I love used PCs. Especially since the free crap out there is pretty good.
This morning I edited video of my daughter on my linux box. I run Debian sid and I use kino for video editing. I had no trouble dumping the video from the DV cam, tidying up the timeline, and burning a VCD for her grandparents. How much did I pay for my nice video editing setup? NOTHING. Well, $15 actually.
1Ghz PIII machine with 256MB of RAM and Geforce MX400 adapter: free from friend 256MB of RAM: had it laying around CD burner: laying around firewire card and cable: $15, clearance rack at Walmart
The parts I had laying around came from another pile of free computers I got from somewhere.
So long Novell. Your once great networking empire has been squashed. Your great software will no longer be known to the world. Rest in peace.
Novell has been in a downward spiral ever since Eric Shmidt left to start Google. Netware 4 was the best freaking NOS on the planet. It was stable, it was light, and it's still compatible with most of Netware's product line to date.
Since then, Novell quality has been slipping. Netware 6.5 is absolutely abismal. It's bloated, it's slow, it's unstable, it's Windows NT. Not to mention, Novell raising prices of eDriectory licenses to the point where it's too expensive to license. Novell used to stand for fast, cheap, manageable software. Now they look like Microsoft, if it wasn't for the big red N on their startup screen I wouldn't know the difference.
eDirectory and Zenworks are all that is left of a once great company. While they are still two of the greatest products on the market, that will diminish in time. These layoffs are the first step. We saw it with Corel, now we see it with Novell. Once eDirectory slips, Red Hat may finally have their directory service off the ground and customers will have a path away from gawdawful active directory.
I don't have a reference handy, but I think it was also used at the beginning of the Longhorn developmnent cycle.
I've mentally equated the phrase "most significant $PRODUCT since Windows 95" to mean WinFS. WinFS will be the biggest visible change in over 10 years, if they ever ship it. That means the day WinFS ships will be the most important release since Windows 95. Maybe they're ramping up again for a WinFS based OS, tying in a new Office to exploit the new functionality of WinFS. It makes sense, and it would be significant.
On the flip side, it also implies that Microsoft hasn't shipped anything significant in 10 years, which is pretty accurate.
XP is just as vulnerable, take off your tinfoil hat and move along.
Props to Shavlik Technologies on this one. I got an e-mail last Tues when the patch was released:
"Both the 05-039 and 05-043 exploits stand a good chance of becoming Internet worms in the near future. These worms could act in a manner similar to the Blaster worm. Shavlik recommends testing and installing these patches as soon as possible to prevent exploitation via these vulnerabilities. "
That's ther first time I've seen wording that strong from Shavlik, good call guys!
Lucky you. You've found a capmpany that actually spends money on technology. You work in some utopia where your CEO sees value in new things.
For the rest of us, we're stuck supporting old crap because someone who controls the money says that new things aren't needed when old hardware works just fine. You've obviously never run into proprietary hardware either, most weird PC based solutions rely heavily on floppies.
Another article declaring the death of the floppy. Haven't we seen these before? Isn't it OBVIOUS that there's better solutions? Duh. Unfortunately for most IT geeks, the floppy will be part of our job for the forseeable future.
In the ideal world, all your PCs that you administer will boot off that fancy USB keychain. Software that insists on doing a media check no longer exists, and the floppy disk is merely a wall decoration.
In a real IT environment, you're ineveitably stuck with machines that are accesible ONLY by floppy. Want to boot that PII machine? Better find a floppy. I set up several HPaq laptops about a year ago. You'd think by now they'd have USB booting working, right? NOPE. The BIOS was set to boot off USB, I popped in my bootable flash drive, and... nothing. I booted a desktop to be sure, yes, this flash drive is bootable. I never pursued it because I had several workarounds (one being the removable floppy drive) but it goes to show that this bane of technology known as the floppy disk will be around for quite some time.
Last month I received a software package distributed on DVD. A forward thinking company, right? Then what's this floppy disk for? That's right, they have a floppy that's needed to install the software. It uses strategically placed bad sectors to verify that the floppy disk is genuine and lets you install the software. Good thing this brand new Dell PC still has a floppy drive, or I couldn't install it.
Sorry folks, the floppy may have outlived its usefulness in the user realm but in the IT realm, we get to hang on to them for quite awhile.
Has no one here heard of "Windows XP embedded edition"? That thing's been out for at least a year, maybe two.
I run Hpaq t5700 thin clients. These boxes are nothing more than a Crusoe processor and a small ATA flash disk. You load the XP embedded image onto the thin client, customize it, and it's ready to go. Footprint? Under 200 MB. That sounds large for a thin client, but this is truly Windows XP with a lot of crap stripped out. IE and MSN messenger are included, as well as basic terminal emulation and other normal thin client apps. All in all, not bad for 200 MB and it does almost everything I need it to. For a more functional box you'll want to grab drivers.cab from a real XP machine, but aside from that it's ready and waiting for your apps.
1) You can certainly say that in a more tactful way.
I could have, yes. But I could have also said "j00 sux0r5". Which would you prefer? Remember, this is Slashdot, not the AP.
2) I don't know what profession you are in, but even in my chair on a computer that's x miles away from you, knowing nothing about you except what you type, I can't infer nor would I even try to rate how you perform in your profession.
Perhaps, but you clearly stated your profession as well as a problem you've encountered. I'm just an impartial third party who sees a possible problem, so I felt the need to point it out. That, and I like to start flamewars for no real reason.
Does anybody know where these habits are coming from?
There's always the possiblity that you suck as a teacher. One thing that pissed me off in high school was bad teaching. If an entire class fails a math test, retakes it, and fails again, the problem is most likely not the stsudents. Either the test is poorly written or the teacher didn't do their job.
I'm not saying that you're neccesarily the problem, I'm just asking you to examine yourself first if it's a seemingly widespread problem.
I figured this out when I got my first credit card. If you sign your card, they will never look closely enough at it.
A friend of mine told me that writing "See Identification" in the signature block on a card would work. It sometimes did, but even then merchants would "compare" my signature and OK it. I tried writing "SEE IDENTIFICATION" in large letters with a black Sharpie. Worked better, but not entirely.
I finally came up with a permanent fix, that has yet to fail me:
When I get a new credit card, on the back Signature area I take a black Sharpie and draw X's over the entire signature area. That forces the clerk to ask for ID. It works EVERY TIME. The only time it hasn't worked is when the clerk doesn't bother checking, but there's little you can do about that other than make a scene or report them to their manager. Besides, in some places (maybe all) a signature is not required for purchases $20.
You do not get a complete copy of the source. You get large chunks... enough to examine the code, but not enough to compile a working product.
Modification is a no-no. Even sending code modifications to Microsoft is against the license. You may NOT modify code or write patches against the code.
You absolutely may NOT incorporated shared code into anything. If you've seen MS source code, you must wash your eyes and cleanse your brain as not to inadvertantly introduce MS code into other projects. Some would say it goes as far as not participating in GPL projects.
Shared source is to appease the customer who wants the ability to evaluate the code and audit its safety. It goes something like "purchase XXX licenses, and we'll show you the source code. Of course, if you don't like the poor quality of the code, you don't get a refund, just that sinking feeling that you're screwed.".
SuSE still owned the linux desktop in Europe last I checked. That being said, they're no longer a European distro as they're now owned by Novell, headquartered in Provo, Utah. Therefore SuSE is no longer a European company, despite the fact that they may still have the market share.
It sounds like what it's doing is comparing the alleged sending domain against the IP address. If the lookup or reverse lookup fails, it rejects the e-mail as bogus. This would theoretically prevent zombie spam relays.
Not a bad concept, but I'm sure MS would find a way to screw it up.
I R'd TFAs, and I don't see any mention of the enterprise. Got a link to back up your claim?
Considering the wealth of free for home/expensive for enterprise software out there, I wouldn't be surprised, but the articles never mentioned the difference.
Good for consumers, maybe, but not good for other Anti-spyware packages. Bundling a free anti-spyware tool could be considered anti-competitive.
Of course, anti-competitive is probably better than the extortion scheme they were planning originally. It's that PoS browser that started the problem in the first place. Why would I want to pay the company that created the problem to remove it? I do agree with you that despite the anti-competitive nature of giving away the product, this is a good move by MS.
Asking for money == extortion Giving it away free == anti-competitive
Of course we all know that when the product ships it will be a classic MS PoS, so there's nothing to worry about:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Don't I know it.
Btw, never use Ajax to clean a dishwasher unless you needed to clean your floor too.
So Slashdot doesn't post dupes, they post compliments?
I love used PCs. Especially since the free crap out there is pretty good.
This morning I edited video of my daughter on my linux box. I run Debian sid and I use kino for video editing. I had no trouble dumping the video from the DV cam, tidying up the timeline, and burning a VCD for her grandparents. How much did I pay for my nice video editing setup? NOTHING. Well, $15 actually.
1Ghz PIII machine with 256MB of RAM and Geforce MX400 adapter: free from friend
256MB of RAM: had it laying around
CD burner: laying around
firewire card and cable: $15, clearance rack at Walmart
The parts I had laying around came from another pile of free computers I got from somewhere.
So long Novell. Your once great networking empire has been squashed. Your great software will no longer be known to the world. Rest in peace.
Novell has been in a downward spiral ever since Eric Shmidt left to start Google. Netware 4 was the best freaking NOS on the planet. It was stable, it was light, and it's still compatible with most of Netware's product line to date.
Since then, Novell quality has been slipping. Netware 6.5 is absolutely abismal. It's bloated, it's slow, it's unstable, it's Windows NT. Not to mention, Novell raising prices of eDriectory licenses to the point where it's too expensive to license. Novell used to stand for fast, cheap, manageable software. Now they look like Microsoft, if it wasn't for the big red N on their startup screen I wouldn't know the difference.
eDirectory and Zenworks are all that is left of a once great company. While they are still two of the greatest products on the market, that will diminish in time. These layoffs are the first step. We saw it with Corel, now we see it with Novell. Once eDirectory slips, Red Hat may finally have their directory service off the ground and customers will have a path away from gawdawful active directory.
Novell, I once loved thee, take care of yourself.
I was wondering the same thing. I find SOHCAHTOA much more useful.
I don't have a reference handy, but I think it was also used at the beginning of the Longhorn developmnent cycle.
I've mentally equated the phrase "most significant $PRODUCT since Windows 95" to mean WinFS. WinFS will be the biggest visible change in over 10 years, if they ever ship it. That means the day WinFS ships will be the most important release since Windows 95. Maybe they're ramping up again for a WinFS based OS, tying in a new Office to exploit the new functionality of WinFS. It makes sense, and it would be significant.
On the flip side, it also implies that Microsoft hasn't shipped anything significant in 10 years, which is pretty accurate.
XP is just as vulnerable, take off your tinfoil hat and move along.
Props to Shavlik Technologies on this one. I got an e-mail last Tues when the patch was released:
"Both the 05-039 and 05-043 exploits stand a good chance of becoming Internet worms in the near future. These worms could act in a manner similar to the Blaster worm. Shavlik recommends testing and installing these patches as soon as possible to prevent exploitation via these vulnerabilities.
"
That's ther first time I've seen wording that strong from Shavlik, good call guys!
Lucky you. You've found a capmpany that actually spends money on technology. You work in some utopia where your CEO sees value in new things.
For the rest of us, we're stuck supporting old crap because someone who controls the money says that new things aren't needed when old hardware works just fine. You've obviously never run into proprietary hardware either, most weird PC based solutions rely heavily on floppies.
Is today's Slashdot being brought to us by the DIY network or something?
Build a rack!
Build a shelf!
Build an LCD!
I admire the geek who homebrews hardware, but this is getting rediculous.
Another article declaring the death of the floppy. Haven't we seen these before? Isn't it OBVIOUS that there's better solutions? Duh. Unfortunately for most IT geeks, the floppy will be part of our job for the forseeable future.
In the ideal world, all your PCs that you administer will boot off that fancy USB keychain. Software that insists on doing a media check no longer exists, and the floppy disk is merely a wall decoration.
In a real IT environment, you're ineveitably stuck with machines that are accesible ONLY by floppy. Want to boot that PII machine? Better find a floppy. I set up several HPaq laptops about a year ago. You'd think by now they'd have USB booting working, right? NOPE. The BIOS was set to boot off USB, I popped in my bootable flash drive, and... nothing. I booted a desktop to be sure, yes, this flash drive is bootable. I never pursued it because I had several workarounds (one being the removable floppy drive) but it goes to show that this bane of technology known as the floppy disk will be around for quite some time.
Last month I received a software package distributed on DVD. A forward thinking company, right? Then what's this floppy disk for? That's right, they have a floppy that's needed to install the software. It uses strategically placed bad sectors to verify that the floppy disk is genuine and lets you install the software. Good thing this brand new Dell PC still has a floppy drive, or I couldn't install it.
Sorry folks, the floppy may have outlived its usefulness in the user realm but in the IT realm, we get to hang on to them for quite awhile.
Volume expressed in Volkswagons would have been acceptable.
There are 11 types of people in the world: those who can count in binary, and those who can't.
I'm guessing you exist in the 3rd type, those who just can't count.
There are 11 types of people in the world: those who can count in binary, those who can't, and those who can't count to 3.
Are they still using that 2.6 kernel? That is SOOOOO last week.....
Has no one here heard of "Windows XP embedded edition"? That thing's been out for at least a year, maybe two.
I run Hpaq t5700 thin clients. These boxes are nothing more than a Crusoe processor and a small ATA flash disk. You load the XP embedded image onto the thin client, customize it, and it's ready to go. Footprint? Under 200 MB. That sounds large for a thin client, but this is truly Windows XP with a lot of crap stripped out. IE and MSN messenger are included, as well as basic terminal emulation and other normal thin client apps. All in all, not bad for 200 MB and it does almost everything I need it to. For a more functional box you'll want to grab drivers.cab from a real XP machine, but aside from that it's ready and waiting for your apps.
1) You can certainly say that in a more tactful way.
I could have, yes. But I could have also said "j00 sux0r5". Which would you prefer? Remember, this is Slashdot, not the AP.
2) I don't know what profession you are in, but even in my chair on a computer that's x miles away from you, knowing nothing about you except what you type, I can't infer nor would I even try to rate how you perform in your profession.
Perhaps, but you clearly stated your profession as well as a problem you've encountered. I'm just an impartial third party who sees a possible problem, so I felt the need to point it out. That, and I like to start flamewars for no real reason.
Have a Good Friday.
Does anybody know where these habits are coming from?
There's always the possiblity that you suck as a teacher. One thing that pissed me off in high school was bad teaching. If an entire class fails a math test, retakes it, and fails again, the problem is most likely not the stsudents. Either the test is poorly written or the teacher didn't do their job.
I'm not saying that you're neccesarily the problem, I'm just asking you to examine yourself first if it's a seemingly widespread problem.
I figured this out when I got my first credit card. If you sign your card, they will never look closely enough at it.
A friend of mine told me that writing "See Identification" in the signature block on a card would work. It sometimes did, but even then merchants would "compare" my signature and OK it. I tried writing "SEE IDENTIFICATION" in large letters with a black Sharpie. Worked better, but not entirely.
I finally came up with a permanent fix, that has yet to fail me:
When I get a new credit card, on the back Signature area I take a black Sharpie and draw X's over the entire signature area. That forces the clerk to ask for ID. It works EVERY TIME. The only time it hasn't worked is when the clerk doesn't bother checking, but there's little you can do about that other than make a scene or report them to their manager. Besides, in some places (maybe all) a signature is not required for purchases $20.
While I realize your post was an attempt at satire, I will say that certain times look really cool on a binary clock.
IIRC, Shared Source is limited in several ways.
You do not get a complete copy of the source. You get large chunks... enough to examine the code, but not enough to compile a working product.
Modification is a no-no. Even sending code modifications to Microsoft is against the license. You may NOT modify code or write patches against the code.
You absolutely may NOT incorporated shared code into anything. If you've seen MS source code, you must wash your eyes and cleanse your brain as not to inadvertantly introduce MS code into other projects. Some would say it goes as far as not participating in GPL projects.
Shared source is to appease the customer who wants the ability to evaluate the code and audit its safety. It goes something like "purchase XXX licenses, and we'll show you the source code. Of course, if you don't like the poor quality of the code, you don't get a refund, just that sinking feeling that you're screwed.".
I, for one, would welcome our tutu wearing overlords.
You can consider this a request.
SuSE still owned the linux desktop in Europe last I checked. That being said, they're no longer a European distro as they're now owned by Novell, headquartered in Provo, Utah. Therefore SuSE is no longer a European company, despite the fact that they may still have the market share.
If Clippy sends me into a violent rage, can I sue Microsoft?
Take off the tin foil hat for a second.
It sounds like what it's doing is comparing the alleged sending domain against the IP address. If the lookup or reverse lookup fails, it rejects the e-mail as bogus. This would theoretically prevent zombie spam relays.
Not a bad concept, but I'm sure MS would find a way to screw it up.
I R'd TFAs, and I don't see any mention of the enterprise. Got a link to back up your claim?
Considering the wealth of free for home/expensive for enterprise software out there, I wouldn't be surprised, but the articles never mentioned the difference.
Good for consumers, maybe, but not good for other Anti-spyware packages. Bundling a free anti-spyware tool could be considered anti-competitive.
:-)
Of course, anti-competitive is probably better than the extortion scheme they were planning originally. It's that PoS browser that started the problem in the first place. Why would I want to pay the company that created the problem to remove it? I do agree with you that despite the anti-competitive nature of giving away the product, this is a good move by MS.
Asking for money == extortion
Giving it away free == anti-competitive
Of course we all know that when the product ships it will be a classic MS PoS, so there's nothing to worry about