No, that's wrong. I installed Windows hundreds of times. Literally.
Well, at least I tried.
Let's put it this way: I installed Windows twice after I thought I'd never want to go back. I went back both times. Back to OS/2 first, then back to Linux.
I started with Windows (like just about everyone here I guess). I wrote my school stuff with Word. I crashed and lost my data in win3.1, Win95 and NT4 like everybody else probably did at least once. I got hacked when I used the internet the first time in Windows 95. I searched for alternatives and found OS/2.
I went back to Win95 (b or c) when it came out because IBM didn't convince me to stay (OS/2 had convinced me, and I used it quite a long time - but IBMs marketing failures didn't). My small private BBS, which I started much later, stayed in OS/2 for about 4 years after that, until I moved and lost my ISDN lines.) I thought the 'new' Windows would be better, more stable, etc yadda yadda. I was disappointed.
I tried NT4. I was disappointed (my software didn't run, and the games we then played didn't either. Like Command&Conquer, which ran FINE under OS/2, even during a 33kbps BBS download).
I got Linux (SuSE 4.something from 1995) for Christmas in 1995 (I probably wouldn't have noticed it otherwise). I was disappointed by the usability (fvwm2) and the GUI but impressed by the number of (free) apps for it, which could do much of what I wanted (Staroffice was available, which covered the majority; and I had a licence for OS/2, which I traded for a Linux license; it wasn't free then). The only thing that I missed was FIDOnet software, and I had a feeling Linux then was suited more to developers and internet geeks, both of which I wasn't really. It wasn't comfortable, but it worked, and never crashed on my even once.
But after half a year my SuSE/usr/local partition was bigger than the rest of the system (because I probably was too stupid for the packaging system) and my system was quite a mess - probably self-induced, I experimented too much. I tried NT4 again - not all apps worked (eg. FIDOnet software was available for 95, but didn't run in NT4, and FEddy was available for Linux then. Don't even start asking about games, of which some even worked in dosEMU under Linux!). That was in 1996 IIRC.
After some months I totally trashed NT with a service pack install which crashed during installation. Then something snapped inside me - I wasn't about to trust my data to Windows again. Ever. I'd rather install something, ANYTHING, else (I wasn't far away from buying a Mac, if they'd been affordable to a student then). I experimented with several Linux distributions during holidays and found that except for Debian, all the 'big' ones were quite similar to SuSE - RPM packaging, no easy updates, etc.
I installed my Debian system during the 1996-7 christmas holidays (took me two days to get a useable system, with 'bo' aka Debian 1.3 IIRC). It took me about two weeks to understand the system and get everything running - I wasn't about to make the same mistake I made with SuSE.
But the reward was there - I haven't reinstalled since. I backup this system regularly. It has moved over two hard disk crashes, about 10 hard disk upgrades, uncountable system upgrades (eg. libc5->6, X11 3.x->4.x, perl 4.x-5.0-5.6-5.8, etc etc) and about a dozen machine upgrades (started with a P60/16MB, I'm now using an Athlon XP 1800+ with 256MB RAM). It doesn't become slower with every new program like Windows. (Windows wasn't really worth backing up because I had to reinstall it every couple months anyway.) When I remove things, they get removed cleanly. It doesn't have conflicts between drivers or software, unless I install experimental stuff.
About 1998 I decided to patch a server together with spare parts: I wanted to resurrect my BBS and an ISDN dialup. I copied my Debian installation to the second harddisk, removed non-server related packages (X11, Staroffice, etc), installed server-related packages, removed my/home from the first machine, mounted/home via NFS from the second, and there we were. In 2001 I got a laptop. Copied my installation over, removed some packages, added APM and ACPI, changed the X11 driver line and resolution, ready.
Well... I've used Windows for quite a long time. I am even now using Windows from time to time. As long as I don't have to maintain it and keep it running and the apps I need, it's fine. But as soon as you start doing serious stuff with it, Windows breaks in my hands. If I use Windows as I use Linux, it crashes, apps don't react, etc and people tell me that's "normal", even with Windows 2000, I'm supposed to be more careful and open less apps at the same time.
I don't accept that. When I work I'm not a "hacker" or "freak", I just like to get my job done (which often enough is creating a presentation with Openoffice or writing technical documentation or developing a website). But if I can't have several text editors, office files, GIMP/Photoshop or Corel Photopaint sessions and file manager windows open without the OS throwing up, I'm not being productive.
So: I went back to Linux. Maybe Windows is easier for the 'casual' user. But please don't suggest sandals to a mountain climber, even if they are more comfortable and look better.
(Oh yes: the OS installs tend to overlap, I had two harddisks and when I changed I installed the 'new' OS on the 'other' harddisk and kept both for a period of time, when possible. So don't nail me about the exact dates, I don't remember some of them either.)
And please don't start the "much more apps available for Windows" discussion: I'ts totally true, if you count a) all the things that Linux can do without extra apps, and b) all the viruses and worms. And anyway, who needs 4711 file managers/ICQ clients/graphics programs/..., it's much more efficient to cooperate and put all the good features into one product, which in free software tends to happen much more often than in the commercial/shareware world.
Lufthansa is (or has been) testing new airplane designs and revisions by firing dead chickens from a special gun onto the windshields and into the turbines. They wanted to test whether the plane would survive a bird hitting the plane head-on at k*100 km/h in the air.
Some idiots once put the lower part of a mop (the thing you clean your bathroom floor with that looks like your mother in law's hairstyle) into this special gun and fired at someone about 200 meters away. Broke him both legs. (Try to explain that to the ambulance... "this here mop did it! Really!")
btw: British Airways (or was it the USA? don't remember) caught up to this and copied the idea (not the mop idea though). They loaded the gun with a dead chicken, measured the distance like Lufthansa did, and fired.
The chicken went through the windshield, through the pilot's seat, through the console behind the driver (or whatever was there) and into the wall behind it.
British Airways (or whoever) complained to Germany. Germany sent two engineers there, looked at the setup, and advised them to un-freeze the chicken before firing.
According to the Bible (which I last read in school, which was about ten years ago) God created man for this very purpose - to name the beasts surrounding him (and us) in paradise.
So isn't it a bit weird that only now someone actually got around to doing it?
Well, so you are denying Microsoft the right to modify their OS on your computer as they wish (they claim they have the right in the EULA). So your Microsoft licence is void, ie. you are using an illegal copy.
Which is probably exactly what you'll hear when you complain to Microsoft. Which is also why law firms and insurances are dropping Windows XP like a hot potato - their customer data is on the computer and NOBODY has a right to view it, not even Microsoft.
As with so much software, gettext() just blindly assumes that the *first* language is always English, and that software gets translated into "other" languages "later".
Anyway, I'm having a hell of a time using gettext with 'msgid's that contain accents, umlauts, ß, and other stuff.
QMail, TMDA, a couple small scripts and.qmail files. Nothing extravagant.
I also run spamassassin and qmail-scanner before the other stuff, just for the kicks (and because the mail server where I get my mail also runs for customers who want spam protection but no TMDA).
Because I like to know who distributes my personal information where. I also have a different middle name(initial) for each company I contact. Thus I was able to verify that someone at our local phone company sold my address to lottery spammers (snail mail).
If somebody contacts me via the slashdot@... alias, I know they know me from slashdot.
Sometimes I think PGP is the answer to half the world's problems. It's just a rockin' way to authenticate.
The basic idea here is to hog spammers' CPU cycles, not (necessarily) to authenticate. If you wanted to authenticate you'd need a verified key signed by some trust center or with a LOT of cross-signatures.
But if the only way to reach you is to sign a mail with your GPG key, click on a link included in an auto-reply (ask Google for "QMail TMDA"), or reply to an auto-reply, then spammers don't have a chance to reach you.
And the idea is that these clicks are inclusive: Once your grandmother authenticated herself by replying once to the bounce-reply, her mail address will be whitelisted: she will be able to send mails to you just like before. Of course, GPG is the easier method, but this is an acceptable alternative for "the masses"
(sometimes I'm kind of sad that "Joe average user"'s average IQ seems to be expected below 70 by most people. Are "normal people" really *THAT* stupid?)
Besides, if I'm spamming, I'll just use a diffrent PGP key for each different piece of spam mail I send out. You'll never stop me. Muhahahahahaha!!! j/k
EXACTLY! And how many CPUs are you gonna buy to encrypt 500,000 messages with 500,000 different GPG keys?
That's the whole idea: sending out one message is cheap. Sending out thousands is supposed to be expensive.
And as spammers will never start using GPG (it just hogs too many CPUs, encrypting each and every mail so that it reaches its recipient without confirmation) you'll have a spam-free box.
Imagine a company paying EUR xx'xxx,00 (I imagine) for Lotus Notes support for tens of thousands of employees. Imagine said company paying EUR whatnot for "Webwasher Corporate Edition (or something like that).
Image said company getting premium support access on www.lotusexpert.com and not being able to use such support.
Philips blocks just about everything that is useful for work (and, surely, lots of sites that aren't, but that's OK). I work there for a short time still (just limited to one project) and I don't get a Lotus Notes account, because "for only 6 months this requires too much effort". But there is no SMTP server. BUT I'm supposed to collaborate with external developers of the embedded software development environment I'm writing (Linux-RTAI, realtime drivers controlled by KDE frontends, btw. KDevelop rocks!).
The solution?
Browsing via SSH-Port-Forwarding -> NTLM-auth.pl -> https-ssl-proxy.pl -> NT-Proxy -> Webwasher (which can't filter https, of course) -> NT-"Firewall" (bah!) -> my own machine at home, on a leased line. No filtering at all. I'm reading my mail on my own machine via SSH through the same tunnel. And some colleages are already asking how I'm bypassing the filtering system (standard answer: "With Linux.";)
And the weirdest part is, my boss is OK with that, as long as I can do my work. The first week I wasn't networked yet I had to run to his machine about 10 times a day to be able to read and send my (company) email. I think that helped.:-)
http://toastytech.com/evil/msproxy.html has a proxy server which inserts those stupid NTLM headers so that I can use Konqueror and Mozilla at work to browse through Philips's NT proxy. (The funny part is that I HAVE to use Linux becaus our current project requires it, and I don't get a second machine to use the net, so I have to do it this way.)
I also use http://ttcplinux.sourceforge.net/tools/stunnel to use SSH via HTTPS, because the firewall here doesn't forward anything other than HTTP and HTTPS, but allows HTTPS to any port. Go figure. Type "gg:firewall-piercing-howto" in any Konqueror URL to get more information.
Right. OK, maybe the comparison wasn't that good. My point was this: There's a company out there producing things whose (main? you decide) purpose is to commit a crime, which is much worse than violating copyrights. Why aren't they investigated? (Yes, this is a rethorical question.)
I don't share MP3s (but I do own some). I don't care (much) about P2P networks, other than that I think it is a good idea (think: internet-wide 'network neighborhood' with automatic replication and bandwidth management, NOT controlled by Microsoft;) and I think it should not get the "it's just there for piracy" label, EVEN IF some people are using it for piracy.
After all, just suppose if somebody found out most criminals escape with BMWs after their job, do you sue BMW because they provided 'the means'? Because BMW 'knows damn good well' some people are using BMWs to escape from pursuing police? Perhaps if BMW started offering features that were especially targeted at criminals, not useful to anybody else, and advertising them that way.
I don't see any of the P2P companies doing this - they advertise "sharing files" and perhaps "sharing MP3s" but they do not advertise illegal media distribution specifically (or do they?).
And sharing MP3s isn't illegal, it's the copyright violation that is illegal (if it were, the world would have switched to OGG long ago).
I heard Smith+Wesson is making a tool to KILL PEOPLE. And Wal-Mart is also selling tools to KILL PEOPLE (knives, for example). Isn't that a bit more serious than copying MP3s? Come on, let's prosecute serious criminals for a change!
It's not the tool that does the deed, it's the user. Don't blame the tool, that's just stupid.
[If you can't recognize the tune, you're in the wrong generation. Run along and play until the grownups are done.]
When I find myself in times of trouble, Douglas Adams comes in view Speaking words of wisdom: "Forty-two." And in my hour of darkness, He is the light that shines on through Speaking words of wisdom: "Forty-two."
Forty-two, forty-two, forty-two, forty-two. Whisper words of wisdom: forty-two.
What are the broken-hearted people Living in the world to do? There will be an answer: Forty-two. For though they may be parted, There is still a chance to see what's true. There will be an answer: forty-two.
Forty-two, forty-two, forty-two, forty-two. There will be an answer: forty-two.
I want a digital Hifi equipment that allows me to copy bits just like bits, with no restrictions applied. I'm copying my own recordings, for heaven's sake. Who says I can't copy them because they are not original?
In other words, where is the non-restrictive digital technology nowadays? Do you really assume that DRM companies won't just phase out old (non-DRM) stuff, and sue everybody who doesn't comply (see MP3 players and recorders and encoders)?
apt-get autoclean didn't do any good. I tried that. There was still about 600MB more to install than I had space.
The KDEbuild I'm talking about is 3.1beta1, complete, with debugging enabled. After compiling, before make clean, the kde-src directory is 6.5GB altogether. Wanna come over here and see for yourself?
Or do you really think most people would use Windows if it weren't set up for them by the computer manufacturer?
Do you really think Windows is "easy" to setup, including drivers, applications, etc etc?
Yes, it tries to do more things automatically than maybe Linux does. But it also fails more often to do this, and then stuff like "DLL Hell" and "Do you want to remove shared files?" get in your way.
Honestly, I agree with IBM when they said "The only reason why most people are using Microsoft Windows is the same reason why most people don't convert their toaster to use 110V, or their car to use electricity instead of gas: It was in there when I got it, you've perhaps already seen it used by friends (so you know who to ask, very important), you don't want to tinker with it more than necessary (for fear of breaking things, and losing support), and it works, at least at first."
Put a complete newbie in front of a computer with a Windows install CD and watch him get lost, just like he probably would (or would not) with a SuSE or Redhat installation CD.
And with "complete newbie" I mean people who don't know how to hold a mouse, and who don't know how to use the cursor keys. People who have used computers as typewriters (typically Windows machines) are not "complete newbies" any more.
I don't know but I see the tendency for things just to grow.
When I installed Linux on my former schools' computers I was given an 1GB partition for the task (the other GB was for Windows). I thought "oh, well, you don't need that much space anyway" (before you ask:/home came via NFS anyway, but the network wasn't fit for more stuff like NFS/usr etc). And with KDE, network, Netscape, Staroffice and some utilities the disk was about 3/4 full.
Now I see those machines upgraded to 20GB and still with the old 1GB Linux partition, and I try to dist-upgrade. Whoa... "You don't have enough space on/var to hold the downloaded packages." WTF? It wants to download close to 400MB of packages and needs about a GB more space! With the same applications!
When I started getting interested in KDE I thought I had lots and lots of space, with my 10G partition, I could mirror the KDE source tree (which, in 1.x times, took about a hundred MB). Now the sources are close to half a GB, if you take them all. And if you compile, you need at least 5GB of space for temporary stuff and binaries.
So, where did all this space go? Features, mostly (IMHO). Other people call it 'bloat' - features that aren't needed.:)
our thousands of Word and MS Office files which can only be read by MS software?"
"You see? You are already hooked. Now we need to move faster so that dependance doesn't grow. Don't create documents in a format where the only application that can read them is controlled by a company whose EULAs say 'We can do anything we like with your computer and you have to like it too'."
In the department of the German Government which deals with recommendations for IT infrastructure and software (for the rest of the state), this was discussed recently. And the outcome was, every time somebody mentioned special software, or access, or compatbility, that only works with Microsoft, the answer were like the one above.
No. I don't think they'll switch tomorrow. What they are going to do (probably) is for now, stick with their legacy apps. But the Government has decided it wants to be "e-Government" too, and so everything must be browser-based and acessible everywhere, internally and externally.
That is a huge advantage, for one thing, there is somebody who says "Things WILL CHANGE", no matter what the users say (so complaining about having to relearn won't do any good). Further, with web-based stuff you are efficiently removing the need for special client software (unless you are a stupid moron and rely on IE-only features). Third, the IT departments can (and they do want to) introduce open solutions in the server space without anybody noticing much, and that's exactly what they are doing now.
So, if the problem will fit into a web-based solution, advocate this instead of bullying the users with SuSE or RedHat CDs. Then, when they are used to using Mozilla or IE (in Windows) for almost all their stuff, the transition to an independant desktop system is much, much easier. They won't even notice the difference if you're clever enough (http://mozillako.hypermart.net/ieskin/).
Compare to a bank. You pay fees to be able to pay via check. OF course, nobody prevents you from walking or driving a couple hundred kilometers each month to be able to pay in person, in cash.
I object to annoying advertising as well, and it's the wrong turn to take. People will not click on or regard banner ads in principle, even if the ad in itself is interesting. ("Yeah, I know they're good, but they are using banner ads, so they suck.")
Education is the key, people must be made aware of the real prices (without ads). Perhaps Slashdot could publish their finances.:-)
Honestly: The quoted person's attitude is not very 'professional', but I have to agree with some of what he said.
I have been trying to find a suitable way of replacing banners on my (commercial) web sites. In the "good old days" banners got me about 0.02 per view, which was about 50% of the price the banner company charged their clients. With our page impressions, these totals would have just about paid for the online costs, and small salaries for two persons, no luxuries included.
This is all gone now, banner companies don't pay by view any more, and we are still alive mostly by the many partnerships we have been able to establish, not by banners. The pressure to accept more agressive banner terms is rising, however - we don't want our company.com to go titsup.com and lose 100,000s of satisfied people. Just like Slashdot...
I don't like (and will never use, unless my life depends on it) pop-up banners or floating banners or things like that. It's a one-way tunnel that is constantly getting worse, and never going to end. I think explaining to people WHY the Web isn't (and can't be) totally "free", at least not for non-hobbyist sites, will help more in the long run. Providing anti-ad functions, anti-anti-ad extensions and anti-anti-ad-blocker plugins is just plain SICK. IMHO.
Be honest: Would you be interested in a re-introduction of the HTTP/1.1 "Cost:" header - or similar measures - and pay 0.02 per mouse click? Because that is what you "pay" indirectly to the company providing you a service.
If the service is bad, then don't use it, full stop. If you use anti-banner software you are effectively cheating the webmaster into providing you his service, without paying for it. It's like going to a restaurant and not paying because you didn't want to see the ads on the inside cover of the menu.
And please kill the "additional cost" argument, it's rubbish. Your internet costs are larger because you have to download banner ads, right? Of course: Your internet connection is the vehicle to transport you to the service you want to access, it has NO connection with the actual service (most of the time anyway). Do you expect to get everything for free at McDonalds just because you paid the bus to get you there? And perhaps expect McDonalds to actually thank you for your non-paying visit?
NOBODY expects to get everything for free in the supermarket just because they already paid the taxi. On the Web, this expectation is there, however, and people don't understand that above a certain level, things just cost.
Why?
P.S.: Do you expect to get ads in magazines and newspapers banned as well? Because the newspaper is bigger with the ads and you have to pay for the paper, right? WRONG. The "Springer" editor house in Germany which sells the "Spiegel" magazine (very popular) published a comparison recently. The magazine costs about 3.- and contains about 40% ads. Without the ads, it would have to cost about 30.- to cover the printing and distribution costs!
So, what would you rather have?
P.P.S: Reply by email if you want a serious discussion about this. I'm interested.
I would pay for NNTP access. Gate the stories and submissions into a NNTP server. Post comments as threads. Gate postings via NNTP into the weblog.
NNTP is capable of using login and password validation schemes and is much easier, more efficient (saving bandwitdth) than using the Web. Plus, setting up mirror sites is a snap.
I would pay for NNTP access. And don't be afraid of people re-gating stuff, because they could just as well publish their Web login passwords, and there aren't many people doing that, are there?
Slashdot Mirror
Well, at least I tried.
Let's put it this way: I installed Windows twice after I thought I'd never want to go back. I went back both times. Back to OS/2 first, then back to Linux.
I started with Windows (like just about everyone here I guess). I wrote my school stuff with Word. I crashed and lost my data in win3.1, Win95 and NT4 like everybody else probably did at least once. I got hacked when I used the internet the first time in Windows 95. I searched for alternatives and found OS/2.
I went back to Win95 (b or c) when it came out because IBM didn't convince me to stay (OS/2 had convinced me, and I used it quite a long time - but IBMs marketing failures didn't). My small private BBS, which I started much later, stayed in OS/2 for about 4 years after that, until I moved and lost my ISDN lines.) I thought the 'new' Windows would be better, more stable, etc yadda yadda. I was disappointed.
I tried NT4. I was disappointed (my software didn't run, and the games we then played didn't either. Like Command&Conquer, which ran FINE under OS/2, even during a 33kbps BBS download).
I got Linux (SuSE 4.something from 1995) for Christmas in 1995 (I probably wouldn't have noticed it otherwise). I was disappointed by the usability (fvwm2) and the GUI but impressed by the number of (free) apps for it, which could do much of what I wanted (Staroffice was available, which covered the majority; and I had a licence for OS/2, which I traded for a Linux license; it wasn't free then). The only thing that I missed was FIDOnet software, and I had a feeling Linux then was suited more to developers and internet geeks, both of which I wasn't really. It wasn't comfortable, but it worked, and never crashed on my even once.
But after half a year my SuSE /usr/local partition was bigger than the rest of the system (because I probably was too stupid for the packaging system) and my system was quite a mess - probably self-induced, I experimented too much. I tried NT4 again - not all apps worked (eg. FIDOnet software was available for 95, but didn't run in NT4, and FEddy was available for Linux then. Don't even start asking about games, of which some even worked in dosEMU under Linux!). That was in 1996 IIRC.
After some months I totally trashed NT with a service pack install which crashed during installation. Then something snapped inside me - I wasn't about to trust my data to Windows again. Ever. I'd rather install something, ANYTHING, else (I wasn't far away from buying a Mac, if they'd been affordable to a student then). I experimented with several Linux distributions during holidays and found that except for Debian, all the 'big' ones were quite similar to SuSE - RPM packaging, no easy updates, etc.
I installed my Debian system during the 1996-7 christmas holidays (took me two days to get a useable system, with 'bo' aka Debian 1.3 IIRC). It took me about two weeks to understand the system and get everything running - I wasn't about to make the same mistake I made with SuSE.
But the reward was there - I haven't reinstalled since. I backup this system regularly. It has moved over two hard disk crashes, about 10 hard disk upgrades, uncountable system upgrades (eg. libc5->6, X11 3.x->4.x, perl 4.x-5.0-5.6-5.8, etc etc) and about a dozen machine upgrades (started with a P60/16MB, I'm now using an Athlon XP 1800+ with 256MB RAM). It doesn't become slower with every new program like Windows. (Windows wasn't really worth backing up because I had to reinstall it every couple months anyway.) When I remove things, they get removed cleanly. It doesn't have conflicts between drivers or software, unless I install experimental stuff.
About 1998 I decided to patch a server together with spare parts: I wanted to resurrect my BBS and an ISDN dialup. I copied my Debian installation to the second harddisk, removed non-server related packages (X11, Staroffice, etc), installed server-related packages, removed my /home from the first machine, mounted /home via NFS from the second, and there we were. In 2001 I got a laptop. Copied my installation over, removed some packages, added APM and ACPI, changed the X11 driver line and resolution, ready.
Well... I've used Windows for quite a long time. I am even now using Windows from time to time. As long as I don't have to maintain it and keep it running and the apps I need, it's fine. But as soon as you start doing serious stuff with it, Windows breaks in my hands. If I use Windows as I use Linux, it crashes, apps don't react, etc and people tell me that's "normal", even with Windows 2000, I'm supposed to be more careful and open less apps at the same time.
I don't accept that. When I work I'm not a "hacker" or "freak", I just like to get my job done (which often enough is creating a presentation with Openoffice or writing technical documentation or developing a website). But if I can't have several text editors, office files, GIMP/Photoshop or Corel Photopaint sessions and file manager windows open without the OS throwing up, I'm not being productive.
So: I went back to Linux. Maybe Windows is easier for the 'casual' user. But please don't suggest sandals to a mountain climber, even if they are more comfortable and look better.
(Oh yes: the OS installs tend to overlap, I had two harddisks and when I changed I installed the 'new' OS on the 'other' harddisk and kept both for a period of time, when possible. So don't nail me about the exact dates, I don't remember some of them either.)
And please don't start the "much more apps available for Windows" discussion: I'ts totally true, if you count a) all the things that Linux can do without extra apps, and b) all the viruses and worms. And anyway, who needs 4711 file managers/ICQ clients/graphics programs/..., it's much more efficient to cooperate and put all the good features into one product, which in free software tends to happen much more often than in the commercial/shareware world.
OK, I'm finished.
Go on. You can flame me now.
Some idiots once put the lower part of a mop (the thing you clean your bathroom floor with that looks like your mother in law's hairstyle) into this special gun and fired at someone about 200 meters away. Broke him both legs. (Try to explain that to the ambulance ... "this here mop did it! Really!")
btw: British Airways (or was it the USA? don't remember) caught up to this and copied the idea (not the mop idea though). They loaded the gun with a dead chicken, measured the distance like Lufthansa did, and fired.
The chicken went through the windshield, through the pilot's seat, through the console behind the driver (or whatever was there) and into the wall behind it.
British Airways (or whoever) complained to Germany. Germany sent two engineers there, looked at the setup, and advised them to un-freeze the chicken before firing.
So isn't it a bit weird that only now someone actually got around to doing it?
Which is probably exactly what you'll hear when you complain to Microsoft. Which is also why law firms and insurances are dropping Windows XP like a hot potato - their customer data is on the computer and NOBODY has a right to view it, not even Microsoft.
Go figure.
Anyway, I'm having a hell of a time using gettext with 'msgid's that contain accents, umlauts, ß, and other stuff.
Cheers, Jens
I also run spamassassin and qmail-scanner before the other stuff, just for the kicks (and because the mail server where I get my mail also runs for customers who want spam protection but no TMDA).
If somebody contacts me via the slashdot@... alias, I know they know me from slashdot.
The basic idea here is to hog spammers' CPU cycles, not (necessarily) to authenticate. If you wanted to authenticate you'd need a verified key signed by some trust center or with a LOT of cross-signatures.
But if the only way to reach you is to sign a mail with your GPG key, click on a link included in an auto-reply (ask Google for "QMail TMDA"), or reply to an auto-reply, then spammers don't have a chance to reach you.
And the idea is that these clicks are inclusive: Once your grandmother authenticated herself by replying once to the bounce-reply, her mail address will be whitelisted: she will be able to send mails to you just like before. Of course, GPG is the easier method, but this is an acceptable alternative for "the masses"
(sometimes I'm kind of sad that "Joe average user"'s average IQ seems to be expected below 70 by most people. Are "normal people" really *THAT* stupid?)
EXACTLY! And how many CPUs are you gonna buy to encrypt 500,000 messages with 500,000 different GPG keys?
That's the whole idea: sending out one message is cheap. Sending out thousands is supposed to be expensive.
And as spammers will never start using GPG (it just hogs too many CPUs, encrypting each and every mail so that it reaches its recipient without confirmation) you'll have a spam-free box.
- You have a whitelist of domains and adresses.
- You also have a blacklist of domains and addresses.
- Every mail from a sender in the whitelist is accepted.
- Every PGP/GPG-signed or encrypted mail from a sender NOT in the blacklist is also accepted.
- Everyone else will get a mail back and have to click on an URL (or reply to the confirmation mail) confirming his/her message to me.
- Double bounced addresses land in the blacklist.
Bang, zero spam.Remember to put your business partners on the whitelist though. ;)
-- Jens
Image said company getting premium support access on www.lotusexpert.com and not being able to use such support.
Philips blocks just about everything that is useful for work (and, surely, lots of sites that aren't, but that's OK). I work there for a short time still (just limited to one project) and I don't get a Lotus Notes account, because "for only 6 months this requires too much effort". But there is no SMTP server. BUT I'm supposed to collaborate with external developers of the embedded software development environment I'm writing (Linux-RTAI, realtime drivers controlled by KDE frontends, btw. KDevelop rocks!).
The solution? Browsing via SSH-Port-Forwarding -> NTLM-auth.pl -> https-ssl-proxy.pl -> NT-Proxy -> Webwasher (which can't filter https, of course) -> NT-"Firewall" (bah!) -> my own machine at home, on a leased line. No filtering at all. I'm reading my mail on my own machine via SSH through the same tunnel. And some colleages are already asking how I'm bypassing the filtering system (standard answer: "With Linux." ;)
And the weirdest part is, my boss is OK with that, as long as I can do my work. The first week I wasn't networked yet I had to run to his machine about 10 times a day to be able to read and send my (company) email. I think that helped. :-)
I also use http://ttcplinux.sourceforge.net/tools/stunnel to use SSH via HTTPS, because the firewall here doesn't forward anything other than HTTP and HTTPS, but allows HTTPS to any port. Go figure. Type "gg:firewall-piercing-howto" in any Konqueror URL to get more information.
There's a HELL of a lot of hardware out there that doesn't even have decent Windows 2000 drivers nowadays, not even in the Internet.
I don't share MP3s (but I do own some). I don't care (much) about P2P networks, other than that I think it is a good idea (think: internet-wide 'network neighborhood' with automatic replication and bandwidth management, NOT controlled by Microsoft ;) and I think it should not get the "it's just there for piracy" label, EVEN IF some people are using it for piracy.
After all, just suppose if somebody found out most criminals escape with BMWs after their job, do you sue BMW because they provided 'the means'? Because BMW 'knows damn good well' some people are using BMWs to escape from pursuing police? Perhaps if BMW started offering features that were especially targeted at criminals, not useful to anybody else, and advertising them that way.
I don't see any of the P2P companies doing this - they advertise "sharing files" and perhaps "sharing MP3s" but they do not advertise illegal media distribution specifically (or do they?).
And sharing MP3s isn't illegal, it's the copyright violation that is illegal (if it were, the world would have switched to OGG long ago).
It's not the tool that does the deed, it's the user. Don't blame the tool, that's just stupid.
[If you can't recognize the tune, you're in the wrong generation. Run along and play until the grownups are done.]
When I find myself in times of trouble,
Douglas Adams comes in view
Speaking words of wisdom: "Forty-two."
And in my hour of darkness,
He is the light that shines on through
Speaking words of wisdom: "Forty-two."
Forty-two, forty-two, forty-two, forty-two.
Whisper words of wisdom: forty-two.
What are the broken-hearted people
Living in the world to do?
There will be an answer: Forty-two.
For though they may be parted,
There is still a chance to see what's true.
There will be an answer: forty-two.
Forty-two, forty-two, forty-two, forty-two.
There will be an answer: forty-two.
[Cue the choir and repeat ad infinitum.]
I want a digital Hifi equipment that allows me to copy bits just like bits, with no restrictions applied. I'm copying my own recordings, for heaven's sake. Who says I can't copy them because they are not original?
In other words, where is the non-restrictive digital technology nowadays? Do you really assume that DRM companies won't just phase out old (non-DRM) stuff, and sue everybody who doesn't comply (see MP3 players and recorders and encoders)?
The KDEbuild I'm talking about is 3.1beta1, complete, with debugging enabled. After compiling, before make clean, the kde-src directory is 6.5GB altogether. Wanna come over here and see for yourself?
Do you really think Windows is "easy" to setup, including drivers, applications, etc etc?
Yes, it tries to do more things automatically than maybe Linux does. But it also fails more often to do this, and then stuff like "DLL Hell" and "Do you want to remove shared files?" get in your way.
Honestly, I agree with IBM when they said "The only reason why most people are using Microsoft Windows is the same reason why most people don't convert their toaster to use 110V, or their car to use electricity instead of gas: It was in there when I got it, you've perhaps already seen it used by friends (so you know who to ask, very important), you don't want to tinker with it more than necessary (for fear of breaking things, and losing support), and it works, at least at first."
Put a complete newbie in front of a computer with a Windows install CD and watch him get lost, just like he probably would (or would not) with a SuSE or Redhat installation CD.
And with "complete newbie" I mean people who don't know how to hold a mouse, and who don't know how to use the cursor keys. People who have used computers as typewriters (typically Windows machines) are not "complete newbies" any more.
When I installed Linux on my former schools' computers I was given an 1GB partition for the task (the other GB was for Windows). I thought "oh, well, you don't need that much space anyway" (before you ask: /home came via NFS anyway, but the network wasn't fit for more stuff like NFS /usr etc). And with KDE, network, Netscape, Staroffice and some utilities the disk was about 3/4 full.
Now I see those machines upgraded to 20GB and still with the old 1GB Linux partition, and I try to dist-upgrade. Whoa... "You don't have enough space on /var to hold the downloaded packages." WTF? It wants to download close to 400MB of packages and needs about a GB more space! With the same applications!
When I started getting interested in KDE I thought I had lots and lots of space, with my 10G partition, I could mirror the KDE source tree (which, in 1.x times, took about a hundred MB). Now the sources are close to half a GB, if you take them all. And if you compile, you need at least 5GB of space for temporary stuff and binaries.
So, where did all this space go? Features, mostly (IMHO). Other people call it 'bloat' - features that aren't needed. :)
"You see? You are already hooked. Now we need to move faster so that dependance doesn't grow.
Don't create documents in a format where the only application that can read them is controlled by a company whose EULAs say 'We can do anything we like with your computer and you have to like it too'."
In the department of the German Government which deals with recommendations for IT infrastructure and software (for the rest of the state), this was discussed recently. And the outcome was, every time somebody mentioned special software, or access, or compatbility, that only works with Microsoft, the answer were like the one above.
No. I don't think they'll switch tomorrow. What they are going to do (probably) is for now, stick with their legacy apps. But the Government has decided it wants to be "e-Government" too, and so everything must be browser-based and acessible everywhere, internally and externally.
That is a huge advantage, for one thing, there is somebody who says "Things WILL CHANGE", no matter what the users say (so complaining about having to relearn won't do any good). Further, with web-based stuff you are efficiently removing the need for special client software (unless you are a stupid moron and rely on IE-only features). Third, the IT departments can (and they do want to) introduce open solutions in the server space without anybody noticing much, and that's exactly what they are doing now.
So, if the problem will fit into a web-based solution, advocate this instead of bullying the users with SuSE or RedHat CDs. Then, when they are used to using Mozilla or IE (in Windows) for almost all their stuff, the transition to an independant desktop system is much, much easier. They won't even notice the difference if you're clever enough (http://mozillako.hypermart.net/ieskin/).
I object to annoying advertising as well, and it's the wrong turn to take. People will not click on or regard banner ads in principle, even if the ad in itself is interesting. ("Yeah, I know they're good, but they are using banner ads, so they suck.")
Education is the key, people must be made aware of the real prices (without ads). Perhaps Slashdot could publish their finances. :-)
Read my post again. I said I didn't like (and don't use) pop-ups, floats and all that stuff.
I have been trying to find a suitable way of replacing banners on my (commercial) web sites. In the "good old days" banners got me about 0.02 per view, which was about 50% of the price the banner company charged their clients. With our page impressions, these totals would have just about paid for the online costs, and small salaries for two persons, no luxuries included.
This is all gone now, banner companies don't pay by view any more, and we are still alive mostly by the many partnerships we have been able to establish, not by banners. The pressure to accept more agressive banner terms is rising, however - we don't want our company.com to go titsup.com and lose 100,000s of satisfied people. Just like Slashdot ...
I don't like (and will never use, unless my life depends on it) pop-up banners or floating banners or things like that. It's a one-way tunnel that is constantly getting worse, and never going to end. I think explaining to people WHY the Web isn't (and can't be) totally "free", at least not for non-hobbyist sites, will help more in the long run. Providing anti-ad functions, anti-anti-ad extensions and anti-anti-ad-blocker plugins is just plain SICK. IMHO.
Be honest: Would you be interested in a re-introduction of the HTTP/1.1 "Cost:" header - or similar measures - and pay 0.02 per mouse click? Because that is what you "pay" indirectly to the company providing you a service.
If the service is bad, then don't use it, full stop. If you use anti-banner software you are effectively cheating the webmaster into providing you his service, without paying for it. It's like going to a restaurant and not paying because you didn't want to see the ads on the inside cover of the menu.
And please kill the "additional cost" argument, it's rubbish. Your internet costs are larger because you have to download banner ads, right? Of course: Your internet connection is the vehicle to transport you to the service you want to access, it has NO connection with the actual service (most of the time anyway). Do you expect to get everything for free at McDonalds just because you paid the bus to get you there? And perhaps expect McDonalds to actually thank you for your non-paying visit?
NOBODY expects to get everything for free in the supermarket just because they already paid the taxi. On the Web, this expectation is there, however, and people don't understand that above a certain level, things just cost.
Why?
P.S.: Do you expect to get ads in magazines and newspapers banned as well? Because the newspaper is bigger with the ads and you have to pay for the paper, right?
WRONG. The "Springer" editor house in Germany which sells the "Spiegel" magazine (very popular) published a comparison recently. The magazine costs about 3.- and contains about 40% ads. Without the ads, it would have to cost about 30.- to cover the printing and distribution costs! So, what would you rather have? P.P.S: Reply by email if you want a serious discussion about this. I'm interested.
Slashdotters,
...)
I would pay for NNTP access. Gate the stories and submissions
into a NNTP server. Post comments as threads. Gate postings
via NNTP into the weblog.
NNTP is capable of using login and password validation schemes
and is much easier, more efficient (saving bandwitdth)
than using the Web. Plus, setting up mirror sites is a snap.
I would pay for NNTP access. And don't be afraid of people re-gating stuff,
because they could just as well publish their Web login passwords,
and there aren't many people doing that, are there?
(I've heard freshmeat does it as well