> The service pack, as well as all of the other addons that are traditionally installed via
> network-download (aka Active Setup) are able to be downloaded and saved from the MS Windows 2000 page (it states
> it as network administrator download, just because they figure they'd be the only ones using it), which easily allows for
> download and then offline installation.
You're probably right, there's nothing evil going on, but I did all of this in dumb user mode (``I didn't do anything! I just booted up my computer, clicked on some stuff, & started typing away. So why doesn't it work, expert?") But I'm the sort of guy who always selects the custom install -- when asked -- just to see what gets installed. And I wasn't asked.
MS is obviously not coding software for the endusers. It's looking to other corporations, & what they are willing to pay for. And that should be a warning to everyone who uses their software.
> I have to admit that hearing of ReplayTV disabling features is pretty sorry, and definitely makes for just cause to
> complain about the "autoupdate" features that have begun to appear in just about everything these days.
Thoughts like these went thru my head today at work.
I had to test some software on the Win2K platform, so I pulled an image from the network & pasted it on the box. Discovered this morning that the image didn't include Service pack 1, so I followed our network Admin's advice & connected the box to windowsupdate.com to get the patch.
I thought that what would happen was that I'd download the file & run the install from a local directory; what I saw happen was a netowrk upgrade. I have no idea what I downloaded & installed today, & can only trust Microsoft wasn't looking for another way to pry into what I had on that computer.
Aw well, it's only a test bed, & sometime in the next couple of months we'll fdisk & reinstall the software on it.
That way you can boast to your buddies, ``You might be able to fit half a billion files with bzip on your 80 gig harddrive, but using this k-rad k3wl program I found, *I* can fit almost 80 BILLION files on it." And prove your l33t abilities with a simple ``ls -l | wc -l".
And they will be so humbled by this show of skill that they will give you the root password.
> Why can't employers just treat their employees fairly? Is there some built-in tendency of managers to be flaming a**holes? Must one be a flaming a**hole to
> become a manager?
>
> Seriously, I'd like to know. I'm interested in becoming management.
My two cents, based on the fact I've worked both for managers who were great & those who were fully toilet-paper compliant. And my impression is being an asshole is the easier way to do things.
Think about it: the good managers -- the ones who not only deliver to both their bosses & to their subordinates -- but also are available at a moment's notice to put out fires are also the ones who put in the hours. They know the company depends on their doing a job, & do it.
Meanwhile, the others feel that their job is nothing more than making sure that their subordinates do the work. And believe that failing to put their name on any successful project they are in the least connected with is a Career Limiting Move.
This latter course can be more successful over the short run -- or if the person runs their own small business -- than the former. (Or if the manager works in a call center.) But eventually that kind of manager has to jump ship one step ahead of her/his karma catching up with her/him. (Or, then again, when it does.) And eventually, unless the asshole comes into a windfall & can retire, even this strategy of cut-&-running will be a sign to future employers.
At least this is what I tell myself when I wonder what has become of former supervisors . . .
> Um, how could you go bankrupt and expect to keep your home?
There are two kinds of bankrupcy, speaking generally: in one case, you turn over all of your assets to a trustee (sometimes with an exception made for clothing, sentimental goods, & other items of negligble value -- this depends on the state or local jurisdiction), who thens sells everything off, pays the debts, & turns any cash left over back to you; in the other, you find a trustee who legally shelters you from debt collectors, arranges a payment schedule, & you get to keep your home, your car, yor computer & the other stuff you need to live your life.
Credit companies don't like the second arrangement because it means they usually have to forego much of the interest the creditor owes on the principal. Even if the creditor is injured, loses her or his job in a down economy, or otherwise had to declare bankrupcy due to no fault of her/his own -- & is a responsible borrower.
I guess they'd rather fatten their bottom line, & save the responsible corporate citizen image for commercials.
> No, the microsoft one was about nobody needing more than six hundred and fourty thousand of those byte thingies.
I must be too subtle here. I surely would have guessed that by saying ``stupid Microsoft quotations", people would remember Allchin talking about how open source is unAmerican.
> The biggest problem I've had with rpm, IMNSHO, is its inability to deal with dependancies of non-rpm packages on the system.
> I don't mind having to go root around for my rpm updates, in fact I prefer this so these benefits for apt-get aren't of great concern
> to me.
Sourceforge lists a couple of utilities to handle this problem: pkgwrite & checkinstall.
I haven't had a chance to thoroughly examine how well they work, or which is better. But you know this advice is prolly worth exactly what you paid for it . . .
Think of the attitude towards alcohol here in Oregon as ``loosening up." When I was a kid, the law was that beer & other spirits could not be advertised on tv on Sunday. IIRC, you could not buy the stuff then either.
Today, we have brew pubs & wine tasting rooms. However, there are a few ``dry" locales (e.g. Monmouth) where you can't buy any liquor. And you have to buy spirits in state-owned liquor stores -- not at almost any store, as is the case in California. And I doubt we'll be seeing ``drive-throughs" as they have in (for instance) Ohio.
> Do we write our thoughts and opinions to our government official(s), or do we just complain about it on./?
>
> There isn't really a difference in the amount of effort it takes to write to the elected officials in your locale, than it does to write to
> Slashdot.
>
> Writing your representatives will get noticed, and may get results. Writing the entire argument to Slashdot won't do that.
Well, something like this happened in Oregon. Damned if I can figure it out, but my best guess is this:
There is a quasi-governmental group here called the ``Oregon Internet Commission" that, as late as last summer, stated that passing UCITA in Oregon was a major goal. I & a number of members of the Portland Linux/UNIX Group wrote in protest of this stand, & I prepared to start lobbying my legislative folks about what a bad law this was.
And as of this writing, no such bill has been submitted to the Oregon Legislature. I feel that I'm repeating the experience I put a weekend aside to fix a plumbing problem in my house which was fixed in 15 minutes!
A visit to the Oregon Internet Commission's home page turned up the interesting discovery that on 17 October 2000 Vince Chiappetta reported back to the Commission that ``the Commission received feedback opposed to enacting UCITA. The subcommitte recommendation does not recommend adopting UCITA, but rather only suggests it as one vehicle for addressing the goal of more certainty in on-line contracting." Hmmm. I guess all of the cards, letters & email from people on the PLUG list was enough to frighten a former Microsoft executive & several corporate lawyers into backing off from endorsing this proposed legislation.
Yes, I was being sardonic in that last sentence. I can't see how a few dozen cards, letters & emails won the battle. I even sent another email to the commission asking if they have decided not to submit this proposed law to the legislature, but have yet to get an answer.
Then I noticed House Bill 2470, ``sponsored by Representative HILL (at the request of Craig Berkman)". In short, the Oregon Internet Commission is due to be terminated -- or sunsetted -- soon, & need to be recreated. Aha! It is all clear . . .
This Commission knows that there are a lot of folks out here who don't like UCITA. But keeping themselves in business for another few years is far more important than an immediate handout for Microsoft & its ilk.
Now if I could only figure out a way to wrangle a seat on this Commission for myself or some true geeks, we might be able to keep the suits at bay.
For the record, Rob Tillotson has created Pyrite, which was compatible to Python 1.5, for the Palm. He has some of the details at http://www.pyrite.org.
While he hasn't done any work on it since December of 1999, I think it's only fair to mention that someone else was there first, created a useable port for Python, & released it under a real GNU license, not some ersatz version.
The Free Source software community for the Palm needs to do a better job of reminding people that they exist, & what they have done for this computer appliance.
> Who here has even HEARD of Zero Wing before this rediculous fad caught on?
So that's where this odd bit of dialogue comes from.
> I mean, just because some jackhole
> pulled out his Genesis a few weeks ago, and realized how poorly the game was translated, doesn't justify MAJOR
> over use of this (double-plus-un-funny) joke.
Well, I'll defend it in this case. I find it funny because it makes Allchin sound like some script kiddie too clueless to even know how to properly use l33t sp33k.
And Allchin has definitely been clueless thruout this whole contraversy.
At that point, I was sweating with excitenment. I was sweating so bad, & I was afraid she'd smell my sweat & lose interest. But she just gave me this look, & I decided to go with the flow.
``You can keep a secret, can't you?" she asked, her voice a husky whisper.
``Uh, yeah," I said, trying to sound mature & knowing that I failed.
``Good." She reached behind her desk, & brought forward a waste paper basket that had been covered with a binder, & put it in front of me.
``What's this?"
She quickly sat down, & looked as if she was gong to cry. ``I just found out I'm pregnant, & got sick earlier with morning sickness. I need someone to clean up the evidence, & get me some pickles & ice cream on the double."
Needless to say, this special assignment did not lead me to further technical ability, although I did learn how to quickly clean puke out of those plastic waste paper baskets. And where all of the grocery stores were in near the business park. In return, she was able to hide the fact of her pregnancy for another three months form her employer.
[well, I doubt our narrator will write the above, but SMPs to 8086s he will end his tale with the following words:]
But she gave me the best review & recommendation I ever received from a work place.
> You mentioned The Holocaust twice. Ten bucks says you're Jewish.
Sorry, no one in my family practices Judaism to my knowledge. I was baptized in the Episcopal church as an infant, my wife's Methodist, my father describes himself as a ``weak Methodist", my mother was an Episcopalian, & my step-mother's Catholic.
The reason I mentioned the Holocaust was because I meant to mention an article I read in the February _Esquire_ the other weekend at the barber's. But I found I could make my point without mentioning it & distract everyone by mentioning Hitler.
And look up the history of the word ``Holocaust" -- especially pre-1940. See why it applies to one incident of genocide, & not all.
> I'm waiting for Murdoch to green light the Fox special "The Great Holocaust Hoax" and "The Great Spherical Earth Hoax."
LOL
Years ago when I was in Junior High, I had a Science Teacher who posed a very simple, yet very challenging question:
Prove that the Sun is the center of the Universe, & not the Earth.
(For the sake of the exercise, he ignored the question whether the Sun is in revolution around another point, or that point is in revolution around still another point.)
The point of this exercise was not to convince us that Gallileo & Copernicus was wrong, but to consider facts & draw our own logical conclusions. Most people would have to say that the Earth rotates around the Sun because that's what they were taught in school. And some of these people eventually realize that that not everything they learned in school was correct, & so start questioning other things they were taught.
Such as Evolution. Or the Holocaust. Or whether the Earth is round.
And when someone questions these things, instead of an informed argument, the questioner is greeted with derision & unsympathetic laughter. Very similar to the youthful nerd who asks a difficult question of her/his teacher that shows she/he knows more than the instructor. Or that she/he bothered to do the homework.
Or begins twisting another person away from logical thinking into the land of superstition & faulty thinking. Read the books of L. Ron Hubbard with a critical eye, & you will be amazed what bizarre creations one can create based on urban legend, lazy research & a fevered imagination.
> PS: I know this will get mod'ed down as it's Pro-Microsoft, but before you pull the trigger, re-read the post. He has NO
> alternatives.
This, in a nutshell, is exactly why our correspondent should find a way to create an alternative to Microsoft. When you trust one source to solve all of your questions, & you encounter a problem that their work cannot solve, you have found yourself at a dead end.
This is Matt Walsh's argument for avoiding MS-ware, & it makes sense. Do you want to trust your livelihood to the software equivalent of monoculture?
I hope our correspondent from Israel studies the more thoughtful answers to his question, & realises that it may be time for him to contribute to an alternative to the de facto MS standard in his country. It's either that, or hope that Microsoft can succeed where King Canute failed -- fight the ebbing tide.
> Depends. Microsoft's behaviour is an excellent example of just such tactics - educated the consumers to buy Windows. And look
> what it did for them. They set the example everyone followed.
You haven't dealt with CA or Oracle personally, have you?
At my prior place of ork, Computer Associates (CA) screwed the PHBs there so badly at their prior place of ork that they swore they would never buy another CA product. When we were evaluating software for a proposed purchase, the CA salesman had to get nicey-nicey with those PHBs in order to guarrantee that their product would stand half a chance at getting approved for purchase.
And Oracle seems to take a perverse delight in charging their users for every shred of possible useful information. Add to this the fact that an Oracle database is probably *The* most difficult piece of software to install, & the fact their own instructions lie about how to install it, & Microsoft looks honest in comparison.
Okay, maybe I exagerated the bit about the girlfriend. Would it be better if I said, ``Dealing with CA or Orcale is like having a gun put to the base of your skull, told to drop yoru shorts & getting sodomized, where as dealing with Microsoft, the thug remembers to add `please', & uses a condom & lots of K-Y jelly"?
]knowing I'm taking it in the karma for this[
Geoff
> The customers are stupid. If you weren't there, they'd be doing something even worse
> with their money and time.
:::boggle:::
Let's cut thru all of the crap & ask a few simple questions:
1) Do you want to a job that you can point to in the future with pride?
2) Do you care that you did the right thing, & gave your customers what they needed, & not some placebo buzzword that they thought they wanted?
I've been in the computer business for about five years. Not long enough to be an expert, but I think I know a few things. And it pains me to know that the average person trusts a used car salesman more than a software salesman. (And this is not a slam against Microsoft: CA & Oracle make MS look like the old buddy you'd trust your girlfriend with if you were out of the country for 3 years.)
Or to put it another way: I've dealt with a few plumbers -- guys who might have a high school education & make a living from the knowledge gained from two weeks of experience -- & without an exception they show more social skills & more trustibility than the average computer geek.
In a nutshell, the whole computer industry stinks. People are making millions thru ripping off the end user. Yes, part of the reason is due to cluelessness on behalf of the customer. But instead of selling them patent medicines & nostrums, shouldn't we make an effort to educate them & make them better consumers?
Or is UCITA our moral compass?
BTW, you're not the same Ben Schumin who is responsible for http://ben-schumin.simplenet.com/ are you? The maturity is simular.
>> I'd ask him how well does Win2K run DNS? And if he can make it work better than the company that wrote it?
> Bra-vo. Way to rise above.
Aw, shucks, you missed my best shot: mentioning Steve Bartko.
In case you're too lazy to Google that name, take a look at http://lists.essential.org/1998/am-info/msg01529.h tml. It tells most of the story, but leaves out the fact that the reporters who uncovered it all found themselves unemployable within 12 months.
Miller's interview in Wired is not FUD. It is nothing more than trash-talking. The same thing Larry Ellison indulges in when he talks about Sybase or MS SQL. Or Larry Augustine or Robert Young might do about a Linux competitor.
Trash talking is not FUD. People laugh at trash talking, but are not convinced. FUD attempts to convince its hearer.
FUD is subtle & shadowy. It is the voice of anonymous cowards or people with made-up names like Steve Bartko, who descries himself
> As someone who used to love Linux a lot more than Windows,
but has found that
> I have no come to see that they are both neck and neck in stability.
And characterizes his opponent as
> Here we obviously have a foaming at the mouth Linux zealot. Careful,
> don't touch that white foam coming out of his mouth, it is contagious, and quite possibly deadly. Let us look at Mr Celtic's claims now. They are all
> (not suprisingly) unfounded. He even has the wherewithall to make certain claims bold.
Wow. This guy reads a lot into a simple post stating that
> but the bottom line is that Linux is more stable, more flexible and more secure! Let them attempt the FUD.. it won't work and
> they know it. -Celtic
Maybe Mr Celtic is wrong. But this two line post doesn't strike me as coming from a frothing at the mouth zealot. (Well, maybe a zealot.)
Our FUDster tries to appear more rational than his oppenent with a carefully qualified statement:
> With Win2K, I think I've had 1 lockup in 6 months,
> and that was my fault for installing 7 year old ASPI drivers.
If Win2K was truly as stable as Linux, why isn't he telling us what he is using it for? More than surfing the web & writing the occasional email? Is he running an enterprise-level application (e.g. a multiuser database, or a webserver)?
(Hey, if I wanted to really slam this poster, I'd ask him how well does Win2K run DNS? And if he can make it work better than the company that wrote it?)
And notice how he discusses security:
> Ah security, one of my pet
> hobbies. I've come to the final conclusion that you spitting zealots don't even have the slightest clue about security, so I'm not going into details.
Oh wow, have we've been dissed! We might actually feel more than slightly miffed if this poster could give any examples that he knew what he was talking about.
A note to those who want to defend Windows here or anywhere: provide specifics, provide verifiable facts to back up your statements. I won't deny some people are very happy with Win2K, but unless you explain why, you're going to be dismissed as another troll earning a paycheck from Ballmer & Co.
> Thanks to Wiley, here is a History of Search Engines, with a section on Archie and AltaVista. By the time of AltaVista there were a
> number of crawlers, spiders, etc.
Wow, that was a flashback. [digs deep into some files in a forgotten directory] Yeah, I remember bookmarking a link about spiders, many years ago . . .
[from my almost forgotten lynx bookmarks file, which I used before I discovered graphical browsers:]
<li><a href="http://web.nexor.co.uk/mak/doc/robots/robots.html">World Wide Web Wanderers, Spiders and Robots</a>
A few other early web sites I used to frequent:
<li><a href="http://daneel.acns.nwu.edu:8082/index.html"& gt;Big Time Television Home
Page</a>
<li><a href="http://www.cs.colorado.edu/homes/mcbryan/pub lic_html/bb/summary.html"> The Mother-of-all BBS
</a>
<li><a href="http://www.cnam.fr/bin.html/imageWWW">Femmes Femmes Femmes</a>
> If you can rm -rf so can any mischievous web page author over whose sorry
> ass^H^H^Hpage you might stumble. And that's a bad thing. This kind of security is about securing the client against the server, not the
> other way round.
Hence my statement, ``Although it would be even safer if anything that ran in this wise ran in rsh as `nobody'." On one hand, a malicious application could no nothing more than writhe around in/tmp. On the other, if I wanted to use this ability to read email, Usenet, etc. thru a Protozilla helper-app, I would be thwarted because by sudoing to ``nobody", the helper-app could not write to my directory.
All of this are just some random thoughts about this ``new feature". After all, it's Sunday, & I should have better things to concern myself on this day of rest than computers.
Yet I hope that the folks responsible for this ``new feature" weigh the plusses & minuses carefully: if they can't make it work without emasculating it due to security concerns, then don't bother diddling with this.
The reason is this: there's this company up in Redmond, WA that is eager to deliver us all of this k-rad k3wl software, but because security puts a crimp in all of their 3l33t featurez, they don't consider security. It crimps their style. And as a resutl knowledgeable computer users hate them.
> I would think this might be a script kiddies dream. Couldn't it be used to exploit local variables?
Interesting point, now that I have thought thru your question, & read the source page. What they wrote at Mozilla is:
> Protozilla is a browser add-on that makes it very easy to implement protocols in Mozilla (or Netscape 6.x). It is not a
> traditional browser plugin, but may be described as a "socket adapter", like the kind that you may carry around with your
> laptop when you travel internationally.
In other words, an ability to handle protocols like SMTP & NNTP akin to the ability of specifying helper-applications to handle MIME types. (And if this works with the Gecko rendering engine, you can specify your own choice of MTA or newsreader when you hit the link that requires that protocol, instead of being forced to d/l the whole bloated mass of Netscape!)
And if the admin for the workstation running the browser has done a proper job securing the ports, then there should be no new security issues.
My assumption -- & someone who knows more, correct me if this is wrong -- is that the browser add-in, being a daughter process, would inherit the environment the parent process has -- & ultimately that of the user. So unless you are doing something stupid like running your workstation as ``root" or ``Admin" this won't do anything to your computer worse than you can do in a non-privileged account. In other words, if *you* can't ``rm -rf *" & lose more than a few files, then neither can the enabled protocol.
(Although it would be even safer if anything that ran in this wise ran in rsh as ``nobody".)
However, I doubt anyone truly knows how security & environment variables are handled under NT4.0/Win2000, so maybe we do have another exploit waiting to happen in certain cases. Wouldn't be the first time MS coding practices proved injurous.
Slashdot Mirror
> The service pack, as well as all of the other addons that are traditionally installed via
> network-download (aka Active Setup) are able to be downloaded and saved from the MS Windows 2000 page (it states
> it as network administrator download, just because they figure they'd be the only ones using it), which easily allows for
> download and then offline installation.
You're probably right, there's nothing evil going on, but I did all of this in dumb user mode (``I didn't do anything! I just booted up my computer, clicked on some stuff, & started typing away. So why doesn't it work, expert?") But I'm the sort of guy who always selects the custom install -- when asked -- just to see what gets installed. And I wasn't asked.
MS is obviously not coding software for the endusers. It's looking to other corporations, & what they are willing to pay for. And that should be a warning to everyone who uses their software.
Geoff
> I have to admit that hearing of ReplayTV disabling features is pretty sorry, and definitely makes for just cause to
> complain about the "autoupdate" features that have begun to appear in just about everything these days.
Thoughts like these went thru my head today at work.
I had to test some software on the Win2K platform, so I pulled an image from the network & pasted it on the box. Discovered this morning that the image didn't include Service pack 1, so I followed our network Admin's advice & connected the box to windowsupdate.com to get the patch.
I thought that what would happen was that I'd download the file & run the install from a local directory; what I saw happen was a netowrk upgrade. I have no idea what I downloaded & installed today, & can only trust Microsoft wasn't looking for another way to pry into what I had on that computer.
Aw well, it's only a test bed, & sometime in the next couple of months we'll fdisk & reinstall the software on it.
Geoff
> It has been part of unix for quite some time. Use rm filename and it will make any file 0% of the original size.
/dev/null > targetfile
Naw, a far better algorithm would be:
cat
mv $targetfile $targetfile.lzip
That way you can boast to your buddies, ``You might be able to fit half a billion files with bzip on your 80 gig harddrive, but using this k-rad k3wl program I found, *I* can fit almost 80 BILLION files on it." And prove your l33t abilities with a simple ``ls -l | wc -l".
And they will be so humbled by this show of skill that they will give you the root password.
Geoff
> Why can't employers just treat their employees fairly? Is there some built-in tendency of managers to be flaming a**holes? Must one be a flaming a**hole to
> become a manager?
>
> Seriously, I'd like to know. I'm interested in becoming management.
My two cents, based on the fact I've worked both for managers who were great & those who were fully toilet-paper compliant. And my impression is being an asshole is the easier way to do things.
Think about it: the good managers -- the ones who not only deliver to both their bosses & to their subordinates -- but also are available at a moment's notice to put out fires are also the ones who put in the hours. They know the company depends on their doing a job, & do it.
Meanwhile, the others feel that their job is nothing more than making sure that their subordinates do the work. And believe that failing to put their name on any successful project they are in the least connected with is a Career Limiting Move.
This latter course can be more successful over the short run -- or if the person runs their own small business -- than the former. (Or if the manager works in a call center.) But eventually that kind of manager has to jump ship one step ahead of her/his karma catching up with her/him. (Or, then again, when it does.) And eventually, unless the asshole comes into a windfall & can retire, even this strategy of cut-&-running will be a sign to future employers.
At least this is what I tell myself when I wonder what has become of former supervisors . . .
Geoff
> Um, how could you go bankrupt and expect to keep your home?
There are two kinds of bankrupcy, speaking generally: in one case, you turn over all of your assets to a trustee (sometimes with an exception made for clothing, sentimental goods, & other items of negligble value -- this depends on the state or local jurisdiction), who thens sells everything off, pays the debts, & turns any cash left over back to you; in the other, you find a trustee who legally shelters you from debt collectors, arranges a payment schedule, & you get to keep your home, your car, yor computer & the other stuff you need to live your life.
Credit companies don't like the second arrangement because it means they usually have to forego much of the interest the creditor owes on the principal. Even if the creditor is injured, loses her or his job in a down economy, or otherwise had to declare bankrupcy due to no fault of her/his own -- & is a responsible borrower.
I guess they'd rather fatten their bottom line, & save the responsible corporate citizen image for commercials.
Geoff
> No, the microsoft one was about nobody needing more than six hundred and fourty thousand of those byte thingies.
I must be too subtle here. I surely would have guessed that by saying ``stupid Microsoft quotations", people would remember Allchin talking about how open source is unAmerican.
Or else it was just my imagination again.
Geoff
> "We estimate this to be about 1,000 firms in the U.S., and not all of them will want the code"
Hmm. Am I the only person who is reminded of a well-known quotation about the market for computers is no larger than five?
Must just be my imagination: no one at Microsoft would say anything so stupid. And the quotation I'm reminded of is probably an urban myth anyway.
Geoff
> The biggest problem I've had with rpm, IMNSHO, is its inability to deal with dependancies of non-rpm packages on the system.
> I don't mind having to go root around for my rpm updates, in fact I prefer this so these benefits for apt-get aren't of great concern
> to me.
Sourceforge lists a couple of utilities to handle this problem: pkgwrite & checkinstall.
I haven't had a chance to thoroughly examine how well they work, or which is better. But you know this advice is prolly worth exactly what you paid for it . . .
Geoff
Think of the attitude towards alcohol here in Oregon as ``loosening up." When I was a kid, the law was that beer & other spirits could not be advertised on tv on Sunday. IIRC, you could not buy the stuff then either.
Today, we have brew pubs & wine tasting rooms. However, there are a few ``dry" locales (e.g. Monmouth) where you can't buy any liquor. And you have to buy spirits in state-owned liquor stores -- not at almost any store, as is the case in California. And I doubt we'll be seeing ``drive-throughs" as they have in (for instance) Ohio.
Geoff
> Do we write our thoughts and opinions to our government official(s), or do we just complain about it on ./?
>
> There isn't really a difference in the amount of effort it takes to write to the elected officials in your locale, than it does to write to
> Slashdot.
>
> Writing your representatives will get noticed, and may get results. Writing the entire argument to Slashdot won't do that.
Well, something like this happened in Oregon. Damned if I can figure it out, but my best guess is this:
There is a quasi-governmental group here called the ``Oregon Internet Commission" that, as late as last summer, stated that passing UCITA in Oregon was a major goal. I & a number of members of the Portland Linux/UNIX Group wrote in protest of this stand, & I prepared to start lobbying my legislative folks about what a bad law this was.
And as of this writing, no such bill has been submitted to the Oregon Legislature. I feel that I'm repeating the experience I put a weekend aside to fix a plumbing problem in my house which was fixed in 15 minutes!
A visit to the Oregon Internet Commission's home page turned up the interesting discovery that on 17 October 2000 Vince Chiappetta reported back to the Commission that ``the Commission received feedback opposed to enacting UCITA. The subcommitte recommendation does not recommend adopting UCITA, but rather only suggests it as one vehicle for addressing the goal of more certainty in on-line contracting." Hmmm. I guess all of the cards, letters & email from people on the PLUG list was enough to frighten a former Microsoft executive & several corporate lawyers into backing off from endorsing this proposed legislation.
Yes, I was being sardonic in that last sentence. I can't see how a few dozen cards, letters & emails won the battle. I even sent another email to the commission asking if they have decided not to submit this proposed law to the legislature, but have yet to get an answer.
Then I noticed House Bill 2470, ``sponsored by Representative HILL (at the request of Craig Berkman)". In short, the Oregon Internet Commission is due to be terminated -- or sunsetted -- soon, & need to be recreated. Aha! It is all clear . . .
This Commission knows that there are a lot of folks out here who don't like UCITA. But keeping themselves in business for another few years is far more important than an immediate handout for Microsoft & its ilk.
Now if I could only figure out a way to wrangle a seat on this Commission for myself or some true geeks, we might be able to keep the suits at bay.
Geoff
For the record, Rob Tillotson has created Pyrite, which was compatible to Python 1.5, for the Palm. He has some of the details at http://www.pyrite.org.
While he hasn't done any work on it since December of 1999, I think it's only fair to mention that someone else was there first, created a useable port for Python, & released it under a real GNU license, not some ersatz version.
The Free Source software community for the Palm needs to do a better job of reminding people that they exist, & what they have done for this computer appliance.
Geoff
> Who here has even HEARD of Zero Wing before this rediculous fad caught on?
So that's where this odd bit of dialogue comes from.
> I mean, just because some jackhole
> pulled out his Genesis a few weeks ago, and realized how poorly the game was translated, doesn't justify MAJOR
> over use of this (double-plus-un-funny) joke.
Well, I'll defend it in this case. I find it funny because it makes Allchin sound like some script kiddie too clueless to even know how to properly use l33t sp33k.
And Allchin has definitely been clueless thruout this whole contraversy.
Geoff
[I expect our narrator to continue thusly:]
At that point, I was sweating with excitenment. I was sweating so bad, & I was afraid she'd smell my sweat & lose interest. But she just gave me this look, & I decided to go with the flow.
``You can keep a secret, can't you?" she asked, her voice a husky whisper.
``Uh, yeah," I said, trying to sound mature & knowing that I failed.
``Good." She reached behind her desk, & brought forward a waste paper basket that had been covered with a binder, & put it in front of me.
``What's this?"
She quickly sat down, & looked as if she was gong to cry. ``I just found out I'm pregnant, & got sick earlier with morning sickness. I need someone to clean up the evidence, & get me some pickles & ice cream on the double."
Needless to say, this special assignment did not lead me to further technical ability, although I did learn how to quickly clean puke out of those plastic waste paper baskets. And where all of the grocery stores were in near the business park. In return, she was able to hide the fact of her pregnancy for another three months form her employer.
[well, I doubt our narrator will write the above, but SMPs to 8086s he will end his tale with the following words:]
But she gave me the best review & recommendation I ever received from a work place.
Geoff
> You mentioned The Holocaust twice. Ten bucks says you're Jewish.
Sorry, no one in my family practices Judaism to my knowledge. I was baptized in the Episcopal church as an infant, my wife's Methodist, my father describes himself as a ``weak Methodist", my mother was an Episcopalian, & my step-mother's Catholic.
The reason I mentioned the Holocaust was because I meant to mention an article I read in the February _Esquire_ the other weekend at the barber's. But I found I could make my point without mentioning it & distract everyone by mentioning Hitler.
And look up the history of the word ``Holocaust" -- especially pre-1940. See why it applies to one incident of genocide, & not all.
Geoff
> Your statement is erroneous, I assume you _meant_ to say "prove that the sun is the center of the solar system
;)
> and not the earth".
Nope. I said what I wanted to say. Read the rest of my post.
And it would be a trivial exercise to prove that the Sun is the center of the Solar System; otherwise it'd be called the **Terrestrial** System.
Geoff
> I'm waiting for Murdoch to green light the Fox special "The Great Holocaust Hoax" and "The Great Spherical Earth Hoax."
LOL
Years ago when I was in Junior High, I had a Science Teacher who posed a very simple, yet very challenging question:
Prove that the Sun is the center of the Universe, & not the Earth.
(For the sake of the exercise, he ignored the question whether the Sun is in revolution around another point, or that point is in revolution around still another point.)
The point of this exercise was not to convince us that Gallileo & Copernicus was wrong, but to consider facts & draw our own logical conclusions. Most people would have to say that the Earth rotates around the Sun because that's what they were taught in school. And some of these people eventually realize that that not everything they learned in school was correct, & so start questioning other things they were taught.
Such as Evolution. Or the Holocaust. Or whether the Earth is round.
And when someone questions these things, instead of an informed argument, the questioner is greeted with derision & unsympathetic laughter. Very similar to the youthful nerd who asks a difficult question of her/his teacher that shows she/he knows more than the instructor. Or that she/he bothered to do the homework.
Or begins twisting another person away from logical thinking into the land of superstition & faulty thinking. Read the books of L. Ron Hubbard with a critical eye, & you will be amazed what bizarre creations one can create based on urban legend, lazy research & a fevered imagination.
Geoff
I happened to see the O'Reilly book on VB Script this weekend, & was amazed to see their choice for the animal on the cover . . .
A flu virus?
The collophon claims this is a drawing of a Sea Urchin. I'm not convinced.
Geoff
> PS: I know this will get mod'ed down as it's Pro-Microsoft, but before you pull the trigger, re-read the post. He has NO
> alternatives.
This, in a nutshell, is exactly why our correspondent should find a way to create an alternative to Microsoft. When you trust one source to solve all of your questions, & you encounter a problem that their work cannot solve, you have found yourself at a dead end.
This is Matt Walsh's argument for avoiding MS-ware, & it makes sense. Do you want to trust your livelihood to the software equivalent of monoculture?
I hope our correspondent from Israel studies the more thoughtful answers to his question, & realises that it may be time for him to contribute to an alternative to the de facto MS standard in his country. It's either that, or hope that Microsoft can succeed where King Canute failed -- fight the ebbing tide.
Geoff
> Depends. Microsoft's behaviour is an excellent example of just such tactics - educated the consumers to buy Windows. And look
> what it did for them. They set the example everyone followed.
You haven't dealt with CA or Oracle personally, have you?
At my prior place of ork, Computer Associates (CA) screwed the PHBs there so badly at their prior place of ork that they swore they would never buy another CA product. When we were evaluating software for a proposed purchase, the CA salesman had to get nicey-nicey with those PHBs in order to guarrantee that their product would stand half a chance at getting approved for purchase.
And Oracle seems to take a perverse delight in charging their users for every shred of possible useful information. Add to this the fact that an Oracle database is probably *The* most difficult piece of software to install, & the fact their own instructions lie about how to install it, & Microsoft looks honest in comparison.
Okay, maybe I exagerated the bit about the girlfriend. Would it be better if I said, ``Dealing with CA or Orcale is like having a gun put to the base of your skull, told to drop yoru shorts & getting sodomized, where as dealing with Microsoft, the thug remembers to add `please', & uses a condom & lots of K-Y jelly"?
]knowing I'm taking it in the karma for this[
Geoff
> The customers are stupid. If you weren't there, they'd be doing something even worse
> with their money and time.
:::boggle:::
Let's cut thru all of the crap & ask a few simple questions:
1) Do you want to a job that you can point to in the future with pride?
2) Do you care that you did the right thing, & gave your customers what they needed, & not some placebo buzzword that they thought they wanted?
I've been in the computer business for about five years. Not long enough to be an expert, but I think I know a few things. And it pains me to know that the average person trusts a used car salesman more than a software salesman. (And this is not a slam against Microsoft: CA & Oracle make MS look like the old buddy you'd trust your girlfriend with if you were out of the country for 3 years.)
Or to put it another way: I've dealt with a few plumbers -- guys who might have a high school education & make a living from the knowledge gained from two weeks of experience -- & without an exception they show more social skills & more trustibility than the average computer geek.
In a nutshell, the whole computer industry stinks. People are making millions thru ripping off the end user. Yes, part of the reason is due to cluelessness on behalf of the customer. But instead of selling them patent medicines & nostrums, shouldn't we make an effort to educate them & make them better consumers?
Or is UCITA our moral compass?
BTW, you're not the same Ben Schumin who is responsible for http://ben-schumin.simplenet.com/ are you? The maturity is simular.
Geoff
>> I'd ask him how well does Win2K run DNS? And if he can make it work better than the company that wrote it?
h tml. It tells most of the story, but leaves out the fact that the reporters who uncovered it all found themselves unemployable within 12 months.
> Bra-vo. Way to rise above.
Aw, shucks, you missed my best shot: mentioning Steve Bartko.
In case you're too lazy to Google that name, take a look at http://lists.essential.org/1998/am-info/msg01529.
Geoff
Miller's interview in Wired is not FUD. It is nothing more than trash-talking. The same thing Larry Ellison indulges in when he talks about Sybase or MS SQL. Or Larry Augustine or Robert Young might do about a Linux competitor.
Trash talking is not FUD. People laugh at trash talking, but are not convinced. FUD attempts to convince its hearer.
FUD is subtle & shadowy. It is the voice of anonymous cowards or people with made-up names like Steve Bartko, who descries himself
> As someone who used to love Linux a lot more than Windows,
but has found that
> I have no come to see that they are both neck and neck in stability.
And characterizes his opponent as
> Here we obviously have a foaming at the mouth Linux zealot. Careful,
> don't touch that white foam coming out of his mouth, it is contagious, and quite possibly deadly. Let us look at Mr Celtic's claims now. They are all
> (not suprisingly) unfounded. He even has the wherewithall to make certain claims bold.
Wow. This guy reads a lot into a simple post stating that
> but the bottom line is that Linux is more stable, more flexible and more secure! Let them attempt the FUD.. it won't work and
> they know it. -Celtic
Maybe Mr Celtic is wrong. But this two line post doesn't strike me as coming from a frothing at the mouth zealot. (Well, maybe a zealot.)
Our FUDster tries to appear more rational than his oppenent with a carefully qualified statement:
> With Win2K, I think I've had 1 lockup in 6 months,
> and that was my fault for installing 7 year old ASPI drivers.
If Win2K was truly as stable as Linux, why isn't he telling us what he is using it for? More than surfing the web & writing the occasional email? Is he running an enterprise-level application (e.g. a multiuser database, or a webserver)?
(Hey, if I wanted to really slam this poster, I'd ask him how well does Win2K run DNS? And if he can make it work better than the company that wrote it?)
And notice how he discusses security:
> Ah security, one of my pet
> hobbies. I've come to the final conclusion that you spitting zealots don't even have the slightest clue about security, so I'm not going into details.
Oh wow, have we've been dissed! We might actually feel more than slightly miffed if this poster could give any examples that he knew what he was talking about.
A note to those who want to defend Windows here or anywhere: provide specifics, provide verifiable facts to back up your statements. I won't deny some people are very happy with Win2K, but unless you explain why, you're going to be dismissed as another troll earning a paycheck from Ballmer & Co.
Geoff
Wow, that was a flashback. [digs deep into some files in a forgotten directory] Yeah, I remember bookmarking a link about spiders, many years ago . . .
[from my almost forgotten lynx bookmarks file, which I used before I discovered graphical browsers:]
<li><a href="http://web.nexor.co.uk/mak/doc/robots/robots .html">World Wide Web Wanderers, Spiders and Robots</a>
A few other early web sites I used to frequent:
<li><a href="http://daneel.acns.nwu.edu:8082/index.html"& gt;Big Time Television Home
Page</a>b lic_html/bb/summary.html"> The Mother-of-all BBS
</a>s Femmes Femmes</a>
<li><a href="http://www.cs.colorado.edu/homes/mcbryan/pu
<li><a href="http://www.cnam.fr/bin.html/imageWWW">Femme
And for the doubtful:
bash-2.03$ ls -l lynx_bookmarks.html -rwxr--r-- 1 llywrch users 4493 Apr 1 1995 lynx_bookmarks.html
Geoff
> If you can rm -rf so can any mischievous web page author over whose sorry
/tmp. On the other, if I wanted to use this ability to read email, Usenet, etc. thru a Protozilla helper-app, I would be thwarted because by sudoing to ``nobody", the helper-app could not write to my directory.
> ass^H^H^Hpage you might stumble. And that's a bad thing. This kind of security is about securing the client against the server, not the
> other way round.
Hence my statement, ``Although it would be even safer if anything that ran in this wise ran in rsh as `nobody'." On one hand, a malicious application could no nothing more than writhe around in
All of this are just some random thoughts about this ``new feature". After all, it's Sunday, & I should have better things to concern myself on this day of rest than computers.
Yet I hope that the folks responsible for this ``new feature" weigh the plusses & minuses carefully: if they can't make it work without emasculating it due to security concerns, then don't bother diddling with this.
The reason is this: there's this company up in Redmond, WA that is eager to deliver us all of this k-rad k3wl software, but because security puts a crimp in all of their 3l33t featurez, they don't consider security. It crimps their style. And as a resutl knowledgeable computer users hate them.
Geoff
> I would think this might be a script kiddies dream. Couldn't it be used to exploit local variables?
Interesting point, now that I have thought thru your question, & read the source page. What they wrote at Mozilla is:
> Protozilla is a browser add-on that makes it very easy to implement protocols in Mozilla (or Netscape 6.x). It is not a
> traditional browser plugin, but may be described as a "socket adapter", like the kind that you may carry around with your
> laptop when you travel internationally.
In other words, an ability to handle protocols like SMTP & NNTP akin to the ability of specifying helper-applications to handle MIME types. (And if this works with the Gecko rendering engine, you can specify your own choice of MTA or newsreader when you hit the link that requires that protocol, instead of being forced to d/l the whole bloated mass of Netscape!)
And if the admin for the workstation running the browser has done a proper job securing the ports, then there should be no new security issues.
My assumption -- & someone who knows more, correct me if this is wrong -- is that the browser add-in, being a daughter process, would inherit the environment the parent process has -- & ultimately that of the user. So unless you are doing something stupid like running your workstation as ``root" or ``Admin" this won't do anything to your computer worse than you can do in a non-privileged account. In other words, if *you* can't ``rm -rf *" & lose more than a few files, then neither can the enabled protocol.
(Although it would be even safer if anything that ran in this wise ran in rsh as ``nobody".)
However, I doubt anyone truly knows how security & environment variables are handled under NT4.0/Win2000, so maybe we do have another exploit waiting to happen in certain cases. Wouldn't be the first time MS coding practices proved injurous.
Geoff