Re: Intellectual Property Theft - Item: Domain Name
Dear Prime Minister:
We have recovered the property stolen by the foreign internet terrorists from California - vis: domain name www.ca.gov
As you well know, YOU are leader of the true government of the Great White North. This abuse of the.gov by our neighbours to the South seems to indicate that they rule the world. We have taken ca.gov offline until such time as they realize that ca.gov is, in fact, the property of the Government of Canada.
Please advise re: further action in the IP war. When do we unleash the rabid beavers over the border?
A dedicated Nation of people mostly located north of the 49th parallel has been working for decades to make fundamental changes to the world through very clever means. As the number one exporter of carbon producing oil to the United States and the number one producer of automobiles for export to the United States, we Canadians are pleased to finally announce that the goal of this labour was to provide the world with a new shipping route.
This was done for many reasons. Firstly, it's mostly damned cold up here. We were continually traveling south to get warm. It was expensive, time consuming and we now have to get bloody passports just to visit our friends south of the border. As the fruits of our labours are paying off, more and more Canadians are staying at home to bask in balmy 5 degree celcius weather.
The second reason for this work was that much of the north was not economically viable because the cost of getting goods up there was prohibitive. This new route appears to have solved that problem once and for all.
Lastly, don't get any ideas about what any of you other nations are going to do with our sovereign arctic territory. We have one (1) very fired up diesel submarine lurking somewhere off Nova Scotia which can get up to the northwest passage in mere months with only four refueling stops to wreak havoc on any of you saber-rattlers.
Please send thank you emails and letters to any email address ending in.ca
P.S. Sorry about the desertification thing in the equatorial latitudes. We have a lot more money and resources than the countries down there, so we used them as best we could. Hey, why not get away from all that oppressive heat and sand and c'mon up and visit!
Brought to you by the people of the Great White (now brown) North!
Isn't it time that the FSF and/or OSDL had a third party examine M$'s code for violations of the GPL? With compiled code, how are we to know what's in it and whether some of it is stolen or not? The U.S. Gov't has the legal right to look at M$'s code: sue them to get them to ensure that the code does not include snippets of GPL'd code on the grounds that they are aware of this violation and hiding it from U.S. taxpayers. Just think of the impact on M$'s case if this were found to be true!
You make a good point. I should have mentioned that this off-the-shelf, grey-box server is for internal use only and I am giving it my own non-scientific testing to see how long it runs without a re-boot.
This release will be an interesting test of ORACLE's knock-off capabilities - let's see how long they take to do it. CentOS will be challenged to get it out there too. I wonder which will be first.
Red Hat should not be slagged for it's efforts. This is a major accomplishment. The virtualization aspect to this release is the wave of the future. Fundamentally, we are seeing the evolution of the server platform to a new level with radically improved capabilities. I'm very disappointed that so many of you are not giving credit where credit is due.
We are starting to see a wave of movement towards Linux in general. CIO's, towns, villages, states, provinces and governments are starting to appreciate the benefits of this tremendous software. Let's aid and abet their efforts and not demean what Red Hat has achieved.
Full disclosure: I run CentOS 4.x - uptime almost 2yrs!! I have installed and managed RH 7.x and 8.x w/ ORACLE.
My laptop is a cheezy Thinkpad T30 with SuSE 10.2 and I no longer use MS except to manage my CrackBerry account online.
Hmmm, let me think:
Tits don't sag.
Bimbos become celluloid icons.
Outdoors has five shadows.
People can be perfectly heard in clubs/restaurants etc.
Movies are ranked by inflated millions of dollars rather than seats actual sold.
Jane Fonda looks 50.
Hollywood is a place which cannot be defined by Cartesian boundaries.
You can have no vocal skills and still sing in a movie.
And, of course the ever-present parking spaces!
This will be my last post on this issue. The following payroll software does NOT meet your needs. It is, however, opensource. If you can team up with other mid-size businesses, you can get inside the software and modify it for US payroll requirements. Alternatively, you could establish your requirements and work on funding this project which would benefit all smaller businesses. Here's the link:
In the original post, I replied: If you think for a second that Dell is going to give up lucrative revenue from selling less software, give your head a shake!! Notice that the proposed option will only be available on higher-end (for Dell) hardware. You are not going to see a rock-bottom box with Linux on it. John Q. Public would kill Dell's margins with all the support calls.
I'm feeling a little smug here! Dell is going to drag it's heels as long as it can, on this one.
You are asking what you would 'DO' with Linux. Great question. The best answer, if you are looking at POS (Point Of Sale) applications is to go to the majors. Just so you know, EVERY Home Depot till runs on Linux Article . I have not been that deep in the accounting world for some time. I can recommend SDC who have an ORACLE-base, web-enabled high-end system that will probably provide you with everything you need. Furthermore, they are great at developing custom aspects to their applications. Also, because it's ORACLE, it can run on the same instance and use the same licensing as any other major database applications you might have. Of course, it goes without saying that ORACLE runs on Linux. Who knows, you might even get Dell to ship the hardware! If all that is not enough for you, then stick to your virus and malware-prone, costly, antiquated way of doing things. Be forewarned, however, your Linux-based competitors will soon be eating their competition for lunch!
I'm not going to get into a big philosophical argument about the Windows/Linux thing - that's been hashed out long ago. The best way to look at the pros and cons of each is to become informed. What has drawn me to Linux is that there is no aspect of it that you can't look at: the way the whole thing works is spread out for all to see. Moreover, the fundamental engineering of it allows an amazing amount of creativity on the part of you, the person setting it up. The Linux community is also very willing to help out newbies. What I advise is to download and burn Knoppix - when it first starts, there are an incredible amount of options open to you on start-up. The best is that you don't need to touch the hard drive of the machine you're booting - it all runs from the CD/DVD ROM and you can write to a USB key. This effectively lets you use any computer anywhere as your own. When you shutdown and pull out the disk, nobody is the wiser that you have been at that workstation.
That is just one simple example. Others are the tremendous stability of the various server versions of Linux (CentOS being a good, free example). I configured my home server with it and set up LVM - logical Volume Manager. This latter lets me re-size partitions on the fly. Tremendous if you want to set up partitions for different departments.
The power of Linux is not in the interface(s) , it's in the guts of how the thing runs. NOTE: you can have a number of interfaces too. Long story short, you would not be in this field if you were not curious. May I suggest you use your curiosity to explore a different way of doing things.
If you think for a second that Dell is going to give up lucrative revenue from selling less software, give your head a shake!! Notice that the proposed option will only be available on higher-end (for Dell) hardware. You are not going to see a rock-bottom box with Linux on it. John Q. Public would kill Dell's margins with all the support calls.
To reply to your missive, I'm currently using gnucash to run my small business, connecting to my CentOS server using OpenSuSE 10.2 on a WiFi enabled T30 IBM Thinkpad. If I want something commercial, I can always use an ORACLE or IBM-based (for example) product which is completely cross-platform. To be honest, it has taken until just recently for Linux to mature to the point where there is little difference between it and the commercial products. To boot, the improvements in Linux are coming at such a rapid rate that I am quite confident in my decision.
Therefore, take your time, revisit your decision and, in the end, you'll end up with a lot lower software and maintenance costs, running on older equipment with only a few viruses and malware knocking at your door.
...just try going to the site! Can you say 'slashdotted'?!!
Now, the bloody thing will be skewed way out of proportion by people who just want so see Linux up there, but don't have an intention to buy from Dell.
If you're going to comment, please be careful to state your true intentions and not just be evangelical about Linux.
NOTE: For my part, I have been asking Dell for 10 years for the option to purchase their products O/S-free (let alone w/ Linux). Having the option to pre-install a working distro would be great - even if it is only a choice of one or two of the majors.
The Feds need to look seriously not, just at who is attacking but why. I surmise that there has been a serious slippage in support for the United States in the last decade. This issue is at the core of the problem and, if addressed, might go a long way to alleviating both terrorism and cybercrime. On the other hand, I'm not naive enough to think that uneducated assholes won't try to compromise or cause damage to major servers for sleazy, so-called 'idealogical reasons.
From cnr.com: "Launching in the 2nd Quarter of 2007, CNR.com will be a free on-line digital software warehouse and one-click delivery service designed to solve the complexity of finding, installing and managing software applications on your Linux desktop computer."
Feb 15th, 2007: Microsoft announces that it has purchased Linspire, closed down the cnr.com website and changed the licensing of Click 'N Run to conform with MS's EULA standards. Ballmer is quoted as saying: "The thought of one-click installation of free software without at charge whatsoever to the End User is against everything that Microsoft stands for and endangers Freedom and the American Dream.
With our announcements today, Microsoft has taken extensive steps to thwart this threat because, were it not for this, the future of the free world is at stake. What kind of a world would it be if people could simply upgrade or install software free of any charge whatsoever?"
I could not agree more. As a paying member of various LUGS, this is just the sort of thing that causes immense grief and head-aches to John Q. Public. It's like giving a 15 year old the keys to a bus and saying, go pick up the kids. I think I'm going to start a website called: GoodbyeGeekMarketing.org and point out all the stupid things that back-room programmers think the public 'needs' vs. how to entice them to 'want'.
If the Debian crowd are smart, they should look at what makes people tick and address their issues in a cogent, reasoned way, not simply have the public install some strange executable who's purpose they don't understand.
"I've always been amazed at the Apollo spacecraft guidance system, built by the MIT Instrumentation Lab. In 1969, this software got Apollo 11 to the moon, detached the lunar module, landed it on the moon's surface, and brought three astronauts home. It had to function on the tiny amount of memory available in the onboard Raytheon computer--it carried 8 Kbytes, not enough for a printer driver these days. And there wouldn't be time to reboot in case of system failure when the craft made re-entry. It's just as well Windows wasn't available for the job." [Thank God!! - Ed.]
If NASA open-sources software of this calibre, the entire world will benefit. Look at what NASA's innovations have done for miniaturising circuitry, freeze-drying foods, high-speed airfoils and robotics (to name a few). Now, go download NASA mars rover imaging software (MAESTRO) at http://mars.telascience.org/softwaredownload and look around Mars yourself. With software of this quality open-sourced, just think of the value to the world.
Linux Bios will significantly reduce boot-up times but it's a bitch to find out what hardware is supported and, if you get it wrong, you're pooched.
Gentoo Linux will compile to suit your hardware, but it doesn't do it automatically. What I'd love to see is an O/S that, on install, detects your bios, motherboard and peripherals. It decides the level of permanence of same and compiles twice. Once, in an 'optimal' version and the second time as a generic. Boot-up would default to the optimal one. Hickups would toggle the generic.
John Q. Public doesn't exactly go swapping processors on their Compaq Presarios every week. If you DO decide to 'upgrade' and swap out a processor or two, then the BIOS should detect it and the default kernel would boot and get you started towards compiling a new kernel.
Well, that's my opinion, and I'm sticking to it.
NOTE: "All brontosauruses are thin at one end, much thicker in the middle and then thin again at the far end." - A. Elk
There is another option coming on line: Osseointegration. http://www.oandp.com/edge/issues/articles/2006-09_ 03.asp In two operations, the amputee has an inert titanium implant inserted into the bone of the stump and the wound is closed over. After six months, a second operation attaches a titanium bolt to the abutment. The bolt protrudes through the skin and the artificial limb is attached to it. See the article for details.
There are 6.5 Billion pesky varmints on the planet that are the issue, not anything else. We North Americans are the worst, per capita, offenders. Hair-brained, short-term solutions that plug up the cosmos with waste can only serve to make life dangerous for future travelers, not to mention the impact on the ozone layer of having all that crap punch through it.
My little part in the effort was to only have ONE child. Please get the word out: wrap your rascals, get the big 'V' and/or tie your tubes. Earth can't support any more. Giving birth is no longer a right, breeding is putting us all in peril.
Just how much of Microsoft's code is now devoted to non work-related tasks? Let me see: DRM, Anti-piracy, Anti-virus, Anti-malware etc. etc. - oh, and I forgot about how much code is devoted to crippling excellent software like Microsoft Works and making each version incompatible with the previous one.
And, now this: AI in Vista dedicated to ensuring that the OS will be crippled if some algorythm is not satisfied.
I wonder how code we could find like that in Linux - oh... um... NONE. Gee - I wonder which operating system might be a better choice...
Hmmmm, let's do the math: Windows OS - $116 (Approx. base upgrade/OEM), MS Office $118 (Approx. base OEM), Anti-virus - $11 (Approx. base OEM), Setup and install - 2-3 hrs at, let's say $20/hr, Patches and updates - 2 hrs more @ $20/hr: Grand total: $305
Linux OS: 2 hrs install and config $40 (don't forget to used depricated hardware and save there too!)
Hey, all you bean counters out there - why the heel-dragging? Get your act in gear and MANDATE the move to Linux - you'll be heroes!!
Slashdot Mirror
...CrackBerry Thumbs are acting up...
...Ballmer & Google both out to lunch...
...Pesky Canadians at RIM are moving to take over China... and, soon, the world!
Nyah-ha-ha!!! Eh?
From: Royal Canadian Mounted Police
To: Government of Canada
Re: Intellectual Property Theft - Item: Domain Name
Dear Prime Minister:
We have recovered the property stolen by the foreign internet terrorists from California - vis: domain name www.ca.gov
As you well know, YOU are leader of the true government of the Great White North. This abuse of the .gov by our neighbours to the South seems to indicate that they rule the world. We have taken ca.gov offline until such time as they realize that ca.gov is, in fact, the property of the Government of Canada.
Please advise re: further action in the IP war. When do we unleash the rabid beavers over the border?
This was done for many reasons. Firstly, it's mostly damned cold up here. We were continually traveling south to get warm. It was expensive, time consuming and we now have to get bloody passports just to visit our friends south of the border. As the fruits of our labours are paying off, more and more Canadians are staying at home to bask in balmy 5 degree celcius weather.
The second reason for this work was that much of the north was not economically viable because the cost of getting goods up there was prohibitive. This new route appears to have solved that problem once and for all.
Lastly, don't get any ideas about what any of you other nations are going to do with our sovereign arctic territory. We have one (1) very fired up diesel submarine lurking somewhere off Nova Scotia which can get up to the northwest passage in mere months with only four refueling stops to wreak havoc on any of you saber-rattlers.
Please send thank you emails and letters to any email address ending in .ca
P.S. Sorry about the desertification thing in the equatorial latitudes. We have a lot more money and resources than the countries down there, so we used them as best we could. Hey, why not get away from all that oppressive heat and sand and c'mon up and visit!
Brought to you by the people of the Great White (now brown) North!
Isn't it time that the FSF and/or OSDL had a third party examine M$'s code for violations of the GPL? With compiled code, how are we to know what's in it and whether some of it is stolen or not? The U.S. Gov't has the legal right to look at M$'s code: sue them to get them to ensure that the code does not include snippets of GPL'd code on the grounds that they are aware of this violation and hiding it from U.S. taxpayers. Just think of the impact on M$'s case if this were found to be true!
takes four minutes to boot - combined with my USB, I only tweak once!
You make a good point. I should have mentioned that this off-the-shelf, grey-box server is for internal use only and I am giving it my own non-scientific testing to see how long it runs without a re-boot.
Red Hat should not be slagged for it's efforts. This is a major accomplishment. The virtualization aspect to this release is the wave of the future. Fundamentally, we are seeing the evolution of the server platform to a new level with radically improved capabilities. I'm very disappointed that so many of you are not giving credit where credit is due.
We are starting to see a wave of movement towards Linux in general. CIO's, towns, villages, states, provinces and governments are starting to appreciate the benefits of this tremendous software. Let's aid and abet their efforts and not demean what Red Hat has achieved.
Full disclosure: I run CentOS 4.x - uptime almost 2yrs!! I have installed and managed RH 7.x and 8.x w/ ORACLE. My laptop is a cheezy Thinkpad T30 with SuSE 10.2 and I no longer use MS except to manage my CrackBerry account online.
Hmmm, let me think: Tits don't sag. Bimbos become celluloid icons. Outdoors has five shadows. People can be perfectly heard in clubs/restaurants etc. Movies are ranked by inflated millions of dollars rather than seats actual sold. Jane Fonda looks 50. Hollywood is a place which cannot be defined by Cartesian boundaries. You can have no vocal skills and still sing in a movie. And, of course the ever-present parking spaces!
Paythyme
I'm feeling a little smug here! Dell is going to drag it's heels as long as it can, on this one.
You are asking what you would 'DO' with Linux. Great question. The best answer, if you are looking at POS (Point Of Sale) applications is to go to the majors. Just so you know, EVERY Home Depot till runs on Linux Article . I have not been that deep in the accounting world for some time. I can recommend SDC who have an ORACLE-base, web-enabled high-end system that will probably provide you with everything you need. Furthermore, they are great at developing custom aspects to their applications. Also, because it's ORACLE, it can run on the same instance and use the same licensing as any other major database applications you might have. Of course, it goes without saying that ORACLE runs on Linux. Who knows, you might even get Dell to ship the hardware! If all that is not enough for you, then stick to your virus and malware-prone, costly, antiquated way of doing things. Be forewarned, however, your Linux-based competitors will soon be eating their competition for lunch!
That is just one simple example. Others are the tremendous stability of the various server versions of Linux (CentOS being a good, free example). I configured my home server with it and set up LVM - logical Volume Manager. This latter lets me re-size partitions on the fly. Tremendous if you want to set up partitions for different departments.
The power of Linux is not in the interface(s) , it's in the guts of how the thing runs. NOTE: you can have a number of interfaces too. Long story short, you would not be in this field if you were not curious. May I suggest you use your curiosity to explore a different way of doing things.
No, I use gnu-found monies from the savings in IT!
If you think for a second that Dell is going to give up lucrative revenue from selling less software, give your head a shake!! Notice that the proposed option will only be available on higher-end (for Dell) hardware. You are not going to see a rock-bottom box with Linux on it. John Q. Public would kill Dell's margins with all the support calls.
Therefore, take your time, revisit your decision and, in the end, you'll end up with a lot lower software and maintenance costs, running on older equipment with only a few viruses and malware knocking at your door.
Now, the bloody thing will be skewed way out of proportion by people who just want so see Linux up there, but don't have an intention to buy from Dell.
If you're going to comment, please be careful to state your true intentions and not just be evangelical about Linux.
NOTE: For my part, I have been asking Dell for 10 years for the option to purchase their products O/S-free (let alone w/ Linux). Having the option to pre-install a working distro would be great - even if it is only a choice of one or two of the majors.
The Feds need to look seriously not, just at who is attacking but why. I surmise that there has been a serious slippage in support for the United States in the last decade. This issue is at the core of the problem and, if addressed, might go a long way to alleviating both terrorism and cybercrime. On the other hand, I'm not naive enough to think that uneducated assholes won't try to compromise or cause damage to major servers for sleazy, so-called 'idealogical reasons.
Feb 15th, 2007: Microsoft announces that it has purchased Linspire, closed down the cnr.com website and changed the licensing of Click 'N Run to conform with MS's EULA standards. Ballmer is quoted as saying: "The thought of one-click installation of free software without at charge whatsoever to the End User is against everything that Microsoft stands for and endangers Freedom and the American Dream.
With our announcements today, Microsoft has taken extensive steps to thwart this threat because, were it not for this, the future of the free world is at stake. What kind of a world would it be if people could simply upgrade or install software free of any charge whatsoever?"
If the Debian crowd are smart, they should look at what makes people tick and address their issues in a cogent, reasoned way, not simply have the public install some strange executable who's purpose they don't understand.
"I've always been amazed at the Apollo spacecraft guidance system, built by the MIT Instrumentation Lab. In 1969, this software got Apollo 11 to the moon, detached the lunar module, landed it on the moon's surface, and brought three astronauts home. It had to function on the tiny amount of memory available in the onboard Raytheon computer--it carried 8 Kbytes, not enough for a printer driver these days. And there wouldn't be time to reboot in case of system failure when the craft made re-entry. It's just as well Windows wasn't available for the job." [Thank God!! - Ed.]
If NASA open-sources software of this calibre, the entire world will benefit. Look at what NASA's innovations have done for miniaturising circuitry, freeze-drying foods, high-speed airfoils and robotics (to name a few). Now, go download NASA mars rover imaging software (MAESTRO) at http://mars.telascience.org/softwaredownload and look around Mars yourself. With software of this quality open-sourced, just think of the value to the world.
That's no reason to dump on them. These little shits are just out to spread it around.
Gentoo Linux will compile to suit your hardware, but it doesn't do it automatically. What I'd love to see is an O/S that, on install, detects your bios, motherboard and peripherals. It decides the level of permanence of same and compiles twice. Once, in an 'optimal' version and the second time as a generic. Boot-up would default to the optimal one. Hickups would toggle the generic.
John Q. Public doesn't exactly go swapping processors on their Compaq Presarios every week. If you DO decide to 'upgrade' and swap out a processor or two, then the BIOS should detect it and the default kernel would boot and get you started towards compiling a new kernel.
Well, that's my opinion, and I'm sticking to it.
NOTE: "All brontosauruses are thin at one end, much thicker in the middle and then thin again at the far end." - A. Elk
There is another option coming on line: Osseointegration. http://www.oandp.com/edge/issues/articles/2006-09_ 03.asp In two operations, the amputee has an inert titanium implant inserted into the bone of the stump and the wound is closed over. After six months, a second operation attaches a titanium bolt to the abutment. The bolt protrudes through the skin and the artificial limb is attached to it. See the article for details.
My little part in the effort was to only have ONE child. Please get the word out: wrap your rascals, get the big 'V' and/or tie your tubes. Earth can't support any more. Giving birth is no longer a right, breeding is putting us all in peril.
And, now this: AI in Vista dedicated to ensuring that the OS will be crippled if some algorythm is not satisfied.
I wonder how code we could find like that in Linux - oh... um... NONE. Gee - I wonder which operating system might be a better choice...
Hmmmm, let's do the math: Windows OS - $116 (Approx. base upgrade/OEM), MS Office $118 (Approx. base OEM), Anti-virus - $11 (Approx. base OEM), Setup and install - 2-3 hrs at, let's say $20/hr, Patches and updates - 2 hrs more @ $20/hr: Grand total: $305
Linux OS: 2 hrs install and config $40 (don't forget to used depricated hardware and save there too!)
Hey, all you bean counters out there - why the heel-dragging? Get your act in gear and MANDATE the move to Linux - you'll be heroes!!