Well said! I'm a hardware engineer, at best an embedded developer and a hack at anything much above that level. I tinkered with PostgreSQL, but realistically I found its general philosophy of doing things a bit cumbersome. Plus, for the few web apps I've built in my spare time, basic MySQL was quick to learn and did everything I needed (and I could figure out how to make it do everything I needed). Anything beyond the basics (transaction support, clustering, blah blah blah...) - not needed by anything I've built thus far.
My wife is a professional DBA and database integration goon (specializing in Sybase, but pretty fluent in Oracle), and gets on me for my sloppy design, but hey, it works, and has worked under ever-increasing load for the last five years with zero maintenance. I'm not switching because there's no compelling reason to do so - my current solution works just fine. When I go to design something new, my first thought will be to look at MySQL first and see if it fits the task. Only if it does not will I look towards something else.
I have books that are well over 100 years old, some of them being one of a handful of copies known to exist. Nobody is going to convince me that any eBook I buy today will survive the test of time, especially with DRM preventing me from doing anything with it.
Plus, I can't stick an eBook in a copier, then pin up the photocopies on the wall and scribble on them while I work.
Quite frankly, the onus is not on me to assure the continuity of business as a lowly analyst in a huge company. Part of my job is to do work in accordance with company policies - including documentation. These policies were set up by someone because they realized that documentation of how things work is almost as important as actually making them work. Thus, I document, both for my own good and because it's part of the prescribed process to follow.
I work on an internal system at a large company that's mission critical to our core business. Five people in the history of the company have worked on it - two moved on, one died, and there are two of us left. He's a private pilot, I'm a suicidal driver, and we spend quite a bit of time together outside of work. The question comes up regularly, "What if you guys get hit by a bus?"
My answer: Then I'm dead, I no longer give a @#$^.
Glad somebody else realized this - let market forces take them down. Customers won't be happy when they don't receive all their email, and I'm sure as hell not going to pay for AOL subscribers to receive mail from me (or from the three rather large mailing lists I moderate). I'm sure most other individuals and mailing lists aren't going to pay, either - just the spammers who want through. Net result, less real mail and more spam to AOLhell land.
If this goes through and people start complaining they can't get mail off the lists anymore, my reply will be - we adhere to standards, it's your ISP that sucks, maybe you should consider getting one that doesn't screw you over.
I'm sorry, but every time I read about eBooks, I can't figure out how it will ever do more than take a small dent out of the dead tree book market. I personally like real books. Maybe I could get used to reading things I only intend to read once (pop literature, etc.) on an electronic device if the price was right, but there is no way I'm ever buying any sort of book in electronic form that I want to keep forever and refer to often.
My shelves at home are covered with texts on the industrial history of the American west from about 1860 to 1960 - mining, railways, early roads, electrical generation and distribution, etc. A good chunk of these are approaching a hundred years old or more, having been printed as contemporary reference material around the turn of the last century or before. I have original maps going back as far as the 1860s. Some, especially the maps and blueprints, are fragile, but they're still very usable. Nobody is going to convince me that any eBook will have a service life of 100 years, or even close. Plus there's nothing like researching for an article by being able to spread a whole bunch of sources on the same topic out on a large table. The advantages of being able to see it all at once simply cannot be replicated in an electronic device, nor can the ability to make photocopies when needed.
Now, if I wanted to pick up the next Clancy, Grisham, other misc pop lit novel for a long flight, I might consider something like this if the price was right. I probably won't read it more than once, so if I lose it I don't particularly care, and if it's cheap enough, it might just make sense.
I'd have to say there's nothing I'd like better than a Crackberry network shutdown, at least for a week. It might actually wake up the execs to the mess the modern patent system has made.
Also, probably some 80% of the people I know who have the damn things only have them to make themselves feel important, not because a life-and-death email could come in at any moment. It's very disruptive trying to talk to some ass who thinks every time his CB goes off he should pick it up rather than continuing the discussion with the real, live person in front of him/her, yet that's what most of them do... Plus, most of this 80% have increased their stress level unbelievably by destroying the greatest feature of email - the ability to get back to it when it doesn't disrupt things, unlike, say, phone calls.
That said, redundancy is a good thing for those people where it really is an end-of-everything scenario to be out of touch with their email. There should be a backup plan, and this will be a healthy reminder. When I'm on call for production support, I have a cell phone and a pager at all times, and if I'm home, email and my land line work as well. Inevitably, at least one of these often fails to reach me, that's why there are backups.
The rest of the people, the 80% above, well, they just need to pop a valium or two and realize that it doesn't matter that much...
I doubt if you asked most Chinese citizens, they'd say, "Oh don't tell me the truth, because I like living in the info-bubble my government keeps me trapped in." There's a fundamental right of people to be able to think. Government mind control through selective omission is just yet another form of oppression.
I'm very, very disappointed with Google, unless their true, never-to-be-mentioned motivations are that enough "leaks" will get through before being noticed that the facts about the Chinese government will eventually get out. In which case, maybe they didn't do evil.
I can't stand cellphones here on the ground, and if I was stuck in a small cabin full of dingbats yapping about pointless shit on their phones, I'd go nuts. Definitely encouragement to bring headphones and some shiny plastic filled with serious metal bands. So, I'm happy to see them banned, no matter what the stupid excuse. However, if they legalize cellphones on planes, they might finally have to admit that one tiny 800-900 or 1800-1900MHz signal won't bring the plane down. I know, local repeaters forcing the phones to lower their power, but still...
Pet peeve - people who instinctively ask on a cellphone - "So, where are you?" Lemme whack about 98% of those people with a cluebat - you really don't fucking care. You don't need to ask the question, because you can't do anything useful with the answer. It's a bad, idiotic habit - stop it. The remaining 2% may have a valid reason for wanting that information. The rest of youm shut the hell up and stop asking. Imagine a whole cabin of morons going, "Hello... Well, I'm on a plane right now..."
Good thing I don't fly anymore. Too much hassle. I'd rather drive. Peaceful serenity at 80 mph and 40 mpg.
The point is that this guy is buried - forever - should they be able to find him. They can just keep on seizing his assets, pretty much indefinitely. In short - all your bucks are belong to us. God I love my home state.
The highway may have only been there since the 1930s, but at least the railway and probably primitive roads have crossed Paisano for some time.
While I'm glad to see a scientific investigation into this, this study seems to at best be a partial explanation. As others have noted, the lights have been around for a long time. This study seems to neglect that, since cars would not have been nearly common enough in the 1880s to be a likely cause, and while it could be a reflectorized light on a wagon or carriage, it just seems unlikely.
Oh well, headed down that way this spring. Even though I'm sure there's a perfectly rational explanation for it all, I still want to see the phenomenon for myself.
Actually, I don't like Thunderbird's UI. I've never liked the Outlook-y folder/list/message pane view. I'd much rather go for the Eudora-style interface (MDE-type interface) where I can have a zillion messages and a few mail folders open in their own child windows, but all neatly contained within one master.
I would assume that, like other rail systems that operate in harsh climates, there are backup systems. Figure when BC Rail built their all-electric Tumbler Ridge line, they included a small diesel engine in each locomotive in case the overhead power failed so that the crew wouldn't freeze to death (winters in the Tumbler Ridge area are absolutely brutally cold). While the Qinghai-Tibet Rwy isn't electrified, there just have to be backups for such things. In this case, supplemental heat and bottled oxygen would be the two I'd worry about. Based on what I've read, the average elevation of the line is something like 13,000 feet, which is still perfectly breathable, especially to those accustomed to thin air. (I live at about 7,000, and spend weeks during the summer above 10000-11000.) It's only going to be on the high passes that you have issues with air. I'm guessing that it's not built to Western-type standards of redundancy (because, after all, this still is *China*, who was still running mainline steam locomotives until this year), but I'm sure they have something in case of failures. Figure each coach probably has its own systems, so if one fails, you pile everybody into the working coaches. My guess is that they'll probably get away from the Chinese way of one locomotive per train as well - anything running in those nasty conditions, I'd want at least two units in case one died somewhere en route.
Add yet another railway to my list of lines I have to go photograph at least once in my life...
Let's start with an assumption - the EU is just another version of the US with a lot more infighting, languages, and bureaucrats, less freedoms, etc. Different, but as far as national organization goes, not that much different compared with the other relevant superpower - China.
I dislike the fact that our government controls ICANN, but only because I dislike government controls in general. I'd sure as hell rather the US DoC controls ICANN than anyone else. Despite the current administration, we have a decent track record on free speech and openness issues, and as many others pointed out, many of the most vocal opponents of US control oppose us *because* of that track record (China, Iran, etc - nations who still don't get the whole "freedom" thing). The EU is just engaging in a biggus diccus contest, because they want relevancy in the internet sphere - they claim they oppose us because they don't believe our track record of openness and lassez-faire operation will continue, and in the process, they have allied with nations who hold the exact opposite view - they fear we will continue with our current record, and there will be too much freedom floating around. That, in my book, puts them somewhere between dumb and evil.
Actually, there's no policy that I have to leave the mail on their server. They think that's a "feature" and can't understand why I don't want it. My email needs to be where I am to do my job, and often that's in some faraway corner of BFE with lousy connectivity to corporate headquarters (read: 56k frame relay or worse...) or at my house when VPN won't fire up and we have a production emergency.
As far as my last backup, about 45 minutes ago - runs at 2000h. Both of my machines are backed up nightly (incremental during the week, full on Saturday) to a network tape backup in the server room downstairs, and the weekly full backups are kept offsite by the corporate lan goons and retained for six months. I'm meticulous about my backups, especially since my primary machine is a laptop that goes through hell when I'm on the road. Of course that doesn't work when the laptop is not connected, but 80% of the time I leave it at work overnight. Add to that my occasional (probably twice monthly) burns of all my data to DVD-R, which I have stacked up at home, and you have a pretty robust backup system.
I won't get fired or sued for losing my email, nor will my company, but my life will suck and I won't have the history or resources to do my job efficiently and effectively. I have the utmost interest in its longevity and functionality, and after the corporate servers have lost my mail several times, I've given up trusting them.
As for what I do, let's just say I'm in an electrical engineer working in scanning system design for the transportation sector.
I'd strongly consider exim and maybe postfix if you're not looking to go with good ol' sendmail. That's the voice of a five year qmail user talking.
I currently run qmail in a small production environment, handling about 20k messages a day. It's small, but enough to point out the cracks.
qmail does many things well, but it also is a product of DJB-bizarroworld. The worst of the offenses, in my book, is that due to his security model, the smtp receiver will accept messages to any recipient, not just valid ones. Then, if it can't figure out what to do with it, it generates a bounce message - which usually bounces. This can kill a machine and a network connection during a dictionary spammer attack. Implementing SMTP-AUTH with qmail is a royal, gigantic, immense, overwhelming pain in the ass. It took me several hours to get it all patched together and working.
Want any of the above to work? Patch. Want a blacklist of users that shouldn't get mail? Patch. Want SPF support? Patch. Want the non-POSIX use of errno to be fixed? Patch. Usually, the patches don't go together smoothly, so you wind up spending hours figuring out the rejected chunks and how to properly patch them together. And this is a modern MTA?
While I've patched qmail to deal with a host of issues, there's no reason a modern MTA should need to be patched for most these. The rcpt authentication thing is just downright dumb, and smtp-auth is reasonably widely supported with the ESMTP standard.
I'm testing exim right now, and I'm pretty happy with it. It's fairly light, does everything I want and need, and isn't the configuration quagmire of sendmail. As soon as I rebuild the mail server, I'm switching the production environment away from qmail.
If you're a hard-core qmail adherent, that's great. It's fast and reasonably easy to configure in its basic form. However, I prefer something that's more standards-compliant and feature-rich right out of the tarball.
My advice to anybody considering qmail for the first time is to try it, but consider other popular MTAs like exim and postfix as well, including the 800lb. gorilla, sendmail. It's a pain, but get the O'Reilly book and you can do positively anything (and I do mean anything) you want with it.
If my company would only go BACK to POP3, my life would be so much easier. First, we moved from POP3 to IMAP - no big deal, but I don't care for IMAP and the whole remote folder thing. However, it just required me to modify fetchmail to dump it in the mail spool on my linux box, same as always. Then set Windows box with Eudora to leave mail on my linux box for 2 days. Then, I can use Eudora as I want, mail is stored on my Windows box, and I can read it using pine over SSH for 48 hours. Worked great, did everything I needed for five years.
As of six months ago, we have Exchange/Outlook, and no POP3/IMAP access to the server at all. You're stuck with Outlook or webmail based on how it's configured. After much reconfiguration, I finally got Outlook to behave mostly the way I want - including delivering mail locally rather than leaving it on some server a thousand miles away (literally, not joking here). Now if I didn't hate everything about Outlook...
All I want, and all I've ever wanted, is to be able to grab my messages easily and put them on my machine, not stored on a server somewhere. POP3 is great for that. It does absolutely everything I want and need for mail, and it's dead simple. Even if you don't make it the standard implementation, it'd be nice if admins everywhere left those of us who know what we're doing the option of using it.
I'm substantially less pissed now. Something about the respect I have for both Linus and John "maddog" Hall and their contributions made me step back and reconsider. I still think the pay scale should be readjusted, since those large commercial entites have the largest stake in the value of the name, but there is some point to protecting it from "evildoers" even for the non-commercial interests.
As long as I can still create a Black Foo distribution, and still note somewhere that it's a Linux(R)-based distribution without paying a licensing fee, then I suppose I can live with it. It still leaves a bad taste in my mouth, not being able to call a linux and linux because a lawyer will come out of the darkness and eat me, but I suppose that's the screwed up legal system we function within...
Anyway if I'm making millions off of the linux trademark it wouldn't hurt me much but on the other hand I may be giving back to the community in some other way and this is one more hand being stuck out to be fed for something I didn't ask for.
I think that hits at the core of why it pisses me off... The big linux-based companies pay a comparatively small fee for a name they built their entire business around, and the community-based non-profits who are usually already burning through their members time, effort, and pocketbooks get an $200 slap in the face every year.
It's because of the volunteers, the amateurs, the professionals who give freely of their spare time - those of us who already throw our personal time and cash at the expenses for continuing our projects - that Linux is a trademark worth protecting to start with. What do we get back? A jackboot to the teeth in the morning.
I'm sorry trademark protection is expensive, but let's face it, so is free (beer/freedom) software development, free project management, free content development, free user support, etc. I'm an engineer, my time could be put to work on lucrative contract jobs outside of work. Instead, I use it to develop software and content. Without people like me, you wouldn't have a trademark worth protecting. Surely some compromise could be worked out with the community that feeds you, such as a $1/year license for non-profit projects?
Actually I'd say there is another type not running XP you forgot about... Those who see no benefit over Win2k, but a good deal of bloat and that stupid "phone home" activation thing. (Yes, fyi, my copy of 2k is paid for...)
When I actually get around to buying that dual core A64, then I'll have a reason to upgrade (XP64). Until then, 2k does everything I need.
WAAAAHHOOOOO!!!! I'm not a morning person, so I don't give a crap if it gets light earlier. I'd rather have more light after work, when I'm actually awake and productive...
I guess I have seen it all. Never did I think in a CC discussion on/. I'd be scrolling along as see "Leo Brodie". The CC license doesn't do me much good (I think I'm up to FOUR copies of TF on my bookshelf at work...), but I'm glad to see Leo agreed to continue its distribution under an open license. The book was invaluable when I was learning the language, and I got my first copy from the guy who had my job before me.
- Nathan, professional Forth programmer, amongst other things...
I've been trying to get rid of the spares for years, but sadly, nobody really wants to learn Forth.:(
I doubt he's going away any time soon - this doofus has been writing inflammatory stuff for years. The problem is people that are less informed will first hear of CC from Dvorak and get the preconception that it's a dumb idea. We really need a way to confront people like this.
Maybe C/NC is artificial, but I still happen to think it's a good distinction.
I have a large collection (and ever getting larger) of railway photographs. Yes, I'm not only a geek, I'm worse... I'm a railfan. All of these that I've published on my website, in addition to the articles I write, are covered by a CC license that prohibits commercial use. I don't mind if other enthusiasts like myself reprint my work, or republish my photos, etc., because they do it for the love of the hobby and often for the historical documentation it provides.
That, at least to me, is a "purer" motivation than a guy trying to sell DVDs of railroad images to make a quick buck. Or even of someone writing a book about the history of the ASDF branch of the YXZ railroad. They're still going to be making a buck off of it. In my view, if you do it purely out of devotion to the hobby or to historical documentation, then you're contributing to the greater good of at least a subset of society. Your efforts to contribute to the greater good are payment enough for me. If you say, "Well, I'm writing this for history, but I deserve to be financially compensated for my effort," my response is similar - I deserve to be compensated, because I contributed to your efforts.
My general reaction to a general release movie (as opposed to some really cool indy stuff that really does get my brain going...) is usually a simple good, okay, bad, or horrible. If you have to deeply analyze it to figure out why it was good or bad, you've overcomplicated a simple question.
I give Ep 3 a definite good. Maybe there were problems with the writing, etc., but I ENJOYED watching it. If you just go in, sit back, and try to just watch it and enjoy it as entertainment, then it's good to great - much better than 1 or 2.
Slashdot Mirror
Well said! I'm a hardware engineer, at best an embedded developer and a hack at anything much above that level. I tinkered with PostgreSQL, but realistically I found its general philosophy of doing things a bit cumbersome. Plus, for the few web apps I've built in my spare time, basic MySQL was quick to learn and did everything I needed (and I could figure out how to make it do everything I needed). Anything beyond the basics (transaction support, clustering, blah blah blah...) - not needed by anything I've built thus far.
My wife is a professional DBA and database integration goon (specializing in Sybase, but pretty fluent in Oracle), and gets on me for my sloppy design, but hey, it works, and has worked under ever-increasing load for the last five years with zero maintenance. I'm not switching because there's no compelling reason to do so - my current solution works just fine. When I go to design something new, my first thought will be to look at MySQL first and see if it fits the task. Only if it does not will I look towards something else.
#5 - Lack of longevity
I have books that are well over 100 years old, some of them being one of a handful of copies known to exist. Nobody is going to convince me that any eBook I buy today will survive the test of time, especially with DRM preventing me from doing anything with it.
Plus, I can't stick an eBook in a copier, then pin up the photocopies on the wall and scribble on them while I work.
Quite frankly, the onus is not on me to assure the continuity of business as a lowly analyst in a huge company. Part of my job is to do work in accordance with company policies - including documentation. These policies were set up by someone because they realized that documentation of how things work is almost as important as actually making them work. Thus, I document, both for my own good and because it's part of the prescribed process to follow.
I work on an internal system at a large company that's mission critical to our core business. Five people in the history of the company have worked on it - two moved on, one died, and there are two of us left. He's a private pilot, I'm a suicidal driver, and we spend quite a bit of time together outside of work. The question comes up regularly, "What if you guys get hit by a bus?"
My answer: Then I'm dead, I no longer give a @#$^.
Glad somebody else realized this - let market forces take them down. Customers won't be happy when they don't receive all their email, and I'm sure as hell not going to pay for AOL subscribers to receive mail from me (or from the three rather large mailing lists I moderate). I'm sure most other individuals and mailing lists aren't going to pay, either - just the spammers who want through. Net result, less real mail and more spam to AOLhell land.
If this goes through and people start complaining they can't get mail off the lists anymore, my reply will be - we adhere to standards, it's your ISP that sucks, maybe you should consider getting one that doesn't screw you over.
I'm sorry, but every time I read about eBooks, I can't figure out how it will ever do more than take a small dent out of the dead tree book market. I personally like real books. Maybe I could get used to reading things I only intend to read once (pop literature, etc.) on an electronic device if the price was right, but there is no way I'm ever buying any sort of book in electronic form that I want to keep forever and refer to often.
My shelves at home are covered with texts on the industrial history of the American west from about 1860 to 1960 - mining, railways, early roads, electrical generation and distribution, etc. A good chunk of these are approaching a hundred years old or more, having been printed as contemporary reference material around the turn of the last century or before. I have original maps going back as far as the 1860s. Some, especially the maps and blueprints, are fragile, but they're still very usable. Nobody is going to convince me that any eBook will have a service life of 100 years, or even close. Plus there's nothing like researching for an article by being able to spread a whole bunch of sources on the same topic out on a large table. The advantages of being able to see it all at once simply cannot be replicated in an electronic device, nor can the ability to make photocopies when needed.
Now, if I wanted to pick up the next Clancy, Grisham, other misc pop lit novel for a long flight, I might consider something like this if the price was right. I probably won't read it more than once, so if I lose it I don't particularly care, and if it's cheap enough, it might just make sense.
Realistically, how multiplayer could "King of the Hill" get? I mean how many players can you have lined up along the street drinking beer?
I'd have to say there's nothing I'd like better than a Crackberry network shutdown, at least for a week. It might actually wake up the execs to the mess the modern patent system has made.
Also, probably some 80% of the people I know who have the damn things only have them to make themselves feel important, not because a life-and-death email could come in at any moment. It's very disruptive trying to talk to some ass who thinks every time his CB goes off he should pick it up rather than continuing the discussion with the real, live person in front of him/her, yet that's what most of them do... Plus, most of this 80% have increased their stress level unbelievably by destroying the greatest feature of email - the ability to get back to it when it doesn't disrupt things, unlike, say, phone calls.
That said, redundancy is a good thing for those people where it really is an end-of-everything scenario to be out of touch with their email. There should be a backup plan, and this will be a healthy reminder. When I'm on call for production support, I have a cell phone and a pager at all times, and if I'm home, email and my land line work as well. Inevitably, at least one of these often fails to reach me, that's why there are backups.
The rest of the people, the 80% above, well, they just need to pop a valium or two and realize that it doesn't matter that much...
Nathan
I doubt if you asked most Chinese citizens, they'd say, "Oh don't tell me the truth, because I like living in the info-bubble my government keeps me trapped in." There's a fundamental right of people to be able to think. Government mind control through selective omission is just yet another form of oppression.
I'm very, very disappointed with Google, unless their true, never-to-be-mentioned motivations are that enough "leaks" will get through before being noticed that the facts about the Chinese government will eventually get out. In which case, maybe they didn't do evil.
I can't stand cellphones here on the ground, and if I was stuck in a small cabin full of dingbats yapping about pointless shit on their phones, I'd go nuts. Definitely encouragement to bring headphones and some shiny plastic filled with serious metal bands. So, I'm happy to see them banned, no matter what the stupid excuse. However, if they legalize cellphones on planes, they might finally have to admit that one tiny 800-900 or 1800-1900MHz signal won't bring the plane down. I know, local repeaters forcing the phones to lower their power, but still...
Pet peeve - people who instinctively ask on a cellphone - "So, where are you?" Lemme whack about 98% of those people with a cluebat - you really don't fucking care. You don't need to ask the question, because you can't do anything useful with the answer. It's a bad, idiotic habit - stop it. The remaining 2% may have a valid reason for wanting that information. The rest of youm shut the hell up and stop asking. Imagine a whole cabin of morons going, "Hello... Well, I'm on a plane right now..."
Good thing I don't fly anymore. Too much hassle. I'd rather drive. Peaceful serenity at 80 mph and 40 mpg.
The point is that this guy is buried - forever - should they be able to find him. They can just keep on seizing his assets, pretty much indefinitely. In short - all your bucks are belong to us. God I love my home state.
The highway may have only been there since the 1930s, but at least the railway and probably primitive roads have crossed Paisano for some time.
While I'm glad to see a scientific investigation into this, this study seems to at best be a partial explanation. As others have noted, the lights have been around for a long time. This study seems to neglect that, since cars would not have been nearly common enough in the 1880s to be a likely cause, and while it could be a reflectorized light on a wagon or carriage, it just seems unlikely.
Oh well, headed down that way this spring. Even though I'm sure there's a perfectly rational explanation for it all, I still want to see the phenomenon for myself.
Actually, I don't like Thunderbird's UI. I've never liked the Outlook-y folder/list/message pane view. I'd much rather go for the Eudora-style interface (MDE-type interface) where I can have a zillion messages and a few mail folders open in their own child windows, but all neatly contained within one master.
I would assume that, like other rail systems that operate in harsh climates, there are backup systems. Figure when BC Rail built their all-electric Tumbler Ridge line, they included a small diesel engine in each locomotive in case the overhead power failed so that the crew wouldn't freeze to death (winters in the Tumbler Ridge area are absolutely brutally cold). While the Qinghai-Tibet Rwy isn't electrified, there just have to be backups for such things. In this case, supplemental heat and bottled oxygen would be the two I'd worry about. Based on what I've read, the average elevation of the line is something like 13,000 feet, which is still perfectly breathable, especially to those accustomed to thin air. (I live at about 7,000, and spend weeks during the summer above 10000-11000.) It's only going to be on the high passes that you have issues with air. I'm guessing that it's not built to Western-type standards of redundancy (because, after all, this still is *China*, who was still running mainline steam locomotives until this year), but I'm sure they have something in case of failures. Figure each coach probably has its own systems, so if one fails, you pile everybody into the working coaches. My guess is that they'll probably get away from the Chinese way of one locomotive per train as well - anything running in those nasty conditions, I'd want at least two units in case one died somewhere en route.
Add yet another railway to my list of lines I have to go photograph at least once in my life...
Let's start with an assumption - the EU is just another version of the US with a lot more infighting, languages, and bureaucrats, less freedoms, etc. Different, but as far as national organization goes, not that much different compared with the other relevant superpower - China.
I dislike the fact that our government controls ICANN, but only because I dislike government controls in general. I'd sure as hell rather the US DoC controls ICANN than anyone else. Despite the current administration, we have a decent track record on free speech and openness issues, and as many others pointed out, many of the most vocal opponents of US control oppose us *because* of that track record (China, Iran, etc - nations who still don't get the whole "freedom" thing). The EU is just engaging in a biggus diccus contest, because they want relevancy in the internet sphere - they claim they oppose us because they don't believe our track record of openness and lassez-faire operation will continue, and in the process, they have allied with nations who hold the exact opposite view - they fear we will continue with our current record, and there will be too much freedom floating around. That, in my book, puts them somewhere between dumb and evil.
Actually, there's no policy that I have to leave the mail on their server. They think that's a "feature" and can't understand why I don't want it. My email needs to be where I am to do my job, and often that's in some faraway corner of BFE with lousy connectivity to corporate headquarters (read: 56k frame relay or worse...) or at my house when VPN won't fire up and we have a production emergency.
As far as my last backup, about 45 minutes ago - runs at 2000h. Both of my machines are backed up nightly (incremental during the week, full on Saturday) to a network tape backup in the server room downstairs, and the weekly full backups are kept offsite by the corporate lan goons and retained for six months. I'm meticulous about my backups, especially since my primary machine is a laptop that goes through hell when I'm on the road. Of course that doesn't work when the laptop is not connected, but 80% of the time I leave it at work overnight. Add to that my occasional (probably twice monthly) burns of all my data to DVD-R, which I have stacked up at home, and you have a pretty robust backup system.
I won't get fired or sued for losing my email, nor will my company, but my life will suck and I won't have the history or resources to do my job efficiently and effectively. I have the utmost interest in its longevity and functionality, and after the corporate servers have lost my mail several times, I've given up trusting them.
As for what I do, let's just say I'm in an electrical engineer working in scanning system design for the transportation sector.
I'd strongly consider exim and maybe postfix if you're not looking to go with good ol' sendmail. That's the voice of a five year qmail user talking.
I currently run qmail in a small production environment, handling about 20k messages a day. It's small, but enough to point out the cracks.
qmail does many things well, but it also is a product of DJB-bizarroworld. The worst of the offenses, in my book, is that due to his security model, the smtp receiver will accept messages to any recipient, not just valid ones. Then, if it can't figure out what to do with it, it generates a bounce message - which usually bounces. This can kill a machine and a network connection during a dictionary spammer attack. Implementing SMTP-AUTH with qmail is a royal, gigantic, immense, overwhelming pain in the ass. It took me several hours to get it all patched together and working.
Want any of the above to work? Patch. Want a blacklist of users that shouldn't get mail? Patch. Want SPF support? Patch. Want the non-POSIX use of errno to be fixed? Patch. Usually, the patches don't go together smoothly, so you wind up spending hours figuring out the rejected chunks and how to properly patch them together. And this is a modern MTA?
While I've patched qmail to deal with a host of issues, there's no reason a modern MTA should need to be patched for most these. The rcpt authentication thing is just downright dumb, and smtp-auth is reasonably widely supported with the ESMTP standard.
I'm testing exim right now, and I'm pretty happy with it. It's fairly light, does everything I want and need, and isn't the configuration quagmire of sendmail. As soon as I rebuild the mail server, I'm switching the production environment away from qmail.
If you're a hard-core qmail adherent, that's great. It's fast and reasonably easy to configure in its basic form. However, I prefer something that's more standards-compliant and feature-rich right out of the tarball.
My advice to anybody considering qmail for the first time is to try it, but consider other popular MTAs like exim and postfix as well, including the 800lb. gorilla, sendmail. It's a pain, but get the O'Reilly book and you can do positively anything (and I do mean anything) you want with it.
If my company would only go BACK to POP3, my life would be so much easier. First, we moved from POP3 to IMAP - no big deal, but I don't care for IMAP and the whole remote folder thing. However, it just required me to modify fetchmail to dump it in the mail spool on my linux box, same as always. Then set Windows box with Eudora to leave mail on my linux box for 2 days. Then, I can use Eudora as I want, mail is stored on my Windows box, and I can read it using pine over SSH for 48 hours. Worked great, did everything I needed for five years.
As of six months ago, we have Exchange/Outlook, and no POP3/IMAP access to the server at all. You're stuck with Outlook or webmail based on how it's configured. After much reconfiguration, I finally got Outlook to behave mostly the way I want - including delivering mail locally rather than leaving it on some server a thousand miles away (literally, not joking here). Now if I didn't hate everything about Outlook...
All I want, and all I've ever wanted, is to be able to grab my messages easily and put them on my machine, not stored on a server somewhere. POP3 is great for that. It does absolutely everything I want and need for mail, and it's dead simple. Even if you don't make it the standard implementation, it'd be nice if admins everywhere left those of us who know what we're doing the option of using it.
I'm substantially less pissed now. Something about the respect I have for both Linus and John "maddog" Hall and their contributions made me step back and reconsider. I still think the pay scale should be readjusted, since those large commercial entites have the largest stake in the value of the name, but there is some point to protecting it from "evildoers" even for the non-commercial interests.
As long as I can still create a Black Foo distribution, and still note somewhere that it's a Linux(R)-based distribution without paying a licensing fee, then I suppose I can live with it. It still leaves a bad taste in my mouth, not being able to call a linux and linux because a lawyer will come out of the darkness and eat me, but I suppose that's the screwed up legal system we function within...
I think that hits at the core of why it pisses me off... The big linux-based companies pay a comparatively small fee for a name they built their entire business around, and the community-based non-profits who are usually already burning through their members time, effort, and pocketbooks get an $200 slap in the face every year.
It's because of the volunteers, the amateurs, the professionals who give freely of their spare time - those of us who already throw our personal time and cash at the expenses for continuing our projects - that Linux is a trademark worth protecting to start with. What do we get back? A jackboot to the teeth in the morning.
I'm sorry trademark protection is expensive, but let's face it, so is free (beer/freedom) software development, free project management, free content development, free user support, etc. I'm an engineer, my time could be put to work on lucrative contract jobs outside of work. Instead, I use it to develop software and content. Without people like me, you wouldn't have a trademark worth protecting. Surely some compromise could be worked out with the community that feeds you, such as a $1/year license for non-profit projects?
Actually I'd say there is another type not running XP you forgot about... Those who see no benefit over Win2k, but a good deal of bloat and that stupid "phone home" activation thing. (Yes, fyi, my copy of 2k is paid for...)
When I actually get around to buying that dual core A64, then I'll have a reason to upgrade (XP64). Until then, 2k does everything I need.
Yeah, here goes my karma. Oh well.
WAAAAHHOOOOO!!!! I'm not a morning person, so I don't give a crap if it gets light earlier. I'd rather have more light after work, when I'm actually awake and productive...
Non-morning people unite and rejoice!
I guess I have seen it all. Never did I think in a CC discussion on /. I'd be scrolling along as see "Leo Brodie". The CC license doesn't do me much good (I think I'm up to FOUR copies of TF on my bookshelf at work...), but I'm glad to see Leo agreed to continue its distribution under an open license. The book was invaluable when I was learning the language, and I got my first copy from the guy who had my job before me.
:(
- Nathan, professional Forth programmer, amongst other things...
I've been trying to get rid of the spares for years, but sadly, nobody really wants to learn Forth.
I doubt he's going away any time soon - this doofus has been writing inflammatory stuff for years. The problem is people that are less informed will first hear of CC from Dvorak and get the preconception that it's a dumb idea. We really need a way to confront people like this.
Maybe C/NC is artificial, but I still happen to think it's a good distinction.
:)
I have a large collection (and ever getting larger) of railway photographs. Yes, I'm not only a geek, I'm worse... I'm a railfan. All of these that I've published on my website, in addition to the articles I write, are covered by a CC license that prohibits commercial use. I don't mind if other enthusiasts like myself reprint my work, or republish my photos, etc., because they do it for the love of the hobby and often for the historical documentation it provides.
That, at least to me, is a "purer" motivation than a guy trying to sell DVDs of railroad images to make a quick buck. Or even of someone writing a book about the history of the ASDF branch of the YXZ railroad. They're still going to be making a buck off of it. In my view, if you do it purely out of devotion to the hobby or to historical documentation, then you're contributing to the greater good of at least a subset of society. Your efforts to contribute to the greater good are payment enough for me. If you say, "Well, I'm writing this for history, but I deserve to be financially compensated for my effort," my response is similar - I deserve to be compensated, because I contributed to your efforts.
Think of it as a matching donation scheme.
My general reaction to a general release movie (as opposed to some really cool indy stuff that really does get my brain going...) is usually a simple good, okay, bad, or horrible. If you have to deeply analyze it to figure out why it was good or bad, you've overcomplicated a simple question.
I give Ep 3 a definite good. Maybe there were problems with the writing, etc., but I ENJOYED watching it. If you just go in, sit back, and try to just watch it and enjoy it as entertainment, then it's good to great - much better than 1 or 2.