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User: erwin

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  1. It's a slippery slope... on Shutting Down Worm-Infected Broadband Users · · Score: 1

    I kinda aggree in this case, but the descision to banish subscribers really is opening Pandora's box.

    Sure, turning off offending boxen is good in this instance (though I like some of the other suggestion like creating a private VLAN with the worm-fixes, etc), but what precidents are the ISP's setting for themselves?

    Aren't they opening themselves up to be the net-police. If they take this responsibility upon themselves now, how do they relieve themselves of it later. I don't think the courts will approve of a fickle, seeming arbitary (from a laymans point of view) use of enforement power.

    Now if this type of offense (worm, SPAM, etc) is covered in the EULA, then I think the ISP is perfectly justified in shutting people off. If there's now way to get ahold of them (no email on file, etc), then the only real way to get their attention is to dam the bit flow.

    my $0.02

  2. But aren't we supposed to jump at M$'s command? on MS Squashes SQL Benchmarks · · Score: 1

    After all, M$ would never release anything that hadn't been dully and adequatly tested in a real world situation. The only conclusion that I can come to is that this level of performance is exactly what they intended....

    W2K has been out for more than a year (when you count all of the RC-Betas). and it's not like W2K/SQL2K is an exotic combination of software....

    I say let them die on the sword of their own marketing department. "Faster and more reliable than ever!" - faa!

  3. Re:What about... on Portable Linux Box · · Score: 1

    This does seem to be the one missing piece. It makes it of marginal usefulness for a business machine. I'd love to be able to lug this back and forth from home rather than my 10-lb IBM POS.

    But network is essential. Not USB, not PC-Card. I can't remember when I last used my floppy or CDROM for anything. The network is the computer...hey, that sounds familiar...

  4. Re:creative != artistic on Where Is The Line Between Programmer And Artist? · · Score: 1

    It follws that elegance is not artistic, at least not exclusivly. Code can be elegant, design can be elegant, a pear can be elegant, but artistic...? Well...

    It brings up the age-old discussion of the creator's (artist, hacker, etc) intention vs the viewer's (patron, user, etc) perception.

  5. Re:Who else is an artist? on Where Is The Line Between Programmer And Artist? · · Score: 1

    come on, we all know that the only real way to tell if someone is an artist or a programmer is to look at them.

    Artists only wear black turtleneck sweaters, smoke unfiltered cigarettes, drink really strong black coffee, never wash their hair, and whine about how people don't understand them.

    Programmers, on the other hand, only wear (free) white t-shirts from hardware vendors, eat anything starchy, never wash their hair, and whine about how people don't understand them.

    It's plain as day.

  6. Re:Artist have only one required attribute... on Where Is The Line Between Programmer And Artist? · · Score: 1

    But is creativity only an attribute of the artists? Much code is the product of creativity.

    I've always thought that the difference between artists and programmers has been along the lines of asthetics and extroversion/introversion.

    Most programmers that I work with are comfortable working within a known system (language, OS, etc). They try to make the most of the constraints placed upon them by available resources, time, etc, to come up with the most elegant hack. The question then becomes who is the hack for, and what does it say about the hacker, the cultural system that it was created in, etc.

    Artists are limited by their medium(s) of choice, are trying to do much the same - trancend the medium's (system's) constraints to reach new levels of expression.

    So I guess it all comes back to creativity and how well you can use your tools of choice.

  7. Re:I used ppc for years, but enough is enough on The Silent Kernel Platform War? · · Score: 1

    Having personally suffered at the hands of Apple's stupidpidy, I can sympathize with you feeling. However, I still think the PPC is a good platform for Linux.

    Remember, PPC doesn't automatically equate with Macintosh. RS6000 is PPC based, as are a lot of embedded controllers.

    It's more than the desktop/server market. I thing good linux support is key to the PPC remaining a viable embedded product.

    my $0.02

  8. Re:Please tell me this is just a rumor on The Silent Kernel Platform War? · · Score: 1

    The architecture isn't abandoned, it's just not as convenient to build your own kernel as it would be on the x86 side. the LPPC crowd has the information that you need, you'll just need to know where to get it.

    Esoteric political discussions aside, the PPC is still a great system to run Linux on....

  9. It's pointless if you have a UPS... on Why Don't Servers Support Power Management? · · Score: 2
    (and every server should have one) You're UPS is always drawing power, whether it's an off-line model where it's keeping the battery charges, or a line-interactive or on-line model, where it's rectifying the AC power to DC then reconstructing the AC sine wave.

    The point is, you can turn off the load side of the UPS, but the rectifier/battery charger/inverter will still draw power. Granted it's less power, but it's still power, and now it's doing absolutly nothing. It's one-thing to pay the penalty for this overhead when the UPS is doing actual work, but it's another when it just sucking up juice.

    check out HomePower Magazine for the best scoop on renewable, off-grid power. Even if you don't want to go off the grid, most of what they talk about is applicable to rolling your own disaster recovery systems...

  10. Re:Other distros? on Run LinuxPPC In A Spare Drive Bay · · Score: 1

    SUSE has support for PPC....

  11. Re:Ralph Nader is a socialist on 2600 Staffer Arrested During Republican Convention · · Score: 1
    I would argue that "..public schools, social security, medicare, military spending, the postal service... " are the few legitimate government responsibilities.


    Government is needed in a civil society to provide services for the common good. Often those services aren't profitable (or shouldn't be). Fire and police protection, water purfication, trash pickup, etc. Ensuring a certain minimum level of health to the population is right up the same alley.


    The question becomes one of degree. Where do you draw the line, for example, between public safety and police brutality? I don't think the solution to jack-booted thugs in squad cars is to abolish the police, because they serve a social need. The solution is agreeing on what is and what isn't acceptable behavior.

    The degree to which we refuse to accept subjection is the degree to which we are free.



    To use a programming example, governement is like shared libraries. It's more efficient to pool our resources that try to do the heavy-lifting by ourselves. By that pooling doesn't free us of individual responsibility. The idea that we, as individual citizens, are no longer responsible things once the government is involved is as much of problem as the idea that we would be better off everything ourselves.


    If you're concerned about the educational system, check out a new site that Ohio is providing for its citizen to comment on the state's school funding formula.

    And the USPotal service is making a profit.

  12. Re:Give MS Visual Studio a Chance! on Why Develop On Linux? · · Score: 1

    It's a pretty bloated text-editor, too. (Though Emacs is a close, but more flexible and functional contender).

    We use Interdev at work for ASP development and I could really take to leave it. Actually, that's not true. I'd rather leave it. There's an annoying bug with it that causes the whole thing to hang when it tries to present the syntax for Javascript statements. So basically, it's a colored text editor with DAV support.

    If I can't work on *nix, give me BBEdit on a Mac....

  13. Re:PPC less expensive to produce? on IBM opens PowerPC design to LinuxPPC · · Score: 1

    I remember hearing something like that, too. Buy cheaper to manufacture and cheaper to buy are two different things.

  14. Re:LinuxPPC never mentioned on IBM opens PowerPC design to LinuxPPC · · Score: 1
    Or Debian, BeOS, and OpenBSD. Even (god forbid) MkLinux...which begs the question - can MkLinux be considered competition to Apple?

    hmmmm.....

    Anyways, the PPC is a great platform (even considering its flaws) for a lot of OSs other than the MacOS.

    And LinuxPPC rocks (heck, it's Linux, and that' enough)

  15. Re:Heat dissipation? on Plastic Hard Drives · · Score: 1

    Would the reduced mass (and hence lower wattage motors) of a plastic spindle mechanims off-set (to a limited extent) the poor heat disipation?

    Perhapse using a magnesium space frame skeleton that could double as a heat sink.....

  16. Not to burst the bubble... on Alias|Wavefront to Support Linux · · Score: 1
    but this is just the _Renderer_. The real product that I want to see is Studio(9+). I saw no mention of a Studio port in the press release (it's a US$30K product, rather than a US$3K product).

    We're a product deign firm who would love a couple more seats of Studio. Linux is the obvious choice in OS (nt - ha!), particullarly with SGI supporting it. But if we still need SGI MIPS hardware and IRIX, I don't see us adding any more.

    Now if Parametric Technologies would port ProEngineer to Linux.....

  17. Lobby ProE on Pro/ENGINEER under Linux? · · Score: 1
    Our PTC rep said that they're looking to port ProE to Linux, but that was 4 months ago. I told him we've love to be a beta site, but I've never heard any followup.

    With SGI support Linux in a big way, maybe that will shake them up a bit. If you want it, I think we need to lobby them for it.

    Interestingly, we did some benchmarking of a new SGI visual Workstation(NT), a Compaq AP500 workstation(NT), an SGI Octane (250Mhz) (IRIX), an 500Mhz Alpha box (DEC Unix) and an aging SGI IndigoII(IRIX). As you'd expect, the Alpha stopmed all over eveything. The AP500s, however, returned better results than the SGI VW, both running NT. and the AP500s are 10-20% cheaper for comperable configurations.

    They are, however, butt-ugly.

    You can get 2-3 machines (either SGI or Compaq) for the price of a single Alpha station, but NT sucks, so that brings us back to Linux.....PTC, are you listening?!?!

  18. Check out LinuxPPC.com on Building a PowerPC Linux Box? · · Score: 1
    They have support for most PCI-based *Macintosh* systems and many Mac-clones and the following non-Mac systesm (from the R5 CD-jacket):
    • BeBox
    • IBM Power Series (PPC-based desktops)
    • IBM RS/6000 40P, 43P
    • Motorola FirePower, PowerSTACK

    check them out at linuxppc.com

    R5 looks amazingly like RH6.0

  19. I still see no reason... on Open Source Community reaction to ActiveState & Perl · · Score: 1

    to purchase Windoze in any of its forms. As a sysadmin for a mid-sized company, I'm planning to ditch as many of our currently small pool of Windoze boxes ASAP.

    The fact that perl would be more redially availalble on the platform is of no real comfort. What good is having a great tool if the underlying OS can't be trusted to simply run?

    Give me *nix in any form and I'll find a way to get my user's work done with it. Fix that MacOS, too....but keep that Imac away from me.

  20. Re:What Else? on Open Source Community reaction to ActiveState & Perl · · Score: 1

    Could this be a new attempt to firewall themselves legally?

    "We (M$) didn't make that product, Ms Reno. AS did it. Go talk to them."

    Plausible Deniability?

  21. Well that pretty much says it all... on ESR/OSI's letter to Microsoft · · Score: 1

    The subtext: "Think Different, don't do it the way Apple did..."

  22. Ihack on iMac Linux · · Score: 1
    I think it'd look cool in our lobby as a kiosk, esp. running Linux. A double joke on the Windoze and Mac freaks around here...

    But, no, it's definatly not worthing trying to use as a workstation. If it was $499....well, maybe.

    LinuxPPC, however, rocks. I've got a LinuxPPC box next to two RedHat boxes, and they're all cool. Hardware is irrelevant if you've got the right OS.