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Can you get 10 years worth of patches for Ubuntu 8? No? then sorry it very much IS a fair comparison and frankly the only comparison you can make, unless you are actually sitting here arguing that the lifecycle of a PC is the same length as an Ubuntu release, is that what you are trying to convince us of here? When you have one OS that abandons users after a pathetic year and a half and another that gives you 10 years then frankly the ONLY comparisons you CAN do is to base the simulation on the hardware not the software,otherwise no comparisons can be made at all.

But like so many others here whether by design or just by not thinking you ignored the fundamental point...I'm giving you a test ALREADY rigged in your favor by only making your OS have HALF the lifecycle of your competition and nobody will take the challenge because they know even in a test rigged in Linux favor they WILL lose, thanks to the piss poor driver model.

As a PC retailer I can tell you the typical lifecycle of a laptop is currently 3-5 years depending on how much or little they baby it, and for desktops its even older, with plenty of first gen C2D and Athlon X2s still running in homes and offices across America...do you dispute this? if not then what is the problem, other than you know the product is so poor it won't pass even a simple simulation?

At the end of the day either your product works or it don't and the challenge can trivially let anybody see that it doesn't. If I as a retailer can't even put your product on a shelf because there is a damned good chance that the first update will break wireless, the second sound, and so on so that in 3 years time they have a system that makes an old XP box filled with malware look like heaven because at least the hardware works, what is your selling point? that if they want to get a masters in comp sci they can fix it themselves? Who gives a shit?

The simple fact is Windows can pass this test with flying colors, I can take a 10 year old box and install Win2K and simulate the entire lifespan of the OS, from the very first patches to the ones released a month before it went EOL and the drivers working at the start WILL be working at the end, with your product? Even only picking 2 random systems off the shelf and only having to show half the length of time your OS WILL FAIL, hell in just the past 5 years you've had both major DEs tossed by the devs, ALSA replaced by the shitastic Pulse that is deep fried ass to this very day when it comes to stability, and of course you got Linus crapping all over the kernel so shit that worked in Foo won't work in Foo+1. if your system was great, why has nobody, not a single OS, adopted it? Not BSD, not Solaris, nobody.

Ironic that so many here can only throw insults which is just further proof they are afraid because they know the truth, its the same thing Dell saw when they tried selling Linux units which riddle me this: If one of the largest OEMs on the planet can NOT get your product to function without having to run their own fork? What chance does a normal user have?

Ya know why? Because they CAN't deny it, because I can fricking wallpaper this post in "update foo broke my driver" posts and they KNOW this, so all they can do is throw a tantrum like a petulant child or say "Ur a bad mean old poo poo head". You see i'm their worst fricking nightmare...A retailer that has actually USED their product and ended up seeing the same thing Dell saw which is their driver model is BROKEN. I mean here is Dell, one of the largest retailers of PCs on the entire fricking planet, and they were selling...what? maybe a dozen different Linux units MAX? And they couldn't even keep drivers functional on a dozen units, maybe 8 fricking pieces of hardware all told?

The sad part is unlike the koolaid drinkers I WANT Linux to get better, I WANT Linux to pass the challenge, I WANT Linux to be a functional OS...but its not. Its really not. And notice how quickly they dismiss my challenge? If their product works and they believe in it... what are they afraid of? hell i even tilt the test in their favor which anybody doing a legitimate test should NEVER do by only giving them HALF the support cycle of Windows, yet all they can do is insult and try to make me out to be a bad man...why? Why are they so afraid if their product works?

Because it doesn't work and they KNOW this, but like any religious zealot (which is why I call 'em FOSSies instead of Freetards) that is told something against dogma it just can't be true, the scripture HAS to be right. this is why I've blocked the Linux articles from my feeds and have learned to ignore them as its always the same routine, "ur a sekret M$ ninja", "let's move the goal posts", "lets talk about web servers" when the topic is the desktop, its the entire circle of loon bit. Know what I find truly depressing and sad? Go to Linux TM Repo, which was set up as a fricking joke site to lampoon the FOSS zealots, and look at their top 20 Linux TMs, go on I'll wait...there you have just seen EVERY argument they have right there, from "it works for me!" to "Linux runs on supercomputers" its just the same excuses, the same insults, they simply can't face reality so instead of doing something about the situation they just insult all those that don't drink the GNUaid.

You watch they will probably downmod us both to hell rather than even attempt to come up with a counter argument,its because they can't. They piss and moan and make excuses like "companies don't support us!" yet I can take my HD4850 graphics card, uninstall the latest driver, and install the nearly 5 year old driver that came on the disc and it WILL work, when you can't even take the driver from last year and use it on the latest kernel thanks to the stupid ass backwards way Linus set up the driver model. I mean here it is 2013 and a company STILL can't just put a penguin on the God damned box because the drivers on the CD won't even work before it gets to the shelves...how pathetic is that?

UK requires benefits claimants to use Windows XP and IE6

The UK for one. Here ya go. The US also, Almost all of the US healthcare requires mandatory use of IE.Even the US govt is on this. Most of the govt healthcare websites (Medicare, Medicaid, etc) for fee for service physicians will only work with Windows and IE. No other operating system or browser is supported. Most US insurance carriers web portals such as Navinet require IE and ActiveX. They could have developed their portals using web standards and allowed different browsers and operating systems. Instead MicroShaft has thrown alot of money in the healthcare industry in order to DRM lock it into it's own proprietary junk.

The inquirer has the link to the original post

Pretty good timing for Renesas.
  http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2253238/renesas-announces-low-latency-vp8-hardware-encoder

You're completely ignoring the memory bandwidth and branch prediction problems that a variable-sized instruction set causes.

One of the benefits of the x86 CISC ISA is code size. The variable sized instructions are a form of compression (Huffman coding, specifically) and code size matters. The ARM Thumb-2 ISA was made variable length specifically to reduce code size and improve cache efficiency.

Too much RISC cool-aid here.

Yep. Judge people by their actions not their words.

Sometimes that happens. Sometimes it doesn't. As a result, Samsung is supposed to pay $1bn for violating Apple's patents, but a huge leak of hydrofluoric acid at Samsung's plant that killed one worker, injured four and according to police reports may have affected thousands, got them a one thousand dollar fine.

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2244389/police-contradict-samsungs-acid-discharge-claims

Actually as we've seen here in articles for the past few weeks it looks like they are gonna go Google and NOT Linux, which sadly I can't say as I blame 'em. when Dell had to run their own repo and keep their own fork of Ubuntu just to keep the drivers working when we are talking only a handful of devices? That is pretty sad.

I'll get hate from the zealots for pointing this out but truth is truth, the current Linux driver model is deep fried ass. Quick, what do BSD, Solaris, OSX, iOS, Windows, and even OS/2 have in common that Linux does not? A stable driver ABI. Now are you are seriously sit here and argue that Linus Torvalds is smarter and knows better than ALL those development teams COMBINED? Really?

And please don't waste both yours and my time posting that RELIGIOUS RANT from one of the kernel devs, and yes it IS a religious rant when he actually puts in his rant "And I hope that all non free drivers break often!" that shows he is more of a "true believer" than a developer and obvious cares more about his religious fanaticism than about making sure the users have a working OS.

At the end of the day the ONLY argument I've seen against a stable ABI is "ZOMFG, they might actually...gasp!...make NON FREE drivers ZOMFG!" yet this very article and all the "Just buy Nvidia" postings prove that argument to be stupid and moot because they ALREADY MAKE non free drivers and guess what? Apparently they work better for most than the free drivers, go figure.

If you truly want to compete then you have to make a BETTER PRODUCT than the other guy, simple as that. Windows has a 10 year support cycle so most folks never have to worry about ever upgrading, the hardware will be so damned old by the time Windows hits EOL most users will have moved to newer hardware with a new Windows pre-installed. So to beat that you are gonna have to either 1.- get Torvalds and company to stop crapping out new kernels and slow Linux development to a 6-8 year cycle, this is doubtful, or 2.- Make a stable ABI so no matter how many new kernels and underpinnings come out the drivers "just work" and continue working after the users upgrade.

Never before in history have you had a better opportunity, MSFT has shot themselves in the face with Windows 8 and burnt a LOT of OEMs with licensing costs as well as pissed off their userbase with that damned shitty Metro UI. The field is wide open folks, the finish line is right there, the only question is what are you gonna do about it? Are you gonna make the changes that will give users and OEMs a true "third way" and claim all that share? or are you gonna sit down in the middle of the field to write a bash script while Google comes along and makes a more locked down and privacy invading choice the next big thing? Its all up to you.

http://m.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2083906/claims-com-net-websites-jurisdiction

(Posting from phone, I might folllow up. Properly later.)

Slammer worm crashed Ohio nuke plant net

Slammer Worm Hit FirstEnergy

Slammer worm crashed Ohio nuke plant network

US blackout was computer related

You're thinking of Apple:

No, he *sn't

..., but even a volunteer Linux admin *definitely* would have, because the virus simply wouldn't have worked.

So what types of admins were administering the server when this happened? (broke into and compromised multiple servers and sites)

Or when this happened? (Gained root access and deployed Trojans)

I guess those sites were being run by incompetent people? How else could a compromised user account lead to root access and rootkits installed?

..., but even a volunteer Linux admin *definitely* would have, because the virus simply wouldn't have worked.

So what types of admins were administering the server when this happened? (broke into and compromised multiple servers and sites)

Or when this happened? (Gained root access and deployed Trojans)

I guess those sites were being run by incompetent people? How else could a compromised user account lead to root access and rootkits installed?

The question in the selection transcript was: "have you or a family member or someone very close to you ever been involved in a lawsuit, either as a plaintiff, a defendant, or as a witness? " ..and Hogan never disclosed being sued by Seagate. Seems like that would be all the judge needs to read.

A rational person would think so, wouldn't they? But this judge seems to be somehow special.

Apple spinmods are out in force, as is typical each time Apple gets caught

What the fuck...you no spek the english? They DO NOT OWN the guts, its patented by several companies that are NOT Nvidia so they can't change SHIT when it comes to licensing, okay? They DO NOT OWN HDCP and it is THOSE parts being used in GP-GPU to cut down on waste and to keep from having to double the size of the die, but they DO NOT OWN this, okay? What part of DO NOT OWN is so damned hard to grasp? I don't care what fucking license you name, BSD, MPL, fucking ABCD, they CAN NOT DO IT anymore than you can make The Lion King a GPL movie because YOU DO NOT OWN IT...get it now? No own? Its licensed tech from half a dozen companies, baked into every chip.

And again WHAT FUCKING DIFFERENCE would having ALL of the code binary VS having a header and footer be GPL and the rest redacted? NOTHING, it would change NOTHING. What you would have is ugly nasty ass hacks like AMD (which I notice you won't even touch on, because guess what? Its nasty ass and sucks compared to Windows where the devs aren't douches) where it wouldn't matter if you had a new tesla board or a Geforce 6600 because it would BOTH SUCK as you'd have this huge chunk of the chip that will never ever work in the FOSS driver. And again because they weren't "100% GPL compliant" the devs would keep right on being douches, drivers still get broken, and Nvidia gains not a single sale, why the fuck should they waste all that money? To make some license nazi happy?

Watch as I make a prediction, ready? Linux gains NO SHARE even though Win 8 is more hated than Vista, because the douchenozzle devs refuse to keep breaking shit like spoiled 14 years olds and between them and the FOSSie camp, which overlaps a lot, you simply won't get the stability and solid drivers required for ANY OEM to look at you as more than a joke. BTW before you dare bring up Dell you should know they have to run their own damned repo even though they ONLY have a dozen models, because the damned drivers break otherwise (surprise surprise) and they refuse to tell you how much profit they have made on Linux sales, why? Because the cost of running their own repo kills any profit, that's why! Its strictly a PR move, designed to make the FOSSie faction STFU, which is why they bury it on a back page and try like hell to warn people away from the Linux systems!

To be fair, the bug was caused by the Debian OpenSSL package maintainers, not by the OpenSSL developers themselves. Here are some information for the bug in question.

While this bug in Cyanogenmod is different and the developers themselves are responsible for it, it was not shipped in any official build. If it did, it would have been a totally different matter.

Samsung shipped a lot of S3s to retailers but they aren't actually saying how many of them sold. I have only seen three in the wild, approximately one for every seven hundred iPhones I have seen.

Ah yes, the old shipped but not sold bullshit, here:

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2203312/samsung-brags-that-it-has-sold-20-million-galaxy-s3-handsets

Also, their sales are increasing, not decreasing:

http://www.itproportal.com/2012/10/04/iphone-5-launch-and-apple-patent-trial-boosted-galaxy-s3-sales/

Intel and AMD are telling you they are going to lock you into Windows 8.

Nope, just Intel. AMD has clarified that its "Windows 8 chip" will also run GNU/Linux, just not Android. From this article: "However unlike Intel, Belt said AMD's software engineers are working on Linux support, though that doesn't necessarily mean Android."

You want an example? Would over 200 examples of broken guts, nearly all of which can be tied directly or indirectly to devs futzing with the internals be good enough? Would you like to compare it to the page from 3 years ago so you can see how much of it hasn't been fixed in three God damned years?

But of course you won't respond to this, nor the fact that the ONLY way Dell, one of the largest OEMs on the God damned planet BTW, can get Linux to fucking run even when dealing with a severely limited subselection of their offerings is to hire a team to run their own damned repo because otherwise the devs constantly shitting on internals leaves you with a device with NON WORKING DRIVERS...gee, where did I hear that? Why I believe it was me, pointing out that very same thing!

And frankly I have every right to be pissed, the community lies its fucking ass off and when caught in those lies what do we get? An apology maybe, or even some pressure brought to bare on the devs constantly breaking shit? Nope we get the standard "Works for me!" followed by a "U must be teh M$ Shill! U no suck teh koolaid!" horseshit. Quick what does MSI, Asus, Walmart, Best Buy, and me ALL have in common? Every one has offered your OS only to find its a broken mess with shit constantly breaking and now won't put your OS on shit for all the money in the world. Gee, wonder why that is? Could it be the after sales support thanks to devs crapping on the internals constantly makes it a money sucking pit? Nope, must be that invisible money truck Ballmer backs up to our door. yep, that's the ticket...dumbasses.

And isn't it funny how every single post other than yours is simply a "works for me!" followed by "U must be a shill!" Wow, really?

Linux drivers sucking balls is God damned legendary, even long time Linux admins admit the wireless is deep fried ass and didn't De Icaza have an article here not even a damned week ago talking about how he had fucking gave up on sound because of Pulse? Is the community THAT filled with religious zealotry that even pointing out the damned obvious is impossible?

Do all those that bitched want a list? How about a list of over 200 show stoppers damned near all of them in part or whole dealing with shitty drivers and updates crapping on said drivers? Here is the same list from three years ago so they can all see how many HAVE NOT BEEN FIXED IN THREE YEARS...but of course that can't be true! Why it works perfectly because RMS waves his magic pixie wand! Why having devs constantly crapping all over internals can't be a BAD thing, because they are just being free!

So its a hell of a lot more than "If it works OOTB then you're okay" because what works OOTB this week may be completely wiped out next week because some dev decided he thought some critical system file would be better if he changed some crucial element, fuck it if they can't take a joke.

The ONLY reason that Linux works in servers is companies spend millions of dollars on full time admins and fixes dealing with the broken shit and that is as completely opposite from the desktop market as one could possibly get! Because whether they like it or not we will NOT hire a team of full time devs to sit around maintaining our own repos because the devs can't quit breaking shit, which just FYI is the only way Dell can get Linux to work and we will NOT give away free lifetime support contracts or give away days of our time every 6 damned months when the devs have their annual crapping on the system.

If you think its perfectly fine to waste your time fixing what they break every 6 months, or are one of the VERY few who are using some system old enough nobody is futzing up the drivers? Well I'm glad, some people collect stamps, everyone needs a hobby. We do this FOR A LIVING and every time you crap all over the system it COSTS US MONEY, money that frankly works out to MORE than WIndows costs.

Quit taking crap sandwiches from the devs, bring some real stability and at least 7 years of ACTUAL support, not that crap like Ubuntu LTS which stands for "don't backport shit" (which just FYI but having software so damned tied to the system that it won't fucking run unless you have kernel foo is totally shitty coding, okay?) and we'll be happy to sell and support your product. But quit living on fantasy island where we have nothing better to do with our weekends than fix fucked up drivers and deal with angry users because some of us? Actually have lives.

The problem is you don't have a say over this: Even if you're not a iPhone-weilding Youtube-uploading Instagram-snapping Facebook-addicted Gmail-enabled Twitter-junkie, you will have friends that are and upload information about you without thinking about it. I'm Privacy aware, but many non-technical people aren't. Now add to that webcams and surveillance video and there is no escape. No wonder they've been dragging their heals on privacy legislation with real teeth: Corporations will love it for data-mining and government will love it for surveillance.

Take this girl: She had a photo snapped of her at a friend's BBQ. They uploaded it to Flikr without thinking, and next thing she knows she's on advertising billboards: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sesh00/515961023/ http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1047772/virgin-mobile-sued-virgin

The webOS GUI is interesting. Too bad the project's name sounds like spanish slang for "testicles" (huevos). I suggest a name change to "kohOneS". At least it'll sound intimidating to iOS and Android fanboys.

They could just call it Whore. Oh, that's right, Nokia already took that name. And WhoreOS had such a nice ring to it...

What is really fucking sad is these FOSSies worship their OS like its a sacred cow which makes them not only retarded but blind as well. Notice how they ALWAYS say I'm some sort of "pro M$ Shill" yet I've written dozen of times how Steve "LOL I wanna work in Cupertino LOL" is probably the shittiest tech CEO in history, how for every decent product they've put out a half a dozen stinkers, and how they are completely fucking over their business customers with their "ZOMFG we gotta be like teh Apple!" consumers over all strategy.

Hey FOSSies? if your OS sucks I'm gonna point that out, no sacred cows for me. Kinda funny how one of the developers of Red Hat makes damned near the EXACT SAME ARGUMENT that I've been making here for years, is he a "M$ Shill" too? Hell Dell has to run their own repos because they can't even get any QA on Linux, even when they only sell a dozen units with Linux tops, are THEY "M$ Shills" as well?

I don't care who makes what, if it does what it says on the tin and does it reliably, be it footpedals or OSes, then I'll give it high marks and sing its praises. If it falls down and goes boom, if it needs to be constantly babied and futzed with just to keep it running, like a 75 Dodge with bad rings? Then damned right I'm gonna point out it sucks ass. Don't like it? Quit kissing dev ass and demand a better quality product, how about that?

Ubuntu 11 new enough for you? I ended up with two half ass working devices (as in "it works right now, cough and it won't") and one that supposedly was 'working" in the it would connect...as long as security wasn't anything you actually cared about on your wireless network.

Frankly I'm so God damned sick of FOSS zealots going "La la la no problems exist, its all candy and RMS in a dress passing flowers la la la" if I ever run into one on the street I'm just gonna bitchslap them, i swear to fricking God.

It is YOU and your type that continue to take the shit shoveled by the devs that make sure Linux doesn't go anywhere. if Linus "ego come and it won't go away" was working on a proprietary OS his ass would have been pink slipped so fast it'd make his head spin, but because the OS he works on is "free" that means he can crap in a box and nobody will say boo. if I hand you a sandwich that is 95% shit and 5% ham, would you call it a ham sandwich?

Hell even one of the Red Hat devs says Linux is in its death cries because of one bad move after another that has made the entire system a fucking mess, but will anybody listen? Nope, they'll just go "La la la" and then mod down anybody who points out emperor RMS is walking bare assed. If you'd like a list of fucked up shit here is a small one, only about two hundred major problems that just FYI many of which have been there for YEARS.

In the end I'll happily take the pepsi challenge with ANY user of Linux and LMAO when it falls down and goes Boom! Take any "normal" distro, don't give me that LTS bullshit because as we've seen with Ubuntu LTS means "see this list of things we fixed? Well fuck off, you can't have it unless you upgrade biotch" that was released at the same time as Win 7, install it clean, NO forum hunts or googling fixes allowed, and IF, which is a big fucking if, if you have the drivers working OOTB upgrade it to current and see what you are left with at the end. I can tell you because I've done it with over a dozen Linux distros and what you get is a pile of broken garbage, drivers fucked, programs gone to shit, its a mess. And don't try to pull that "Windows has to be installed clean too!" horseshit because you get TEN YEARS of updates minimum with windows, with Linux if you get a year and a half before doing the upgrade shuffle its a fucking miracle.

So far the ONLY one that has come close to passing the Hairyfeet challenge is RHEL which surprise! Costs $400 a year. Windows? $40 if you want Win 8, $80 if you want Win 7...kinda a BIG fricking difference there huh?

if you wanna push "free as in freedom!" or the whole "Linux works on dumpster dived hardware!" that's cool, but don't fucking lie. it makes the whole Linux community look like a bunch of FOSSies, with little RMS altars and pictures of Linus with hearts around it. Hell even Dell, one of the biggest OEMs on the fricking planet has to run their own repos because the drivers shit themselves....great QC you got there. Meanwhile the XP machine I'm typing on with an OS install from 2004 is running just fine with original drivers and the whole system is updated to current. And don't give me the "U must have teh viruz!" horseshit because any one of a dozen free AVs and 10 minutes of instruction from me and there ain't no fucking viruses getting on my builds. Yeah....no fricking contest, WinVista on its worse day is 1000 times better.

From the article:

By driving prices down to this level so rapidly, both Amazon and Google have irrevocably harmed the tablet market by creating unrealistic price expectations.

This is not true. Did Nokia irrevocably harm the phone market by constantly driving down the price of a phone until it hit a low of $19? Did Asus irrevocably harm the laptop market by releasing the first cheap netbook? Did Dell harm the PC market by pursuing lower and lower prices?

Agreed. It's stupid of the article's author to make a comparison between tablet and PC price wars, because in practical terms, all PCs were indistinguishable to the purchaser. They all just ran Windows, and they only had to be good enough to run Windows. The minority who actually cared about performance paid more for their kit and the rest just bought the cheapest PC they could find.

In other words, the PC industry went to shit because Windows ran like shit anyway (for the majority), so why waste money?

iOS, Mac OS X and their tight integration with the hardware platform(s) they run on makes it easy for purchasers to justify the added expense. My 27" iMac is clearly superior in terms of how it uses the display and maximises performance, so I'm willing to pay more for it than I would a similarly configured PC. For a counterfactual, my phone is a Galaxy SII for the same reasons. It has a better display than the iPhone, and with ICS on it, it behaves extremely well. The effort that Google has invested in creating a simple workflow for common tasks on Android has been rewarded by popular demand.

The moral of the story is that there are clear distinctions between the iPad, the Nexus 7 and the Amazon Kindles. They have common virtues, yes, but they each have unique features as well (OS/UX, hardware, performance, featureset) that offer clear distinctions to users. The article's author is guilty of false analogy - or, in layman's terms, he's full of shit.

But if price is such an important metric, why is the iPad — with its premium price tag — so popular? Simple, it was the first tablet to go mass market, and cumulative sales of around 85 million gives the iPad credibility in the eye on potential buyers.

This is just stating the obvious - the iPad has had more sales, because it has been available for longer. If the Nexus 7 had been released in April two years ago (like the iPad), and the iPad were released last month, then the Nexus 7 would have sold more units.

By driving prices down to this level so rapidly, both Amazon and Google have irrevocably harmed the tablet market by creating unrealistic price expectations.

This is not true. Did Nokia irrevocably harm the phone market by constantly driving down the price of a phone until it hit a low of $19? Did Asus irrevocably harm the laptop market by releasing the first cheap netbook? Did Dell harm the PC market by pursuing lower and lower prices? Sure, you could argue that, or you could argue that cheaper technology expands the market - by making it accessible to people on a lower income. Cell phones are cheaper now than ever before, but the market has expanded so that 5.2 billion people now have cell phones, and the total market is still growing (two years ago revenue from phone sales passed $1 trillion and revenue from associated mobile services like calls etc. is also about $1 trillion).

Then MS came up with "Palladium" ten years ago and it, too, was soundly rejected and MS got yet another black eye.

How do you figure? They never really implemented it, but just about every computer in use today has all the hardware necessary to make it work.

If MS wanted to they could push out an XP update that encrypted the drive on the next boot, and blocked all access to any data stored on it if you mess with any part of the boot chain. That's one of the things I don't get about UEFI/etc - you can already block boot-sector rootkits today but with the caveat that you can't prevent people from just wiping the drive and installing a new OS.

Even Linux supports this today. Linux has support for TPM, and there is a fork of Grub that supports it as well. You could easily configure a linux distro to encrypt your home directory with a key stored in the TPM that is only accessible if the OS booted cleanly without tampering. Stick a rootkit in the MBR and you won't be able to log in. (None of these technologies block denial-of-service - just the much more dangerous hidden software-level tampering.)

Intel had the bright idea back in the nineties and it was soundly rejected; Intel got a lot of bad publicity and backed off. Then MS came up with "Palladium" ten years ago and it, too, was soundly rejected and MS got yet another black eye.

WTF, people?? FIGHT THIS MADNESS!! This is yet another round of MS's war against all other OSes. This is MS wanting to control YOUR computer. This has no upsides whatever, and is all bad.

Gees, ten years isn't that long, have you folks forgotten already?

STFU and RTFA.

It's meant to be syllogistic.

As in:

Linux:Operating Systems::OpenStack:Cloud

At this point, though, OpenStack is still pre-1.0, perhaps equivalent to Linux circa 1993. Whether it can polish up and continue to deliver what is needed is yet to be seen.

The impetus behind cloud right now means that this will be a lot more high profile than Linux was in 1993. There's all sorts of politics (eg Why Citrix Left Openstack) at play, and no one has an OpenStack cloud of any significant size running. OpenStack has been tooting its horn for 18+ months and yet the most advanced player is really just going into production. Rackspace clearly sees OpenStack as an avenue to leverage outside development in an effort to go after Amazon, but whether that makes it viable for other people - and thus creates a rewarding ecosystem - has yet to be seen.

They lock it on ARM for the same reason Google does it with ChromeOS, because if you can just bypass the boot security on a mobile device ALL security is as easy to bypass as "Hey want a free copy of "Plants VS Zombie" well just run this!" which then installs itself into the boot and ur pwned.

What I want to know is what kind of assurance is Canonical gonna provide to the OEMs. Are they gonna guarantee they won't screw the drivers in the main branch like they did with Dell or are these OEMs gonna have to do like Dell and run their own repos (which of course leaves them behind the curve and vulnerable) which will cause their support costs to go through the roof?

Lets face it there is a REASON why OEMs ain't been using Linux, and it ain't because writing all them checks for OEM copies of Windows gives them a big happy, its because the Linux driver model sucks when it comes to updates. Nobody is gonna continue to sell Linux boxes, I don't care if they are Ubuntu or PCLOS or any other flavor, if their support costs go up due to borked drivers. Now we ALL know that Linux has some serious problems with upgrades, especially wireless and Nvidia or ATI drivers so unless these OEMs are ONLY gonna sell the LTS and ONLY warranty it for the amount of time left on the LTS then this is gonna be a problem unless Canonical steps up and makes damned sure their upgrades don't go poop on the drivers. If Canonical is gonna step up? great wonderful, glad to hear it. if they are not? Well then this will probably end up a lot like an experiment in how quick to turn off the OEMs to ever using Linux.

No, it's really much slower, particularly in double-precision:
Nvidia cripples GPGPU in Geforce GTX 680
Benchmark Results: Sandra 2012
NVIDIA GTX 680 Reviewed: A New Hope

Only for varying degrees of "capable":
Nvidia cripples GPGPU in Geforce GTX 680
Benchmark Results: Sandra 2012
NVIDIA GTX 680 Reviewed: A New Hope

A roundup of reviews from the usual major sites as well as others not mentioned in the summary above: Overclockers Review, Anandtech Review, Anandtech Undervolting/Overclocking, HardwareSecrets, Bit-tech, PCPer, Tweaktown, Hard OCP, The Inquirer, Techspot, Computer Shopper, Tom's Hardware, ExtremeTech, PC Mag, Overclockers Club, and Guru 3d

Yes, Charlie is a known nVidia basher, but he backed up his findings in bumpgate. http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1049921/inquirer-confirms-apple-macbook-pros-nvidia-bad-bump-material Google bumpgate and you will find many articles about Nvidia paying OEMs hundreds of millions for their faulty graphics chips.

Well, when all the litigation amongst the companies shook out, it turns out that Nvidia is footing the bill for their own screw-up.

As much as it pains me to defend Apple's corporate behavior in any matter, Nvidia was clearly in the wrong. Apple had no advance knowledge of Nvidia's bad engineering and dishonest documentation. The GPUs failed after time and use, so only an unrealistically long engineering evaluation period by any customer of Nvidia's parts would have uncovered the issue. Apple was boned, and Nvidia did the boning.

This little peccadillo on Nvidia's part is how they wound up on my "never buy" list.

The Inquirer chased the story quite intensively back in the 2009 timeframe. This query will give you the list of the articles there that might provide a bit of context to this story.

Oh look, its a FOSSie, aka basement troll. How's the koolaid, is it cherry? You want some links on breakage? be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it and that is showing that one of the largest OEMs on the planet can't keep your craptastic OS running without having to do their own fricking fork!

This is why a decade old Windows beat the shit out of Linux on netbooks or how ASUS has given up on your bullshit or how about Walmart running away from linux as fast as it can? want some more? Nice thing about having the truth on your side instead of religious dogma, i can do this alllll day long! How about you actually have the balls to celebrate getting a whole 1% market share while you are actually lower than JavaME and there is a whole website dedicated To your bullshit and excuses

And how about that "great" Linux security that is supposed to be why we should put up with all this horseshit? Get ready, here they come! Kinda makes that koolaid just a little bitter now, don't it? Now why would anybody care when they could get a Mac or Win 7 and not deal with all this lies and horseshit?

BTW if you'd like a little more food for thought, what OS was 3 of the 4 CAs running that were compromised? take a look and see. Maybe they just had bad configs? Surely someone with knowledge would be safe right? Guess again and its not a fluke by any means.

http://www.theinquirer.net/img/7144/os2thing.jpg

Excuse #209-"Ur doin it wrong" notice how to a militant with a perception bubble it is NEVER the fault of the OS, ever? Hell they even used Excuse #209 on the Ubuntu battery problem right up until canonical admitted that yes, they were suffering from serious power usage problems.

Linux is known for a lot of things but good wireless drivers? Not one of them. trying Linux on dozens of different makes and models that have come through my shop I've found with Linux what works OOTB will work just fine, but the parts that do NOT work OOTB? Give it up chuck, you might as well not bother as it'll be nothing but frustration. if it doesn't have sound, if it doesn't have wireless, you better just learn to live without because it is nothing but an exercise in pain, because one thing about Linux is it is never halfway, either it works brilliantly or you are SOL. Sadly on laptops unless you specifically buy a Linux laptop (and even then only from certain vendors, because even Dell has to run their own repos because the standard drivers don't work) then it really is a crapshoot. like it or not all the hardware has Windows drivers, with linux it may or may not, they may be up to date or may not, they may work with the newest kernel or may not, that is just the way it is friend.

I'm not convinced on the justifications of not supporting flash when there clearly isn't a viable alternative yet.

And with that mentality, there never will be.

Here's what Adobe suggests.

Here's 10 alternatives to Flash Player.

Then there's the "Occupy Flash" movement, LOL!

So, admit it. You're just plain lazy. You don't WANT to have to learn a new way.

Tough.

Two years ago, you had a point. But not now.

You're beating a dead horse and you very well know it.

I'd love to see some sort of sort of source from 2005 about that...

Sony president says Playstation 3 will be expensive

Can't find anything like it for the 360. In fact, I found the bit about the PS3 while looking for such a citation for the 360, started there first.

Insightful? For what? bragging your on an OS lower than the margin for error and therefor not worth a criminal's time. hey you should brag you are on OS/2, I bet it ain't needed a single patch in years! Meanwhile you can enjoy such fun recreational activities as 1.-hunting for fixes on forums every 6 months when the latest update deathmarch craps on 1 or more of your drivers, 2.- Having such wonderful documentation that is at best just a pile of CLI use flags, at worse a 'todo" file, 3.-having an "OS" that is just a hodge podge of programs written by a bunch of groups that have nothing to do with each other, so some follow Windows conventions, some mac, and some unix, 4.- having such wonderful QA that Dell has to run their own repos just to keep the OS from going "LOL I made a stinky!" on itself and killing the wireless, need i go on?

As for your much vaunted security? might want to look at some things, ready?

Get ready, here they come! BTW if you'd like a little more food for thought, what OS was 3 of the 4 CAs running that were compromised? take a look and see. Maybe they just had bad configs? Surely someone with knowledge would be safe right? Guess again and its not a fluke by any means.

with LOWER wage keyboard monkeys.

See EDS. EDS has been doing this for 10 years, not just recently.

Yours In Minsk,
K. Trout, C.I.O.

Thank you for living proof that FOSSies are batshit. you still think that I'm a guy that I can't even get along with and to this very day we don't agree on anything OTHER than the fact you're batshit? delusional much? but if its a pimp slapping of your craptastic OS you want, enjoy! See that's the nice thing about reality, while all you have is insults I have facts! Where are YOUR facts? oh right, they don't exist :-(

Get ready, here they come! Kinda makes that koolaid just a little bitter now, don't it? I believe in using the best tool for the job, but to say Linux is secure or better than any other complex OS is frankly bullshit. Hell I was talking to a 15 year Linux admin on one of the other sites that had gotten so sick of Linux fuckups they were going to BSD and if THAT didn't "just work" they were gonna wash their hands of FLOSS on the desktop and just go Mac.

BTW if you'd like a little more food for thought, what OS was 3 of the 4 CAs running that were compromised? take a look and see. Maybe they just had configs? Surely someone with knowledge would be safe right? Guess again and its not a fluke by any means.

Would you like some more reality? well here it comes! Isn't it sad, how like a frightened child afraid to look under the bed, you cower at the truth? if your driver model isn't shit then why does Dell have to run their own repos even though we are talking a teeny tiny subset of hardware? Oh right because Linux shits itself and dies if you use the default repos! Man that is some excellent product you got there! you think I can get better QA than the third largest OEM on the planet? What, you expect me to tell paying customers "Go to the forum, kiss some loser ass, and maybe, just maybe, in a few days someone will have mercy and give you a big pile of bullshit that may or may not make your sound work again"?

Bleeding yet douchey? want some more? nice thing about having the truth on your side, you can keep throwing punches all day! How about how a decade old Windows beat the shit out of Linux on netbooks or how ASUS has given up on your bullshit or how about Walmart running away from linux as fast as it can? You got the crazy koolaid drunk enough to say they ALL are paid shills because they won't do your forum dance or CLI horseshit? Meanwhile your "hero" Torvalds the great says Plans? We don't need no steenkin plans!. Why don't you tell them that at work next week, see how quick you get a pink slip? More? How about you actually have the balls to celebrate getting a whole 1% market share while you are actually lower than JavaME and there is a whole website dedicated To your bullshit and excuses .

You see you whiny little delusional mama's boy, I'm your worst fucking nightmare...a retaile

No wonder Apple's brand is slipping.

Microsoft looses money on XBox360 sold. Sony loses money on every PS3 sold. Gillette loses money on every razor handle made. They make the money up on other areas because they are smart enough to do so. ASUS should have been making money on selling Linux units because it didn't have to pay anyone for the license. However, Microsoft often tips the scales by (illegally) paying vendors for shipping Windows (as in this case). Then the consumer choice is removed. This is my point. This is what keeps the Windows monopoly going. No large company is going to invest in developing an alternative because Microsoft uses a combination of licensing threats (removal of cheap licenses) and 'bribe' payments to bundle Windows exclusively. This is my point. When Win8 comes out and it sucks and people are forced to use it because they have no realistic alternative because Microsoft ensure there is no absolutely economic incentive for alternatives to be developed then we'll still get shopkeepers like yourself blaming Linux or Mac OS X for the lack of market penetration when the real reason is the lack of a free market and level playing field (one devoid of illegal monopoly payments). This is my point. Intel does exactly the same thing, but it is not illegal because it isn't using one monopoly to create another (unlike Microsoft). Oh, and while you're busy defending Microsoft's business practices (attributing the current state of the market to their 'superior' software rather than their business practices) I hope you love getting reamed by the unit pricing on Windows.

Notice how the Windows phones are such dogs the Microsoft have to pay the point-of-sales folks a direct commission to try and move them (but they're still not moving, lol). The (Microsoft) technology is perfectly fine but in this case the network effect (Apple and Android[Linux]) are already established. What usually works for Microsoft in new spaces (payments to vendors and exclusive licensing terms) failed here. The best tech doesn't always win. There are a bunch of factors at play.

Incidentally, it sounds partially is your view is because you are bitter with regard to Linux because your well-meaning suggestions weren't immediately jumped on by a legion of willing developers. You don't need a Masters to develop useful user-space stuff on Linux. Read about how this 60-year old retired civil servant made a difference instead of just complaining: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1047633/one-writes-linux-drivers-235-usb-webcams

Hell, a great businessman would see an opportunity that perhaps Linux just needs a little polish and you could re-sell it using all the labour already put in over the years (Google did this with Android). With the Win8 opportunity coming up the time to start it is now. Not just whining about the situation like a lazy shag, but actually doing something innovative. Incidentally, I'm not in the O/S retail space. I have seen an opportunity in another space and am working towards that goal - and the software will run on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. Avoiding the Windows-only trap is just smart business.

Uhhh...your link shows Microsoft PAID FOR AN AD. Are you no longer allowed to pay for ads because FOSS wants to be "free as in beer"? And did you look at the date? Xandros had already stopped updating by that time. Again do you HONESTLY expect Asus to place an unsupported OS on their units? finally a little link of my own you might find interesting and a far more likely reason they quit carrying Linux, which is a 400% higher return rate for Linux than Windows on netbooks. We are talking about a unit where the average profit per unit is $6-$8. At margins that razor thin literally more than a handful of returns can make the whole line unprofitable. Have you EVER sold anything at retail? If you'd have you'd know high returns are the kiss of death.

This is what never fails to amaze me about FOSS zealots and their perception bubbles. More people STEAL WINDOWS than have EVER used your product, even though your product is free, doesn't that whack you upside the head with a cluebat? Here it is 2012 and you STILL refuse to ask the single most important question: What are my competitors (and it is a competition) doing right that I'm doing wrong? Ask the retailers, we'll be happy to tell you. your driver model is horribly broken and like something from 15 years ago, your sound system is the buggiest POS I've ever seen with updates to seemingly unrelated systems causing Pulseaudio to puke and give silence or static, you still have figured out how to get a machine to wake from sleep, NONE of your devs follow the UI conventions, some use the Windows conventions, some use Mac conventions, some old school Unix which makes the whole experience disjointed. Basically the whole system feels like a bunch of different crap thrown together by people who never talk to each other....which is pretty much what it is. Hell even one of the largest OEMs on the planet Dell has to run their own repos because they can't even get enough QA from the so called "user friendly distro" to keep the drivers from puking, even though they sell less than a dozen models!

Waste your mod points all you want but this is a truth that needs to be spoken, it is THIS, this right here, that keeps Linux in last place. Somewhere along the way making F/LOSS accessible to the masses was thrown to the wayside in favor of the "FLOSSie club" as I call it, where You must prove your "worthy" of using the gifts the great Torvalds and RMS have bestowed upon thee. In this club anything that makes F/LOSS more useful, easier, and friendlier? why that is bad, its "rampant consumerism" or "dumbing down" and anything that makes Linux more complex, obtuse, or fiddly is "smarter" and "more powerful". I have actually been told by a member of the FLOSSie club when i pointed out that Linux was too CLI heavy for my consumers "to make them embrace the power of CLI" like its the Goddamn force!

A wise person once said "You know what the definition of insanity is? Its doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result" and that is EXACTLY what the community has been doing. Insane release schedule, broken drivers, none of that matter because the users will embrace the power of CLI and learn "the Unix way" even though Unix was NEVER supposed to be a consumer OS and died out over a decade ago!

In the end its not a conspiracy, its not magic, hell Microsoft is being run by a bumbling idiot with Apple envy and you STILL can't get ahead! Have you seen Win 8? Its a fricking bad joke and you STILL won't gain any share, people will pirate Win 7 instead, why? Its because you DO NOT LISTEN TO US. You don't listen to the consumers, to the retailers, nor the OEMs, its a bunch of nerds scratching itches and having a "I'm moar leet!" wankfest. You're a good decade behind your competition, here we are in the great XP dieoff in a recession and NOBODY, not Best Buy

All the others can be hacked by predators to take pictures of the children.

Why would they care about that, when the government has no problem with school districts spying on students themselves?

Awww...did the poor little FOSSie have his perception bubble busted again? i do find that so delightful. I don't know whether to laugh at you or feel pity at your being so fucking pathetic, I mean I have wrote article on how to make Linux more accessible to small business, what have you done besides wave your tiny penis and scream shill at anybody that won't kiss RMS' sweaty ass? But don't worry i have some nice facts that will make your day, a place where linux is winning? Its vulnerabilities..

Not only does Linux have 4x++ the amount of unpatched security vulnerabilities its competitor Windows Server 2008 does, but it bears 3 remotely exploitable unpatched security vulnerabilities (THE WORST KIND!): one and a two and a three. But hey, what can you expect from an OS that actually has less users than JavaME which is a shitty sub basement OS they put on Tracphones. Of course when you were given an equal chance to compete a decade old Windows beat the shit out of your Linux on netbooks and even ASUS, which invented the whole netbook for the masses with a Linux unit even ASUS has given up on your bullshit How about how you actually have the balls to celebrate getting a whole 1% market share ?

But you stick your head under your little blankie and start crying about how "Only a shill wouldn't love our perfect OS!" while ignoring all the bugs, the vulnerabilities, failures, hell even Dell has to run their own repos just to keep your "precious" from crapping itself. How much money you think that costs Alex? wanna bet dell is LOSING money on every sale? I bet you think they can make it up on volume though huh? You just keep telling yourself I'm a bad man, I must be a "M$ Ninja" when in reality I'm your worst fucking nightmare...a retailer that has tried your shit and seen what a turd it is. hell its not even up to WinXP standards, much less OSX Lion or Win 7. Hell Vista was the biggest POS on the planet and even with MSFT not even having a horse in the race they fricking STOMPED you with a decade old creaking POS, how fucking sad and pathetic do you have to be to get beat by an OS that is so damned old it came out before SATA or even dual cores and it STILL kicks your ass?

Maybe instead of calling names you should volunteer to fix some of the mess huh? i'm sure you think of yourself as some kind of programming genius because you can copypasta into a CLI. Of course in Windows we would call that a script kiddie, but I guess that means genius in your world. Oh a final bit of info, just FYI...Kernel.org pwnage , Linux.com pwned too oh and MYSQL.com throwing malware worse than a "look at teh titties" toipsite in case you missed it. Man gotta be impressed by that kick ass Linux security, them eyes that make bugs shallow must have cataracts huh?