The point is, you can lock machines down reasonably well just by not giving out the root password. Sure, a user can mess up her home directory, but she can't damage system directories.
After spending the day in front of a computer...
on
Why TV Lost
·
· Score: 1
... the last thing I want to do is park myself in front of a screen for entertainment.
I took a look, but ruQueue seems only to work with MySQL. One of the pluses of RT is that it's somewhat database-independent; we use it with PostgreSQL. Since we use PostgreSQL for everything else, we don't really want to install MySQL just for one app.
Why is it that so many PHP programs only work with MySQL? Is it because PHP lacks a decent equivalent of DBI?
We use RT and it works very well for us. We don't have a very high volume of tickets (we're up to about 14000 in 5 years, so only about 8 tickets/day on average), but RT is insanely flexible and customizable and has excellent e-mail integration.
The CRTC needs to have its mandate drastically reduced to
making sure spectrum is allocated properly and keeping telcos in line.
Levying a fee against ISPs is no better than corporate welfare, except
in this case, the welfare recipients are Canadian "artists" [sic] who
somehow feel entitled to tax Canadians who wouldn't otherwise watch their
"content".
If this does go through, though, I'm going to apply for my
share of the welfare handouts. My Web site offers original Canadian
content (I'm Canadian and I post the odd short story or rant), so surely
I qualify? (Oh, wait, I don't. I probably need to join a good old socialist
"collective" to collect.)
We sell commercial, proprietary software. However, we do ship
source code and we specifically allow end-users to modify the source
if they want.
There are two provisos, though: End-users can't redistribute our
software (or modified versions of the software.) And if they modify
the software, we are released from support obligations. (In practice,
we do support our customers unless it's obvious their modifications
have screwed up the system.)
It seems to work well for us and our clients. Probably 95% don't care
about having source and never modify it, but the 5% who do care really
love our license.
So, Bobby, how do you think the game has gone in the first period?
Well, Jim, uhh, we're playing good. But, uhh, the other team, uhh, they're like a bit better, eh? Uhh... so they're leading us... uhh... two to one.
Bobby, what's your strategy for the rest of the game?
Well, uhh... we've got to play better, like... uhh... score more, maybe and uhh... improve the defence. Our players are good, Jim, but... uhh... we have to push to be better than the other team or... uhh... we'll lose, Jim.
We use Drupal for our site
on
Using Drupal
·
· Score: 1
Drupal is awesome. I'm not crazy about the fact that it's written in PHP... but I have to admit it's one of the better-written PHP projects.
I use it for a bunch of Web sites, including my company's site. It's extremely powerful and pretty easy to customize.
Intersect my liking for Drupal with my love of O'Reilly books and I feel a purchase coming on...
Most people won't boycott Apple because they don't understand the issues. Even a lot of geeks whom I'd assume would understand the issue are still dazzled by the Apple brand. Just count the number of Macbooks at the average open-source conference.
I personally boycott Apple. I feel that we're lucky that Microsoft became the evil monopolist rather than Apple; had Apple won the lottery, it would be ten times as evil and draconian as Microsoft. The only reason, IMO, that geeks don't perceive Apple this way is that it isn't a monopoly (at least, not in the computer field.)
I wrote a book back in 2000. I asked the publisher if I could use LaTeX, and the publisher said "Sure, no problem!"
Well, it turned out said publisher didn't know LaTeX from a hole in the head, so after I'd written a few chapters, I discovered I had to do format-conversion so their evil MS-Word-based toolchain could digest my work.
They completely messed up my formatting; it was a nightmare from beginning to end.
If I ever write another book, it'll either be self-published or done in collaboration with a publisher willing to use *nix tools.
Why are you trying to give all kids a laptop? What educational purpose does it serve? None that I can see.
That being said: If the purpose is to educate kids about computers, then I would consider any kid who is unable to remove restrictions from the laptop to have failed the computer-science course.
And why Macbooks? Why not cheaper, more open machines like the EEE?
FOSS is a poor business model. (It's a great software development model, though.)
My company produces both FOSS (GPL) and proprietary software. We happily sell support and service contracts for our free stuff. I estimate that the revenue from support+service of FOSS adds up to about 1% of the revenue from selling the proprietary software. (We include source with the proprietary software; you just aren't allowed to redistribute it.)
Making money from service and support is hard and labour-intensive. Making money from selling proprietary software is much easier, because once the thing is written, you can sell it over and over again, amortizing your labour costs enormously.
Sorry... much as I love, use and contribute to free software, I just don't think it's easy to build a good business around it.
Young' kids brains are still forming and very malleable until they're at least 7 or 8. Do you really want to expose such a young brain to a lot of computer use? I think that's almost child abuse.
I don't say ban kids from using computers. But wait until they're 5 or 6 at least, for crying out loud.
Well, it's possible they'll try to sneak it back in, but it won't work. There are too many people paying attention.
Given the Liberals' weakness, I expect the Conservatives to try to govern as if they had a majority, and unfortunately they may get away with it for a while. I don't think C-61 is important enough to any of the opposition parties to risk an election.:-(
We need to move C-61 up on the radar of the opposition (the Conservatives are already a lost cause; they don't give a crap.)
Vigilance is required, but I don't think C-61 is a done deal just yet.
"Conservatives" in control of the USA? I don't think so. Those are "Neocons" who've run up the largest deficit in US history and are practically socializing the nation's banks. The Bushites are about as "conservative" as the Communist Party.
I was going to vote Green, but they've (alas) been hijacked by wacko leftists as far as their foreign policy goes. I really, really wanted to vote Green this election, but they blew it.
Hey, I'm completely opposed to GWB and his pals, including this $700B bailout. If people want to be greedy, they should pay the consequences. It's absolutely despicable that taxpayers are on the hook for stupid people who bought houses they couldn't afford and for greedy investment bankers.
Just because I oppose the NDP doesn't mean I'm for the neocons.
I host my kids' e-mail. I also run a spam-filtering company, and I use a feature in our product that holds all mail for human review if it's coming from an unknown sender. If my kids get a real e-mail from a friend, I whitelist that sender.
Of course, now that they're older, they just went and made Hotmail accounts for themselves. So at some point, it boils down to trust and upbringing as opposed to technology.
They don't have to take the test, but then I don't have to hire them.
However, I agree with some posters that you have to give the right test in the right way. I always talk to the interviewee first, describe the job, etc. Then towards the middle of the interview, I give the test, which is usually only about 6 or 7 questions long. I don't send the person off into a corner to write it; instead, I interact with the interviewee to see how he/she would approach the problems.
We do this with everyone (salespeople too), not just IT staff. In my opinion, if you don't give some kind of skills-test to someone you're considering hiring, you are a terrible interviewer.
He broke the law and stole 32 students' passwords. That's not "White Hat". White Hat would have been to publish his findings without actually stealing the passwords.
... someone who can capture some of the original Seinfeld show:
Jerry: So, why do you think they used blue for the Windows Blue Screen of Death?
George: What? How the heck do I know? Weren't you buying shoes the other day with Bill Gates? Why didn't you ask?
Jerry: Hmm... I dunno. Could've been awkward, don't you think? I just met the guy; do I really want to mention Blue Screen of Death?
George: Why not? You're not on a date. If anyone knows, he knows. Ask him!
Jerry: I dunno...
George: Well, do you want to know or not? Ask him; he knows! He knows!
(Elaine enters)
Elaine: Who knows?
Jerry: The screen of death.
Elaine: Is that a new movie?
George: No, no, the screen of death. The blue one. You know, Windows.
Elaine: I would've preferred it in pink. Much more flattering.
George: You want a flattering screen of death? What the heck is that? I can't believe it.
(Kramer bursts in)
Kramer:: HWOAH!!! Jerry, you know what I heard? Bill Gates hired Newman to infiltrate this Linux thing and change it's screen of death to orange! It's supposed to be the most psychologically-disturbing color!
Elaine: What? Where did you hear that?
Kramer:: It's true!
Jerry: So, did it work?
Kramer:: I dunno. It seems no-one's gotten this Linux thing to crash.
Unions are a BAD idea. They may start out seeming fine, but they evolve into massive bureaucracies that concentrate on self-preservation and pursuit of irrelevant issues rather than acting on behalf of their members. We see this over and over again. It's unsurprising that union membership in North America is at an all-time low; the best way to ruin a sector's economy is to unionize in these days of globalization.
Slashdot Mirror
noexec doesn't prevent: perl ./some_script_here
The point is, you can lock machines down reasonably well just by not giving out the root password. Sure, a user can mess up her home directory, but she can't damage system directories.
... the last thing I want to do is park myself in front of a screen for entertainment.
YIPE! I took a closer look at ruQueue... can you say XSS attacks and SQL injection, folks? /me mails the authors...
I took a look, but ruQueue seems only to work with MySQL. One of the pluses of RT is that it's somewhat database-independent; we use it with PostgreSQL. Since we use PostgreSQL for everything else, we don't really want to install MySQL just for one app.
Why is it that so many PHP programs only work with MySQL? Is it because PHP lacks a decent equivalent of DBI?
We use RT and it works very well for us. We don't have a very high volume of tickets (we're up to about 14000 in 5 years, so only about 8 tickets/day on average), but RT is insanely flexible and customizable and has excellent e-mail integration.
The CRTC needs to have its mandate drastically reduced to making sure spectrum is allocated properly and keeping telcos in line.
Levying a fee against ISPs is no better than corporate welfare, except in this case, the welfare recipients are Canadian "artists" [sic] who somehow feel entitled to tax Canadians who wouldn't otherwise watch their "content".
If this does go through, though, I'm going to apply for my share of the welfare handouts. My Web site offers original Canadian content (I'm Canadian and I post the odd short story or rant), so surely I qualify? (Oh, wait, I don't. I probably need to join a good old socialist "collective" to collect.)
We sell commercial, proprietary software. However, we do ship source code and we specifically allow end-users to modify the source if they want.
There are two provisos, though: End-users can't redistribute our software (or modified versions of the software.) And if they modify the software, we are released from support obligations. (In practice, we do support our customers unless it's obvious their modifications have screwed up the system.)
It seems to work well for us and our clients. Probably 95% don't care about having source and never modify it, but the 5% who do care really love our license.
So, Bobby, how do you think the game has gone in the first period?
Well, Jim, uhh, we're playing good. But, uhh, the other team, uhh, they're like a bit better, eh? Uhh... so they're leading us... uhh... two to one.
Bobby, what's your strategy for the rest of the game?
Well, uhh... we've got to play better, like... uhh... score more, maybe and uhh... improve the defence. Our players are good, Jim, but... uhh... we have to push to be better than the other team or... uhh... we'll lose, Jim.
Drupal is awesome. I'm not crazy about the fact that it's written in PHP... but I have to admit it's one of the better-written PHP projects.
I use it for a bunch of Web sites, including my company's site. It's extremely powerful and pretty easy to customize.
Intersect my liking for Drupal with my love of O'Reilly books and I feel a purchase coming on...
Most people won't boycott Apple because they don't understand the issues. Even a lot of geeks whom I'd assume would understand the issue are still dazzled by the Apple brand. Just count the number of Macbooks at the average open-source conference.
I personally boycott Apple. I feel that we're lucky that Microsoft became the evil monopolist rather than Apple; had Apple won the lottery, it would be ten times as evil and draconian as Microsoft. The only reason, IMO, that geeks don't perceive Apple this way is that it isn't a monopoly (at least, not in the computer field.)
I wrote a book back in 2000. I asked the publisher if I could use LaTeX, and the publisher said "Sure, no problem!"
Well, it turned out said publisher didn't know LaTeX from a hole in the head, so after I'd written a few chapters, I discovered I had to do format-conversion so their evil MS-Word-based toolchain could digest my work.
They completely messed up my formatting; it was a nightmare from beginning to end.
If I ever write another book, it'll either be self-published or done in collaboration with a publisher willing to use *nix tools.
Why are you trying to give all kids a laptop? What educational purpose does it serve? None that I can see.
That being said: If the purpose is to educate kids about computers, then I would consider any kid who is unable to remove restrictions from the laptop to have failed the computer-science course.
And why Macbooks? Why not cheaper, more open machines like the EEE?
FOSS is a poor business model. (It's a great software development model, though.)
My company produces both FOSS (GPL) and proprietary software. We happily sell support and service contracts for our free stuff. I estimate that the revenue from support+service of FOSS adds up to about 1% of the revenue from selling the proprietary software. (We include source with the proprietary software; you just aren't allowed to redistribute it.)
Making money from service and support is hard and labour-intensive. Making money from selling proprietary software is much easier, because once the thing is written, you can sell it over and over again, amortizing your labour costs enormously.
Sorry... much as I love, use and contribute to free software, I just don't think it's easy to build a good business around it.
What a stupid question.
Young' kids brains are still forming and very malleable until they're at least 7 or 8. Do you really want to expose such a young brain to a lot of computer use? I think that's almost child abuse.
I don't say ban kids from using computers. But wait until they're 5 or 6 at least, for crying out loud.
Well, it's possible they'll try to sneak it back in, but it won't work. There are too many people paying attention.
Given the Liberals' weakness, I expect the Conservatives to try to govern as if they had a majority, and unfortunately they may get away with it for a while. I don't think C-61 is important enough to any of the opposition parties to risk an election. :-(
We need to move C-61 up on the radar of the opposition (the Conservatives are already a lost cause; they don't give a crap.)
Vigilance is required, but I don't think C-61 is a done deal just yet.
"Conservatives" in control of the USA? I don't think so. Those are "Neocons" who've run up the largest deficit in US history and are practically socializing the nation's banks. The Bushites are about as "conservative" as the Communist Party.
I think all parties will concentrate on the economic mess for a while (not that there's really anything they can do about it.)
I was going to vote Green, but they've (alas) been hijacked by wacko leftists as far as their foreign policy goes. I really, really wanted to vote Green this election, but they blew it.
Hey, I'm completely opposed to GWB and his pals, including this $700B bailout. If people want to be greedy, they should pay the consequences. It's absolutely despicable that taxpayers are on the hook for stupid people who bought houses they couldn't afford and for greedy investment bankers. Just because I oppose the NDP doesn't mean I'm for the neocons.
Use of modern P2P technology by an old-style socialist party whose policies have been discredited since the 1970's.
I host my kids' e-mail. I also run a spam-filtering company, and I use a feature in our product that holds all mail for human review if it's coming from an unknown sender. If my kids get a real e-mail from a friend, I whitelist that sender.
Of course, now that they're older, they just went and made Hotmail accounts for themselves. So at some point, it boils down to trust and upbringing as opposed to technology.
They don't have to take the test, but then I don't have to hire them.
However, I agree with some posters that you have to give the right test in the right way. I always talk to the interviewee first, describe the job, etc. Then towards the middle of the interview, I give the test, which is usually only about 6 or 7 questions long. I don't send the person off into a corner to write it; instead, I interact with the interviewee to see how he/she would approach the problems.
We do this with everyone (salespeople too), not just IT staff. In my opinion, if you don't give some kind of skills-test to someone you're considering hiring, you are a terrible interviewer.
He broke the law and stole 32 students' passwords. That's not "White Hat". White Hat would have been to publish his findings without actually stealing the passwords.
... someone who can capture some of the original Seinfeld show:
Jerry: So, why do you think they used blue for the Windows Blue Screen of Death?
George: What? How the heck do I know? Weren't you buying shoes the other day with Bill Gates? Why didn't you ask?
Jerry: Hmm... I dunno. Could've been awkward, don't you think? I just met the guy; do I really want to mention Blue Screen of Death?
George: Why not? You're not on a date. If anyone knows, he knows. Ask him!
Jerry: I dunno...
George: Well, do you want to know or not? Ask him; he knows! He knows!
(Elaine enters)
Elaine: Who knows?
Jerry: The screen of death.
Elaine: Is that a new movie?
George: No, no, the screen of death. The blue one. You know, Windows.
Elaine: I would've preferred it in pink. Much more flattering.
George: You want a flattering screen of death? What the heck is that? I can't believe it.
(Kramer bursts in)
Kramer:: HWOAH!!! Jerry, you know what I heard? Bill Gates hired Newman to infiltrate this Linux thing and change it's screen of death to orange! It's supposed to be the most psychologically-disturbing color!
Elaine: What? Where did you hear that?
Kramer:: It's true!
Jerry: So, did it work?
Kramer:: I dunno. It seems no-one's gotten this Linux thing to crash.
Unions are a BAD idea. They may start out seeming fine, but they evolve into massive bureaucracies that concentrate on self-preservation and pursuit of irrelevant issues rather than acting on behalf of their members. We see this over and over again. It's unsurprising that union membership in North America is at an all-time low; the best way to ruin a sector's economy is to unionize in these days of globalization.