I think this is a very short-sighted sort of view, and seeing this pissing contest is rather annoying to me.
While it's true that developers play a very important role in a business, so also do systems administrators. In the environments I've worked in, the application itself is nothing without a working server on which to host it. My current place of employment, as well as my last, relied heavily on web applications and interfaces for their customers. If those servers go down, those applications that the developers worked so hard on, are worth naught.
It takes all kinds to run an enterprise. While I couldn't write a C program to save my life, most of our application developers also couldn't troubleshoot an ecache parity error on a Sun Enterprise 10000 domain either.
It's best described, I think, as a "symbiotic relationship". The fact that you seem to be rather hell-bent on the idea that developers are *more* important than the sysadmins is rankling. We all have important, but very different, jobs to do, none of which requires more skill than the others.
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
I've been running OS X since March 24th or so, thanks to Staples selling it early, and I've personally been very impressed with it.
I'm a long-time UNIX geek and recent Mac convert. (Despite the initially seemingly-high pricetag, the quality of the hardware and support is unbeatable.)
I don't think it's fair to say the OS was shipped "unfinished" or "half-baked". From time to time, you have to decide what bugs and problems you can live with, and get stuff out the door. (How long was 2.4 in development? If I'm not mistaken, since I'm not a Linux person, Linus finally slapped a code freeze on it, did he not?)
Yes, I have to boot into OS9 to watch DVD's. Windows doesn't ship with a DVD player (Media Player doesn't count. I don't use it to play my mp3's, I won't use it to watch my DVD's) and certainly has issues, and Linux has been not-ready-for-primetime since its inception.
Aqua is eyecandy, and a lot of it is probably overkill to some of our more utilitarian users, but there's a whole lot of config files and resource forks just waiting to be hacked. Lots of sites exist, as a matter of fact, devoted to such things.
Applications - well, I hardly ever have to run anything in Classic. I've found an email application, an mp3 player, a web browser, AIM, a LiveJournal client (addict? me? never...) and other things that I need for daily happiness, all either Carbonized or already Cocoa. The only things I need Classic for are things like Photoshop and Dreamweaver - and it works just fine for those. Not every application I'll ever use is available yet - but stuff I need on a daily basis is all already supported in OS X.
The only real caveat I've heard about its support, in fact, is a lack of real MIDI support. But I've heard that's being worked on.
Plus, if you think something's missing - add it. Apple couldn't get ssh included, but many many people have gotten OpenSSH installed and working with a minimum of hassle.
It needs a bit of work, but the potential within OS X is huge. I'm looking forward to watching it grow.
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
Re:OSX has more jewlery hanging on it than Mr. T
on
OS X
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· Score: 2
Naw... We've got OS X running on an old beige G3/233.. It's not perfect by any means, but it works. The performance isn't as stellar as on my G4 Powerbook, but it's serviceable.
And the beige G3 is considered by many, including myself, to be an old machine.
Windows XP's system requirements aren't going to be much better, but I know that Microsoft and Apple are like twin anathemas to most/. denizens.
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
That's a possibility. If so, it's likely just a generic one, because every optical scrollie mouse I've used (several) has worked out of the box with OS X.
It's still a damn sight nicer than having to load an extension or control panel to get it to work - less work for me.;)
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
There's some Mac games for OS9, but not a whole ton for OS X. (Diablo and Deus Ex came out in a timely manner - read: within six months of the PC version - and versions of the Sims and Livin' Large exist, for example. These are all OS9 games though.)
As far as mouses are concerned, my two-button scrollie wheel optical mouse works *out of the box* in OS X - no need to load extensions or control panels anymore. It works lovely. "During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
I've been debating whether or not to post.
I will, with this disclaimer. I work for Netscape, but not in product development.
It's true that standards in PR3 are broken - CSS doesn't display correctly, or at all, for example. However, I believe this is temporary, and that standards compliance is a big issue with Netscape in general. Evidence of that is here, although it may seem like propaganda-speak.
I've also had the privilege of trying out some of the internal nightly builds, and they have come a long way. There's still a ways to go, but keep in mind, Netscape 6 is still in the pre-release stage.
Out of respect for my employer, I'm trying not to divulge too much information, so please understand why this post is a little detail-thin.:)
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
The game that comes to mind immediately is Deus Ex. Now, I haven't played this game extensively yet (I'm still playing Diablo 2), but what I have played of it, skills other than point and shoot are emphasized, despite the fact that it is built on the UT engine. (The game is absolutely beautiful, too, I was amazed at the reflection of the walls in the marble floors.) If you move too loudly, you're toast. In the training, you had to figure out a way to get across a sewer (or something similar) with no ladder on the either side to get out. In my opinion, using your brain comes first, using the gun comes second in this game.
I guess I think that if there's a reason for fewer "smart" games and more shooters and the like, it's due solely to market influences. A lot of people are buying Q3A, and non-shooters seem to have fallen out of favor with many geeks, including a lot of people who read/.
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
I've been informed by people who've analyzed the packet stream that Napster sends that it's horribly insecure - frighteningly so, in fact. It would really not surprise me if something similar to your scenario were allowed to happen, though by current standards, I consider the sending of autoexec.bat to be pretty tame. In my opinion, it's pretty pointless to try to "hack" any box that still uses an autoexec.bat, but just think - the blackmail possibilities are endless! Things like this coupled with the sheer instability of Napster (I have to reboot my box, a 500 Celeron with 128 megs of ram, every time I use it), made me just decide to delete the entire install and mooch off of my friends who have 60+ gig mp3 archives.
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
While there is some merit to this, it also all depends on your bank.
A couple months ago, my car insurance company read a $197 check as $797, which bounced and caused an overdraft in my account. They said, "oops, sorry" and sent the check through again, and it cleared. In the midst of all these colossal screw-ups, my bank recalled the extra $600 to my account, and refunded me my overdraft fees.
My point in all this is that if you have a decent relationship with your bank, and they're not a bunch of twinks, you should be able to work something out with them should this particular wave of fraud affect you - even if you have a debit card.
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
What immediately springs to mind are those infamous nanny-cams that you see on the likes of Oprah. Would this not count as surreptitious, since they're usually embedded in clocks or knick-knacks placed on shelves, or whatnot? I'd consider those much more of a "privacy violation" than the devices sold by Ramsey, which appear to be little personal monitoring devices. (They seem to be kissing cousins to the Polar heartrate monitoring watches.)
As an aside, I like to see this sort of thing on Slashdot./. employs a calibre of Geek that should be able to do more than regurgitate news from CNN. Originality is good...
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
I'm personally quite disappointed in Scott Kurtz at the moment. Several months ago, he ran a series of UserFriendly jokes, bordering on UF-bashing (in my opinion) in PvP. I sent him an email pointing out inaccuracies, and he and I ended up in a nice discussion about the various types of UF fans. He even joined #userfriendly on Undernet, where, as I recall, he received less than a warm welcome. However, I continued to think of him as a talented and decent person, and read PvP somewhat regularly. The subject matter wasn't always in my area of expertise, but I appreciated it nonetheless. I'm seeing somewhat of a disturbing trend amongst some of the online comic strip authors - PvP and Penny Arcade in particular. It seems that rather than concentrate on their own strips, and make them as good as they can based on their own merits, some folks feel the need to try to bring other strips down to make theirs look better. "UserFriendly sucks, so read my strip instead!" It's akin to political mudslinging campaigns - and if politicians would wake up, they'd realize that they alienate many more people than they're expecting. I'm proud to be involved in a comic strip which brings a smile to so many faces, and does it without trying to stomp on someone else in an attempt to look better.
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
I can't think of a single person that I know that wouldn't be truly disgusted (and thereby regard me with some disdain) at having been spammed, traceably, by me. No one wants spam in their mailbox, let alone spam originating from an acquaintance. Inasmuch as it appears that there really is no other way to get the DSL router (at least for the moment), potential users really are being forced to be used as slave labor in the spamming efforts - don't want to pay for the latest email listing CD? No problem, make your "subscribers" spam people to get the service! In addition, when factoring in the percentage of people who actually respond to spam, users are going to have to send out email to many more than the ten or fifteen that are required.
This is not to mention the misnomers that are associated with this, either... DSL is more secure than cable, but only when DSL is not in bridging mode - something that in my area, is only becoming more widespread recently.
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
Doesn't a black market imply money changing hands? I suppose that mp3's changing hands can imply some sort of barter, but there are plenty of people leeching, as well, who never intend to share their music collection with others.
Poor choices of words for a poorly thought-out lawsuit.
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
Geek boys absolutely need geek girls. Who else is going to understand when geek boy (or girl, for that matter) goes on a weekend binge of programming or playing Age of Kings? Your "old-fashioned" (*gag*) girl is going to spend that weekend whining about how she wants to go out dancing and why doesn't he get off that damned computer and that he never pays attention to her.
Geek boys and geek girls are made for one another. Geek girls are out there. Treat them like worthwhile human beings and they might even go out with you.:)
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
People relate their tech support stupidities all the time. There are a million sites out there for people to rant about the idiots who call them. (I've even featured a few as the Link of the Day.) No names were given, only one nickname. And despite what another poster thinks, Microsoft is a large enough company that I don't think you'd be able to track down the user in this story. Think about it - they'll have more than one person running Linux, in the usability study, and even people who aren't. I bet they also have more than one person running CivCTP on it, even. It's a popular game. Microsoft is too afraid of Linux not to be running a large-scale usability study on it, and I doubt Linux use is confined to just one study. So, if you can figure out which MS employee they were talking about, exactly, you probably have too much time on your hands.
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
I can't imagine that banks can't track down their own money to find out where it is, and then nab the crackers from there. ("Yeah, sure, we'll give you money! --Aha, gotcha!") I also can't believe that these skript kiddiez all have secret Swiss bank accounts or something. Wouldn't a deposit of $400,000 by an unemployed teenager be suspicious? This isn't exactly an amount of money you can hide under your bed. Reminds me of a local incident a couple years ago, where a couple skript kiddiez hacked an e-commerce server, stole credit card numbers, then had stuff *shipped to their homes*. And they wonder why they got caught...
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
IRC servers aren't the system hogs Dvorak makes them out to be. Unless you're running a massive hub server, generally they're not much of a drain at all. Granted, this doesn't cover the being-hacked aspect, however, any poorly administered system is a risk. Out of all of the load-heavy duties a server can pull, IRC serving isn't one of them. A site running an e-commerce solution probably takes more resources than would an IRC server. In addition, it's clear he knows nothing about IRC, having not been on in "years" and getting all his information hearsay. But those kinds of reporting tactics are normal for the "publication" he writes for. I've sent several letters correcting half-truths and misnomers, and never once have I received a reply. Perhaps/. should stop posting this sort of tripe. It only lends credence to the person who writes it.
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
My mother bought a TriGem several years ago, and it was a completely unstable piece of crap. (The hardware acceleration had to be completely off in order to run the screensaver - and this was a comparatively minor problem.)
I've stayed well away from eMachines - have they improved their quality at all? It seems like they can't have - after all, you get what you pay for. I'd rather shell out a bit more and have a stable system than get a cheap box whose components probably don't work (i.e., the infamous eMachines quasi-Winmodem).
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
Stephenson, the person, the author
on
The Diamond Age
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· Score: 1
I lived in Ames, Iowa, for eleven years. Neal Stephenson also grew up in Ames, and he came to talk to an English class of mine, several years ago. It's easy to see where he gets his geekiness from; he told us that he was in the Boy Scouts as a kid. That's pretty normal, but what's not normal was the fact that one or more of the troop leaders worked in the Ames Lab. Apparently one of their projects was to put corn seeds in high radiation, and plant them to see what happened. The most normal corn stalk got a prize, as did the most mutated. There were many other such stories we were told, but that one stands out in memory. I like to think that this explains a lot about his outlook on life and his writing...
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
I find it interesting that they call "Netscape Navigator" open source on this webpage (listed under the various programs used to create the page).. AKAIK, Netscape never was "open source". Just think about how much money Netscape would've lost if they'd made their code open source - heh. I suppose there's the flipside, that Netscape would've become so stable, so quickly, that it would've crushed MSIE. A game of what-if's...
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
It seems as though SGI is creating all sorts of problems for themselves simply by being as short-sighted as they are. In 1996, they acquire Cray, which in my opinion, wasn't as bad a move as they're implying now. Then recently we have the famed name/logo change, layoffs, the divestiture of their so recently acquired Cray division (where I did some contract work) and the NT Workstation division, the CEO changes, etc... It seems as though they're making such radical changes without any thought as to any far-reaching effects, possibly just to see the stock price get up above $12 for a while. Sure, Q2 might be profitable - but at what cost? It's all superficial, and I'm surprised the stock market fell for it.
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
As a female in a technical field, I'm curious how you handle being in a male-dominated field. I've dealt with many setbacks and much harassment, myself. (One job interview I actually got asked, "So, can you handle being in a group of guys?") What kind of obstacles have you encountered? Has it been easier or more difficult than you expected? How have you dealt with men who refuse to believe that a female could be such a cool geek?
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
From what I can gather, the vendor had solutions set up using NT that worked in other settings. Of course, this doesn't make them proven in their setting, but it's understandable that they were willing to give it a try.
I find it pretty admirable that Tim and the rest of the O`Reilly crew were able to look past politics and attempt to implement what they considered to be the best solution for their needs - whether it was NT, Linux, Sun, whatever. I think it shows a certain maturity to be able to look past a brand name and get to the heart of the matter. (It's also easy to say at this point that it didn't work because it was NT. While it may be the case, and even could be considered a strong possibility, it's also possible that a similar setup on a UNIX could also have failed.)
Just another reason to be impressed with O`Reilly as a whole....
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
In the book, "Atanasoff - Forgotten Father of the Computer", by Clark R Mollenhoff, it's described how Mauchly had visited the Iowa State campus in June of 1941, and studied the ABC computer extensively for several days.
It was then found in a court of law that indeed, Mauchly had gotten many concepts for the ENIAC directly from the ABC computer, and Atanasoff was given the credit he deserved.
However, I believe the current school of thought is that the ENIAC is the first large scale digital computer. You cannot look at the ENIAC, though, without also looking at its roots.
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
Slashdot Mirror
I think this is a very short-sighted sort of view, and seeing this pissing contest is rather annoying to me.
While it's true that developers play a very important role in a business, so also do systems administrators. In the environments I've worked in, the application itself is nothing without a working server on which to host it. My current place of employment, as well as my last, relied heavily on web applications and interfaces for their customers. If those servers go down, those applications that the developers worked so hard on, are worth naught.
It takes all kinds to run an enterprise. While I couldn't write a C program to save my life, most of our application developers also couldn't troubleshoot an ecache parity error on a Sun Enterprise 10000 domain either.
It's best described, I think, as a "symbiotic relationship". The fact that you seem to be rather hell-bent on the idea that developers are *more* important than the sysadmins is rankling. We all have important, but very different, jobs to do, none of which requires more skill than the others.
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
The secret for this is that any Cocoa app will use the scrollwheel, while any Carbon app won't.
Carbon is the "springboard" to ease developers into Cocoa, which is the API leftover from NeXT.
It's frustrating, but not surprising, that the Finder's a Carbon app and not a Cocoa app.
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
I read the Ars review with some interest.
I've been running OS X since March 24th or so, thanks to Staples selling it early, and I've personally been very impressed with it.
I'm a long-time UNIX geek and recent Mac convert. (Despite the initially seemingly-high pricetag, the quality of the hardware and support is unbeatable.)
I don't think it's fair to say the OS was shipped "unfinished" or "half-baked". From time to time, you have to decide what bugs and problems you can live with, and get stuff out the door. (How long was 2.4 in development? If I'm not mistaken, since I'm not a Linux person, Linus finally slapped a code freeze on it, did he not?)
Yes, I have to boot into OS9 to watch DVD's. Windows doesn't ship with a DVD player (Media Player doesn't count. I don't use it to play my mp3's, I won't use it to watch my DVD's) and certainly has issues, and Linux has been not-ready-for-primetime since its inception.
Aqua is eyecandy, and a lot of it is probably overkill to some of our more utilitarian users, but there's a whole lot of config files and resource forks just waiting to be hacked. Lots of sites exist, as a matter of fact, devoted to such things.
Applications - well, I hardly ever have to run anything in Classic. I've found an email application, an mp3 player, a web browser, AIM, a LiveJournal client (addict? me? never...) and other things that I need for daily happiness, all either Carbonized or already Cocoa. The only things I need Classic for are things like Photoshop and Dreamweaver - and it works just fine for those. Not every application I'll ever use is available yet - but stuff I need on a daily basis is all already supported in OS X.
The only real caveat I've heard about its support, in fact, is a lack of real MIDI support. But I've heard that's being worked on.
Plus, if you think something's missing - add it. Apple couldn't get ssh included, but many many people have gotten OpenSSH installed and working with a minimum of hassle.
It needs a bit of work, but the potential within OS X is huge. I'm looking forward to watching it grow.
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
Naw... We've got OS X running on an old beige G3/233.. It's not perfect by any means, but it works. The performance isn't as stellar as on my G4 Powerbook, but it's serviceable.
/. denizens.
And the beige G3 is considered by many, including myself, to be an old machine.
Windows XP's system requirements aren't going to be much better, but I know that Microsoft and Apple are like twin anathemas to most
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
That's a possibility. If so, it's likely just a generic one, because every optical scrollie mouse I've used (several) has worked out of the box with OS X.
;)
It's still a damn sight nicer than having to load an extension or control panel to get it to work - less work for me.
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
There's some Mac games for OS9, but not a whole ton for OS X. (Diablo and Deus Ex came out in a timely manner - read: within six months of the PC version - and versions of the Sims and Livin' Large exist, for example. These are all OS9 games though.)
As far as mouses are concerned, my two-button scrollie wheel optical mouse works *out of the box* in OS X - no need to load extensions or control panels anymore. It works lovely.
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
I've been debating whether or not to post. :)
I will, with this disclaimer. I work for Netscape, but not in product development.
It's true that standards in PR3 are broken - CSS doesn't display correctly, or at all, for example. However, I believe this is temporary, and that standards compliance is a big issue with Netscape in general. Evidence of that is here, although it may seem like propaganda-speak.
I've also had the privilege of trying out some of the internal nightly builds, and they have come a long way. There's still a ways to go, but keep in mind, Netscape 6 is still in the pre-release stage. Out of respect for my employer, I'm trying not to divulge too much information, so please understand why this post is a little detail-thin.
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
The game that comes to mind immediately is Deus Ex. Now, I haven't played this game extensively yet (I'm still playing Diablo 2), but what I have played of it, skills other than point and shoot are emphasized, despite the fact that it is built on the UT engine. (The game is absolutely beautiful, too, I was amazed at the reflection of the walls in the marble floors.) If you move too loudly, you're toast. In the training, you had to figure out a way to get across a sewer (or something similar) with no ladder on the either side to get out. In my opinion, using your brain comes first, using the gun comes second in this game.
/.
I guess I think that if there's a reason for fewer "smart" games and more shooters and the like, it's due solely to market influences. A lot of people are buying Q3A, and non-shooters seem to have fallen out of favor with many geeks, including a lot of people who read
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
I've been informed by people who've analyzed the packet stream that Napster sends that it's horribly insecure - frighteningly so, in fact.
It would really not surprise me if something similar to your scenario were allowed to happen, though by current standards, I consider the sending of autoexec.bat to be pretty tame. In my opinion, it's pretty pointless to try to "hack" any box that still uses an autoexec.bat, but just think - the blackmail possibilities are endless!
Things like this coupled with the sheer instability of Napster (I have to reboot my box, a 500 Celeron with 128 megs of ram, every time I use it), made me just decide to delete the entire install and mooch off of my friends who have 60+ gig mp3 archives.
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
While there is some merit to this, it also all depends on your bank.
A couple months ago, my car insurance company read a $197 check as $797, which bounced and caused an overdraft in my account. They said, "oops, sorry" and sent the check through again, and it cleared. In the midst of all these colossal screw-ups, my bank recalled the extra $600 to my account, and refunded me my overdraft fees.
My point in all this is that if you have a decent relationship with your bank, and they're not a bunch of twinks, you should be able to work something out with them should this particular wave of fraud affect you - even if you have a debit card.
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
What immediately springs to mind are those infamous nanny-cams that you see on the likes of Oprah. Would this not count as surreptitious, since they're usually embedded in clocks or knick-knacks placed on shelves, or whatnot?
/. employs a calibre of Geek that should be able to do more than regurgitate news from CNN. Originality is good...
I'd consider those much more of a "privacy violation" than the devices sold by Ramsey, which appear to be little personal monitoring devices. (They seem to be kissing cousins to the Polar heartrate monitoring watches.)
As an aside, I like to see this sort of thing on Slashdot.
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
I'm personally quite disappointed in Scott Kurtz at the moment. Several months ago, he ran a series of UserFriendly jokes, bordering on UF-bashing (in my opinion) in PvP. I sent him an email pointing out inaccuracies, and he and I ended up in a nice discussion about the various types of UF fans. He even joined #userfriendly on Undernet, where, as I recall, he received less than a warm welcome. However, I continued to think of him as a talented and decent person, and read PvP somewhat regularly. The subject matter wasn't always in my area of expertise, but I appreciated it nonetheless.
I'm seeing somewhat of a disturbing trend amongst some of the online comic strip authors - PvP and Penny Arcade in particular. It seems that rather than concentrate on their own strips, and make them as good as they can based on their own merits, some folks feel the need to try to bring other strips down to make theirs look better. "UserFriendly sucks, so read my strip instead!" It's akin to political mudslinging campaigns - and if politicians would wake up, they'd realize that they alienate many more people than they're expecting.
I'm proud to be involved in a comic strip which brings a smile to so many faces, and does it without trying to stomp on someone else in an attempt to look better.
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
I can't think of a single person that I know that wouldn't be truly disgusted (and thereby regard me with some disdain) at having been spammed, traceably, by me. No one wants spam in their mailbox, let alone spam originating from an acquaintance.
Inasmuch as it appears that there really is no other way to get the DSL router (at least for the moment), potential users really are being forced to be used as slave labor in the spamming efforts - don't want to pay for the latest email listing CD? No problem, make your "subscribers" spam people to get the service! In addition, when factoring in the percentage of people who actually respond to spam, users are going to have to send out email to many more than the ten or fifteen that are required.
This is not to mention the misnomers that are associated with this, either... DSL is more secure than cable, but only when DSL is not in bridging mode - something that in my area, is only becoming more widespread recently.
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
Doesn't a black market imply money changing hands? I suppose that mp3's changing hands can imply some sort of barter, but there are plenty of people leeching, as well, who never intend to share their music collection with others.
Poor choices of words for a poorly thought-out lawsuit.
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
Geek boys absolutely need geek girls. Who else is going to understand when geek boy (or girl, for that matter) goes on a weekend binge of programming or playing Age of Kings? Your "old-fashioned" (*gag*) girl is going to spend that weekend whining about how she wants to go out dancing and why doesn't he get off that damned computer and that he never pays attention to her.
:)
Geek boys and geek girls are made for one another. Geek girls are out there. Treat them like worthwhile human beings and they might even go out with you.
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
People relate their tech support stupidities all the time. There are a million sites out there for people to rant about the idiots who call them. (I've even featured a few as the Link of the Day.)
No names were given, only one nickname. And despite what another poster thinks, Microsoft is a large enough company that I don't think you'd be able to track down the user in this story. Think about it - they'll have more than one person running Linux, in the usability study, and even people who aren't. I bet they also have more than one person running CivCTP on it, even. It's a popular game.
Microsoft is too afraid of Linux not to be running a large-scale usability study on it, and I doubt Linux use is confined to just one study.
So, if you can figure out which MS employee they were talking about, exactly, you probably have too much time on your hands.
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
I can't imagine that banks can't track down their own money to find out where it is, and then nab the crackers from there. ("Yeah, sure, we'll give you money! --Aha, gotcha!")
I also can't believe that these skript kiddiez all have secret Swiss bank accounts or something. Wouldn't a deposit of $400,000 by an unemployed teenager be suspicious? This isn't exactly an amount of money you can hide under your bed.
Reminds me of a local incident a couple years ago, where a couple skript kiddiez hacked an e-commerce server, stole credit card numbers, then had stuff *shipped to their homes*. And they wonder why they got caught...
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
IRC servers aren't the system hogs Dvorak makes them out to be. Unless you're running a massive hub server, generally they're not much of a drain at all. Granted, this doesn't cover the being-hacked aspect, however, any poorly administered system is a risk. /. should stop posting this sort of tripe. It only lends credence to the person who writes it.
Out of all of the load-heavy duties a server can pull, IRC serving isn't one of them. A site running an e-commerce solution probably takes more resources than would an IRC server.
In addition, it's clear he knows nothing about IRC, having not been on in "years" and getting all his information hearsay. But those kinds of reporting tactics are normal for the "publication" he writes for. I've sent several letters correcting half-truths and misnomers, and never once have I received a reply.
Perhaps
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
Wasn't eMachines formerly known as TriGem?
My mother bought a TriGem several years ago, and it was a completely unstable piece of crap. (The hardware acceleration had to be completely off in order to run the screensaver - and this was a comparatively minor problem.)
I've stayed well away from eMachines - have they improved their quality at all? It seems like they can't have - after all, you get what you pay for. I'd rather shell out a bit more and have a stable system than get a cheap box whose components probably don't work (i.e., the infamous eMachines quasi-Winmodem).
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
I lived in Ames, Iowa, for eleven years. Neal Stephenson also grew up in Ames, and he came to talk to an English class of mine, several years ago.
It's easy to see where he gets his geekiness from; he told us that he was in the Boy Scouts as a kid. That's pretty normal, but what's not normal was the fact that one or more of the troop leaders worked in the Ames Lab. Apparently one of their projects was to put corn seeds in high radiation, and plant them to see what happened. The most normal corn stalk got a prize, as did the most mutated. There were many other such stories we were told, but that one stands out in memory.
I like to think that this explains a lot about his outlook on life and his writing...
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
I find it interesting that they call "Netscape Navigator" open source on this webpage (listed under the various programs used to create the page)..
AKAIK, Netscape never was "open source". Just think about how much money Netscape would've lost if they'd made their code open source - heh. I suppose there's the flipside, that Netscape would've become so stable, so quickly, that it would've crushed MSIE. A game of what-if's...
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
It seems as though SGI is creating all sorts of problems for themselves simply by being as short-sighted as they are.
In 1996, they acquire Cray, which in my opinion, wasn't as bad a move as they're implying now. Then recently we have the famed name/logo change, layoffs, the divestiture of their so recently acquired Cray division (where I did some contract work) and the NT Workstation division, the CEO changes, etc...
It seems as though they're making such radical changes without any thought as to any far-reaching effects, possibly just to see the stock price get up above $12 for a while. Sure, Q2 might be profitable - but at what cost? It's all superficial, and I'm surprised the stock market fell for it.
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
As a female in a technical field, I'm curious how you handle being in a male-dominated field. I've dealt with many setbacks and much harassment, myself. (One job interview I actually got asked, "So, can you handle being in a group of guys?")
What kind of obstacles have you encountered? Has it been easier or more difficult than you expected? How have you dealt with men who refuse to believe that a female could be such a cool geek?
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
From what I can gather, the vendor had solutions set up using NT that worked in other settings. Of course, this doesn't make them proven in their setting, but it's understandable that they were willing to give it a try.
I find it pretty admirable that Tim and the rest of the O`Reilly crew were able to look past politics and attempt to implement what they considered to be the best solution for their needs - whether it was NT, Linux, Sun, whatever. I think it shows a certain maturity to be able to look past a brand name and get to the heart of the matter. (It's also easy to say at this point that it didn't work because it was NT. While it may be the case, and even could be considered a strong possibility, it's also possible that a similar setup on a UNIX could also have failed.)
Just another reason to be impressed with O`Reilly as a whole....
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
Indeed.
In the book, "Atanasoff - Forgotten Father of the Computer", by Clark R Mollenhoff, it's described how Mauchly had visited the Iowa State campus in June of 1941, and studied the ABC computer extensively for several days.
It was then found in a court of law that indeed, Mauchly had gotten many concepts for the ENIAC directly from the ABC computer, and Atanasoff was given the credit he deserved.
However, I believe the current school of thought is that the ENIAC is the first large scale digital computer. You cannot look at the ENIAC, though, without also looking at its roots.
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."