I don't understand why routers can not be programed to limit the number of emails it receives from a single source.
If you're asking whether a router can can impose limits such as the number of simultaneous connections allowed from a given host, or the rate at which new connections are established, then yes, that's perfectly do-able and good sense for not just SMTP traffic. Restricting the receipt of email messages, however, is a very different problem as has already been pointed out. That's not to say that email servers are completely lacking features that can help (Sendmail's ratecontrol, for example).
My own observation, however, is that spammers tend to be more well-behaved these days so these kinds of solutions, while helpful, aren't the solutions you're looking for.;-)
My question though is to the quality of these books.
Not your intended meaning, but whenever the subject of electronic versions of books comes up, at least those of a non-fiction type, I'm left wondering why the "quality" of bound book is considered the same as its electronic version. It's the same, but different, right?
There's a lot to be said for making available free versions, but my own opinion is that an electronic version of any book should be free, or at least offered as a promotion of the real thing. I can spend an hour on usenet and download most anything that's been published of a technical nature, but instead, I regularly buy bound books from Amazon.
Maybe in the next few years things will be different (given the ongoing success of Kindle and friends), but until then, a free electronic version, at least for me, has a value close to zero.
Point being: stereotypes are looked-down upon for a reason. They are spurious, frequently unhelpful, often downright wrong, and usually rather insulting.
Time for a Pop Quiz. Which of the following is an endangered species?
a) The drinking Irish; b) Boys that like to break things; c) Girls that like dolls; d) Men who enjoy sports; or e) Women who like pink and appreciate flowers.
It's a trick question. The correct answer is "All of the above."
Dunno about you, but I repeatedly meet all the above, along with black men who are good at basketball, black women that are quick to argue, Asians who can't drive, Catholics that love to fuck, Jews that complain, Mexicans who work hard but don't value schedules, and Nigerians who spam. And, interestingly enough, there's no shortage of politically correct white guys acknowleding the value of diversity while espousing contradictory (and hand-wavy) notions of equality.
Life's more interesting when you celebrate differences. And if the continuing popularity of comedians like Don Rickles is any indication, a helluvalot more fun.
Don't think so. Maybe it's mentioned in the article (which I haven't yet read), but whatever focus you think you have expires every 20-25 minutes, if not sooner. That "shutting off", to use the OP's words, is what's key here, not what follows.
Ask yourself how often you've been at work and simply interrupted things to refresh your coffee, or watched something interesting on television and welcomed the commercial break. In movie theatres, who doesn't get up to go for popcorn? Or for the real nerds, watching a porno movie and getting distracted by some computer equipment that happens to be part of the set.
You can pretend you can maintain concentration or focus, but that's a self deceit that yields little that's useful. By contrast, most forms of meditation, for example, encourage following our natural ebbs and flows of concentration, even if what we're striving to focus on is absolutely nothing.
No. Farmers who produce fruits and vegetables don't receive subsidies. Sugar and corn syrup, on the other hand, are considered important[1] enough to merit lower consumer prices.
--------- 1. Important to food chains whose profits depend on products with a high shelf-life, food "manufacturers" and advertisers who wouldn't make any money if people started to show interest in real food, and politicians who couldn't afford relection campaigns if they depended on a bunch of farmers growing vegetables.
There are quite a few countries who's culture is substantially different from the United States in which bribery is considered standard business practice. If you dont bribe an official in one of those countries, you dont get anything done.
No doubt true, but what's standard business practices today may not be the same tomorrow. Banking secrecy laws in countries like Switzerland, for example, have long been considered inviolate, but that's hardly the case today, is it? Chances are good that even more changes are coming.
As for corruption, I'd suggest that the choices made by businesses are just that: choices. You can debate their relative merits and/or provide rationalisations, but ultimately, those choices remain subject to law. The overarching issue, then, becomes one of enforcement.
For those who aren't news junkies or C-SPAN fans, the following, taken from a randomly selected link, may offer some insight as to the direction the new administration may be headed:
To the extent there is a shift in prosecutorial priorities by the new administration, it is likely that this shift will not be felt in 2009. This is largely because the current leaders of DOJ, SEC and FBI already have declared their intention to step up FCPA enforcement in 2009. For example, DOJ recently announced that it expects the trend of increased enforcement to increase in 2009, "given the significant number of matters that we have under investigation. The number of individual prosecutions has risen, and that is not an accident. It is our view that to have a credible deterrent effect, people have to go to jail. People have to be prosecuted where appropriate. This is a federal crime, it's not fun and games." 54/ Federal agencies such as the FBI have budgeted increased expenditures for FCPA enforcement in 2009. 55/ If there is relief in sight from the new administration, it is not readily apparent for 2009.
Can someone tell me what the hell's wrong with Slashdot's front page?
No, but I suspect you're preferences include one of the "beta" options. If you uncheck those, you're probably fine. I guess the operative word in this day and age where UIs evolve into unusable states is "Classic Mode". While I'm at it...
Disabling javascript goes a long way to making Slashdot more usable, irrespective of your connection speed.
Opting for "Plain Old Text" is will go a long way to ensure your posts are actually readable by everyone else. The only benefit the HMTL option offers is numbering/bullets.
I know all about the dangers of the Internet. I have a brilliant, beautiful, innocent, obedient, *GOOD* 10 year old daughter, who would LOVE for me to get her a netbook. Pink, of course. I'm terrified at the prospect of turning my little girl -- smart and good as she is -- loose on the Internet.
If she's old enough that she doesn't require full time supervision as with younger kids, maybe just having her account for where she's been and what she's been doing would suffice. For that, simple access logs would suffice. It's perfectly reasonable for a parent to call a school and another parent to "check up", so I'd say you'd be on safe ground with an occasional review of logs and regular chats about her activities.
A keylogger, by contrast, strikes me as unwarranted as she's done nothing to abuse your trust.
If it was me, I would get her one. And a pink one at that. Just be sure there's no webcam, though. Kids today and all that.
It's easier to make excuses for why the public schools are failing and why parents, especially poor parents, are often roadblocks to their kids' success...
I'm always puzzled by this. Obama made the statement in a speech recently that the number one predictor of a child's success in the classroom is the teacher. We've all heard that before. However, he followed it up by stating the the number one predictor "outside the classroom" is the parents' attitude toward education (ie, involvement). That follow up was notable in that it stated what few want to admit is a widespread problem -- parents don't value education.
I grew up in an immigrant household and we were probably a lot poorer than I'd care to remember. My parents, however, held education to such a high level that they considered a lack of interest in learning as indicative of poor character. It wasn't until I grew much older that I discovered the ideals of my upbringing have become quaint relics of another generation, and in certain wide swaths of our society, the respect for education is, if not absent, derided as unimportant, useless, or worse.
Quite frankly, I don't get it.
As for notebooks for grade schoolers, I'm sure they'll offer some benefits, at least for those who have the desire to take advantage of them. For those that don't, well, what can you do? If the parents don't value education, the kids probably won't, and all the laptops and talented teachers in the world won't make much of difference.
For yucks, I visited the site. Cute and friendly so I guess it would appeal to novice users. That said, the following caught my eye:
What can I download?
Using BitNabber's technology, it's possible to download anything you can imagine! Bitnabber updates in real time with the latest NZB files, allowing you to grab the latest in movies, music, tv shows, and software!
Reading the above I'm reminded of the way in which Napster (?) advertised themselves before being sued for contributory copyright infringement and went out business.
Then, there's the new and disturbing trend by state attorneys general to get together and browbeat content providers. Craig's List is the latest to draw their attention (turns out their Erotic Services section is too popular), but usenet providers have already been hit. A large number of groups that were alleged to contain child pornography are no longer accessible. Extending the successes of their Do It Or We'll Take You To Court approach to the alt.binaries.mp3 groups, for example, would seem a no brainer.
A balanced and closed ecosystem is naturally self correcting. Humans will prove no different. The available resources will be consumed, humans will die off in large numbers and a balance will be reached...
The late George Carlin described the above scenario as an Eden where man is a distant memory, and earth and styrofoam coexist happily.
Somewhere between "porking a hefty bag" and "finding the right couple of girls to settle down with" there's undoubtedly some good advice, but I'll have to stop laughing to figure out what it is.
I'd wager that all men hate condoms, and women probably aren't too fond them either (flavoured varieties included). That said, it's also worth pointing out that unless you're Jewish, or born in the last few decades when circumcision became almost routine, they really don't work too well.
Complicating things is the issue of size. How many here have had trouble finding something at your local drugstore that isn't just too fucking small? Don't feel obliged to answer unless you're aiming for a +5 Funny.
Family planning campaigners welcomed the news and said they hoped an injection would give couples more choice and enable men to take a greater share of the responsibility for contraception.
Now assuming that "family planning campaigners" are predominantly female (a fair and perfectly reasonable assumption), contrast the above with the following opinion from fertility expert Mr. Laurence Shaw:
"It would empower men to make a decision which involves more than just a condom. At the moment the onus is on the woman and men do not have that much choice.
The difference in both perspective and opinion is somewhere between funny and tragic. If you're a woman, the former is most true (men are all-powerful and don't need any "empowerment"). If you're a man who's been involved in custody or child support proceedings, it's likely that you've been made painfully aware that the notion of men's rights is routinely ignored, dismissed as unecessary, or taken away in a gesture of deference to the "weaker" sex.
Sadly the article seems to confuse install share and market share, not just confusing the phrases, but using them concepts interchangeably.
I'd go farther. The term "market" is sufficiently ambiguous and using it invites all sorts of connotations that simply aren't applicable, or are relevant only in narrowly-defined circumstances. For the vast majority of downloads and installations, there is no money changing hands so there is no "market".
Ah, Watson, but notice this curious "Fucking Bunch of Idiots". A Frenchman or Russian could not have written that. It is the German who is so uncourteous to his nouns.
Hmm. Here we have a serious security breach but the details are so sketchy we're resorting to ethnic humour and the finer points of grammar to fill in the time. Allow me to offer up my guesses as to what Really Happened(TM):
The server was recently migrated to Windows Vista from RedHat, the hackers were Chinese nationals who coordinated their actions using Hotmail accounts, and needed funding for the Virgina health department IT department was cut by Republicans in the stimulus bill.
Want to go green?... [snip list of recommendations that don't relate to the computer industry]... When the ink jet containers themselves are made of soy, and the mfgs standardize their cartridges so that reuse is more feasible, I'll take notice.
I'd offer the suggestion that increased attention on the part of consumers and manufacturers to the polluting nature of manufacturing computer parts (and petroleum products in general) is a step in the right direction. Or do you really think we can get somewhere without taking one step at a time?
Anything that's used by individuals in small quantities may be insignificant, but taken as a whole, there's probably a incredibly large number behind the quantity that's manufactured. And then dump in our water or land.
I'm no green nut, but seriously, loosen up. Soy ink? Why the hell not? The newspaper industry adopted it years ago, and while the formulation isn't exactly 100% natural, it was a step in the right direction.
Am I the only person left on earth that like and often prefers to read things printed on dead trees?
No worries, mate, you're in good company.
That's not to say I don't have this unfulfilled ambition (fantasy?) to read things as they do on Star Trek, while being able to access or carry around the sum total of everything that's available in print.
Books in can't be beat, but I'd like to think that newspapers will find a new "medium" and we can do away with the problems of newsprint. My guess is that by the time this all shakes out, we may have some sort of device that satisfies the basic reading experience requirements we all demand, and newspapers, books and magazines will all be available in this new form.
It's entirely possible that reading Shakespeare on leather-bound Kindle type of device may be similar enough (or possibly superiour to) reading the real thing. Then again, given the intractable nature of the publishing industry, we may never get there. For now, however, I'd be happy if it proves to be a saviour for the newspaper industry.
Exercise: buy a newspaper and throw out all the sections that are 100% marketing. Entire sections, like Autos, Real Estate, and Wine (Wine?) go into the dumpster. The classified sections can go; that's all on-line, and on line it's searchable...Of what's left, over half will still be pages that are all advertising.
You do know you've described my daily newspaper reading habit? LOL. Mind you that works well for certain papers only. For the LA Times (or sundry local papers), most definitely. For the WSJ, NY Times, and specialty papers, for example, it doesn't really apply.
Today's newspapers make spam look like an efficient data transmission medium.
As does the postal service. I keep a small garbage can right beside my mailbox and go through a routine similar to what you've described for newspapers. Though to be fair, there was a time not so long ago when newspapers weren't publically owned (read "the owners were perfectly happy with stable returns"), and adverts weren't such a problem.
Look no farther than ad rates to understand the limited value that the papers can generate for most of their advertisers.
Maybe you missed this part
Publishers could possibly use these new mobile reading devices to hit the reset button and return in some form to their original business model: selling subscriptions, and supporting their articles with ads.
A subscription-based model on custom displays with the ad-supported web edition available for the masses sounds like a win-win situation, no?
My main beefs were not with the infrastructure, which seemed OK, but that the package maintenance seemed pretty spotty:
Could we get a less vague or subjective characterisation? The general concensus by FreeBSD users (and one shared by myself), especially those coming from a Linux background, is that the ports system Just Works(TM). As for the tools to manage installed ports or package, there's certainly plenty to choose from. By that I mean the issue, if there is one, is generally one of "preference" rather than functionality; put simply, they all work.
many many packages (even fairly "major" ones) were pretty out-of-date, even compared to e.g. debian stable
To the extent that the "many many" qualifier has any meaning, I'd really be interested in your naming just a few of these "major" ports.
and in many cases they were installed as monolithic chunks where a bit of judicious splitting would have been very helpful -- for example, an otherwise fairly dependency-free library that happens to come with some demo apps that drag in all of OpenGL and X
There's as much or as little judicious splitting as you want. A quick read through of ports(7), make.conf(5), src.conf(5), for example, would have addressed your perceived issues, as would have a quick Google search. Next thing I'll hear is that FreeBSD suffers from a lack of documentation.
Nothing personal, but I have trouble seeing something modded +5 that consists of little else than random impressions from the uniformed who are "playing around".
We know better and we try to educate Joe Consumer, but Joe Consumer doesn't have our skills or knowledge, which was the point of my original post. The consumer is not to blame.
Sorry, but the consumer is to blame. They may not, at the present time, have any legal obligations, and may not suffer any direct liabilities while remaining blissfully oblivious of the consequences of their actions or inactions, but we're free and justified for assessing the blame on them as we are on the malware authors as both share responsibility for their actions or omissions. To use a cliche, it always takes two to tango.
I don't care whether you're talking about a guy handing over money to an unscrupulous investor (or worse, trying to invest it themselves), someone doing home wiring without understanding electricity or codes, someone driving a car who ignores the relationship between speed and stopping distances, or someone who bought a product that doesn't do work as well as it was advertised, the blame rests ultimately with the individual who fucked up. That should come as no surprise given that individuals who do fuck rarely need encouragement or a convincing argument to admit they fucked up.
The standard here is one of reasonableness.
Is it reasonable to assume that computers are complex beasts and that malware is problem? Yes. The former is self evident and the latter is a also truism that can be cited by most Windows users or gleaned from the local news by everyone else. Then WTF is Joe Average doing trying to install an operating system? Or manage it? He has lots of alternatives including hiring the kid down the block or taking it the local shop.
Is it reasonable to assume that Macs are also complicated but Mac users can do without requisite knowledge or skill? Yes. The reasons for that are as numerous as why Windows users continue to suffer problems.
You can go on about complexity and missing skillsets, but none of those justify anything. If you're trying to comfort those who fucked up, you're doing them a disservice. If you're conceding that the battle is lost and ha ha this is the way things are and always will be, then you're being irresponsible and contributing nothing to the discussion or solution.
Personally, I'd go so far as to say that anyone who trots out the "poor user" argument (usually in combination with the "Everyone is using Windows so everyone is doing it, too!" argument) is they participate in extending the current state of affairs and are therefore part of the problem.
Why pay lip service to user education advocacy when responsibility and blame are pre-requisites? Start blaming. Blame everyone involved, but don't skip the person ultimately responsible. We'll all be better off for it.
If by that you mean you're referring to a 25 dollar Pentium IV notebook, I'd love to know where you buy your used equipment. Seriously. Me, I'd be impressed if I can get a single used part for that amount of money.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't understand why routers can not be programed to limit the number of emails it receives from a single source.
If you're asking whether a router can can impose limits such as the number of simultaneous connections allowed from a given host, or the rate at which new connections are established, then yes, that's perfectly do-able and good sense for not just SMTP traffic. Restricting the receipt of email messages, however, is a very different problem as has already been pointed out. That's not to say that email servers are completely lacking features that can help (Sendmail's ratecontrol, for example).
My own observation, however, is that spammers tend to be more well-behaved these days so these kinds of solutions, while helpful, aren't the solutions you're looking for. ;-)
My question though is to the quality of these books.
Not your intended meaning, but whenever the subject of electronic versions of books comes up, at least those of a non-fiction type, I'm left wondering why the "quality" of bound book is considered the same as its electronic version. It's the same, but different, right?
There's a lot to be said for making available free versions, but my own opinion is that an electronic version of any book should be free, or at least offered as a promotion of the real thing. I can spend an hour on usenet and download most anything that's been published of a technical nature, but instead, I regularly buy bound books from Amazon.
Maybe in the next few years things will be different (given the ongoing success of Kindle and friends), but until then, a free electronic version, at least for me, has a value close to zero.
Point being: stereotypes are looked-down upon for a reason. They are spurious, frequently unhelpful, often downright wrong, and usually rather insulting.
Time for a Pop Quiz. Which of the following is an endangered species?
a) The drinking Irish;
b) Boys that like to break things;
c) Girls that like dolls;
d) Men who enjoy sports; or
e) Women who like pink and appreciate flowers.
It's a trick question. The correct answer is "All of the above."
Dunno about you, but I repeatedly meet all the above, along with black men who are good at basketball, black women that are quick to argue, Asians who can't drive, Catholics that love to fuck, Jews that complain, Mexicans who work hard but don't value schedules, and Nigerians who spam. And, interestingly enough, there's no shortage of politically correct white guys acknowleding the value of diversity while espousing contradictory (and hand-wavy) notions of equality.
Life's more interesting when you celebrate differences. And if the continuing popularity of comedians like Don Rickles is any indication, a helluvalot more fun.
I'd say it depends on the task.
Don't think so. Maybe it's mentioned in the article (which I haven't yet read), but whatever focus you think you have expires every 20-25 minutes, if not sooner. That "shutting off", to use the OP's words, is what's key here, not what follows.
Ask yourself how often you've been at work and simply interrupted things to refresh your coffee, or watched something interesting on television and welcomed the commercial break. In movie theatres, who doesn't get up to go for popcorn? Or for the real nerds, watching a porno movie and getting distracted by some computer equipment that happens to be part of the set.
You can pretend you can maintain concentration or focus, but that's a self deceit that yields little that's useful. By contrast, most forms of meditation, for example, encourage following our natural ebbs and flows of concentration, even if what we're striving to focus on is absolutely nothing.
Do i get a tax break for buying celery?
No. Farmers who produce fruits and vegetables don't receive subsidies. Sugar and corn syrup, on the other hand, are considered important[1] enough to merit lower consumer prices.
---------
1. Important to food chains whose profits depend on products with a high shelf-life, food "manufacturers" and advertisers who wouldn't make any money if people started to show interest in real food, and politicians who couldn't afford relection campaigns if they depended on a bunch of farmers growing vegetables.
Standardize the buttons.
There's always workarounds.
There are quite a few countries who's culture is substantially different from the United States in which bribery is considered standard business practice. If you dont bribe an official in one of those countries, you dont get anything done.
No doubt true, but what's standard business practices today may not be the same tomorrow. Banking secrecy laws in countries like Switzerland, for example, have long been considered inviolate, but that's hardly the case today, is it? Chances are good that even more changes are coming.
As for corruption, I'd suggest that the choices made by businesses are just that: choices. You can debate their relative merits and/or provide rationalisations, but ultimately, those choices remain subject to law. The overarching issue, then, becomes one of enforcement.
For those who aren't news junkies or C-SPAN fans, the following, taken from a randomly selected link, may offer some insight as to the direction the new administration may be headed:
Can someone tell me what the hell's wrong with Slashdot's front page?
No, but I suspect you're preferences include one of the "beta" options. If you uncheck those, you're probably fine. I guess the operative word in this day and age where UIs evolve into unusable states is "Classic Mode". While I'm at it ...
Disabling javascript goes a long way to making Slashdot more usable, irrespective of your connection speed.
Opting for "Plain Old Text" is will go a long way to ensure your posts are actually readable by everyone else. The only benefit the HMTL option offers is numbering/bullets.
I know all about the dangers of the Internet. I have a brilliant, beautiful, innocent, obedient, *GOOD* 10 year old daughter, who would LOVE for me to get her a netbook. Pink, of course. I'm terrified at the prospect of turning my little girl -- smart and good as she is -- loose on the Internet.
If she's old enough that she doesn't require full time supervision as with younger kids, maybe just having her account for where she's been and what she's been doing would suffice. For that, simple access logs would suffice. It's perfectly reasonable for a parent to call a school and another parent to "check up", so I'd say you'd be on safe ground with an occasional review of logs and regular chats about her activities.
A keylogger, by contrast, strikes me as unwarranted as she's done nothing to abuse your trust.
If it was me, I would get her one. And a pink one at that. Just be sure there's no webcam, though. Kids today and all that.
It's easier to make excuses for why the public schools are failing and why parents, especially poor parents, are often roadblocks to their kids' success ...
I'm always puzzled by this. Obama made the statement in a speech recently that the number one predictor of a child's success in the classroom is the teacher. We've all heard that before. However, he followed it up by stating the the number one predictor "outside the classroom" is the parents' attitude toward education (ie, involvement). That follow up was notable in that it stated what few want to admit is a widespread problem -- parents don't value education.
I grew up in an immigrant household and we were probably a lot poorer than I'd care to remember. My parents, however, held education to such a high level that they considered a lack of interest in learning as indicative of poor character. It wasn't until I grew much older that I discovered the ideals of my upbringing have become quaint relics of another generation, and in certain wide swaths of our society, the respect for education is, if not absent, derided as unimportant, useless, or worse.
Quite frankly, I don't get it.
As for notebooks for grade schoolers, I'm sure they'll offer some benefits, at least for those who have the desire to take advantage of them. For those that don't, well, what can you do? If the parents don't value education, the kids probably won't, and all the laptops and talented teachers in the world won't make much of difference.
Personally, I use NNTP.
The first rule of USENET is ... oh, nevermind.
I use www.bitnabber.com
For yucks, I visited the site. Cute and friendly so I guess it would appeal to novice users. That said, the following caught my eye:
Reading the above I'm reminded of the way in which Napster (?) advertised themselves before being sued for contributory copyright infringement and went out business.
Then, there's the new and disturbing trend by state attorneys general to get together and browbeat content providers. Craig's List is the latest to draw their attention (turns out their Erotic Services section is too popular), but usenet providers have already been hit. A large number of groups that were alleged to contain child pornography are no longer accessible. Extending the successes of their Do It Or We'll Take You To Court approach to the alt.binaries.mp3 groups, for example, would seem a no brainer.
Glad you like bitnabber. Enjoy it while it lasts.
A balanced and closed ecosystem is naturally self correcting. Humans will prove no different. The available resources will be consumed, humans will die off in large numbers and a balance will be reached ...
The late George Carlin described the above scenario as an Eden where man is a distant memory, and earth and styrofoam coexist happily.
Somewhere between "porking a hefty bag" and "finding the right couple of girls to settle down with" there's undoubtedly some good advice, but I'll have to stop laughing to figure out what it is.
I hate condoms.
I'd wager that all men hate condoms, and women probably aren't too fond them either (flavoured varieties included). That said, it's also worth pointing out that unless you're Jewish, or born in the last few decades when circumcision became almost routine, they really don't work too well.
Complicating things is the issue of size. How many here have had trouble finding something at your local drugstore that isn't just too fucking small? Don't feel obliged to answer unless you're aiming for a +5 Funny.
Quoth the article:
Now assuming that "family planning campaigners" are predominantly female (a fair and perfectly reasonable assumption), contrast the above with the following opinion from fertility expert Mr. Laurence Shaw:
The difference in both perspective and opinion is somewhere between funny and tragic. If you're a woman, the former is most true (men are all-powerful and don't need any "empowerment"). If you're a man who's been involved in custody or child support proceedings, it's likely that you've been made painfully aware that the notion of men's rights is routinely ignored, dismissed as unecessary, or taken away in a gesture of deference to the "weaker" sex.
Sadly the article seems to confuse install share and market share, not just confusing the phrases, but using them concepts interchangeably.
I'd go farther. The term "market" is sufficiently ambiguous and using it invites all sorts of connotations that simply aren't applicable, or are relevant only in narrowly-defined circumstances. For the vast majority of downloads and installations, there is no money changing hands so there is no "market".
Ah, Watson, but notice this curious "Fucking Bunch of Idiots". A Frenchman or Russian could not have written that. It is the German who is so uncourteous to his nouns.
Hmm. Here we have a serious security breach but the details are so sketchy we're resorting to ethnic humour and the finer points of grammar to fill in the time. Allow me to offer up my guesses as to what Really Happened(TM):
The server was recently migrated to Windows Vista from RedHat, the hackers were Chinese nationals who coordinated their actions using Hotmail accounts, and needed funding for the Virgina health department IT department was cut by Republicans in the stimulus bill.
Discuss.
Want to go green? ... [snip list of recommendations that don't relate to the computer industry] ... When the ink jet containers themselves are made of soy, and the mfgs standardize their cartridges so that reuse is more feasible, I'll take notice.
I'd offer the suggestion that increased attention on the part of consumers and manufacturers to the polluting nature of manufacturing computer parts (and petroleum products in general) is a step in the right direction. Or do you really think we can get somewhere without taking one step at a time?
Anything that's used by individuals in small quantities may be insignificant, but taken as a whole, there's probably a incredibly large number behind the quantity that's manufactured. And then dump in our water or land.
I'm no green nut, but seriously, loosen up. Soy ink? Why the hell not? The newspaper industry adopted it years ago, and while the formulation isn't exactly 100% natural, it was a step in the right direction.
Then how come Slashdot only allows 120 characters in your sig line, including html tags?
To make it easier to filter them out for users who set their preferences to avoid being exposed to what's typically noise?
Am I the only person left on earth that like and often prefers to read things printed on dead trees?
No worries, mate, you're in good company.
That's not to say I don't have this unfulfilled ambition (fantasy?) to read things as they do on Star Trek, while being able to access or carry around the sum total of everything that's available in print.
Books in can't be beat, but I'd like to think that newspapers will find a new "medium" and we can do away with the problems of newsprint. My guess is that by the time this all shakes out, we may have some sort of device that satisfies the basic reading experience requirements we all demand, and newspapers, books and magazines will all be available in this new form.
It's entirely possible that reading Shakespeare on leather-bound Kindle type of device may be similar enough (or possibly superiour to) reading the real thing. Then again, given the intractable nature of the publishing industry, we may never get there. For now, however, I'd be happy if it proves to be a saviour for the newspaper industry.
Exercise: buy a newspaper and throw out all the sections that are 100% marketing. Entire sections, like Autos, Real Estate, and Wine (Wine?) go into the dumpster. The classified sections can go; that's all on-line, and on line it's searchable...Of what's left, over half will still be pages that are all advertising.
You do know you've described my daily newspaper reading habit? LOL. Mind you that works well for certain papers only. For the LA Times (or sundry local papers), most definitely. For the WSJ, NY Times, and specialty papers, for example, it doesn't really apply.
Today's newspapers make spam look like an efficient data transmission medium.
As does the postal service. I keep a small garbage can right beside my mailbox and go through a routine similar to what you've described for newspapers. Though to be fair, there was a time not so long ago when newspapers weren't publically owned (read "the owners were perfectly happy with stable returns"), and adverts weren't such a problem.
Look no farther than ad rates to understand the limited value that the papers can generate for most of their advertisers.
Maybe you missed this part
A subscription-based model on custom displays with the ad-supported web edition available for the masses sounds like a win-win situation, no?
My main beefs were not with the infrastructure, which seemed OK, but that the package maintenance seemed pretty spotty:
Could we get a less vague or subjective characterisation? The general concensus by FreeBSD users (and one shared by myself), especially those coming from a Linux background, is that the ports system Just Works(TM). As for the tools to manage installed ports or package, there's certainly plenty to choose from. By that I mean the issue, if there is one, is generally one of "preference" rather than functionality; put simply, they all work.
many many packages (even fairly "major" ones) were pretty out-of-date, even compared to e.g. debian stable
To the extent that the "many many" qualifier has any meaning, I'd really be interested in your naming just a few of these "major" ports.
and in many cases they were installed as monolithic chunks where a bit of judicious splitting would have been very helpful -- for example, an otherwise fairly dependency-free library that happens to come with some demo apps that drag in all of OpenGL and X
There's as much or as little judicious splitting as you want. A quick read through of ports(7), make.conf(5), src.conf(5), for example, would have addressed your perceived issues, as would have a quick Google search. Next thing I'll hear is that FreeBSD suffers from a lack of documentation.
Nothing personal, but I have trouble seeing something modded +5 that consists of little else than random impressions from the uniformed who are "playing around".
We know better and we try to educate Joe Consumer, but Joe Consumer doesn't have our skills or knowledge, which was the point of my original post. The consumer is not to blame.
Sorry, but the consumer is to blame. They may not, at the present time, have any legal obligations, and may not suffer any direct liabilities while remaining blissfully oblivious of the consequences of their actions or inactions, but we're free and justified for assessing the blame on them as we are on the malware authors as both share responsibility for their actions or omissions. To use a cliche, it always takes two to tango.
I don't care whether you're talking about a guy handing over money to an unscrupulous investor (or worse, trying to invest it themselves), someone doing home wiring without understanding electricity or codes, someone driving a car who ignores the relationship between speed and stopping distances, or someone who bought a product that doesn't do work as well as it was advertised, the blame rests ultimately with the individual who fucked up. That should come as no surprise given that individuals who do fuck rarely need encouragement or a convincing argument to admit they fucked up.
The standard here is one of reasonableness.
Is it reasonable to assume that computers are complex beasts and that malware is problem? Yes. The former is self evident and the latter is a also truism that can be cited by most Windows users or gleaned from the local news by everyone else. Then WTF is Joe Average doing trying to install an operating system? Or manage it? He has lots of alternatives including hiring the kid down the block or taking it the local shop.
Is it reasonable to assume that Macs are also complicated but Mac users can do without requisite knowledge or skill? Yes. The reasons for that are as numerous as why Windows users continue to suffer problems.
You can go on about complexity and missing skillsets, but none of those justify anything. If you're trying to comfort those who fucked up, you're doing them a disservice. If you're conceding that the battle is lost and ha ha this is the way things are and always will be, then you're being irresponsible and contributing nothing to the discussion or solution.
Personally, I'd go so far as to say that anyone who trots out the "poor user" argument (usually in combination with the "Everyone is using Windows so everyone is doing it, too!" argument) is they participate in extending the current state of affairs and are therefore part of the problem.
Why pay lip service to user education advocacy when responsibility and blame are pre-requisites? Start blaming. Blame everyone involved, but don't skip the person ultimately responsible. We'll all be better off for it.
I'm using a 25 dollar used Pentium IV ...
If by that you mean you're referring to a 25 dollar Pentium IV notebook, I'd love to know where you buy your used equipment. Seriously. Me, I'd be impressed if I can get a single used part for that amount of money.