To Jeffrey Kaplan,
Why is there such a negative attitude towards bots and the makers of botting software. The usual arguments of gold farming don't cut it - if everyone has the ability to bot then the value of outside gold sellers automatically deflates.
I don't buy the negative effect on other players argument either; It creates an equal advantage or disadvantage if regulated instead of taking a total prohibition to botting.
It would not be unreasonable to think that botting can coexist inside of MMO's. In fact, I think it could enhance the experience much in the same way that autopilot enhances flying: It didn't replace the pilot, it just allows the pilot to take a more managerial role when needed.
The US government needs to choose it's tax laws carefully, less it incite a revolution. If the federal government levies a sales tax on transactions, the US citizens need to then realize that we're being taxed twice on money earned. We unjustly pay a federal income tax on our labor, which is specifically prohibited in the constitution. Now, we're going to be asked to pay a tax for spending the money we've already paid tax's one. It's one thing to stay it's a state tax, but it's quite another to pass something of that magnitude in Congress.
So to our government, I say this: Pick One! Which would you rather have? Tax my income, or tax my spending? To tax both is too much.
Maybe we need to water the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants. And maybe the government should keep in mind how this country was founded, and why our fore fathers started a revolution against Britain in the first place.
I for one will be writing my congressman in the strongest language appropriate, urging him to oppose this.
Well, this clinches it for me. As a Virginia resident with a child about to enter grade school, my only option now is private school. I'm tired of public education in this state, and in this country as a whole.
This has nothing to do with the teachers, who do a wonderful job with what they're given, but the way they're forced to teach. Which is to say the government won't let our teachers teach in public schools. Gone are the days where children were allowed to explore a topic that interested them, now they need to stay on-track to regiments of "The Standards of Learning". And honestly, when you think about it, all that the "No child left behind act" has done for us is forced schools to teach to the lowest common denominator.
Anyway, this is just another case of politicians with too much time and not enough understanding. Get the politics out of our schools, get the government out of our schools, and let the teachers teach. Until then, private education is our only hope (until the government fucks that up too).
MySQL decides to comply with the GNU General Public License and only give its tested, certified Enterprise code to those who pay for the service underlying that code (gasp!). Immediately cries of protest are raised, How dare MySQL not give everything away for free?"
Right, so so how is this closing the source? The source is still available, and it's still open source. I think the author here has confused open source with "free", and their not interchangeable terms. There is plenty of open source software that also happens to be free, thats F/OSS. There is also plenty of software that is free, but isn't necessarily open source, thats Freeware. This is really a non-issue, the source is still available, and they also continue to have and support a F/OSS version of code base.
Personally, I think this is a positive move for them. It's a positive move for the technology community as a whole as well. When my team looks at investing in technology for our business, we usually like to have a positive feeling that the technology will still be relevant 5 years and 10 years from when we purchase it. This move will make it easier for me to deploy MySQL in the enterprise, as I can now say to my review comity - "Look, they have a revenue source. They'll be around 5 years from now, and they'll be there to honor any support contract we purchase from them". Whereas in the past, I could only argue the point that they've been there a while, they should still be there a while from now. So, positive move in my book, not just for them, but for the technology community as a whole.
I've got several bad IT scenarios that I could share, but this one is the best I've personally seen.
The building my company is in was never designed to house IT infrastructure - even new newer additions are not build to house IT infrastructure. But we've made do and put infrastructure where we can, even if it means sharing a closet with the cleaning crew. One such closet had and old catalyst 2900 24 port switch in it, with the ports facing upwards. The connection are nice and hardwired into the switch, and generally looks like a rats nest (it pre-dates my employment). Recently in the renovation of the floor above it, the construction crew needed to poor a new floor. It didn't occur to them to plug the holes that had been drilled through the old floor over time, or cap the stubbed in conduit that had been put in. As a result of this the switch with it's ports facing upwards was filled with concrete. Completely and utterly filled. The cleaning crew reported that the fans made an awful noise for days. The switch never failed and is still in operation, although we can't unplug any cables or plug any new wiring into it.
At a different company, the server administrator was deeply convinced that rack mount server cases were evil and caused problem. He didn't want to use tower or desktop cases either, his reasoning? They were ugly (his words). The solution? He ordered servers, removed the motherboards from them, zip tied them into the rack via their screw-down holes, and placed the hard drives directly on top with cardboard "protecting" them from the motherboard. 5 racks of servers mounted just like this. I quite after a week of working for them, as I didn't want to be anywhere near that place when a zip-tie failed.
Not that I want to make an argument against drinking, I mean what would my best friend Jack D. think of me? BUT, couldn't this data also be interpreted to read 82% of those studied studied drank less? Or more than 18% of all studied suffered from clinical alcoholism - which is roughly defined as continued excessive or compulsive use of alcoholic drinks - and clinically defined as not being able to go without an alcoholic beverage for longer than a day? I could, then, possibly infer that 18% of those studied could just possibly be luckier than the rest of the population, and that it as nothing to do with the alcohol.
The article didn't go into great detail on exactly how this was measured, only that it comprised of 34 larger studies. Personally, I think it's junk science, or a failing attempt to make or influence those prone to alcoholism become full blown alcoholics.
I'll still continue to drink at my normal pace of getting piss drunk before my wife's family comes over, but pretty much not drinking at any other time. Just my 2 cents.
I use Komodo from ActiveState (http://www.activestate.com). It's cross-platform, runs well on *nix/Windows/and OS X, and has a very good feature set. It's extremely flexable, supports plugins, language syntax, error checking (the basics of what you would expect in any IDE). It's a commercial utility, but the price tag isnt terrible (Pro for ~$300, Personal for ~$30). One my favorite features is the regex explorer, which lets you see the effects of regex expressions without running your program - a handy feature if you do alot of regex manipulation.
Gentoo is obviously the end-all be-all answer to linux distros, I can pimp it out just like my '86 honda that I spent more the stereo system on than the car is worth!
Seriously though, I don't foresee any one distro putting an end to another distro. It's simply the design of linux to have many different distros suited around the likes and dislikes of smaller sub-communities. I use several different flavors depending on what I'm trying to accomplish, what software I need to run, etc... That's really what any good sysadmin does (or should do): evaluate your needs first, preferences second, and budget third - then choose your best solution. Be it Debian, Fedora/Red Hat, Ubuntu, or yes - even Gentoo.
At a previous company I was with, we ran CommunigatePro, with roughly 500,000 users on it. Our cluster had only 4 machines to support this, and we had plenty of room to grow. They offer great support, and have several installation services. Everything is customizable in it, and has all the features you requested.
I'll give away one of these laptops for every acre of land my pacific beach-front property purchased. Located in Oaklahoma, and only $2500 per acre. Just send checks made out to me, Cash, and I'll send you the laptop and the property deeds. Any buyers?
In the healthcare and financial industries, this kind of monitoring is required (as oposed to others where it's just company policy). Regulations, such as hipaa and sarbanes-oxley, require that "resonable and responsible" measures be taken to safeguard information deemed "covered" or "confidential" by those regulations. Working in the healthcare industry, this meens scanning all in- and outbound email for signs of protected health information (PHI). Any instance where PHI is found to be transmitted un-encrypted has to be assessed for the impact and implications of the discoluser of information, and may require being turned over to a hippa advisory board (usualy corporate lawers and top level administration), who in turn descides if legal action need be taken against the offending party. I'm not sure about the specifics of sarbanes-oxley as I'm not in the finacial sector, but from what I've read, it's very similar.
Personally, I liked the movie. I went in with absolutely no expectations, or delusions of grandeur - and I feel that that is the single largest mistake most people made. How often do we see that, no matter how good the book was, the movie is less? Every time. EX: LOTR was a great series of books; The movies were good as well; The movies and the books are similar, but different. It's the same with H2G2.
We see the converse of this where movies have been adapted to book form. The books don't follow the movie, has a different flow of events, and is usually written in a new perspective. Most are bad, some are good - it depends on the writer.
Personally, I'd like to see a five part trilogy - I think it would be great. I don't, however, have any expectation that it would, or even should, follow the books with a faithfulness of more than using the ideas in them, and building anew. With the proper writers, script editors, etc.., a series of movies could be great. It also brings me to another point - if the movies were to be close followings of the books, don't you think it would get monotones? Do we really want our own visions of what we think it should be, of how we picture it on our own minds, shattered by something that strives to be an exact copy? I wouldn't. I'd want something that I could watch, and maybe see the story from a new angle, not the same old thing regurgitated in a visual form.
Personally speaking, I've never had a problem with my DNS servers being ignored. Then again, I took the time to educate myself on how DNS actually works. I got the O'Reilly book 'BIND', read the faqs on djbdns, played with MS dns until I got sick (so, like under 5 minutes with that one), and set up some real world, hard working name servers. I ran into many problems along the - I couldn't see the DNS changes outside of my network, they weren't updating correctly, etc...
So you know what did about? I fixed my damn mistakes, and the shinizzle started to work just fine. Yeah, that's right. I made some mistakes setting things up for the first time. I can admit it, I'm a big man (and I was young and needed the money).
Anyway, my point is this - It doesn't matter what DNS server you use (as long as it's not MS DNS), or what your religion is - If you read the documentation, and I mean read it, don't just skim over it and say "Uh huh.. oh that's interesting, I knew that.. ble. This book was written by a monkey, I don't need to make my crap work right", and you set up (initially at least) per the documentation - THEN IT WILL WORK.
Update your serials, most cach's just check the SOA - this is quicker and less costly than pulling the record down. If the serials match, then no change was made. You can even use a tool for administration (Webmin? not my thing, but you know...) that does this for you. PUT THE DAMN DOTS AFTER THE RECORDS.. this is the biggest problem newbs seen to have with dns. Yes, it's a period, just like ending a sentence. Oh, thats right, you learned l337 sp34k in skool. Yeah, you're useless (not you per se, but a generalization of the 90's generation).
Check out www.dns.net, it's a great resource, really.
Most importantly, make sure your stuff works before you complain about how the world doesn't like you. If you don't, it's incompetence, and I've fired people for less.
Sorry for the harsh tone of the message, but I'm a bitter sysadmin with the HIPAA dedline tomorrow and fresh-out-of-college grad that needs to be trained, and I had to vent somewhere... I mean, I'm saving that "Another insane UNIX sysadmin killed is co-workers" headline for another Slashdot day...
"Next, you have inherently great security built into Linux. Windows requires more of a careful hand, and is far more prone to virii,"
I have several problems with this statement. I disagree that Linux inherently has great security. Linux has good security, but security isn't really a product, it's not just something that you turn on and, poof, your secure. It's easier to harden Linux, than it is to harden Windows - thats true, but they can both become as secure with one another. It requires alot of work, reguardless of the OS - Most of that work actualy goes into educating your users, not physicaly "securing" your machine.
I feel that Linux is just as prone to virii as any other operating system - we just haven't seen that many for it. I strongly feel that in the next 5 years, it will become a much larger problem.
"The strength of the Windows platform does NOT lie in its products. It does NOT lie in its technological marvels. It lies in its simple interoperability with other applications that are polished. Microsoft Outlook ties in great with Microsoft Word, Excel. Microsoft BizTalk ties in great with.NET. Microsoft's Windows platform makes that all come to life."
That interoperability really goes along way with keeping Windows as the dominant OS. We're just now starting to see more mainstream applications for Linux coming out, but it's far from a simple install process - and who do call when it goes wrong? That truely is a huge area where Linux needs to be improved for the general users. Sure, the developers say email them, but what if you can't get your modem or NIC working? Who are you going to email? and how?
Anyway, just some general observations - I'm in a pissy mood with the hipaa deadline looming.
I read this somewhere along the way, so I'll regurgitate it here. A study was done on people who had never used computers before. What they found, was that the platform OS didn't matter, be it Linux; Windows; or MacOS. They each had their own learning curves, and regardless of the operating system they had just used, moving to a new OS did not reduce the learning curve by much for that OS. The study also observed that regardless of OS, the subjects were usually against changing, due to the learning curve. It also noted that MacOS had the lowest learning curve (this was circa MacOS 9), and Linux had the highest learning curve. If I could remember where I read it, I would link it... maybe someone else knows.
So, I guess we could infer from that study, that there will always be Microsoft people: because they don't want to learn anything new; And there will always be Linux users: because they like a challenge; And MacOS 9 users are just lazy...
I was really hoping for the death penalty on this conviction, but ya take what you can get.
Seriously though, this guy will probably be out in 2 years, maybe 3. I think a more applicable punishment is removing these people from using electronic means. Like what the FBI and Secret Service used to do the "hacker" community. Take away their right to use a computer. Jail time or no, thats what is really going to stop these people from sending out spam.
After the fall-out affects of the dot-bomb era, I think the perception of us techies has truly changed, and not in a very positive way. What most people (and I mean the 70% who don't follow what's going on around them) fail to realize, is that the dot-bomb era was a cause of mis-management, bad ideas, and far too many people with the idea that if they "learned" computers, they would become the next Bill Gates. The paradigm shifted around 2001 from "Wow, you know how to program" to "Yeah, you programmers are a dime a dozen, be happy I gave YOU a job". I don't see the current perception changing for at least 2 years either. Anyway, food for thought...
Ok, after reading comments talking about how this is just more censorship, or how this is giving even more control to governments, I have to say that I disagree with that. This is in fact, IMHO, a mostly good thing.
First off, it's not censorship. Censorship is shutting down, or forcing the alterations of ones message. This is neither. This ensures the rights of those who wish to exercise them. E.G. Your rights stop where mine begin, and likewise. If I choose not to listen to what your saying, then I don't have to listen to it. The same applies here. Those people, parents or otherwise, who choose to have such content filtered, may do so. It is, in no way, pushed onto them. Nor is pushed onto those sites who affected by it. This simply provides a regulated means to solve a perceived problem.
Secondly, I feel a rating system is long over-due. It's no different, in principal, than say a movie type rating system. For those who don't want to their kids to an 'R' rated movie, don't buy movies with 'R' ratings. Others don't really care, and it doest affect them. How, in principal, is this any different. I foresee some implementation issues, and growing pains on the technical side, but thats to be expected.
More importantly, this only affects those in Utah. So if your not in Utah, your current impact of this decision is ZERO. Sure, this could become some federal rule down the road. It's probable that some other states will adopt similar policies. Hell, we could even have an asteroid destroy all of mankind.
My point is, is that this allows those who feel offended by such content, a means not to feel exposed to it. It's really a government approved Net-Nanny. Thats all.
I've seen allot of arguments for and against the GPL. I don't really take sides either way, but here are my general observations about it.
Allot of people have the common mis-conception that just because software is released as being free, that they can do what ever they want with it. The truth is, if that were the case, then all we would have is mass chaos. This would lead to (more) code stealing and mis-use of IP.
Another mis-conception that I see, is that people believe if your code extends, in/any/ way, code that has a GPL license, that you must also release your code under the GPL. It's my understanding that this is not so. If you modify code covered under the GPL, then you have to release your modifications. If you use code covered under the GPL, then you have to release copies of that source. If you create/new/ code, but it depends on a GPL item, then you can release your code under whatever license you see fit - open or closed source.
Anyway, I've forgotten my original point here, so I'll just say this:
We can't have Free/Open Source without rules; That would just be Chaotic/Open Source. And if you violate the GPL, you deserve to be sued for. It's akin to breaking a Constitutional Amendment. I mean really....
I don't trust anything that I send out to, or receive from, the Internet. This includes any chat programs, email, web content, etc... It's a basic security principal. If it isn't encrypted and signed by a trusted source, than it's not trusted material. If it is encrypted, then it's only a matter of time before the encryption key becomes known. You increase this risk every time you send an encrypted message/packet. So, AOL coming out and telling you that have no expectation of anonymity is something that everyone in the security field has been saying for years.
Then again, I don't trust anyone, and it's not paranoia if "they" really are out to get you....
Slashdot Mirror
To Jeffrey Kaplan,
Why is there such a negative attitude towards bots and the makers of botting software. The usual arguments of gold farming don't cut it - if everyone has the ability to bot then the value of outside gold sellers automatically deflates.
I don't buy the negative effect on other players argument either; It creates an equal advantage or disadvantage if regulated instead of taking a total prohibition to botting.
It would not be unreasonable to think that botting can coexist inside of MMO's. In fact, I think it could enhance the experience much in the same way that autopilot enhances flying: It didn't replace the pilot, it just allows the pilot to take a more managerial role when needed.
The US government needs to choose it's tax laws carefully, less it incite a revolution. If the federal government levies a sales tax on transactions, the US citizens need to then realize that we're being taxed twice on money earned. We unjustly pay a federal income tax on our labor, which is specifically prohibited in the constitution. Now, we're going to be asked to pay a tax for spending the money we've already paid tax's one. It's one thing to stay it's a state tax, but it's quite another to pass something of that magnitude in Congress.
So to our government, I say this: Pick One! Which would you rather have? Tax my income, or tax my spending? To tax both is too much.
Maybe we need to water the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants. And maybe the government should keep in mind how this country was founded, and why our fore fathers started a revolution against Britain in the first place. I for one will be writing my congressman in the strongest language appropriate, urging him to oppose this.
Well, this clinches it for me. As a Virginia resident with a child about to enter grade school, my only option now is private school. I'm tired of public education in this state, and in this country as a whole.
This has nothing to do with the teachers, who do a wonderful job with what they're given, but the way they're forced to teach. Which is to say the government won't let our teachers teach in public schools. Gone are the days where children were allowed to explore a topic that interested them, now they need to stay on-track to regiments of "The Standards of Learning". And honestly, when you think about it, all that the "No child left behind act" has done for us is forced schools to teach to the lowest common denominator.
Anyway, this is just another case of politicians with too much time and not enough understanding. Get the politics out of our schools, get the government out of our schools, and let the teachers teach. Until then, private education is our only hope (until the government fucks that up too).
Wasn't this already covered in the move Evolution?
Personally, I think this is a positive move for them. It's a positive move for the technology community as a whole as well. When my team looks at investing in technology for our business, we usually like to have a positive feeling that the technology will still be relevant 5 years and 10 years from when we purchase it. This move will make it easier for me to deploy MySQL in the enterprise, as I can now say to my review comity - "Look, they have a revenue source. They'll be around 5 years from now, and they'll be there to honor any support contract we purchase from them". Whereas in the past, I could only argue the point that they've been there a while, they should still be there a while from now. So, positive move in my book, not just for them, but for the technology community as a whole.
I've got several bad IT scenarios that I could share, but this one is the best I've personally seen.
The building my company is in was never designed to house IT infrastructure - even new newer additions are not build to house IT infrastructure. But we've made do and put infrastructure where we can, even if it means sharing a closet with the cleaning crew. One such closet had and old catalyst 2900 24 port switch in it, with the ports facing upwards. The connection are nice and hardwired into the switch, and generally looks like a rats nest (it pre-dates my employment). Recently in the renovation of the floor above it, the construction crew needed to poor a new floor. It didn't occur to them to plug the holes that had been drilled through the old floor over time, or cap the stubbed in conduit that had been put in. As a result of this the switch with it's ports facing upwards was filled with concrete. Completely and utterly filled. The cleaning crew reported that the fans made an awful noise for days. The switch never failed and is still in operation, although we can't unplug any cables or plug any new wiring into it.
At a different company, the server administrator was deeply convinced that rack mount server cases were evil and caused problem. He didn't want to use tower or desktop cases either, his reasoning? They were ugly (his words). The solution? He ordered servers, removed the motherboards from them, zip tied them into the rack via their screw-down holes, and placed the hard drives directly on top with cardboard "protecting" them from the motherboard. 5 racks of servers mounted just like this. I quite after a week of working for them, as I didn't want to be anywhere near that place when a zip-tie failed.
Not that I want to make an argument against drinking, I mean what would my best friend Jack D. think of me? BUT, couldn't this data also be interpreted to read 82% of those studied studied drank less? Or more than 18% of all studied suffered from clinical alcoholism - which is roughly defined as continued excessive or compulsive use of alcoholic drinks - and clinically defined as not being able to go without an alcoholic beverage for longer than a day? I could, then, possibly infer that 18% of those studied could just possibly be luckier than the rest of the population, and that it as nothing to do with the alcohol.
The article didn't go into great detail on exactly how this was measured, only that it comprised of 34 larger studies. Personally, I think it's junk science, or a failing attempt to make or influence those prone to alcoholism become full blown alcoholics.
I'll still continue to drink at my normal pace of getting piss drunk before my wife's family comes over, but pretty much not drinking at any other time. Just my 2 cents.
I use Komodo from ActiveState (http://www.activestate.com). It's cross-platform, runs well on *nix/Windows/and OS X, and has a very good feature set. It's extremely flexable, supports plugins, language syntax, error checking (the basics of what you would expect in any IDE). It's a commercial utility, but the price tag isnt terrible (Pro for ~$300, Personal for ~$30). One my favorite features is the regex explorer, which lets you see the effects of regex expressions without running your program - a handy feature if you do alot of regex manipulation.
Gentoo is obviously the end-all be-all answer to linux distros, I can pimp it out just like my '86 honda that I spent more the stereo system on than the car is worth!
Seriously though, I don't foresee any one distro putting an end to another distro. It's simply the design of linux to have many different distros suited around the likes and dislikes of smaller sub-communities. I use several different flavors depending on what I'm trying to accomplish, what software I need to run, etc... That's really what any good sysadmin does (or should do): evaluate your needs first, preferences second, and budget third - then choose your best solution. Be it Debian, Fedora/Red Hat, Ubuntu, or yes - even Gentoo.
My driver /license/ binds me to the /laws/ in my state. How is the GPL, being a license, any different?
At a previous company I was with, we ran CommunigatePro, with roughly 500,000 users on it. Our cluster had only 4 machines to support this, and we had plenty of room to grow. They offer great support, and have several installation services. Everything is customizable in it, and has all the features you requested.
I'll give away one of these laptops for every acre of land my pacific beach-front property purchased. Located in Oaklahoma, and only $2500 per acre. Just send checks made out to me, Cash, and I'll send you the laptop and the property deeds. Any buyers?
In the healthcare and financial industries, this kind of monitoring is required (as oposed to others where it's just company policy). Regulations, such as hipaa and sarbanes-oxley, require that "resonable and responsible" measures be taken to safeguard information deemed "covered" or "confidential" by those regulations. Working in the healthcare industry, this meens scanning all in- and outbound email for signs of protected health information (PHI). Any instance where PHI is found to be transmitted un-encrypted has to be assessed for the impact and implications of the discoluser of information, and may require being turned over to a hippa advisory board (usualy corporate lawers and top level administration), who in turn descides if legal action need be taken against the offending party. I'm not sure about the specifics of sarbanes-oxley as I'm not in the finacial sector, but from what I've read, it's very similar.
Personally, I liked the movie. I went in with absolutely no expectations, or delusions of grandeur - and I feel that that is the single largest mistake most people made. How often do we see that, no matter how good the book was, the movie is less? Every time. EX: LOTR was a great series of books; The movies were good as well; The movies and the books are similar, but different. It's the same with H2G2.
We see the converse of this where movies have been adapted to book form. The books don't follow the movie, has a different flow of events, and is usually written in a new perspective. Most are bad, some are good - it depends on the writer.
Personally, I'd like to see a five part trilogy - I think it would be great. I don't, however, have any expectation that it would, or even should, follow the books with a faithfulness of more than using the ideas in them, and building anew. With the proper writers, script editors, etc.., a series of movies could be great. It also brings me to another point - if the movies were to be close followings of the books, don't you think it would get monotones? Do we really want our own visions of what we think it should be, of how we picture it on our own minds, shattered by something that strives to be an exact copy? I wouldn't. I'd want something that I could watch, and maybe see the story from a new angle, not the same old thing regurgitated in a visual form.
Anyway, just my two cents worth.
Personally speaking, I've never had a problem with my DNS servers being ignored. Then again, I took the time to educate myself on how DNS actually works. I got the O'Reilly book 'BIND', read the faqs on djbdns, played with MS dns until I got sick (so, like under 5 minutes with that one), and set up some real world, hard working name servers. I ran into many problems along the - I couldn't see the DNS changes outside of my network, they weren't updating correctly, etc...
So you know what did about? I fixed my damn mistakes, and the shinizzle started to work just fine. Yeah, that's right. I made some mistakes setting things up for the first time. I can admit it, I'm a big man (and I was young and needed the money).
Anyway, my point is this - It doesn't matter what DNS server you use (as long as it's not MS DNS), or what your religion is - If you read the documentation, and I mean read it, don't just skim over it and say "Uh huh.. oh that's interesting, I knew that.. ble. This book was written by a monkey, I don't need to make my crap work right", and you set up (initially at least) per the documentation - THEN IT WILL WORK.
Update your serials, most cach's just check the SOA - this is quicker and less costly than pulling the record down. If the serials match, then no change was made. You can even use a tool for administration (Webmin? not my thing, but you know...) that does this for you. PUT THE DAMN DOTS AFTER THE RECORDS.. this is the biggest problem newbs seen to have with dns. Yes, it's a period, just like ending a sentence. Oh, thats right, you learned l337 sp34k in skool. Yeah, you're useless (not you per se, but a generalization of the 90's generation).
Check out www.dns.net, it's a great resource, really.
Most importantly, make sure your stuff works before you complain about how the world doesn't like you. If you don't, it's incompetence, and I've fired people for less.
Sorry for the harsh tone of the message, but I'm a bitter sysadmin with the HIPAA dedline tomorrow and fresh-out-of-college grad that needs to be trained, and I had to vent somewhere... I mean, I'm saving that "Another insane UNIX sysadmin killed is co-workers" headline for another Slashdot day...
I have one question for you... It's a 42 part question:
No, seriously though, here is my question:
Did you get to work with Douglas Adams before his untimely death? If so, what was it like?
"Next, you have inherently great security built into Linux. Windows requires more of a careful hand, and is far more prone to virii,"
.NET. Microsoft's Windows platform makes that all come to life."
I have several problems with this statement. I disagree that Linux inherently has great security. Linux has good security, but security isn't really a product, it's not just something that you turn on and, poof, your secure. It's easier to harden Linux, than it is to harden Windows - thats true, but they can both become as secure with one another. It requires alot of work, reguardless of the OS - Most of that work actualy goes into educating your users, not physicaly "securing" your machine.
I feel that Linux is just as prone to virii as any other operating system - we just haven't seen that many for it. I strongly feel that in the next 5 years, it will become a much larger problem.
"The strength of the Windows platform does NOT lie in its products. It does NOT lie in its technological marvels. It lies in its simple interoperability with other applications that are polished. Microsoft Outlook ties in great with Microsoft Word, Excel. Microsoft BizTalk ties in great with
That interoperability really goes along way with keeping Windows as the dominant OS. We're just now starting to see more mainstream applications for Linux coming out, but it's far from a simple install process - and who do call when it goes wrong? That truely is a huge area where Linux needs to be improved for the general users. Sure, the developers say email them, but what if you can't get your modem or NIC working? Who are you going to email? and how?
Anyway, just some general observations - I'm in a pissy mood with the hipaa deadline looming.
I read this somewhere along the way, so I'll regurgitate it here. A study was done on people who had never used computers before. What they found, was that the platform OS didn't matter, be it Linux; Windows; or MacOS. They each had their own learning curves, and regardless of the operating system they had just used, moving to a new OS did not reduce the learning curve by much for that OS. The study also observed that regardless of OS, the subjects were usually against changing, due to the learning curve. It also noted that MacOS had the lowest learning curve (this was circa MacOS 9), and Linux had the highest learning curve. If I could remember where I read it, I would link it... maybe someone else knows.
So, I guess we could infer from that study, that there will always be Microsoft people: because they don't want to learn anything new; And there will always be Linux users: because they like a challenge; And MacOS 9 users are just lazy...
I was really hoping for the death penalty on this conviction, but ya take what you can get.
Seriously though, this guy will probably be out in 2 years, maybe 3. I think a more applicable punishment is removing these people from using electronic means. Like what the FBI and Secret Service used to do the "hacker" community. Take away their right to use a computer. Jail time or no, thats what is really going to stop these people from sending out spam.
Just my 2 cents.
first post
After the fall-out affects of the dot-bomb era, I think the perception of us techies has truly changed, and not in a very positive way. What most people (and I mean the 70% who don't follow what's going on around them) fail to realize, is that the dot-bomb era was a cause of mis-management, bad ideas, and far too many people with the idea that if they "learned" computers, they would become the next Bill Gates. The paradigm shifted around 2001 from "Wow, you know how to program" to "Yeah, you programmers are a dime a dozen, be happy I gave YOU a job". I don't see the current perception changing for at least 2 years either. Anyway, food for thought...
Ok, after reading comments talking about how this is just more censorship, or how this is giving even more control to governments, I have to say that I disagree with that. This is in fact, IMHO, a mostly good thing.
First off, it's not censorship. Censorship is shutting down, or forcing the alterations of ones message. This is neither. This ensures the rights of those who wish to exercise them. E.G. Your rights stop where mine begin, and likewise. If I choose not to listen to what your saying, then I don't have to listen to it. The same applies here. Those people, parents or otherwise, who choose to have such content filtered, may do so. It is, in no way, pushed onto them. Nor is pushed onto those sites who affected by it. This simply provides a regulated means to solve a perceived problem.
Secondly, I feel a rating system is long over-due. It's no different, in principal, than say a movie type rating system. For those who don't want to their kids to an 'R' rated movie, don't buy movies with 'R' ratings. Others don't really care, and it doest affect them. How, in principal, is this any different. I foresee some implementation issues, and growing pains on the technical side, but thats to be expected.
More importantly, this only affects those in Utah. So if your not in Utah, your current impact of this decision is ZERO. Sure, this could become some federal rule down the road. It's probable that some other states will adopt similar policies. Hell, we could even have an asteroid destroy all of mankind.
My point is, is that this allows those who feel offended by such content, a means not to feel exposed to it. It's really a government approved Net-Nanny. Thats all.
Interesting, But a little off topic... kinda like my wife...
I've seen allot of arguments for and against the GPL. I don't really take sides either way, but here are my general observations about it.
/any/ way, code that has a GPL license, that you must also release your code under the GPL. It's my understanding that this is not so. If you modify code covered under the GPL, then you have to release your modifications. If you use code covered under the GPL, then you have to release copies of that source. If you create /new/ code, but it depends on a GPL item, then you can release your code under whatever license you see fit - open or closed source.
Allot of people have the common mis-conception that just because software is released as being free, that they can do what ever they want with it. The truth is, if that were the case, then all we would have is mass chaos. This would lead to (more) code stealing and mis-use of IP.
Another mis-conception that I see, is that people believe if your code extends, in
Anyway, I've forgotten my original point here, so I'll just say this:
We can't have Free/Open Source without rules; That would just be Chaotic/Open Source. And if you violate the GPL, you deserve to be sued for. It's akin to breaking a Constitutional Amendment. I mean really....
I don't trust anything that I send out to, or receive from, the Internet. This includes any chat programs, email, web content, etc... It's a basic security principal. If it isn't encrypted and signed by a trusted source, than it's not trusted material. If it is encrypted, then it's only a matter of time before the encryption key becomes known. You increase this risk every time you send an encrypted message/packet. So, AOL coming out and telling you that have no expectation of anonymity is something that everyone in the security field has been saying for years.
Then again, I don't trust anyone, and it's not paranoia if "they" really are out to get you....