When my daughter, and later my son, started kindergarten, I told her "This year you have to learn only three things:
[1] Sit down
[2] Shut up, and
[3] Pay attention
If you learn those three things, I will be satisfied." They did. Both of them now have bachelor's degrees, thanks to the three things they learned in kindergarten.
[1] To ensure quality; buy a copy of "Tamborine Man" and copyright allows Bob Dylan to ensure that it's an accurate copy. I'm all for that.
[2] To reap money; buy a copy of "Tamborine Man" and Bob Dylan should get money from it. That's OK. But he doesn't own the copyright, a record corporation gets the money, not him.
[3] To limit access; just try to buy a copy of "Tamborine Man" in the legal CD shops in Thailand. The legal movie shops have hundreds of movies, the pirates have thousands, the Internet has tens of thousands. Adolf Hitler used his copyright on "Mein Kamph" to prevent an accurate English translation from being published. I am opposed to this. Once a work is published, it belongs to humanity; it should not be possible to block distribution through copyright law.
Intellectual Property was a bad idea.
It is generally conceded that if there were no copyright laws, 98% of the books published each year would not have been written. It is also generally conceded that 98% of the books published each year are crap. Some of us believe that it is the same 98%.
Over the past 25 years I've tried a few 'calendar 'and 'todo' tools and always come back to: ASCII text files.
Calendar? Lines of ASCII text, mm/dd+[TAB]+description. Sorts nicely, just look at the top, can see everything. When an annual event is finished, move it to the bottom of the list for next year.
ToDo list? Ascii text again. Important things move to the top of the list. Less important stuff disappears off the bottom of the window and never gets done.
Sometimes I share the same calendar or todo file between Windows and Linux. I can edit it over the local network.
Portable, personal, customized, universal. Virtually the same user interface as in 1980.
maps.google.com is not yet useful to the ninety-five percent of the worlds population that lives outside the United States. A nice little toy for the few people who live in that area.
BBC pointed me to http://www.isna.ir/news/Main.asp? so I think it's still up, hosted somewhere. Too bad they don't have an english language page.
During the UN arguments with the Taleban I found their web site (taleban.com or taliban.org or something). I checked it once in a while for the alternate opinion. In July it was hacked. After 911 it disappeared completely.
During the Vietnam war we learned the value of getting news from the other side. Our side lies, their side lies, but between the two you can catch more truth than listening to one side alone. Today, http://www.al-qaeda.org/en/ does not exist, and it should. We need it.
Read http://english.aljazeera.net for some Arab news views. Good stuff.
Adams International has offices in Roiet, Banphai, and Bangkok (Thailand). The Roiet office has completely converted. All computers either Linux or dual-boot Linux+Windows. Nobody connects to the Internet using Windows. All e-mail from Linux; mozilla or evolution or thunderbird. All web from Linux; mozilla or firefox. No Windows Internet access at all any more. No viruses, no spam relays, no spyware, no anti-virus software, no anti-virus updates, no Ad-aware, no patches. Spam, yes. Banphai office coming up, then Bangkok.
IMHO, IBM has one major reason for supporting Open Source: OS/2. Microsoft jerked IBM around with Windows 95, forced IBM to give up on an operating system IBM already owned. IBM is supporting Open Source so that nobody can ever do that to IBM again. It's in the anti-monopoly case Statement Of Facts.
I tried it. But they insist that I be online when I run the checker. Sorry, Bill, but I won't connect to the Internet using Windows. Too many security holes. Give me a validity checker that I can download and I'll use it. AFAIK, I run a legal copy of Windows 98 Thai Edition First Edition, which Microsoft no longer supports, so no patches. Sorry, Bill, but no way am I going to let your holey system wade through the Internet swamp.
I live in Thailand, and just once I'd like to hear an American in the United States talk about what's best for the world. All they ever seem to care about is what's best for the United States. Is the world safer since the invasion of Iraq? Obviously not. The biggest threat to world peace? Washington D.C.
Different people learn in different ways, and they come out knowing different things. Most of the posters here learned on their own, and that's best, for them, because that's the kind of people they are.
I learn best by reading the reference manual cover to cover (ever read the man pages in alphabetical order?). Remember, though - any book on Linux you see in a bookstore is obsolete.
Some people learn best sitting in a class; I learn nothing sitting in a class.
A college degree in Computer Science teaches you something valuable - it teaches you how to debug the damned program at 4AM.
Classes teach facts; experienced teaches skills. Skills are more important.
Remember - the first actual user will do something you never dreamed of.
If your company judges on what certificates you've got, take the classes and get the papers. If the company judges on what you can do, just do it. Alone, quietly, invisibly. Don't let the boss hear you screaming.
You know how you drift through the intro to a movie, and wake up when something starts to happen? Well, with Poor Cow, it says "THE END" and you look at your watch and it's been an hour and half and the movie hasn't started yet. This woman's life was lifeless, and the movie was lifeless, so it was a great movie, yes?
For sure using our server. Having been alerted by the bounced messages coming to the catchall account, we checked the SMTP logs and, sure enough, SMTP was sending messages from that non-existant user. I don't know enough about servers to know how it was done. Maybe the smtp user list was hacked, maybe there was a weakness in a cgi script. Security knows about it.
We have a catchall e-mail address. We started receiving messages saying an outgoing e-mail was bounced. The surprise was that the originating user account did not exist! Apparently somebody was using our server to send out e-mail, maybe spam, from a fake account. A catch-all address can be useful in surprising ways.
You buy two computers, A and B. Each comes with Windows. A dies, you buy computer C. Can you install the Windows for A onto C? Legally? Don't know? Well, you'd better, because Bill will send you to jail if you get the wrong answer. Can you install Windows D onto computer D using the product key from Windows E? Guess again! Threats. I can live without the threats. I live a deliberately low-stress lifestyle and I don't want to live with Bill pointing a gun at my head.
As a programmer I can get even more time with the kids. But it's not so regularly scheduled. When the crunch is on my time is in the office; when the crunch is off I can take time off. I'm on call 24 hours a day 7 days a week, but rarely do I have to drive in at 8pm. I am paid for what I put out, not for the hours I sit at a desk.
Whenever I get a suspicious e-mail, in Mozilla I hit Ctrl+U (In MS Outlook it's Properties / Source) which then shows me the raw ascii text that was transmitted, without any evaluaion of HTML, loading of links, playing music, etc. Reading the raw text tells me immediately if it's spam or unexpected legitimate mail. No need to use a special e-mail browser.
"The... drivers... get into the system and re-route system API calls, much about with non-standard kernel features and the like. And that's the problem with "bianary" modules. The problem with nVidia's approach is that it's hard to tell where their drivers start and the kernel begins...heck, they could rewrite half the kernel and simply override it in their module..."
Maybe that's why my Linux crashes so often. Linux seems to be well protected against application bugs, but helpless against driver bugs. If "driver_space == kernel_space" then "driver_bug == kernel_bug".
The real question is not whether you can release binary-only drivers, but WHETHER YOU OUGHT TO BE ABLE TO RELEASE BINARY-ONLY DRIVERS. As it seems to stand now, if we crack down on such drivers anyone with NVidea hardware has to run Windows. Wouldn't it make sense to allow a driver to be as proprietary as the hardware it drives?
"What's good for General Motors is good for America." That was the insensitive horror quote when I was growing up. Today, "What's good for the United States is good for the World". **that** is why five billion people don't want the US to run the planet, turn off Galileo, control the Internet, etc.
Standard construction in Thailand, where I live, has one [1] two[2]-holed electrical outlet per room, right next to the light switch by the door. Lots and lots of extension cords. In our bedroom the previous tenant had an air conditioner; we spliced the leftover power wires to an extension cord to create an outlet on that side of the room. Unless you have an electrician install the wiring, and watch him carefully, nothing is grounded, even if it's got three holes.
Six months ago I bought a bicycle. The chain was inside a sheet-metal shell. When it came off the front gear, I learned that I could open the maintenance hole and got it back on again. When it came off the rear gear I spent two hours ripping the sheet metal off with my pliers. Now the chain is exposed, just like all the other bicycle chains I've ever had, so that I can get at it when it fails. Chain off sproket: the sheet metal cover turned a ten second fix into a major repair. If you put the chain inside the frame that chain/sprocket system had better be 100% reliable, not 99.99 percent!
NASA has a ten wheel truck that's grounded. They need a toyota; a cheap small vehicle for hauling people around. Why build a space plane from scratch? The Chinese just did it! Cheap. Small, Space Vehicle. Carries two passengers plus the pilot. Goes up; comes down. Fast, cheap, gets the job done.
The last time I installed MS-DOS on a computer was - April, 2003.
Ten years ago we developed a special application that ran on MS-DOS. It is low-security, simple, used only 3-4 months of the year. A few years ago I modified it to run in a DOS window under Windows 98. As the company gradually upgraded from DOS to Windows 98, these old DOS machines were grabbed to keep running this application. Our hardware man performed miracles keeping these boxes running. So the application runs on Windows 98 and MS-DOS computers.
In April 2003 a Compaq Notebook running Windows 98 konked out; hardware OK, software dorfed. Darned if I'm going to pay a hundred dollars for a Windows 98 license for that thing, so I installed MS-DOS (6.22) to finish up the last month of the season. These old machines have had their day.
We are in the midst of upgrading from Windows 98. To Linux. This year the application will get all new boxes. I am now porting the application from DOS to Linux. The main problems are with permissions and mounts; DOS lets our application do anything it wants to; Unix treats it like it's the enemy. Linux is learning...
In the spring and summer of 2001 I often visited www.taleban.com for their version of the truth. In July it was hacked. After 2001/09/11 it disappeared. The FBI says there are Al-Queda web sites, but I can't find them. During the Vietnam war we found out how important it is to listen to "the enemy". So I've bookmarked http://www.kahane.org/home.htm just because, someday, I might want to hear their side of the story. I also check http://english.aljazeera.net/HomePage for their views.
Slashdot Mirror
[1] Sit down
[2] Shut up, and
[3] Pay attention
If you learn those three things, I will be satisfied." They did. Both of them now have bachelor's degrees, thanks to the three things they learned in kindergarten.
[1] To ensure quality; buy a copy of "Tamborine Man" and copyright allows Bob Dylan to ensure that it's an accurate copy. I'm all for that.
[2] To reap money; buy a copy of "Tamborine Man" and Bob Dylan should get money from it. That's OK. But he doesn't own the copyright, a record corporation gets the money, not him.
[3] To limit access; just try to buy a copy of "Tamborine Man" in the legal CD shops in Thailand. The legal movie shops have hundreds of movies, the pirates have thousands, the Internet has tens of thousands. Adolf Hitler used his copyright on "Mein Kamph" to prevent an accurate English translation from being published. I am opposed to this. Once a work is published, it belongs to humanity; it should not be possible to block distribution through copyright law.
Intellectual Property was a bad idea.
It is generally conceded that if there were no copyright laws, 98% of the books published each year would not have been written. It is also generally conceded that 98% of the books published each year are crap. Some of us believe that it is the same 98%.
Over the past 25 years I've tried a few 'calendar 'and 'todo' tools and always come back to: ASCII text files.
Calendar? Lines of ASCII text, mm/dd+[TAB]+description. Sorts nicely, just look at the top, can see everything. When an annual event is finished, move it to the bottom of the list for next year.
ToDo list? Ascii text again. Important things move to the top of the list. Less important stuff disappears off the bottom of the window and never gets done.
Sometimes I share the same calendar or todo file between Windows and Linux. I can edit it over the local network.
Portable, personal, customized, universal. Virtually the same user interface as in 1980.
So am I. Have you ever been to Thailand? I have over 35 years of experience with computing; I could live anywhere in the world. (:>)=
maps.google.com is not yet useful to the ninety-five percent of the worlds population that lives outside the United States. A nice little toy for the few people who live in that area.
BBC pointed me to http://www.isna.ir/news/Main.asp? so I think it's still up, hosted somewhere. Too bad they don't have an english language page.
During the UN arguments with the Taleban I found their web site (taleban.com or taliban.org or something). I checked it once in a while for the alternate opinion. In July it was hacked. After 911 it disappeared completely.
During the Vietnam war we learned the value of getting news from the other side. Our side lies, their side lies, but between the two you can catch more truth than listening to one side alone. Today, http://www.al-qaeda.org/en/ does not exist, and it should. We need it.
Read http://english.aljazeera.net for some Arab news views. Good stuff.
Adams International has offices in Roiet, Banphai, and Bangkok (Thailand). The Roiet office has completely converted. All computers either Linux or dual-boot Linux+Windows. Nobody connects to the Internet using Windows. All e-mail from Linux; mozilla or evolution or thunderbird. All web from Linux; mozilla or firefox. No Windows Internet access at all any more. No viruses, no spam relays, no spyware, no anti-virus software, no anti-virus updates, no Ad-aware, no patches. Spam, yes. Banphai office coming up, then Bangkok.
IMHO, IBM has one major reason for supporting Open Source: OS/2. Microsoft jerked IBM around with Windows 95, forced IBM to give up on an operating system IBM already owned. IBM is supporting Open Source so that nobody can ever do that to IBM again. It's in the anti-monopoly case Statement Of Facts.
I tried it. But they insist that I be online when I run the checker. Sorry, Bill, but I won't connect to the Internet using Windows. Too many security holes. Give me a validity checker that I can download and I'll use it.
AFAIK, I run a legal copy of Windows 98 Thai Edition First Edition, which Microsoft no longer supports, so no patches.
Sorry, Bill, but no way am I going to let your holey system wade through the Internet swamp.
I live in Thailand, and just once I'd like to hear an American in the United States talk about what's best for the world. All they ever seem to care about is what's best for the United States. Is the world safer since the invasion of Iraq? Obviously not. The biggest threat to world peace? Washington D.C.
Different people learn in different ways, and they come out knowing different things. Most of the posters here learned on their own, and that's best, for them, because that's the kind of people they are. I learn best by reading the reference manual cover to cover (ever read the man pages in alphabetical order?). Remember, though - any book on Linux you see in a bookstore is obsolete. Some people learn best sitting in a class; I learn nothing sitting in a class. A college degree in Computer Science teaches you something valuable - it teaches you how to debug the damned program at 4AM. Classes teach facts; experienced teaches skills. Skills are more important. Remember - the first actual user will do something you never dreamed of. If your company judges on what certificates you've got, take the classes and get the papers. If the company judges on what you can do, just do it. Alone, quietly, invisibly. Don't let the boss hear you screaming.
You know how you drift through the intro to a movie, and wake up when something starts to happen? Well, with Poor Cow, it says "THE END" and you look at your watch and it's been an hour and half and the movie hasn't started yet. This woman's life was lifeless, and the movie was lifeless, so it was a great movie, yes?
For sure using our server. Having been alerted by the bounced messages coming to the catchall account, we checked the SMTP logs and, sure enough, SMTP was sending messages from that non-existant user. I don't know enough about servers to know how it was done. Maybe the smtp user list was hacked, maybe there was a weakness in a cgi script. Security knows about it.
We have a catchall e-mail address. We started receiving messages saying an outgoing e-mail was bounced. The surprise was that the originating user account did not exist! Apparently somebody was using our server to send out e-mail, maybe spam, from a fake account. A catch-all address can be useful in surprising ways.
You buy two computers, A and B. Each comes with Windows. A dies, you buy computer C. Can you install the Windows for A onto C? Legally? Don't know? Well, you'd better, because Bill will send you to jail if you get the wrong answer. Can you install Windows D onto computer D using the product key from Windows E? Guess again! Threats. I can live without the threats. I live a deliberately low-stress lifestyle and I don't want to live with Bill pointing a gun at my head.
As a programmer I can get even more time with the kids. But it's not so regularly scheduled. When the crunch is on my time is in the office; when the crunch is off I can take time off. I'm on call 24 hours a day 7 days a week, but rarely do I have to drive in at 8pm. I am paid for what I put out, not for the hours I sit at a desk.
Whenever I get a suspicious e-mail, in Mozilla I hit Ctrl+U (In MS Outlook it's Properties / Source) which then shows me the raw ascii text that was transmitted, without any evaluaion of HTML, loading of links, playing music, etc. Reading the raw text tells me immediately if it's spam or unexpected legitimate mail. No need to use a special e-mail browser.
"The ... drivers ... get into the system and re-route system API calls, much about with non-standard kernel features and the like. And that's the problem with "bianary" modules. The problem with nVidia's approach is that it's hard to tell where their drivers start and the kernel begins...heck, they could rewrite half the kernel and simply override it in their module..."
Maybe that's why my Linux crashes so often. Linux seems to be well protected against application bugs, but helpless against driver bugs. If "driver_space == kernel_space" then "driver_bug == kernel_bug".
The real question is not whether you can release binary-only drivers, but WHETHER YOU OUGHT TO BE ABLE TO RELEASE BINARY-ONLY DRIVERS. As it seems to stand now, if we crack down on such drivers anyone with NVidea hardware has to run Windows. Wouldn't it make sense to allow a driver to be as proprietary as the hardware it drives?
"What's good for General Motors is good for America." That was the insensitive horror quote when I was growing up. Today, "What's good for the United States is good for the World". **that** is why five billion people don't want the US to run the planet, turn off Galileo, control the Internet, etc.
Standard construction in Thailand, where I live, has one [1] two[2]-holed electrical outlet per room, right next to the light switch by the door. Lots and lots of extension cords. In our bedroom the previous tenant had an air conditioner; we spliced the leftover power wires to an extension cord to create an outlet on that side of the room. Unless you have an electrician install the wiring, and watch him carefully, nothing is grounded, even if it's got three holes.
Six months ago I bought a bicycle. The chain was inside a sheet-metal shell. When it came off the front gear, I learned that I could open the maintenance hole and got it back on again. When it came off the rear gear I spent two hours ripping the sheet metal off with my pliers. Now the chain is exposed, just like all the other bicycle chains I've ever had, so that I can get at it when it fails. Chain off sproket: the sheet metal cover turned a ten second fix into a major repair. If you put the chain inside the frame that chain/sprocket system had better be 100% reliable, not 99.99 percent!
NASA has a ten wheel truck that's grounded. They need a toyota; a cheap small vehicle for hauling people around. Why build a space plane from scratch? The Chinese just did it! Cheap. Small, Space Vehicle. Carries two passengers plus the pilot. Goes up; comes down. Fast, cheap, gets the job done.
The last time I installed MS-DOS on a computer was - April, 2003. Ten years ago we developed a special application that ran on MS-DOS. It is low-security, simple, used only 3-4 months of the year. A few years ago I modified it to run in a DOS window under Windows 98. As the company gradually upgraded from DOS to Windows 98, these old DOS machines were grabbed to keep running this application. Our hardware man performed miracles keeping these boxes running. So the application runs on Windows 98 and MS-DOS computers. In April 2003 a Compaq Notebook running Windows 98 konked out; hardware OK, software dorfed. Darned if I'm going to pay a hundred dollars for a Windows 98 license for that thing, so I installed MS-DOS (6.22) to finish up the last month of the season. These old machines have had their day. We are in the midst of upgrading from Windows 98. To Linux. This year the application will get all new boxes. I am now porting the application from DOS to Linux. The main problems are with permissions and mounts; DOS lets our application do anything it wants to; Unix treats it like it's the enemy. Linux is learning...
In the spring and summer of 2001 I often visited www.taleban.com for their version of the truth. In July it was hacked. After 2001/09/11 it disappeared. The FBI says there are Al-Queda web sites, but I can't find them. During the Vietnam war we found out how important it is to listen to "the enemy". So I've bookmarked http://www.kahane.org/home.htm just because, someday, I might want to hear their side of the story. I also check http://english.aljazeera.net/HomePage for their views.