YES! But remeber you have to let them know what made you make that decision. For example:
I was recently woring on a friends DSL connection. To make a long story short, I made three calls to tech support that night. The first two got routed to foreign call centers. I spent hours struggling with the accent. To make matters worse I am from Texas and have a very thick southern drawl. The technician could not understand me either. Finally on the third call I got routed to an american technician. In 10 minutes we had isolated the modem as the problem.
"OK" you say, "What is the point?" The point is that I got the technicians name and wrote a glowing letter praising that technician. I enclosed it with the letter explaining that I was moving the account to a new provider that did not outsource their support.
OK maybe it is a valid point that not only M$ is vulnerable. Still he uses an example that is intentionally designed to cause fear because not only is it a non-M$ app, but it is a firewall to boot. Next he proposes a solution that looks too much like Longhorn to be a coincidence.
"In one possible scenario, software owners would subscribe to an automated patch service. "...
"Subscribers would receive a predeployed, encrypted version of the patch. At a predetermined point, a decryption key would be passed to a patch installer on all subscribed systems."...
"By the time the code exploiter even begins to reverse-engineer the patch, most affected systems would be immune. "
Am I the only person who imagines the "Code Exploiter" exploiting the patching system? I would never allow any process from outside my network to put software onto a computer on my network.
Interestingly I use a system similar to this but it is a pull not a push. SuSE has a system called YOU - Yast Online Update. I have it configured to automaticall poll for patches and install them during off peak hours. I believe Red Hat has something similar. The difference is I (or my computer) initiate the process. It leaves me in controll, not some mysterious "patch service."
From the original article: "Illustrating the strong emotional response elicited by such a sudden insight, Archimedes is said to have run home from the baths in euphoric glee..."
I think this is one of the places our education system is missing a bet. I have never met a person who does not get that rush of joy from solving a problem. If our education process stressed problem solving instead of rote memorization, we would have a population addicted to learning.
"...even at normal volume, because having only half the conversation seems to leave my brain wondering and pondering the other half more.
Yeah I think it is kind of like hearing your name in a crowd. I do not notice conversations around me, but if someone uses my name it will catch my attention. I think hearing half a conversation works the same way. You hear a vocalization and never hear a response. Your brain thinks "If no one answered they must be talking to me!" That is why it attracts your attention. You are checking to see if they expect a response from you.
It is just a bad idea for a person not familiar with a distribution to review a BETA version of that distribution. Many of his issues were because he is not used to installing SuSE. For example, he is installing individual Gnome apps hoping that the dependancy resolution will install a Gnome desktop for him. This is just stupid. If he had chosen to look at "Selections" instead of "Packages" he would have been presented with a single "Gnome" option. Selecting it would have installed a full blown Gnome desktop.
As for the menus, I think SuSE has a great menu system. It is XML based and is shared by both Gnome and KDE. This way whatever you install is available to both desktops and is located in the same place in both menus. As a rule, if it is not in the menus, you haven't installed it yet. SuSE does a great job of updating its menus when you add software from the distribution CD's. In addition, the professional versions (5 CD's or 1 Dbl DVD) have every software package the average user will ever need on the CD.
What a load of tripe! This is just another way to appear to be doing something while actually doing nothing. I can see it now:
Microsoft wins "industry awards for secure software development practices." Of course OSS developers NEVER recieve these awards because they are not part of any "industry."
This is simply false. Do you suppose ESPN pays the National Collegiate Athletic Association the same amount to broadcast an hour of men's college basketball as it does to broadcast an hour of men's collegiate wrestling? Of course not.
Sorry I was unclear. What i meant when I said "the costs of producing and distributing programming are largely fixed" was that it does not cost much more to distribute the program to 5,000 viewers than it does to distribute it to 5 viewers.
Popular channels will go sky high such as CNN, ESPN, HGTV, etc. The channels nobody want's (QVC, HSC) will be free anyway.
I think you have this wrong. Since the costs of producing and distributing programming are largely fixed, the huge sponsorship of popular channels will allow those costs to be spread over a larger group. Even at a lower per unit cost total profits will be high. Less popular channels will have a harder time reaching wide enough distribution to be proffitable. Therefore they will require a higher per unit cost.
You know I don't get it. Here is a company that cann afford to pay cash for Disney, but they cannot get my billing account and my ISP login synchonized so that I do not have to use two different login names and passwords.
I disagree with your first statement, "Voting issues have been becoming more and more prevalent in the past decade." Chicago has been famous for it's "Graveyard Vote" since the days when Mayor Dailey was supposedly running the political machine. Election fraud and rigging is an historic fact.
I think your statement "When watching the flow of money with these issues, they tend to resolve to the same small group of elites, thought not necessarily the same person, company or political alignment." is very enlightened (informed, astute? something like that.) This is more about class warfare than any political agenda.
My father was a politician, so I have a little experience with the election process. I have NEVER seen an election that did not have issues.
For example:
The wrong ballot gets delivered to a polling location.
The ballots get delivered but the election judge does not show up.
Ballots get printed with names mispelled or missing.
A polling location runs out of ballots before the day is over.
No one has the right key to open the doors so people can vote.
And that is just accidental stuff. Believe it or not some people will actually try to intentionally and illegally influence the outcome of an election! It is a human process subject to the entire gamut of human error. Even when we have the entire process electronic, there will still be some human elements. Face it, elections are a flawed process. Still it is the best process we have...
"most important part of Suse YAST is closed source and comes with restrictions"
When selling free software, the logical business model is to add value. It is that added value that you are paying for. For SuSE that value is YAST. Sure they are slick and they are one of the most complete distributions out there, but ask anyone who runs SuSE what their best feature is and they will tell you it is YAST.
Instead of demanding that SuSE release the source to software that they paid developers to write, why doesn't the open source community band together and give us an admin tool that is the equal or superior to YAST.
"My office has no idea I have a cell phone number."
That is how I got my nifty leash - I mean text pager. I told my work I did not have a phone and had no intention of getting one. Two weeks later my director hands me a text pager.
"# Tests the available bandwidth by posting large amounts of data to the following websites:...* www.xo.net "
So what is up with XO? This is the second reference to XO and virus writers I have encountered this month. Are they jsut an easy mark, or do they provide such exquisite products that the script kiddies can't resist the temptation? I just don't get it.
"It's not like Linux is going to improve his gaming experience."
The first time I set up NWN under Linux and ran it under TWM I almost came all over myself! It gave me better graphics, better performance, and a better gaming experience. Thank you Bioware, Nvidia, and Suse.
In Linux you have to usually exit X, check dependencies, and all kinds of other cryptic stuff.
SuSE has a great installer for Nvidia drivers in 9.x. I do not know about their support of ATI because I do not run ATI cards. It still requires exiting X befoire the install, but the documentation on both SuSE's web site and Nvidia's web site is user friendly enough to walk most users through that step.
many companies don't port their games to Linux on the sole basis that they 1. don't want to release source and 2. don't want to take the time to write an installer which can accomodate every distro's different package management, directory layout, and dependency tree.
I cannot speak directly to the installer issues, but Bioware seems to have solved these problems quite well. I do know that they are NOT releasing source for the Linux version of NWN.
Isn't the challenge not to make windows games run under linux, aka wine, but to get game publishers to release linux versions of their games?
Yes! Games! The only reason I still have Windoze installed on a computer is because I am a gamer and I can only get one decent game under Linux. I do not know how many of you play Never Winter Nights but it is the best game implementation I have seen under Linux. In fact it outperforms the same computer running a Microsoft OS.
I have long been of the opinion that Linux needs a Game Development Library like Microsoft's Avtive X. I also cannot figure out why no one is making games that run from a bootable Linux CD. I remeber back in the day, games came on bootable floppies. The game booted into an OS that was optimised to play the game. I would think that a bootable Linux Distro that auto launched the user into the game would be ideal for game manufacturers. There would bo no chance of the user running other software that conflicted or degraded game play.
"I'd imagine the teamsters would have it smashed before it cut out the first window...
"
Nah, they'll just have the government add a 40% tax to the cost of the construction to pay to retrain the displaced construction workers to be outsorced computer programmers.
"are there any valid reasons why I shouldn't be allowed to run a spambot?"
Yes there are. It is illegal. While I am all in favor of freedom, the distibution of either spam or malicious software (viri, trojans etc.) is illegal. As such it violates the ISP's acceptable use policy.
Caveat Emptor (Let the buyer beware!) As I see it Richards built and operated the web site using his own resources for three years with ZERO compensation from the police. It was his site, his hardware, and his time and effort. If the police provided hime 'content' without a contractual obligation attached to that content, then it was Richards' content to use as he pleased.
This is clearly not a crimminal matter. How can it possibly be extortion for me to threaten to stop providing a free service because no one wants to pay for it. For a real world example, Southland Corporation provides free coffee to Law Enforcement Officers to help increase police presence around their stores. If they suddenly decided to make the police pay for their own coffee no one would call that extortion.
According to ZDNET, "The Nevada court where SCO has filed a lawsuit against AutoZone over its use of Linux is itself a user of the open-source software." Apparently the court has its own web site running on Linux. If SCO loses they can appeal based on a conflict of interest.
I vote for the 12 year old girl. They need someone who will not have the will or money to fight. That way the defendant will cave quickly and SCO gets an out of court settlement. In the court of public opinion an out of court setlement is the same as a win.
Slashdot Mirror
I play Tux Racer all the time and my penguins always fly!
YES! But remeber you have to let them know what made you make that decision. For example:
I was recently woring on a friends DSL connection. To make a long story short, I made three calls to tech support that night. The first two got routed to foreign call centers. I spent hours struggling with the accent. To make matters worse I am from Texas and have a very thick southern drawl. The technician could not understand me either. Finally on the third call I got routed to an american technician. In 10 minutes we had isolated the modem as the problem.
"OK" you say, "What is the point?" The point is that I got the technicians name and wrote a glowing letter praising that technician. I enclosed it with the letter explaining that I was moving the account to a new provider that did not outsource their support.
"In one possible scenario, software owners would subscribe to an automated patch service. "...
"Subscribers would receive a predeployed, encrypted version of the patch. At a predetermined point, a decryption key would be passed to a patch installer on all subscribed systems." ...
"By the time the code exploiter even begins to reverse-engineer the patch, most affected systems would be immune. "
Am I the only person who imagines the "Code Exploiter" exploiting the patching system? I would never allow any process from outside my network to put software onto a computer on my network.
Interestingly I use a system similar to this but it is a pull not a push. SuSE has a system called YOU - Yast Online Update. I have it configured to automaticall poll for patches and install them during off peak hours. I believe Red Hat has something similar. The difference is I (or my computer) initiate the process. It leaves me in controll, not some mysterious "patch service."
From the original article: "Illustrating the strong emotional response elicited by such a sudden insight, Archimedes is said to have run home from the baths in euphoric glee..."
I think this is one of the places our education system is missing a bet. I have never met a person who does not get that rush of joy from solving a problem. If our education process stressed problem solving instead of rote memorization, we would have a population addicted to learning.
Yeah I think it is kind of like hearing your name in a crowd. I do not notice conversations around me, but if someone uses my name it will catch my attention. I think hearing half a conversation works the same way. You hear a vocalization and never hear a response. Your brain thinks "If no one answered they must be talking to me!" That is why it attracts your attention. You are checking to see if they expect a response from you.
I thought Gates was the antichrist. How can Janus be his god?
As for the menus, I think SuSE has a great menu system. It is XML based and is shared by both Gnome and KDE. This way whatever you install is available to both desktops and is located in the same place in both menus. As a rule, if it is not in the menus, you haven't installed it yet. SuSE does a great job of updating its menus when you add software from the distribution CD's. In addition, the professional versions (5 CD's or 1 Dbl DVD) have every software package the average user will ever need on the CD.
Microsoft wins "industry awards for secure software development practices." Of course OSS developers NEVER recieve these awards because they are not part of any "industry."
Sorry I was unclear. What i meant when I said "the costs of producing and distributing programming are largely fixed" was that it does not cost much more to distribute the program to 5,000 viewers than it does to distribute it to 5 viewers.
That is always a given.
Popular channels will go sky high such as CNN, ESPN, HGTV, etc. The channels nobody want's (QVC, HSC) will be free anyway.
I think you have this wrong. Since the costs of producing and distributing programming are largely fixed, the huge sponsorship of popular channels will allow those costs to be spread over a larger group. Even at a lower per unit cost total profits will be high. Less popular channels will have a harder time reaching wide enough distribution to be proffitable. Therefore they will require a higher per unit cost.
You know I don't get it. Here is a company that cann afford to pay cash for Disney, but they cannot get my billing account and my ISP login synchonized so that I do not have to use two different login names and passwords.
I think your statement "When watching the flow of money with these issues, they tend to resolve to the same small group of elites, thought not necessarily the same person, company or political alignment." is very enlightened (informed, astute? something like that.) This is more about class warfare than any political agenda.
For example:
The wrong ballot gets delivered to a polling location.
The ballots get delivered but the election judge does not show up.
Ballots get printed with names mispelled or missing.
A polling location runs out of ballots before the day is over.
No one has the right key to open the doors so people can vote.
And that is just accidental stuff. Believe it or not some people will actually try to intentionally and illegally influence the outcome of an election! It is a human process subject to the entire gamut of human error. Even when we have the entire process electronic, there will still be some human elements. Face it, elections are a flawed process. Still it is the best process we have...
Can't call it a Virus. It does not self replicate. Someone has to make a copy of it manually.
When selling free software, the logical business model is to add value. It is that added value that you are paying for. For SuSE that value is YAST. Sure they are slick and they are one of the most complete distributions out there, but ask anyone who runs SuSE what their best feature is and they will tell you it is YAST.
Instead of demanding that SuSE release the source to software that they paid developers to write, why doesn't the open source community band together and give us an admin tool that is the equal or superior to YAST.
That is how I got my nifty leash - I mean text pager. I told my work I did not have a phone and had no intention of getting one. Two weeks later my director hands me a text pager.
So what is up with XO? This is the second reference to XO and virus writers I have encountered this month. Are they jsut an easy mark, or do they provide such exquisite products that the script kiddies can't resist the temptation? I just don't get it.
The first time I set up NWN under Linux and ran it under TWM I almost came all over myself! It gave me better graphics, better performance, and a better gaming experience. Thank you Bioware, Nvidia, and Suse.
SuSE has a great installer for Nvidia drivers in 9.x. I do not know about their support of ATI because I do not run ATI cards. It still requires exiting X befoire the install, but the documentation on both SuSE's web site and Nvidia's web site is user friendly enough to walk most users through that step.
many companies don't port their games to Linux on the sole basis that they 1. don't want to release source and 2. don't want to take the time to write an installer which can accomodate every distro's different package management, directory layout, and dependency tree.
I cannot speak directly to the installer issues, but Bioware seems to have solved these problems quite well. I do know that they are NOT releasing source for the Linux version of NWN.
Yes! Games! The only reason I still have Windoze installed on a computer is because I am a gamer and I can only get one decent game under Linux. I do not know how many of you play Never Winter Nights but it is the best game implementation I have seen under Linux. In fact it outperforms the same computer running a Microsoft OS.
I have long been of the opinion that Linux needs a Game Development Library like Microsoft's Avtive X. I also cannot figure out why no one is making games that run from a bootable Linux CD. I remeber back in the day, games came on bootable floppies. The game booted into an OS that was optimised to play the game. I would think that a bootable Linux Distro that auto launched the user into the game would be ideal for game manufacturers. There would bo no chance of the user running other software that conflicted or degraded game play.
Nah, they'll just have the government add a 40% tax to the cost of the construction to pay to retrain the displaced construction workers to be outsorced computer programmers.
"are there any valid reasons why I shouldn't be allowed to run a spambot?" Yes there are. It is illegal. While I am all in favor of freedom, the distibution of either spam or malicious software (viri, trojans etc.) is illegal. As such it violates the ISP's acceptable use policy.
This is clearly not a crimminal matter. How can it possibly be extortion for me to threaten to stop providing a free service because no one wants to pay for it. For a real world example, Southland Corporation provides free coffee to Law Enforcement Officers to help increase police presence around their stores. If they suddenly decided to make the police pay for their own coffee no one would call that extortion.
According to ZDNET, "The Nevada court where SCO has filed a lawsuit against AutoZone over its use of Linux is itself a user of the open-source software." Apparently the court has its own web site running on Linux. If SCO loses they can appeal based on a conflict of interest.
I vote for the 12 year old girl. They need someone who will not have the will or money to fight. That way the defendant will cave quickly and SCO gets an out of court settlement. In the court of public opinion an out of court setlement is the same as a win.