cheap wine is not fine wine
polyester is not fine linen
McDonalds is not fine dining
and Rubbermaid is not fine china
That's all beside the point. What makes art "fine" is the artist's interpretation and expression of feeling. I have seen computer-aided art which is much more expressive than hand drawn art. The computer is just a tool in the artist's hand, not much different than a paintbrush. Some may whine that the computer artist is using content designed by someone else... but how many painters make their own paint, canvas, and brushes from raw materials? Each brush has its own signature: wouldn't a painter using paint or brushes by someone else effectively be using someone else's content?
Few high school marching bands would be included in "fine arts," yet most symphonies are. Many people can toot a flute or play the piano, but few can evoke the deep emotional response to music that a talented artist can.
OS/2 may be "dead" in the sense that very few vendors are selling it and very few consumers are purchasing it, but it is still represents a viable revenue stream for IBM.
As another poster pointed out, IBM still has millions of dollars worth of support contracts tied to OS/2. As these contracts expire, the companies using OS/2 have two choices: renew the contract or dump OS/2. Renewing the contract is the better solution IF the system still meets their needs. Open sourcing OS/2 would allow other companies to compete with IBM supporting these customers.
More onerously, is the intellectual property issue. IBM may own the rights to much of the OS/2 source code, but some of the code is owned by other companies (including Microsoft). These companies will likely NOT permit their code to be open-sourced. Also, IBM probably has NDAs with these companies which effectively prevent IBM from disclosing IBM's own code, because it may give insights into how the proprietary non-IBM code works.
Even if IBM could open-source that code which they do own, you would have a set of incomplete, non-functional code. The missing pieces would have to be built from scratch by the open source community, of whose experts may not want to devote time to another OS besides the one(s) they are already working on.
I installed one of these the other day on a mostly-Mac network, and got it to work with Apple's Airport cards. Granted, I don't know whether the Airport is using SNAP or EthernetII, but I did find out that the Airport does not support standard WEP. Apparently, they use their own encryption using a password rather than a 128-bit key. Not sure how auth works on the Airport. Anyway, right now it's running unencrypted, so I'll have to put in a separate firewall and an Airport WAP. Bleah.
The only way the MPAA is gonna go under is if people stop paying for music. Since now the only thing Napster is 'napping is your money, that ain't gonna help. And if that three-legged elephant up in Redmond has its way, you can expect the demise of the MP3 also.
By building the major parts himself, and finding other components and speakers that were just as good, he saved himself over $25K.
He spent $140k on his system? I doubt that saving money was the reason that he built his own. This type of person (and I have a friend who's one) is probably more interested in the challenge of designing an audiophile system from the ground up. He probably wants to prove to himself that he can make a system that's just as good or better than the ones that anyone else makes.
Saving money is just a bonus; that will probably buy about 1500 CD's for his collection.
People mistakenly think that all audiophiles care about is sound quality. Well, it's not about sound, it's about the whole experience.
A good audio system not only presents the sound in an accurate manner, but also elicits the other senses (via imagination): a highly accurate reproduction can mentally transport you to a distant place, bringing the imagery of sights, smells, emotions, tactile feelings, tastes... even non-recorded sounds to a very real state. You become a part of the performer's environment, not just an outside observer. This is what I mean about the whole experience: it becomes a reproduction of an actual event, not just an audio track.
Now at first listen, you may say that a $3,000 audio system sounds just as good as a $130,000 system. However, the more expensive system is better able to reproduce inaudible subleties that are only percieved by the subconsious, making the imagery much more vivid.
Seen on an oscilloscope, the waveform at the smallest fractal levels will be much truer to the original than the output of the cheaper system. Because audio is instant, we cannot scrutinize it in the same manner that we might scrutinize a fine painting.
For illustration, if you read this text in a monospace font such as Courier, and then read it in a kerned, proportional font such as Times Roman, you would say that your are reading the same thing. But are you? The proportional font is much easier to read, and probably elicits a different emotional response than the Courier. This is obvious: research has shown that the font is very important to the readability of the text. That's why we have hundreds of thousands of fonts, so we can personalize our writing according to our mood.
Audio systems are the same way. You may be hearing the same audio track from both systems, but the emotional response, the mood you feel will be much different.
Seems to me that many audiophiles tend to be.com nerds with lots of money sans the ability to get a date. Seeings how they have no outlet for their pent up desires, they spend money on audio systems instead of pr0n. A friend of mine actually compared a fine classical performance to sex: a gradual buildup to a climax that leaves you breathless, your heart pumping; begging for more.
This same friend, of course is a.com nerd with lots of money sans the ability to get a date........ somewheres between fifty and a hundred k invested in his home audio system.
A pair of Classe Omega amplifiers (yes, I said "pair"), Magnepan Magneplanar main speakers, all digital sources & preamp (don't remember the brands, but they're expensive, too).
Now here's where it gets a little strange. Subwoofers are his own design, homebuilt, based on 15" MTX piledrivers (yes, they look like crap but they sound sweeeeeet; crisp, clean bass). It's not the drivers that make the system, it's the design of the cabinet. He claims he has yet to hear subs as good as these ones, and I'm inclined to agree.
Speaker wires are hand-made using gold-plated copper wire with insulated strands in a woven pattern. Very impressive looking. But because of his electrical engineering background, he just can't believe that spending $30,000 on a speaker cable is gonna make a noticeable difference -- so what he won't tell you is that his speaker cables are homemade out of telephone base cord. The flat stuff. Considering the time he spent making them, however, they're probably worth about $30,000;-)
The world needs more business people with a technical background (Master of Science & Master of Business Administration). Businesses would be more likely to succeed if this were the case.
Far too often, you have technical people that can't understand why management makes the decisions they do. (Why are you cutting the R&D budget but doubling marketings?) It's quite possible that in return, management just plain doesn't understand what the techies do.
First, let's look at management's viewpoint. It's easy to understand marketing, to see how much profit a dollar spent on advertising will return (if we advertise in Playgoat magazine, people will flock to our door with money!). But put a dollar into R&D so that Fred the Engineer can get a 21" monitor to replace his perfectly good 14" monitor (What a waste!)? At this point, the profitability is more inderect and abstract. To management, it looks like a dollar down the toilet. The management just can't comprehend that the larger monitor may mean getting the product out to market a month earlier, ahead of the competition, and certainly more profit to the corporation than the cost of the monitor. The R&D manager is looking toward his quarterly report, when he has to report to his bosses how much his department cost, and how much it returned. Typically, it's very difficult for R&D to claim credit for profits. Besides, managers are looking to keep costs down, so they will get a nice fat bonus check.
OK, now let's consider the techie's perspective. The techie takes pride in his work, and really doesn't want the customer to get a shoddy product, no matter how long it takes to finish. *Bug Free* is every engineer's goal. The techie, unfortunately, is out of touch with how people act & react, how they purchase things and what they are willing to sacrifice & accept, and out of touch with the marketing department. He can't see that for each increment of improved quality, the cost for that increment is greater than the increment before (think of a hyperbola in the (-x,y) quadrant, where x=0 is perfection and y=0 is free). At some point, bugginess becomes acceptable because the cost of perfection is too high.
Someone with both a business and a technical education (not just background, but education) is considerably more valuable, because he or she will be able to balance the needs of the engineers with the needs of the company in order to maximize profits. I say education in addition to background, because while you may be exposed to both fields in your work, the education teaches you accepted methods of doing the paperwork, interacting with others, and general business practices. (Disclaimer: I have the background, but not the education *and I feel it*)
Oh yeah, and clothes really do make the man. Dressing for success should be a required college course.
~webmoth
P.S.-- A note on bugginess: In the parabola I mention above, "perfection" is practically impossible to reach, because the cost approaches infinity as quality approaches perfection. You might disagree with this, but you must consider all the factors.
Consider the program "Hello World" and all its variants. It's something every programmer learns, and can be done in one line of code (or less). While you may say that it can be coded bug-free, remember how many other pieces of software and hardware it must interact with. One of those may *not* be bug free, causing "Hello World" to crash your system, fry your computer, put a sudden, large drain on the power grid, resulting in a nuclear meltdown which kills half The Planet. "Hello World" will be blamed for it!
Well, since everyone that reads slashdot seems to be so well-*cough*-informed, maybe the solution is to have every application for a *.au domain be a slashdot poll.
What domain should Sue's 'Roo Stew In a Shoe Company have? ( ) suesroostewinashoe.com.au
( ) pocketlunch.com.au
( ) savetheroos.org.au
( ) cmdrtacosinthecan.net.au
A software solution on the PC or Mac the kid is using isn't really ideal, because even with password protection, the kid could still defeat your ability to see where she's been.
Perhaps some kind of proxy server that logs the websites she's been to might be the way to go.
Rural? I've got friends living in rural Wahkiakum County in Washington. Rural? Well, that's not very specific... except for the single incorporated town, Cathlamet, the whole county's rural. And they've got ZERO stoplights in their county (although there is 1 flashing red light).
BTW, it's also the least populous county in the state.
Broadband? Heck, they don't even have a local ISP.
Wal*Mart? McDonalds? Try a 45 minute drive to the next county.
I know that libraries use a similar system for their online catalogs to locate volumes that may be in different branch libraries. I've seen the system also used between libraries that aren't necessarily afilliated (like interlibrary loan).
I've got it tuned in on my radio right now and it doesn't seem to be slashdotted.... you *do* know what a radio is, don't you? And the bandwidth seems to be adequate, too.
What the heck. Dust it off, tune in and let's see if we can slashdot the radio station!
Not quite. What is needed is a real-time scanner on the *nix server which scans files as they are read, created, or modified. Scanning the entire filesystem every 30 minutes or so (10 minutes is unrealistic) is going to put a tremendous load on the network & the system, and there's the potential for a virus to propagate throughout the network in the period between scans.
A *nix virus scanner should scan for known viruses on ALL major OS'es, not just the native OS, since the *nix server will be providing file storage services to a variety of OS'es... Win*, Mac, *nix, Amiga, TRS-80, Commodore64, whatever.
Symantec's Norton Antivirus Enterprise Edition is a fabulous product which provides centralized management of antivirus software (using a client/server scheme) on the network. I'd love to see a *nix antivirus client for it, even if the antivirus server has to be on an NT box.
Another nice feature would be an SMTP server that scans incoming files for viruses in an OS-independent manner.
A computer can be no smarter than the person who programmed it. Considering what's come out of Microsoft, I don't have high hopes for Redmond...
I don't believe that a computer can help make a kid more intelligent. Rather, it takes intelligence to begin with to operate a computer efficiently.
In my job as an on-call on-site consultant & tech support tech, I get people saying "how-do-i-do-such-and-such" or "it don't work"... on a program I've never seen before. So I have to learn how to use the program instantly and teach them how to do what they're trying to do.
Couple of things that come into play here: the understanding that *most* programs work in the same manner, and having the guts to just try stuff and see what works.
Working with computers requires reasoning and problem solving abilities, probably more so than not working with 'em. People have this grand illusion that computers will do the problem solving and reasoning for them: THEY CAN'T. If it does, it's not the computer doing it, it's the person who programmed it that's doing it. The computer will do this in exactly the same way that the programmer would; the comp. just does the dirty work of data analysis and mathematics. How it works depends on how it's programmed, which in turn depends on the mind of the programmer.
Now having your kid be online 4 hours a night playing games does more for teaching problem solving & reasoning than sitting in front of the boob tube for 4 hours, but if you really want him to get smart, send him outside to weed the garden, fix the fence, paint the shed... whatever, but don't tell him how to do it. He's gotta figure that out on his own. Being forced to figure it out does far more for building intelligence than being shown.
Remember how you hated story problems in algebra in school? Well, guess what... life's a story problem. There ain't no abstract equations out there waiting to be solved. It's up to you to take the problem, find the equation that fits, and solve it. If teachers would give more story problems, we'd have smarter kids.
Now what would be really cool is if I could plug my USB digicam into it and save the pics to a big disc. Then I can shoot 1600x1200 TIFFs on my vacation without having to have haul around 312 (expensive) CF cards or a laptop.
Here's my concept: a USB mass storage device which can be directly connected to another USB mass storage device of the same or different manufacturer. The device would have a small monochrome LCD screen which allows you to view the filesystems on both units and copy files from one filesystem to the other. It should comply with existing USB mass storage standards and be capable of mounting filesystems of type FAT, FAT32, ext2, minix, etc.
Strike One: people go with what they know. And people know Windows. There ain't much we can do about this except get 'em started early, before they can taste Windows. Games will help tremendously.
Strike Two: Trying to get X working on anything but the most common hardware is anything but trivial. I just spent 6 hours tweaking settings in XF86Config* and it's still not right. If there is a graphical utility for doing this (besides xvidtune), I haven't found it. I will say though that Linuxconf is a wonderful tool for system administration. (Number 9 SR9 AGP with an S3 Savage4 chipset [XFree_SVGA] & a Mag XJ810 monitor on RH7.1 (2.4 series kernel): if you got it working @ 1600 x 1200 & 24-bit color, lemme know your timings)
Strike Three: Inconsistencies. There's no common user interface standards for software. Yes, there's the window manager. But, the dialog boxes appear differently, menu commands are in different places in different programs, save & open dialog boxes are different (Nutscrape's SUCKS: why in Uncle George's Name do you have to lose the file name when you're trying to navigate to a directory????).
No wonder Linux-on-the-Desktop is out.
*Yes, I know RH 7.1 doesn't use XF86Config but I don't remember the name of the one it does use at the moment 'cuz I'm on the NT box @ the office:-)
The.sig says: 'You have received email, but your system must first be restarted before this feature can be used.'
I'm waiting for the day I see: Shutdown and Restart: your system must first be restarted before this feature can be used. Almost as bad as when you get the End Task box for an unnamed task (the shutdown process); ending the task halts the shutdown process and you're right back at the desktop so you hit the pwr and then Win9x blames you for not shutting the system down properly.... you know the drill. Grrr.
It's gonna cost you more than 15 cents to drive 15 minutes.
When you're shopping for the best deal, you have to consider all the costs, not just the absolute cost of that item. I once saw a great deal on a refubished monitor online, only to discover that when you add shipping, the total was only 5 bucks less than a brand new one (including shipping). Both on the same website.
If I'd needed a new monitor, I would've bought the brand new one. For 5 bucks more, I get a full factory warranty and probably a couple more years of service.
BTW, I won't deal with online merchants that make you give all sorts of personal information before telling you what shipping will be.
Slashdot Mirror
I think few would disagree that:
cheap wine is not fine wine
polyester is not fine linen
McDonalds is not fine dining
and Rubbermaid is not fine china
That's all beside the point. What makes art "fine" is the artist's interpretation and expression of feeling. I have seen computer-aided art which is much more expressive than hand drawn art. The computer is just a tool in the artist's hand, not much different than a paintbrush. Some may whine that the computer artist is using content designed by someone else... but how many painters make their own paint, canvas, and brushes from raw materials? Each brush has its own signature: wouldn't a painter using paint or brushes by someone else effectively be using someone else's content?
Few high school marching bands would be included in "fine arts," yet most symphonies are. Many people can toot a flute or play the piano, but few can evoke the deep emotional response to music that a talented artist can.
In light of this, perhaps the following names could be "confusingly similar" to well-known tradmarks:
Wal*Fart compared to Wal*Mart
Sysco compared to Cisco
IBN compared to IBM
Wintel compared to Intel
Microslop compared to Microsoft
Oh, and any router with the word "gateway" in its hostname must be changed!
Granted, *most* of the sites mentioned are backed by big businesses with even bigger legal budgets so they can get away with it, but still....
(P.S.--It seems to me that "well-known" and "confusingly similar" are mutually exclusive)
OS/2 may be "dead" in the sense that very few vendors are selling it and very few consumers are purchasing it, but it is still represents a viable revenue stream for IBM.
As another poster pointed out, IBM still has millions of dollars worth of support contracts tied to OS/2. As these contracts expire, the companies using OS/2 have two choices: renew the contract or dump OS/2. Renewing the contract is the better solution IF the system still meets their needs. Open sourcing OS/2 would allow other companies to compete with IBM supporting these customers.
More onerously, is the intellectual property issue. IBM may own the rights to much of the OS/2 source code, but some of the code is owned by other companies (including Microsoft). These companies will likely NOT permit their code to be open-sourced. Also, IBM probably has NDAs with these companies which effectively prevent IBM from disclosing IBM's own code, because it may give insights into how the proprietary non-IBM code works.
Even if IBM could open-source that code which they do own, you would have a set of incomplete, non-functional code. The missing pieces would have to be built from scratch by the open source community, of whose experts may not want to devote time to another OS besides the one(s) they are already working on.
First of all, here's a link to the Linksys BEFW11S4 product information page.
I installed one of these the other day on a mostly-Mac network, and got it to work with Apple's Airport cards. Granted, I don't know whether the Airport is using SNAP or EthernetII, but I did find out that the Airport does not support standard WEP. Apparently, they use their own encryption using a password rather than a 128-bit key. Not sure how auth works on the Airport. Anyway, right now it's running unencrypted, so I'll have to put in a separate firewall and an Airport WAP. Bleah.
Finally, a Slashdot article that carries some weight!
Can you imagine the gravity of this situation?
The only way the MPAA is gonna go under is if people stop paying for music. Since now the only thing Napster is 'napping is your money, that ain't gonna help. And if that three-legged elephant up in Redmond has its way, you can expect the demise of the MP3 also.
Meditation anyone?
Hmmmmmmmmmm Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm. . . . . .
By building the major parts himself, and finding other components and speakers that were just as good, he saved himself over $25K.
He spent $140k on his system? I doubt that saving money was the reason that he built his own. This type of person (and I have a friend who's one) is probably more interested in the challenge of designing an audiophile system from the ground up. He probably wants to prove to himself that he can make a system that's just as good or better than the ones that anyone else makes.
Saving money is just a bonus; that will probably buy about 1500 CD's for his collection.
~webmoth
People mistakenly think that all audiophiles care about is sound quality. Well, it's not about sound, it's about the whole experience.
A good audio system not only presents the sound in an accurate manner, but also elicits the other senses (via imagination): a highly accurate reproduction can mentally transport you to a distant place, bringing the imagery of sights, smells, emotions, tactile feelings, tastes... even non-recorded sounds to a very real state. You become a part of the performer's environment, not just an outside observer. This is what I mean about the whole experience: it becomes a reproduction of an actual event, not just an audio track.
Now at first listen, you may say that a $3,000 audio system sounds just as good as a $130,000 system. However, the more expensive system is better able to reproduce inaudible subleties that are only percieved by the subconsious, making the imagery much more vivid.
Seen on an oscilloscope, the waveform at the smallest fractal levels will be much truer to the original than the output of the cheaper system. Because audio is instant, we cannot scrutinize it in the same manner that we might scrutinize a fine painting.
For illustration, if you read this text in a monospace font such as Courier, and then read it in a kerned, proportional font such as Times Roman, you would say that your are reading the same thing. But are you? The proportional font is much easier to read, and probably elicits a different emotional response than the Courier. This is obvious: research has shown that the font is very important to the readability of the text. That's why we have hundreds of thousands of fonts, so we can personalize our writing according to our mood.
Audio systems are the same way. You may be hearing the same audio track from both systems, but the emotional response, the mood you feel will be much different.
~webmoth
Seems to me that many audiophiles tend to be .com nerds with lots of money sans the ability to get a date. Seeings how they have no outlet for their pent up desires, they spend money on audio systems instead of pr0n. A friend of mine actually compared a fine classical performance to sex: a gradual buildup to a climax that leaves you breathless, your heart pumping; begging for more.
.com nerd with lots of money sans the ability to get a date........ somewheres between fifty and a hundred k invested in his home audio system.
;-)
This same friend, of course is a
A pair of Classe Omega amplifiers (yes, I said "pair"), Magnepan Magneplanar main speakers, all digital sources & preamp (don't remember the brands, but they're expensive, too).
Now here's where it gets a little strange. Subwoofers are his own design, homebuilt, based on 15" MTX piledrivers (yes, they look like crap but they sound sweeeeeet; crisp, clean bass). It's not the drivers that make the system, it's the design of the cabinet. He claims he has yet to hear subs as good as these ones, and I'm inclined to agree.
Speaker wires are hand-made using gold-plated copper wire with insulated strands in a woven pattern. Very impressive looking. But because of his electrical engineering background, he just can't believe that spending $30,000 on a speaker cable is gonna make a noticeable difference -- so what he won't tell you is that his speaker cables are homemade out of telephone base cord. The flat stuff. Considering the time he spent making them, however, they're probably worth about $30,000
In the parabola I mention above...
I meant hyperbola. Nothing makes an error more glaring than the "submit" button!
The world needs more business people with a technical background (Master of Science & Master of Business Administration). Businesses would be more likely to succeed if this were the case.
Far too often, you have technical people that can't understand why management makes the decisions they do. (Why are you cutting the R&D budget but doubling marketings?) It's quite possible that in return, management just plain doesn't understand what the techies do.
First, let's look at management's viewpoint. It's easy to understand marketing, to see how much profit a dollar spent on advertising will return (if we advertise in Playgoat magazine, people will flock to our door with money!). But put a dollar into R&D so that Fred the Engineer can get a 21" monitor to replace his perfectly good 14" monitor (What a waste!)? At this point, the profitability is more inderect and abstract. To management, it looks like a dollar down the toilet. The management just can't comprehend that the larger monitor may mean getting the product out to market a month earlier, ahead of the competition, and certainly more profit to the corporation than the cost of the monitor. The R&D manager is looking toward his quarterly report, when he has to report to his bosses how much his department cost, and how much it returned. Typically, it's very difficult for R&D to claim credit for profits. Besides, managers are looking to keep costs down, so they will get a nice fat bonus check.
OK, now let's consider the techie's perspective. The techie takes pride in his work, and really doesn't want the customer to get a shoddy product, no matter how long it takes to finish. *Bug Free* is every engineer's goal. The techie, unfortunately, is out of touch with how people act & react, how they purchase things and what they are willing to sacrifice & accept, and out of touch with the marketing department. He can't see that for each increment of improved quality, the cost for that increment is greater than the increment before (think of a hyperbola in the (-x,y) quadrant, where x=0 is perfection and y=0 is free). At some point, bugginess becomes acceptable because the cost of perfection is too high.
Someone with both a business and a technical education (not just background, but education) is considerably more valuable, because he or she will be able to balance the needs of the engineers with the needs of the company in order to maximize profits. I say education in addition to background, because while you may be exposed to both fields in your work, the education teaches you accepted methods of doing the paperwork, interacting with others, and general business practices. (Disclaimer: I have the background, but not the education *and I feel it*)
Oh yeah, and clothes really do make the man. Dressing for success should be a required college course.
~webmoth
P.S.-- A note on bugginess: In the parabola I mention above, "perfection" is practically impossible to reach, because the cost approaches infinity as quality approaches perfection. You might disagree with this, but you must consider all the factors.
Consider the program "Hello World" and all its variants. It's something every programmer learns, and can be done in one line of code (or less). While you may say that it can be coded bug-free, remember how many other pieces of software and hardware it must interact with. One of those may *not* be bug free, causing "Hello World" to crash your system, fry your computer, put a sudden, large drain on the power grid, resulting in a nuclear meltdown which kills half The Planet. "Hello World" will be blamed for it!
Well, since everyone that reads slashdot seems to be so well-*cough*-informed, maybe the solution is to have every application for a *.au domain be a slashdot poll.
What domain should Sue's 'Roo Stew In a Shoe Company have?
( ) suesroostewinashoe.com.au
( ) pocketlunch.com.au
( ) savetheroos.org.au
( ) cmdrtacosinthecan.net.au
Democracy at work!
A software solution on the PC or Mac the kid is using isn't really ideal, because even with password protection, the kid could still defeat your ability to see where she's been.
:-)
Perhaps some kind of proxy server that logs the websites she's been to might be the way to go.
Ask someone else for links
~J
Rural? I've got friends living in rural Wahkiakum County in Washington. Rural? Well, that's not very specific... except for the single incorporated town, Cathlamet, the whole county's rural. And they've got ZERO stoplights in their county (although there is 1 flashing red light).
BTW, it's also the least populous county in the state.
Broadband? Heck, they don't even have a local ISP.
Wal*Mart? McDonalds? Try a 45 minute drive to the next county.
I know that libraries use a similar system for their online catalogs to locate volumes that may be in different branch libraries. I've seen the system also used between libraries that aren't necessarily afilliated (like interlibrary loan).
Some links to systems set up like this (there's others, these are just the ones I know about):
Longview Public Library is linked with the Lower Columbia College library
Oregon State University Valley Library; via Telnet
Oregon Union List of Serials
I've got it tuned in on my radio right now and it doesn't seem to be slashdotted.... you *do* know what a radio is, don't you? And the bandwidth seems to be adequate, too.
What the heck. Dust it off, tune in and let's see if we can slashdot the radio station!
Not quite. What is needed is a real-time scanner on the *nix server which scans files as they are read, created, or modified. Scanning the entire filesystem every 30 minutes or so (10 minutes is unrealistic) is going to put a tremendous load on the network & the system, and there's the potential for a virus to propagate throughout the network in the period between scans.
A *nix virus scanner should scan for known viruses on ALL major OS'es, not just the native OS, since the *nix server will be providing file storage services to a variety of OS'es... Win*, Mac, *nix, Amiga, TRS-80, Commodore64, whatever.
Symantec's Norton Antivirus Enterprise Edition is a fabulous product which provides centralized management of antivirus software (using a client/server scheme) on the network. I'd love to see a *nix antivirus client for it, even if the antivirus server has to be on an NT box.
Another nice feature would be an SMTP server that scans incoming files for viruses in an OS-independent manner.
("viruses"; "viri"; whatever!)
A computer can be no smarter than the person who programmed it. Considering what's come out of Microsoft, I don't have high hopes for Redmond...
I don't believe that a computer can help make a kid more intelligent. Rather, it takes intelligence to begin with to operate a computer efficiently.
In my job as an on-call on-site consultant & tech support tech, I get people saying "how-do-i-do-such-and-such" or "it don't work"... on a program I've never seen before. So I have to learn how to use the program instantly and teach them how to do what they're trying to do.
Couple of things that come into play here: the understanding that *most* programs work in the same manner, and having the guts to just try stuff and see what works.
Working with computers requires reasoning and problem solving abilities, probably more so than not working with 'em. People have this grand illusion that computers will do the problem solving and reasoning for them: THEY CAN'T. If it does, it's not the computer doing it, it's the person who programmed it that's doing it. The computer will do this in exactly the same way that the programmer would; the comp. just does the dirty work of data analysis and mathematics. How it works depends on how it's programmed, which in turn depends on the mind of the programmer.
Now having your kid be online 4 hours a night playing games does more for teaching problem solving & reasoning than sitting in front of the boob tube for 4 hours, but if you really want him to get smart, send him outside to weed the garden, fix the fence, paint the shed... whatever, but don't tell him how to do it. He's gotta figure that out on his own. Being forced to figure it out does far more for building intelligence than being shown.
Remember how you hated story problems in algebra in school? Well, guess what... life's a story problem. There ain't no abstract equations out there waiting to be solved. It's up to you to take the problem, find the equation that fits, and solve it. If teachers would give more story problems, we'd have smarter kids.
Now what would be really cool is if I could plug my USB digicam into it and save the pics to a big disc. Then I can shoot 1600x1200 TIFFs on my vacation without having to have haul around 312 (expensive) CF cards or a laptop.
Here's my concept: a USB mass storage device which can be directly connected to another USB mass storage device of the same or different manufacturer. The device would have a small monochrome LCD screen which allows you to view the filesystems on both units and copy files from one filesystem to the other. It should comply with existing USB mass storage standards and be capable of mounting filesystems of type FAT, FAT32, ext2, minix, etc.
Strike One: people go with what they know. And people know Windows. There ain't much we can do about this except get 'em started early, before they can taste Windows. Games will help tremendously.
:-)
Strike Two: Trying to get X working on anything but the most common hardware is anything but trivial. I just spent 6 hours tweaking settings in XF86Config* and it's still not right. If there is a graphical utility for doing this (besides xvidtune), I haven't found it. I will say though that Linuxconf is a wonderful tool for system administration. (Number 9 SR9 AGP with an S3 Savage4 chipset [XFree_SVGA] & a Mag XJ810 monitor on RH7.1 (2.4 series kernel): if you got it working @ 1600 x 1200 & 24-bit color, lemme know your timings)
Strike Three: Inconsistencies. There's no common user interface standards for software. Yes, there's the window manager. But, the dialog boxes appear differently, menu commands are in different places in different programs, save & open dialog boxes are different (Nutscrape's SUCKS: why in Uncle George's Name do you have to lose the file name when you're trying to navigate to a directory????).
No wonder Linux-on-the-Desktop is out.
*Yes, I know RH 7.1 doesn't use XF86Config but I don't remember the name of the one it does use at the moment 'cuz I'm on the NT box @ the office
The .sig says: 'You have received email, but your system must first be restarted before this feature can be used.'
I'm waiting for the day I see: Shutdown and Restart: your system must first be restarted before this feature can be used. Almost as bad as when you get the End Task box for an unnamed task (the shutdown process); ending the task halts the shutdown process and you're right back at the desktop so you hit the pwr and then Win9x blames you for not shutting the system down properly.... you know the drill. Grrr.
Forgive me. The One Before(tm) posted shortly before I did, hence his post was not seen by me prior to my clicking "submit."
But I still think I said it better.
News for Nerds. Stuff that matters.
Oh, wait. There's no (tm) or ® after that.
This is news? This matters?
Mc*® is a registered trademark of McDonalds®.
It's gonna cost you more than 15 cents to drive 15 minutes.
When you're shopping for the best deal, you have to consider all the costs, not just the absolute cost of that item. I once saw a great deal on a refubished monitor online, only to discover that when you add shipping, the total was only 5 bucks less than a brand new one (including shipping). Both on the same website.
If I'd needed a new monitor, I would've bought the brand new one. For 5 bucks more, I get a full factory warranty and probably a couple more years of service.
BTW, I won't deal with online merchants that make you give all sorts of personal information before telling you what shipping will be.