Free software has never been about "it's free but you must pay your way by worshipping the software ideals and community", no matter how much some may with that to be true.
Reading/. you'd be hard pressed to think otherwise.
Actually, I think the best thing that would happen for Linux and the software industry in general is that the whole cult mentality with its "bring me the head of Darl McBride"-attitude went the way of the dodo-bird.
The people who actually make useful OSS should not have their image tarnished by a bunch of immature morons who have nothing better to do than blather endlessly about perceived wrongdoings of the "convicted monopolist" (blegh).
If you think $COMMERCIAL_VENDOR isn't doing it right, do it right yourself, let everyone know about it and let your work be judged on its own merits. Nobody needs the personality cults or flamefests.
This may be something of an ignorant question, but why do spammers remove.edu,.gov and.mil addresses?
Who knows, spammers are stupid. Probably a combination of poor returns (fewer suckers, more fake addresses), risk (chance of attracting the wrong kind of attention) and false sense of ethics (anyone with a.com e-mail address must have consented to receiving commercial e-mail).
These are university servers where staff and faculty are required to have valid email addresses posted on the department web pages. Any spider worth a damn should have harvested them long ago. I find it very hard to believe that this environment is getting 60% less spam than systems that don't provide a directory of valid addresses.
Let me guess:.edu? Spammers have long since started washing their lists for.edu,.gov and.mil addresses. I believe many also filter out ccTLDs. You're looking at a skewed sample.
Do you understand the concept of 'reference' in a technical or scientific article? Or maybe you think the editors should have added the standard/. "I heard Microsoft might have something to do with this so it must be crap" disclaimer?
You are missing the point. It makes it easy to convert from Microsoft SQL. Imagine thousands of independent software developers with an alternative to MSQL within easy reach. Their entire solution cost is now reduced, and they will sell better. At least the ones that take the chance.
I'm not sure so many independent software developers use MS SQL anyway, but there has for a while been a light version of MS SQL, MSDE, available for a free download, with most of the features of MS SQL but with similar restrictions to this Sybase offering.
But this appears to be targeted mostly at Linux developers so it's competition for PostgreSQL and the Abomination That Shall Not Be Named.
If you ever rub elbows with the crowds that really get into chess, you'll find them an honorable bunch.
I've found that there are three kinds of Chess players: nice guys, deep thinkers and assholes. Chess ability seems to be independent of which group the player belongs in.
as there are no referees to make wrong calls, and judges to give wrong scores.
Actually, tournaments have people called arbiters who assist the players and rule on any unclear cases or when the players disagree on something. And it's not uncommon that an arbiter makes a wrong call.
But, cheating is still possible with the help of latest technology. In an on board match, you could have some person watching your game and suggest moves after checking in a computer. This is more true of non Grandmaster games. Its almost impossible to do this in GrandMaster games as necessary precautions are taken.
The traditional method is to take frequent bathroom breaks and then flip through an opening book in the stall. Nowadays that's been replaced with a pocket computer.
Now, in internet chess, cheating is even more likely to occur. It is very difficult to hold a fair tournament completely online anytime soon. Something like our elections.
You don't even need hacks like this to do it. Having another computer running analysis and entering moves in real time allows almost perfect play and if you're not stupid about it, it's probably very hard to get caught.
Or at least the financial sections of businesses won't.
Oh really? I'm thinking the exact opposite.
If the software is used frequently enough to be of use, there is currently no financial benefit to paying as you use it unless you are perhaps already paying a subscription fee for usage (mainframe software for example).
This depends so much on the situation it's impossible to make blanket statements like this and hope to be at all accurate.
Additionally, how do you budget for this software. Companies typically like to make up a sheet saying we will spend X amount of dollars on this 'solution' and then expect you to stick to it. Have you ever tried to change or add on to a project after the initial purchase? It is always much easier to deal with the financial people when you do it up front.
This only holds for short-term investments, but if you're talking over the next several years, the future updates and support fudge up your numbers.
The problem comes when the product turns out to be unsuitable or just plain bad after a few months into the implementation. I've heard these stories so many times from the customers of our web-based ASP enterprise software. They buy some expensive system, pay through the nose for hardware and licenses and then it's not usable so they have to spend more money on buying something else. On the other hand, if they'd just signed a monthly service contract that you can terminate with a few months warning, they could salvage most of the investment and move on easier and cheaper.
Not to mention that ASPs usually do all the updates automatically so you don't have to think about those issues.
The question is not the storage, I would think, as much as the bandwidth. GMail's business model does not include the idea of, say, 10k people accessing a single gmail account to view content, which may or may not include Google's adverts.
Um, Google own Blogger.com who already do this and have been doing it for years. Furthermore I think any Gmail bandwidth will be dwarfed by the Google search engine bandwidth.
We're seeing far to many cases of one black hat who comes up with the "forbiden hack" that causes a company that puts out a hack-friendly device to wish they never had and want to take the hacking tools they gave the world back. Can't we be nice to the suppliers of such devices so that such devices keep coming out?
I wouldn't call a piece of software that permits legal fair use to be "black hat". It's also strange that normally corporations who stomp on hackers trying to leverage their devices or services for relatively moderate ends get lambasted on/. but when that corporation happens to be Apple or Google, a lot of slashdotters put on the white knight armor and ride to the resque of an entity that surely has enough lawyers to fend off for themselves.
Realistically though, GmailFS is and always will be a quirk. They can of course break it any time they want but since 1 gigabyte in storage space costs, what, a handful of glass beads nowadays, do you really think enough people will bother with this to cause serious scalability problems for a search engine company that handles a hundred million hits per day?
To sum it up: wake up, Gmail isn't going to be cancelled just because somebody made a cute hack to use it as a filesystem. You can still pretend to be part of a special in-crowd of Google lovers because you managed to beg an invite off of someone.
I am not trying to troll or throw out some flamebait, but everyone has a tendency to want to complain about having your phone tapped or your email read. However, these means are the primary ways of detecting terrorist chatter.
I don't buy it. Terrorist organizations don't spend months in the US chatting away on their VoIP phones, waiting for the FBI to eavesdrop. They lay out their plans in Afghanistan or Syria or wherever, send in the operatives and from that moment on it's total communication blackout until the execution unless the plan is aborted.
Phone taps are used to catch domestic criminals as usual. Drug dealers, kidnappers, murderers etc.
Rather more confused are the slashbots who tout client-side content filtering as the end-all be-all "solution" to spam.
To block spam at the transport level is one thing; an algorithm for identifying spam without human intervention is another entirely.
The only catch: it's not possible to identify spam (unsolicited bulk e-mail) based on the content alone. Why? Because the two words in the definition, 'unsolicited' and 'bulk'. How can the existence of the word 'viagra' possibly tell me the message was unsolicited? Even if I'm not interested in buying Viagra, I can still receive important e-mail containing spammy words that's neither bulk nor unsolicited (like spam complaints about my users). The bulk criteria is even more difficult to predict using content filtering alone. About the only solution that addresses this point I know of that is the Distributed Checksum Clearinghouse.
I suggest you RTFA. Their method is actually pretty interesting. Lackluster is not the appropriate word for the novel idea they have come up with.
The method might be novel. The purpose (content filtering spam that's already been delivered) is not. Such methods simply don't address the costs of receiving and storing spam, only the perceived user inconvenience.
...how does this DNA sequencing algorithm block spam before it's delivered to my mail server? And if it doesn't, what good does it do since the cost of delivery is incurred anyway?
I suggest they go back to working with real DNA rather than dabble in another lackluster content filter that just hides the spam.
Re:Pre-IPO getting less shares owners selling less
on
Google Slashes IPO price
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
The initial market capitalization at that $100+ stock price (I.E. price of stock * stock in circulation) was about a billion dollars less than Yahoo's current capitalization.
That makes as much sense in valuing the stock as saying that since 'Google' has six letters and 'Yahoo' only had five, then Google is better value for your money. If Google were selling one share for $1,000,000, would you think it's a great deal?
I looked at the documentation and something was left unclear. I understand that backkups are made using the pg_dump command to script the entire database to stdout. Does PGSQL have the ability to do incremental backups consisting only of the transactions since the last pg_dump or do you have to take the full backup every 30 minutes or so, which sounds hugely wasteful?
They are right in my spam folder. I think I had one false negative since I've began running it a couple of months ago.
Yeah, me too. Only thanks to the three RBLs I use (Spamhaus, SORBS, DSBL) the Bayesian filter only gets to handle a dozen messages a day instead of hundreds.
If all you're looking for is speed, fine... but RAID artrays are typically installed not just for performance, but redundancy/data protection.
Regular backups and off-site storage are installed for data protection. Even with RAID 5 if IT hits the fan and you have no backups, you're more than likely screwed.
Slashdot Mirror
Free software has never been about "it's free but you must pay your way by worshipping the software ideals and community", no matter how much some may with that to be true.
Reading /. you'd be hard pressed to think otherwise.
Actually, I think the best thing that would happen for Linux and the software industry in general is that the whole cult mentality with its "bring me the head of Darl McBride"-attitude went the way of the dodo-bird.
The people who actually make useful OSS should not have their image tarnished by a bunch of immature morons who have nothing better to do than blather endlessly about perceived wrongdoings of the "convicted monopolist" (blegh).
If you think $COMMERCIAL_VENDOR isn't doing it right, do it right yourself, let everyone know about it and let your work be judged on its own merits. Nobody needs the personality cults or flamefests.
It is official; Netcraft confirms: the Internet is dying
Are you sure? I seem to have trouble bringing up www.netcraft.com...
This may be something of an ignorant question, but why do spammers remove .edu, .gov and .mil addresses?
Who knows, spammers are stupid. Probably a combination of poor returns (fewer suckers, more fake addresses), risk (chance of attracting the wrong kind of attention) and false sense of ethics (anyone with a .com e-mail address must have consented to receiving commercial e-mail).
These are university servers where staff and faculty are required to have valid email addresses posted on the department web pages. Any spider worth a damn should have harvested them long ago. I find it very hard to believe that this environment is getting 60% less spam than systems that don't provide a directory of valid addresses.
Let me guess: .edu? Spammers have long since started washing their lists for .edu, .gov and .mil addresses. I believe many also filter out ccTLDs. You're looking at a skewed sample.
No, it's not.
References:
Understanding IPv6 by Microsoft Press
Do you understand the concept of 'reference' in a technical or scientific article? Or maybe you think the editors should have added the standard /. "I heard Microsoft might have something to do with this so it must be crap" disclaimer?
When I first started using Sybase, I thought the same thing you did. I even did a google on "Sybase sucks."
22 results.
So then I googled for "SQL server sucks."
70 results.
Finally, to be fair to Open Source, I did a query on "MySQL Sucks."
599 records found and I agree with all of them. But hey, at least you get the source to that pile of shit.
You forgot "Oracle sucks".
250 results.
Oh, and "DB2 sucks".
6 results.
Google has spoken!
http://www.sphere-data.com/docs/ib_vs_ss.shtml
This articles discusses SQL Server 6.5. That was two full versions ago!
You are missing the point. It makes it easy to convert from Microsoft SQL. Imagine thousands of independent software developers with an alternative to MSQL within easy reach. Their entire solution cost is now reduced, and they will sell better. At least the ones that take the chance.
I'm not sure so many independent software developers use MS SQL anyway, but there has for a while been a light version of MS SQL, MSDE, available for a free download, with most of the features of MS SQL but with similar restrictions to this Sybase offering.
But this appears to be targeted mostly at Linux developers so it's competition for PostgreSQL and the Abomination That Shall Not Be Named.
If you ever rub elbows with the crowds that really get into chess, you'll find them an honorable bunch.
I've found that there are three kinds of Chess players: nice guys, deep thinkers and assholes. Chess ability seems to be independent of which group the player belongs in.
as there are no referees to make wrong calls, and judges to give wrong scores.
Actually, tournaments have people called arbiters who assist the players and rule on any unclear cases or when the players disagree on something. And it's not uncommon that an arbiter makes a wrong call.
But, cheating is still possible with the help of latest technology. In an on board match, you could have some person watching your game and suggest moves after checking in a computer. This is more true of non Grandmaster games. Its almost impossible to do this in GrandMaster games as necessary precautions are taken.
The traditional method is to take frequent bathroom breaks and then flip through an opening book in the stall. Nowadays that's been replaced with a pocket computer.
Now, in internet chess, cheating is even more likely to occur. It is very difficult to hold a fair tournament completely online anytime soon. Something like our elections.
You don't even need hacks like this to do it. Having another computer running analysis and entering moves in real time allows almost perfect play and if you're not stupid about it, it's probably very hard to get caught.
Or at least the financial sections of businesses won't.
Oh really? I'm thinking the exact opposite.
If the software is used frequently enough to be of use, there is currently no financial benefit to paying as you use it unless you are perhaps already paying a subscription fee for usage (mainframe software for example).
This depends so much on the situation it's impossible to make blanket statements like this and hope to be at all accurate.
Additionally, how do you budget for this software. Companies typically like to make up a sheet saying we will spend X amount of dollars on this 'solution' and then expect you to stick to it. Have you ever tried to change or add on to a project after the initial purchase? It is always much easier to deal with the financial people when you do it up front.
This only holds for short-term investments, but if you're talking over the next several years, the future updates and support fudge up your numbers.
The problem comes when the product turns out to be unsuitable or just plain bad after a few months into the implementation. I've heard these stories so many times from the customers of our web-based ASP enterprise software. They buy some expensive system, pay through the nose for hardware and licenses and then it's not usable so they have to spend more money on buying something else. On the other hand, if they'd just signed a monthly service contract that you can terminate with a few months warning, they could salvage most of the investment and move on easier and cheaper.
Not to mention that ASPs usually do all the updates automatically so you don't have to think about those issues.
The question is not the storage, I would think, as much as the bandwidth. GMail's business model does not include the idea of, say, 10k people accessing a single gmail account to view content, which may or may not include Google's adverts.
Um, Google own Blogger.com who already do this and have been doing it for years. Furthermore I think any Gmail bandwidth will be dwarfed by the Google search engine bandwidth.
Call me naive, but surely there's no such thing as an independent study?
Most studies seem to be independent of reality.
We're seeing far to many cases of one black hat who comes up with the "forbiden hack" that causes a company that puts out a hack-friendly device to wish they never had and want to take the hacking tools they gave the world back. Can't we be nice to the suppliers of such devices so that such devices keep coming out?
I wouldn't call a piece of software that permits legal fair use to be "black hat". It's also strange that normally corporations who stomp on hackers trying to leverage their devices or services for relatively moderate ends get lambasted on /. but when that corporation happens to be Apple or Google, a lot of slashdotters put on the white knight armor and ride to the resque of an entity that surely has enough lawyers to fend off for themselves.
Realistically though, GmailFS is and always will be a quirk. They can of course break it any time they want but since 1 gigabyte in storage space costs, what, a handful of glass beads nowadays, do you really think enough people will bother with this to cause serious scalability problems for a search engine company that handles a hundred million hits per day?
To sum it up: wake up, Gmail isn't going to be cancelled just because somebody made a cute hack to use it as a filesystem. You can still pretend to be part of a special in-crowd of Google lovers because you managed to beg an invite off of someone.
I am not trying to troll or throw out some flamebait, but everyone has a tendency to want to complain about having your phone tapped or your email read. However, these means are the primary ways of detecting terrorist chatter.
I don't buy it. Terrorist organizations don't spend months in the US chatting away on their VoIP phones, waiting for the FBI to eavesdrop. They lay out their plans in Afghanistan or Syria or wherever, send in the operatives and from that moment on it's total communication blackout until the execution unless the plan is aborted.
Phone taps are used to catch domestic criminals as usual. Drug dealers, kidnappers, murderers etc.
You are confused.
Rather more confused are the slashbots who tout client-side content filtering as the end-all be-all "solution" to spam.
To block spam at the transport level is one thing; an algorithm for identifying spam without human intervention is another entirely.
The only catch: it's not possible to identify spam (unsolicited bulk e-mail) based on the content alone. Why? Because the two words in the definition, 'unsolicited' and 'bulk'. How can the existence of the word 'viagra' possibly tell me the message was unsolicited? Even if I'm not interested in buying Viagra, I can still receive important e-mail containing spammy words that's neither bulk nor unsolicited (like spam complaints about my users). The bulk criteria is even more difficult to predict using content filtering alone. About the only solution that addresses this point I know of that is the Distributed Checksum Clearinghouse.
I suggest you RTFA. Their method is actually pretty interesting. Lackluster is not the appropriate word for the novel idea they have come up with.
The method might be novel. The purpose (content filtering spam that's already been delivered) is not. Such methods simply don't address the costs of receiving and storing spam, only the perceived user inconvenience.
...how does this DNA sequencing algorithm block spam before it's delivered to my mail server? And if it doesn't, what good does it do since the cost of delivery is incurred anyway?
I suggest they go back to working with real DNA rather than dabble in another lackluster content filter that just hides the spam.
Apple fans are nutty.
I hear they now come in caramel flavor as well.
The initial market capitalization at that $100+ stock price (I.E. price of stock * stock in circulation) was about a billion dollars less than Yahoo's current capitalization.
That makes as much sense in valuing the stock as saying that since 'Google' has six letters and 'Yahoo' only had five, then Google is better value for your money. If Google were selling one share for $1,000,000, would you think it's a great deal?
I looked at the documentation and something was left unclear. I understand that backkups are made using the pg_dump command to script the entire database to stdout. Does PGSQL have the ability to do incremental backups consisting only of the transactions since the last pg_dump or do you have to take the full backup every 30 minutes or so, which sounds hugely wasteful?
They are right in my spam folder. I think I had one false negative since I've began running it a couple of months ago.
Yeah, me too. Only thanks to the three RBLs I use (Spamhaus, SORBS, DSBL) the Bayesian filter only gets to handle a dozen messages a day instead of hundreds.
The Netcraft posts on Slashdot would be less ironic if slashdot.org didn't boast a whopping 35 day uptime.
I use SpamBayes.
Why bother with SpamBayes, just put your fingers in your ears and go "la-la-la-la I can't see any spam so it doesn't exist la-la-la".
If all you're looking for is speed, fine... but RAID artrays are typically installed not just for performance, but redundancy/data protection.
Regular backups and off-site storage are installed for data protection. Even with RAID 5 if IT hits the fan and you have no backups, you're more than likely screwed.
But yea, my mom doesn't need anything faster for email and web surfing.
For crying out loud, your mom doesn't set the standards of progress in information technology.