My school in North London had a server room full of expensive optical hardware, several firewalls and servers, bought at a cost to students of around a million pounds. I once managed to get my hands on a bandwidth usage chart, and found that a Linksys router, around 100 at the time, and three 20-port switches, each around 100 could easily cope with the usage patterns.
It's telling that the IT administrators who installed the million pound system where an equivalent solution under 500 could have worked just fine, all left that year. The school is left with a completely irrelevant infrastructure that costs thousands of pounds a year to maintain and support.
All of this happens because, when a school installs a system, it's not their money that's being spent, but that of the students (or sometimes the taxpayer). Big hardware firms love to wine and dine school purchasing directors in a bid to convince them that they really need this fancy kit. It's in all of their interests to squander the money, and nothing is happening to change that.
You underestimate the extent of the nationalism found in China. By and large, the Chinese people adamantly claim these territories to be part of China. They just won't accept any other interpretation.
Point in case: Herbert Xu, a Chinaman, resigned from the Debian project after the Taiwanese flag made it into a KDE package. Note that this package was not even one that he maintained, and that he had been part of the project for several years.
With feelings as strong as that, it's going to take more than the latest and greatest 3D arcade game to sway people of their political convictions. After all, independent thought and rebellion can be a costly passtime in China, particularly when it turns you against your government.
In my experience, Vaios are some of the best-supported mobile systems available for Linux. Even the funky dials, switches and displays are supported by the sonypi project. I suspect it's because Linux has had great success in the East, even prompting some vendors to ship dual-booting Windows/Linux laptops. It just makes sense for Sony to use hardware that won't cause headache for its users.
Fedora Core 2 wins the vote of this Debianite
on
Fedora Core 2 Review
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
FC has finally won me over following half a decade of Debian zealotry (much of that spent maintaining several packages and participating in the Debian development cycle). Twice a year, FC provides a fairly stable release that I can share with friends, and allows me to track the latest software releases without destabilizing my system as Debian unstable (and even testing) used to. I think Fedora has really hit the sweet spot by releasing a stable platform every 6 months and then making it easy for users to keep their applications up-to-date (with apt-rpm) without being forced into upgrades of glibc or other core libraries at the same time.
That, and the fact that FC is actually _more_ free than Debian following the prompt removal of all MP3 and similar tained code leaves me asking: What more could you want from a distro? The latest FC2 installer was particularly stunning, making LVM2 setup trivial for the first time. This is really what Debian should have been.
How is this anything special? I remember ripping the capacitors out of a disposable camera, plugging them into a battery and taking the setup to school when I was about ten years old.
The following Kill Bill-esque encounters with sworn playground enemies was a thrill. In fact, that's about when I got some respect for the first time from the 'in crew'.
For pc users who just want to trade files with their friends, etc, its a great alternative to other p2p.
In my experience, this isn't true. The WASTE client (for Linux, at least) is still at an early stage of development. In fact, there only seem to be operational WASTE clients available for Microsoft's Windows right now.
So now I got a video card worth well over $400 and I should trash it to go back to a crappier card because Linux doesn't support it?
You spent $400 on a silly graphics card, and one that doesn't support the development of Open Source drivers at that? You're not an 'average user' or a 'power user' -- I think you're what most people on Slashdot would call a 'mug'.
This looks like a great product, as I'm sure anyone who's looking for a solid state Ogg Player will agree, but the website is a joke, and is bound to alienate the customers they are trying to market to. Just hitting the front page, I get an unrecognised "Flash animation" in the middle of the screen and get booted into a plugin download page. Surely most people will want to see pictures of the product, not some silly Flash animation (Has anyone seen the content of this -- is it at all useful?)
Something also strikes me as strange with their software requirements list: Windows 98-SE/ME/2000/XP Mac OS 8.6 or newer (Linux as well) -- What's the deal with that? If it supports Linux, they can add it to the list. Do they really thing that putting one of their best features it in brackets like an afterthought is going to help endear their product to Linux users?
According to the license provided with that binary (the GPL) file, you should also provide sources on your site which you have failed to do.
I'm sick of people violating the GPL and I've decided to do something about it for a change, so I've forwarded your contact details to AOL, which owns Nullsoft, and VIA, both of whose GPL-licensed code you seem to be illegally distributing.
CRS
Robert Sell (no.spam.robs@robsell.com)
+1.7016335535
Fax: +1.NoFaxNum
14853 30th St SE
Wheatland, ND 58079
US
I hope they choose to prosecute -- just because they're the large companies and you're the individual in this case doesn't make what you're doing any more acceptable.
And the others aren't? Associating value with capital when it comes to free and open source software doesn't really make sense. There are probably better ways to praise commercial Linux distributions than spiting the hands that feed the `community' and make software freely available.
'We don't expect to make Ximian the default user interface, and for the medium term KDE will remain the default GUI on SuSE Linux'."
What you have to remember is that Novell has traditionally been a server-oriented business. Novell is interested in Mono primarily as a server offering -- the Ximian desktop connection is purely incidental. It would make perfect sense for them to bundle Mono to provide ASP.NET support in Apache 2, even if they've decided not ship a single Ximian Gnome library.
All internet is piped through our central office so doing this in other offices means putting in a new firewall/VPN in each site. This is much more costly than a $50 access point.
Just install firmware that supports OpenVPN and pptp on the access points -- problem solved. $50 AP hardware like the WRT54G is quite capable of running dozens of secure tunnels. We even host our internet-facing website off the RAM off what used to be a WAP, they are quite resilient and flexible little devices.
Does anyone with a little knowledge of 802.11b scanning know if ordinary wireless kit can be used to determine the signal strength to a given wireless node?
Triangulation is easy once you have the raw signal data, and this seems a fun hack to do this on the cheap with Linux HostAP over the holidays.
Out here in the UK, BT charges 15/hour for an hour of 802.11b connectivity for their "OpenZone" service. They cite Microsoft Windows as a system requirement but you can get connectivity in Linux using IP-over-DNS, with the added benefit that it's absolutely free. I'd probably have willing to pay a reasonable amount for their service, but as long as they refuse to support Linux, people are just going to continue to freeload with IP-over-DNS.
Why would an NHS worker have to install hardware or software? This is what the NHS would pay Sun for, and Sun would probably implement a centrally managed system rather than sending round technicians to update each workstation individually.
The UK government spends millions on institutions like universities allowing them to research and develop all sorts of free software, ranging from kernel security features (StegFS, Cambridge) to userspace applications like text-to-speech (Festival TTS, Edinburgh) and VoIP (VIC, UCL). It only makes sense that they should reap the benefits. Why pay twice for something?
My university just installed 54g wireless Internet access available in almost every lecture theature, allowing students to collaborate and do background research during lectures. This seems a much more sane approach than fitting signal jammers if one wants to increase attendance rates. I daresay lectures will never be the same now that I can IRC my way through KRI with the Zaurus and a CF wireless card. More access to communication networks -- not less -- seems to be the way forward.
Eh? According to http://www.gnome.org/press/ the logo that slashdot uses is the official Gnome logo. At the end of the day, it's not what logo you want but which logo the Gnome Foundation wants that officially represents Gnome, I'm afraid:-)
Do you have any idea how easy it is to forge an email header, give the someone else's contact details to your domain registrar or 'borrow' someone's dialup connection?
Have you ever received angry emails from people you've never heard of, because they think you're spamming them, because some foolish spammer (or their bulk-mail software) decided to use your address as their From header for the day?
Better to let ten spammers free than publicly chastise a single innocent bystander, I say. Maybe it's time to start work on a resilient email network based on something like the PGP network of trust or on national cryptographic certificate schemes. Just whatever you do, for heaven's sake, don't go trying to fix the current mess with a spate of misguided witch hunts.
I tried this a few years back at my high-school. I managed to pull together some great kit (not just computers, but yet-to-be-released consumer kit and other neat toys). I got the school to provide perks like free sandwiches and drinks for those who came. We even had Sir. Clive Sinclair come and speak, but never more than a couple of people turned up. It was an after-school activity rather than a club, so there was no obligation any anyone could turn up if they wanted.
It was a little embarrassing to have such a great computer society, but no members. Unfortunately, my experience has been that people of the age of 16/17 are just too preoccupied with other things like going out to the pub after school or driving about town in their friends' new cars. It might be that the fact the school I went to was a rather posh London private school didn't help, but it just didn't work out. Nobody was interested.
I hope it works out for you, but I wouldn't be surprised if people just don't turn up. Eventually I gave up and started doing the things the other guys did, and realised that you'll never win back those years of your life. Believe me, you'll have enough time to geek out at university. Go out with your friends and have a pint while the good times last.
Slashdot Mirror
or has 0.9 not yet been released? How can you review software that isn't yet available?
Looks like slashdot is stripping currency symbols. All values are in pound sterling (GBP).
My school in North London had a server room full of expensive optical hardware, several firewalls and servers, bought at a cost to students of around a million pounds. I once managed to get my hands on a bandwidth usage chart, and found that a Linksys router, around 100 at the time, and three 20-port switches, each around 100 could easily cope with the usage patterns.
It's telling that the IT administrators who installed the million pound system where an equivalent solution under 500 could have worked just fine, all left that year. The school is left with a completely irrelevant infrastructure that costs thousands of pounds a year to maintain and support.
All of this happens because, when a school installs a system, it's not their money that's being spent, but that of the students (or sometimes the taxpayer). Big hardware firms love to wine and dine school purchasing directors in a bid to convince them that they really need this fancy kit. It's in all of their interests to squander the money, and nothing is happening to change that.
You underestimate the extent of the nationalism found in China. By and large, the Chinese people adamantly claim these territories to be part of China. They just won't accept any other interpretation.
Point in case: Herbert Xu, a Chinaman, resigned from the Debian project after the Taiwanese flag made it into a KDE package. Note that this package was not even one that he maintained, and that he had been part of the project for several years.
With feelings as strong as that, it's going to take more than the latest and greatest 3D arcade game to sway people of their political convictions. After all, independent thought and rebellion can be a costly passtime in China, particularly when it turns you against your government.
There doesn't seem to be a version compiled against Xft or Gtk+2.0. Is this a regression?
In my experience, Vaios are some of the best-supported mobile systems available for Linux. Even the funky dials, switches and displays are supported by the sonypi project. I suspect it's because Linux has had great success in the East, even prompting some vendors to ship dual-booting Windows/Linux laptops. It just makes sense for Sony to use hardware that won't cause headache for its users.
FC has finally won me over following half a decade of Debian zealotry (much of that spent maintaining several packages and participating in the Debian development cycle). Twice a year, FC provides a fairly stable release that I can share with friends, and allows me to track the latest software releases without destabilizing my system as Debian unstable (and even testing) used to. I think Fedora has really hit the sweet spot by releasing a stable platform every 6 months and then making it easy for users to keep their applications up-to-date (with apt-rpm) without being forced into upgrades of glibc or other core libraries at the same time.
That, and the fact that FC is actually _more_ free than Debian following the prompt removal of all MP3 and similar tained code leaves me asking:
What more could you want from a distro? The latest FC2 installer was particularly stunning, making LVM2 setup trivial for the first time. This is really what Debian should have been.
How is this anything special? I remember ripping the capacitors out of a disposable camera, plugging them into a battery and taking the setup to school when I was about ten years old.
The following Kill Bill-esque encounters with sworn playground enemies was a thrill. In fact, that's about when I got some respect for the first time from the 'in crew'.
For pc users who just want to trade files with their friends, etc, its a great alternative to other p2p.
In my experience, this isn't true. The WASTE client (for Linux, at least) is still at an early stage of development. In fact, there only seem to be operational WASTE clients available for Microsoft's Windows right now.
So now I got a video card worth well over $400 and I should trash it to go back to a crappier card because Linux doesn't support it?
You spent $400 on a silly graphics card, and one that doesn't support the development of Open Source drivers at that? You're not an 'average user' or a 'power user' -- I think you're what most people on Slashdot would call a 'mug'.
Do you really think that the majority of customers, being Windows users, really give a shit?
Er, no. But the minority -- Linux users -- would probably prefer their operating system listed without a pair of superfluous brackets.
This looks like a great product, as I'm sure anyone who's looking for a solid state Ogg Player will agree, but the website is a joke, and is bound to alienate the customers they are trying to market to. Just hitting the front page, I get an unrecognised "Flash animation" in the middle of the screen and get booted into a plugin download page. Surely most people will want to see pictures of the product, not some silly Flash animation (Has anyone seen the content of this -- is it at all useful?)
Something also strikes me as strange with their software requirements list: Windows 98-SE/ME/2000/XP
Mac OS 8.6 or newer (Linux as well) -- What's the deal with that? If it supports Linux, they can add it to the list. Do they really thing that putting one of their best features it in brackets like an afterthought is going to help endear their product to Linux users?
According to the license provided with that binary (the GPL) file, you should also provide sources on your site which you have failed to do.
I'm sick of people violating the GPL and I've decided to do something about it for a change, so
I've forwarded your contact details to AOL, which owns Nullsoft, and VIA, both of whose GPL-licensed code you seem to be illegally distributing.
CRS
Robert Sell (no.spam.robs@robsell.com)
+1.7016335535
Fax: +1.NoFaxNum
14853 30th St SE
Wheatland, ND 58079
US
I hope they choose to prosecute -- just because they're the large companies and you're the individual in this case doesn't make what you're doing any more acceptable.
Its a Linux distribution worth paying for.
And the others aren't? Associating value with capital when it comes to free and open source software doesn't really make sense. There are probably better ways to praise commercial Linux distributions than spiting the hands that feed the `community' and make software freely available.
Maybe you posted the wrong link?
'We don't expect to make Ximian the default user interface, and for the medium term KDE will remain the default GUI on SuSE Linux'."
What you have to remember is that Novell has traditionally been a server-oriented business. Novell is interested in Mono primarily as a server offering -- the Ximian desktop connection is purely incidental. It would make perfect sense for them to bundle Mono to provide ASP.NET support in Apache 2, even if they've decided not ship a single Ximian Gnome library.
Considering that Novell also owns Ximian, it would be interesting to find out if the SuSE Mono packages are provided/installed.
All internet is piped through our central office so doing this in other offices means putting in a new firewall/VPN in each site. This is much more costly than a $50 access point.
Just install firmware that supports OpenVPN and pptp on the access points -- problem solved. $50 AP hardware like the WRT54G is quite capable of running dozens of secure tunnels. We even host our internet-facing website off the RAM off what used to be a WAP, they are quite resilient and flexible little devices.
Does anyone with a little knowledge of 802.11b scanning know if ordinary wireless kit can be used to determine the signal strength to a given wireless node?
Triangulation is easy once you have the raw signal data, and this seems a fun hack to do this on the cheap with Linux HostAP over the holidays.
Out here in the UK, BT charges 15/hour for an hour of 802.11b connectivity for their "OpenZone" service. They cite Microsoft Windows as a system requirement but you can get connectivity in Linux using IP-over-DNS, with the added benefit that it's absolutely free. I'd probably have willing to pay a reasonable amount for their service, but as long as they refuse to support Linux, people are just going to continue to freeload with IP-over-DNS.
Why would an NHS worker have to install hardware or software? This is what the NHS would pay Sun for, and Sun would probably implement a centrally managed system rather than sending round technicians to update each workstation individually.
The UK government spends millions on institutions like universities allowing them to research and develop all sorts of free software, ranging from kernel security features (StegFS, Cambridge) to userspace applications like text-to-speech (Festival TTS, Edinburgh) and VoIP (VIC, UCL). It only makes sense that they should reap the benefits. Why pay twice for something?
My university just installed 54g wireless Internet access available in almost every lecture theature, allowing students to collaborate and do background research during lectures. This seems a much more sane approach than fitting signal jammers if one wants to increase attendance rates. I daresay lectures will never be the same now that I can IRC my way through KRI with the Zaurus and a CF wireless card. More access to communication networks -- not less -- seems to be the way forward.
Eh? According to http://www.gnome.org/press/ the logo that slashdot uses is the official Gnome logo. At the end of the day, it's not what logo you want but which logo the Gnome Foundation wants that officially represents Gnome, I'm afraid :-)
Do you have any idea how easy it is to forge an email header, give the someone else's contact details to your domain registrar or 'borrow' someone's dialup connection?
Have you ever received angry emails from people you've never heard of, because they think you're spamming them, because some foolish spammer (or their bulk-mail software) decided to use your address as their From header for the day?
Better to let ten spammers free than publicly chastise a single innocent bystander, I say. Maybe it's time to start work on a resilient email network based on something like the PGP network of trust or on national cryptographic certificate schemes. Just whatever you do, for heaven's sake, don't go trying to fix the current mess with a spate of misguided witch hunts.
I tried this a few years back at my high-school. I managed to pull together some great kit (not just computers, but yet-to-be-released consumer kit and other neat toys). I got the school to provide perks like free sandwiches and drinks for those who came. We even had Sir. Clive Sinclair come and speak, but never more than a couple of people turned up. It was an after-school activity rather than a club, so there was no obligation any anyone could turn up if they wanted.
It was a little embarrassing to have such a great computer society, but no members. Unfortunately, my experience has been that people of the age of 16/17 are just too preoccupied with other things like going out to the pub after school or driving about town in their friends' new cars. It might be that the fact the school I went to was a rather posh London private school didn't help, but it just didn't work out. Nobody was interested.
I hope it works out for you, but I wouldn't be surprised if people just don't turn up. Eventually I gave up and started doing the things the other guys did, and realised that you'll never win back those years of your life. Believe me, you'll have enough time to geek out at university. Go out with your friends and have a pint while the good times last.