I wouldn't necessarily agree with that. I think the average slashdot user has a hostile attitude towards any company that is a market leader or making profit. I also think the average slashdot user would be uninterested in Redhat Network because of a more do-it-yourself attitude.
I forgot to mention that he also said that they want to target the pda market because it is much more open than the desktop market. He even said that the desktop market will eventually come if they can really get the pda market.
A few months ago I had the opportunity to meet Redhat COO Tim Buckley at Penn State. I am a marketing major and I asked him about Redhat and marketing. Basically I asked him, what Redhat is doing to market to people who don't have a very strong idea about computing. I said that if someone perceives Linux as being too complicated to use, it is too complicated for them because a fundamental concept of marketing is the customer's perception is their reality. Ie. you can say Linux is easy to use until you are blue in the face but if people disagree, then you are wrong.
He said that is a major concern of Redhat's and they are working with Eazel and Gnome to make a better user interface, to ultimately make Linux easier to use.
He also went on to say that they want to agressively go after the pda market.
Pretty interesting stuff. He was a really positive guy who said he liked working for Redhat because he truly believed in the philosphies behind Linux.
I think for now on a slashdot poll should take the place of the electoral college. Sure their would be some ballot stuffing and that damn third party hemos the hamster would take votes from Al Gore.... But overall I think it is a good alternative.
I am a Penn State student and I think there is another question that needs to be answered.
Why are these lawyers going after Universities in the first place? I mean it seems like such a waste of time, a real drop in the bucket. If you really think about it, there are 12,000 students on the PSU campus, a recent statistic said that around 65% of college students say they have used Napster. So around 7,000 students have and use a solid connection to trade files. If PSU banned it, I really don't think there would be much of an effect. So many people have cable modems and dsl lines, it's not that a fast connection is that unique anymore.
I am sorry, I think that is a real waste of time for the lawyers considering that there 27 million users the last time I checked. I really just think it is obnoxious.
But before suing them, get another ebay account, and bid up a couple thousand dollars, let it get canceled, and then sue for all the money you "lost". However, I think a better idea would be to go to compusa and buy a shrink wrapped copy of any msoft product and save the receipt. I am not sure if they would really care about a Windows 3.1 copy. But then again, stranger things have happened.
>Though kids are stripped of Constitutional rights in most American schools, it's hard to believe courts will ultimately uphold educational or police actions taken on the basis of anonymous calls.
I am afraid that you are totally wrong in this statement. Kids are not stripped of their constitutional rights in American schools. However, their some rights are limited for very obvious reasons. Freedom of speech is one right that is limited because a school is considered a "special place" by the courts. Bethel vs. Fraser (1979) set the precedent that freedom of speech may be limited if the student is causing s distraction to the education others. This is simply a common sense law, a student who is yelling in the back of a room during a class can not justify his/her actions by claiming freedom of speech. However, as long as it is not a justifiable distraction, the courts will not uphold every Tom, Dick, and Harry principal that wants to censor a student for whatever stupid reason.
As for searches and the 4th amendment, recently there has been controversy over locker searches. What students do not realize is that their lockers are property of the school and are thereby subject to search. However I believe the jury is still out on whether or not school officials can search inside a backpack that is stored in a locker.
It is true that rights are limited in schools but to claim that kids are stripped of their constitutional rights is a completely false and erroneous claim. But on the other hand, the scary part is the school administrators who have the power to ignore or abuse these rights.
Yes and no. The only reason that the ground escape system exists is if there is a problem with the SRBs. If there was a problem with the liquid propellant engines then they can be easily shut off (unlike the SRBs), this has happened twice in the shuttle's history. If there is a problem with the SRBs after they are lit the bolts will not explode, and the shuttle will stay on the launch pad, giving the crew a few seconds (maybe, hopefully) to move to the ground escape system, then everything goes to hell.
As for the shuttle lifting almost instantaneously off the ground, that is not quite true either.
Here is an example T + 2.46 seconds - SRBs ignite T + 3 seconds bolts explode - liftoff.
However, if the computers detect a problem with the SRBs after ignition (T + 2.46 seconds), but before liftoff (T + 3 seconds), the bolts will not explode and that is when the ground escape system comes into use (because as I stated above, if the problem was with the liquid propelled, then they would simply shutoff and there would be no purpose for the ground escape system). The crew will have very little time to use this.
You do bring up some good points though. I will definitely agree with you that the shuttle is unsafe, and most of these safety mechanisms will have little chance of working.
>>>1. Sending up Russian Cosmonauts on the Space Shuttle, which they consider unsafe because there is no abort option for the entirety of the solid rocket booster burn (From liftoff to 2.5 minutes later, if anything goes wrong, everyone dies. No matter what.)
Nope. You are wrong. There are actually two escape systems on the shuttle. The first is on the ground, in case something goes wrong with the solid rocket boosters, then there is a special escape cart that the astronauts can jump onto which will take them to an underground bunker. However, the effectiveness of this is in doubt because the astronauts would have to move pretty quickly to get onto it.
Once they are in the air, if something goes wrong (and it is noticed by nasa), then the astronauts can parachute out of the shuttle. There is a pole that they can strap on to. However, there are a few problems with this escape mechanism as well; the astronauts may not be able to exit the shuttle in time and there is a good chance that they may hit the wing on the way out.
I know there is doubt whether these systems will work, but there is a way to abort, albeit with little chance of escape, but they are there.
I go to Penn State, and I live in Beaver Hall, which isn't that far from Beaver Stadium, and East Beaver Avenue. Everyone makes fun of me when I tell them I live in Beaver Hall, oh well, I don't care (and I am not kidding either)....
I don't really see a particularily good point in changing the name. I don't think they should accomodate some crappy censoring program, it should be the other way around, that is what is wrong with censorware.
I go to Penn State and they have a policy that does not allow links to commmercial websites. The policy when it was originally written made it sound like they were not going to allow anyone to link any commercial website, ie. I wouldn't have been able to link redhat.com from my personal website. But they revised it and made it so that only official Penn State webpages could not have commercial links unless approved by the Executive Director of University relations. Supposedly pages were being corrupted with too many commercial links that did not have anything to do with the university.
I think it is a stupid waste of time. Anyways here is the url for the policy
What if you have passwords on your computer that prevent people from viewing the contents of your harddrive? Are you required to give that password to the forensics experts? Are they allowed to try to crack your passwords?
Yeah, I am a former psu compsci dropout too:), Along with two friends, one an exchange student on full scholarship who turned down the Fullbright scholarship and the other a salutatorian. Hmm.... go figure... if anyone is reading this, DO NOT go to Penn State for Compsci.
Tom Ridge is very outspoken about technology in general. He really wants to keep people who are experienced with computers in Pennslyvania. Too many people who know about technology leave Pennsylvania for better places to live suchas California, and that is what he refers to as the "Brain Drain."
However, my question for him has always been, what is he really doing about it? For example, I am a student at Penn State and our computer science program accepts only 100 students per year. I think it is hypocritical to complain about a "brain drain" and then have an under-funded compsci program at the largest and most funded university in Pennsylvannia. Other universities that are near high-tech centers, generally have large computer science programs, ie. University of Maryland - College Park has a program with over 1000 students, which is only a gridlocked beltway drive away from Northern Virginia.
Oh well... he just wants to get re-elected... hypocrite.
>But with an MP3 rip, it is identical, and it doesn't cost anything to do it.
Mp3 rips are very lossy, the sound difference is easily discernable depending upon the ripper, especially at the almost-mp3-standard of 128 kbps. If you listen closely to an mp3 you can easily hear a whooshing sound. Personally I think mp3s will die because people will begin to care more about digital audio as they buy better computer speakers.
Once lossless encoding is adopted like the shn, then I think the music industry will have serious problems. However, lossless encoded shns is currently not decodable on the fly like mp3s are.
Has anyone heard of this service? You pay 200 bucks for 200 mbs for life. No real restrictions. I have contemplated using it, however, I am afraid, they will take my money and then close down after 3 months. Or maybe I am just being paranoid, but personally I think that 200 mbs for the rest of your life is a pretty good deal or am I wrong? www.nomonthlyfees.com
I guarantee there will never be a Microsoft Windows 2001, they would never live it down with all of the Hal comparisons, it would be a never ending joke.
Error ! Uninstall Internet Explorer, "Dave, I am afraid I can't do that. Internet Explorer is too important to this mission." Do what Dave did.
Usually I don't respond to flames, but when someone has no sense of humor I kind of think it is pathetic. The story is of course true, but I told it tongue and cheek hoping someone would get a laugh out of it, I do everytime I tell it. But you obviously took it seriously, thinking I was someone that needed a shrink. That is pretty funny in itself. And as for your comment on my physical attributes, I am 6'3, 200 lbs....and I am dating a blond...not to be a braggard or anything. Lighten up.
When I was a Senior in High School I was our school mascot, Wally Wolverine (although I really think it was a cheap chipmunk costume because they couldn't find a wolverine). At the pep rally, once people realized that it was I under the costume, they (my friends and enemies) started to beat the crap out of me, thinking it was funny and that their punches did not hurt. However, I could really feel their fists through the foam and it really hurt. I retired after the pep rally and this really annoying girl took over, but of course because she was a girl nobody beat her up, even though she might have deserved it.
I think that it is a very bad idea to have a single protocol. For one main reason, I believe that Microsoft would eventually beat the competition out. I can see it happening just as it happened with Netscape. Microsoft would "integrate" instant messaging with internet explorer and then everyone would just start using Microsoft Instant messaging instead of the most popular today aol im.
I am sorry, but I just think that a protocol is a bad idea when you look at how Microsoft has abused their market share to force other companies out of the market.
My professor once said, "Someone is taking my notes, and copyrighting them." (there is always a little disclaimer on the bottom of the notes) There are some interesting questions that need to be answered. You could almost think of it, as if you went to see a band in concert, taped it, copyrighted, and sold it. It is very similar, you are paying admission to the concert (tuition), and you are making a copy (the students impression of notes). However, since I am not a legal expert I can't make a judgement, but there are some similarities.
The worst part is, when professors buy the notes and make exams from everything that was covered in class that wasn't on the notes. I am not a fan of the notes....
"The next day, he was in the local juvenile detention center for suspicion of making "terroristic threats."(Perhaps a bit ingenuously, Beamon told reporters he spent his time in jail reading the Bible)."
I am pretty impressed that a kid would say something like that. That really is ingenius and it also shows a very healthy patience.... something that is probably lacking in people who run around with shotguns shooting people. I know if I was thrown in jail for writing a fictional tale, the second I would talk to reporters, I would be ranting and raving...
Slashdot Mirror
If I had known his name was Clinton, I would have asked him if he knew what the meaning of "is" is. Maybe this Clinton would have known. Doh!
Fis
I wouldn't necessarily agree with that. I think the average slashdot user has a hostile attitude towards any company that is a market leader or making profit. I also think the average slashdot user would be uninterested in Redhat Network because of a more do-it-yourself attitude.
I forgot to mention that he also said that they want to target the pda market because it is much more open than the desktop market. He even said that the desktop market will eventually come if they can really get the pda market.
>who are they marketing to, exactly?
A few months ago I had the opportunity to meet Redhat COO Tim Buckley at Penn State. I am a marketing major and I asked him about Redhat and marketing. Basically I asked him, what Redhat is doing to market to people who don't have a very strong idea about computing. I said that if someone perceives Linux as being too complicated to use, it is too complicated for them because a fundamental concept of marketing is the customer's perception is their reality. Ie. you can say Linux is easy to use until you are blue in the face but if people disagree, then you are wrong.
He said that is a major concern of Redhat's and they are working with Eazel and Gnome to make a better user interface, to ultimately make Linux easier to use.
He also went on to say that they want to agressively go after the pda market.
Pretty interesting stuff. He was a really positive guy who said he liked working for Redhat because he truly believed in the philosphies behind Linux.
Ben
I think for now on a slashdot poll should take the place of the electoral college. Sure their would be some ballot stuffing and that damn third party hemos the hamster would take votes from Al Gore.... But overall I think it is a good alternative.
Fisics
I am a Penn State student and I think there is another question that needs to be answered.
Why are these lawyers going after Universities in the first place? I mean it seems like such a waste of time, a real drop in the bucket. If you really think about it, there are 12,000 students on the PSU campus, a recent statistic said that around 65% of college students say they have used Napster. So around 7,000 students have and use a solid connection to trade files. If PSU banned it, I really don't think there would be much of an effect. So many people have cable modems and dsl lines, it's not that a fast connection is that unique anymore.
I am sorry, I think that is a real waste of time for the lawyers considering that there 27 million users the last time I checked. I really just think it is obnoxious.
Fisics
[Oh, and then sue them, of course]
But before suing them, get another ebay account, and bid up a couple thousand dollars, let it get canceled, and then sue for all the money you "lost". However, I think a better idea would be to go to compusa and buy a shrink wrapped copy of any msoft product and save the receipt. I am not sure if they would really care about a Windows 3.1 copy. But then again, stranger things have happened.
Fis
That is really impressive. Good Chaucer reference.
>Though kids are stripped of Constitutional rights in most American schools, it's hard to believe courts will ultimately uphold educational or police actions taken on the basis of anonymous calls.
I am afraid that you are totally wrong in this statement. Kids are not stripped of their constitutional rights in American schools. However, their some rights are limited for very obvious reasons. Freedom of speech is one right that is limited because a school is considered a "special place" by the courts. Bethel vs. Fraser (1979) set the precedent that freedom of speech may be limited if the student is causing s distraction to the education others. This is simply a common sense law, a student who is yelling in the back of a room during a class can not justify his/her actions by claiming freedom of speech. However, as long as it is not a justifiable distraction, the courts will not uphold every Tom, Dick, and Harry principal that wants to censor a student for whatever stupid reason.
As for searches and the 4th amendment, recently there has been controversy over locker searches. What students do not realize is that their lockers are property of the school and are thereby subject to search. However I believe the jury is still out on whether or not school officials can search inside a backpack that is stored in a locker.
It is true that rights are limited in schools but to claim that kids are stripped of their constitutional rights is a completely false and erroneous claim. But on the other hand, the scary part is the school administrators who have the power to ignore or abuse these rights.
Ben
Yes and no. The only reason that the ground escape system exists is if there is a problem with the SRBs. If there was a problem with the liquid propellant engines then they can be easily shut off (unlike the SRBs), this has happened twice in the shuttle's history. If there is a problem with the SRBs after they are lit the bolts will not explode, and the shuttle will stay on the launch pad, giving the crew a few seconds (maybe, hopefully) to move to the ground escape system, then everything goes to hell.
As for the shuttle lifting almost instantaneously off the ground, that is not quite true either.
Here is an example
T + 2.46 seconds - SRBs ignite
T + 3 seconds bolts explode - liftoff.
However, if the computers detect a problem with the SRBs after ignition (T + 2.46 seconds), but before liftoff (T + 3 seconds), the bolts will not explode and that is when the ground escape system comes into use (because as I stated above, if the problem was with the liquid propelled, then they would simply shutoff and there would be no purpose for the ground escape system). The crew will have very little time to use this.
You do bring up some good points though. I will definitely agree with you that the shuttle is unsafe, and most of these safety mechanisms will have little chance of working.
Fis
>>>1. Sending up Russian Cosmonauts on the Space Shuttle, which they consider unsafe because there is no abort option for the entirety of the solid rocket booster burn (From liftoff to 2.5 minutes later, if anything goes wrong, everyone dies. No matter what.)
Nope. You are wrong. There are actually two escape systems on the shuttle. The first is on the ground, in case something goes wrong with the solid rocket boosters, then there is a special escape cart that the astronauts can jump onto which will take them to an underground bunker. However, the effectiveness of this is in doubt because the astronauts would have to move pretty quickly to get onto it.
Once they are in the air, if something goes wrong (and it is noticed by nasa), then the astronauts can parachute out of the shuttle. There is a pole that they can strap on to. However, there are a few problems with this escape mechanism as well; the astronauts may not be able to exit the shuttle in time and there is a good chance that they may hit the wing on the way out.
I know there is doubt whether these systems will work, but there is a way to abort, albeit with little chance of escape, but they are there.
Fis
And in a related story....
I really like this press release from Oracle comparing linux to a chia pet. I thought it was kind of funny.
Ben
I go to Penn State, and I live in Beaver Hall, which isn't that far from Beaver Stadium, and East Beaver Avenue. Everyone makes fun of me when I tell them I live in Beaver Hall, oh well, I don't care (and I am not kidding either)....
I don't really see a particularily good point in changing the name. I don't think they should accomodate some crappy censoring program, it should be the other way around, that is what is wrong with censorware.
Ben
I go to Penn State and they have a policy that does not allow links to commmercial websites. The policy when it was originally written made it sound like they were not going to allow anyone to link any commercial website, ie. I wouldn't have been able to link redhat.com from my personal website. But they revised it and made it so that only official Penn State webpages could not have commercial links unless approved by the Executive Director of University relations. Supposedly pages were being corrupted with too many commercial links that did not have anything to do with the university.
I think it is a stupid waste of time. Anyways here is the url for the policy
Ben
What if you have passwords on your computer that prevent people from viewing the contents of your harddrive? Are you required to give that password to the forensics experts? Are they allowed to try to crack your passwords?
Does anyone have any insight?
Ben
Yeah, I am a former psu compsci dropout too :), Along with two friends, one an exchange student on full scholarship who turned down the Fullbright scholarship and the other a salutatorian. Hmm.... go figure... if anyone is reading this, DO NOT go to Penn State for Compsci.
Ben
Tom Ridge is very outspoken about technology in general. He really wants to keep people who are experienced with computers in Pennslyvania. Too many people who know about technology leave Pennsylvania for better places to live suchas California, and that is what he refers to as the "Brain Drain."
However, my question for him has always been, what is he really doing about it? For example, I am a student at Penn State and our computer science program accepts only 100 students per year. I think it is hypocritical to complain about a "brain drain" and then have an under-funded compsci program at the largest and most funded university in Pennsylvannia. Other universities that are near high-tech centers, generally have large computer science programs, ie. University of Maryland - College Park has a program with over 1000 students, which is only a gridlocked beltway drive away from Northern Virginia.
Oh well... he just wants to get re-elected... hypocrite.
Ben
>But with an MP3 rip, it is identical, and it doesn't cost anything to do it.
Mp3 rips are very lossy, the sound difference is easily discernable depending upon the ripper, especially at the almost-mp3-standard of 128 kbps. If you listen closely to an mp3 you can easily hear a whooshing sound. Personally I think mp3s will die because people will begin to care more about digital audio as they buy better computer speakers.
Once lossless encoding is adopted like the shn, then I think the music industry will have serious problems. However, lossless encoded shns is currently not decodable on the fly like mp3s are.
Ben
for information on shns, visit www.softsound.com
Has anyone heard of this service? You pay 200 bucks for 200 mbs for life. No real restrictions. I have contemplated using it, however, I am afraid, they will take my money and then close down after 3 months. Or maybe I am just being paranoid, but personally I think that 200 mbs for the rest of your life is a pretty good deal or am I wrong? www.nomonthlyfees.com
Ben
I guarantee there will never be a Microsoft Windows 2001, they would never live it down with all of the Hal comparisons, it would be a never ending joke.
Error ! Uninstall Internet Explorer, "Dave, I am afraid I can't do that. Internet Explorer is too important to this mission." Do what Dave did.
Usually I don't respond to flames, but when someone has no sense of humor I kind of think it is pathetic. The story is of course true, but I told it tongue and cheek hoping someone would get a laugh out of it, I do everytime I tell it. But you obviously took it seriously, thinking I was someone that needed a shrink. That is pretty funny in itself. And as for your comment on my physical attributes, I am 6'3, 200 lbs....and I am dating a blond...not to be a braggard or anything. Lighten up.
Ben
When I was a Senior in High School I was our school mascot, Wally Wolverine (although I really think it was a cheap chipmunk costume because they couldn't find a wolverine). At the pep rally, once people realized that it was I under the costume, they (my friends and enemies) started to beat the crap out of me, thinking it was funny and that their punches did not hurt. However, I could really feel their fists through the foam and it really hurt. I retired after the pep rally and this really annoying girl took over, but of course because she was a girl nobody beat her up, even though she might have deserved it.
Ben
Of course Netscape was not a protocol, but it used a protocol that Microsoft had full access to, http.
Ben
I think that it is a very bad idea to have a single protocol. For one main reason, I believe that Microsoft would eventually beat the competition out. I can see it happening just as it happened with Netscape. Microsoft would "integrate" instant messaging with internet explorer and then everyone would just start using Microsoft Instant messaging instead of the most popular today aol im.
I am sorry, but I just think that a protocol is a bad idea when you look at how Microsoft has abused their market share to force other companies out of the market.
Ben
My professor once said, "Someone is taking my notes, and copyrighting them." (there is always a little disclaimer on the bottom of the notes) There are some interesting questions that need to be answered. You could almost think of it, as if you went to see a band in concert, taped it, copyrighted, and sold it. It is very similar, you are paying admission to the concert (tuition), and you are making a copy (the students impression of notes). However, since I am not a legal expert I can't make a judgement, but there are some similarities.
The worst part is, when professors buy the notes and make exams from everything that was covered in class that wasn't on the notes. I am not a fan of the notes....
Ben
"The next day, he was in the local juvenile detention center for suspicion of making "terroristic threats."(Perhaps a bit ingenuously, Beamon told reporters he spent his time in jail reading the Bible)."
I am pretty impressed that a kid would say something like that. That really is ingenius and it also shows a very healthy patience.... something that is probably lacking in people who run around with shotguns shooting people. I know if I was thrown in jail for writing a fictional tale, the second I would talk to reporters, I would be ranting and raving...
Fisics