What the author of TFA and most of the posters here are missing is that for many people, myself included, the anti Microsoft mindset comes from a dislike of the tactics used by the company, not anything to do with their products.
Sure, Windows is a decent enough product to satisfy alot of people. But to say you love Microsoft because you like how Windows works is somewhat like saying you love Hitler because he improved Germany's economy. Not as extreme, but my point is that all of the things the author loves about MS have come at a price to everyone else involved in the IT industry.
Compare a monopoly power that assimilates or destroys all competition to a benevolent group of great, smart people who write code mostly because they just love to write code.
We all know that MS studies Linux, they'd be remiss not too. But, how does Microsoft describe your role and your department in their own words? What is your "mission statement", official or simply what is your understanding of what MS would like you to do?
I would imagine it would be something like, "we want you to keep us aware of any advantages linux seems to have" or "we want you to find flaws our marketing machine can use" or (i wish but doubt) "we want to find ways to integrate better" or "we want to identify opportunties to join the world in creating free software". Just wondering what the official role is, and if you can tell us, what the actual outcome so far has been.
As a part time hobbyist web developer, I have to applaud any move by any browser towards correctly implementing standards. Sure yeah it's Microsoft and I think I share a pretty negative view of alot of things they do with many of you. BUT... have you ever tried to create a page that uses even moderately complex CSS and have it look the same in IE and Firefox? It's practically impossible. I usually find it easier to just serve up different pages based on the user agent.. that sucks! So any move regardless of motivation that makes it possible to create a single version of a page and have it look normal is a good move in my book. For once, and just this once, good job MS.
Use it now with DSPAM, CRM114, SpamProbe, or Popfile. Pretty much anyway you get your mail, you can use language classification based tools to ELIMINATE spam, right now.
My god... it was a JOKE. Do you not see the "Funny" label next to the title? Have you just not bothered to read the other two comments where I long ago explained it was a joke for the poor saps who didn't catch what I thought were dead giveaways, i.e "noone born in this century", "morse code over IP", "emergency services should be using broadband"....... what more do I have to do, put "hahaha j/k" at the end?? You all have (to some degree) good points, but they are basically wasted in this thread. If someone is too dense to tell I was kidding, they aren't going to understand any argument you're trying to make either. sheeeeesh.
For the record, I come from a family of hams (father, uncles, etc) and I have great respect for what they do and their right to do it. Our family station wagon had a bumper sticker which read "Hams do it with frequency" (which I did not understand at the time). I tried to make sure that every single sentence in my post would be unbelievably wrong to anyone with half a clue.. I am truly saddened to find that someone actually modded it informative and insightful... wtf?? I've rarely been accused of being informative or insightful even when I wasn't being a jackhole. Sigh..
When will people quit whining about RF interference from powerline broadband? Who cares. RF is a dead technology that noone born in this century still finds cool. Radio is dead dead dead. I say fsck any and all wavelengths unless they're using em to bring me faster internet. All you hams should get a computer and learn to use email instead of tieing up valuable spectrum with your silly talking. If you really want to you can still use morse code over IP. Screw the radio, screw broadcast TV, screw emergency services. They should all be using broadband.
I love Debian.. I have used it for a long long time. I enjoy the environment, the stability, and the package manager you can trust not to screw up your machine even when you tell it to do fairly stupid things. All in all it's a system does make sense and does follow convetion enough of the time to keep me productive and having fun.
Used to be, when the people I knew who knew what they were talking about talked about linux, they probably were talking about Debian GNU/Linux.
Things are changing. More and more smart folks I know are frustrated. Most Open source projects are using a "release early and release often" mentality that is a stark contrast to Debian's recent "don't release at all" policy.
Yes, there is always unstable for those that want the latest(ish) versions of things. That's really not the point, as I see it. People are frustrated with the lack of movement, the apparent lack of progress towards getting any new features into stable, even if they arentt the very latest. I think at some point, many people just like to feel like their system is getting new software even if they don't use any new features at all.
Maybe the negative stuff I read on/. and here tossed around between friends is not accurate. Things might not really be as stagnate as they seem from a common user's prespective. But that Debian has gone from a Good Thing to a bit of a joke amongst the sys admins I respect makes me concerned about it's future.
There are some distro's out there that are attempting to fill the void that debian has created, and some are starting to do a good job of it. A world where a debian based distro replaces a bulk of the debian based users is not hard to imagine right now. What happens to debian then? And what happens to a debian based distro when debian doesn't have users?
It could work out great for almost everyone except the actual debian project. i think everyone in a position of influence there needs to compare the costs of addressing the current perception one way or another to the cost of bascially becoming irrelevant.
I hope I am still enjoying doing my work with debian systems many years from now, but I am starting to wonder if I won't be working on some (probably debian based) alternative instead.
well thats my rant, please forgive any spelling mistakes or generally stupid things I might have said. I'm not one of the smart ones.
The actual code used in OS/2 is probably very tied to being part of an OS/2 system, not Linux or your open source os of choice. Porting an OS isn't like porting an app and translating some library calls..
Except maybe for some of the very high level code (basically applications), you aren't just going to port some feature of OS/2 to *nix even if you have the code.
What would be nice would be a release of patents/copyrights covering concepts and technologies used in OS/2, such as the System Object Model concepts and the Workplace Shell. OS/2 had some nice ideas and it was a neat environment to work in. Bringing that environment to open source (or any other environment) would not be that much easier even if you had the source.
This works "by flooding p2p networks with corrupt/junk data". Didn't spammers already try to kill email with a similar technique? Isn't this the basic principal behind posting on Slashdot? Yet they both continue to thrive..
maybe, just maybe, you might want to read the article next time before you go on a rant. this technology has nothing to do with broadband over powerlines. this works over the premise wiring in your home or building.
Depending on your situation, you might like the way that TorrentFlux works. www.torrentflux.com
Basically it is a php based cgi that allows all users on your network (or even outside your net if you prefer) to manage torrent downloads on a single server. You forward the ports to that server, everyone uses an easy web interface to manage their downloads, and life is good. Very nice for a small dorm or home network with a handful of torrent users.
Another neat trick is to mount shares on each user's workstation on the torrentflux server so that the torrents are actually downloaded right onto the user's workstations. It has a nice builtin interface to RSS torrent feeds as well.
Since this attack sends a packet with a source address of the target host rather than the attacker, won't this attack fail in a vast majority of remote situations (i.e. via Internet or not on the same LAN as the target)?? Doesn't almost every ISP filter outgoing packets for a bit of sanity, especially valid (or reasonable) source addresses? I know my ISPs at home (Adelphia cable) and work (AT&T data) do.
You come back to your hometown on a visit after being away for a few months. You first stop in and see your parents. You chat for say 15 minutes, and then "Oh by the way, can you take a look at the computer, it's doing something funny". Later that day you're at an old buddies house and again, a few minutes into the visit they're wondering if you could help them out with this problem on their PC.
Later that night you go out to an old hangout and suprise, suprise, you run into an old friend who, after the "so how are you doing" is out of the way just wants to ask a quick computer question.
WHY? Why do people assume that I will help them with their PC problems? I have friends who are lawyers, in real estate, carpenters, etc... they don't get badgered to provide services for free. What has happened in the history of IT that makes people feel no shame in requesting that I provide them as a favor the valuable service which I do professionally??
I have worked as a consultant for public schools, and my experience has been that many lack the funding and staff to support their own internal networks and the computer labs used by the students.
If your organization has people willing to donate time, I'm sure the local schools would be glad to have some assistance administering or upgrading their networks, implementing better software for the students to use, etc.
If you are looking to engage students more directly, perhaps you can create some sort of program where the students work together with your staff to improve the school's systems. Perhaps a teacher could use a database set up to track student projects, or a web based bulletin board to distribute class notes and confirm assignment dates etc.
There are many potential projects that exist in any school. Why not try to create something that improves all of the student's experience with technology while teaching/inspiring those who are interested enough to contribute directly?
My father has been a HAM for nearly forty years. Growing up I always enjoyed going to hamfest and other events with him. Even in the short time I experienced the ham culture (aprox 1980-1990), I noticed a trend towards PCs becoming frequent topics of discussion and PC gear being swapped at swapfests as much as radio equipment.
Probably the best integration of the two worlds that I experienced was packet radio. I'm sure there are many who know more about the system than I do. I remember being fascinated that you could log in to a packet radio bulletin board and exchange messages with people from all over the world. In those days a local dialup PC based BBS would typically only have members from the surrounding area.
Maybe someone can post more info on Packet radio?
I used to use OS/2 quite a bit several years ago. While it doesn't seem that open sourcing the operating system itself would do much good, as Linux and the bsds seem to have equal or better low level functionality in most areas, what about the Workplace Shell? The WPS has some great ideas that I have yet to see implemented in another GUI. I know that the WPS is not tied to OS/2 too tightly, because I have a verion that runs as a filemanager type app in DOS. It was released by IBM many years ago in some sort of beta program I participated in. I would think that the Gnome and/or KDE project might be able to take some inspiration if not source code from the WPS.
This new protocol simply cannot be adopted until it's fully acronymic... I mean come on, SNMP and WBEM and even CIM have been fully acronymous for some time now, and this WS-Management thing still has an entire word spelled out in the name? That won't fly in my shop, no sir.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, Windows is a decent enough product to satisfy alot of people. But to say you love Microsoft because you like how Windows works is somewhat like saying you love Hitler because he improved Germany's economy. Not as extreme, but my point is that all of the things the author loves about MS have come at a price to everyone else involved in the IT industry.
Compare a monopoly power that assimilates or destroys all competition to a benevolent group of great, smart people who write code mostly because they just love to write code.
This is why I love Linux.
I would imagine it would be something like, "we want you to keep us aware of any advantages linux seems to have" or "we want you to find flaws our marketing machine can use" or (i wish but doubt) "we want to find ways to integrate better" or "we want to identify opportunties to join the world in creating free software". Just wondering what the official role is, and if you can tell us, what the actual outcome so far has been.
As a part time hobbyist web developer, I have to applaud any move by any browser towards correctly implementing standards. Sure yeah it's Microsoft and I think I share a pretty negative view of alot of things they do with many of you. BUT... have you ever tried to create a page that uses even moderately complex CSS and have it look the same in IE and Firefox? It's practically impossible. I usually find it easier to just serve up different pages based on the user agent.. that sucks! So any move regardless of motivation that makes it possible to create a single version of a page and have it look normal is a good move in my book. For once, and just this once, good job MS.
I thought we were going to just shut down ham radio altogether so we can all have powerline broadband??? what the heck is this?
already patended this back when they patented everything else..
a.k.a. the end of spam.
Use it now with DSPAM, CRM114, SpamProbe, or Popfile. Pretty much anyway you get your mail, you can use language classification based tools to ELIMINATE spam, right now.
My god... it was a JOKE. Do you not see the "Funny" label next to the title? Have you just not bothered to read the other two comments where I long ago explained it was a joke for the poor saps who didn't catch what I thought were dead giveaways, i.e "noone born in this century", "morse code over IP", "emergency services should be using broadband"....... what more do I have to do, put "hahaha j/k" at the end?? You all have (to some degree) good points, but they are basically wasted in this thread. If someone is too dense to tell I was kidding, they aren't going to understand any argument you're trying to make either. sheeeeesh.
For the record, I come from a family of hams (father, uncles, etc) and I have great respect for what they do and their right to do it. Our family station wagon had a bumper sticker which read "Hams do it with frequency" (which I did not understand at the time). I tried to make sure that every single sentence in my post would be unbelievably wrong to anyone with half a clue.. I am truly saddened to find that someone actually modded it informative and insightful... wtf?? I've rarely been accused of being informative or insightful even when I wasn't being a jackhole. Sigh..
was hoping that would be a clue as to how sarcastic/asinine/goofy I was trying to be :)
When will people quit whining about RF interference from powerline broadband? Who cares. RF is a dead technology that noone born in this century still finds cool. Radio is dead dead dead. I say fsck any and all wavelengths unless they're using em to bring me faster internet. All you hams should get a computer and learn to use email instead of tieing up valuable spectrum with your silly talking. If you really want to you can still use morse code over IP. Screw the radio, screw broadcast TV, screw emergency services. They should all be using broadband.
Used to be, when the people I knew who knew what they were talking about talked about linux, they probably were talking about Debian GNU/Linux.
Things are changing. More and more smart folks I know are frustrated. Most Open source projects are using a "release early and release often" mentality that is a stark contrast to Debian's recent "don't release at all" policy.
Yes, there is always unstable for those that want the latest(ish) versions of things. That's really not the point, as I see it. People are frustrated with the lack of movement, the apparent lack of progress towards getting any new features into stable, even if they arentt the very latest. I think at some point, many people just like to feel like their system is getting new software even if they don't use any new features at all.
Maybe the negative stuff I read on /. and here tossed around between friends is not accurate. Things might not really be as stagnate as they seem from a common user's prespective. But that Debian has gone from a Good Thing to a bit of a joke amongst the sys admins I respect makes me concerned about it's future.
There are some distro's out there that are attempting to fill the void that debian has created, and some are starting to do a good job of it. A world where a debian based distro replaces a bulk of the debian based users is not hard to imagine right now. What happens to debian then? And what happens to a debian based distro when debian doesn't have users?
It could work out great for almost everyone except the actual debian project. i think everyone in a position of influence there needs to compare the costs of addressing the current perception one way or another to the cost of bascially becoming irrelevant.
I hope I am still enjoying doing my work with debian systems many years from now, but I am starting to wonder if I won't be working on some (probably debian based) alternative instead.
well thats my rant, please forgive any spelling mistakes or generally stupid things I might have said. I'm not one of the smart ones.
Except maybe for some of the very high level code (basically applications), you aren't just going to port some feature of OS/2 to *nix even if you have the code.
What would be nice would be a release of patents/copyrights covering concepts and technologies used in OS/2, such as the System Object Model concepts and the Workplace Shell. OS/2 had some nice ideas and it was a neat environment to work in. Bringing that environment to open source (or any other environment) would not be that much easier even if you had the source.
This works "by flooding p2p networks with corrupt/junk data". Didn't spammers already try to kill email with a similar technique? Isn't this the basic principal behind posting on Slashdot? Yet they both continue to thrive..
emerge slut
maybe, just maybe, you might want to read the article next time before you go on a rant. this technology has nothing to do with broadband over powerlines. this works over the premise wiring in your home or building.
Basically it is a php based cgi that allows all users on your network (or even outside your net if you prefer) to manage torrent downloads on a single server. You forward the ports to that server, everyone uses an easy web interface to manage their downloads, and life is good. Very nice for a small dorm or home network with a handful of torrent users.
Another neat trick is to mount shares on each user's workstation on the torrentflux server so that the torrents are actually downloaded right onto the user's workstations. It has a nice builtin interface to RSS torrent feeds as well.
Since this attack sends a packet with a source address of the target host rather than the attacker, won't this attack fail in a vast majority of remote situations (i.e. via Internet or not on the same LAN as the target)?? Doesn't almost every ISP filter outgoing packets for a bit of sanity, especially valid (or reasonable) source addresses? I know my ISPs at home (Adelphia cable) and work (AT&T data) do.
You come back to your hometown on a visit after being away for a few months. You first stop in and see your parents. You chat for say 15 minutes, and then "Oh by the way, can you take a look at the computer, it's doing something funny". Later that day you're at an old buddies house and again, a few minutes into the visit they're wondering if you could help them out with this problem on their PC. Later that night you go out to an old hangout and suprise, suprise, you run into an old friend who, after the "so how are you doing" is out of the way just wants to ask a quick computer question.
WHY? Why do people assume that I will help them with their PC problems? I have friends who are lawyers, in real estate, carpenters, etc... they don't get badgered to provide services for free. What has happened in the history of IT that makes people feel no shame in requesting that I provide them as a favor the valuable service which I do professionally??
Does it run Linux?
If your organization has people willing to donate time, I'm sure the local schools would be glad to have some assistance administering or upgrading their networks, implementing better software for the students to use, etc.
If you are looking to engage students more directly, perhaps you can create some sort of program where the students work together with your staff to improve the school's systems. Perhaps a teacher could use a database set up to track student projects, or a web based bulletin board to distribute class notes and confirm assignment dates etc.
There are many potential projects that exist in any school. Why not try to create something that improves all of the student's experience with technology while teaching/inspiring those who are interested enough to contribute directly?
Add X windows + wm - 5-10 hours
Updating once a week - 2-4 hours
Watching n00bs fight with other n00bs because they actually think this is cool - PRICELESS
Yes, I know I'm an ahole.. what can i say i been drinkin
My father has been a HAM for nearly forty years. Growing up I always enjoyed going to hamfest and other events with him. Even in the short time I experienced the ham culture (aprox 1980-1990), I noticed a trend towards PCs becoming frequent topics of discussion and PC gear being swapped at swapfests as much as radio equipment. Probably the best integration of the two worlds that I experienced was packet radio. I'm sure there are many who know more about the system than I do. I remember being fascinated that you could log in to a packet radio bulletin board and exchange messages with people from all over the world. In those days a local dialup PC based BBS would typically only have members from the surrounding area. Maybe someone can post more info on Packet radio?
I used to use OS/2 quite a bit several years ago. While it doesn't seem that open sourcing the operating system itself would do much good, as Linux and the bsds seem to have equal or better low level functionality in most areas, what about the Workplace Shell? The WPS has some great ideas that I have yet to see implemented in another GUI. I know that the WPS is not tied to OS/2 too tightly, because I have a verion that runs as a filemanager type app in DOS. It was released by IBM many years ago in some sort of beta program I participated in. I would think that the Gnome and/or KDE project might be able to take some inspiration if not source code from the WPS.
This new protocol simply cannot be adopted until it's fully acronymic... I mean come on, SNMP and WBEM and even CIM have been fully acronymous for some time now, and this WS-Management thing still has an entire word spelled out in the name? That won't fly in my shop, no sir.
What have I got in my pocket?