"...I wanted a system that "just works" at home..."
I hear you on that:P As for myself, I'm neck-deep in the Windows world every day at work and at school, and I'm a MCP. So I wanted something different at home.
"...I meant replacing the Win98 in QEMU with Reactos."
Ahh, misunderstanding. Still, got to drop a line about Linux every now and then, eh?
"but as soon as ReactOS can run everything I need, I'll switch for sure!"
I said the same thing not but eight months ago. Then, about two months ago, I installed a Linux distro on my home desktop. I've installed plenty of them before, but they never stuck. Even the one I'm using right now (Gentoo) has been on this system at least half-a-dozen times. However, this time it stuck.
"And why's that?", you may ask. Well, over the past few years I've been migrating to Open Source Software! Replacing Microsoft Office with Open Office, replacing Photoshop with The GIMP, and of course replacing Internet Explorer with Firefox.
Anyway, once I got comforatible with the administration aspects of a Unix-like system, the software all fell into place. Most of the programs I use now on my NIX system are the same programs I used to use on my Windows install. And the best part is, if you enjoy fidling with stuff and don't mind recompiling loads of code, a Gentoo system (or just about any other non-bloated NIX distro) is at least twice as fast as a Win system.
Anyway, just saying Mac guy, if you want to take the plunge, go ahead and do it. You'll be pleasently supprised.
It works for the MySQL crowd. That's one rock-solid piece of software that's never given me any trouble. The advantage of the paid support route is when you are in a very large corporate setting, having a multitude of database servers running on different platforms, serving different purposes. That can get really complicated, really quick.
Having a team of phone support people that do nothing but MySQL support is an invaluable asset when you're facing a problem that may take you a month to sort out, and that is costing your company countless dollars every day.
MySQL is a brillian example of a piece of Open Source Software that is very stable, contains relativley few bugs, yet has a thriving business of support professionals.
Finaly, I'd like to point out that if a piece of OSS contains so many bugs, or is so hard to use, that one would have to purchase a support package just to use it in thier business, why would you use it? There are almost always alternatives in the OSS world, they may be forks of what you are currently using, or new software systems built from the ground up. Either way, there's usualy an alternative.
1) I'm not saying the UN should have control, I'm saying that no one orgonization should have control.
2) Yea, I ken't speel fer sheet:D
3) No, Regan wasn't a hippy, and yes, a lot of good things came about because of the peace movement.
4) If you're going to try to shoot down a comment, please read it first. I didn't say the government forced Rockstar Games to pull GTA:SA, rather policical players excerted influance over the games industry as a whole, without fully understanding the issue.
That really is my main consern. The US governemnt isn't completely ignorant of technology, that's for sure. However, our policy makers could care less about what is right or even ethical, all they care about is getting elected the next go-around. I for one feel that politics should not be running or backing DNS.
Not that anyone will see this comment now that the topic is off the main page, but what the heck:P
FYI: It's the Child Internet Protection Act, but that's not very relivant right now.
What is relivant is the fact that the US governing bodies have been in a trend of increased censorship and denial of liberties to it's citizens since the information boom began. Don't get me wrong, I am a US citizen, and I love my country, but my government has been placing a higher and higher value on the needs and wants of the few as opposed to the many. The liberties of the majority are now infringed upon and at times out-right denied in order to maintain the liberties of the minority. Let's think about some issues here:
Ok, without getting into a political argument, let's just all quitely reflect on some major issues in the US in recent times with regards to fair access and technology.
Affirmative Action (forcing companies to hire certain people based on ethnic background rather than employable skill or experiance)
Excerting influance on video game companies, example is Grand Thieft Auto: San Andreas (the game was pulled from shelves after comming under heavy fire because it was posible to hack the game to show sexualy explicit content)
Pressuring and even prosecuting P2P networks because thier service could be used for illegal activities. I'd like to point out that I can commit a felony crime with a telephone, but they're legal.
Prosecuted Microsoft for having a monopoly on the OS market (a market with very little competition outside of the Open Source world, BTW, TUX=ROX). Forcing broadcasters to switch to digital signals (it's been passed already, it just won't come into effect for a few years).
And the list goes on and on and on. Our governemnt seems technologicaly ignorant at every turn. The conservatives cling to the dead and dieing, the liberals want Hippy Freedom which just doesn't work (that was proven in the 60's, sure it was fun, but the 80's really sucked because of it), and the moderates just don't care. Put that together with the foringe policy tendancies to be the global watch-dog, and see what happens:
1) Argentina calls for a boycott of US trade policy (this was on CNN THIS MORNING by the way).
2) The US responds by inacting a trade embargo of Argentina.
3) This embargo includes de-registering all Argentinian domains from the global DNS.
4) Well, you can see how this would be bad.
Think this would never happen? Think again. The US is famous for it's trade embargos. Cuba, Iran (I think), Iraq pre-war, North Korea at varous times, the USSR, and the list goes on. Does anyone honestly believe that a nation that has such policies would wave them for the most valuable resource on the planet (free exchange of information)? I think not.
Just think about it for a minute. Some of the US's chief threats now reside on the Internet. The terrorist groups, the US-hostile news agencies, and the governments of the world are all online. If the US is to control how it's enimies are addressed on the global intranet, you can be certain of the answer. "port.iran.ml could not be found. Please check the name and try again later".
But the rabit hole goes much deeper my friends. The US doesn't do anything piece-meal. Think about it: this country was started by a minority of people that didn't like thier current government, so they rebeled and won. Just a few short decades later and this country was "Manifestly predestined by God to expand over the whole of the continent". And once that was done, we started taking over yet more places, such as Hawiai and Alaska, and accquired yet more so-called "protectorites" such as Guam and Purto Rico. And now durring the 2000's, we're reshaping countries in our own image. We didn't like the Taliban, so we took over thier country. We didn't like Saddam, so we took over thier country.
What's the point in all of this? The US won't stop with DNS, oh no my friends. That may be what is at issue currently, but if the US is allowed control it won't be the issue tomo
All this talk makes me wounder, does the US, Canada, Germany, and other such countries have simalir laws?
I suppose by not giving a US investigator your key, it could be construed as Obstruction of Justice, or at the very least failure to cooperate with a police investigation. However, there are precidents in US legal history to support the rights of the fifth amendment (the right to refuse to bring testimony in a court of law that would incriminate yourself) in situations that are outside a court of law, yet that could lead to legal inditment.
Very interesting to me. Also, the statement "The innocent have nothing to hide" is total BS. Those innocent of guilt may not have any legal reason to hide or otherwise deny information, however the individual still has a right to reasonable privacy.
Slashdot Mirror
"Wicca, despite new-age flap to the contrary, does not and has not ever existed as a "real" religion in any reasonable sense."
What?
1983 US District Court Ruling
Exerpt of the US Army Chaplin's Handbook, cerca 1990
In addition, Wiccanism has been recognized by the World's Parliament of Religions
You should probly check out this web site: ReligiousTolerance.Org
Blessed Be
QBRADQ
"...I wanted a system that "just works" at home..."
:P As for myself, I'm neck-deep in the Windows world every day at work and at school, and I'm a MCP. So I wanted something different at home.
I hear you on that
"...I meant replacing the Win98 in QEMU with Reactos."
Ahh, misunderstanding. Still, got to drop a line about Linux every now and then, eh?
Thanks for the feedback,
QBRADQ
"but as soon as ReactOS can run everything I need, I'll switch for sure!"
I said the same thing not but eight months ago. Then, about two months ago, I installed a Linux distro on my home desktop. I've installed plenty of them before, but they never stuck. Even the one I'm using right now (Gentoo) has been on this system at least half-a-dozen times. However, this time it stuck.
"And why's that?", you may ask. Well, over the past few years I've been migrating to Open Source Software! Replacing Microsoft Office with Open Office, replacing Photoshop with The GIMP, and of course replacing Internet Explorer with Firefox.
Anyway, once I got comforatible with the administration aspects of a Unix-like system, the software all fell into place. Most of the programs I use now on my NIX system are the same programs I used to use on my Windows install. And the best part is, if you enjoy fidling with stuff and don't mind recompiling loads of code, a Gentoo system (or just about any other non-bloated NIX distro) is at least twice as fast as a Win system.
Anyway, just saying Mac guy, if you want to take the plunge, go ahead and do it. You'll be pleasently supprised.
That's my $0.02.
QBRADQ
It works for the MySQL crowd. That's one rock-solid piece of software that's never given me any trouble. The advantage of the paid support route is when you are in a very large corporate setting, having a multitude of database servers running on different platforms, serving different purposes. That can get really complicated, really quick.
Having a team of phone support people that do nothing but MySQL support is an invaluable asset when you're facing a problem that may take you a month to sort out, and that is costing your company countless dollars every day.
MySQL is a brillian example of a piece of Open Source Software that is very stable, contains relativley few bugs, yet has a thriving business of support professionals.
Finaly, I'd like to point out that if a piece of OSS contains so many bugs, or is so hard to use, that one would have to purchase a support package just to use it in thier business, why would you use it? There are almost always alternatives in the OSS world, they may be forks of what you are currently using, or new software systems built from the ground up. Either way, there's usualy an alternative.
QBRADQ
Thanks for the feed back.
:D
:P
1) I'm not saying the UN should have control, I'm saying that no one orgonization should have control.
2) Yea, I ken't speel fer sheet
3) No, Regan wasn't a hippy, and yes, a lot of good things came about because of the peace movement.
4) If you're going to try to shoot down a comment, please read it first. I didn't say the government forced Rockstar Games to pull GTA:SA, rather policical players excerted influance over the games industry as a whole, without fully understanding the issue.
That really is my main consern. The US governemnt isn't completely ignorant of technology, that's for sure. However, our policy makers could care less about what is right or even ethical, all they care about is getting elected the next go-around. I for one feel that politics should not be running or backing DNS.
Not that anyone will see this comment now that the topic is off the main page, but what the heck
QBRADQ
FYI: It's the Child Internet Protection Act, but that's not very relivant right now.
What is relivant is the fact that the US governing bodies have been in a trend of increased censorship and denial of liberties to it's citizens since the information boom began. Don't get me wrong, I am a US citizen, and I love my country, but my government has been placing a higher and higher value on the needs and wants of the few as opposed to the many. The liberties of the majority are now infringed upon and at times out-right denied in order to maintain the liberties of the minority. Let's think about some issues here:
Ok, without getting into a political argument, let's just all quitely reflect on some major issues in the US in recent times with regards to fair access and technology.
Affirmative Action (forcing companies to hire certain people based on ethnic background rather than employable skill or experiance)
Excerting influance on video game companies, example is Grand Thieft Auto: San Andreas (the game was pulled from shelves after comming under heavy fire because it was posible to hack the game to show sexualy explicit content)
Pressuring and even prosecuting P2P networks because thier service could be used for illegal activities. I'd like to point out that I can commit a felony crime with a telephone, but they're legal.
Prosecuted Microsoft for having a monopoly on the OS market (a market with very little competition outside of the Open Source world, BTW, TUX=ROX).
Forcing broadcasters to switch to digital signals (it's been passed already, it just won't come into effect for a few years).
And the list goes on and on and on. Our governemnt seems technologicaly ignorant at every turn. The conservatives cling to the dead and dieing, the liberals want Hippy Freedom which just doesn't work (that was proven in the 60's, sure it was fun, but the 80's really sucked because of it), and the moderates just don't care. Put that together with the foringe policy tendancies to be the global watch-dog, and see what happens:
1) Argentina calls for a boycott of US trade policy (this was on CNN THIS MORNING by the way).
2) The US responds by inacting a trade embargo of Argentina.
3) This embargo includes de-registering all Argentinian domains from the global DNS.
4) Well, you can see how this would be bad.
Think this would never happen? Think again. The US is famous for it's trade embargos. Cuba, Iran (I think), Iraq pre-war, North Korea at varous times, the USSR, and the list goes on. Does anyone honestly believe that a nation that has such policies would wave them for the most valuable resource on the planet (free exchange of information)? I think not.
Just think about it for a minute. Some of the US's chief threats now reside on the Internet. The terrorist groups, the US-hostile news agencies, and the governments of the world are all online. If the US is to control how it's enimies are addressed on the global intranet, you can be certain of the answer. "port.iran.ml could not be found. Please check the name and try again later".
But the rabit hole goes much deeper my friends. The US doesn't do anything piece-meal. Think about it: this country was started by a minority of people that didn't like thier current government, so they rebeled and won. Just a few short decades later and this country was "Manifestly predestined by God to expand over the whole of the continent". And once that was done, we started taking over yet more places, such as Hawiai and Alaska, and accquired yet more so-called "protectorites" such as Guam and Purto Rico. And now durring the 2000's, we're reshaping countries in our own image. We didn't like the Taliban, so we took over thier country. We didn't like Saddam, so we took over thier country.
What's the point in all of this? The US won't stop with DNS, oh no my friends. That may be what is at issue currently, but if the US is allowed control it won't be the issue tomo
All this talk makes me wounder, does the US, Canada, Germany, and other such countries have simalir laws?
/.
I suppose by not giving a US investigator your key, it could be construed as Obstruction of Justice, or at the very least failure to cooperate with a police investigation. However, there are precidents in US legal history to support the rights of the fifth amendment (the right to refuse to bring testimony in a court of law that would incriminate yourself) in situations that are outside a court of law, yet that could lead to legal inditment.
Very interesting to me. Also, the statement "The innocent have nothing to hide" is total BS. Those innocent of guilt may not have any legal reason to hide or otherwise deny information, however the individual still has a right to reasonable privacy.
Later
QBRADQ