Much of the pesimistic advice so far, is mostly correct. It'd be much much easier on your self to just start a pirate radio station and have fun until you get a warning (because after the first warning, they confiscate). Consider the new low power fm stations. They are a great idea that is being actively blocked by dr. evi... er, I mean, FCC chairman Michael "nepotism" Powell. What would be best is to set up your pirate station with in the rules of the law, but just don't file your paper work. When they come and give you a warning, show them you've already started on getting permission.
I've done this once before in a small market town and it went well. I eventually sold the station to the high school at a bit of a profit (not much). I used the book "Sex & Broadcasting" as my guide, and check out the other books at the Free Radio Network. Good luck!! It's worth it!
Anonymous coward indeed! 10 minutes after reading this, the following message was sent to my at&t phone:
"Good news! You can now use your AT&T Wireless phone to make international calls to over 220 countries. Visit [censored] for rates & info"
Sender: 9263
Sent: August 22, 2002 16:32 PT
It COMPLETELY freaked me out!!! Since I ONLY used the pager/sms as an emergency contact and I rarely get paged (unlike the sysadmin days), my first reaction was anexity and concern for my family. I had to stop being productive today due to At&t insisting on forcing their advertising through a service plan I pay for. Which, by the way, it is something I get charged for, and there is a line item on my bill. But that's not the point - we pay for it even if there is no line for it on the bill. Just because it's "included" doesn't mean I am not paying for the service. I find it deeply insulting that I should pay for a service that does not act as it should and actively seeks to dimish the quality of it's service through captive audience techniques.
I am very upset and harmed by At&t's actions and as such, I wouldn't mind hearing from civil litigation and personal injury rats^H^H^H^H^H laywers on how I may persue this matter and seek restitiution for the harm they have caused me:
- personal trauma
- loss of work
- theft of service
- telecom fruad
- bait & switch
Since government action has removed any hope of my ever being able to obtain lawyers, guns or money, I might suggest the slashdot effect be directed at the above sender.:)
I've been on too many commercial rooftops working on getting carriers roof rights and such. Most roofs don't have much room, that is often where HVAC and such are kept. The other thing you will find often time up there are small racks or closets for cell, network and pager systems.
Second, how do you propose to keep the proposed plants alive? Most plant's couldn't handle the harsh sun and heat. Would you water these plants? More money. How do you make sure there's no leaks? Things settle over time, so "proper drainage" doesn't always stay that way. How to you patch a leak once you find one? How much top soil are you going to have to dig through? How do you deal with root systems that start to grow into the infrastructure. How much weight is the structure going to have to bear to provide the long term benifit to provide a return? How about the increased liability that the owner will need to incur because the roof will need to have a higher level of maintainence? Would you choose to lose one or two storied off your house (and thus lose money) to have roof garden that *may* survive the heat, and be seen by very few and unusable to most?
This book sounds good, but this idea is often considered and the cons far outweigh the pros.
No, I completely understand how modern modems work -- I just type too fast and never proofread. I was alluding to this with the situation of dropping the PRI circuit, thus making calls analog, digital, analog. Sorry for the inconvienence.
Quality of Service. In other words, they setup a QoS profile on their equipment (based on the nieve assumption that they would know how, or even care to get equipment that does QoS), and what that will ensure is that each customer will always get at LEAST what they paid for. If there is extra bandwidth, it will let you eat up more. I even wrote a program for an ISP that was interested in setting up accounts for customers who want to pay a bit extra for a fat pipe during the night and back to normal during the day. (I assumed the plan was dropped b/c the customer who was sucking down 80% of our traffic was doing it during the night any way).
So if QoS is out there and is implimentable, why doing they roll it out? 1) They don't know about it or understand or trust it, 2) What ever their neighbor hood hub and switches are, they didn't buy them to do QoS, 3) marketing: if the mainstream knew that this was possible, and that you could have a guarenteed minimum (think CIR), people would demand that, which completely blows away the business model of -oversubscription-, 4) Money: the internet has been sold to the highest bidder; coporations. The interenet was a remarkable way to promote free speech and open communications. However, the backbone providers realized that businesses have more money to use and do most of the "transmitting" (if you will) while average joe modem user did most of the recieving. Asyncronous billing was born; charge more for bytes sent than bytes recieved. It makes great sense from a business point of view, but it has effectivally KILLED the open and free communication aspect of the network. Back to cable - implementing QoS profiles would be bad news for them because it would make sure the pipe is always full, and thus they pay more. With the interenet, you pay for the size of the pipe, and how much is going through it, and now, how much is going away from you costs WAY more. As it always seems to be; it's all about the money.
I used to work for an ISP that covered most of rural montana. Even in the worst cases, we could ALWAYS squeeze out 28.8. If there was ever a case of bad connections like that, we didn't wait a second to jump all over u.s. worst's (local telco, now qworst) back. We quote the tarrifs for the state (you can usally find them on line), and tell them to get out there and fix it now, not tomorrow, NOW.
As to answer 'what changed', I can envision one situation that would cause that to happen, even though it would make no sense. Perhaps the new company dropped their PRI's and set up some modem bank or some such. I can't imagine why, but v.90 modems pretty much can only go above 28.8 when they are analog only on one side. If you connection goes analog, digitial, and finally analog on the ISP's end, the best you will ever get is 28.8 - period.
Also check to see if the local telco dude did sometime to effect the lines in the neighborhood. It's best not to call, but wait until you see the van ot ask the guy personally. I've found that they're usally no further than one hour away from getting stoned. If you have good timing and play your cards right, and a bag of Herbal Essence, you can usally get anything you want and it'll be done faster, better and cheaper.
Hollywood has spent a TON of fame, time, and money influencing congress over the past 15 years or so. They have come to ask for their favor now; they want to see the return on investment and if they don't see it, they will be taking their money else where.
...the world looks like a nail. And to a legistlature, who's sole power is to create laws, creating a new law is the answer to the world's problems. They see it as no one else is addressing the "problem", and they could win a lot of points with different groups, and look like the hero, if they present a workable plan.
So, while everyone is whining that legislation is not the answer (which is VERY true), it is best to play along and make legislation the answer.
How? Make legislation that says the justice department should get off it's butt and prosecute copyright infringement cases. Providing a new spin or emphasis on existing law would do it. Honestly, someone is going to have those hollywood, tax doging, trolls a bone. The best I can come to a solution is to actually prosecute and pursue cases under existing laws, demonstrating a) the government wishes to protect existing copyright holders and b) the existing laws work, once given a little incentive.
As to point two: They may not be teh best communitcators, but could you at least make sure the people on the phone speak the same language as the customer... please?! I think the managers think it's a great way to lower call times. BTW, passing a writen english test doesn't count when their accent is a thick as a brick. Could someone slap around the companies with a few clue sticks!
SETI is not a waste of resources
on
Rare Earth
·
· Score: 1
If you think most people run SETI to contribute to it's end, your way off. Most people run SETI for the cool factor of techy looking screen saver. It's resource is that it actually looks like you're *doing* something!
At first this technology was used to make the chipmunks, then used for Barbara Striesand to record and album in only one take. Later it found it's true calling in making fake boy bands [New Kids] sound like they can sing. Who says technology isn't making life better!!
Seriously. They packed the inside of the E150 cases with foam to direct the air flow inside the case - and they were a HUGE pain to try and put the pieces back together again. Don't believe it? Check it out. Look it up and search for 'foam'.
If you inisist on using outlook, there was a solution: OpenMail but HP decided to kill it. Which, btw, everyone is assuming it's Sun they are replacing (a safe assumption) but with goofy I'll-do-a-merger-to-keep-my-job-and-blame-company- problmes-on-someone-other-that-I Carly at the helm of HP, I wouldn't be surpised if it's HP they need to drop.
Bynari is another calendaring solution that has been mentioned before for Linux. No, it's not open source, free, or even just like exchange; but it works, is virus free, etc.
As for point 2, I've done the virus thing with a cheesy script on each system, and other such lame sysadmin duct tape approaches taking care of windoze network unfriendly boxes.
Your primary point, the question, "just what are they replacing" is a good one and your conclusions are reasonable. My problem is what I sense inbetween the lines. Your point is that exchange makes outlook really easy to deal with and win2k server takes care of windoze boxes easier. Well, ya got me there. Yup, Linux isn't as good as windows in dealing with windows non-sense. I don't suspect it ever will be, EVEN if they were to play nice as Mr. Stallman suggested oh so long ago. You are suggesting that linux will never be ready for IT b/c IT runs windows clients. This doesn't have to be. Things in a linux server/win client enterprise would have to be different. In some ways it would be better and some ways not. There are of course growing pains - I'm sure you're one of the millions that have had to suffer through years and years of M$'s growing pains, mistakes and lies. Now, "their solutions" (ahem) are mostly workable on few commodity (cough, cough) systems - such as the most expensive Intel systems you could buy. That's one approach. Another might be to buy an old unix server (say, a Sun E450) and centralize each offices services to one reliable system.
My point is that the gap between windows and unix/linux is getting smaller in some ways. Unix apps can be easily recompiled to run (slowly) on your pc, and that win box can now pretend to be a newtwork server. Large unix apps can now sort-of slowly run on small linux installations. But the windows boxes can't scale the same was as unix apps, and certianly can't scale as far and will never scale as big. They are different things, and it is very disingenuous for you to say that unix/linux will never cut it in IT b/c it's not windows. Unix can now go big or go small, and it always goes smart and dresses in style. Don't expect to run a better network with out some effort and growing pains - and if you're running windows, always expect to spend a lot more. This why they are replacing unix and you can bet that if this pilot project goes well, windows will be phased out.
I'm happy that someone so capable is think about this. However, bsd ports and package systems are quite good already - lean and mean. On my OpenBSD box it is quite simple. Either pkg_add ftp://url/package_file or env FLAVORS="option1 option2" make install. Elegant, simple, lightweight and powerful. Yesterday I did a big php build with a BUNCH of dependancies and sub dependancies - and it handled them all beautifully. A round of applause for OpenBSD and the port maintainers, please!
What I would hate to see are any major revisions if it's just gonna add some feature; I would rather see that time spent on developing the ports and packages themselves. Make is a good, simple, foundational and almost always present solution. Adding other languages would be a waste of time IMHO.
Let me condense what I think should be pursued from the ports perspective: documentation and ease of use. One can always make readmes and get mini-descirptions, but that really should be expanded upon, both for beginners and seasoned users who just don't know what that software is about. It would be nice to have some options like, info that would go thought the ports tree and build more verbose information. If those documents are built in a consistant manner (such as xml), then any ol' front end can be built to pull the info on the port and automate building the port and the flavors available. For example, a simple curses interface that will inform you of the dependancies that will need to be built first, estimates the size, and gives you a list of flavors to add into your build. Hit ok and it monitors the progress for you, logs the process and keeps the messages out of sight (from those who get scared easy).
I agree that something should be done to be able to automagically build a package from a port. I think this area would be the best to pursue. Even better, if we bsd types could get a system like checkinstall/installwatch consistantly, not most of the time, but consistantly working on BSD. This project essentially is a wrapper script that records everything make install does. In current form, it gives you the option of building an RPM from that make install. What should be pursued is making this work -well- on bsd, with the option to build a package along with documenting it's dependancies and/or recording the install info into the existing system to that all one has to do to remove what you just built is 'pkg_delete'. THAT would be cool!!
Linux is a target. When the black hats are sweeping the network, they see a bunch of windows boxes that are easy to break into; whoopty-shit, who cares. No challenge, no glory, and no use. On the other hand, when they find a linux box, it's a gold mine. Linux is the friendly unix which give it's owners a false sense of security. Linux, being easy, tends to install so much, which gives greater opportunities to install security flaws. Linux is also far more useful to a black hat. He's probably also using linux; he can just run his root kit with out thinking and then all of his tools are installed and ran without a recompile or any fuss. It's easier for black hats to own a linux box and use it's network tools than it is for a black hat to do the same with a windoze box. Most linux boxes have a compiler installed (which is right and good thing), the opposite is in windoze land.
Conclusion: Linux is still better and more powerful than windoze any day, which makes is a more attrative target. Since the barrier to entry with linux has been deeply lowered, may nieve good people are installing a powerful OS for fun, just to find out that with power, comes resposibility.
Having grown up in working class north Idaho, I never ever thought working in computers. It was just a very expensive hobby. There were probably only about ten people doing computers full time. I thought of electronics, which I also played around with, and I knew and EE, but it was also a rare thing. After high school, I just didn't do much of anything. Thought I'd go to school to be a psychologist. I got a helpful scholarship in music too. I ended up double majoring in Music Theory/Composition and Psychology. Advice: if you must double major, at least make sure it in related disciplines!!! At the end of college, the internet finally arrive. Suddenly, running a BBS was just lame. Suddenly, my hobby became very profitable. As it turns out, b/c I'd be doing this so long, I actually had more practicial knowledge than the computer types. Now, I'm stuck in it, but (when I'm employed) I really do enjoy it. I'll probably get a graduate degree in psych at some point, knowing now I can afford it. One note, I'm not a real CS person. I can program, but I wouldn't hire me to do that. I can network, dba and admin great. If it were my life plan to stay in this, I would go and get a CS degree and learn the math better and learn the theory.
If they decide to show contempt for currently establish best practices on the internet, the simple solution is to withdraw their AS numbers. Screw 'em! NAT was -NOT- developed to 'cheat' service providers of revenue. NAT was devleoped by internet leaders; not black-hat hackers. It was developed to help slow the ever diminishing supply of IP addresses. Such behavior shows corporate greed and contempt for the utility they provide. Revoke their IPs. While we're at it, let's revoke M$ business licensees and corporation status.;) I can still dream about justice.
Especially in the techno-world, where most of the work is based on scientific principles.
While I'm not directing this at the author, it serves as a good example of a profound misunderstanding that constantly goes on. Scientific principles and religon are not contradictory. Ok, I'll admit there are some extremeists that get a great deal of attention from some people because they serve them to further their own agenda and arguements. In practice however, the overwhelming majory of relgious people do not exclude scientific principles from their thinking.
In case this starts a long thread of people pointing out a few expeptions to what is the general practice, let me just add that it is about tollerance. Tollerance seems to be one of the primary virtues being preached by the secular humanist society. However, it is also known that there seem to be exceptions to this virtue. I believe this is becasue those outside of christianity don't wish to spend too much time learning about it. Thus, they only hear from the people that are the most vocal; fundementalists. Those people are significant in number, but not the majority, and could rightfully be called extremeists. In contrast, after 9/11, there has been SO much energy expended saying, not all muslims are bad, it's just the extremeists. This point has been beaten into our heads. There are a very significant number of extremeist, fundementalist (wahabi) muslims. For some reason, the computer world can easily seperate the groups of muslims out, but fundementalists christians get lumped in with everyone else - very broad, uninformed generalizations seem to rule in this area of the computer world.
Lastly, scientific principles don't address everything. My guess is that many of the people who flame me for admiting my religious side, are fueled in part by having been hurt previously by someone who claimed to be christian. Thus, the strong reaction directed at a certian group (and the majority), but not all religious groups.
I'm surprised that no one has addressed one of the big reasons for this release. This is to compete with Sun's Trusted Solaris in trying to land more defense contracts and customers. For one or two cpus it's about the same price. However, sun has been developing this much longer and may be able to scale to larger number of cpus better. If we could only convince those defense people to stop using SunOS now.
I have suffered from religious descrimination in hiring. I was a youth minister for seven years before entering the computer world (which was just a hobby). To be clear, I have never stated my religious affiliation on any job application, resume or in interviews; I have been maligned because I am religious.
It started with my finishing my psych degree. My classmates were getting jobs at a local, church-sponsored recovery 'ranch' which helps adolecents. Their help wanted ads would always say 'males prefered'. Being male, psych major, seeing all of my friends get hired, and having years of experience working with youth, I thought for sure I would at least get an interview. Instead, silence. No returned calls. I would follow up and make sure that my application was recieved and being reviewed. No response. No rejection letter or call - nothing. It was clear my services were not desired. Instead of pursuing it further, I stuck with my part-time systems administration.
In the computer world, there seems to be a deep hate of people who are a) scientoligists (I understan this one) b) jehova whitnesses c) mormons, and d) any sort of christians. Other religions are tolerated. The prime religons of the computer world seem to be secular humanism, gnosticism, atheism, narsicism and roll-your-own religion. It's ironic how much judmentalism and intollerance I have recieved from groups that seems to preach tollerance and to-each-his-own. Anyone who's been on irc, usenet, or slashdot threads that go mearly go near religion can see how radical and overwhelming the anti-religous voices can be.
When applying for tech jobs, rarely is youth ministry experience good. Somewhat understandable; I have have to work my way up. But when applying for entry-level positions, who would be better? Someone who is mature, already knows perl, and somehow can handle hundreds of jr. highers - or, someone who's experience is working at a gas stations and their computer experience is playing video games? It's a true story, and I'll grant there may have been other differeneces that made the other canidate better. However, after encountering this many times, one starts to get a sense that something is going on. A couple former empolyers confessed that they did have reservations in hiring me because they thought I would be too judgemental and cause problems and hurt the team. A prejudice which has never been true. In addition, I don't 'preach' or 'judge' at work; I barely even share my views when it comes to religion or topics that may be religious. The most noteable thing about my speech that may make me religious is that I try not to swear and I try and avoid certian topics when possible.
Now, I have enough work experience that my youth ministry positions are in the past and I have learned to be guarded in to the workplace. YMMV, but if my experience in california (even behind the orange curtian) is any indication - be on guard against religious descrimination.
Slashdot Mirror
I've done this once before in a small market town and it went well. I eventually sold the station to the high school at a bit of a profit (not much). I used the book "Sex & Broadcasting" as my guide, and check out the other books at the Free Radio Network. Good luck!! It's worth it!
"The shouting is a temporary side affect of the unfreezing process"
"Yes I'm having difficulty controlling the volume of my voice!!!!!! "
I should have known it was the methane
"Good news! You can now use your AT&T Wireless phone to make international calls to over 220 countries. Visit [censored] for rates & info"
Sender: 9263
Sent: August 22, 2002 16:32 PT
It COMPLETELY freaked me out!!! Since I ONLY used the pager/sms as an emergency contact and I rarely get paged (unlike the sysadmin days), my first reaction was anexity and concern for my family. I had to stop being productive today due to At&t insisting on forcing their advertising through a service plan I pay for. Which, by the way, it is something I get charged for, and there is a line item on my bill. But that's not the point - we pay for it even if there is no line for it on the bill. Just because it's "included" doesn't mean I am not paying for the service. I find it deeply insulting that I should pay for a service that does not act as it should and actively seeks to dimish the quality of it's service through captive audience techniques.
I am very upset and harmed by At&t's actions and as such, I wouldn't mind hearing from civil litigation and personal injury rats^H^H^H^H^H laywers on how I may persue this matter and seek restitiution for the harm they have caused me:
- personal trauma
- loss of work
- theft of service
- telecom fruad
- bait & switch
Since government action has removed any hope of my ever being able to obtain lawyers, guns or money, I might suggest the slashdot effect be directed at the above sender. :)
I've been on too many commercial rooftops working on getting carriers roof rights and such. Most roofs don't have much room, that is often where HVAC and such are kept. The other thing you will find often time up there are small racks or closets for cell, network and pager systems.
Second, how do you propose to keep the proposed plants alive? Most plant's couldn't handle the harsh sun and heat. Would you water these plants? More money. How do you make sure there's no leaks? Things settle over time, so "proper drainage" doesn't always stay that way. How to you patch a leak once you find one? How much top soil are you going to have to dig through? How do you deal with root systems that start to grow into the infrastructure. How much weight is the structure going to have to bear to provide the long term benifit to provide a return? How about the increased liability that the owner will need to incur because the roof will need to have a higher level of maintainence? Would you choose to lose one or two storied off your house (and thus lose money) to have roof garden that *may* survive the heat, and be seen by very few and unusable to most?
This book sounds good, but this idea is often considered and the cons far outweigh the pros.
No, I completely understand how modern modems work -- I just type too fast and never proofread. I was alluding to this with the situation of dropping the PRI circuit, thus making calls analog, digital, analog. Sorry for the inconvienence.
Quality of Service. In other words, they setup a QoS profile on their equipment (based on the nieve assumption that they would know how, or even care to get equipment that does QoS), and what that will ensure is that each customer will always get at LEAST what they paid for. If there is extra bandwidth, it will let you eat up more. I even wrote a program for an ISP that was interested in setting up accounts for customers who want to pay a bit extra for a fat pipe during the night and back to normal during the day. (I assumed the plan was dropped b/c the customer who was sucking down 80% of our traffic was doing it during the night any way).
So if QoS is out there and is implimentable, why doing they roll it out? 1) They don't know about it or understand or trust it, 2) What ever their neighbor hood hub and switches are, they didn't buy them to do QoS, 3) marketing: if the mainstream knew that this was possible, and that you could have a guarenteed minimum (think CIR), people would demand that, which completely blows away the business model of -oversubscription-, 4) Money: the internet has been sold to the highest bidder; coporations. The interenet was a remarkable way to promote free speech and open communications. However, the backbone providers realized that businesses have more money to use and do most of the "transmitting" (if you will) while average joe modem user did most of the recieving. Asyncronous billing was born; charge more for bytes sent than bytes recieved. It makes great sense from a business point of view, but it has effectivally KILLED the open and free communication aspect of the network. Back to cable - implementing QoS profiles would be bad news for them because it would make sure the pipe is always full, and thus they pay more. With the interenet, you pay for the size of the pipe, and how much is going through it, and now, how much is going away from you costs WAY more. As it always seems to be; it's all about the money.
I used to work for an ISP that covered most of rural montana. Even in the worst cases, we could ALWAYS squeeze out 28.8. If there was ever a case of bad connections like that, we didn't wait a second to jump all over u.s. worst's (local telco, now qworst) back. We quote the tarrifs for the state (you can usally find them on line), and tell them to get out there and fix it now, not tomorrow, NOW.
As to answer 'what changed', I can envision one situation that would cause that to happen, even though it would make no sense. Perhaps the new company dropped their PRI's and set up some modem bank or some such. I can't imagine why, but v.90 modems pretty much can only go above 28.8 when they are analog only on one side. If you connection goes analog, digitial, and finally analog on the ISP's end, the best you will ever get is 28.8 - period.
Also check to see if the local telco dude did sometime to effect the lines in the neighborhood. It's best not to call, but wait until you see the van ot ask the guy personally. I've found that they're usally no further than one hour away from getting stoned. If you have good timing and play your cards right, and a bag of Herbal Essence, you can usally get anything you want and it'll be done faster, better and cheaper.
By the way, when did this turn into supportdot?
Hollywood has spent a TON of fame, time, and money influencing congress over the past 15 years or so. They have come to ask for their favor now; they want to see the return on investment and if they don't see it, they will be taking their money else where.
...the world looks like a nail. And to a legistlature, who's sole power is to create laws, creating a new law is the answer to the world's problems. They see it as no one else is addressing the "problem", and they could win a lot of points with different groups, and look like the hero, if they present a workable plan.
So, while everyone is whining that legislation is not the answer (which is VERY true), it is best to play along and make legislation the answer.
How? Make legislation that says the justice department should get off it's butt and prosecute copyright infringement cases. Providing a new spin or emphasis on existing law would do it. Honestly, someone is going to have those hollywood, tax doging, trolls a bone. The best I can come to a solution is to actually prosecute and pursue cases under existing laws, demonstrating a) the government wishes to protect existing copyright holders and b) the existing laws work, once given a little incentive.
As to point two: They may not be teh best communitcators, but could you at least make sure the people on the phone speak the same language as the customer... please?! I think the managers think it's a great way to lower call times. BTW, passing a writen english test doesn't count when their accent is a thick as a brick. Could someone slap around the companies with a few clue sticks!
If you think most people run SETI to contribute to it's end, your way off. Most people run SETI for the cool factor of techy looking screen saver. It's resource is that it actually looks like you're *doing* something!
At first this technology was used to make the chipmunks, then used for Barbara Striesand to record and album in only one take. Later it found it's true calling in making fake boy bands [New Kids] sound like they can sing. Who says technology isn't making life better!!
It had to be said. Now, just top it with some of the novety store fake poo-poo.
Seriously. They packed the inside of the E150 cases with foam to direct the air flow inside the case - and they were a HUGE pain to try and put the pieces back together again. Don't believe it? Check it out. Look it up and search for 'foam'.
Just what everyone wants: to sound like Ned from South Park.
If you inisist on using outlook, there was a solution: OpenMail but HP decided to kill it. Which, btw, everyone is assuming it's Sun they are replacing (a safe assumption) but with goofy I'll-do-a-merger-to-keep-my-job-and-blame-company- problmes-on-someone-other-that-I Carly at the helm of HP, I wouldn't be surpised if it's HP they need to drop.
Bynari is another calendaring solution that has been mentioned before for Linux. No, it's not open source, free, or even just like exchange; but it works, is virus free, etc.
As for point 2, I've done the virus thing with a cheesy script on each system, and other such lame sysadmin duct tape approaches taking care of windoze network unfriendly boxes.
Your primary point, the question, "just what are they replacing" is a good one and your conclusions are reasonable. My problem is what I sense inbetween the lines. Your point is that exchange makes outlook really easy to deal with and win2k server takes care of windoze boxes easier. Well, ya got me there. Yup, Linux isn't as good as windows in dealing with windows non-sense. I don't suspect it ever will be, EVEN if they were to play nice as Mr. Stallman suggested oh so long ago. You are suggesting that linux will never be ready for IT b/c IT runs windows clients. This doesn't have to be. Things in a linux server/win client enterprise would have to be different. In some ways it would be better and some ways not. There are of course growing pains - I'm sure you're one of the millions that have had to suffer through years and years of M$'s growing pains, mistakes and lies. Now, "their solutions" (ahem) are mostly workable on few commodity (cough, cough) systems - such as the most expensive Intel systems you could buy. That's one approach. Another might be to buy an old unix server (say, a Sun E450) and centralize each offices services to one reliable system.
My point is that the gap between windows and unix/linux is getting smaller in some ways. Unix apps can be easily recompiled to run (slowly) on your pc, and that win box can now pretend to be a newtwork server. Large unix apps can now sort-of slowly run on small linux installations. But the windows boxes can't scale the same was as unix apps, and certianly can't scale as far and will never scale as big. They are different things, and it is very disingenuous for you to say that unix/linux will never cut it in IT b/c it's not windows. Unix can now go big or go small, and it always goes smart and dresses in style. Don't expect to run a better network with out some effort and growing pains - and if you're running windows, always expect to spend a lot more. This why they are replacing unix and you can bet that if this pilot project goes well, windows will be phased out.
"When direction is taken by committee, art ceases to be art and instead it becomes propaganda."
What I would hate to see are any major revisions if it's just gonna add some feature; I would rather see that time spent on developing the ports and packages themselves. Make is a good, simple, foundational and almost always present solution. Adding other languages would be a waste of time IMHO.
Let me condense what I think should be pursued from the ports perspective: documentation and ease of use. One can always make readmes and get mini-descirptions, but that really should be expanded upon, both for beginners and seasoned users who just don't know what that software is about. It would be nice to have some options like, info that would go thought the ports tree and build more verbose information. If those documents are built in a consistant manner (such as xml), then any ol' front end can be built to pull the info on the port and automate building the port and the flavors available. For example, a simple curses interface that will inform you of the dependancies that will need to be built first, estimates the size, and gives you a list of flavors to add into your build. Hit ok and it monitors the progress for you, logs the process and keeps the messages out of sight (from those who get scared easy).
I agree that something should be done to be able to automagically build a package from a port. I think this area would be the best to pursue. Even better, if we bsd types could get a system like checkinstall /installwatch consistantly, not most of the time, but consistantly working on BSD. This project essentially is a wrapper script that records everything make install does. In current form, it gives you the option of building an RPM from that make install. What should be pursued is making this work -well- on bsd, with the option to build a package along with documenting it's dependancies and/or recording the install info into the existing system to that all one has to do to remove what you just built is 'pkg_delete'. THAT would be cool!!
Linux is a target. When the black hats are sweeping the network, they see a bunch of windows boxes that are easy to break into; whoopty-shit, who cares. No challenge, no glory, and no use. On the other hand, when they find a linux box, it's a gold mine. Linux is the friendly unix which give it's owners a false sense of security. Linux, being easy, tends to install so much, which gives greater opportunities to install security flaws. Linux is also far more useful to a black hat. He's probably also using linux; he can just run his root kit with out thinking and then all of his tools are installed and ran without a recompile or any fuss. It's easier for black hats to own a linux box and use it's network tools than it is for a black hat to do the same with a windoze box. Most linux boxes have a compiler installed (which is right and good thing), the opposite is in windoze land.
Conclusion: Linux is still better and more powerful than windoze any day, which makes is a more attrative target. Since the barrier to entry with linux has been deeply lowered, may nieve good people are installing a powerful OS for fun, just to find out that with power, comes resposibility.
So far, this is the most useful comment today.
Having grown up in working class north Idaho, I never ever thought working in computers. It was just a very expensive hobby. There were probably only about ten people doing computers full time. I thought of electronics, which I also played around with, and I knew and EE, but it was also a rare thing. After high school, I just didn't do much of anything. Thought I'd go to school to be a psychologist. I got a helpful scholarship in music too. I ended up double majoring in Music Theory/Composition and Psychology. Advice: if you must double major, at least make sure it in related disciplines!!! At the end of college, the internet finally arrive. Suddenly, running a BBS was just lame. Suddenly, my hobby became very profitable. As it turns out, b/c I'd be doing this so long, I actually had more practicial knowledge than the computer types. Now, I'm stuck in it, but (when I'm employed) I really do enjoy it. I'll probably get a graduate degree in psych at some point, knowing now I can afford it. One note, I'm not a real CS person. I can program, but I wouldn't hire me to do that. I can network, dba and admin great. If it were my life plan to stay in this, I would go and get a CS degree and learn the math better and learn the theory.
If they decide to show contempt for currently establish best practices on the internet, the simple solution is to withdraw their AS numbers. Screw 'em! NAT was -NOT- developed to 'cheat' service providers of revenue. NAT was devleoped by internet leaders; not black-hat hackers. It was developed to help slow the ever diminishing supply of IP addresses. Such behavior shows corporate greed and contempt for the utility they provide. Revoke their IPs. While we're at it, let's revoke M$ business licensees and corporation status. ;) I can still dream about justice.
Especially in the techno-world, where most of the work is based on scientific principles.
While I'm not directing this at the author, it serves as a good example of a profound misunderstanding that constantly goes on. Scientific principles and religon are not contradictory. Ok, I'll admit there are some extremeists that get a great deal of attention from some people because they serve them to further their own agenda and arguements. In practice however, the overwhelming majory of relgious people do not exclude scientific principles from their thinking.
In case this starts a long thread of people pointing out a few expeptions to what is the general practice, let me just add that it is about tollerance. Tollerance seems to be one of the primary virtues being preached by the secular humanist society. However, it is also known that there seem to be exceptions to this virtue. I believe this is becasue those outside of christianity don't wish to spend too much time learning about it. Thus, they only hear from the people that are the most vocal; fundementalists. Those people are significant in number, but not the majority, and could rightfully be called extremeists. In contrast, after 9/11, there has been SO much energy expended saying, not all muslims are bad, it's just the extremeists. This point has been beaten into our heads. There are a very significant number of extremeist, fundementalist (wahabi) muslims. For some reason, the computer world can easily seperate the groups of muslims out, but fundementalists christians get lumped in with everyone else - very broad, uninformed generalizations seem to rule in this area of the computer world.
Lastly, scientific principles don't address everything. My guess is that many of the people who flame me for admiting my religious side, are fueled in part by having been hurt previously by someone who claimed to be christian. Thus, the strong reaction directed at a certian group (and the majority), but not all religious groups.
I'm surprised that no one has addressed one of the big reasons for this release. This is to compete with Sun's Trusted Solaris in trying to land more defense contracts and customers. For one or two cpus it's about the same price. However, sun has been developing this much longer and may be able to scale to larger number of cpus better. If we could only convince those defense people to stop using SunOS now.
It started with my finishing my psych degree. My classmates were getting jobs at a local, church-sponsored recovery 'ranch' which helps adolecents. Their help wanted ads would always say 'males prefered'. Being male, psych major, seeing all of my friends get hired, and having years of experience working with youth, I thought for sure I would at least get an interview. Instead, silence. No returned calls. I would follow up and make sure that my application was recieved and being reviewed. No response. No rejection letter or call - nothing. It was clear my services were not desired. Instead of pursuing it further, I stuck with my part-time systems administration.
In the computer world, there seems to be a deep hate of people who are a) scientoligists (I understan this one) b) jehova whitnesses c) mormons, and d) any sort of christians. Other religions are tolerated. The prime religons of the computer world seem to be secular humanism, gnosticism, atheism, narsicism and roll-your-own religion. It's ironic how much judmentalism and intollerance I have recieved from groups that seems to preach tollerance and to-each-his-own. Anyone who's been on irc, usenet, or slashdot threads that go mearly go near religion can see how radical and overwhelming the anti-religous voices can be.
When applying for tech jobs, rarely is youth ministry experience good. Somewhat understandable; I have have to work my way up. But when applying for entry-level positions, who would be better? Someone who is mature, already knows perl, and somehow can handle hundreds of jr. highers - or, someone who's experience is working at a gas stations and their computer experience is playing video games? It's a true story, and I'll grant there may have been other differeneces that made the other canidate better. However, after encountering this many times, one starts to get a sense that something is going on. A couple former empolyers confessed that they did have reservations in hiring me because they thought I would be too judgemental and cause problems and hurt the team. A prejudice which has never been true. In addition, I don't 'preach' or 'judge' at work; I barely even share my views when it comes to religion or topics that may be religious. The most noteable thing about my speech that may make me religious is that I try not to swear and I try and avoid certian topics when possible.
Now, I have enough work experience that my youth ministry positions are in the past and I have learned to be guarded in to the workplace. YMMV, but if my experience in california (even behind the orange curtian) is any indication - be on guard against religious descrimination.