Why is it that whenever something doesn't go as people plan they turn to sueing in the US ? Don't they realize that this whole turn of events could very well lead to destruction of the same market they venture in alltogether ?
In this case I find the whole story absurd. This may sound extremely arrogant but when an Internet company has to rely as heavily as they claim on a search engine then I don't think much of said company to begin with. You don't attract customers by being mentioned in a search engine alone, you get customers (and keep them) by offering good products and service.
As to the "drop of the PR"; "From February of 2001 to last month, SearchKing's PageRank was seven, within 30 days of launching PR Ad Network's services, our PageRank dropped to four". So? When I take a look at the description of this google service (PR value is determined several ways, including calculating the number of web pages (links) pointing to a particular page and how relevant they are to the topic at hand.) then this is simply a logical happening of events.
IMO its comparable to measuring an average speed; when you take a quick stop you'll notice the speed drops quite heavily and then its not easy to get it back to the same amount it was. In this case something new was introduced which had some influence (3 points) on the rating. In time it will rise back to the old value (allthough I have some doubts now:)).
For now we'll see how good these people really are. Pardon me for laughing if their boxes don't survice a/. effect:-)
I guess I missed the entire show but what the heck, I'll write something up anyway.
It is my belief that most people simply do not like Linux anymore. At least not the Linux environment in its true form, instead they rely on extra software to take away all the hassle which comes when you administrate a Linux system (yast, linuxconf, etc.).
Allthough I don't claim this to be a bad development (personally I think it is though) it is becoming pretty clear that just because of this development people completely loose track and focus of what Linux really is.
When taking a closer look at Debian GNU/Linux you will see its a completely free distribution which is composed of Linux software. Software like XFRee86, KDE, but also shells, shell utilities, and so on. Allthough Debian has provided in some installation guide most of it is done the Linux way, apart from compiling your own software that is.
There is a lot of complaining about the way Debian is installed but I truly wonder if any of these complaining people have actually bothered to, for example, grab a copy of XFree86 directly from the XFree site in order to set that up ? Because that is exactly what you get when you use Debian, you'll get Linux in its purest form. The Linux OS with access to all the major software packages out there. And yes, perhaps the Debian team could have put some more effort in the installation process, perhaps.
But have we allready forgotten that Linux isn't Windows ? Who cares about the harder / rougher installtion process, once its installed then you'd normally don't have to bother with installing for the next 5 years. And the configuration part... True, it doesn't give you nice hardware detection and all of that. Instead effort and attention has been put in other aspects. For example the option to keep your system running for those 5 years I mentioned above, even when you do want to upgrade to the next release. And I don't mean pop in the CD and select upgrade, I mean keep your server running while the next release is being downloaded and/or installed. Try that with RedHat or SuSE:)
In conclusion; I think people are losing focus to what Linux really is. Its nice that there are companies out there investing in Linux and developing nice tools to make configuration and installation easier. But this development does not take away the mere fact that Linux itself is still a Unix based environment which is (and should be) configurable using vi at all times.
And when a certain distribution gives you just that then its a little bit disturbing, IMO ofcourse, when people start complaining about how hard it is to install and configure. Because in the end it seems these people don't realize anymore that they are complaining about Linux itself.
Offcourse we've seen reports like this time and time again now but lets also try to grasp the broader picture here. MS is very busy trying to intergrate as much as possible, even beyond the original idea 'one interface, one way to operate'. Nowadays everything seems to be in need of integration and so far we've seen more trouble then good coming from it.
Take for example the vb scripting, once the email client got 'infected' by it we've seen virii take advantage of it. At first vb attachments but later the rumours went on about overflow exploits and even emails which basicly got autostarted. So the virii basicly evolved, it started pretty harmless but soon got worse.
Allthough its hard to look into the future I have a feeling we're on the start of something new and icky. Don't forget that a lot of websites using IIS also have a connection to some SQL server in order to store/retrieve data. This exploit may only be capable of doing harm without a SU password, don't toss it away with "blech, there's no harm in that" and forget all about it. It just might haunt us afterall.
Allthough I do think we should remain open for news like this I also think it becomes a bit boring. I mean hasn't it allready been proven that if you need (tight) security you should not use Windows ?
I don't see why this would not be the case at IT departments. However, I do think that there is a big "but" here. I experienced on quite some occasions that the whole feel of 'getting together' vaporized the moment where such a "coming together" is forced upon the department by the boss or manager who thinks "its good to be together and get some relaxation going".
I allways enjoy these things the moment its organized (or simply not organized at all) by some other colleague or simply thought up by the group. And usually those occasions are much more fun too.
This would heavily depend on the country. For example; in Europe it usually costs money (phonecosts) to get the email. So these spammers are forcing you to make costs you don't want to make. Therefor I think this trial would work in most countries.
IMHO its impossible to talk about the "good" and "bad" guys here. Sure, we have heard about the evidence which should proof that Bin Laden is behind this attack and it seems the Taliban regime (supported by the US when they rose to power I might add) isn't all too thrilled about handing Bin Laden over.
Can we now talk about the US being the good innocent guys and the evil Afghanistan ? I don't think so. The real story about this whole shit will probably surfuce in / after the next 50 years or so. There have been countless of conflicts which started out with "good guys" and "bad guys" and in the end it turned out to be bullshit. Take one of the most recent afairs for example; Lockerbie (since this is happening in Holland its 'close by'). The evil terrorists who blew up an airplane. Shame shame, hunt them down and lynch 'm. Since Gadaffi wasn't too thrilled about handing them over (fair is fair; I don't see Gadaffi as a good guy:-)) he was marked yet again being an evil guy who was in the line of justice. Now, a couple of years later, the whole story has a total different approach; one of the so called terrorists has been spoken free and the other is going into higher appeal and everyone is allready considering him innocent.
Its oh so easy to call Bin Laden the root of all evil and the Taliban as well for protecting him. Personally I'd really like to hear the story behind all this. What drove those idiots to do this? All in the name of Allah? I doubt that, the attack hasn't even been claimed by any terrorist group. So what purpose did this all have? Revenche maybe? (Lockerbie comes to mind once again) And if so; revenche for what? And if it is indeed revenche we are talking about; what role did the US, and maybe other nations as well, have? once we know the answers to those questions I think its safe to speak about good vs. evil. Now its just speculating and mindless hollow shouting.
Don't underestimate this, this can go further and deeper then you may realize. For example; in Holland we had a national test of the air-raid alarm to see (hear) if it could be heard through the whole country. In some places things went wrong; the alarm did not sound at all due to a "computer error".
Guess which OS ran on those computers? And I can assure you that I'm not making this one up. I can also tell you that I'm very glad my life doesn't depend on Windows in this way. At least not yet...
The last time I actually used a terminal program on my old C64 was to get an old database from the C64 onto my laptop. I merely needed my RS232 interface (small box which goes into the userport and contains one small chip to translate all the data to a full blown RS232 connection) and a null modem cable.
After I was done I skimmed around in my (dusted) software archive and stumbled across NovaTerm; a completely modular build terminal program for the C64 which offered anything you'd need. You need one side of a 5.25" disk for it (it will take up aprox. 80%) and the other side can be used as a datadisk. Because it was modular its functions expanded; right up to full ZModem support.
Taken that into consideration and the total size of the ppp stack in the Linux kernel I must admit not being very impressed by this project. I'm sure that if the novaterm developers we're still at it there would be a lynx style Internet access for the C64 ages ago. Maybe it could even evolve into full blown graphical support, who knows.
Basicly; this looks nice but I'm sure the C64 can do much more.
Nice article but unfortunatly (at least IMO) its just commenting on the thingie without giving us any technical details... What I'd like to know is how those machines will compete against each other.. Is this going the 'old fashioned' way (2 machines, 1 chessboard and the pityfull humans to operate it) or did they evolve on the programming _and_ the hardware allready?
So far the whole issue is focussing on writing the software to actually compete. IMHO its a shame no one seems to care about other details like getting a competition to a more cutting edge. For example:
The Shredder team declined the invitation to come to Spain. I guess we can conclude from this piece that those computers aren't able to connect over public networks (yet?). If they can't do that i'm somewhat convinced they can't communicate directly between each other. IMO that would/could improve the games and totally get rid of any possible human errors.
Maybe even better; it could make it easier for mere mortals to actually play against such machines without the need of much effort from its operator/creator.
Remember this article? Just write Saddam an email and ask him what he's doing with all the left-over games after he puts the PS2's interials into his SCUD missiles;)
Now why do I get this feeling that these people completely ran out of ideas and in order to get more money in start doing re-runs? The screenshots look nice, but are we really waiting for a game which basicly offers more of the same?
IMHO its a total shame that the whole game market seems to be totally out of inspiration these days. Sometimes you come across a title which offers a complete new setup (based on something allready these I guess) but in most cases its just more of the same. The last game I've bought (Oni) is IMO a good example; its a 3rd person 'fight / shoot 'm up' but offers quite some new options. Ever fought 3 man at the same time by disarming one poor bastard and shooting the rest with his weapon? I've never seen Lara Croft do that, to name just another 3rd person game and perfect example. IMO another game which just kept on going adding basicly nothing to gameplay, just nicer landscapes and some new moves, in order to get gain more money.
As I said; the screenshots looked nice. The game itself is a shame IMVHO. Why not put the effort and money into something new?
I sure hope it won't get to that but I have serious doubts about this. IMHO the 'original' series was quite nice (BBC did a re-run no to long ago) but it went from nice to completely bad (at least IMO) when they finally found earth. Allthough it wasn't all bad I seriously think that the program makers totally ran out of idea's and started the 'easy way'. For example; remember the episode where a cylon and some human robot (yuch) were going to capture a radio station to broadcast their position (aka; location of earth) to the Cylon fleet? The entire earth was at stake and what happens? 2 man get to save the earth, gimme a break...
And it went from bad to even worse and then the whole serie stopped. Now I truly hope that these people won't do what so many did before them; making new episodes in which they use new techniques and the likes with old plots. Eventually we would then get another struggle against the cylons with the same old evil tactics used in the first series. In many cases the producers think that we won't remember it anyway because it was 'so long ago'.
But what would be even worse is that this same ingredient is enough to kill of the entire series and legend. Now most of us remember Battlestar Galactica being some nice SF series which (IMO at least) started to suck in the end. The 1st run however was quite good. If this new serie would indeed suck most people would eventually remember Battlestar Galactica as a sucky SF series and would even call us crazy for liking it; "heck, if the serie is as shitty as that I can't even imagine what horror the first series must have been".
Lets hope it won't come to that. Unfortunatly that is what happens most of the time... Remember the (IMHO great) SF series V? And the totally sucky 2nd series? If so you know exactly what I mean..
I have no doubt that this will eventually evolve into some form of distributed computing. And whether or not this will all be sent over the Net is quite irrelevant; I can imagine that companies like M$ will re-discover the likes of shareware and let you use a product for an amount of time once you registered it.
This is the logical next step. Just take a look at the modern computers these days; if you buy a PC and/or laptop you'll notice that the OS license is pinned on the machine these days. You don't buy yourself a computer and an OS, you'll get a computer with an OS. And if you decide to use another OS you cannot use the shipped OS on another computer. Simply because the license is pinned down to the computer.
I dislike that concept and I think this is a very bad thing(tm)as well. Its basicly the search for more money, nothing more nothing less. And I truly doubt if this increase of income will eventually lead to better software. Developing software is expensive, esp. for a company, and therefor I think they will use that exact 'excuse' to introduce this shit. Fortunatly people tend to become aware of all the options and possibilities M$ doesn't want us to know about. My personal & recent experience was with SSL.. Do it the M$ way and pay up ($895 / year). The *nix way would be openssl. Oh; I forgot; you need a brain for that:P
You guys must be completely crazy to set something like this up for our *nix boxes. I can promise you right now that this will eventually lead to a major disaster which offcourse will work very well for our friends in Redmond.
C'mon, it can't be that hard...
My Linux box (2.4.1) is compiled with many cool features (gotta love usb) and iptables is right among them. Thats right; my packeting firewall is handled by my system itself. I can hear many of you think 'yeah, what else is new'. Well; think about it... I've set it up manually and its pretty
'paranoially' setup.
Now, I'm going to use this service and my box will find another box and gets totally crazed about it. What would be the number one thing to do in order to get contact through the box?
Think about it... I *knew* it would be a bad idea getting packeting firewall support into the kernel:)
IMO a very interessting idea but it would not work nevertheless. Sure; you can give a GUI the exact feel of a plain commandline but even then it would not be exactly the same.. I think the author is missing a very important point here. In theory he makes some very good points IMHO and indeed, in theory it could very well work out. But in the real world people tend to associate GUI's with completely configurable environments. iow; I can decide how the windows get placed, how big the fonts are, and the likes. Thats not really new. But going back to the article:
What if the shell popped up a window, showing you the last N commands you typed, or showed you what you would get if you hit tab at that point. Or let you mix a file selection dialog with the command line. You could type rm , select the files you want to remove
In this example the GUI would allmost feel like a commandline yet would not work. The "idiots" would demand a more flexible and more easy way to administrate their boxes while the more advanced users would still complain about the time it takes to transfer all the used data over the Net in order to remote administrate these servers.
Like I said, the author is missing a point here. At least IMHO.. If you really know what you are doing you don't need a GUI period. not even when you're administrating a Windows based (web)server.
My comany maintains some IIS (NT based) webservers mainly because we need the options NT offers (ASP). Sure; there may be much other options which can provide non-asp based solutions but that isn't an option and not the point here. Some time ago we had a major problem on the IIS part and I asked a colleague to help me out. I know my way around in IIS but I'm still, and prob. allways will be, *nix minded and therefor not interessted in IIS enough to specialize. He took control over the box using a remote admin tool and to my surprise immediatly did a "run program -> cmd". From there he typed like hell and did the rest to sort out the problems (yes; the solution worked as well).
Noticing my surprise he basicly told me that Windows never did let go of the commandline *if* you knew how to use it.
Experiences like this made me wonder about this whole GUI stuff as well and IMO it all boils down to the fact of acceptation.. People accept that you can or cannot do certain things in a console and get excited if something is possible. In a gui people are more demanding which tends to lead to more excessive environments. Personally I've never seen anyone on a console get freaked out on where a certain error message was placed yet in a GUI environment I tend to see people even move error messages to another spot...
writing tools with the assumption "ok everybody has a gui" is wrong.
It sure is different but all wrong? Whether you like it or not there are quite some NT servers out there which are also mounted in those racks you mentioned.
Maybe this is an option for Windows machine (no trolling intended since I really would not know) but I'd consider this a big NO NO for *nix based machines. Sure, maybe you can save some power in theory by letting some hardware sleep or spin down for some time. But how much power would it cost to get everything back up & running every hour of the day?
Getting things back up usually costs more power then letting them spin & run. I don't know about you and your servers but mine cannot give up on those hourly cronjobs since some jobs simply have to be done. So basicly I think it would end up consuming even more power then it does now. Not to mention the extra wear and shortened lifetime on the hardware which will surely not please my boss.
Qmail only supports maildir, and claims that mbox is slow and dangerous!
Now where did you got that load of crap from? Certainly not from the documentation, because those (QMail FAQ) state:
Is qmail compatible with sendmail?
Answer: Yes. qmail supports.forward,/etc/aliases, binmail deliveries to a central mail spool in the usual mbox format, the/usr/{lib,sbin}/sendmail interface for mail injection, and the normal UNIX user database in/etc/passwd. There is a checklist for large sites moving from sendmail to qmail.
Do get the facts right before drawing conclusions whether something is or isn't possible.
if there is a magnetic field, theres also and electric field
That doesn't have to be the case, it all depends on how you create the magnetic field. A magnetic field on its own doesn't have anything electrical about it unless you move a coil through the field. Then you are creating electricity, the principle of the dynamo. But thats pretty hard to compare with a mobile phone; thats a totally different story.
The next thing you are totally forgetting is Faraday. If you're inside a metal train then the electro magnetic fields generated by this train (remember; the tracks aka bottom of the train is where the actions at) will surely have a hard time reaching you. Thats first class Physics (I do hope I got the verb right:)); the cage of Faraday.
Slashdot Mirror
In this case I find the whole story absurd. This may sound extremely arrogant but when an Internet company has to rely as heavily as they claim on a search engine then I don't think much of said company to begin with. You don't attract customers by being mentioned in a search engine alone, you get customers (and keep them) by offering good products and service.
As to the "drop of the PR"; "From February of 2001 to last month, SearchKing's PageRank was seven, within 30 days of launching PR Ad Network's services, our PageRank dropped to four". So? When I take a look at the description of this google service (PR value is determined several ways, including calculating the number of web pages (links) pointing to a particular page and how relevant they are to the topic at hand.) then this is simply a logical happening of events.
IMO its comparable to measuring an average speed; when you take a quick stop you'll notice the speed drops quite heavily and then its not easy to get it back to the same amount it was. In this case something new was introduced which had some influence (3 points) on the rating. In time it will rise back to the old value (allthough I have some doubts now :)).
For now we'll see how good these people really are. Pardon me for laughing if their boxes don't survice a /. effect :-)
It is my belief that most people simply do not like Linux anymore. At least not the Linux environment in its true form, instead they rely on extra software to take away all the hassle which comes when you administrate a Linux system (yast, linuxconf, etc.). Allthough I don't claim this to be a bad development (personally I think it is though) it is becoming pretty clear that just because of this development people completely loose track and focus of what Linux really is.
When taking a closer look at Debian GNU/Linux you will see its a completely free distribution which is composed of Linux software. Software like XFRee86, KDE, but also shells, shell utilities, and so on. Allthough Debian has provided in some installation guide most of it is done the Linux way, apart from compiling your own software that is.
There is a lot of complaining about the way Debian is installed but I truly wonder if any of these complaining people have actually bothered to, for example, grab a copy of XFree86 directly from the XFree site in order to set that up ? Because that is exactly what you get when you use Debian, you'll get Linux in its purest form. The Linux OS with access to all the major software packages out there. And yes, perhaps the Debian team could have put some more effort in the installation process, perhaps.
But have we allready forgotten that Linux isn't Windows ? Who cares about the harder / rougher installtion process, once its installed then you'd normally don't have to bother with installing for the next 5 years. And the configuration part... True, it doesn't give you nice hardware detection and all of that. Instead effort and attention has been put in other aspects. For example the option to keep your system running for those 5 years I mentioned above, even when you do want to upgrade to the next release. And I don't mean pop in the CD and select upgrade, I mean keep your server running while the next release is being downloaded and/or installed. Try that with RedHat or SuSE :)
In conclusion; I think people are losing focus to what Linux really is. Its nice that there are companies out there investing in Linux and developing nice tools to make configuration and installation easier. But this development does not take away the mere fact that Linux itself is still a Unix based environment which is (and should be) configurable using vi at all times.
And when a certain distribution gives you just that then its a little bit disturbing, IMO ofcourse, when people start complaining about how hard it is to install and configure. Because in the end it seems these people don't realize anymore that they are complaining about Linux itself.
Actually it does, and for quite some time too. `apt-get euro-support`. I even got the euro symbol on my console for quite some time now.
Because the people programming it don't have to worry about market sales and/or popularity ratings?
SSH. Enough said IMO.
Allthough its hard to look into the future I have a feeling we're on the start of something new and icky. Don't forget that a lot of websites using IIS also have a connection to some SQL server in order to store/retrieve data. This exploit may only be capable of doing harm without a SU password, don't toss it away with "blech, there's no harm in that" and forget all about it. It just might haunt us afterall.
Allthough I do think we should remain open for news like this I also think it becomes a bit boring. I mean hasn't it allready been proven that if you need (tight) security you should not use Windows ?
I allways enjoy these things the moment its organized (or simply not organized at all) by some other colleague or simply thought up by the group. And usually those occasions are much more fun too.
This would heavily depend on the country. For example; in Europe it usually costs money (phonecosts) to get the email. So these spammers are forcing you to make costs you don't want to make. Therefor I think this trial would work in most countries.
Can we now talk about the US being the good innocent guys and the evil Afghanistan ? I don't think so. The real story about this whole shit will probably surfuce in / after the next 50 years or so. There have been countless of conflicts which started out with "good guys" and "bad guys" and in the end it turned out to be bullshit. Take one of the most recent afairs for example; Lockerbie (since this is happening in Holland its 'close by'). The evil terrorists who blew up an airplane. Shame shame, hunt them down and lynch 'm. Since Gadaffi wasn't too thrilled about handing them over (fair is fair; I don't see Gadaffi as a good guy
Its oh so easy to call Bin Laden the root of all evil and the Taliban as well for protecting him. Personally I'd really like to hear the story behind all this. What drove those idiots to do this? All in the name of Allah? I doubt that, the attack hasn't even been claimed by any terrorist group. So what purpose did this all have? Revenche maybe? (Lockerbie comes to mind once again) And if so; revenche for what? And if it is indeed revenche we are talking about; what role did the US, and maybe other nations as well, have? once we know the answers to those questions I think its safe to speak about good vs. evil. Now its just speculating and mindless hollow shouting.
Guess which OS ran on those computers? And I can assure you that I'm not making this one up. I can also tell you that I'm very glad my life doesn't depend on Windows in this way. At least not yet...
After I was done I skimmed around in my (dusted) software archive and stumbled across NovaTerm; a completely modular build terminal program for the C64 which offered anything you'd need. You need one side of a 5.25" disk for it (it will take up aprox. 80%) and the other side can be used as a datadisk. Because it was modular its functions expanded; right up to full ZModem support.
Taken that into consideration and the total size of the ppp stack in the Linux kernel I must admit not being very impressed by this project. I'm sure that if the novaterm developers we're still at it there would be a lynx style Internet access for the C64 ages ago. Maybe it could even evolve into full blown graphical support, who knows.
Basicly; this looks nice but I'm sure the C64 can do much more.
Maybe even better; it could make it easier for mere mortals to actually play against such machines without the need of much effort from its operator/creator.
Remember this article? Just write Saddam an email and ask him what he's doing with all the left-over games after he puts the PS2's interials into his SCUD missiles ;)
IMHO its a total shame that the whole game market seems to be totally out of inspiration these days. Sometimes you come across a title which offers a complete new setup (based on something allready these I guess) but in most cases its just more of the same. The last game I've bought (Oni) is IMO a good example; its a 3rd person 'fight / shoot 'm up' but offers quite some new options. Ever fought 3 man at the same time by disarming one poor bastard and shooting the rest with his weapon? I've never seen Lara Croft do that, to name just another 3rd person game and perfect example. IMO another game which just kept on going adding basicly nothing to gameplay, just nicer landscapes and some new moves, in order to get gain more money.
As I said; the screenshots looked nice. The game itself is a shame IMVHO. Why not put the effort and money into something new?
And it went from bad to even worse and then the whole serie stopped. Now I truly hope that these people won't do what so many did before them; making new episodes in which they use new techniques and the likes with old plots. Eventually we would then get another struggle against the cylons with the same old evil tactics used in the first series. In many cases the producers think that we won't remember it anyway because it was 'so long ago'.
But what would be even worse is that this same ingredient is enough to kill of the entire series and legend. Now most of us remember Battlestar Galactica being some nice SF series which (IMO at least) started to suck in the end. The 1st run however was quite good. If this new serie would indeed suck most people would eventually remember Battlestar Galactica as a sucky SF series and would even call us crazy for liking it; "heck, if the serie is as shitty as that I can't even imagine what horror the first series must have been".
Lets hope it won't come to that. Unfortunatly that is what happens most of the time... Remember the (IMHO great) SF series V? And the totally sucky 2nd series? If so you know exactly what I mean..
This is the logical next step. Just take a look at the modern computers these days; if you buy a PC and/or laptop you'll notice that the OS license is pinned on the machine these days. You don't buy yourself a computer and an OS, you'll get a computer with an OS. And if you decide to use another OS you cannot use the shipped OS on another computer. Simply because the license is pinned down to the computer.
I dislike that concept and I think this is a very bad thing(tm)as well. Its basicly the search for more money, nothing more nothing less. And I truly doubt if this increase of income will eventually lead to better software. Developing software is expensive, esp. for a company, and therefor I think they will use that exact 'excuse' to introduce this shit. Fortunatly people tend to become aware of all the options and possibilities M$ doesn't want us to know about. My personal & recent experience was with SSL.. Do it the M$ way and pay up ($895 / year). The *nix way would be openssl. Oh; I forgot; you need a brain for that :P
My Linux box (2.4.1) is compiled with many cool features (gotta love usb) and iptables is right among them. Thats right; my packeting firewall is handled by my system itself. I can hear many of you think 'yeah, what else is new'. Well; think about it... I've set it up manually and its pretty 'paranoially' setup.
Now, I'm going to use this service and my box will find another box and gets totally crazed about it. What would be the number one thing to do in order to get contact through the box?
Think about it... I *knew* it would be a bad idea getting packeting firewall support into the kernel :)
Ok, thats enough nonsense for me today :)))
IMO a very interessting idea but it would not work nevertheless. Sure; you can give a GUI the exact feel of a plain commandline but even then it would not be exactly the same.. I think the author is missing a very important point here. In theory he makes some very good points IMHO and indeed, in theory it could very well work out. But in the real world people tend to associate GUI's with completely configurable environments. iow; I can decide how the windows get placed, how big the fonts are, and the likes. Thats not really new. But going back to the article:
What if the shell popped up a window, showing you the last N commands you typed, or showed you what you would get if you hit tab at that point. Or let you mix a file selection dialog with the command line. You could type rm , select the files you want to remove
In this example the GUI would allmost feel like a commandline yet would not work. The "idiots" would demand a more flexible and more easy way to administrate their boxes while the more advanced users would still complain about the time it takes to transfer all the used data over the Net in order to remote administrate these servers.
Like I said, the author is missing a point here. At least IMHO.. If you really know what you are doing you don't need a GUI period. not even when you're administrating a Windows based (web)server.
My comany maintains some IIS (NT based) webservers mainly because we need the options NT offers (ASP). Sure; there may be much other options which can provide non-asp based solutions but that isn't an option and not the point here. Some time ago we had a major problem on the IIS part and I asked a colleague to help me out. I know my way around in IIS but I'm still, and prob. allways will be, *nix minded and therefor not interessted in IIS enough to specialize. He took control over the box using a remote admin tool and to my surprise immediatly did a "run program -> cmd". From there he typed like hell and did the rest to sort out the problems (yes; the solution worked as well).
Noticing my surprise he basicly told me that Windows never did let go of the commandline *if* you knew how to use it.
Experiences like this made me wonder about this whole GUI stuff as well and IMO it all boils down to the fact of acceptation.. People accept that you can or cannot do certain things in a console and get excited if something is possible. In a gui people are more demanding which tends to lead to more excessive environments. Personally I've never seen anyone on a console get freaked out on where a certain error message was placed yet in a GUI environment I tend to see people even move error messages to another spot...
It sure is different but all wrong? Whether you like it or not there are quite some NT servers out there which are also mounted in those racks you mentioned.
Indeed. Another part you are ignoring is that laptops are made to conserve power. Servers are not.
Getting things back up usually costs more power then letting them spin & run. I don't know about you and your servers but mine cannot give up on those hourly cronjobs since some jobs simply have to be done. So basicly I think it would end up consuming even more power then it does now. Not to mention the extra wear and shortened lifetime on the hardware which will surely not please my boss.
Now where did you got that load of crap from? Certainly not from the documentation, because those (QMail FAQ) state:
Is qmail compatible with sendmail? Answer: Yes. qmail supports .forward, /etc/aliases, binmail deliveries to a central mail spool in the usual mbox format, the /usr/{lib,sbin}/sendmail interface for mail injection, and the normal UNIX user database in /etc/passwd. There is a checklist for large sites moving from sendmail to qmail.
Do get the facts right before drawing conclusions whether something is or isn't possible.
If I did I would have mentioned it. :)
Besides; this is happening in China, not in France
That doesn't have to be the case, it all depends on how you create the magnetic field. A magnetic field on its own doesn't have anything electrical about it unless you move a coil through the field. Then you are creating electricity, the principle of the dynamo. But thats pretty hard to compare with a mobile phone; thats a totally different story.
The next thing you are totally forgetting is Faraday. If you're inside a metal train then the electro magnetic fields generated by this train (remember; the tracks aka bottom of the train is where the actions at) will surely have a hard time reaching you. Thats first class Physics (I do hope I got the verb right :)); the cage of Faraday.