I worked for 7 years writing board and chip level diags for a 68k board manufacturer. I sure don't remember the stats now, but we burned in for 24 hours or so, and most failures were in the beginning. I will make a SWAG and say the next two days might have detected 1% more failures, which were already in the 5-10% range at most. So you triple your burnin expenses to avoid failing one system out of a thousand.
Most people won't jump into a project unless they can contribute. That only happens either during the specualtion and design stage, or after a stable product has been released. In between, the fun design work has been done, and the source is changing too fast for casual helpers.
I myself have several ideas for Mozilla (one on the software bazaar is to stop animated gifs and blink tags). But there's no way I am going to try and learn a moving target for such small projects. When a release version is ready, and development slows down to a more "normal" pace, then I will try to contribute.
I was in a hurry to go see a couple of steam engines going over the Sierras. Let me elaborate on what I meant.
I imagine there has been the equivalent of flamers at every widening of political power. I have no doubt that Bad King John winced at what the new guys said when he signed the Magna Carta and was forced to share a bit of pwer; he would have understood quite well the term "flamer" as applied to his new sidekicks.
Same with the beginnings of the English parliament, and the expansion of that parliament to include mere merchants, and so on down the line to today.
At every step, the old guard screamed bloody murder about the new kids not understanding how things really worked, how things should be, why they were what they were, and especially how the new guys were going to destroy the Internet errr, excuse me, governemnt, society, etc.
How many of you remember rec.humor.jokes before it got loaed up with newbies? The last two times I visited that newsgroup was just to harvest PeeWee Herman and O.J. jokes. It seemed like every fall, a load of new freshmen would discover that if they responded "That was funny" to some joke, their buddy two terminals down could see the same thing! Wasn't technology amazing?! Of course, it never occurred to them that a million people around the world also saw it, and even to the few who did have a glimmer of understanding, "so what? cool!" And of course there were a zillion predictions of "Death of the Internet", just like Metcalfe several years ago.
Well, guys and gals, look at the new hoss, same as the old hoss. Yes, flamers say silly and offensive things and show little understanding of the nuances of their native language. Also yes, they have exactly as much right to post their opinions and make fools of themselves as you or I.
That's the price you pay for democracy. Soon ordinary housewives (gasp!) and (dare I say it?) even grade school kids will post to the Internet!
Think of a mythical New England town hall meeting. Everyone speaks their piece. But do they? I reckon not. Only a few do, because most people feel too intimidated by the regulars. Is that really democracy? What would happen if they actually forced everybody to get up and speak for a couple of minutes? I tell you what -- the regulars would snort how the new guys didn't know what they were talking about, hadn't done their research, used bad grammer, and worst of all, showed no respect for tradition and their elders. They just didn't understand. They shouldn't be allowed to speak.
Why do you think graffitti shows up on walls and buses and even the trains I watched today? Because those people feel they have no other voice. Who would listen to them anyway? So they write graffitti in frustration. It's been going on since Roman days at least.
Certainly some people write graffitti just for the kicks, just to piss off the elders, and so on. But I wager the vast majority do so because they are not skilled socially, they resent being put down for bad grammar and non-conforming dress, and it is the only recourse they think they have left.
Flamers, first-posters, anonymous cowards: they are the graffitti artists of the world. They draw mustaches on political posters and flame columnists because they know no other way. Pity them if you want, sneer at them, but ignore them at your own peril. They have opinions, they buy things and they hassle cops and sysadmins. Their lashing out is a sign for you experienced, mature, and god-like veterans to read.
Everyone likes to talk about how good democracy is until it disagrees with them. Like it or not, the net is bringing true democracy to more corners than anyone has ever dreamt of. Democracy means EVERYONE gets a voice, immature or not.
We have no idea where the drawings from which we derived our TCAP came from. They were extremely complex but not that detailed, we had to fill in the gaps. Obviously, very deep studies were performed, and IBM and Western Electric (Bell Labs) were involved in the 1947-1955 analysis of this technology, but from WHERE did it come? [...]
If you believe anything else after reading that last paragraph, send me money and I will get back to you.
If, as most expect, the judge declares M$ a monopoly, the US Govt should simply declare that for 5 years, starting one year later, they will not buy any M$ products.
The 5 year period guarantees a decent market for competitors. The one year delay gives them a chance to develop products.
No standing body to watchdog M$, no long nvloved appeals process, no messy quibbling about how to break up M$, or how big a fine, or oversight of APIs. A nice simple solution.
And there is precedence of a sort. Several defense contractors were barred from doing business with the govt because of overcharges. I think (but would not bet on it) that they were barred without even having been convicted of anything.
1. Everyone knows RMS, the FSG, GNU, and especially the GPL are communist. Red, geddit?
2. It's from all the flames!
--
Only facts broadcast by fact generators, I think
on
The Factoid
·
· Score: 1
I believe the intent here is to have fact broadcasters, such as stores broadcasting wares for sale, crosswalks broadcasting signal conditions, etc. Not advertising so much as facts; 200 bytes isn't enough for glamor, "just the facts, ma'am." Presumably your home server could analyze them and tell you about good prices you just passed up, or even do it real time in the factoid. Suppose you were looking for a new pair of shoes, and passed a store with the shoes you want at a good price. It would alert you, and as you enter the store, it would also alert the store, and possibly you could have the shoes waiting to try on.
But I may be getting this confused with a different project, the name of which I have forgotten.
Linda Tripp is in hot water for this very reason. It is illegal, either in most states, or in all of the US, to record a conversation without the other party's permission. Absolutely illegal. People have gone to trial for taping conversations which show knowledge of a crime and taking those tapes to the police.
Microsoft/Mindcraft published these emails because they have no other way of attacking Linux.
That said, the authors are too immature to be embarrassed. Publishing them only awards bragging rights and encourages more of the same. Just like First Posters and Usenet flamers, they are the graffitti writers of the Internet.
Every category of every human endeavour has its own version of these losers. They consume and destroy, and never contribute.
I would love to buy several quick cams for playing with, but not until they release specs. I've emailed them and they just don't care. Someone else will eventually get my business. In the meantime, I boycott all things Logitech.
I have seen several sites which had some kind of limited functionality out of QuickCams, but I have also heard that new models add quirks and don't work any more. They aren't better, they just changed something and only they know what. No thanks.
If Transvirtual is the copyright holder on Kaffe, then they can do as they please. Currently released copies cannot be recalled. If Transvirtual (by their own will, or by the will of their purported hypothetical masters from Redmond) decide to change the copyright on the next version, that is their right.
This is not M$ stealing and subverting code. At worst, it is M$ buying a copyright and perverting subsequent versions.
If the MicroPerlGUI stuff required a proprietary core, it would fade because M$ can't keep up with the legions of Perl hackers, so it would be the loser in a fork. And if not proprietary, it won't fork Perl.
If they did it as a module, some enterprising hacker would quickly write a module to make theirs appear like the Tk stuff.
I get really passionate about this because I believe in libre source software. Folks, no matter what M$ does, they cannot steal the source. You have your copy. M$ cannot take that back.
Suppose the worst the Artistic License lets them do is release their own MicroPerl with proprietary core additions that they don't release source for. Now what?
You still have the real Perl. And M$ has just inherited a can of worms, trying to keep their proprietary version in sync with the legions of Perl hackers maintaining the real thing. If they succeed, it robs them of a lot of manpower, and for no gain, because, either way, they are incompatible with, and have lost the utility of, the thousands of CPAN modules. Can you spell W-O-R-T-H-L-E-S-S?
Now let's go to motive. Why would M$ want to hijack Perl? I mean hijack as in destroy, not hijack as in use productively. Their reason for destroying Java is to prevent "write once, run everywhere" as a Windows alternative, and to piss off a competitor (Sun). Guess what? Perl isn't a similar threat, and there is *no* competitor to damage.
You naysayers and doomsayers remind me of politicians with knee jerk reactions. Grow up, figure out what's between your ears, learn how to use it for yourselves without being a slave to Microsoft. Whether you follow them slavishly, or react against them slavishly, matters not. You need to think for yourselves, not for or against Microsoft!
Go here. A nice summary; well, I assume so, since, like most, I don't intend to read the whole 500 page filing:-)
--
"RH Only" is a junk phrase abused by FUDmeisters
on
On Red Hat Bashing...
·
· Score: 1
As the others have pointed out, it only means that the software is "certified" to work with the RH distribution by the proprietary manufacturer. If it were libre source, it would be meaningless, but the companies have chosen to release proprietary binaries, and thus the junk phrase.
It almost certainly means only that they certified with a specific set of libraries and directory structure. You should be able to get it running on just about any Linux system with the proper libs.
FUDmeisters are enamored of the phrase because they can raise false alarms. Pay no attention to them. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find some of them part of M$'s astro turf FUD campaign.
5 seconds comtemplation will lead to the astounding idea that the only aspect of CodeWarrior likely to be "RedHat specific" is the libraries against which it is linked and the location of configuration files.
Not quite as scary, I suppose, but my only contact with the Weekly Weird News is laughing in the grocery store checkout line.
Read the other comments. I have heard this elsewhere. Even if you use nonstandard ports to get around their blocking, if they find any services running, they just disconnect you.
Regulation is for utilities, phone companies, etc, where there is a so-called "natural monopoly" which has to ask the public ("government") for permission to do lots of things, like raise prices and change service.
The problems he cites with licenses could be solved by a simple law preventing those kind of bogus licenses.
The example he has of some regulatory body fining a company 11 weeks profits is far beyond anything any current regulatory body does.
Notice the specs which say up to 15,000 feet or so. Drives are filtered but not air tight. You lose too much air pressure, the head stops flying...
Don't think it would spin well in oil, nor would the heads fly well, and the seek time would definitely slow down.
--
Curiousity questions you may not want to answer
on
VA on Upside
·
· Score: 1
What kind of a work atmosphere is it there -- do you just give them a desk and whopping good PC and let 'em go totally unguided:-), or do you have a few specific goals, or...
Slashdot Mirror
I worked for 7 years writing board and chip level diags for a 68k board manufacturer. I sure don't remember the stats now, but we burned in for 24 hours or so, and most failures were in the beginning. I will make a SWAG and say the next two days might have detected 1% more failures, which were already in the 5-10% range at most. So you triple your burnin expenses to avoid failing one system out of a thousand.
--
Most people won't jump into a project unless they can contribute. That only happens either during the specualtion and design stage, or after a stable product has been released. In between, the fun design work has been done, and the source is changing too fast for casual helpers.
I myself have several ideas for Mozilla (one on the software bazaar is to stop animated gifs and blink tags). But there's no way I am going to try and learn a moving target for such small projects. When a release version is ready, and development slows down to a more "normal" pace, then I will try to contribute.
--
I was in a hurry to go see a couple of steam engines going over the Sierras. Let me elaborate on what I meant.
I imagine there has been the equivalent of flamers at every widening of political power. I have no doubt that Bad King John winced at what the new guys said when he signed the Magna Carta and was forced to share a bit of pwer; he would have understood quite well the term "flamer" as applied to his new sidekicks.
Same with the beginnings of the English parliament, and the expansion of that parliament to include mere merchants, and so on down the line to today.
At every step, the old guard screamed bloody murder about the new kids not understanding how things really worked, how things should be, why they were what they were, and especially how the new guys were going to destroy the Internet errr, excuse me, governemnt, society, etc.
How many of you remember rec.humor.jokes before it got loaed up with newbies? The last two times I visited that newsgroup was just to harvest PeeWee Herman and O.J. jokes. It seemed like every fall, a load of new freshmen would discover that if they responded "That was funny" to some joke, their buddy two terminals down could see the same thing! Wasn't technology amazing?! Of course, it never occurred to them that a million people around the world also saw it, and even to the few who did have a glimmer of understanding, "so what? cool!" And of course there were a zillion predictions of "Death of the Internet", just like Metcalfe several years ago.
Well, guys and gals, look at the new hoss, same as the old hoss. Yes, flamers say silly and offensive things and show little understanding of the nuances of their native language. Also yes, they have exactly as much right to post their opinions and make fools of themselves as you or I.
That's the price you pay for democracy. Soon ordinary housewives (gasp!) and (dare I say it?) even grade school kids will post to the Internet!
Think of a mythical New England town hall meeting. Everyone speaks their piece. But do they? I reckon not. Only a few do, because most people feel too intimidated by the regulars. Is that really democracy? What would happen if they actually forced everybody to get up and speak for a couple of minutes? I tell you what -- the regulars would snort how the new guys didn't know what they were talking about, hadn't done their research, used bad grammer, and worst of all, showed no respect for tradition and their elders. They just didn't understand. They shouldn't be allowed to speak.
Why do you think graffitti shows up on walls and buses and even the trains I watched today? Because those people feel they have no other voice. Who would listen to them anyway? So they write graffitti in frustration. It's been going on since Roman days at least.
Certainly some people write graffitti just for the kicks, just to piss off the elders, and so on. But I wager the vast majority do so because they are not skilled socially, they resent being put down for bad grammar and non-conforming dress, and it is the only recourse they think they have left.
Flamers, first-posters, anonymous cowards: they are the graffitti artists of the world. They draw mustaches on political posters and flame columnists because they know no other way. Pity them if you want, sneer at them, but ignore them at your own peril. They have opinions, they buy things and they hassle cops and sysadmins. Their lashing out is a sign for you experienced, mature, and god-like veterans to read.
--
Everyone likes to talk about how good democracy is until it disagrees with them. Like it or not, the net is bringing true democracy to more corners than anyone has ever dreamt of. Democracy means EVERYONE gets a voice, immature or not.
--
Read the last paragraph first ---
We have no idea where the drawings from which we derived our TCAP came from. They were extremely complex but not that detailed, we had to fill in the gaps. Obviously, very deep studies were performed, and IBM and Western Electric (Bell Labs) were involved in the 1947-1955 analysis of this technology, but from WHERE did it come? [...]
If you believe anything else after reading that last paragraph, send me money and I will get back to you.
--
If, as most expect, the judge declares M$ a monopoly, the US Govt should simply declare that for 5 years, starting one year later, they will not buy any M$ products.
The 5 year period guarantees a decent market for competitors. The one year delay gives them a chance to develop products.
No standing body to watchdog M$, no long nvloved appeals process, no messy quibbling about how to break up M$, or how big a fine, or oversight of APIs. A nice simple solution.
And there is precedence of a sort. Several defense contractors were barred from doing business with the govt because of overcharges. I think (but would not bet on it) that they were barred without even having been convicted of anything.
--
1. Everyone knows RMS, the FSG, GNU, and especially the GPL are communist. Red, geddit?
2. It's from all the flames!
--
I believe the intent here is to have fact broadcasters, such as stores broadcasting wares for sale, crosswalks broadcasting signal conditions, etc. Not advertising so much as facts; 200 bytes isn't enough for glamor, "just the facts, ma'am." Presumably your home server could analyze them and tell you about good prices you just passed up, or even do it real time in the factoid. Suppose you were looking for a new pair of shoes, and passed a store with the shoes you want at a good price. It would alert you, and as you enter the store, it would also alert the store, and possibly you could have the shoes waiting to try on.
But I may be getting this confused with a different project, the name of which I have forgotten.
--
Linda Tripp is in hot water for this very reason. It is illegal, either in most states, or in all of the US, to record a conversation without the other party's permission. Absolutely illegal. People have gone to trial for taping conversations which show knowledge of a crime and taking those tapes to the police.
Flat illegal. You can be busted.
--
Microsoft/Mindcraft published these emails because they have no other way of attacking Linux.
That said, the authors are too immature to be embarrassed. Publishing them only awards bragging rights and encourages more of the same. Just like First Posters and Usenet flamers, they are the graffitti writers of the Internet.
Every category of every human endeavour has its own version of these losers. They consume and destroy, and never contribute.
--
I would love to buy several quick cams for playing with, but not until they release specs. I've emailed them and they just don't care. Someone else will eventually get my business. In the meantime, I boycott all things Logitech.
I have seen several sites which had some kind of limited functionality out of QuickCams, but I have also heard that new models add quirks and don't work any more. They aren't better, they just changed something and only they know what. No thanks.
--
If Transvirtual is the copyright holder on Kaffe, then they can do as they please. Currently released copies cannot be recalled. If Transvirtual (by their own will, or by the will of their purported hypothetical masters from Redmond) decide to change the copyright on the next version, that is their right.
This is not M$ stealing and subverting code. At worst, it is M$ buying a copyright and perverting subsequent versions.
--
If the MicroPerlGUI stuff required a proprietary core, it would fade because M$ can't keep up with the legions of Perl hackers, so it would be the loser in a fork. And if not proprietary, it won't fork Perl.
If they did it as a module, some enterprising hacker would quickly write a module to make theirs appear like the Tk stuff.
--
I get really passionate about this because I believe in libre source software. Folks, no matter what M$ does, they cannot steal the source. You have your copy. M$ cannot take that back.
Suppose the worst the Artistic License lets them do is release their own MicroPerl with proprietary core additions that they don't release source for. Now what?
You still have the real Perl. And M$ has just inherited a can of worms, trying to keep their proprietary version in sync with the legions of Perl hackers maintaining the real thing. If they succeed, it robs them of a lot of manpower, and for no gain, because, either way, they are incompatible with, and have lost the utility of, the thousands of CPAN modules. Can you spell W-O-R-T-H-L-E-S-S?
Now let's go to motive. Why would M$ want to hijack Perl? I mean hijack as in destroy, not hijack as in use productively. Their reason for destroying Java is to prevent "write once, run everywhere" as a Windows alternative, and to piss off a competitor (Sun). Guess what? Perl isn't a similar threat, and there is *no* competitor to damage.
You naysayers and doomsayers remind me of politicians with knee jerk reactions. Grow up, figure out what's between your ears, learn how to use it for yourselves without being a slave to Microsoft. Whether you follow them slavishly, or react against them slavishly, matters not. You need to think for yourselves, not for or against Microsoft!
--
Go here. A nice summary; well, I assume so, since, like most, I don't intend to read the whole 500 page filing :-)
--
As the others have pointed out, it only means that the software is "certified" to work with the RH distribution by the proprietary manufacturer. If it were libre source, it would be meaningless, but the companies have chosen to release proprietary binaries, and thus the junk phrase.
It almost certainly means only that they certified with a specific set of libraries and directory structure. You should be able to get it running on just about any Linux system with the proper libs.
FUDmeisters are enamored of the phrase because they can raise false alarms. Pay no attention to them. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find some of them part of M$'s astro turf FUD campaign.
--
5 seconds comtemplation will lead to the astounding idea that the only aspect of CodeWarrior likely to be "RedHat specific" is the libraries against which it is linked and the location of configuration files.
Not quite as scary, I suppose, but my only contact with the Weekly Weird News is laughing in the grocery store checkout line.
--
Beeblebrox.
Well, actually, multiple video cards and monitors. Don't know if it includes multiple keyboards and mice.
Also don't know if anything other than a 1:1 card/monitor ratio is possible;ie, if any cards by themselves support multiple monitors.
All of this implies independent monitors. I bet there are solutions already for monitors slaved to another monitor, but that's not multihead.
--
Mommy mommy Bruce isn't playing fair.
Sheesh, get a life or get a grip.
--
Read the other comments. I have heard this elsewhere. Even if you use nonstandard ports to get around their blocking, if they find any services running, they just disconnect you.
--
Maybe it would be the straw that convinces them to ditch NT :-)
--
Nearby street lights broadcast the signal is in fact a fact. It happened in Britain. It is not rumour, and it is not just plain silly.
--
Regulation is for utilities, phone companies, etc, where there is a so-called "natural monopoly" which has to ask the public ("government") for permission to do lots of things, like raise prices and change service.
The problems he cites with licenses could be solved by a simple law preventing those kind of bogus licenses.
The example he has of some regulatory body fining a company 11 weeks profits is far beyond anything any current regulatory body does.
--
Notice the specs which say up to 15,000 feet or so. Drives are filtered but not air tight. You lose too much air pressure, the head stops flying...
Don't think it would spin well in oil, nor would the heads fly well, and the seek time would definitely slow down.
--
What kind of a work atmosphere is it there -- do you just give them a desk and whopping good PC and let 'em go totally unguided :-), or do you have a few specific goals, or ...
Just curiousity.
--