Linux "zealots" would have studied the twin towers, found a way to improve them and a community to do it in their spare time, opened their work for everyone to see (a "nothing to hide" philosophy), and done it for little or no money, perhaps charging only for future consultation.
SCO would have claimed the towers were theirs for some strange reason, provided no proof (except for maybe the toilets looked the same), worked in secret (much like terrorists!) and threatened individual harm to every person who entered, until the world promised their property back.
Yes, Linux enthusiasts are just as fanatic as terrorists. What this moron failed to realize is where terrorist are obsessed on hurting and promoting Fear (uncertainty, and doubt?), Linux zealots are obsessed with making better software, helping people and making the world a better place.
When was the last time a terrorist helped a little old lady cross the road?
... but doesn't *everyone* disable/uninstall messenger service? Even tho I'm a huge fan of Linux, it doesn't mean I don't know my way around windows. Whenever I setup a new XP machine (for anyone), or advise someone on setting up a new machine, I have 3 requirements: no spying(adaware, xp anti-spy), no viruses (virus software like avg, mcaffee or norton), and a firewall (either hardware or software, like black ice, tiny personal firewall, which they used to give out ver 2 of for free.) I also don't trust the firewall that comes with XP, looks like a tiny stateful firewall, which doesn't block outbound connections, so someone with a virus can still spread it.
I just went looking for XP Anti-Spy and the german site looks like its down or changed, but this looks like it might be the newest version. These are all options which should be standard with Windows, or at least steer the customers in the right direction (using other companies' products, instead of something recommended/influenced by MS).
Everyone knows there's a bit of hardening that needs to be done to Linux/Unix systems... what about hardening for Windows systems? Many folks will argue "it's not for normal joes" but I'm sure sooner or later it will become part of standard practice. Do you think seatbelts were a major concern with the first automobiles? How many people jump in their car now and fasten it without even thinking of it?
I bought my C64 when I was about 12. It was summer and I bought it from a garage sale. It was probably about 1986-87 or so, and it was a few years after their hayday. Anyhow, it was broken from the garage sale, and I remember the only thing you could do on it was play frogger with a cartrigde. (Wouldn't load basic correctly). I was a poor kid from a poor family, I had been enthralled with computers for years, but thought it was a pipe dream. But this was my chance. We took it to a local shop and my dad paid $50 to have it fixed. (Think we only paid $50 for it at the garage sale, that was a ton of money for our family at the time... $100 was usualy reserved for large xmas gifts like casio keyboards, my dad thought I == concert pianist or something).
Then it all blew up. Once I got it fixed, I barrowed a few books from the local library, (which moved several times, and I still have them, never took em back! Wonder what the fee is for having a book since '86?) I quickly learned basic, and machine langauge. I found myself picking up spare hardware here and there. I had tape drives, then a few 1541s... I could solder switches and align drives like noones business. I babysat for neighbors while in high school for money for software. I backed up all the original AD&D SSI titles and played off copies. (I still have the original 5 1/4s in mint condition). I even used a disk editor and found that all the words (ie: 3rd word from 2nd paragraph on page 43, etc) were jumbled together, and no string legnth checking was done. So on the copies, I filled them all in with asterixes, and when that part came up in the game, you just went ********************* and you were good to go. I wrote cool programs and games, and one of my fav routines was for polygon drawing, you enter the number of sides, and it drew it. I even calculated the angle the drawing needed to "start" at so it was on a side instead of a point. In 10th grade (1990) a buddy and I won the ICPSC (international computer problem solving contest) for our school. Had we finished one more question in the time allowed, we would have went national.
My first modem was a vicmodem... 300 baud. You needed a rotary phone to dial. (Which was kind of rough, when I first got it, my fam didn't have luxuries like a car or telephone line. Looking back I think I felt lucky to have food and running water.) But when I finally hit the BBSs... watch out. I ended up being a co-sysop and eventually running my own, and meeting tons of nice local people in the meantime. I would also "barrow" free shell accounts and friends unix accounts to get on the internet, command line news and ftp being my favorite.
The vicmodem lead to an adaptec 2400... then I was cooking. Which lead to many more friends on BBS's and I bought an Amiga, then a 486. My first machine I built myself was an Amd k5 133 with about 16-32 megs of ram and Win 95. At this point, the internet was becoming popular... I didn't know whether I wanted to go into Unix/Networking, hardware or programming. So I did some college time for computer engineering.
I gave away all my C64 stuff to a friend from RIT... I know own several computers and am a Linux lover. Married with my own place... I work for an ISP. I've been teaching myself perl and earned my CCNA. I have all my old software and a 1541 with the idea of building the special cable you can build and use something like Vice to mess around.
Make software creators liable for copyright infringement but not other creators of software liable for damage done by their buggy software? Gotta love it...
No. I work for an ISP, and people ask this all the time. My response is usually, we don't offer limited connections. I usually draw an analogy to the phone company... if you recieve prank/threatening/sexual phone calls, will the phone company screen them for you? No, that's your responsibility. If you can't handle screening your own calls, perhaps you shouldn't have a telephone. This is very similar to the flashing 12 problem...
A few years ago there was a push on to provide home users with "safe" connections with the ISP running a firewall and virus scanning. What ever happened to this? While this would not fix everything it would help a lot, especially for inexperienced users. The current situation is kind of like making people do their own water purification at home.
Because human stupidity is extremely difficult to firewall.
makes me a firm believer in the fact that Microsoft is not objective in any way. Then again, neither is any company, but hey, it's Slashdot, where Microsoft bashing is almost a national pastime:)
Not true! There are tons of people who hate Microsoft without even knowing what Slashdot is!
Does he also believe that non-free architects, authors, musicians, is a 'predatory social system that keeps people in a state of domination and division.'
Hmm, I would guess so. Any enslaved architects, authors, or musicians would probably agree with his statement.
I must say, I'm in tech support, at least a good percentage of my job, but it's more Service Provider support, as in an ISP. I can imagine this being terribly different than software tech support (see my other comment in this article), but I can imagine my job being much easier. My secret is to treat the customer very decently, as I would a friend or relative, and make them come around to helping you. The unspoken words "I'm not going to fix this, we are" go a long way. A litte encouragement, explaination and nudge in the right direction is usually all it takes. They're only people, after all.
On the other hand, there's some software I wouldn't want to support 100% all the time... (leaving that part up to your imagination)
Amen brother! I know what you're talking about... I'm 28 and have been typing extensively since I was about 12. Most days I type all 8 hrs long then go home and do so even more. I've never had any signs of carpal tunnel, and even if my wrists did ache a little I know to take a quick break...
Geez, redundant. Would like to know what's so redundant about it. I'm trying to make a joke of it, make light of it, actually kind of glad the whole thing will be over soon. We all know SCO is bull of BS.
Slashdot Mirror
If I had a job like that, I would sign a Do Not Recessitate agreement as well.
Assholeware - companies that produce spyware and then insist that noone calls it as such.
...terrorism to the Linux community and SCO.
Linux "zealots" would have studied the twin towers, found a way to improve them and a community to do it in their spare time, opened their work for everyone to see (a "nothing to hide" philosophy), and done it for little or no money, perhaps charging only for future consultation.
SCO would have claimed the towers were theirs for some strange reason, provided no proof (except for maybe the toilets looked the same), worked in secret (much like terrorists!) and threatened individual harm to every person who entered, until the world promised their property back.
Yes, Linux enthusiasts are just as fanatic as terrorists. What this moron failed to realize is where terrorist are obsessed on hurting and promoting Fear (uncertainty, and doubt?), Linux zealots are obsessed with making better software, helping people and making the world a better place.
When was the last time a terrorist helped a little old lady cross the road?
I'm sorry, I meant to imply that "xp anti-spy" allows you to both either/or disable/uninstall it.
... but doesn't *everyone* disable/uninstall messenger service? Even tho I'm a huge fan of Linux, it doesn't mean I don't know my way around windows. Whenever I setup a new XP machine (for anyone), or advise someone on setting up a new machine, I have 3 requirements: no spying(adaware, xp anti-spy), no viruses (virus software like avg, mcaffee or norton), and a firewall (either hardware or software, like black ice, tiny personal firewall, which they used to give out ver 2 of for free.) I also don't trust the firewall that comes with XP, looks like a tiny stateful firewall, which doesn't block outbound connections, so someone with a virus can still spread it.
I just went looking for XP Anti-Spy and the german site looks like its down or changed, but this looks like it might be the newest version. These are all options which should be standard with Windows, or at least steer the customers in the right direction (using other companies' products, instead of something recommended/influenced by MS).
Everyone knows there's a bit of hardening that needs to be done to Linux/Unix systems... what about hardening for Windows systems? Many folks will argue "it's not for normal joes" but I'm sure sooner or later it will become part of standard practice. Do you think seatbelts were a major concern with the first automobiles? How many people jump in their car now and fasten it without even thinking of it?
I bought my C64 when I was about 12. It was summer and I bought it from a garage sale. It was probably about 1986-87 or so, and it was a few years after their hayday. Anyhow, it was broken from the garage sale, and I remember the only thing you could do on it was play frogger with a cartrigde. (Wouldn't load basic correctly). I was a poor kid from a poor family, I had been enthralled with computers for years, but thought it was a pipe dream. But this was my chance. We took it to a local shop and my dad paid $50 to have it fixed. (Think we only paid $50 for it at the garage sale, that was a ton of money for our family at the time... $100 was usualy reserved for large xmas gifts like casio keyboards, my dad thought I == concert pianist or something).
Then it all blew up. Once I got it fixed, I barrowed a few books from the local library, (which moved several times, and I still have them, never took em back! Wonder what the fee is for having a book since '86?) I quickly learned basic, and machine langauge. I found myself picking up spare hardware here and there. I had tape drives, then a few 1541s... I could solder switches and align drives like noones business. I babysat for neighbors while in high school for money for software. I backed up all the original AD&D SSI titles and played off copies. (I still have the original 5 1/4s in mint condition). I even used a disk editor and found that all the words (ie: 3rd word from 2nd paragraph on page 43, etc) were jumbled together, and no string legnth checking was done. So on the copies, I filled them all in with asterixes, and when that part came up in the game, you just went ********************* and you were good to go. I wrote cool programs and games, and one of my fav routines was for polygon drawing, you enter the number of sides, and it drew it. I even calculated the angle the drawing needed to "start" at so it was on a side instead of a point. In 10th grade (1990) a buddy and I won the ICPSC (international computer problem solving contest) for our school. Had we finished one more question in the time allowed, we would have went national.
My first modem was a vicmodem
The vicmodem lead to an adaptec 2400
I gave away all my C64 stuff to a friend from RIT... I know own several computers and am a Linux lover. Married with my own place... I work for an ISP. I've been teaching myself perl and earned my CCNA. I have all my old software and a 1541 with the idea of building the special cable you can build and use something like Vice to mess around.
And it all started with the C64...
Yea, and *I* said 5pm... so I still get 0, Funny? Geesh, I predicted it an hour beforehand!
... 5pm EST, Sept 12, 2003, the website goes down for some reason...
Make software creators liable for copyright infringement but not other creators of software liable for damage done by their buggy software? Gotta love it ...
No. I work for an ISP, and people ask this all the time. My response is usually, we don't offer limited connections. I usually draw an analogy to the phone company... if you recieve prank/threatening/sexual phone calls, will the phone company screen them for you? No, that's your responsibility. If you can't handle screening your own calls, perhaps you shouldn't have a telephone. This is very similar to the flashing 12 problem...
Because human stupidity is extremely difficult to firewall.
...my anti-anti-rfid tag, uhh ... tag.
Not true! There are tons of people who hate Microsoft without even knowing what Slashdot is!
Hmm... perhaps we can ascertain more information than the decision wanted us to know! Gotta love when
...from the Samba team. And start referring to SCO as "RHO" (Rank Hypocrite Operation.) Just a thought...
Hmm, I would guess so. Any enslaved architects, authors, or musicians would probably agree with his statement.
I'm going to Dunkin' Donuts and order a Duncan McNutt right now ...
...what's up doc?
& OT
Can't
You
Think/Try/Tech/Triumph/Thrill/Trip/Theorize
Like
I
Do
I must say, I'm in tech support, at least a good percentage of my job, but it's more Service Provider support, as in an ISP. I can imagine this being terribly different than software tech support (see my other comment in this article), but I can imagine my job being much easier. My secret is to treat the customer very decently, as I would a friend or relative, and make them come around to helping you. The unspoken words "I'm not going to fix this, we are" go a long way. A litte encouragement, explaination and nudge in the right direction is usually all it takes. They're only people, after all.
On the other hand, there's some software I wouldn't want to support 100% all the time...
(leaving that part up to your imagination)
But shouldn't the topic be Consumer Reports Discovers Software Tech Support Sucks ? Can I mod the article -1, Offtopic?
Amen brother! I know what you're talking about ... I'm 28 and have been typing extensively since I was about 12. Most days I type all 8 hrs long then go home and do so even more. I've never had any signs of carpal tunnel, and even if my wrists did ache a little I know to take a quick break...
Geez, redundant. Would like to know what's so redundant about it. I'm trying to make a joke of it, make light of it, actually kind of glad the whole thing will be over soon. We all know SCO is bull of BS.
... I knew it! That's when McBride's car payment is due!
(I envision him on his kness.. Please... Please... PLEASE IBM!)