Is it just me or am I the only one here who wasn't magically bestowed a multi-thousand-dollar machine by the parents when I was a child?
My family had an 8MHz 80286 Tandy 1000TX in 1988 when I was a kid. But in order to answer the posed question accurately, I'll have to admint that I didn't have a computer that was "mine" until well after I moved out and had my first full-time job (circa 2000). In fact, it's my main workstation even today. Except for a recent motherboard upgrade, I suppose you could say that I'm still using "my" first computer to post this very comment, despite having 18 years of experience (hardware, software, programming) under my belt.
and then I can use intelligence, postioning, and execution to cull that person (or personality) from my work environment. It makes my life easier and the workplace easier to go to.
And cowpox was just perfect. You just inject some, and you become immune to smallpox with basically no ill effects.
Feh! No ill effects?! Have you ever HAD the smallpox vaccine? Granted, said effects are all temporary except the immunity to smallpox, but what a horrible experience.
For the first week or so, you're fine. Everything is hunkey-dorey and you start thinking that this vaccination is going to be just peachy-keen.
Then the pustule forms. (Yes, that's what they call it.) You think, "eww, that looks icky." Starts itching a little too. Which sucks because you have to keep it covered with gauze at all times. Water-proof bandage in the shower. No baths or swimming at all.
Then the pain starts in your lymph nodes. Don't plan on getting full use of the arm that they poked you on for the next week or two. (Also, for some reason, people tend to punch you in the arm at least daily at this stage, even if they don't know you have the vaccine. It's worth it though, because you get to see the look on their faces when you tell them, "Ouch, you just punched my smallpox pustule.") Itch-level increases by 10.
Then the worst of it sets in. Mind-splitting, brain-numbing headaches. So bad that you can't sleep or even see straight at times. I'm not even remotely joking when I admit that, at the time, I thought I was going to come out of the ordeal with at least minor brain damage. (Proofed mysef rong!) Itch-level increases by 1000.
After that's all over with, The Pustule gets larger and after another week or two it finally explodes. Here you have to be EXTREMELY careful, because if any of the gunk gets into an orifice or microscopic scratch on your skin, you get another pustule there and get to relive the fun all over again. Want permanent disfiguration? Just get a tiny bit on your finger by accident and then rub your eyes! Fun for all ages! (Or so I assume.) Itch-level increases by 1,000,000,000.
Thank goodness El Wife and I don't have any infants or children because I probably would have been afraid to even touch them during the month-long ordeal.
I've heard (or merely always assumed) that flourescent lights take a lot of energy to "ignite" when first turned on but their energy use afterward is far lower than incandescent bulbs. (Hence their popularity in stores, workshops, etc where the lights are turned on once and left on throughout the whole day.)
Do CFBs do the same thing? I've googled before for an answer, but came up blank. Of course the packaging doesn't say much, their tests comparing incandescant and flourescent probably have both bulbs burning constantly, which would be the best-case scenario. Because of this uncertainty, I've been avoiding installing CFBs in places where the lights are likely to be turned on and off many times per day (hallways, basement, etc) in my home.
Can anyone shine some light (*smack*) on this issue?
Uh, if Dell gives you the complete source code to their Dell Signed Linux (unencrypted, as it must be under even GPLv2), then all of the requirements of open source software have been fulfilled. It doesn't matter that the Dell system won't then run the non-signed code. It's still open source software. If you don't like the hardware then you know what? DON'T BUY IT IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Sheesh. People act like this is a new thing. Since the 80's video game console manufacturers have been doing everything possible to make sure that unlicensed software (games) don't run on their computers (game consoles). The X-Box came out years ago and is both based on general-purpose PC architecture and contains the first widespread implementation of DRM, yet nobody raised a stink about it. I wonder how many staunch RMS supporters buy video games for themselves or their children, blissfully ignorant that they're supporting DRM?
I take it you didn't RTFM, because if you did you'd realize that your post is largely off-topic.
Everyone's going around saying that Linus is pooh-poohing the GPLv3, which isn't the case if you actually read his articles. What he is in fact saying is that he feels the GPLv3 isn't right for the Linux kernel.
You modify that source code to your heart's content, suckers, because it's written against this prison platform (and it's probably not really useful anywhere else) and if you change it, it won't load.
WTF is the point of the GPL then? Where is the freedom?
Here's a simple solution to that whole problem: Don't buy the damn DRM hardware in the first place. No matter how marginalized it may become, there will always be non-DRM general-purpose computing hardware. Linus is saying that software developers have no right to dictate what people do with their hardware.
Leaving aside the fact that DRM itself is nonsense (it is), impossible (it is), and inherently repugnant and evil (it is), DRM is directly incompatible with the purpose of the GPL, that's all.
I don't like DRM either, but I'm smart enough that I know to steer clear of it and simply vote with my wallet instead. Granted, my wallet not going to make any difference in the market as a whole. But my fight against DRM consists of educating those who don't know what its all about and supporting open source software and non-DRM hardware to the best of my ability. Contrived software licenses are not the proper place for a DRM battlefield.
Frankly, the more restrictions that are built into the GPL, less free the software licensed under it becomes.
This is just a bunch of worthless FUD. Programs have been able to write to the BIOS flash ROM for years now. It's not by any means a new concept. What suddenly makes next month the date that all of these thousands of BIOS-infecting rootkits are going to be released?
And what, exactly, would a rootkit or virus want with the BIOS? Does a BIOS even have enough "extra room" to accomodate either? How about platform-independent versions? That's just an idiotic claim if I've ever seen one.
Just sounds to me like this John Heasman is your average "computer security expert" trying to stir up issues and catch some rays in the media spotlight thanks to some worthless but impressive-sounding (to idiots) premise. He needs to go back and finish his MSCE so he can do something useful with his life.
For the love of Dog, don't just go out and buy any old crappy wireless card and hope that linuxant or ndiswrapper will support it. All of these slashbots who recommend this route are just remorseful that they didn't do their research before wasting their money on a monopoly-sustaining wireless card.
The worst part is that ndiswrapper and linuxant usually don't allow full use of the card. Sure, you can probably get some connectivity out of it, but sometimes you can't use 802.11g, put the card into promiscuous mode, or use one of the fancy wifi signal-strength and network information applets in KDE and GNOME.
When people ask me about Linux wireless support, I tell them two things:
1) Skip on down to Staples and pick up a Netgear WG511T. It'll cost $40-$50 depending on where in the nation you buy it and what rebates they have going at the time.
2) Boot your favorite distro and install the MadWifi drivers. Configure ath0 for DHCP, sit within range of an access point, and you're good to go.
The madwifi drivers work with Atheros chipsets and evidently Atheros themselves contributed a large amount of the code, so it would be in the interest of all Linux users to support them by checking out the MadWifi compatibility listing and purchasing one of the listed cards. You'll be helping the open source community and getting the most out of your wireless card at the same time.
It's great that after almost 10 years you're finally giving us some real info on how the inner, mysterious workings of our beloved Slashdot operate. Unfortunately, you do so with an entirely defensive point of view and tone, as if you're tired of explaining all of these things to everyone a million gazillion times. Except that, from what most of us can tell, you haven't.
So I'd like to offer some counter-points to a few of the issues you raise, but from the other side of the fence: a daily Slashdot reader and sometimes poster.
Picking which stories to post is a big part of our job, matters of style and formatting matter too.
From our perspective, picking which stories to post is the ONLY thing you do. Slashdot does not post all that many articles per day (say, like one an hour?). I'm sure there are tons of submissions each day, and that just choosing which ones to post take up the vast majority of the editors' time. However, this shouldn't mean that basic grammar, minimal fact-checking, and dupe-checking are to be overlooked. Perhaps at any given time you should have one editor browsing through the submission queue who hands off potential submission to another editor that does the actual editing. Might not be feasible for some reason or another, but it's just an idea.
Since I want my articles to be around the same size, this is my chance to put in my own words. I'll try to add a joke or opinion.
CmdrTaco, we HATE this. There's nothing wrong at all wrong with wanting to comment on the story, but for crying out loud, put you comments where the comments go. Since you have the power to post comments, you also have power to post your own comments very early in the thread. Believe me when I say that we, your readership would prefer this. This way, you can be seen as an active part of the Slashdot community instead of just some editor on the other side of the glass. People can use their friends/foes score modifiers to either view your comments or not. And I don't think you have to worry about not getting a +5 on almost every single one. Believe it or not, many of us do want to hear your opinion and wit, just not necessarily as part of the article.
Slashdot was spawned from what today would be called a blog. To be more precise, it came from MY blog. Where I posted almost nothing but my own opinions.
We may not say it all the time, but CmdrTaco, we love Slashdot. Really, we do. Or we wouldn't be here otherwise. It may have been your personal blog at one point, but you have to acknowledge that it is not your personal blog anymore. It's a news aggregation site frequented by what, millions? We're not going to tell you that you can't add your opinion (see above), but we're mainly irate that Slashdot never seems to have any emphasis on professionalism or improvement, so we feel that it must be our job to TELL you that we want to see those things. You may percieve it as mindless complaining (and much of it may in fact be mindless complaining), but honestly all we really want to do is help.
Of course some users like to email me to tell me how much Slashdot sucks, how fat and lazy I am, and how the most terrible thing in the history of Slashdot is the fact that the 4th story down contains the word 'to' when it ought to contain the word 'too'. That missing 'o' is the greatest travesty on-line today! It's hard to take that seriously. Especially when people are rude.
We have to put up with grammar and spelling nazis too, just probably not as often as you.
People found other things to complain about. It's almost as if some percentage of the population wants to complain. And they will find something to complain about no matter what.
This is going to happen. A good percentage of the articles that are posted contain comments that ARE mostly a whole bunch of complaining. Then again, what exactly do you expect when you post articles that have a "Post your comment here!" button right below them? We're a culture of
That just seems crazy to me... The people accessing the site pay for their internet access, but that's not good enough - they need to double-charge.
It's one step worse than that...
The BellSouth guy in the article specifically mentioned iTunes as an example of the kind of service that Apple could pay for "reliable, high-speed use" of the BellSouth network. If Apple ever did such a dastardly thing, every BellSouth iTunes user would be paying for:
- Their iTunes subscription - Their regular flat-rate BellSouth broadband bill - The surcharge that Apple would pass on to their BellSouth users
That's 3 (THREE) times the BellSouth customer has to pay for downloading as little as one song.
Believe it or not, I'd personally like to see Apple or a few high-profile content providers sign up with Bell South and then after a year or so ask BellSouth en masse to pay THEM a fee because BellSouth's customers are sucking up a lot of their bandwidth and they need to recoup the costs somehow.
I just checked out amaroK for the second time last night. Hated it a year ago, but they've made great strides since and I must say I'm quite impressed.
Anyway, I just felt like mentioning that amaroK has this same song suggestion feature, but it's off by default and you have to sign up with a third party (last.fm) in order to use it.
If they're using specially encrypted DVDs meant to only be played back on specially-made DVD players, why are they even bothering to region code them? This just reeks of stupidity...
I usually never do this, but I just posted another comment that directly answered this question, so I'm going to cut-and-paste it here.
"If you remember back in June or July or whenever it was that x86 Macs were first announced, they said that the biggest reason for the switch was that the G5 ran too hot and was too power hungry to implement in anything but a desktop computer. The G4 was losing steam and the G5 just couldn't run nearly as cool or efficiently and they wanted it to.
"At the time, I read this as, 'We really should have had a G5 PowerBook by now, but we just can't do it because of the limitations of the G5. So we're going to transition to Intel chips without those limitations.' I believe that Apple really wanted to stay on the PPC arch, but realized that such a thing was simply impossible if they still wanted to keep their high-performance edge.
"Just look at the Powerbooks. Prior to today, it seems like it's been forever since they last had any new features that weren't simply incremental. I go into CompUSA and the Powerbooks they have on display appear identical in looks (and nearly so in specs) to the ones that they had 5 or 6 years ago.
"Of all the machines in Apple's line of Macs, the Powerbook was the one most in need of this upgrade."
The iBooks and MiniMacs, on the other hand, are decent performers in their price range and will be replaced later rather than sooner.
iMac that's as powerful as a PowerMac? Who's gonna wanna buy PowerMacs for the next couple months?
Well, those who don't know the difference, which is a substantial chunk of their market.
As of six months ago, I would have only taken a PowerPC-based Mac if it was free. Reason? The PPC is being phased out and it will soon be left behind and unsupported. Sure, Apple is making these broad, sweeping claims that thanks to universal binaries, applications will be supported for both architectures long enough for PPCs to become thorougly obsolete, performance-wise. And it's indeed probably true that Apple's software will continue to run happily on PPC for at least the next 5 years or more.
However, there are two factors that Apple cannot control and are bound to end up frustrating more than a few of their customers. First, people tend to keep Macs around for longer than, say, your average Dell. Apple machines are built well and tend to be decent performers well into old age. Second, third-party developers are not going to wait for every PPC to be scrapped until they stop producing universal binaries. As soon as Intel Macs hold the majority, they'll turn off universal binaries to lower their development and bugtesting costs and to produce smaller installation images. Thus, a few years from now, PPC users will start seeing fewer and fewer releases of new third-party software that they can run. Selection of peripherals will likewise decline as the manufacturers stop writing their device drivers for PPC.
(BTW, when compiling software using Apple's development tools, is it possible to specify one of x86, PPC, or universal as the target arch or are x86 and universal the only options?)
Also, Apple will probably cut prices drastically on the Powerbook line as more MacBooks are introduced, same as they do when phasing out any other product.
And a MacBook Pro that's 10x more powerful than a iBook?!? There goes the iBook market...
Not really. The iBook is designed to be the lower-end Mac portable and serves a different market. The iBook is for home and casual computer users whereas the (Power|Mac)Book is for the more serious users who need more storage, power, and screen. Plus, we'll probably see Intel iBooks this summer a year from now, at worst.
Anybody else see the logic of transitioning the consumer desktop and pro laptop first, rather than starting with the consumer desktop and laptop, or the pro desktop and laptop, or the pro desktop and consumer laptop, or some other combination?
If you remember back in June or July or whenever it was that x86 Macs were first announced, they said that the biggest reason for the switch was that the G5 ran too hot and was too power hungry to implement in anything but a desktop computer. The G4 was losing steam and the G5 just couldn't run nearly as cool or efficiently and they wanted it to.
At the time, I read this as, "We really should have had a G5 PowerBook by now, but we just can't do it because of the limitations of the G5. So we're going to transition to Intel chips without those limitations." I believe that Apple really wanted to stay on the PPC arch, but realized that such a thing was simply impossible if they still wanted to keep their high-performance edge.
Just look at the Powerbooks. Prior to today, it seems like it's been forever since they last had any new features that weren't simply incremental. I go into CompUSA and the Powerbooks they have on display appear identical in looks (and nearly so in specs) to the ones that they had 5 or 6 years ago.
Of all the machines in Apple's line of Macs, the Powerbook was the one most in need of this upgrade. Though, I must confess that I wish they'd enhanced the look a little bit more, added a numeric keypad, and didn't use an ATI video chipset. Still, would have already ordered one if I had an extra $2k sitting around...
Right, but for those unwise in the art of booting operating systems, let me clarify. You're not going to load the Linux kernel from Windows boot.ini. You can only point it to a Linux boot sector containing a loader like LILO or GRUB so you still need those, just not in the MBR. This is similar to what happens when you use the 'chainloader' command with GRUB. If you use boot.ini to choose your OS on a multi-boot machine, you're only substituting the Windows OS selection screen for LILO's or GRUB's which gains you little.
There's a lot of confusion surrounding the difference between a boot loader and a boot manager because those that we're familiar with typically do both. Boot loaders do the job of loading a kernel into memory and are typically tied to a particular OS while boot managers essentially just pass control to a boot loader of the user's choosing. GRUB and LILO are the main boot loaders for x86 Linux, but there are many OS-independent boot managers out there.
They already do. Safari is descendant of Konqueror and contribute (perhaps inefficiently) their patches back to KDE. However, since this is KDE's own effort to reproduce Dashboard from scratch (Dashboard isn't open source even if many of its components are), Apple has no reason or incentive to contribute any of their work on Dashboard to KDE.
Most UNIX-people use Apple because it still is UNIX but with a better GUI.
This needs to be qualified a little better because the a large number (most likely the majority) of "UNIX-people" are still happily using a non-Apple Unix. For example, I use KDE and don't see that changing anytime soon because KDE is, for me, a much more powerful UI environment than OS X. Most of my geek friends and co-workers are in the same boat, though some are considering Powerbooks for the occasional on-the-road work.
Perhaps KDE will convince Apple to make the GUI Free Software.
Not going to happen and literally everyone at Apple has said as much. The simple, elegant OS X GUI is Apple's trump card. It is the main reason to buy a Mac. If they give that away, then anyone on the planet can implement it and Mac sales go down the tube. Sure, there are many reasons to buy a Mac but the OS is definitely the biggie. This is why Apple is putting so much effort into making sure that OS X does not run (easily) on plain Intel boxes.
Or maybe Apple will just sue the socks off of the KDE project.
I don't see how that's possible unless Apple went patent-squatting on the desktop widget engine idea. Dashboard may be the most popular implementation, but it was hardlythe first to exist.
I don't know how GCD in particular works, but with Unix disk encryption, the designers typically allow for the entire filesystem to be encrypted from root (/) on down. In this case, you are asked for a passphrase by the kernel or some utility before the relevant parts of your disk are "unlocked." System accounts don't even enter into it since/etc could very well (and probably should) be encrypted on a sensitive machine. The attacker can know your user password, root password, and the blood type of your first-born son, but they aren't going to get at your data any time soon without the encryption passphrase.
I've personally always found encrypted disks (Linux and BSD) to be more trouble than they're worth to set up. I realized long ago that I'm much better at just keeping sensitive data off my laptop rather than trying to keep it secure. If my laptop is ever stolen, the most valuable thing they'd walk away with (data-wise) are a few DS9 episodes and maybe logins to a few non-essential websites.
Let me preface this by saying that I haven't yet taken the time to try to teach myself a second language. I would like to learn German, but I've got too many other projects going on right now. However, when I do finally commit myself, I can tell you what I'd like to do.
Since you're asking this question on Slashdot, it's assumed that you're at least moderately well-immersed in technology. Why not use technology to your advantage? If you're like me, a large amount of English that you come across in your daily activities (discounting conversation) is through a computer or other similar technology.
Only AFTER learning the basics of your target language, you might make an effort to force yourself to use technology tailored to that language. A few examples:
Install a localized version of your OS of choice. Windows, Mac, and many Linux distributions have localized variants. One problem you might run into is that some operating systems may not let you separate localized language from localized units of measure or currency.
If you're a geek like most of us, try to visit localized versions of open source software websites. And, obviously, use the localized versions of said software where possible.
Subscribe to newsgroups and mailing lists in your target language.
Read your daily news on websites written in your target language. If you're not so interested in the country in which your language dominates, there are still many translations of relatively geographically-neutral sources of news, like Google News.
Many PDAs, home entertainment components, and other electronic gadgets (even computer monitors) have a variety of built-in languages for their interfaces. If your target is listed, select it.
Listen to podcasts or talk shows on streaming Internet stations in your target language, even if you're not overly interested in the content. Just don't delude yourself that it's having any benefit if you're not actually paying attention.
It bears repeating that these are never going to replace actual instruction or conversation in your target language, but with an honest effort, it seems to me that everyday exposure to it would probably do more good than harm.
You probably mean the J-LIST suits. Understand that we're a reserve unit.:)
In all likelihood, we would probably be issued J-LIST suits if deploying to a location where chem warfare were a serious possibility, but it wouldn't surprise me if the AF has a huge inventory of these old charcoal jobbies, so that's what we get to train in. (And of course, the fact that we have to train in them at all, multiple times per year, is irritating enough. But that's another story...)
Sure, the hoses are quick-release, but now he's got yet another layer of clothing on in the desert heat, a layer that probably doesn't help his maneuverability. Perhaps there's a better solution.
Feh! You sir haven't been in the military. I'm an enlisted member of the Air Force and while it's true that the AF is the Disneyland of armed services in many regards, the one thing that you can count on no matter what branch you serve in is that the military doesn't give a flying fuck about comfort in the combat zone.
Take my unit's chem warfare exercises for example. We are issued thick, hot, dirty, charcoal powder-infested suits that go over our regular uniform. Oversized rubber boots that slip over our already-hefty uniform boots. And a gas mask. The full ensemble results in severely limited movement, vision, and heat dissipation. Now imagine an entire wing trying to do their various jobs (everything from filing papers to avionics maintenance to flying airplanes) in that getup in 90-degree weather.
It sucks a lot and we'd get pummeled in a second if enemy ground troops attacked, but from a commander's point of view, it's a good thing if most of your unit survives a chemical or biological assault thanks to your foresight.
Same thing goes for the cooling issue in Humvees. Loss of some mobility in an emergency is a small price to pay for not roasting your guys alive in their vehicles. I could barely stand being inside an aircraft parked on the flightline with doors and windows open on a hot New Mexico day. I can't imagine tooling around Iraq in a 4-wheeled toaster oven.
Slashdot Mirror
Is it just me or am I the only one here who wasn't magically bestowed a multi-thousand-dollar machine by the parents when I was a child?
My family had an 8MHz 80286 Tandy 1000TX in 1988 when I was a kid. But in order to answer the posed question accurately, I'll have to admint that I didn't have a computer that was "mine" until well after I moved out and had my first full-time job (circa 2000). In fact, it's my main workstation even today. Except for a recent motherboard upgrade, I suppose you could say that I'm still using "my" first computer to post this very comment, despite having 18 years of experience (hardware, software, programming) under my belt.
and then I can use intelligence, postioning, and execution to cull that person (or personality) from my work environment. It makes my life easier and the workplace easier to go to.
Ah, a fellow BOFH?
And cowpox was just perfect. You just inject some, and you become immune to smallpox with basically no ill effects.
Feh! No ill effects?! Have you ever HAD the smallpox vaccine? Granted, said effects are all temporary except the immunity to smallpox, but what a horrible experience.
For the first week or so, you're fine. Everything is hunkey-dorey and you start thinking that this vaccination is going to be just peachy-keen.
Then the pustule forms. (Yes, that's what they call it.) You think, "eww, that looks icky." Starts itching a little too. Which sucks because you have to keep it covered with gauze at all times. Water-proof bandage in the shower. No baths or swimming at all.
Then the pain starts in your lymph nodes. Don't plan on getting full use of the arm that they poked you on for the next week or two. (Also, for some reason, people tend to punch you in the arm at least daily at this stage, even if they don't know you have the vaccine. It's worth it though, because you get to see the look on their faces when you tell them, "Ouch, you just punched my smallpox pustule.") Itch-level increases by 10.
Then the worst of it sets in. Mind-splitting, brain-numbing headaches. So bad that you can't sleep or even see straight at times. I'm not even remotely joking when I admit that, at the time, I thought I was going to come out of the ordeal with at least minor brain damage. (Proofed mysef rong!) Itch-level increases by 1000.
After that's all over with, The Pustule gets larger and after another week or two it finally explodes. Here you have to be EXTREMELY careful, because if any of the gunk gets into an orifice or microscopic scratch on your skin, you get another pustule there and get to relive the fun all over again. Want permanent disfiguration? Just get a tiny bit on your finger by accident and then rub your eyes! Fun for all ages! (Or so I assume.) Itch-level increases by 1,000,000,000.
Thank goodness El Wife and I don't have any infants or children because I probably would have been afraid to even touch them during the month-long ordeal.
I've heard (or merely always assumed) that flourescent lights take a lot of energy to "ignite" when first turned on but their energy use afterward is far lower than incandescent bulbs. (Hence their popularity in stores, workshops, etc where the lights are turned on once and left on throughout the whole day.)
Do CFBs do the same thing? I've googled before for an answer, but came up blank. Of course the packaging doesn't say much, their tests comparing incandescant and flourescent probably have both bulbs burning constantly, which would be the best-case scenario. Because of this uncertainty, I've been avoiding installing CFBs in places where the lights are likely to be turned on and off many times per day (hallways, basement, etc) in my home.
Can anyone shine some light (*smack*) on this issue?
Uh, if Dell gives you the complete source code to their Dell Signed Linux (unencrypted, as it must be under even GPLv2), then all of the requirements of open source software have been fulfilled. It doesn't matter that the Dell system won't then run the non-signed code. It's still open source software. If you don't like the hardware then you know what? DON'T BUY IT IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Sheesh. People act like this is a new thing. Since the 80's video game console manufacturers have been doing everything possible to make sure that unlicensed software (games) don't run on their computers (game consoles). The X-Box came out years ago and is both based on general-purpose PC architecture and contains the first widespread implementation of DRM, yet nobody raised a stink about it. I wonder how many staunch RMS supporters buy video games for themselves or their children, blissfully ignorant that they're supporting DRM?
I take it you didn't RTFM, because if you did you'd realize that your post is largely off-topic.
Everyone's going around saying that Linus is pooh-poohing the GPLv3, which isn't the case if you actually read his articles. What he is in fact saying is that he feels the GPLv3 isn't right for the Linux kernel.
You modify that source code to your heart's content, suckers, because it's written against this prison platform (and it's probably not really useful anywhere else) and if you change it, it won't load.
WTF is the point of the GPL then? Where is the freedom?
Here's a simple solution to that whole problem: Don't buy the damn DRM hardware in the first place. No matter how marginalized it may become, there will always be non-DRM general-purpose computing hardware. Linus is saying that software developers have no right to dictate what people do with their hardware.
Leaving aside the fact that DRM itself is nonsense (it is), impossible (it is), and inherently repugnant and evil (it is), DRM is directly incompatible with the purpose of the GPL, that's all.
I don't like DRM either, but I'm smart enough that I know to steer clear of it and simply vote with my wallet instead. Granted, my wallet not going to make any difference in the market as a whole. But my fight against DRM consists of educating those who don't know what its all about and supporting open source software and non-DRM hardware to the best of my ability. Contrived software licenses are not the proper place for a DRM battlefield.
Frankly, the more restrictions that are built into the GPL, less free the software licensed under it becomes.
This is just a bunch of worthless FUD. Programs have been able to write to the BIOS flash ROM for years now. It's not by any means a new concept. What suddenly makes next month the date that all of these thousands of BIOS-infecting rootkits are going to be released?
And what, exactly, would a rootkit or virus want with the BIOS? Does a BIOS even have enough "extra room" to accomodate either? How about platform-independent versions? That's just an idiotic claim if I've ever seen one.
Just sounds to me like this John Heasman is your average "computer security expert" trying to stir up issues and catch some rays in the media spotlight thanks to some worthless but impressive-sounding (to idiots) premise. He needs to go back and finish his MSCE so he can do something useful with his life.
For the love of Dog, don't just go out and buy any old crappy wireless card and hope that linuxant or ndiswrapper will support it. All of these slashbots who recommend this route are just remorseful that they didn't do their research before wasting their money on a monopoly-sustaining wireless card.
The worst part is that ndiswrapper and linuxant usually don't allow full use of the card. Sure, you can probably get some connectivity out of it, but sometimes you can't use 802.11g, put the card into promiscuous mode, or use one of the fancy wifi signal-strength and network information applets in KDE and GNOME.
When people ask me about Linux wireless support, I tell them two things:
1) Skip on down to Staples and pick up a Netgear WG511T. It'll cost $40-$50 depending on where in the nation you buy it and what rebates they have going at the time.
2) Boot your favorite distro and install the MadWifi drivers. Configure ath0 for DHCP, sit within range of an access point, and you're good to go.
The madwifi drivers work with Atheros chipsets and evidently Atheros themselves contributed a large amount of the code, so it would be in the interest of all Linux users to support them by checking out the MadWifi compatibility listing and purchasing one of the listed cards. You'll be helping the open source community and getting the most out of your wireless card at the same time.
Dear CmdrTaco,
It's great that after almost 10 years you're finally giving us some real info on how the inner, mysterious workings of our beloved Slashdot operate. Unfortunately, you do so with an entirely defensive point of view and tone, as if you're tired of explaining all of these things to everyone a million gazillion times. Except that, from what most of us can tell, you haven't.
So I'd like to offer some counter-points to a few of the issues you raise, but from the other side of the fence: a daily Slashdot reader and sometimes poster.
Picking which stories to post is a big part of our job, matters of style and formatting matter too.
From our perspective, picking which stories to post is the ONLY thing you do. Slashdot does not post all that many articles per day (say, like one an hour?). I'm sure there are tons of submissions each day, and that just choosing which ones to post take up the vast majority of the editors' time. However, this shouldn't mean that basic grammar, minimal fact-checking, and dupe-checking are to be overlooked. Perhaps at any given time you should have one editor browsing through the submission queue who hands off potential submission to another editor that does the actual editing. Might not be feasible for some reason or another, but it's just an idea.
Since I want my articles to be around the same size, this is my chance to put in my own words. I'll try to add a joke or opinion.
CmdrTaco, we HATE this. There's nothing wrong at all wrong with wanting to comment on the story, but for crying out loud, put you comments where the comments go. Since you have the power to post comments, you also have power to post your own comments very early in the thread. Believe me when I say that we, your readership would prefer this. This way, you can be seen as an active part of the Slashdot community instead of just some editor on the other side of the glass. People can use their friends/foes score modifiers to either view your comments or not. And I don't think you have to worry about not getting a +5 on almost every single one. Believe it or not, many of us do want to hear your opinion and wit, just not necessarily as part of the article.
Slashdot was spawned from what today would be called a blog. To be more precise, it came from MY blog. Where I posted almost nothing but my own opinions.
We may not say it all the time, but CmdrTaco, we love Slashdot. Really, we do. Or we wouldn't be here otherwise. It may have been your personal blog at one point, but you have to acknowledge that it is not your personal blog anymore. It's a news aggregation site frequented by what, millions? We're not going to tell you that you can't add your opinion (see above), but we're mainly irate that Slashdot never seems to have any emphasis on professionalism or improvement, so we feel that it must be our job to TELL you that we want to see those things. You may percieve it as mindless complaining (and much of it may in fact be mindless complaining), but honestly all we really want to do is help.
Of course some users like to email me to tell me how much Slashdot sucks, how fat and lazy I am, and how the most terrible thing in the history of Slashdot is the fact that the 4th story down contains the word 'to' when it ought to contain the word 'too'. That missing 'o' is the greatest travesty on-line today! It's hard to take that seriously. Especially when people are rude.
We have to put up with grammar and spelling nazis too, just probably not as often as you.
People found other things to complain about. It's almost as if some percentage of the population wants to complain. And they will find something to complain about no matter what.
This is going to happen. A good percentage of the articles that are posted contain comments that ARE mostly a whole bunch of complaining. Then again, what exactly do you expect when you post articles that have a "Post your comment here!" button right below them? We're a culture of
That just seems crazy to me... The people accessing the site pay for their internet access, but that's not good enough - they need to double-charge.
It's one step worse than that...
The BellSouth guy in the article specifically mentioned iTunes as an example of the kind of service that Apple could pay for "reliable, high-speed use" of the BellSouth network. If Apple ever did such a dastardly thing, every BellSouth iTunes user would be paying for:
- Their iTunes subscription
- Their regular flat-rate BellSouth broadband bill
- The surcharge that Apple would pass on to their BellSouth users
That's 3 (THREE) times the BellSouth customer has to pay for downloading as little as one song.
Believe it or not, I'd personally like to see Apple or a few high-profile content providers sign up with Bell South and then after a year or so ask BellSouth en masse to pay THEM a fee because BellSouth's customers are sucking up a lot of their bandwidth and they need to recoup the costs somehow.
Instead of the PC horror of one fan that has to suck out a large volume the whole time and runs at full blast no matter what.
:P
One? Heh.
I just checked out amaroK for the second time last night. Hated it a year ago, but they've made great strides since and I must say I'm quite impressed.
Anyway, I just felt like mentioning that amaroK has this same song suggestion feature, but it's off by default and you have to sign up with a third party (last.fm) in order to use it.
If they're using specially encrypted DVDs meant to only be played back on specially-made DVD players, why are they even bothering to region code them? This just reeks of stupidity...
Hi, I see you're new to the film industry...
I usually never do this, but I just posted another comment that directly answered this question, so I'm going to cut-and-paste it here.
"If you remember back in June or July or whenever it was that x86 Macs were first announced, they said that the biggest reason for the switch was that the G5 ran too hot and was too power hungry to implement in anything but a desktop computer. The G4 was losing steam and the G5 just couldn't run nearly as cool or efficiently and they wanted it to.
"At the time, I read this as, 'We really should have had a G5 PowerBook by now, but we just can't do it because of the limitations of the G5. So we're going to transition to Intel chips without those limitations.' I believe that Apple really wanted to stay on the PPC arch, but realized that such a thing was simply impossible if they still wanted to keep their high-performance edge.
"Just look at the Powerbooks. Prior to today, it seems like it's been forever since they last had any new features that weren't simply incremental. I go into CompUSA and the Powerbooks they have on display appear identical in looks (and nearly so in specs) to the ones that they had 5 or 6 years ago.
"Of all the machines in Apple's line of Macs, the Powerbook was the one most in need of this upgrade."
The iBooks and MiniMacs, on the other hand, are decent performers in their price range and will be replaced later rather than sooner.
iMac that's as powerful as a PowerMac? Who's gonna wanna buy PowerMacs for the next couple months?
Well, those who don't know the difference, which is a substantial chunk of their market.
As of six months ago, I would have only taken a PowerPC-based Mac if it was free. Reason? The PPC is being phased out and it will soon be left behind and unsupported. Sure, Apple is making these broad, sweeping claims that thanks to universal binaries, applications will be supported for both architectures long enough for PPCs to become thorougly obsolete, performance-wise. And it's indeed probably true that Apple's software will continue to run happily on PPC for at least the next 5 years or more.
However, there are two factors that Apple cannot control and are bound to end up frustrating more than a few of their customers. First, people tend to keep Macs around for longer than, say, your average Dell. Apple machines are built well and tend to be decent performers well into old age. Second, third-party developers are not going to wait for every PPC to be scrapped until they stop producing universal binaries. As soon as Intel Macs hold the majority, they'll turn off universal binaries to lower their development and bugtesting costs and to produce smaller installation images. Thus, a few years from now, PPC users will start seeing fewer and fewer releases of new third-party software that they can run. Selection of peripherals will likewise decline as the manufacturers stop writing their device drivers for PPC.
(BTW, when compiling software using Apple's development tools, is it possible to specify one of x86, PPC, or universal as the target arch or are x86 and universal the only options?)
Also, Apple will probably cut prices drastically on the Powerbook line as more MacBooks are introduced, same as they do when phasing out any other product.
And a MacBook Pro that's 10x more powerful than a iBook?!? There goes the iBook market...
Not really. The iBook is designed to be the lower-end Mac portable and serves a different market. The iBook is for home and casual computer users whereas the (Power|Mac)Book is for the more serious users who need more storage, power, and screen. Plus, we'll probably see Intel iBooks this summer a year from now, at worst.
Anybody else see the logic of transitioning the consumer desktop and pro laptop first, rather than starting with the consumer desktop and laptop, or the pro desktop and laptop, or the pro desktop and consumer laptop, or some other combination?
If you remember back in June or July or whenever it was that x86 Macs were first announced, they said that the biggest reason for the switch was that the G5 ran too hot and was too power hungry to implement in anything but a desktop computer. The G4 was losing steam and the G5 just couldn't run nearly as cool or efficiently and they wanted it to.
At the time, I read this as, "We really should have had a G5 PowerBook by now, but we just can't do it because of the limitations of the G5. So we're going to transition to Intel chips without those limitations." I believe that Apple really wanted to stay on the PPC arch, but realized that such a thing was simply impossible if they still wanted to keep their high-performance edge.
Just look at the Powerbooks. Prior to today, it seems like it's been forever since they last had any new features that weren't simply incremental. I go into CompUSA and the Powerbooks they have on display appear identical in looks (and nearly so in specs) to the ones that they had 5 or 6 years ago.
Of all the machines in Apple's line of Macs, the Powerbook was the one most in need of this upgrade. Though, I must confess that I wish they'd enhanced the look a little bit more, added a numeric keypad, and didn't use an ATI video chipset. Still, would have already ordered one if I had an extra $2k sitting around...
Right, but for those unwise in the art of booting operating systems, let me clarify. You're not going to load the Linux kernel from Windows boot.ini. You can only point it to a Linux boot sector containing a loader like LILO or GRUB so you still need those, just not in the MBR. This is similar to what happens when you use the 'chainloader' command with GRUB. If you use boot.ini to choose your OS on a multi-boot machine, you're only substituting the Windows OS selection screen for LILO's or GRUB's which gains you little.
There's a lot of confusion surrounding the difference between a boot loader and a boot manager because those that we're familiar with typically do both. Boot loaders do the job of loading a kernel into memory and are typically tied to a particular OS while boot managers essentially just pass control to a boot loader of the user's choosing. GRUB and LILO are the main boot loaders for x86 Linux, but there are many OS-independent boot managers out there.
System 6, released back in 1985 seemed to have some very neat desktop accessory applications. Creepy, huh?
Hmm. Touché. I guess nothing's an original idea in GUIs these days.
Perhaps it will lend something to KDE.
They already do. Safari is descendant of Konqueror and contribute (perhaps inefficiently) their patches back to KDE. However, since this is KDE's own effort to reproduce Dashboard from scratch (Dashboard isn't open source even if many of its components are), Apple has no reason or incentive to contribute any of their work on Dashboard to KDE.
Most UNIX-people use Apple because it still is UNIX but with a better GUI.
This needs to be qualified a little better because the a large number (most likely the majority) of "UNIX-people" are still happily using a non-Apple Unix. For example, I use KDE and don't see that changing anytime soon because KDE is, for me, a much more powerful UI environment than OS X. Most of my geek friends and co-workers are in the same boat, though some are considering Powerbooks for the occasional on-the-road work.
Perhaps KDE will convince Apple to make the GUI Free Software.
Not going to happen and literally everyone at Apple has said as much. The simple, elegant OS X GUI is Apple's trump card. It is the main reason to buy a Mac. If they give that away, then anyone on the planet can implement it and Mac sales go down the tube. Sure, there are many reasons to buy a Mac but the OS is definitely the biggie. This is why Apple is putting so much effort into making sure that OS X does not run (easily) on plain Intel boxes.
Or maybe Apple will just sue the socks off of the KDE project.
I don't see how that's possible unless Apple went patent-squatting on the desktop widget engine idea. Dashboard may be the most popular implementation, but it was hardly the first to exist.
I don't know how GCD in particular works, but with Unix disk encryption, the designers typically allow for the entire filesystem to be encrypted from root (/) on down. In this case, you are asked for a passphrase by the kernel or some utility before the relevant parts of your disk are "unlocked." System accounts don't even enter into it since /etc could very well (and probably should) be encrypted on a sensitive machine. The attacker can know your user password, root password, and the blood type of your first-born son, but they aren't going to get at your data any time soon without the encryption passphrase.
I've personally always found encrypted disks (Linux and BSD) to be more trouble than they're worth to set up. I realized long ago that I'm much better at just keeping sensitive data off my laptop rather than trying to keep it secure. If my laptop is ever stolen, the most valuable thing they'd walk away with (data-wise) are a few DS9 episodes and maybe logins to a few non-essential websites.
from the go-down-swinging dept.
Nice to see she has your vote of confidence, ScuttleMonkey.
"...but we try not to indulge in naval gazing."
Since you're asking this question on Slashdot, it's assumed that you're at least moderately well-immersed in technology. Why not use technology to your advantage? If you're like me, a large amount of English that you come across in your daily activities (discounting conversation) is through a computer or other similar technology.
Only AFTER learning the basics of your target language, you might make an effort to force yourself to use technology tailored to that language. A few examples:
It bears repeating that these are never going to replace actual instruction or conversation in your target language, but with an honest effort, it seems to me that everyday exposure to it would probably do more good than harm.
You probably mean the J-LIST suits. Understand that we're a reserve unit. :)
In all likelihood, we would probably be issued J-LIST suits if deploying to a location where chem warfare were a serious possibility, but it wouldn't surprise me if the AF has a huge inventory of these old charcoal jobbies, so that's what we get to train in. (And of course, the fact that we have to train in them at all, multiple times per year, is irritating enough. But that's another story...)
Sure, the hoses are quick-release, but now he's got yet another layer of clothing on in the desert heat, a layer that probably doesn't help his maneuverability. Perhaps there's a better solution.
Feh! You sir haven't been in the military. I'm an enlisted member of the Air Force and while it's true that the AF is the Disneyland of armed services in many regards, the one thing that you can count on no matter what branch you serve in is that the military doesn't give a flying fuck about comfort in the combat zone.
Take my unit's chem warfare exercises for example. We are issued thick, hot, dirty, charcoal powder-infested suits that go over our regular uniform. Oversized rubber boots that slip over our already-hefty uniform boots. And a gas mask. The full ensemble results in severely limited movement, vision, and heat dissipation. Now imagine an entire wing trying to do their various jobs (everything from filing papers to avionics maintenance to flying airplanes) in that getup in 90-degree weather.
It sucks a lot and we'd get pummeled in a second if enemy ground troops attacked, but from a commander's point of view, it's a good thing if most of your unit survives a chemical or biological assault thanks to your foresight.
Same thing goes for the cooling issue in Humvees. Loss of some mobility in an emergency is a small price to pay for not roasting your guys alive in their vehicles. I could barely stand being inside an aircraft parked on the flightline with doors and windows open on a hot New Mexico day. I can't imagine tooling around Iraq in a 4-wheeled toaster oven.
Are there any approaches to thwarting or mitigating surveillance that will work on a mass scale?
No. Because if there were, or were actually used on a mass scale, they would be illegal very quickly.