Goddamn, PDFs for language specification and programmer's guide? Thanks guys, I'll probably never need to search this stuff, or link to a specific section. Also, what the hell do you call this bracket style:
public Program() { // Receive command line arguments from port CommandLine String [] args = recieve(PrimaryChannel::CommandLine); // Send a message to port ExitCode; PrimaryChannel::ExitCode <-- 0; }
I can't help but think that their idea of "Channels" is really a message queue, which listeners pull messages from. This is easily implemented in around 30-40 lines of Python, Queues, Tasks and Listeners. And since Python supports these crazy things called CLASSES, it's really quite easy to implement new features or override base functionality.
In other words, this is an incredible waste of time. Put all these kids to work on IronPython and close this crap down.
If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, it's a duck.
There's a difference between subjectively sensing the "duck" and a duck actually existing. There is a palpable difference between the reality we sense and the reality that actually exists, as has been proven many times by science.
You have to be careful equating our experience of reality with reality itself, because everyone's reality is different... sometimes with gross incompatibilities. Just because you've "seen" or "heard" something, doesn't mean you actually saw or heard it. It means your brain registered it, and there's a pretty big disconnect between that and objective reality. Even worse, it boggles most conceptions of the universe that multiple, valid "realities" are hanging around; either there's an objective reality we perceive imperfectly, or we live in a completely chaotic universe where the only reason we think it makes sense is we "remember it making sense"... as if memory makes sense.
Empiricism seems like a common-sense way to shut up all these nerdo philosophy/physics kids, but empiricism tends to be the enemy of intelligent discourse these days.
Or hv3. It's got CSS compliance that passes Acid2, 90% frame support, and no Javascript or Flash support. The only negatives are it's a little alpha-y (background tabs block the whole UI, etc.) and there's no HTTPS support. It's rather lightweight, however, and actively developed. I use it on my Thinkpad 233MHz no trouble.
I'll use elinks for GMail and my bank website because it handles HTTPS. Using plain links for regular web browsing pales in comparison. Even w3m or dillo do better than that. And, if I'm not mistaken, Lynx is only used at libraries without funding, at universities with a documentation/knowledge base system build around it, and for users with disabilities. Well, I guess you can script with it...
No, I'd like it to notify me that the software had been modified. Then I can choose to use the ATM or not.
Here's a better way to envision your "example":
I have a computer. I modify the source code to the TTY driver. I recompile the kernel, reboot (modules, I know, whatever). My computer refuses to run. OH! I FORGOT I HAVE DRM/TCO ON MY PC AND NOW IT REFUSES TO RUN! HOW IN GOD'S NAME AM I GOING TO GET ANYTHING BACK NOW THAT I'VE BEEN LOCKED OUT OF MY OWN HARDWARE? In what universe is this okay? Repeat after me: THE OWNER OF THE HARDWARE MUST BE IN CONTROL.
And you presuppose that the people who break into these 'mission critical' machines won't find a way to disable the signing, or find a weakness in the hash. All this nonsense about "B-B-B-But... what if someone HACKS the box?" When someone hacks the box, all bets are off, and you restore. Anything done on the box during the 'hacked' period is suspect and has to be removed. Anything less is a security weakness, whether PC, ATM, or voting machine. Did you flunk sysadmin class? Just throwing around sensitive hardware like machines that control your democracy, money, and health doesn't change the issue at all, but it does make it more difficult to be objective. Thanks for that.
You know, I was about to go on some huge environmental rant about how "people like you are the ones killing because you don't want to wait 90 seconds for your computer to come on." But then I did a little research and found out that turning your computer off at night isn't much different then letting it sleep. Of course, the computer has to be configured to do this, but it's not all that complicated. Now, I'm sure that if the quad-zillion computers around the world were all turned off at night (Energy Star says that minimal usage is 2.3 watts) as opposed to just sleeping, that's 2.3 quad-zillion watts saved. But such mass conformity is unreasonable.
I do, however, take issue that it's "bad" for reboots to be perceived as a pain in the ass. I would encourage users everywhere to complain loudly whenever they have to reboot, specifically to the authors of whatever software forced it upon them. I think the more people that find things unacceptable (IE's implementation of CSS, for example) and refuse to abide them, the more things either get fixed or replaced. This goes quad-zillion-double for reinstalling the OS.
IMHO this is hypocrisy. If one product is better, why not use it??
Because sometimes ideology is more important than technology. Before I'm modded as a pro-RMS troll or something, think about all the technology we wouldn't have if it weren't for the ideology of Free Software, Open Source, Object-Oriented Programming, etc.
Manifestation of ideas is easy, CREATION of ideas is the hard part.
Well, I for one would like to debate the merits of MHT. I'm sure that the Mozilla devs have more important things to worry about, though I don't make their priority lists for them.
And, for some irony, Mozilla apps are Open Source. Why don't you add it yourself? I'd argue that if anyone actually gave a shit about it, they'd code it in there themselves.
Oh wait, it looks like someone already did. MAF apparently is compatible with MHT and has its own format which is better. I'd suggest googling for things before freaking out. In fact, if it were so important to you, I would hope you would've already done that.
Are you insane? Just because a project offers free binaries doesn't make them amazing. In fact, to compare closed-source to open-source:
1. Can't fix problems
2. Can't adapt software to specific environment/use
3. Can't verify the software isn't spying/serving porn
Free binaries don't solve any of those, and when you think about the problems that software is SUPPOSED to solve, closed-source seems to be a step backwards. Besides, it's pretty asinine to ask someone if they've contributed software to an open-source project to qualify their beliefs. We call it ad-hominem around here.
Not to divert the focus here, but you DO know that there's quite a few places in the good ol' USA that still have sweatshop-style practices? And before we blame all the Americans who just want to buy paper plates, maybe we ought to consider that the USA isn't the only place that sells goods from sweatshops?
Demand something else and you'll get it.
I demand you cease your support for sweatshop labor by using that computer. Seriously, I dare you to try and build a computer without anything made in China, Taiwan, Sri Lanka, and Malaysia. Really, someone here on Slashdot take me up on it. Ever cap and resistor at USA living wage ($7.50/hr). Or did you post using telepathy?
On the other hand, I'm paying for the internet connection so prioritising traffic based on whether the remote party are paying protection money to my ISP is a very Bad Thing - I already paid for the connection, the remote party already paid for theirs, why the hell should my ISP be demanding more cash from them and penalising me if they don't pay?
This is basically it. I pay $50/mo. for 3M/800K and I expect full pipe. Of course, in my ToS agreement, it's explained that they cannot guarantee that service will be available all the time, so I don't expect 99.999% uptime or anything (as a side note, I would like to not reboot my DSL modem every 10 hours), but nowhere in my ToS does it say that if I use 'too much' of what I pay for my connection will degrade. So if I BitTorrent all day and max out my connection, I assume that my ISP doesn't have shit for brains and oversold their bandwidth. Fundamentally, then, it's not my fault if _your_ connection (RTP) degrades because I'm using _my_ connection (BitTorrent), it's _our_ ISPs.
At this point, there's no basis (legal or moral) to really be upset with me for using the service I pay for. This is what the ISPs are trying to do, make their product more valuable by increasing the scarcity... like DeBeers and Diamonds.
If you want to see the Internet become something like a newspaper full of classified ads, make sure the people who make money from the bandwidth are in control. I mean, can you imagine calling someone on the phone and having to sit through a radio ad before you got through to your grandma? Or plugging in your lamp and having to sit through a holographic presentation of why this margarita mix is better than that one? This doesn't happen because these services are REGULATED, so everyone's guaranteed phone service and everyone's guaranteed electricity... unless you're ridiculous and you live in the Grand Canyon or something.
What it comes down to is this: Do you want your Internet service to be like electricity, or like cable? Hell, I'd pay $70 a month for DSL if it meant they didn't have to oversell bandwidth, but all that would happen is some Executive would get a new car.
So what did we decide, the Linux servers were down for 3, 4 weeks compared to a *stellar* 100% uptime from Windows?
Who admins the Linux servers? I can tell you that two full days of downtime a month for my servers puts me in unemployment. Did they hire 10 year-olds or something? Were the servers REQUIRED to run super-unstable software? What gives?
I had just this same issue, roughly 300GB of porn, 100GB of digital audio, 100GB of music, and probably 50GB of miscellaneous stuff. I scrounged up all the drives I had, bought two computers from the University Surplus (a PII and PIII, 450 and 400 MHz, respectively), put 128MB of RAM in each and split the drive space evenly between them. Then, I set up LVM on each box to create one giant disk, set up RSYNC on each box to create automatic backups, and I was done.
The drawback to this setup is speed, the drives are not SATA drives, there is not RAID to speedup your throughput, they use 10/100MBit NICs. But, to be honest, I've not noticed any issues with my Home Media server (Freevo-based), nor backing up my Digital Audio work, nor going through an automatic backup while watching videos on 3 different machines on the house.
Now, is this pluggable like a RAID array? Not exactly. However, adding disks to an LVM is ridiculously easy, and if you're out of IDE channels, trash your LVM (remember your redundant backup on the backup machine), swap the smallest and largest disks, restore the data from the backup machine, and go. Will copying ~1TB of data take all day over 100MBit? Yes. In fact, if all goes well and you don't use your network at all, it'll take you 22 hours (12.5MB/sec). So gigabit is clearly the way to go, but this whole thing cost me... $150. That's cables, power strips, everything. Of course, I had the disks too. You could probably do all of this for:
What the hell do you mean 3D interfaces suck? Like MMORPG's? Like FPS's (I'm pretty sure DOOM: The Board Game sux04z)? Like the entire world? Name an earthly "interface" (and things like your car, the television, the stove, etc.) that would be improved by a 2D interface.
> If technology was the limiting factor on 3D interfaces, I believe they'd have become commonplace by the 2nd half of the 1990s.... Also; bear in mind that 3D interfaces will always be observed via two 2D projections (in your eyes, of course); this does *not* give anything approaching full knowledge of the 3D world from a given perspective. 2D on the other hand, does not have this problem.
I'm confused. Are we talking about the monitor that always displays a 3D interface in 2D, or the eyes? Either way I'm not sure that's right, monitors simulate depth quite well, much like IMAX movie screens, and if not, there's always 3D monitors and goggles. Even so, isn't that a technical limitation? If we're talking about eyes, then is there no such thing as a 3D interface anywhere? I mean, I guess I'm __pretty__ sure my girlfriend's in 3D, but I may need to check again. *grins*
Regardless, the real gain of 3D interfaces is that depth/location provides context, which at first might not prove to be such a valuable thing. Sure, 2D interfaces provide context all over the place, my favorites are greyed out options, confusing dialog screens, inconsistently placed buttons that work sometimes, and keyboard shortcuts that don't give any feedback... or do different things depending upon the programmer's definition of 'context'. In 3D interfaces (let's take a stove for example) you would never ever ever have someone call you complaining that they couldn't set the stove temperature from inside the stove. I feel retarded even saying it. However, in a 2D interface there's all kinds of questions, "why can't we do this from here?" because they don't understand the magical Computer World the programmer's created with its own random rules.
Of course 3D interfaces suck when you emulate all the bad points of 2D interfaces (like walking down a hallway to get to a new fileroom/filedrawer/folder/file? Jesus, who the fuck thought that was efficient in the slightest? I get upset looking for a file under more than 2 folders.), but that seems a little moronic to me. The problem with a 3D file management interface isn't 3D interfaces, it's the way we conceive of and use files. Rather than think of them as mere bit-buckets, think of them as tiny programs with lots of different methods.
For instance, in a 3D interface, I'd expect to pick up a piece of paper (an OpenOffice document), write on it (edit the document), draw a picture (import a graphic), make a paper airplane of it and toss it through a portal labeled BOSS (e-mail it to my boss). Though that's probably way too much fun for any normal office environment, and probably requires too much screen real-estate, but then we've run into social/technological limitations, not interface ones.
To summarize, any interface sucks if you write a sucky one, but designing a quality interface requires a thorough understanding of what you're interfacing with, who will be using your interface, and for what. Getting caught up in current methodology is a surefire way to create 8 consecutive Operating Systems that all have the same braindead usability.
That is absolute nonsense, and furthermore, I can tell you that people with your attitude are the bane of the Help Desk world. Mounting drives is really easy (you add the applet to the taskbar in GNOME... which autodetects it for you anyway). Sharing drives (of course, you don't want to do that, right? You mean sharing individual folders.)? GNOME-SYSTEM-TOOLS fixes this right up for you. Permissions? Seriously, it's not that hard. R is Read. W is Write. X is eXecute. First group is owner, second group is group, last group is everyone else. That's way easier than MS permissions (Modify? "Full" Control? Group Policy? The Fuck?). And when was the last time that Desktop usage forced you to work with shell scripts, or cron, or drivers? And don't even try and cop out with that printing nonsense, printing sucks no matter which platform you're using (except... MAYBE OS X... if your printer is supported). I mean, try printing anything in XP without a real printer driver. Guess what CUPS does?
Imagine this: "Hey everyone, it's your boss, Charlie. I'm sure you've noticed that your computers look a little strange; that's because we've removed Windows and installed Linux. Yes, overnight. Please, nobody panic. For the next 8 hours, we're not going to do any work. Instead, we're going to take the time to learn the Linux equivalents to the Windows apps you're so... fond of. First, THE INTERNET... better known as a Web Browser. It works the same, no worries. Second, WORD... or OpenOffice.org. It also works the same. Thirdly, OUTLOOK (which I'm sure you'll all miss)... which is Evolution here in Linux. And I'm sure you see this coming, it also works the same. Oh... and Instant Messaging, which is GAIM on this side of the fence. Wait... I believe it also works the same."
Maybe this attitude comes from working Help Desk too long, but I'm tired of stupid questions. Really, if you can't take 5 minutes to click around in the menu options (which is what I do... because I frequently have no idea what people are talking about) then you need to take a day and find your brain. I mean, you're worried about TCO? Try the THINKING option, and I guarantee you can kill off 90% of your Support Staff. Why do I suggest it? Because despite the fact that it would cost me my job, I know it's never going to happen.
Why don't you just do this at your home? Setup some Gigabit Networking on the cheap, get a 500mHz box running XDMCP, get Squid proxy going (for all your monitoring needs) and setup your user accounts appropriately. I mean, I realize that this isn't a NATIONWIDE DEPLOYMENT or anything, but spyware's gone, you can grep logs for pr0n (and... dead people?) and you can get your kids used to a REAL OS. I mean, the whole thing *might* cost you $400 (500mHz=$200. 3 gigabit NICs $45. Gigabit Switch=$50. Cables=$50) So... compared to "Computer Management Service", you'll probably make your money back in about a year, and not have to call anyone in India.
So... what is an OS again? Device drivers, memory management and an API, right? I mean, there's all kinds of things Windows/Microsoft sucks at, but alot, if not 98% of that has nothing to do with the OS itself. So, if we're comparing apples to apples here...
As far as I'm concerned there's 3 arguments against the Windows OS (as in, kernel, memory management and API): frequent crashes, vulnerabilities in the code, and a convoluted/ineffective security model.
1. Things crash - Not so much post-NT kernel switchover.
2. Viruses/Spyware - Having worked in tech support for a while now, I can safely say that idiots rule on this one. Not to say I don't get adware/spyware and the occasional virus on my home Windows box (Windows definitely loses here), but I'm nowhere near the level these users are at.
3. Security - I'm not even sure this falls in kernel space for Windows... but if it does, Active Directory can kiss my nuts. Freaking containers and blah blah blah. What a mess. Again with Windows losing on this one.
So let's keep things sane, just like you can't blame Linus for Firefox maybe destroying a directory in its Beta phase, you can't blame the Windows OS for Visual Basic, or the latest Internet Explorer vulnerability. With that in mind, what's the problem with cross-platform software? I mean, what it sounds like most people have a problem with is Windows Apps (such as WMP, Explorer, Office, IE), all of which are immimently replaceable. I submit that the biggest problem with the Windows OS is Microsoft itself. Who wants to write applications for an OS that's just going to replace your app with a shittier version anyway, meanwhile changing the platform so your app only works 1/2 as well as it used to. Blame the Windows OS for OS issues, blame Windows applications for application issues, and blame Microsoft for what they do with their platform.
And really, if most users understood that the OS had nothing to do with double-click vs. single-click or Safari vs. Firefox vs. IE, they'd tell the OS to go to hell because they don't care. Applications ought to be completely transparent as to what OS they're running if at all possible. I mean, let's see a show of hands. Who's said, "Thank God I'm on Windows and, instead of running the quality Free/Open apps I'm used to, I get to run the sub-par Proprietary/Closed apps Microsoft bundles with the OS."
The best way to win people over to Free/Open software is to write the best software possible, and features of good software include portability and cross-platform compatibility. And when Microsoft closes the door on your app, as is their prerogative, reopen it. If it gets to the point where you can't, tell your users. Maybe some of them will try something different just because of your app. But regardless, at some point you're going to have to decide whether evangelism or developing is your priority. Oh, and curse Slashdot for not having 'vi' keybindings in their post windows.
Slashdot Mirror
Goddamn, PDFs for language specification and programmer's guide? Thanks guys, I'll probably never need to search this stuff, or link to a specific section. Also, what the hell do you call this bracket style:
public Program()
{
// Receive command line arguments from port CommandLine
String [] args = recieve(PrimaryChannel::CommandLine);
// Send a message to port ExitCode;
PrimaryChannel::ExitCode <-- 0; }
I can't help but think that their idea of "Channels" is really a message queue, which listeners pull messages from. This is easily implemented in around 30-40 lines of Python, Queues, Tasks and Listeners. And since Python supports these crazy things called CLASSES, it's really quite easy to implement new features or override base functionality.
In other words, this is an incredible waste of time. Put all these kids to work on IronPython and close this crap down.
If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, it's a duck.
There's a difference between subjectively sensing the "duck" and a duck actually existing. There is a palpable difference between the reality we sense and the reality that actually exists, as has been proven many times by science.
You have to be careful equating our experience of reality with reality itself, because everyone's reality is different... sometimes with gross incompatibilities. Just because you've "seen" or "heard" something, doesn't mean you actually saw or heard it. It means your brain registered it, and there's a pretty big disconnect between that and objective reality. Even worse, it boggles most conceptions of the universe that multiple, valid "realities" are hanging around; either there's an objective reality we perceive imperfectly, or we live in a completely chaotic universe where the only reason we think it makes sense is we "remember it making sense"... as if memory makes sense.
Empiricism seems like a common-sense way to shut up all these nerdo philosophy/physics kids, but empiricism tends to be the enemy of intelligent discourse these days.
Or hv3. It's got CSS compliance that passes Acid2, 90% frame support, and no Javascript or Flash support. The only negatives are it's a little alpha-y (background tabs block the whole UI, etc.) and there's no HTTPS support. It's rather lightweight, however, and actively developed. I use it on my Thinkpad 233MHz no trouble.
I'll use elinks for GMail and my bank website because it handles HTTPS. Using plain links for regular web browsing pales in comparison. Even w3m or dillo do better than that. And, if I'm not mistaken, Lynx is only used at libraries without funding, at universities with a documentation/knowledge base system build around it, and for users with disabilities. Well, I guess you can script with it...
No, I'd like it to notify me that the software had been modified. Then I can choose to use the ATM or not.
Here's a better way to envision your "example":
I have a computer. I modify the source code to the TTY driver. I recompile the kernel, reboot (modules, I know, whatever). My computer refuses to run. OH! I FORGOT I HAVE DRM/TCO ON MY PC AND NOW IT REFUSES TO RUN! HOW IN GOD'S NAME AM I GOING TO GET ANYTHING BACK NOW THAT I'VE BEEN LOCKED OUT OF MY OWN HARDWARE? In what universe is this okay? Repeat after me: THE OWNER OF THE HARDWARE MUST BE IN CONTROL.
And you presuppose that the people who break into these 'mission critical' machines won't find a way to disable the signing, or find a weakness in the hash. All this nonsense about "B-B-B-But... what if someone HACKS the box?" When someone hacks the box, all bets are off, and you restore. Anything done on the box during the 'hacked' period is suspect and has to be removed. Anything less is a security weakness, whether PC, ATM, or voting machine. Did you flunk sysadmin class? Just throwing around sensitive hardware like machines that control your democracy, money, and health doesn't change the issue at all, but it does make it more difficult to be objective. Thanks for that.
You know, I was about to go on some huge environmental rant about how "people like you are the ones killing because you don't want to wait 90 seconds for your computer to come on." But then I did a little research and found out that turning your computer off at night isn't much different then letting it sleep. Of course, the computer has to be configured to do this, but it's not all that complicated. Now, I'm sure that if the quad-zillion computers around the world were all turned off at night (Energy Star says that minimal usage is 2.3 watts) as opposed to just sleeping, that's 2.3 quad-zillion watts saved. But such mass conformity is unreasonable.
I do, however, take issue that it's "bad" for reboots to be perceived as a pain in the ass. I would encourage users everywhere to complain loudly whenever they have to reboot, specifically to the authors of whatever software forced it upon them. I think the more people that find things unacceptable (IE's implementation of CSS, for example) and refuse to abide them, the more things either get fixed or replaced. This goes quad-zillion-double for reinstalling the OS.
IMHO this is hypocrisy. If one product is better, why not use it??
Because sometimes ideology is more important than technology. Before I'm modded as a pro-RMS troll or something, think about all the technology we wouldn't have if it weren't for the ideology of Free Software, Open Source, Object-Oriented Programming, etc.
Manifestation of ideas is easy, CREATION of ideas is the hard part.Well, I for one would like to debate the merits of MHT. I'm sure that the Mozilla devs have more important things to worry about, though I don't make their priority lists for them.
And, for some irony, Mozilla apps are Open Source. Why don't you add it yourself? I'd argue that if anyone actually gave a shit about it, they'd code it in there themselves.
Oh wait, it looks like someone already did. MAF apparently is compatible with MHT and has its own format which is better. I'd suggest googling for things before freaking out. In fact, if it were so important to you, I would hope you would've already done that.
Are you insane? Just because a project offers free binaries doesn't make them amazing. In fact, to compare closed-source to open-source:
1. Can't fix problems
2. Can't adapt software to specific environment/use
3. Can't verify the software isn't spying/serving porn
Free binaries don't solve any of those, and when you think about the problems that software is SUPPOSED to solve, closed-source seems to be a step backwards. Besides, it's pretty asinine to ask someone if they've contributed software to an open-source project to qualify their beliefs. We call it ad-hominem around here.
Not to divert the focus here, but you DO know that there's quite a few places in the good ol' USA that still have sweatshop-style practices? And before we blame all the Americans who just want to buy paper plates, maybe we ought to consider that the USA isn't the only place that sells goods from sweatshops?
Demand something else and you'll get it.
I demand you cease your support for sweatshop labor by using that computer. Seriously, I dare you to try and build a computer without anything made in China, Taiwan, Sri Lanka, and Malaysia. Really, someone here on Slashdot take me up on it. Ever cap and resistor at USA living wage ($7.50/hr). Or did you post using telepathy?
On the other hand, I'm paying for the internet connection so prioritising traffic based on whether the remote party are paying protection money to my ISP is a very Bad Thing - I already paid for the connection, the remote party already paid for theirs, why the hell should my ISP be demanding more cash from them and penalising me if they don't pay?
This is basically it. I pay $50/mo. for 3M/800K and I expect full pipe. Of course, in my ToS agreement, it's explained that they cannot guarantee that service will be available all the time, so I don't expect 99.999% uptime or anything (as a side note, I would like to not reboot my DSL modem every 10 hours), but nowhere in my ToS does it say that if I use 'too much' of what I pay for my connection will degrade. So if I BitTorrent all day and max out my connection, I assume that my ISP doesn't have shit for brains and oversold their bandwidth. Fundamentally, then, it's not my fault if _your_ connection (RTP) degrades because I'm using _my_ connection (BitTorrent), it's _our_ ISPs.
At this point, there's no basis (legal or moral) to really be upset with me for using the service I pay for. This is what the ISPs are trying to do, make their product more valuable by increasing the scarcity... like DeBeers and Diamonds.
If you want to see the Internet become something like a newspaper full of classified ads, make sure the people who make money from the bandwidth are in control. I mean, can you imagine calling someone on the phone and having to sit through a radio ad before you got through to your grandma? Or plugging in your lamp and having to sit through a holographic presentation of why this margarita mix is better than that one? This doesn't happen because these services are REGULATED, so everyone's guaranteed phone service and everyone's guaranteed electricity... unless you're ridiculous and you live in the Grand Canyon or something.
What it comes down to is this: Do you want your Internet service to be like electricity, or like cable? Hell, I'd pay $70 a month for DSL if it meant they didn't have to oversell bandwidth, but all that would happen is some Executive would get a new car.
So what did we decide, the Linux servers were down for 3, 4 weeks compared to a *stellar* 100% uptime from Windows?
Who admins the Linux servers? I can tell you that two full days of downtime a month for my servers puts me in unemployment. Did they hire 10 year-olds or something? Were the servers REQUIRED to run super-unstable software? What gives?
I had just this same issue, roughly 300GB of porn, 100GB of digital audio, 100GB of music, and probably 50GB of miscellaneous stuff. I scrounged up all the drives I had, bought two computers from the University Surplus (a PII and PIII, 450 and 400 MHz, respectively), put 128MB of RAM in each and split the drive space evenly between them. Then, I set up LVM on each box to create one giant disk, set up RSYNC on each box to create automatic backups, and I was done.
The drawback to this setup is speed, the drives are not SATA drives, there is not RAID to speedup your throughput, they use 10/100MBit NICs. But, to be honest, I've not noticed any issues with my Home Media server (Freevo-based), nor backing up my Digital Audio work, nor going through an automatic backup while watching videos on 3 different machines on the house.
Now, is this pluggable like a RAID array? Not exactly. However, adding disks to an LVM is ridiculously easy, and if you're out of IDE channels, trash your LVM (remember your redundant backup on the backup machine), swap the smallest and largest disks, restore the data from the backup machine, and go. Will copying ~1TB of data take all day over 100MBit? Yes. In fact, if all goes well and you don't use your network at all, it'll take you 22 hours (12.5MB/sec). So gigabit is clearly the way to go, but this whole thing cost me... $150. That's cables, power strips, everything. Of course, I had the disks too. You could probably do all of this for:
2 Surplus computers: 160
2 Gigabit NICs: 50
Gigabit Router/Switch: 100
Cat 5e cables: 40
Linux: Free
Total: 350
At that point, all you need's disks... which is honestly going to be the bulk of your expense. But hey, you wanted storage, right?
So, seriously, can we not have informational links that send us into some research storefront? I feel like I'm at a porn site. "See my movie!"
What the hell do you mean 3D interfaces suck? Like MMORPG's? Like FPS's (I'm pretty sure DOOM: The Board Game sux04z)? Like the entire world? Name an earthly "interface" (and things like your car, the television, the stove, etc.) that would be improved by a 2D interface.
> If technology was the limiting factor on 3D interfaces, I believe they'd have become commonplace by the 2nd half of the 1990s.... Also; bear in mind that 3D interfaces will always be observed via two 2D projections (in your eyes, of course); this does *not* give anything approaching full knowledge of the 3D world from a given perspective. 2D on the other hand, does not have this problem.
I'm confused. Are we talking about the monitor that always displays a 3D interface in 2D, or the eyes? Either way I'm not sure that's right, monitors simulate depth quite well, much like IMAX movie screens, and if not, there's always 3D monitors and goggles. Even so, isn't that a technical limitation? If we're talking about eyes, then is there no such thing as a 3D interface anywhere? I mean, I guess I'm __pretty__ sure my girlfriend's in 3D, but I may need to check again. *grins*
Regardless, the real gain of 3D interfaces is that depth/location provides context, which at first might not prove to be such a valuable thing. Sure, 2D interfaces provide context all over the place, my favorites are greyed out options, confusing dialog screens, inconsistently placed buttons that work sometimes, and keyboard shortcuts that don't give any feedback... or do different things depending upon the programmer's definition of 'context'. In 3D interfaces (let's take a stove for example) you would never ever ever have someone call you complaining that they couldn't set the stove temperature from inside the stove. I feel retarded even saying it. However, in a 2D interface there's all kinds of questions, "why can't we do this from here?" because they don't understand the magical Computer World the programmer's created with its own random rules.
Of course 3D interfaces suck when you emulate all the bad points of 2D interfaces (like walking down a hallway to get to a new fileroom/filedrawer/folder/file? Jesus, who the fuck thought that was efficient in the slightest? I get upset looking for a file under more than 2 folders.), but that seems a little moronic to me. The problem with a 3D file management interface isn't 3D interfaces, it's the way we conceive of and use files. Rather than think of them as mere bit-buckets, think of them as tiny programs with lots of different methods.
For instance, in a 3D interface, I'd expect to pick up a piece of paper (an OpenOffice document), write on it (edit the document), draw a picture (import a graphic), make a paper airplane of it and toss it through a portal labeled BOSS (e-mail it to my boss). Though that's probably way too much fun for any normal office environment, and probably requires too much screen real-estate, but then we've run into social/technological limitations, not interface ones.
To summarize, any interface sucks if you write a sucky one, but designing a quality interface requires a thorough understanding of what you're interfacing with, who will be using your interface, and for what. Getting caught up in current methodology is a surefire way to create 8 consecutive Operating Systems that all have the same braindead usability.
That is absolute nonsense, and furthermore, I can tell you that people with your attitude are the bane of the Help Desk world. Mounting drives is really easy (you add the applet to the taskbar in GNOME... which autodetects it for you anyway). Sharing drives (of course, you don't want to do that, right? You mean sharing individual folders.)? GNOME-SYSTEM-TOOLS fixes this right up for you. Permissions? Seriously, it's not that hard. R is Read. W is Write. X is eXecute. First group is owner, second group is group, last group is everyone else. That's way easier than MS permissions (Modify? "Full" Control? Group Policy? The Fuck?). And when was the last time that Desktop usage forced you to work with shell scripts, or cron, or drivers? And don't even try and cop out with that printing nonsense, printing sucks no matter which platform you're using (except... MAYBE OS X... if your printer is supported). I mean, try printing anything in XP without a real printer driver. Guess what CUPS does?
Imagine this: "Hey everyone, it's your boss, Charlie. I'm sure you've noticed that your computers look a little strange; that's because we've removed Windows and installed Linux. Yes, overnight. Please, nobody panic. For the next 8 hours, we're not going to do any work. Instead, we're going to take the time to learn the Linux equivalents to the Windows apps you're so... fond of. First, THE INTERNET... better known as a Web Browser. It works the same, no worries. Second, WORD... or OpenOffice.org. It also works the same. Thirdly, OUTLOOK (which I'm sure you'll all miss)... which is Evolution here in Linux. And I'm sure you see this coming, it also works the same. Oh... and Instant Messaging, which is GAIM on this side of the fence. Wait... I believe it also works the same."
Maybe this attitude comes from working Help Desk too long, but I'm tired of stupid questions. Really, if you can't take 5 minutes to click around in the menu options (which is what I do... because I frequently have no idea what people are talking about) then you need to take a day and find your brain. I mean, you're worried about TCO? Try the THINKING option, and I guarantee you can kill off 90% of your Support Staff. Why do I suggest it? Because despite the fact that it would cost me my job, I know it's never going to happen.
Why don't you just do this at your home? Setup some Gigabit Networking on the cheap, get a 500mHz box running XDMCP, get Squid proxy going (for all your monitoring needs) and setup your user accounts appropriately. I mean, I realize that this isn't a NATIONWIDE DEPLOYMENT or anything, but spyware's gone, you can grep logs for pr0n (and... dead people?) and you can get your kids used to a REAL OS. I mean, the whole thing *might* cost you $400 (500mHz=$200. 3 gigabit NICs $45. Gigabit Switch=$50. Cables=$50) So... compared to "Computer Management Service", you'll probably make your money back in about a year, and not have to call anyone in India.
So... what is an OS again? Device drivers, memory management and an API, right? I mean, there's all kinds of things Windows/Microsoft sucks at, but alot, if not 98% of that has nothing to do with the OS itself. So, if we're comparing apples to apples here...
As far as I'm concerned there's 3 arguments against the Windows OS (as in, kernel, memory management and API): frequent crashes, vulnerabilities in the code, and a convoluted/ineffective security model.
1. Things crash - Not so much post-NT kernel switchover.
2. Viruses/Spyware - Having worked in tech support for a while now, I can safely say that idiots rule on this one. Not to say I don't get adware/spyware and the occasional virus on my home Windows box (Windows definitely loses here), but I'm nowhere near the level these users are at.
3. Security - I'm not even sure this falls in kernel space for Windows... but if it does, Active Directory can kiss my nuts. Freaking containers and blah blah blah. What a mess. Again with Windows losing on this one.
So let's keep things sane, just like you can't blame Linus for Firefox maybe destroying a directory in its Beta phase, you can't blame the Windows OS for Visual Basic, or the latest Internet Explorer vulnerability. With that in mind, what's the problem with cross-platform software? I mean, what it sounds like most people have a problem with is Windows Apps (such as WMP, Explorer, Office, IE), all of which are immimently replaceable. I submit that the biggest problem with the Windows OS is Microsoft itself. Who wants to write applications for an OS that's just going to replace your app with a shittier version anyway, meanwhile changing the platform so your app only works 1/2 as well as it used to. Blame the Windows OS for OS issues, blame Windows applications for application issues, and blame Microsoft for what they do with their platform.
And really, if most users understood that the OS had nothing to do with double-click vs. single-click or Safari vs. Firefox vs. IE, they'd tell the OS to go to hell because they don't care. Applications ought to be completely transparent as to what OS they're running if at all possible. I mean, let's see a show of hands. Who's said, "Thank God I'm on Windows and, instead of running the quality Free/Open apps I'm used to, I get to run the sub-par Proprietary/Closed apps Microsoft bundles with the OS."
The best way to win people over to Free/Open software is to write the best software possible, and features of good software include portability and cross-platform compatibility. And when Microsoft closes the door on your app, as is their prerogative, reopen it. If it gets to the point where you can't, tell your users. Maybe some of them will try something different just because of your app. But regardless, at some point you're going to have to decide whether evangelism or developing is your priority.
Oh, and curse Slashdot for not having 'vi' keybindings in their post windows.