You can run a certain portion of the binaries written for MS-DOS 2 still, ya know. That's one hell of a legacy.
I fully understand that M$ has a large amount of backwards compatibility, and that can be nice...but there comes a time when you have to admit that a bug ridden failure is not something that you wish to support anymore. At least not when it means that you have to have so many workarounds and hacks set up that it makes everything totally confusing.
I used to own a pair of jeans that kept getting holes in them and I kept patching them. Eventually I had enough of it (mainly I think b/c I patched a completely new pair of jeans) and bought a new pair of jeans becuase the old ones looked like cripe. Sometimes you just have to let go of the old stuff and move on.
Why can't M$ just supply a win9x emulator like the OS9 emulator for osX? Yeah it sucks, but eventually the old stuff phases out and the potential for properly working new stuff grows tremendously. C'mon, how many times a year do you pull out some old DOS version of WordPerfect(I still have mine) and try to run it?
I was under the impression that all colleges were like this... correct me if I'm wrong?
Correction: my college professors frequently prepare powerpoint presentations (which I despise...what's that chalk board behind you for?) for class instruction and the prof simply places the ppt on their website for the students to download. A couple of other classmates and I had to specially request that one teacher post the mid-term in pdf format to make it easier on everyone.
so to answer your question, no all profs post their data in postscript or pdf
I work at an engineering company and one of the consultants we frequently hire has been surfacing old cypress logs from the bottom of deep lakes for years now. He has made quite a profit from this and even holds a few patents on ROV's that find and cut the trees, similar to this sawfish. It is actually a _very_ lucrative idea, not to mention envorinmentally friendly since it does not cut down any of the old growth trees in forests, which would be the only way to obtain wood of this quality.
Slashdotters need to start understanding that "It works for me," is not an argument. The typical Slashdotter has a level of hacking skill that is neither available nor desired by the world at large.
I have to agree with this. I wouldn't say that I am a Linux/Unix guru by any means. I'm running gentoo right now and it isn't that hard for me to use, not to mention that I think it's fun spending entire nights reading up on a new piece of software I want to use. But I have a friend that is interested in running a linux box at his office for running an apache/mysql box (I think he just wanted to try linux). Anyway, I set up a gentoo box for him and installed all the required packages he would need. He still calls me up every other day asking how to authenticate his logins against a windows PDC or how to auto-mount his windows shares or tons of other things.
"it works for me" is great if you know what you are doing, but the majority of people do not know/do not _want_ to know how to configure pam_smb or samba...they just want it to work.
a much simpler and more reliable attack is to embed a 1px by 1px iframe in your own high-traffic website
There is a huge difference between the HTML code in an e-mail doing this and having it on your high traffic website...the IP addy. If you put a 1px X 1px iframe then all the traffic to google created by that iframe will be from the web server that hold the page aka 1 IP. By using the e-mail scam, the refering IP changes all the time.
Yeah, but only if they wanted to put us on the front lines. I'm sure they'll let us fat, pale skinned, caffine addicts sit in front of a computer ad play war games all day.
Actually, if I could play Call of Duty for the gov, I'd do it. Hmmmm... a little Ender's Game anyone?
I keep hearing about all these different methods of using authentication to curb spam. However, the problem is a little bigger than the minor inconvience that you recieve from having to delete 10, 100, 1000 e-mail's from your box a day. The real problem is the disgusting amount of traffic dedicated to sending out spam. While it would be great to block spam when it hit's my SMTP server, the traffic is still there and possibly doubled if my server sends a reply. We need to find a way to address this problem from the source before it bogs down pipelines. Ok so I guess I'm all talk because I can't think of a single possible solution, but I do feel that this is the approach we need to take.
Actually, no program depends on it being in a certain memory location. Instead the software in question, Ansys, would try to load to the newly reserved memory location.
Actual Error Message: "The system DLL Kernel32.dll was relocated in memory. The application will not run properly. The relocation occurred because the DLL C:\Program Files\ANSYS Inc\v70\AISOL\CommonFiles\Solving\ANSYS.exe occupied an address range reserved for Windows system DLLs. The vendor supplying the DLL should be contacted for a new DLL."
DLL = Dynamic Link Library, you are correct...but windows reserves a specific memory range to load those dll's in, and one of the service packs changed that reserved memory location. Unfortunately, Ansys was trying to use that very memory location. Hence, The program could not load and hours of work time was lost. Learn a little more before you start making foolish comments like this.
The whole "servicepack"/"hotfix" system is horribly broken.
This is more true than you could possibly imagine. I've had more than one third party software package be rendered useless after applying a Windows update. XP Service packs have moved the location that kernel.dll resides in memory which has cost large and very important software packages to not work.
I'm actually the most worried about the general public beginning to think that Microsoft Security Updates should be as commonplace as making breakfast in the morning.
Scene 1 Act 1:
Wife: Well lets see, I need to make breakfast for the kids, pay the bills, install MS updates, and get the spare tire for the car fixed.
*Later that day*
Husband: Honey did you remember to install the security updates?
Wife: Oh No! I forgot! do it quickly before MyDoom.3AF5B infects us!!!!!
This idea sounds completely ridiculous to me. I find number problem with this concept:
1) Have my computer run some algorithm to give me access to send an e-mail? My old 133Mhz (which I still use as a SMTP gateway) takes a hell of a lot longer to verify whether 671998030559713968361666935769 is a prime number (it is) than the dual 3.06 XEON system I have at my disposal at work.
2) On what step would this verification be required to take place? On my computer when I send an e-mail? On my SMTP gateway which sends the message out? What is to keep me from running my own SMTP server on my computer? If it has to run on my computer then every SMTP server in the world would have to be updated. If it has to run on my SMTP gateway, then I'm going to have to make sure that my SMTP gateway, which is my 133Mhz box, is being upgraded every year or so that, as faster processors come out and more complex verification algorithms are developed, it can keep up.
3) And what about all the legitimate bulk e-mail senders out there? CERT for example probably has a huge mailing list to notify people who have subscribed that a new vulnerability has been discovered (in Windows most likely). Is CERT going to have to buy hundreds of computers to send out it's mail to ensure that everyone who has subscribed will recieve the notification in a timely manner?
This is a step in the right direction. We do need to address the spam issue and find a solution for it. Why can't we just have a non-profit org created that has a database of SMTP servers that are authorized to send mail and if people wish to avoid spam, they upgrade their own server software to require that the sending server of a message it is recieving is on the authorized list? I'm sure that there are better solutions than this silly verification BS.
This is the best news that I seen all week! I just wrote an Ask Slashdot (rejected) article yesterday asking why Macromedia and Adobe will not port their software to linux. Photoshop runs fine under WINE but having Macromedia consider making an actual port is music to my ears! I've been waiting to regain that 3G partition that windows hogs up!
Granted that this replay is a few days late, but I often add a little about what I was thinking when I write the comment. //4AM thinking about random idea solves idea like this
I agree that comments are like crutches, as I personally hate having to break my thought process to write a comment.
On the other hand, even the most readable code takes time to look at and decypher. It is far easier to read that one line comment that you wrote last month and immediately recall what you were doing.
Comments may be crutches, but I will always laugh at the idiot with the compound fracture in their femur who refuses to use a crutch to get around because he is too proud.
1) Ok I'll give you the digital camera argument, as that can be a bit of a pain in the ass. But you can't really blame linux for that one. There are a limited number of developers and most digital camera makers will help MS and Apple to develop their drivers because they want the most popular OSes to support their hardware. If you really have a problem with linux not supporting your digital camera, write a letter to the manufacturer and complain to them that they aren't supported in linux.
2)I haven't used OpenOffice as of yet because all the papers I write, I use vim. Admittedly, I dont write that many papers. But if you are really concerned about that then why don't you just go buy StarOffice?
3)You are complaining about GIMP? I've been using Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator for years and I find GIMP to be a very nice program to use. You just don't realize how to use it, as I'm sure you would have no clue how to use Photoshop if you had never used it before. But for all the Adobe lovers out there ( I'm one of them ) complain to Adobe to make a linux version of Photoshop.
4)I use xine and have no problems with it. When I want to start the movie, I press the play button( you know, the one that looks like an arrow pointing to the right). )Or...OMG! if you are such a graphics guru, just make your own skin.
5)I've never had to change my font settings, except for years ago when mozilla first came out and was buggy as just about all new software is( or in the case of MS...still is 15 years later)
Learn a little more before flaming that which you do not understand.
I also have Cox High Speed Internet and have noticed some VERY odd port restrictions. I was running a web server, ftp server, and ssh from my box at home strictly for personal use...website was to test things and ftp was to share files between work and home. Well about 6 months ago, I noticed that Cox blocked port 80 thus rendering my web server useless (at least untill I just changed the port it served on) but they left my ftp and ssh ports alive and well. I don't really understand this because I use the ssh and ftp ports a lot more then I use the http port.
On a positive note though, apparently they have removed or increased my downstream bandwidth to 8Mbps because I consistently download at around 800-950MBps (and I actually timed it and did the byte comparison to ensure that it wasn't jus a mis-report by my ftp client). The strange thing is that my neighbor is still restricted to 3Mbps. Some things I just don't understand....
Slashdot Mirror
You can run a certain portion of the binaries written for MS-DOS 2 still, ya know. That's one hell of a legacy.
I fully understand that M$ has a large amount of backwards compatibility, and that can be nice...but there comes a time when you have to admit that a bug ridden failure is not something that you wish to support anymore. At least not when it means that you have to have so many workarounds and hacks set up that it makes everything totally confusing.
I used to own a pair of jeans that kept getting holes in them and I kept patching them. Eventually I had enough of it (mainly I think b/c I patched a completely new pair of jeans) and bought a new pair of jeans becuase the old ones looked like cripe. Sometimes you just have to let go of the old stuff and move on.
Why can't M$ just supply a win9x emulator like the OS9 emulator for osX? Yeah it sucks, but eventually the old stuff phases out and the potential for properly working new stuff grows tremendously. C'mon, how many times a year do you pull out some old DOS version of WordPerfect(I still have mine) and try to run it?
Why am I not in the least bit surprised that a religious debate has been born in an article about choosing M$ or OSS?!?!?!?!
I was under the impression that all colleges were like this... correct me if I'm wrong?
Correction: my college professors frequently prepare powerpoint presentations (which I despise...what's that chalk board behind you for?) for class instruction and the prof simply places the ppt on their website for the students to download. A couple of other classmates and I had to specially request that one teacher post the mid-term in pdf format to make it easier on everyone.
so to answer your question, no all profs post their data in postscript or pdf
bah!!!!! everyone knows that vi is the most powerful and easiest editor to use...at least after you figure out how to use it
I work at an engineering company and one of the consultants we frequently hire has been surfacing old cypress logs from the bottom of deep lakes for years now. He has made quite a profit from this and even holds a few patents on ROV's that find and cut the trees, similar to this sawfish. It is actually a _very_ lucrative idea, not to mention envorinmentally friendly since it does not cut down any of the old growth trees in forests, which would be the only way to obtain wood of this quality.
Slashdotters need to start understanding that "It works for me," is not an argument. The typical Slashdotter has a level of hacking skill that is neither available nor desired by the world at large.
I have to agree with this. I wouldn't say that I am a Linux/Unix guru by any means. I'm running gentoo right now and it isn't that hard for me to use, not to mention that I think it's fun spending entire nights reading up on a new piece of software I want to use. But I have a friend that is interested in running a linux box at his office for running an apache/mysql box (I think he just wanted to try linux). Anyway, I set up a gentoo box for him and installed all the required packages he would need. He still calls me up every other day asking how to authenticate his logins against a windows PDC or how to auto-mount his windows shares or tons of other things.
"it works for me" is great if you know what you are doing, but the majority of people do not know/do not _want_ to know how to configure pam_smb or samba...they just want it to work.
a much simpler and more reliable attack is to embed a 1px by 1px iframe in your own high-traffic website
There is a huge difference between the HTML code in an e-mail doing this and having it on your high traffic website...the IP addy. If you put a 1px X 1px iframe then all the traffic to google created by that iframe will be from the web server that hold the page aka 1 IP. By using the e-mail scam, the refering IP changes all the time.
Yeah, but only if they wanted to put us on the front lines. I'm sure they'll let us fat, pale skinned, caffine addicts sit in front of a computer ad play war games all day.
Actually, if I could play Call of Duty for the gov, I'd do it. Hmmmm... a little Ender's Game anyone?
I keep hearing about all these different methods of using authentication to curb spam. However, the problem is a little bigger than the minor inconvience that you recieve from having to delete 10, 100, 1000 e-mail's from your box a day. The real problem is the disgusting amount of traffic dedicated to sending out spam. While it would be great to block spam when it hit's my SMTP server, the traffic is still there and possibly doubled if my server sends a reply. We need to find a way to address this problem from the source before it bogs down pipelines.
Ok so I guess I'm all talk because I can't think of a single possible solution, but I do feel that this is the approach we need to take.
Actually, no program depends on it being in a certain memory location. Instead the software in question, Ansys, would try to load to the newly reserved memory location.
Actual Error Message:
"The system DLL Kernel32.dll was relocated in memory. The application will not run properly. The relocation occurred because the DLL C:\Program Files\ANSYS Inc\v70\AISOL\CommonFiles\Solving\ANSYS.exe occupied an address range reserved for Windows system DLLs. The vendor supplying the DLL should be contacted for a new DLL."
DLL = Dynamic Link Library, you are correct...but windows reserves a specific memory range to load those dll's in, and one of the service packs changed that reserved memory location. Unfortunately, Ansys was trying to use that very memory location. Hence, The program could not load and hours of work time was lost. Learn a little more before you start making foolish comments like this.
This is more true than you could possibly imagine. I've had more than one third party software package be rendered useless after applying a Windows update. XP Service packs have moved the location that kernel.dll resides in memory which has cost large and very important software packages to not work.
I'm actually the most worried about the general public beginning to think that Microsoft Security Updates should be as commonplace as making breakfast in the morning.
Scene 1 Act 1:
Wife: Well lets see, I need to make breakfast for the kids, pay the bills, install MS updates, and get the spare tire for the car fixed.
*Later that day*
Husband: Honey did you remember to install the security updates?
Wife: Oh No! I forgot! do it quickly before MyDoom.3AF5B infects us!!!!!
This idea sounds completely ridiculous to me. I find number problem with this concept:
1) Have my computer run some algorithm to give me access to send an e-mail? My old 133Mhz (which I still use as a SMTP gateway) takes a hell of a lot longer to verify whether 671998030559713968361666935769 is a prime number (it is) than the dual 3.06 XEON system I have at my disposal at work.
2) On what step would this verification be required to take place? On my computer when I send an e-mail? On my SMTP gateway which sends the message out? What is to keep me from running my own SMTP server on my computer? If it has to run on my computer then every SMTP server in the world would have to be updated. If it has to run on my SMTP gateway, then I'm going to have to make sure that my SMTP gateway, which is my 133Mhz box, is being upgraded every year or so that, as faster processors come out and more complex verification algorithms are developed, it can keep up.
3) And what about all the legitimate bulk e-mail senders out there? CERT for example probably has a huge mailing list to notify people who have subscribed that a new vulnerability has been discovered (in Windows most likely). Is CERT going to have to buy hundreds of computers to send out it's mail to ensure that everyone who has subscribed will recieve the notification in a timely manner?
This is a step in the right direction. We do need to address the spam issue and find a solution for it. Why can't we just have a non-profit org created that has a database of SMTP servers that are authorized to send mail and if people wish to avoid spam, they upgrade their own server software to require that the sending server of a message it is recieving is on the authorized list?
I'm sure that there are better solutions than this silly verification BS.
Apparantly my numerous bug reports informing them of the major bug "flash doesn't seem to install under linux properly" finally paid off!
This is the best news that I seen all week! I just wrote an Ask Slashdot (rejected) article yesterday asking why Macromedia and Adobe will not port their software to linux. Photoshop runs fine under WINE but having Macromedia consider making an actual port is music to my ears!
I've been waiting to regain that 3G partition that windows hogs up!
When, not if, SCO shuts down, I want to buy their used computers and install a different flavor of linux on each one then give them out.
Granted that this replay is a few days late, but I often add a little about what I was thinking when I write the comment.
//4AM thinking about random idea solves idea like this
I agree that comments are like crutches, as I personally hate having to break my thought process to write a comment.
On the other hand, even the most readable code takes time to look at and decypher. It is far easier to read that one line comment that you wrote last month and immediately recall what you were doing.
Comments may be crutches, but I will always laugh at the idiot with the compound fracture in their femur who refuses to use a crutch to get around because he is too proud.
1) Ok I'll give you the digital camera argument, as that can be a bit of a pain in the ass. But you can't really blame linux for that one. There are a limited number of developers and most digital camera makers will help MS and Apple to develop their drivers because they want the most popular OSes to support their hardware. If you really have a problem with linux not supporting your digital camera, write a letter to the manufacturer and complain to them that they aren't supported in linux.
2)I haven't used OpenOffice as of yet because all the papers I write, I use vim. Admittedly, I dont write that many papers. But if you are really concerned about that then why don't you just go buy StarOffice?
3)You are complaining about GIMP? I've been using Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator for years and I find GIMP to be a very nice program to use. You just don't realize how to use it, as I'm sure you would have no clue how to use Photoshop if you had never used it before. But for all the Adobe lovers out there ( I'm one of them ) complain to Adobe to make a linux version of Photoshop.
4)I use xine and have no problems with it. When I want to start the movie, I press the play button( you know, the one that looks like an arrow pointing to the right). )Or...OMG! if you are such a graphics guru, just make your own skin.
5)I've never had to change my font settings, except for years ago when mozilla first came out and was buggy as just about all new software is( or in the case of MS...still is 15 years later)
Learn a little more before flaming that which you do not understand.
I also have Cox High Speed Internet and have noticed some VERY odd port restrictions. I was running a web server, ftp server, and ssh from my box at home strictly for personal use...website was to test things and ftp was to share files between work and home. Well about 6 months ago, I noticed that Cox blocked port 80 thus rendering my web server useless (at least untill I just changed the port it served on) but they left my ftp and ssh ports alive and well. I don't really understand this because I use the ssh and ftp ports a lot more then I use the http port. On a positive note though, apparently they have removed or increased my downstream bandwidth to 8Mbps because I consistently download at around 800-950MBps (and I actually timed it and did the byte comparison to ensure that it wasn't jus a mis-report by my ftp client). The strange thing is that my neighbor is still restricted to 3Mbps. Some things I just don't understand....
Or you can actually just set up a *nix box as a router and have as many computer connected to your internet service as you want