I have had run ins with Metcalfe myself concerning his thoughts on old technology as he called it (GNU/Linux/OSS etc.). The fact is Metcalfe is brilliant when it comes to wire(less) columns, but he does not know a great deal about Operating Systems. I specifically recall when he asked me why NT had taken over the marketplace which was far from true, but, simply asking showed a great deal of ignorance (the obvious answer was marketing). He is unable to see the difference between marketing and good architectures. In regards to Transmeta and Open Sourcing the morphing software, I believe that while Opening up the source certainly sounds cool, we need to take more time to think about it in general. I am guessing that Transmeta considered this and had decided (again -- obvious Marketing reasons aside) for the time being it might not be wise. This idea is a bit new and it should be deliberated at great length by a number of groups, although I am somewhat upset that it has not come to the discussion table before. The sick side of this is Metcalfe and his rantings have helped bring the subject to the forefront - so maybe he does have a purpose in the Universe aside from mentioning Linux to draw hits.
Well I never thought I would say this, but I agree (to a point). An to re-emphasize what Mr. Katz said yesterday, there is a level of reflection to the off line world. Yesterday's article (which I mercilessly flamed - go figure) seemed too much like a knee jerk reaction from Katz. The flip side (not forgetting all of the already existing social problems of hostility) is just the sheer amount of wasted time someone can spend filetering it, however, funny flames cannot be denied.
This is where responsible moderation comes into play. A funny flame, by no means, should not be jilted, by the same token, the moderator(s) need to have some sort of established set of practices about moderation that is publically available. This way, a site can be tuned after a fashion for a specific audience.
To say that a site is just for men or just for women or - to be frank - just for assholes - is fine, as long as people know what they might be getting into.
Well great, that still does not solve the social problems in the offline world, but maybe it could help.
Damn still no Open Source Beer
on
Free Be
·
· Score: 1
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah crap
My home brew kit just exploded again, I was really hoping for that Open Source FREE BEER project.
Man get over it. Discussions (in general) have always been volatile regardless of the topic. The sheer nature of humans to take everything so fucking personally whether you are talking about fucking plants or the ramifications of artificial intelligance always steer toward some level of hostility, even among friends. How many times have we gotten into a (drunken) debate about something that in the long run probably does not mean shit? On Line forums amplify the general human nature for arguing because it is so hard to identify whom you are talking to, plus, they can change their identity if they feel they should. I have been called all sorts of names my entire life, for the most part, good ones, but on occasion I have been intellectually attacked and rightfully so, but I did not make such a big deal out of it as to write a (bad) paper (if you want to call it that) on the topic. In reality when I was wrong I learned something. It has nothing to do with the online world, it is human nature in general.
I have to be honest, the way things are going I am going to have to setup my own personal slashdot. After the apologies about the GNU license hole and this piece of crap article my apathy has reached a whole new (run) level. Stop being such a bunch of pansies and just take it.
I am in the middle of getting my BS (a little over it I think) in CS (that little play on acronyms was not intentional) and work for a foriegn owned yet independent american company (I am a CS major so I have no real idea what that means but I am sure it has something to do with taxes) and I make a damn good salary as a UN*X and Linux admin. I am not uncommon (despite what I try to tell myself), I started out in electronics, got into UN*X and here I am. Granted, I spent some time doing some really low paying work, but I have never worked at any place for less than 2 years, I have always paid the bills and I have always liked my job. If one person can do it (especially a joe like me) anyone can do it.
Do I think busting my balls in SV is worth it? NO. I would prefer to settle into a scenario - gee exactly like the one I have now - where I do support as an admin and spend spare time working cool UN*X stuff I like. Makes more sense to someone like me. As time goes on I will most likely examine changing fields, but always managing to get job A that you like so you can twiddle your thumbs looking for job B is very important. I think that SV is far too volatile for most people and agree that talent is being both exploited and wasted (to a degree) in the green rush.
One thing a lot of readers are missing here is the fact that it is just a Window Manager and does not claim to be the OS. IceWM is a good WM. It is light, flexible and easy to use. It makes a great alternative to fvwmX for speed and if you don't have the horsepower (or in my own case with a huge monitor that can only handle 256 colors) / ability to peruse E. GNOME or KDE it is still somewhat glitzy.
The thing our FUD friends are missing is that WM's under UNIX are different for a number of reasons, one of which is scalability. Look, you can't run winNT 4.0 on a 486 (of course that begs the question - why do you have a 486?) and expect reasonable performance. You can't run E on a 486, but you can run aewm or fvwm with no problems.
Even the standard windows GUI (which it refers to as the Operating System) has inconsistancy between versions, small but they are there. Windows, however, does not match the configurability or scalability of Linux, WM's play a part in both the configurability and scalability aspects.
That is why there are so many WM's. It is really more of a natural practicality (is that a word?) than nicety. It also gives the end user a level of enpowerment that no other system (aside from the Open Motif perhaps) gives.
You know this actually happened to me. When I got to a site I had to write a knee-jerk response program that was a total piece of crap. One year later - someone who is still actually using it - asks me if I can make a change to it. Man - never again. I learned my lesson well.
I have to admit though that writing bum code for fun on a crash test dummy is a lot of fun (if you can afford the time).
I agree that an underlying understanding of the mechanics of the Operating System help a great deal. This is where Open Source OS's (Linux, FreeBSD, Hurd --- whatever) can help an administrator understand other UNIXes. For example, taking a look at kernel code (not neccessarily modifying it) and understanding say how the struct task_struct operates can really help out. While they may not be the same, analagies may be drawn between them that could help a sysadmin understand why UNIX flavor X does something (or doesn't as the case may be). Of course, fundamental programming knowledge is required, but for that level of programming it shouldn't take long for the average whiz-banger to come up to speed. and this line: "The notion that one does not require deep knowledge of systems to be a systems administrator is tenable only in a system with nothing ever happens that is outside the training materials. No such system exists." Should be put in the smithsonian somewhere.
First, if we all followed what other people say on paper (albeit virtual paper) we would be using fucking windows. Another point these assholes keep missing is that if Linux, GNU/Hurd or FreeBSD can't scale up to something then chances are the person looking inot it will buy a UNIX varient. Why preytell? Or why investigate building a beowulf cluster to match the high end performance of nt? Mainly because NT is a leaky, sloppy fat piece of unusable shit. Granted, joe jizzlobber can use NT and maybe even administer it, the same can be said for MACs or whatever other dipshit systems are out there, but when you try to get NT to do something like run an oracle db or some freaking Front Page-IIS crap it is like pulling fucking teeth. These dickwads insist that you upgrade this that and the other and then the fucking upgrade breaks other software, e.g. Oracle and/or IIS. Not too mention the second NT starts pissing itself with memory leaks your only recourse is to reboot. No core files, no nothing. Anyone worth their salt, and I mean all those slaves at infoworld or ZDfuck or where-ever who say NT is better than Linux, FreeBSD or UNIX is a dumb ass. More usable? Sure for idiots. Nicer to look at? Maybe. But better - wrong answer. With OSS driving UNIX/Linux and FreeBSD the simple fact is they are more stable, more open and a hell of a lot easier to manage. Plus - they are fun:)
Here is a real interesting dilemma. Let's say you are attending some college, somewhere, we'll say UNIXU. Now, for an argument, you are someone relatively famous like say - CmdrTaco >;-) and you make it know at/. you are attending class A at UNIXU and - of course - you have bunch of programs you give out under GPL all the time. You learn some nifty programming technique as *part* of an assignment. You implement it under the GPL in some source, somewhere.
Now, it is VERY unlikely that someone could, but there is the possibility that they might, rip it off for the very same assignment (that's even if they could find it at all).
Is it cheating? Is it a violation of rights in any form?
The answer is -- it doesn't freaking matter, because, if I wanted to learn some great Python techniques, I might vist ESR's home page or - gee - python.org. For C _ might go and find small header files and use their source . . . you get the idea.
Now, BLATENTLY putting up code that says - HERE, USE ME TO DO YOUR HOMEWORK, is just kind of messed up in a way (although you could still cheat about a million other ways) so I don't think it is a good practice. but, putting up helpful snippets or someone taking the time to learn someone else's implementation is STILL learning.
In the end I think the debate has no substance on either side of the table.
Well this does explain away a lot of stuff going on such as RH's new Open Source projects, the Open Source only distro etc. It seems almost like a balancing act of commercialism/open source mentality. They (RH) had the good taste to initiate a series of Open Source projects prior to this rumor getting released. The bit about founding members bailing is sort of worrisome, while acquistions (and sell offs of portions of a company, take a look at Lockheed Martin who is in a different sector, that freaking company has sold off parts, bought parts, sold off bought parts, it was a confusing mess while I was there) are part of a normal business cycle (except when it is someone like MS who buys, buys, buys and never lets go) it seems strange to me that Senior Management members - who could stand to make a lot of cash out of it - would leave. I mean if becoming successful or commercial was a problem for those individuals they would have quit a long time ago, I think there may be more to it. Nevertheless, I see no reason to worry. So many Linux users have a tendancy to use different distributions at any given time I am actually a little surprised at RH's success (Marketing?) but I wouldn't let it bother me.
I don't believe Hypermedia is a right for anyone, until it is AOL is simply denying itself business. There are plenty of other providers out there who offer usable web pages for handicapped access.
but
If I were "AOL" (Steve Case?) I would have made some sort of effort to offer up usable HTML awhile ago just to avoid this sort of thing. It isn't all that difficult if you practice it from the get-go but man it is a BITCH to go back and repair!
Anyway it just makes for good PR, but I do not believe it should be a law, it is far to difficult to enforce and in the end will screw over more people than it might help - besides like an earlier poster said - are they going to sue every book publisher who does not carbon all of their books into Braille? I doubt it.
On a side note, I will be starting up my new "disabled access only ISP", yup - all text based and audio enhanced CSS and XML . . . "
Although I agree with the "Figures" poster that the 3-5 years always gets pushed back 3-5 years there seems to be an awful lot of tiny-device stuff breaking out these days, I think perhaps a change is at least somewhere in the next 10-20 years.
I do know that with the immense growth of databases such technology would seriously kick ass. You could run mega multiple instances of DB's on a single server which isn't popular now because of resident memory size (well - unless you have a crapload of memory).
I wanna know about disks though. I keep reading stuff about nanotechnology driven processors and now molecule memory - what is happening with disc technology, or rather semi-permanant technology like disks?
Although many posts about Echelon have made mention of things like "disinformation" and "there is no way it could be done" plus the old "we look like schmucks for buying into it" I don't think that is the real matter.
Granted, there are those schlepp's who believe stuff like aliens in Congress (well if there are then that proves they are idiots as well). But the fact is "they" do listen in, on some mesages, most likely not all (I have a feeling "all" means "all they can get") but it is done nevetheless. At what scale doesn't matter, what matters is people, smart people, are being told to go away and leave them (NSA - whomever) alone. Again, we know these things happen, some of the laws within the United States allow for monitoring - we just want two simple things:
To stop being treated like children and either being fed disinformation or none at all.
Some sort of accountability both pricewise and ethically (yeah right).
If we could get those things, I doubt anyone with a brain would care. It is in a sense a lot like children (kind of paradox - ish really) when you as a parent say "That is mine, you cannot look at it" and offer no explanation whatsoever or not even a very good LIE. If they would just come and say "yeah sure were doing this - but here is why, how much it costs and our regulating body is . . . " then it wouldn't be such a big deal.
As a full time sysadmin and (in my opinion anyway - others may refer to me as a programmer but I don't think so) and a budding script-kiddie I like Linux because it is EASY to manage. I manage some HP-UX Servers and have managed IRIX ones (they were actually pretty cool), all of which I manage(d) remotely from the prompt. I have found managing Linux to be the easiest in all areas fron upgrading, adding hardware, users, server processes etc.
Additionally I agree with all of the opinions that say "It is just plain easier to program on Linux". I peruse VC++ on win32 and of course gcc-lib on Linux and Perl on both. Programming on Linux is so ridicously low overhead it just can't be matched.
I think what a lot of people may confuse is the programming environment issue. That is really where the hardline win32 programmers I know attack Linux. Seeing as how I was introduced to Computers from a mainframe perspective (I never really used a PC until Linux came out) this is hard for me to undestand, but the counter argument is -- there is emacs, there is the shell-interpreter (where you can create your own environment --- geez), emacs and so on - or make your own!
I think a lot of it boils down to perspective and how open minded a person is, for me, Linux actually introduced me to PC architectures, but for people who went to say a school somewhere and were taught the MS way (whether a college or some trade school - whatever) they simply "don't get it" all of the time and some folks are just plain disagreeable (on the flip side, I couldn't manage a win32 PC until I downloaded cygwin's GNU utils - so am I suffering from the inability to comprehend win32?).
This person, Shamrock, doesn't know their ass from a hole in the ground (yeah I know I am lacking originality but hey - it works). He is covering his ass because he realized he made a mistake. Look at the damn facts:
Knucklehead never brought up programming
never mentioned open source at all
focused on criminal activities
Shamrock doesn't even know what a hacker is, all of the references made allude towards crackers not hackers. Why was there no effort made to inform MTV from the start that they were actually looking for crackers?
This idiot tried to be someone he was not and as a result managed to f'k up an already badly damaged image, hell, most crackers have somewhat good intentions as well - to share exploits and learn how to stop them. Without crackers how would we know if there is a hole to be breached?
It all boils down to the fact that Shamrock never gives any correct definitions and vaguely states what really happened the same way I blind my boss with bullshit after accidentally nuking a user process I didn't mean to (okay - I probably meant to) with some crap like the ipcs table spilled over into vacuum space.
The guy is covering his ass because he is an idiot and realized he made a mistake - period.
I actually have a case in point where recently I installed Linux-Mandrake 6.0 (RedHat 6.0 plus StarOffice and some other junk) yes -- slap me with a dead trout because that was *dumb* First of all installing any RH*.0 has been known to be a dnagerous past time. Add mandrake-soft's tweaking to it and you might have a problem. In essence, regardless of the WM, Xfree86 version, utils or whatever, X would destroy my memory and wreak havoc on the ext2 because after reboot the fs was out of sync. I ran a bunch of X stuff through gdb and lefence to no avail and franky, I was running out of time on a project. I snagged slakware 4.0 (I started out on Slakware 1.0.13) and ran it through a variety of "as close as I can replicate it" tests and nothing even near the same level of disasters was occuring (although I did manage a nice xemacs core dump - I am rather proud of that). So - if I had the time, I would have found the problem (and am in fact still running the mdk distro on a stronger system to see if I can find the evil code) because I know how, but, not everyone does. Here there may have been a case of code tweaking (I have not gotten a confirm or denial from Mandrake - actually I haven't heard anything at all) or some mismatched guts. Now, as a matter of record, I did buy Mandrake 6.0 in a rush without thinking it through. On that occasion I had bashed my previous distro and the CD was shot and - once again - I was on a project and needed a system like THAT DAY so I pretty much deserved what I got. With Slakware 4.0 I mulled over it for several weeks until finally asking around and getting the answers I wanted. I do not think Linux is fragmenting nearly as much or as rapidly as UNIX did, but I do think that potential users need be aware that the fallacy of composition does exist within the confines of Linux distros - what works on one does not neccessarily work on the other even if the kernel is the same. The point to remember is Linux can be just as complex as UNIX (which is how some of us like it) and critical thinking has to come into play before picking up a distro. In the past it was easy, you had Slak and RH. One non-commercial and one commercial (respectively). It is much more complex now and users need to have the capability in understanding the differences, where to find good data about distros and how to implement them.
Slashdot Mirror
I have had run ins with Metcalfe myself concerning his thoughts on old technology as he called it (GNU/Linux/OSS etc.). The fact is Metcalfe is brilliant when it comes to wire(less) columns, but he does not know a great deal about Operating Systems. I specifically recall when he asked me why NT had taken over the marketplace which was far from true, but, simply asking showed a great deal of ignorance (the obvious answer was marketing). He is unable to see the difference between marketing and good architectures. In regards to Transmeta and Open Sourcing the morphing software, I believe that while Opening up the source certainly sounds cool, we need to take more time to think about it in general. I am guessing that Transmeta considered this and had decided (again -- obvious Marketing reasons aside) for the time being it might not be wise. This idea is a bit new and it should be deliberated at great length by a number of groups, although I am somewhat upset that it has not come to the discussion table before. The sick side of this is Metcalfe and his rantings have helped bring the subject to the forefront - so maybe he does have a purpose in the Universe aside from mentioning Linux to draw hits.
Well I never thought I would say this, but I agree (to a point). An to re-emphasize what Mr. Katz said yesterday, there is a level of reflection to the off line world. Yesterday's article (which I mercilessly flamed - go figure) seemed too much like a knee jerk reaction from Katz. The flip side (not forgetting all of the already existing social problems of hostility) is just the sheer amount of wasted time someone can spend filetering it, however, funny flames cannot be denied.
This is where responsible moderation comes into play. A funny flame, by no means, should not be jilted, by the same token, the moderator(s) need to have some sort of established set of practices about moderation that is publically available. This way, a site can be tuned after a fashion for a specific audience.
To say that a site is just for men or just for women or - to be frank - just for assholes - is fine, as long as people know what they might be getting into.
Well great, that still does not solve the social problems in the offline world, but maybe it could help.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah crap
My home brew kit just exploded again, I was really hoping for that Open Source FREE BEER project.
Man get over it. Discussions (in general) have always been volatile regardless of the topic. The sheer nature of humans to take everything so fucking personally whether you are talking about fucking plants or the ramifications of artificial intelligance always steer toward some level of hostility, even among friends. How many times have we gotten into a (drunken) debate about something that in the long run probably does not mean shit? On Line forums amplify the general human nature for arguing because it is so hard to identify whom you are talking to, plus, they can change their identity if they feel they should. I have been called all sorts of names my entire life, for the most part, good ones, but on occasion I have been intellectually attacked and rightfully so, but I did not make such a big deal out of it as to write a (bad) paper (if you want to call it that) on the topic. In reality when I was wrong I learned something. It has nothing to do with the online world, it is human nature in general.
I have to be honest, the way things are going I am going to have to setup my own personal slashdot. After the apologies about the GNU license hole and this piece of crap article my apathy has reached a whole new (run) level. Stop being such a bunch of pansies and just take it.
I am in the middle of getting my BS (a little over it I think) in CS (that little play on acronyms was not intentional) and work for a foriegn owned yet independent american company (I am a CS major so I have no real idea what that means but I am sure it has something to do with taxes) and I make a damn good salary as a UN*X and Linux admin. I am not uncommon (despite what I try to tell myself), I started out in electronics, got into UN*X and here I am. Granted, I spent some time doing some really low paying work, but I have never worked at any place for less than 2 years, I have always paid the bills and I have always liked my job. If one person can do it (especially a joe like me) anyone can do it.
Do I think busting my balls in SV is worth it? NO. I would prefer to settle into a scenario - gee exactly like the one I have now - where I do support as an admin and spend spare time working cool UN*X stuff I like. Makes more sense to someone like me. As time goes on I will most likely examine changing fields, but always managing to get job A that you like so you can twiddle your thumbs looking for job B is very important. I think that SV is far too volatile for most people and agree that talent is being both exploited and wasted (to a degree) in the green rush.
One thing a lot of readers are missing here is the fact that it is just a Window Manager and does not claim to be the OS. IceWM is a good WM. It is light, flexible and easy to use. It makes a great alternative to fvwmX for speed and if you don't have the horsepower (or in my own case with a huge monitor that can only handle 256 colors) / ability to peruse E. GNOME or KDE it is still somewhat glitzy.
The thing our FUD friends are missing is that WM's under UNIX are different for a number of reasons, one of which is scalability. Look, you can't run winNT 4.0 on a 486 (of course that begs the question - why do you have a 486?) and expect reasonable performance. You can't run E on a 486, but you can run aewm or fvwm with no problems.
Even the standard windows GUI (which it refers to as the Operating System) has inconsistancy between versions, small but they are there. Windows, however, does not match the configurability or scalability of Linux, WM's play a part in both the configurability and scalability aspects.
That is why there are so many WM's. It is really more of a natural practicality (is that a word?) than nicety. It also gives the end user a level of enpowerment that no other system (aside from the Open Motif perhaps) gives.
You know this actually happened to me. When I got to a site I had to write a knee-jerk response program that was a total piece of crap. One year later - someone who is still actually using it - asks me if I can make a change to it. Man - never again. I learned my lesson well.
I have to admit though that writing bum code for fun on a crash test dummy is a lot of fun (if you can afford the time).
I agree that an underlying understanding of the mechanics of the Operating System help a great deal. This is where Open Source OS's (Linux, FreeBSD, Hurd --- whatever) can help an administrator understand other UNIXes. For example, taking a look at kernel code (not neccessarily modifying it) and understanding say how the struct task_struct operates can really help out. While they may not be the same, analagies may be drawn between them that could help a sysadmin understand why UNIX flavor X does something (or doesn't as the case may be). Of course, fundamental programming knowledge is required, but for that level of programming it shouldn't take long for the average whiz-banger to come up to speed. and this line: "The notion that one does not require deep knowledge of systems to be a systems administrator is tenable only in a system with nothing ever happens that is outside the training materials. No such system exists." Should be put in the smithsonian somewhere.
First, if we all followed what other people say on paper (albeit virtual paper) we would be using fucking windows. Another point these assholes keep missing is that if Linux, GNU/Hurd or FreeBSD can't scale up to something then chances are the person looking inot it will buy a UNIX varient. Why preytell? Or why investigate building a beowulf cluster to match the high end performance of nt? Mainly because NT is a leaky, sloppy fat piece of unusable shit. Granted, joe jizzlobber can use NT and maybe even administer it, the same can be said for MACs or whatever other dipshit systems are out there, but when you try to get NT to do something like run an oracle db or some freaking Front Page-IIS crap it is like pulling fucking teeth. These dickwads insist that you upgrade this that and the other and then the fucking upgrade breaks other software, e.g. Oracle and/or IIS. Not too mention the second NT starts pissing itself with memory leaks your only recourse is to reboot. No core files, no nothing. Anyone worth their salt, and I mean all those slaves at infoworld or ZDfuck or where-ever who say NT is better than Linux, FreeBSD or UNIX is a dumb ass. More usable? Sure for idiots. Nicer to look at? Maybe. But better - wrong answer. With OSS driving UNIX/Linux and FreeBSD the simple fact is they are more stable, more open and a hell of a lot easier to manage. Plus - they are fun :)
Here is a real interesting dilemma. Let's say you are attending some college, somewhere, we'll say UNIXU. Now, for an argument, you are someone relatively famous like say - CmdrTaco >;-) and you make it know at /. you are attending class A at UNIXU and - of course - you have bunch of programs you give out under GPL all the time. You learn some nifty programming technique as *part* of an assignment. You implement it under the GPL in some source, somewhere.
Now, it is VERY unlikely that someone could, but there is the possibility that they might, rip it off for the very same assignment (that's even if they could find it at all).
Is it cheating? Is it a violation of rights in any form?
The answer is -- it doesn't freaking matter, because, if I wanted to learn some great Python techniques, I might vist ESR's home page or - gee - python.org. For C _ might go and find small header files and use their source . . . you get the idea.
Now, BLATENTLY putting up code that says - HERE, USE ME TO DO YOUR HOMEWORK, is just kind of messed up in a way (although you could still cheat about a million other ways) so I don't think it is a good practice. but, putting up helpful snippets or someone taking the time to learn someone else's implementation is STILL learning.
In the end I think the debate has no substance on either side of the table.
Well this does explain away a lot of stuff going on such as RH's new Open Source projects, the Open Source only distro etc. It seems almost like a balancing act of commercialism/open source mentality. They (RH) had the good taste to initiate a series of Open Source projects prior to this rumor getting released. The bit about founding members bailing is sort of worrisome, while acquistions (and sell offs of portions of a company, take a look at Lockheed Martin who is in a different sector, that freaking company has sold off parts, bought parts, sold off bought parts, it was a confusing mess while I was there) are part of a normal business cycle (except when it is someone like MS who buys, buys, buys and never lets go) it seems strange to me that Senior Management members - who could stand to make a lot of cash out of it - would leave. I mean if becoming successful or commercial was a problem for those individuals they would have quit a long time ago, I think there may be more to it. Nevertheless, I see no reason to worry. So many Linux users have a tendancy to use different distributions at any given time I am actually a little surprised at RH's success (Marketing?) but I wouldn't let it bother me.
I don't believe Hypermedia is a right for anyone, until it is AOL is simply denying itself business. There are plenty of other providers out there who offer usable web pages for handicapped access.
but
If I were "AOL" (Steve Case?) I would have made some sort of effort to offer up usable HTML awhile ago just to avoid this sort of thing. It isn't all that difficult if you practice it from the get-go but man it is a BITCH to go back and repair!
Anyway it just makes for good PR, but I do not believe it should be a law, it is far to difficult to enforce and in the end will screw over more people than it might help - besides like an earlier poster said - are they going to sue every book publisher who does not carbon all of their books into Braille? I doubt it.
On a side note, I will be starting up my new "disabled access only ISP", yup - all text based and audio enhanced CSS and XML . . . "
Although I agree with the "Figures" poster that the 3-5 years always gets pushed back 3-5 years there seems to be an awful lot of tiny-device stuff breaking out these days, I think perhaps a change is at least somewhere in the next 10-20 years.
I do know that with the immense growth of databases such technology would seriously kick ass. You could run mega multiple instances of DB's on a single server which isn't popular now because of resident memory size (well - unless you have a crapload of memory).
I wanna know about disks though. I keep reading stuff about nanotechnology driven processors and now molecule memory - what is happening with disc technology, or rather semi-permanant technology like disks?
Although many posts about Echelon have made mention of things like "disinformation" and "there is no way it could be done" plus the old "we look like schmucks for buying into it" I don't think that is the real matter.
Granted, there are those schlepp's who believe stuff like aliens in Congress (well if there are then that proves they are idiots as well). But the fact is "they" do listen in, on some mesages, most likely not all (I have a feeling "all" means "all they can get") but it is done nevetheless. At what scale doesn't matter, what matters is people, smart people, are being told to go away and leave them (NSA - whomever) alone. Again, we know these things happen, some of the laws within the United States allow for monitoring - we just want two simple things:
If we could get those things, I doubt anyone with a brain would care. It is in a sense a lot like children (kind of paradox - ish really) when you as a parent say "That is mine, you cannot look at it" and offer no explanation whatsoever or not even a very good LIE. If they would just come and say "yeah sure were doing this - but here is why, how much it costs and our regulating body is . . . " then it wouldn't be such a big deal.
Just a few thoughts:
As a full time sysadmin and (in my opinion anyway - others may refer to me as a programmer but I don't think so) and a budding script-kiddie I like Linux because it is EASY to manage. I manage some HP-UX Servers and have managed IRIX ones (they were actually pretty cool), all of which I manage(d) remotely from the prompt. I have found managing Linux to be the easiest in all areas fron upgrading, adding hardware, users, server processes etc.
Additionally I agree with all of the opinions that say "It is just plain easier to program on Linux". I peruse VC++ on win32 and of course gcc-lib on Linux and Perl on both. Programming on Linux is so ridicously low overhead it just can't be matched.
I think what a lot of people may confuse is the programming environment issue. That is really where the hardline win32 programmers I know attack Linux. Seeing as how I was introduced to Computers from a mainframe perspective (I never really used a PC until Linux came out) this is hard for me to undestand, but the counter argument is -- there is emacs, there is the shell-interpreter (where you can create your own environment --- geez), emacs and so on - or make your own!
I think a lot of it boils down to perspective and how open minded a person is, for me, Linux actually introduced me to PC architectures, but for people who went to say a school somewhere and were taught the MS way (whether a college or some trade school - whatever) they simply "don't get it" all of the time and some folks are just plain disagreeable (on the flip side, I couldn't manage a win32 PC until I downloaded cygwin's GNU utils - so am I suffering from the inability to comprehend win32?).
Well -- food for thought anyway.
This person, Shamrock, doesn't know their ass from a hole in the ground (yeah I know I am lacking originality but hey - it works). He is covering his ass because he realized he made a mistake. Look at the damn facts:
Shamrock doesn't even know what a hacker is, all of the references made allude towards crackers not hackers. Why was there no effort made to inform MTV from the start that they were actually looking for crackers?
This idiot tried to be someone he was not and as a result managed to f'k up an already badly damaged image, hell, most crackers have somewhat good intentions as well - to share exploits and learn how to stop them. Without crackers how would we know if there is a hole to be breached?
It all boils down to the fact that Shamrock never gives any correct definitions and vaguely states what really happened the same way I blind my boss with bullshit after accidentally nuking a user process I didn't mean to (okay - I probably meant to) with some crap like the ipcs table spilled over into vacuum space.
The guy is covering his ass because he is an idiot and realized he made a mistake - period.
I actually have a case in point where recently I installed Linux-Mandrake 6.0 (RedHat 6.0 plus StarOffice and some other junk) yes -- slap me with a dead trout because that was *dumb* First of all installing any RH*.0 has been known to be a dnagerous past time. Add mandrake-soft's tweaking to it and you might have a problem. In essence, regardless of the WM, Xfree86 version, utils or whatever, X would destroy my memory and wreak havoc on the ext2 because after reboot the fs was out of sync. I ran a bunch of X stuff through gdb and lefence to no avail and franky, I was running out of time on a project. I snagged slakware 4.0 (I started out on Slakware 1.0.13) and ran it through a variety of "as close as I can replicate it" tests and nothing even near the same level of disasters was occuring (although I did manage a nice xemacs core dump - I am rather proud of that). So - if I had the time, I would have found the problem (and am in fact still running the mdk distro on a stronger system to see if I can find the evil code) because I know how, but, not everyone does. Here there may have been a case of code tweaking (I have not gotten a confirm or denial from Mandrake - actually I haven't heard anything at all) or some mismatched guts. Now, as a matter of record, I did buy Mandrake 6.0 in a rush without thinking it through. On that occasion I had bashed my previous distro and the CD was shot and - once again - I was on a project and needed a system like THAT DAY so I pretty much deserved what I got. With Slakware 4.0 I mulled over it for several weeks until finally asking around and getting the answers I wanted. I do not think Linux is fragmenting nearly as much or as rapidly as UNIX did, but I do think that potential users need be aware that the fallacy of composition does exist within the confines of Linux distros - what works on one does not neccessarily work on the other even if the kernel is the same. The point to remember is Linux can be just as complex as UNIX (which is how some of us like it) and critical thinking has to come into play before picking up a distro. In the past it was easy, you had Slak and RH. One non-commercial and one commercial (respectively). It is much more complex now and users need to have the capability in understanding the differences, where to find good data about distros and how to implement them.