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Windows in 2020
sasha328 writes: "I came across this article on LA Times while I was reading the LinuxToday news site. It is very funny, and points out the in layman's language, the problem with homogeneity in computer OSes. Well worth reading."
Secondly, could you quote the law that gives you "the ability to destroy competitors who improve on your product"? Hasn't Microsoft made a career out of 'improving on' competitors' products? If your statement were correct, the Microsoft trial would never have happened. Netscape would have simply 'destroyed' MS for improving on its browser.
Thirdly, RTFA. The article says, "Apple Computer continues to do well", and refers to "a team of Linux programmers". The scenario does not require Linux being "wiped off the face of the earth", only that the overwhelming number of machines run exactly the same thing.
Besides, a big reason that people dislike Microsoft is that Microsoft on every machine means more control for Microsoft and that's it, whereas Linux on every machine doesn't give anybody a death grip over consumers. It's all about a desktop that looks like Microsoft says it will versus the choice between Gnome, KDE, neither, etc.
No, I didn't read the goddamned article.
Huh huh - you said "pulled".
I don't think it is - the problem is finding the best protocol to use to let computers talk to each other. The OS is several levels above this, and standardising on the OS is like standardising on a singe type of cell phone.
But won't the OS of today be the protocol of the future? If we programmers are going to be getting anywhere, we're going to have to keep building on top of what's been already done. I no longer use assembly, many Web designers now know very little HTML -- folks are always building on what was made in the past.
And if they can all build on a common base (TCP/IP now, an OS in the future), it'll mean more and better things get done.
-Dug
Never say never when Micro$oft is concerned. I've been involved in the Home Automation industry and the established vendors got real nervous when Micro$oft started getting the biggest booth they could at HA shows. But all they really seemed to demo was home networking. Home Automation is more about centralized control of the systems in your house. Climate control, A/V, security, etc. For years it has been heavily run by embedded systems using RTOS setups. There are also systems that run on PCs, but they often lack easy to find and use I/O (Digital, Analog, RS-485, etc) Its out there but not for mainstream stuff. Right now, one of the more popular PC based setups is Mr House which is perl based.
So yes, Microsoft really thinks this is an area they can dominate. Yes, some of the high dollar systems (think 10-20% of the cost of your new home) run windows. But for 'everyday' Home Automation, embedded setups are king. Linux is just starting to get buzz for the next generation stuff, but primarily, Home Automation is run on 8-bit systems from PIC microcontrollers up to high end embedded CPUs. The reason? Cost. When you can buy a small system for Considering you can get complete RTOS systems like uC-OS/II (Rabbit C) or Java (Dallas TINI) with a compiler with built in Internet libraries for HTTP, FTP, SMTP, etc, etc including servers for $300, its hard to justify paying royalties for anythign Micro$oft might come out with. Especially when the actual HW cores can be had for $30-$100 including ethernet!
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
Yes, you do get economies of scale if you have huge companies. Coca Cola can ship beverages cheaper and more reliably than 10000 local bottling plants all over the country. You do derive benefits from comparative advantage if you have completely open trade.
The problem is that the megacorp approach sacrifices the diversity that underlies a healthy free market just as much as a healthy ecology. In effect, the cheaper soft drink or the cheaper PC is bought by opportunity costs: society and the market lose the ability to adapt to changing conditions quickly because there are no alternative players that can take over. Instead, the leading players need to laboriously restructure and adapt, with all the speed and efficiency of the Soviet (planned) economy.
What can be done about it? Giving the states more autonomy helps. Allowing states and cities to adopt a wide variety of local regulations helps. Taxing interstate and international commerce helps. A progressive taxation system for corporate profits might help. But all of those are fighting words to conservative economists, as well as corporate backed politicians. And such approaches are not without risk of abuse and inherent problems either.
There is something you can do as a customer, though: be aware of the importance of diversity. Buy local, buy from small companies, and buy the non-mainstream product. Pay a little more for the high-quality specialty item. Don't worry about what the Joneses do. Do without, or do something different. Don't make a habit of eating at big chains, watching a lot of TV, etc. In addition too creating economic diversity, your health and your wallet will thank you, too. But don't obsess about it, either: moderate change in a lot of people is far better than obsessive change in a few.
I notice that the "yaboot" linux bootloader works just fine on the new, "changed" macs, and no one ever managed to write a proper Linux bootloader (well, OK, miBoot, but it was a terrible kludge) for the old macs.
Be were just a bunch of whiners IMO.
I have a positive modifier on Troll. When I mod someone Troll their karma should go UP!
Remember that most REAL servers don't run either Windows or Linux. Look at a list of major Web sites and the OS's they run, lots of Solaris, HP-UX and BSD. Consider that for most corporations the REALLY mission critical stuff is probably running on a S/390, AS/400, Tandem, or OpenVMS box. You don't think anyone is insane enough to try running the NYSE or a major bank with MS products?
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
I honestly think this won't be the case, for the following reasons:
Unix systems, having been multi-user systems for a number of years, have well-established guidelines for how much permission to give an application. Even simple things like access permissions and chroots would prevent really devastating worms from hosing your system, and perhaps even from spreading. (Even if Linux supports VBScript Attachments in the future, it's very unlikely that the attachment will be able to do much outside of that user's account...) Many Windows problems stem from giving applications too many permissions. The "tight integration" of Windows applications is done with only lip service to security. (this may be better in Win2K, I haven't done that much with it)...
The Open-Source nature of all the major Unix Services mean that any holes can be found more quickly, and be quickly made available. If someone is suspicious of a certain piece of code, they can LOOK AT IT and find out for themselves. You can't do that with IIS, and have to rely on MS to analyze the code and release patches, making the whole process shower and leaving computers vulernable for longer periods of time. By the time the patch comes out, the hysteria may have dies down, and the Admin may have moved on to other things. (Yes, this means that at least one Admin in an organization should know how to read code. I don't think this is unreasonable.)
Individual Open-Source programs are widely deployed (Apache and BIND, for example) and while they have their share of problems, they don't have nearly as many problems as Windows or IIS. Compare the number of Apache problems over the last five years with the number of IIS problems, relate that to market share, and please tell me if I'm wrong!
In short, if Linux had the same market share as Windows, there would certainly be more Linux nasties than there are now, but not nearly as serious and not nearly in the same proportion as currently affects MS products, for all the reasons I outlined above.
After watching Microsoft profit off of bad software and business decisions that screwed people over again and again, I have come to the following conclusion:
Darwinism does not apply to Capitalism.
The best product, unfortunately, is usually not the one that survives. Rather, it's the one that has the best marketing.
On the topic of using old computers, I don't think it's because they're hard to maintain. I don't know what you mean by that - my Atari ST needs no maintainance. I don't use it for one simple reason - I have absolutely no use for it. Everything I do on my PC would be completely impossible with that little amount of computing power.
We only need a metaphor to explain something new. But a kid growing up in 2020 will spend more time looking at virtual windows then real ones. He will not need a new methaphor unless there is something new to explain. In fact, it could work the other way around, complex new systems might be explained as a kind of collection of windows. And mail might be explained as a kind of email but with real paper.
Domination by Linux won't happen, because it's too decentralized. That's why a lot of folks hold it up as an ideal. There is no evil corporation with restrictive licenses pushing bug-ridden crap out the door to make a buck and stomp on any competition. If Linux took over, who would run things? Not Bill, but the programmers. Sure, the reporters would all look to Red Hat's CEO for interviews, but he wouldn't run the show any more than he does now.
"If it were our OS that "won" the great battle for the desktop," versions would be released when they were ready. Patches would come out quickly. Software would include things that work, not paperclips. The money that we spend on computers would go towards running them, not into Gates' pocket. Linux isn't going to take over, but it's precisely because of the reasons that it won't that it wouldn't be a bad thing like what we have now.
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
Games are not the reason to upgrade that they once were.
i firmly believe that if microsoft was a worse company, it could not retain its hold, nor could it have gotten there in the first place.
...) is the second.
Because MS is a worse company is why it's at the top of the food chain in the first place. You don't understand how they got there. Not once did they actually go to the public with a OS product, sell it, and sell big. They've always made deals behind the backs of the consumers. They got DOS onto the PC, because IBM made a deal with them, and all ther clonemakers had to have the same OS as IBM. Competiting DOS products were wiped out because Microsoft made their DOS incompatible with the competitors ON PURPOSE. Afterwards they made deals with computer resellers to preload Windows on PC's. Microsoft already had market dominance, so computer resellers had to sell PC's with MS's OS on it. And MS told them they could get it cheaper if they preloaded Windows on _every_ PC. That's why shops either don't preload Windows at all (only on request), or they preload on ALL PC's.
That's how they got their market dominance. Not through actually selling something straight to the consumer.
microsoft provides software that is easy to navigate, an os which is unparallel in simplicity, and the best web browser that i can think of offhand
No single piece of MS software has no competitor that's easier to use. MacOS is a lot simpler than Windows, and if you're complaining about that being on another hardware platform, then try BeOS, that completely trumps Windows on it's own platform as far as usability goes. Besides, IE is not necessarily the best web browser. It's UI is majorly counter-intuitive, in such great lengths that a lot of people stick with Netscape, even though Netscape releases one shoddy product after another. It's also less standards compliant than competing browsers like konqueror and mozilla. It's bigger than most of the alternatives. And Windows IE is even outcompeted by IE for the mac in every respect. Not that it's not stable, and fast, but it's not the gift of God you portray it to be.
amd and intel make beautiful chips at low prices
It is generally accepted that the x86 architecture is the _worst_ cpu architecture out there. It is an absolute disaster as far as design goes, and this has a majorly negative impact on performance, which forces them to make the chips run at higher clockspeeds to outcompete the alternatives. Intel crippled the Pentium 4 just to make it run at a higher clockspeed. It actually became slower, instead of aster, as you would expect. The only reason it might be preferred is because it extends the x86 instruction set yet again with instructions specifically for multimedia apps. They also overcharge in a lot of situations, but the competition between each other has brought prices to a reasonable point for average cpu's. But just look at the top of the line and think about how they can reasonably defend charging that much. Sometimes 30 mhz difference can set you back over a 100 dollars. That's a BIG difference.
coke and pepsi have good pop.
Agreed, they do have good pop. But you should research what Coke does behind the screens. Very interesting. But not necessarily a consequence of the failure of modern capitalism.
thirdly, the us is not a pure capitalist state, nor is it enough of one to accuse capitalism for bogging us down. the problem we have is government interference - the ability to destroy competitors who improve on your product, for example, is a particularly ugly piece of legislation designed to protect businesses by stifling innovation.
Here I partly agree with you. The problem is the patent system. Not patents per se, which are needed, but the generality and laziness of the system around it. Anyone can get a 20 year monopoly on anything. That's too long, and too simple to obtain. And some stuff just shouldn't be patentable (like genomes, which aren't inventions but discoveries) The system is way to easy to exploit, and it's destroying people's lives.
But removing the government from the picture is very bad. Most of the times the gov lets an indusrty do as they please, the situation melts down. Government intervention is needed. The only problem is that right now you can buy your own law if you have enough money, so there is no real government. Creating a real, independant government is the first step, and doing away with all the bought laws (like the copyright bills, the dmca, ucita, and so on
ms does not need a patch - it will die, eventually, if it's not what the people want. and if it is what the people want, then who are you to deny them that?
Here you're probably right. Companies don't have absolute dominance yet. They're like sheepherders. You can send the flock anywhere you want, but if it panics there's no way you're going to be able to control it.
i don't know how many minds it will change, but it's bringing microsoft's new licensing scheme into a larger forum. someone whining about it in the LA Times reaches a lot more people than someone whining about it on slashdot.
one thing the article didn't address, though (and i know i'm going to get flame for this one) is the benefit of the scheme: code red would have gone away the day microsoft released the patch, while EVEN NOW some people haven't patched their servers. a subscription service would be a boon for the clueless --and they're NEVER going away-- but it should be optional.
oh, and i thought macs were already a religion. i've seen people change religions but i've never seen a mac user switch to unix and say "look at all i've been missing!"
"Mister Potato-head --MISTER POTATO-HEAD! Backdoors are not secrets!" (War Games, 1983)
Which is, of course, because most people who use their computers for games don't care enough about them to choose non-ms. That means that most games aren't give *nix compatibility until months after they're released these days... the lack of diversity in the commercial os market (let's face it, Linux isn't a major commercial os for anything other than servers, because most have never even heard of it) means that people who make the software don't have to be flexible.
It's similar to this: Let's say Ford changed the way they build wheels, so that you needed a special type of tire to fit on them. Let's also say (bear with me here) that Ford somehow built themselves up to contain 97% or so of the market share for vehicles. That means that tire producers would not only have to make their tires Ford-compatible, but might decide to save money and not bother to make them compatible with the other 3% of vehicles.
Well, that's my beleagured analogy. I forgot where I was going with this, so I'm going to end it now.
----
On the other hand, I've never seen a linux box kill itself in this fashion. Sure, I've seen crap happen like ext2 volume corrupting from bad restarts, but with ReiserFS, XFS and JFS becoming stable that's not really a problem anymore.
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
Why does MS ship it with most services running? Apple does the opposite with OS X; almost everything is disabled by default.
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Oh the fun you could have with this game .. how 'bout ..
;)
Windows POS
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They will rename it to Indimentional Portal 2020. No wait 100% of their deditcated consumers will not know what that is. Oh well keep on trying microsoft scum.
Nathan McCotter
nate_ remove--->NOCRAP---remove is@nova.org
Well, I'm not saying it's really planned, but it seems they never really stop finding bugs in Microsoft's software. At the same time, they do stop issuing patches for software that is no longer officially supported. If Code Red had emerged 5 years from now, and Microsoft simply said the fix was to upgrade to Windows XXL (or whatever it'll be in 2006) then you'd have to choose having your HD repeatedly formatted by script kiddies, or upgrading to the latest version of Windows (or switching to Linux, but I'm betting that if you're still holding onto Windows 2000 six years after it came out, you're not the type to take change lightly.)
Very interesting idea - this will probably be the case. The answer appears to be auto-adminstrated machines, which automatically search for updates on a regular basis.
While an advantage it has the potential to be exploited by a "black hat" hacker. What would happen if a worm or virus exploited the patch repository and installed a trojan update?
Some people see a solution, others see a problem.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
> Quake, I need new algorithms to make Quake look
> like natural motion at 30 fps.
80 fps! 80 fps!
30 fps is jerky, somewhere between 60-80 fps it becomes smooth, like looking through a window.
The old software renderer, on 320x200, played on a good machine (as of 2 years ago) looks eerie, even with pixels the size of Hillary's ego.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
Be's story that it was all Apple's fault may have had more to do with getting passed over in favour of NeXT and receiving a large cash injection from Intel...
-dair (yeah, OT)
and that, my friend, is what you use an Athlon for.
Of everything I've read or heard in the last month this has to be the least significant item in the mix. There is absolutely nothing of worth in this article. I think I was more enthused by the notice that we're required to recycle toner cartridges.
Someone mod this guy with a quick but firm blow to the head.
- Sig this!
firstly, microsoft does not have a stranglehold on the market. Have you ever READ the licence for Microsoft products? Nobody would in their RIGHT mind pay a lot of dollars for a product when there are NO GUARANTEES about whether it works or not, and it also specifically says that the producer is NOT LIABLE for any inherent flaws?
How would you like it if GM made a car with brakes that disintegrated after three months, but could not be sued because of several clauses in the buying contract?
Whether we like tort law or not, it HAS provided increased security for John Average. Poor security not only leads to a questionable reputation, it leads to direct expenses in lawsuit settlements and/or court proceedings.
Contradicting yourself in adjoining sentences. nice stuff. and hey - a much better way of killing yourself in traffic is drinking and driving.
Stop the brainwash
This reminds me of the Dilbert cartoon where Dilbert is talking to a salesman about a new computer. The salesman points out that this computer has only one button (implied ideal user interface). When asked what the button does, the salesman pulls back and says "Whoa, I'm in over my head, you'd better call tech support."
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
Then so are any govenment contracts. It's in the procument manuals. An OS puchased must have POSIX without any sort of add on. The government buys a lot of stuff to just ignore them.
You're also making the invalid assumption that Linux == Linux
Man, I haven't had a laugh like that all day. And I've been hitting slashdot hard. (Yes, I do know what you mean, and it makes sense. But the quotation remains goddamned funny).
$17 for 128 MB sounds pretty good to me. :)
TCP/IP is a great protocol and now, thankfully, we can take it for granted that we can intercommunicate between machines freely. What is more important now is higher level protocols which allow file/information transfer. In 2019 when LanMan 22.0 goes Beta with password encryption using a fully patented technique where will the rest of us be with our humble FTP and StarOffice/KDE file formats. Will we even come close to Gate's XML 10.0 Alpha format? I really do not want to exchanging high level document formats using TEXT in 2019! Come to think of it, in 2019 I think I would rather be making a living sailing the Seven Seas!
Returning to the central issue, though, Microsoft should hardly be used as evidence of the failures of capitalism. Few would claim that markets cannot fail, and the typical scenario used to illustrate market failure is the monopoly. Excuse me, but did you miss the antitrust case? Furthermore, every company you list holds a nice portfolio of patents. What is a patent other than a monopoly granted by the government. The legitimacy of the patent claims issued by the USPTO is another issue entirely.
You're crying wolf if you think capitalism has failed. It's sad that so many people will drive their SUVs into their offices today and sit with coffee in hand and nod while reading your post. Your misinformation along with the ignorant protests of other anti-capitalists are worse than anything a Microsoft marketing rep has ever written because they risk the foundation of our society and the future of our families far more than the next Microsoft Security Advisory.
djb fixed all the BIND security flaws long ago. It is called djbdns.
I know that, *that is why* we need new algorithms for motion graphics.
Your TV at 300x200 at 30 fps gives life like color and smooth motion. Your computer dosn't.
Ever wonder WHY?
KFG
>M68000 CPU
The M68000 CPU was amazing, and outperformed anything by Intel when it was released (and for many years thereafter).
>1 MB RAM
The 1040ST had 4 MB of RAM, and by replacing the MMU, you could upgrade further.
I had a 50MB HD, and that was huge. It was divided into 5 partitions, and each contained hundreds of files and programs.
I ran bulletin boards on it for years, connected to UUCP servers, composed and played music, word processed, programmed in C and assembler, and played wonderful games.
I still miss it, to be truthful... *Sniff.*
Neopets - the best free game on the Int
By your own assertion, you seem content with the idea of Linux "crushing the competition"... Isn't this the same mentallity thats powering your much-hated adversary, Microsoft? How are you any better than them, if you're willing to engadge in the same sort of practices?
...Very kind of you to take an insulting tone with me when i've done nothing but speak my mind, by the way. Have a good one.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
I'm sure the resulting discussion about how evil-evil-evil OS homogeny is would be totally different if it were our OS that "won" the great battle for the desktop. We'd all be proudly singing the virtues about how Linux did away with the confusion inherent with supporting multiple platforms, and how it was Linux that prevailed in its design and implementation.
But it's not Linux's supremacy that's being talked about here. It's Windows..And that makes you angry.
Now, before you call me a turncoat, i'll underscore the fact that I love Linux -- I use it on the majority of systems I own, and couldn't live without it -- Regardless of that, I cant help but notice that I've grown increasingly disappointed with the Linux community's almost blind willingness to look down upon Windows as a platform et al, regardless of the fact that for most things, Windows is (nowadays) far easier to deal with from a user's standpoint than Linux us. To some degree, I myself am partly to blame -- I used to hate Microsoft simply because it was fun to, and not based on any real concrete observations. Regardless of how much I like Linux, i'd be lying if I said Microsoft hadn't come a long way in the past year or two in improving the stability and usability of their OS offerings.
The Linux community itself is partly to blame for Microsoft's domination. Its our own partisanship and internal bickering that has prevented Linux from showing a unified face to the world when it came to the desktop -- Had KDE and Gnome merged for the common good, and challenged Microsoft's stronghold on the desktop, we would have probably made it...But instead that challenge ended up being more of separate Gnome vs. Microsoft, then KDE vs. Microsoft battle. We got squashed, and sent home with our tail between our legs. That was our fault, not theirs.
OS homogeny is a wonderful thing if it's your OS they're talking about. Its only when that homogeny is achieved with an OS you don't like that homogeny becomes on par with communism. Ask yourself if your opinion on OS homogeny would be the same if Linux were king of the hill versus Windows. How you answer that question will dictate wether or not you need to re-evaluate your view of the competition.
BTW, thanks to all who visited the site earlier today. It was a good stress test!
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
I'm going out today to buy various samples of corn and freeze them.
I don't think the kernels will be viable for planting after freezing. However, if you keep them in a dry and semi cool place, they can probably keep in storage for a very long time. I'm not sure about 20 years, though...
Frosted Flakes, on the other hand -- They would probably still be safe to eat after 20 years if you kept them frozen, I'm just not sure how they would taste.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
I don't think you understand either Darwinism or Capitalism.
Dawinism states that the organisms that are best adapted for their environment will be the ones that pass on their genes.
Geeks love the BEST solution to a problem, where best == technically elegant or technically advanced.
The real world like the GOOD ENOUGH solution, which wins because there are more parameters than "technical elegance" in the real world. In the real world, MS wins most of the time because they are "best adapted" to the environment they work in.
Sad, but true. The world is not an ideal place.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
You have obviously never "played with" an ST, have you?
Definitely slow by today's standards, but, for example, my father is VERY happy with his. It does everything HE needs running of an old 80MB SCSI HD that I had no use for.
PS: Is there a "Thunder" like spell checker for Windows or Linux/*BSD?
"Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead." A. Huxley
Debian.
They already have signed package lists and a special security update server - just get the thing to try to run them at midnight.
Someone will set up an appliance box with two equal partitions. It will download security patches every day or so (and check the authenticity of all of its binary files, and install the correct packages to 'repair' any corrupted ones) and it will check their signature before installing them, eliminating the man in the middle attack. (Not only that, but probably downloading them over HTTPS at this point would be good...)
Then, copy partition 1 over partition 2, (you can be nicer, but we're going for secure), install the packages you've downloaded in partition 1, and check yourself. If you work, kill all non-authorized processes and keep chugging. If you don't work, copy partition 2 back over partition 1, kill all non-authorized processes, and page or call the network administrator phone numbers that you have. Enjoy!
Hehe... speaking about blocking company names, I was playing max payne today when I got to a room with a TV... i went into graphic novel mode and it said "Aesir could become and even bigger monopoly than Mi*static*oft was". True story!
They that quote Benjamin Franklin on liberty and safety deserve neither.
"while I was reading the LinuxToday news..."
... and LinuxToday's Kevin Reichard was long fired before internet.com's demise and LinuxToday was back to its great self in 2004
Thank god I live in 2021.
internet.com is dead
How did people ever manage to live in that excuse-of-a-world of 2001?
P.S. everybody get a playstation 9!!
(and what's up with that excuse-of-a-hardware xbox 2022?)
--
Violators will be prosecuted and prosecutors will be violated.
Um, but don't anyone else do it, OK?
Borg or lost for words?
I wonder if he'll still be getting burned by IBM engineers in 2020?
Right, so it's 2021, and I've decided I want to hack into a toaster running some stripped down version of NT. Lying silently in the bushes with my tricord-um, PDA, outside the house of Dr. Britney Spears, M.D., I quadruple-click on an icon and launch 'hack.exe'.
Within a few seconds, a box pops up, cheerily announcing that all the nodes on Britney's wireless home network now think I'm the hair dryer. Cackling, I set the toaster on 'high-ten minutes', and go about my merry business.
Oh, no, God, no! What a bleak, Ellison-esque future. The toast of our daughters is burnt, our hair dryers impersonated! We cannot slaughter the fatted calf, for the Butch-o-matic 3000's OS has been hacked into and it won't stop doing the chicken dance...we cannot pour the libations, for the EZ-pour has been mixing margaritas and refuses to do anything else...fear, pillage and rapine!
There will come a time when the security of the OSes citizens run will become critical to national security, if not world security. At that point, it will not be left up to MS, or whoever, to decide whether it wants to use resources to make an OS stable and secure, or code an animated paper clip. There WILL be government mandated minimal security for computers on the internet. You're not allowed to drive a car with no brakes, no turn signals, and a flattened cardboard box for a rear window on the interstate, are you?
I've seen 3D interfaces, and still have yet to see them offer anything other than a bunch of buzzwords. After all, reading isn't exactly a 3D thing. I suppose that by 2020 we'll all be illiterate though, and that an actual keyboard will be seen as less user friendly than a virtual one in 3D.
What if commodity hardware would only run a Microsoft operating system? If the CPU and bus architecture would only run pages of code which were digitally signed by Microsoft? It'll probably start as a privileged mode which gives access to "approved" hardware devices, and be promoted as a DRM feature with support from the RIAA and cronies, or as an antivirus security feature. Then it'll be extended to all code.
You simply won't be able to buy a new CPU which will run Linux.
I doubt things will move along from "windows" to "rooms" by 2020, although MSFT might be as far as "walls," or perhaps even "doorframes."
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
> proof that windows is not prefered is in the
> messages posted on slashdot about code red. I
> don't think I read a single message that said "
> I run a windows box and was affected".
In statistics you'd call that a skewed population sample. Seriously do you think any self-preserving Win2k admin who wasn't keeping up with the patches, would post a message to what has to be the single most anti-microsoft community?
I agree however, there will never be one perfect operating system. There will always be, as there has always been, as many operating systems as there are purposes for runnning computers. No one organisation is ever going to get it completely right for every situation.
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read the rest of his post dipshit. He refers to embedded systems.
I'm amazed that a CS dept. isn't forcing Unix/Linux down your throats! What OS are the students coding their projects on?
At my school everyone started on Digital Unix, and then all the %^* Linux zealots(read: freshman/sophmore Linux weenies) got the old sysadmin fired and they installed Debian on all the servers and required ssh logins. No longer was anyone not using *nix able to simply telnet in or ftp in, this act of zealotry forced *every* Windows/Mac user to download a program just to use the deptartments machines.
The majority(even the music majors) of my school knows what Linux is...They hate it! They hate the fact that they need to download software just to use the school's facilities that they used to be able to use without problem. They hate the fact that the school's generic mail program couldn't retrieve mail because it wasn't able to connect to the servers properly.
Add to this that the zealots didn't notify anyone that this change was ocurring! Once someone outside the dept. made a fuss the zealots promptly got suspended for a week, and Digital Unix returned.
Before someone cries foul, the reason they were suspended is that they did all the install of Debian over a weekend behind *everyone's* back and didn't tell anyone! They did not get the authorization from the school or even the CS dept. chair! Honestly I feel they got what they deserved. I'm all for a little OS zealotry, but when arrogant Linux users feel they know best for everyone, it just gives Linux a bad reputation.
Impossible? Really? I've never had nor seen an Atari ST but I've heard that they had a color GUI with multimedia that for the mid 80's rocked - sort of the Amiga before there was an Amiga. I don't doubt that it probably doesn't have a big hard drive or RAM but I've heard of people porting web browsers and such to the ST.
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
The basic tenet of a capitalist, free-enterprise system is that through competition and the invisible hand of supply-demand, products and productivity will constantly improve and thus society as a whole will prosper.
This, obviously, isn't happening.
Microsoft has no strong commercial competitors. AMD and Intel are the only major processor makers for PCs. Nobody can touch Rambus' stuff. No one sells cola at the same price as Coke or Pepsi that is any better. Wizards of the Coast has the only big CCG. The list goes on and on. The fact of the matter is that the large new corps have managed to warp the capitalist system with their own money. Theorectically no one in one of the modern capitalist countries, especially a hardcore capitalist one like America, should be able to strangle the market for their goods like Microsoft does or Rambus almost did - what needs a patch for our problems is not M$ but modern capitalism, and I don't like the way things are going, because in that path the only major wake-up call may turn out to be...
Hacked by Chinese!
{/rant)
-Better USB support
-P2P2P2P support for faster MP3 downloads
-Greatly improved SMP
-FreeCiv final + Minesweeper deluxe
-BIND security flaw patched
Case
Heh... I don't know about Microsoft overrunning alternate OSes, but they could just do what Apple did to BeOS.
:)
Which is to say, they could change the way every computer boots, so that it is impossible to make an alternate operating system for it other than Windows.
I know this would be a lot harder for Microsoft to do than Apple, because Microsoft does not have control of the hardware. However, I would not put it beyond their capabilities...
Scary thought, isn't it.
I wonder if anyone realizes that the same can be said of any other piece of software or OS. then, if we apply Darwin's rule to it, that means that smaller groups evolve faster than large ones.. In other words, MacOS and Linux (no one mentioned Linux in that article ??) will be far far ahead than Windows Uber Grande..The larger the userbase, the worse the problems :o) (Virus writers seldom bother targeting obscure software or architectures anyway)
Talk about being a victim of its own marketing success!
Sounds like someone forgot to download and patch their cornfields. Silly ecological administrators. On a similar note, another buffer overrun was found in tomatoes that permit another a plant to take root.
"Linux" isn't homogeneous. You don't read the occasional distro flame wars that pop up here, do you?
Seriously, take a look at the types of systems out there - you have embedded systems, production systems that still run 2.2.x kernels, home users running 2.4.8, mail/web/FTP servers, home boxen used for surfing and mp3s, workstations for development...there's just no end to the possible configurations of Linux systems lurking out there, and every one is running a different combination of services and software. Whereas Windows comes in...Server and Workstation (err, Professional and Home, these days). And now everything's going to be built on one kernel. Ouch. That's not "homogeneous", that's downright bland.
Linux probably won't ever be homogeneous like Windows because of that simple fact - with Windows, you get two choices. With Linux, you get who knows how many different distros, with thousands of different ways of installing and configuring. End result: Windows boxes are stamped from cookie cutters, but no two Linux machines are ever the same.
Any game that has an AI could benefit from a better CPU. _Combat Mission_, for instance, could use a better tactical AI, as well as dynamic lighting (right now, for instance, being next to a burning tank during a night battle doesn't have any particular effects -- such as worsening your vision and possibly making it easier for others to spot you). And it's certainly not a twitch game; in fact, the tactical AI is there because it is not, and due to its company/battalion-level scope should not be a twitch game. Instead, the AI needs to be able to intelligently override your commands during each 60-second turns if, say, something you didn't anticipate shows up. You wouldn't want your tanks merrily proceeding down the road as ordered if the leader hits a minefield and a previously hidden 88mm FlaK opens up; it's up to the computer to decide what to do, and it's fairly important that it does so reasonably quickly so that the user doesn't get fed up with turn computation times.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Not only that, but you know Fatboy Slim? The guy with all the really catchy remix-style tunes? Guess what he uses to write pretty much 100% of his music? Here's a hint: it's not an Athlon 900.
That's right, one of the most popular electronic musicians ever still even today uses his Atari ST and a pair of old Akai samplers.
Causation can cause correlation
Code Red bunging up my apache logs has made me think:
Posit: once Linux reaches a certain saturation, it will suffer the same security issues as Microsoft does.
Bear with me on this...
Take Code Red.The problem is not that Microsoft products are insecure. Code Red exploits a flaw for which the patch was available a month ago.
Neither is it that Microsoft sysadmins are incompetent. Most major systems were indeed patched well in advance. Those that weren't at the time, soon did as Code Red struck: even the least-subscribed admin reads the papers and watches TV news.
No. The problem that should be making the Linux community a little less smug is rather more insideous.
After talking to quite a few infected companies, it seems that the majority of uninfected machines were those that were admin-less.
The sort of server you buy, plug in, have someone load up with whatever and leave in a cupboard to happily serve away...and that is **Precisely** the sort of system Linux is going to be used for.
Once Linux systems are consumer devices (like my lovely Cobalt Qube) - and there is every good reason for them to become so - then no amount of open source hacking, patches, multiple eyeballs and bugtraqery will stop these systems from being compromised once a hole is found and made public.
This is not because they will be run by bad sysadmins, but because they will - as with many MS systems running Code Red right now - not be administered by anyone at all.
Perhaps, just perhaps, the very security of Linux is something to do with the average level of savvy among current Linux users.
Would a bigger userbase keep the same level of security and system awareness? Will the guy in 2020 buying the plug-in-and-leave Linux box for his small business's network know when and where to go for the next patch to Sendmail/Apache/Bind?
Probably not.
And that's the problem Microsoft have. and the one we're going to get.
I think I've seen something similar not too long ago. Don't remember where, unfortunately.
Quite a good point about everything running the same OS and getting hit by (worms | virii | crackers) at the same time -- it's even more poignant and ironic with the infections of Code Red 1, 2 (and 3?) still making the rounds.
The corn analogy drives his point home quite well, too!
Now... where are those raging mobs he talks about? We sure could use a few of them -- especially for all the brilliant individuals who still haven't noticed their infected boxes, never mind turn them off! (God forbid they could be bothered to patch 'em!)
Sheesh.
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
Keeping a "Pentium or better" is not sufficient in the long run and the reason is just one word: "Games".
I realize that Linux game distros are getting better and all, but the truth of the matter is that the gaming platform of choice is Windows (although one could make an argument for the PS2, but I think the distinction between gaming box and 'work' box will be bluring together again in the future). The games makers seem to push the limits of the operating system out there right now, so as the OS changes and expands, so will the games. And as that happens, new hardware will be needed to satisfy the requirements of these new games and OS'es. And people will buy this new hardware (and subscription software OS'es) up because right now, they really need their fix of games. The gaming industry is quite the moneymaker, or so I've heard; not quite passing the pr0n industry, but I believe it has surpassed the movie industry.
- A non-productive mind is with absolutely zero balance.
- AC
I've turned javascript. So there's no pop-up or pop-under windows at all.
my Atari ST needs no maintainance. I don't use it for one simple reason - I have absolutely no use for it. Everything I do on my PC would be completely impossible with that little amount of computing power.
True, but I think this is wandering away from the initial topic - today's hardware is massively more powerful than an ST. I still use my PII/350 at home becuase it does everything that I actually need with speed and efficiency. I'll upgrade eventually, but I feel no burning desire to do so in the same way that I very much did feel the need to go from a 486 to a pentium.
I argree with the original poster's point - for the things your mom needs to do, today's hardware is and will continue to be just fine. The only thing that will increase the average computer user's need to upgrade will be bloatware and bells&whistles.
Which is not to say we shouldn't or won't upgrade, I just think it's a bit less necessary now than it has been.
IANAL and I knew what the parent poster was on about, it's just that others might not.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Moderators who have cognitive dissonance will mod me down
Yeah, I guess. On the other hand:
My point is only that we all live in glass houses.(from the first page of Debian )
Practice random senselessness and act kind of beautiful.
ummm... haven't you ever heard of a linux distribution?
The problem is, because everything runs the same operating system--even my electric shaver--once somebody discovers a security flaw...
wonder how his face looks like when Win goes blue...
As plastik55 says, the basic hardware bootstrapping is done with OF. Information about particular devices is available from Darwin. The idea that it's somehow illegal to use this information is a bit implausible, unless you entered into a contract to say you wouldn't - but I doubt that applies to Be.
-dair (IANAL, but I doubt the person from Be who told you this was either)
Dir Sir/Madam
We respectfully request you cease and desist using the name of our OS product.
Ubersoft Legal Team
somewhat writes a decent, portable word processor and spreadsheet, gets it to run well on Windows, and is so much better than Excel and Word that everyone jumps at it at once.
Or when the client stops demanding everything in Word documents because thats all he knows how to read.
Thanks for a very sensible reply. I'll try to return your courtesy.
I think you have a great point. Some group-think is powerful these days. For instance, at work we act out what's in the best interest for our company often disregarding thought-processes that we would have if we were to make the decision for ourselves as opposed to our employer.
As you said, there are many groups and levels. The biggest group is that of the whole populace of earth (that we know of). Then we have the national level, the city level, the suburb level, the local community level, immediate relationships and yourself. (These levels are of course not set in stone, and the possible hierarchy much more complex.) Many people don't have a healthy balance between these. In fact, relatively new entities called 'workplace' and 'bussiness' seems to be predominant in our priorities - of attention, faith and support.
It can even be argued that individual thinking does not exist. It's a matter of definition and beliefs though, so let's leave that open.
When speaking about individual power, I don't speak of the same power that so-called rich and powerful people talk about - the power to rule over others. Individual power is power over your own life-experience. It basically means that whatever happens to you, should only move you from your center if you let it. Why do you think Tibetan munks said to forgive the chinese invaders for looting, murdering and raping? They have it.
Today, few people are in the center. They are imbalanced and believe that a good outer experience is necessary to be happy. Our entire society works on this principle - feverishness for ones desires and cravings. However, instead of creating happiness and abundance it creates ill feelings, scarcity and an endless chase for good outer experiences. Many people actually believe humans live solely for that chase. That we'll stagnate if we don't do it. We're already stagnant, spiritually. We've come a long way technically, but without proper grounding it threatens our very existance.
This mentality is also a group mentality that we're stuck in. To get out of it, we have to follow another group mentality. A more positive, one that puts faith in humans. However, a person should follow a mentalities with awareness. Through breath-exercises, yoga and meditation you can raise that awareness about your everyday life. Being aware and observing releases bad habits. (This you can try) I recommend finding someone to teach you breath exercises and that can follow you up.
Why do people smoke? To feel good, but it lasts only for a very short time. In fact, most bad habits are like that and they worsen the situation for the individual, creating a mental addiction. Through awareness in everyday life, in time, you can much more easily break those habits. Just observe what you're doing.
I'm living this right now, this is not just some words embedded in HTML. Raising awareness, observing, breaking bad habits and limitations will improve your life quality. It requires to find a good teacher/group to do it with though. There are many powerful techniques that will work if you let them.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
20 years of development, and the Linux kernel 2.4.x is not yet considered "stable" by Debian.
Now here's one for you. I've copied and pasted this little gem from a Netscape Web browser to Microsoft Office 2001 on a G3 running Mac OS 9.1 I'll be printing it to a laser printer on a Novell print queue. I may even create an HTML document and post it to my homepage on a Web server running Linux, Apache, PHP, Perl et. al.
That corn analogy is a good one. It's not about homegeny. It's about interoperabilty. If I've learned anything so far in my career, it's to pick the right tools for the job. Know the strength and weakness of what you use. Find a balance that will yield the best benefits in the situations you encounter.
hermit
The Grinder Organization
[We're looking for a few good links.]
This is why we don't browse with something as inherintly broken by design as Javascript turned on :)
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
I think most distributions have one now.
Redhat has up2date
Gentoo has emerge
debian has apt-get
I'm not sure about mandrake or suse yet, but, hell, there really is no excuse to not updating your system. *shrugs*
I am surprised with that Microsoft has not publicly supported human cloning so they can make 1 type of software to support one type of user.
Keeping a "Pentium or better" is not sufficient in the long run and the reason is just one word: "Games".
TOD is very playable on Pentium 100 computers. And if you don't like that kind of game, you can try hundreds of others with TuxNES including open-source games such as GNOME vs. KDE.
The games makers seem to push the limits of the operating system out there right now
"Games makers," or "first person shooter makers"? Not everybody is a Quakeoholic; some people enjoy thinking games such as Solitaire, SameGame, or Tetanus (a falling tetramino game). Some like the Flash games you can find at Newgrounds. They all run fine on the PII/233 MHz laptops I see everywhere at my school. Not everybody needs a 2 GHz Pentium 4 and GeForce 3 because not everybody thinks Black & White is that much more than a glorified SimCity (which, incidentally, ran on a 3.6 MHz 65816-based Super NES console).
And people will buy this new hardware (and subscription software OS'es) up because right now, they really need their fix of games.
Or they can just connect their GAMECUBE console (coming 5 November in many markets) to their current computer's TV tuner.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Crap, I must have missed those since I'm running Web Washer.
Interesting point. However... would you still run your old machine with 1 MB of RAM now? I doubt it.
:)
Considering that, why assume you'll still be running the machine you have now, 20 years from now?
I think that attitude limits the possibilities inherent in computing; it's not just that you're doing things faster.
The best reason to have a newer computer is because you can do a lot more. (I know I sound like a computer ad). You can do video editing, sound compression, and other machine-intensive things with modern computers that you could not have imagined 20 years ago.
My point is, there will probably be something 20 years from now that requires a new-generation machine. And this is probably something you will want to do. And this is definitely something I have not thought of yet.
Does anyone else have visions of the devout standing in airport concourses around the world, wearing multicolored robes and handing out apples?
------------------------------
One thing I noticed is that the whole "homogeny" thing is based around the fact that Windows is the only operating system.
Isn't that pretty much true right now (and for the past 5 years)?
In short, no. If you take all the computers in the world and worked out what percentage are Intel based you get a figure less than 0.2% - of those, maybe 80% are running Windows.
The problem is what you identify as a computer and as an OS. The article discusses traffic lights, shavers, etc. and these are examples of embedded systems. An electric shaver may have a very simple embedded system in there, bordering on an OS. A traffic light system has something a bit more complicated. Your video recorder or DVD doesn't need anything particularly fancy, but still has something bordering on an OS in there. Same goes with your car's engine management, your burglar alarm, your microwave, etc... Just because almost every desktop you see has Windows running on it, doesn't mean every computer in the world runs it - far from it in fact...
This article is talking about the day when all those things are running some version of Windows. As somebody who studied Software Engineering and therefore embedded systems at Uni (although now I work in ISP as it's more interesting), I suspect that day will take some time to get here, and Linux is already in the lead - how many embedded Linux systems are there out there in comparison to Windows?
The scariest part of this story is the thought of not having frosted flakes anymore. *shudder* that would suck.
Hey, if it means tax exempt status, i'm all for it.
I was very surprised when the guy who came and cleaned my carpets the other day asked me what Linux was. He was doing my office and saw some linux books by my computer. He said a guy in his investment club brought up a linux company and was wondering what it was. He seemed to understand my explanation easily enough. I gave another guy some old 72-pin simms the other day and asked if he needed to backup his old ram before he put in the new ram. I don't think I would try to explain linux to him.
One would think that if there was a cult of Mac users that nearly everyone knew about, it would be rather obvious when all the Microsoft-run stuff shut down, that the Mac computers weren't affected. Seems to me that'd be enough to have people switching systems...at least if it was a crisis on this scale...
...isn't that one of the major problems w/ Linux, that most people just don't know it exists? I know I didn't have a clue what it was until one of my friends got me to start reading Slashdot. And if this guy ever thought that MS would be able to over-run the alternate-OS crowd that frequents this place... well, I don't believe that's possible.
I like the bit about the Frosted Flakes though. :)
My Webcomic: Asylum on 5th Street
I'm not exactly familiar with the Los Angeles Times, so I'm wondering if this article is printed under a "humorous" section, or if it's supposed to be "quality" journalism.
If it's the latter, then I really hope that we will see more articles like this in the future, and that people actually will read and understand them. I'm sick and tired of getting N hits from the Code Red worm.
//Wegge
If this article actually DOES change anybodies opinion about Microsoft, please ensure that those people stay CLEAR of bizarre cults.
When are folks going to realize that this:
1.) bashing of MS
2.) copy all sorts of MS techniques into Linux
3.) bash again
is just plain dumb.
The linux community should be thankful for Microsoft. It gives splinter groups (gnome & kde, vi & emacs, dev & devfs, xfs & ext3fs, etc) a common enemy...
oh, the humanity!
or, something... hey, look, i wasted server space!
"we demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!" --Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
"you get a figure less than 0.2%"
I'd love to see this breakdown of yours.
[o]_O
And to sell these new Windowses (Windii??) they'll have a loud, tough-sounding man with his voice electronically deepened yelling at you about the "once in a lifetime blowout event" with explosions in the background.
Yippie.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
Web browsers for the Atari ST? That would be amazing considering the machine comes with the following specs:
:)
- M68000 CPU
- 1 MB RAM
- No hard drive
- One available parallel (i think) port
- One available hard drive port
- One floppy drive
There were of course add-ons you could buy. Like a really slow modem (the port is not a standard PC type port, so forget any new hardware). Or you could buy their 10 MB hard drive...
The machine really seems useless except to play the old (but still fun) Atari ST games. My dad sold our old ST a few years ago for about $40.
It certainly does not have the power to function as _my computer_ even if I could browse the web on it. Can I convert DivX movies (or DVD's) to VideoCD's? Can I store all of my CD's in a central location, for easy access and huge playlists? Can I even run my own Perl apps on it? (I doubt a port for Perl exists...)
Um, wait a sec, the flakes would contain DNA wouldn't they. Um, but, uh..... /me running to car, starting engine and peeling away at speed]
[/me cautiously backs towards the door]
....Y'see, the sugar-frosting DNA would, uh, mix with the corn DNA, and....
SLAM!
[sound of
I wish I could come up with a joke after reading this article, but I simply cannot. It hits too close to the heart of the problem, and it's a huge one. Because aparently this is where the world is going right now, and there is no going back. The problem is that everything, not only computers, is becomming more and more the same.
:P
I was going to write a longer post, but then I realized one thing: There is no way that this can be stopped. Maybe all computers will run M$ software, or maybe not. But then look around you! Even though in the early 1900s there were cars running on gas, steam and electricity, only the gas cars remain. Why? They were the most feasible to build. Now the technology has evolved to a point where we might see some other kind of car using maybe H2, solar or some other energy source, and all the new cars will use that new, better source.
Another example is the cell phone. In the beginning all were analogue (at least in the US). Go to Europe now, and most people don't even know what that is. Why? All cells there are digital, and most of the ones in the US are the same. And how many digital protocols are there? GPM is only one of them, but soon 3G is comming, and that will be the world standard.
The point I'm trying to make is that maybe uniformity is good. Maybe all computers will run M$ software, although I doubt it! (I would never trade Linux for Windoze). So the problem is not that every computer will run the same OS. The problem however is finding the best OS to use on all computers.
But it's 5am where I live, and I think I'll solve it tomorrow.
Hm... AdSubtract seems to have subtracted that BS for me.
I'm not going to plant them - I'm going to clone them.
Are you trying to suggest to me that they can't just clone the Frosted Flakes?
Damn. There goes my idea.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
Yah, the old "Those that don't know history are bound to repeat it" saying is sooo true. In the computer industry this seems to be especially true. Sadly, Linux isn't any exception. I love the open source ideals but I don't particularly like the way they are often implemented. In particular Linux is UNIX and therefore has all the Unix problem and klugy workarounds. This is the one thing I like about NT, M$ just threw the old crap away and designed a modern OS from the ground up paying attention to the lessons learned in OS design/development over the last 25 year (most of the lessons were from the UNIX camp). That is why the NT kernel is microkernelish, has a kernel debugger, ACL's for everything and a bunch of other 'solutions' to problems discovered along the way. Their application developers could take a lesson though, IIS, Outlook, VBScript, etc have a bunch of fatal flaws which give NT/2K a bad name. Their second pass at a lot of these service should be a lot better.....
Yes, I know it is wrong.
Yes, I know it is illegal.
Yes, I know it is a bad bad thing.
But what if a worm probed for open relays?
And then probed them for exploits?
And CLOSED the relay? (And patched the exploit.)
What a wonderful world.
We can dream, can we not?
--
The Coward
Microsoft already tried this. Remember "Bob"? That even had "outside".
... if Bob had succeeded, we could have gone "outside" and run Linux.
Let's see
---Any philosophy that can be put "in a nutshell" belongs there.---
I don't consider win95 obsolete yet. Sure it was MS's first major transition I know into a mac-like GUI and a truly usable environent. No one is whining about the WinNuke exploit today, and therefore I know that only a random CS k1ddi3 or a drunk hacker would try to reboot my windows95 machine on a blue moon.
But my point is that windows95 is my only x86 source for my RISC-based computer, and Virtual PC even gave me the USB-enabled version with IE4 --that was 3 years ago in late '98. I feel more comfortable knowing that if windows / IE goes down for whatever reason, it is only an emulator window needing to get restarted, or that I can go back to the barebones situation without ever actually damaging my real OS or Hard drive.
As long as I have a real Wintel machine to get back to when I'm not on campus, having windows95 as my absolute only choice is the best I can do. I wish I could download software that MS considers "obsolete" for free. I would be writing my own EXEcutable BASIC graphics and games [HEY! no one complains that the TI-8x community still does the same], but MS has stopped shipping anything newer than QBASIC on the stinking brand-new OSen.
And now DOS is obsolete too! The more reasons why my x86 emulation will come in handy when I can no longer run my old DOS games. Call me old-fashioned, but I know linux is being used on really old boxes and people keep whatever they like. Unlike what happens to my programs EVERY time I upgrade forcedly.
"Wireless : LAN
This brings a topic that I have been wondering about for a while. Would you have spent $200 - $300 to move to Linix (or any other OS) by hiring someone knowledgable to do the following:
- evaluate your software needs and find appropriate replacements in the new OS
- setup your machine with the new OS
- walk you through the basic tasks you need to perform to do your job
- point you to the appropriate documentation where you can expand your knowledge about the new system
It should be possible (barring exotic hardware, etc) to do the switch in 2-3 days, and be able to do your work on the new system (which is why the first step is important). How many people would be interestd in such a service? Do you think Windows XP will push people towards getting this type of service?Indeed. Until one year ago the computer that handled the core functions of my business, the one that if it went down I was out of business, was 1.7 MHz Compaq trasportable.
The only reason I ditched it was the 5 1/2" full hight floppy drive was getting cranky and I couldn't find a replacment.
I donated it to a church and it's still chugging away doing useful work.
Oh sure, a few years from now I'll want something newer and snazzier than the Athlon 900 I have now. I WON'T want to get rid of the Athlon though. Why should I? It plays music, it records music, both prepackaged and live. It makes CDs. It plays and records movies and TV. It renders images in photo quality. It surfs the web. It can interface with, and control, every electronic device in my house, and with a bit tinkering every NON electronic device in my house. Screen resolutions are higher than anybody can see.
Hell, it even *computes!*
And all of the software to do this is either free or easily writable by myself.
It already does what 90% of the population needs, but more than that, it already does 90% of everything *I* will ever need.
I don't need a faster cpu to get 300 fps in Quake, I need new algorithms to make Quake look like natural motion at 30 fps.
I sure as hell don't need Windows XP. The "industry" is counting on XP to sell computers. What's with that? Do these people have their heads up their fscking butts? It ain't going to happen. If I WANTED XP I'd buy XP, not a computer.
What I need is bigger, faster *storage.*
At least until the Virtual date with petrified Natalie Portman with hot grits down her pants program comes out.
I might buy a new machine to run that. I'll still run my core apps on my current machine though. The new one will be down for cleaning too often.
KFG
I didn't notice any pop-ups. I guess I must wait ...
for the next version of lynx for that "feature"
stein
All you have to do is keep a "Pentium or better" running and you'll be able to load software on it to do everything that 90% of the population will ever need. Heck, some people are still going fine with C64s, Amigas and for all I know, Atari STs. I had an old 19MHz XT with 1 MB of EMS RAM that did pretty well.
I believe that the glut of existing, functioning, equipment will have more of an influence on the future than homoganisation of the available platforms.
But then, how many of you have written non-portable software for Linux? You probably figured Windows sucks, and there was no reason to support it.
There are definetly people who write code for any OS without giving thought to how portable the code is. But if you use MFC it is MUCH more difficult to make your code portable. IMO using many of the Win32 API and DirectX features makes things fairly unportable. You have to write everything as if it had a wrapper around it.
Please help! I'm stuck inside my virtual reality headset!
I've heard that WinNT and 2k have good underlying security capabilities. That's why I added the 'default' in there, and was careful to reflect the learning of Linux distros with respect to their default installations.
You're right, BIND, sendmail, Apache, etc have had troubles, and have fixed them. But Microsoft should also not be on their own isolated learning curve. They should have seen the BIND, sendmail, and Apache problems and solutions, and incorporated appropriate fixes for their own products.
So yes, I can criticize their stupidity, because apparently they didn't learn from history.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Actually what I find disturbing is that 'PC' seems be by some weird definition to mean 'runs MS Windows'. I get tired of hearing the watered down phrase, "you have a PC or a MAC". I'm sorry, but we all have PC's...it's called a Personal Computer. Doesn't matter what the operating system running on it is. I say yeah, I have linux machine and windows machine.
Perhaps it's some tie-in with that other PC acronym, political correctness. Ya gotta have a PC to be PC, or something like that. Yech.
- A non-productive mind is with absolutely zero balance.
- AC
Copyright 2001 Los Angeles Times
By visiting this site, you are agreeing to our Terms of Service.
That's right the bottom. Thousands of /.ers have now agreed to a licence they've never seen. Ironic given the nature of the article
In the future anything which isn't Microsoft-compatible will be called un-Windows. And it will be illegal.
And don't forget the new Windows 2010 feature that all computers and other devices (which will now all include Windows) will include mandatory remote monitoring by Microsoft to make sure you don't talk about trying to circumvent any of their protection schemes or claim that they aren't the best. If the monitoring is disabled you are immediately arrested for noncompliance.
djb fixed all the BIND security flaws long ago. It is called djbdns.
According to http://cr.yp.to/distributors.html, the djbdns license does NOT allow modification of the source code (even when the product is released under a different name) and therefore breaks freedom 1. Besides, BIND 9, despite the name, is not based on the BIND codebase at all; it's a complete rewrite and shouldn't have the same security holes.
Will I retire or break 10K?
And did you see the part about macs? That article is great!
Anonymous coward #369
I beg to differ.
This article (especially considering the source) may change quite a few people's opinions about Microsoft, and give them a new open attitude towards alternative operating systems.
You might be surprised by how easily influenced people are by "regular media" like newspapers and television.
Besides, calling it "non-fiction" means that it's _real_. "Fiction" is the made up stuff. Is that what you meant?
No, but I think marketing may consider changing the name. Let's see, we've had windows 1, 2, 3, 3.1, 3.11, 95, 98, NT, 2000, 2001 ... this doesn't inspire confidence now does it.
"Don't worry Maw, we'll have the last bug out in Windows 21000"
But more seriously, Windows was called that as the generic name for the paradigm. What should we be using for the next one? 'Head Space' for VR? 'Wheres the network gone?' for mobiles?
that's an interesting view Steeltoe. Brings up an interesting controversy as to how much power an individual has. keep in mind, groups such as corporations, government organizations and affiliations tend to have a sort of "group think" to them. A seperate conciousness and will that can, more often than not, be stronger than the individual. You say we have lost faith in the system.... Individuals have lost faith in the group... How many individuals truly think as an Individual? Not many. Many people may act as if they have lost faith in the system as a whole... but usually they have only lost faith in a sub-system of the system... opposing the subsystem they are a part of. From this view, the individual has much less power than you seem to think they do.
Please help! I'm stuck inside my virtual reality headset!
while i agree with your point that the article makes a good point, i must say that i hate comments like "how easily people are influence by the regular media". can you be more condescending and arrogant?
And the next version...
Windows DOJ
Geez. You should stop jacking off and go to college. Your words almost sound important.
Now why is it that people around here can come to sweeping conclusions without properly supporting them? Oh, because most people here are idiots!
Insightful? My ass. You moderators need to stop sticking carrots up your asses before going to work. Oh, that's right, most of you don't work because it is not legal in your state at your age.
I can't fucking stand it anymore. This site is so dumb it has become a novelty for me. It's funny to watch you dicks jerk it in front of each other. Why don't you just break out into a big orgy instead of building up the tension ad nauseam? You know, like those dumb sitcoms, the sexual tension building can only last so long? Then, when the main characters finally fuck, the show can finally end the way it should have years before.
Fuck already! Be done with it. Wankers.
/Slonob
Strict obedience to the law is the key to liberty.
I can see where you are coming from. On my file server, I run Linux exclusively. On the desktop, I dual-boot between win and Linux and on occasions I run FreeBSD. Now, I see Mac OSX. Basically it's unix with an enhanced mac interface. I will never need to touch windows again. Sure, between Linux and Windows I'm pretty pleased, although I find Linux to be more enjoyable to use. Now that OSX has come along, I think I have found the holy grail of operating systems. I will definately not be upgrading to XP either. OSX will become my default desktop because nothing in either the windows or linux world can touch it's ease of use and power. Sure, it's a bit slow now, but in September that won't be the case. I've followed mac's for years and never wanted to own one until now. Many unix types that I know want OSX, myself included.
Posit: once Linux reaches a certain saturation, it will suffer the same security issues as Microsoft does.
Unplace excriment: Apache runs more web servers than IIS, the victim of Code Red. Saturation reached, failure not suffered. Think about it for a while.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Will /. ever consider a corrections section on the site? Well, the whole damn site would have to be devoted to it.
What the hell was up with that lame thread about Cod Red "aftermath?" The script that was linked was riddled with bugs. The worst of which was that it shutdown IIS, then made another outrageously clever attempt to connect to port 80 again to, be still my hacker pretender heart, shut down the server itself. Duh. And not one person brought this up.
So many of you slashbags are full of hot air and apparently have no skills to speak of. I mean other than blowing air across your teeth or typing out drool with cum-stained fingers.
/Slonob
Strict obedience to the law is the key to liberty.
We've heard it all before... from those who would take a bullet for Linus to those who lick Bill Gates' shoes clean for a living. The discussion is wore out. Everything that can be said, has been. Many times.
Please for the love of God, stop the insanity.
You're nothing; like me.
Whether this distrust will result in the company being constrained to operate consistently with its monopoly status is - unfortunately - another matter entirely. It looks as though MS's top management has decided to construct new facts on the ground which will make current court rulings irrelevant; unfortunately the US justice system appears unable to cope with this strategy.
...for apple to become an official religon? heh. They need to talk to some more apple fans. You could probly get more people to claim their religon was Apple, than said their religon was jedi
On that note, who wants to start the chain letter?
The opinions in this post are ficticious. Any similarity to actual opinions, real or imagined, is purely coincidental.
Although hardly a very subtle way of putting it, the author is completely correct - all technology being the same has risks that go beyond monopolistic practices. Thankfully, the free software community "knows" this, and so even though a given nice may be dominated by a large key player, there are many other excellent choices as well. Think Linux vs. the BSDs, KDE vs. Gnome, Red Hat vs. Debian, StarOffice vs KOffice, and so on.
Of course, free software is fundamentally more safe from this sort of problem: with proprietary software, it's entirely in the hands of the vendor. With free software, most of us are lazy so we leave it in the hands of the "vendor" (who may be just some guy from Norway). But we do have the _power_ to change it ourselves should the need truly arise.
And other people will have their own list (Photoshop, anyone?). For most people, switching everything away from Windows isn't an option. I don't think you can advocate a unilateral switch to Linux, even for hardcore techies.
Gee, i didn't get a single one. Must be because i use Mozilla.
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
about this article, is that it can possibly happen.....
I lost my concept of community when my community lost all concept of me.
Actually, from what I can tell, Microsoft has stopped using their year-based (or even number-based) schemes for version numbers.
:)
Their latest fad appears to be a series of letters that sound important, just like the "SX" and "LX" versions of cars make them sound better.
You have "Windows XP" and "Office XP".
What will it be two years from now?
Windows SL?
Windows RX?
Windows HI?
Windows YU?
Windows PA?
Those are probably bad guesses.
We will go way beyond rooms.
We will have wombats. Wombats are better than rooms because they crawl about eating things and can crush a dingoes head when it is threatened.
I want a computing experience that eats things and crushes heads.
I come from a LAN down under
Where the packets flow and routers chunder
Actually, windows has a very nice security model. The problem is all the idiot users running as Administrator, and all the idiot administrators running IIS and friends with full system privileges. The NT ACL and friends provide a very nice fine grained security system. Take a quick look at the 'Local Security Settings' applet in the 'Administrative Tools' Folder. You can assign privileges like 'Increase quotas' and 'Lock pages in memory' to groups or individual users. I actually find it a little easier than planning out complicated group schemes and then changing the access rights on 100 different unix utilities so only certain user/group combinations have access. Then all that gets broken when a big monolithic program comes along and expects to have appropriate (read root) access to the machine, its simply not possible to give it only some super user privileges but not all. Granted the authors of BIND, apache, sendmail etc have gotten in trouble enough times that they are finally learning, but when you look at all the sendmail exploits over the years you can't really criticize M$ for their stupidity with IIS.
I read slashdot often, and I see countless posts about people giving their reasons for why Microsoft still has the desktop market by far, and why they think that everyone should run Something Else(tm). I agree that Windows isn't my favorite operating system, but I will also agree that nothing else comes close to supporting the games I play, the hardware I own, and the simplicity of setting it all up from scratch very quickly.
Don't get me wrong, I use linux and unix (Solaris, HP-UX, and AIX) constantly. It's my job. I'm a systems programmer for a large company, and all the software I write has to be supported on all of those systems, both 32 and 64 bit. We don't support windows, because it would be too much of a porting headache.
My point is that if all of you zealots want to get vendor's support on more than Windows, we have to show the World what linux/unix/other operating systems can do.
I have never seen a Linux add on TV. Of course, I don't watch TV anymore, but I bet if there were some Alternative OS advertisements on TV about "Free, powerful, productive, (fill in *nix strength here)" then people might open their eyes. Maybe it won't be a big start, but its a start.
Who knows, maybe with some time and Spreading The Word, individuals will start inquiring around work, school, computer dealers, and a movement might begin. Maybe not. But would it be so hard to try?
-Serp
Yeah, the corn analogy is excellent. What's that saying they used to have back in the short-sighted 20th century? "You find something that works - you stick with it!" Yeah, maybe that works in the imaginary world of permanence, but take a cue from the mother of us all: You find something that works, attack it with everything you've got - virus, plague, famine, pestilence - until it goes extinct. It may be just a little red worm now, but someday it'll grow up to be Shai Hulud!
The bit about the subscription system's reverberating side-effects rings awfully true too. Proprietary and convoluted file-formats can only do so much to bring about the American(TM) dream of planned obsolescence. But mark my words: Subscription software is flawed in its genes and doomed to fail. Anything that goes straight to profit-motive without providing added value to the consumer *cough*antitrust*cough* just seems a little dubious.
Personally, I'm getting one of my hotshot Windows geek buddies to whip up a nice short hack to disable the automatic shutoff for my own personal use. Want one? It'll be printed on T-shirts next year in rebus sistena verse.
-- thinkyhead software and media
"Inside Internet Security" by Jeff Crume is a free book being given away by IBM that covers a lot of security topics in a really good way. They get into a lot of white-hat/black-hat discussion, which is sometimes really a distraction from talking about good policies, but it's still good overall. Get a free copy here instead of paying $30 for it, and you can even spamgourmet the address so you make sure you don't hear from them after signing up.
Remember, security is a process, not a package you buy in a store. The best tech won't help if someone is loaning their keychain with security keyfob to their girlfriend or lets their cousin use their corporate PPP account to browse the web from his home.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
SlashDot/XP? Didn't pay your software rent?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
>I don't want to play chess with my microwave, I just want to reheat the damn pizza!
yeah, that is what you think! And mobile phones are only for calling right? Bzzzzt, try again.
nosig today
Windows MyAss
Free Manning, jail Obama.
I wonder if Steve Ballmer will still be doing this in 2020?
This information, stored in an Ellison 3.0 Database was immediately acted on by Larry who decided, by the licencing agreement, that it was his CREATION. (Read Eddison and the light bulb).
Gates looked down and saw that it was good. Understanding section 2228795.66 subsection AZ9 of the MS user licence, he realized that all information stored on a MS based machine was His.
He took it.
Linus looked out from the tower and let down his hair. The Johns Hopkins people climbed up.
The file had been stored in Ellison DB as a KDE Word file. Not compatible with any other software and included encyption techniques covered by the DMCA.
"We are saved" they cryed. "MS nor Larry cannot legally read the document."
Moral ... Er! Is there one? Yes.
Can we, as an industry, please have document formats that we can use and keep open.
Please, those who consistently try to pull down the industry, can we please try to open it, just a little?
Yeah, I hate those, specially the pop-under with an OK button, like a trouble message. Grrrrrrr
~~~Please pass the salt, I hate unsalted MD5s
The best of all possible worlds is:
* open standards
* with multiple, open implementations
That way, you get interoperability (like the Internet) without the problems that you get with Microsoft-led homogeneity, which is built on
* closed standards
* with single, closed implementations
A world where everyone ran Linux, but no distribution dominated, would be much safer than the current one.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Windows DNI
You open the box labeled "Windows DNI: Direct Neural Interface", carefully extracting the pouch labeled "License Agreement". You examine the contents of the pouch, finding an inflatable cap bearing the Windows logo rather than the familiar 3.5" diskette package. You inflate the cap, insert two "C"-size batteries (not included), and carefully place it on your head. You press the Start button.
Immediately, the image of an hourglass comes to your mind. You find yourself trapped; unable to move anything in your body save your eyes. After an indeterminable delay, you regain control of your senses. You are suddenly compelled to speak your name and business affiliation. You then retrieve your Windows DNI package and chant the Product-ID number.
Suddenly you see the words "Windows is detecting new hardware" flash before your eyes. You crash to the floor, writhing in agony. You feel every muscle in your body contract and retract in turn. Your mind is filled with the image of a blue inchworm, creeping slowly across a grey field. The creature finally reaches the edge of its domain, and your seizure ceases. You take a moment to regain your composure, and you are reminded of your high school anatomy course as a complete listing of every organ in your body appears before your eyes. You browse the list for a moment, and utter the phrase "OK". After a short delay, you hear the sound of a trumpet echo through the recesses of your mind.
You find yourself in a large, barren space. You look around, and discover images labeled "My Brain", "Recycle Bin, and "Set up the Microsoft Network". You feel compelled to utter the word "Start", after which a list of options floods your mind. Weary from the detection phase, you utter the word "Shut down". You close your eyes, and blackness surrounds you. You feel yourself start to drift into sleep. Your peace is interrupted, however, as a bright orange light invades your nothingness. "It's now safe to shut down your mind".
You drift into unconsciousness, and sleep for several hours. When you awaken, you are frozen in place as you see clouds and blue cycling colors. After a short eternity, the familiar "My Brain" icon reappears in your mind. But something is terribly wrong; you can feel it in your gut. Just outside the range of primary vision, you can sense something lurking about you on all four sides.
You slowly look up, and see the word "Safe Mode" glaring back at you. You back away slowly, swivel your head, and there it is, behind you as well. Your heartbeat quickened and you are terrified as you turn to your left and your right and it meets you there as well, its cold, heartless glare filling your soul with despair.
Quickly, you summon Control Panel, System, Device Manager. You feel yourself frantically gasping for air as you run through the list of installed devices. You come upon "Respiratory System" and are horrified to see a black exclamation point on a yellow field next to the entry "Lungs". You close your eyes and utter the word "Properties". On the closed curtains of your eyelids, you see your life flashing before your eyes.
You force yourself to concentrate on your situation, attempting to discover which system devices are in conflict, when suddenly your entire body seizes up in pain. You lose all sense of reality. You are floating through the clouds as you hear a voice echo through your mind: "This program has performed an illegal operation and will be terminated." You start to black out and suddenly you remember your situation. You stare in horror at your blue extremities, knowing that, without oxygen, you will not last much longer. With all the consciousness you can muster, you force yourself... To reboot.
You awaken in a place that is dark, but familiar. A solitary white prompt on a black field greets you. You look behind you and see the wreckage of the operating system that nearly spelled your demise. "Cannot find a file that may be needed to run Windows". You turn around to face the prompt, and a wide grin comes across your face. You take a deep breath and revel in the life-giving atmosphere. You laugh as you utter the words, "DELTREE WINDOWS".
Suddenly you find yourself on the floor of your home. You find the charred remains of the Windows DNI beanie littering the floor. You carefully gather them up, stack them neatly on an altar, and burn them, promising yourself never to risk your life with Microsoft again. You bury the ashes, knowing that your life is again in order.
I have no idea who originally wrote this, it was emailed to me a few years ago...
---
the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword is mightier than the court, the court is mightier than the pen.
Gates and his minions literally went underground in 2019 after the Supreme Court ruled against the company for the 1,249th time in the antitrust case that began in 1997.
:)
I see that the justice system in the States works just fine
----
"I believe in karma. That means I can do bad things to people and assume they deserve it" - Dogbert
that will never happen, forget the linux faithful for a moment and think about how many servers run windows... proof that windows is not prefered is in the messages posted on slashdot about code red. I don't think I read a single message that said "I run a windows box and was affected". I sure someone else could come up with exact figures and berate MS software for exactly why it isn't used.
Windows is good for home users and workstations, xp is actually quite good, but there is enough reactionary backlash against MS that even if they did manage to release a perfect windows os in the next few years *nix and other os's wouldn't just dissapear overnight (or even 20 years I suspect).
Is it possible to totally secure an os ?, you never know one day it might. In this case, as long as windows doesn't crash and does what it is supposed to then I will be more than happy to live in that world.
We need a CLI version of those pretty GUI updaters. Debian is already set, of course. Not a complete answer, of course, but done with a touch of planning will eliminate 99% of failure-to-update errors.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
All of the companies listed (but can't speak about WOTC) work very hard to create a demand for their products and services. You left out phillip morris and a few others. Perhaps I should be daring and mention that you also left out the drug cartels. This is not what people want, it's what they've been told they want.
Can you honestly tell me that Peruvian natives actually wanted black caffienated phosphoric acid before CCC moved in and flogged it to them, hard? People don't actually want ``Word'' or ``Windows'', they want software that does certain things, or even more so, they simply want to do certain things, and Microsoft have - at great expense - sold them on the idea that the Microsoft Way is the best (only) way, and please pay at the till on the way out.
What they are doing now is escalating that to the point of being able to make you pay every time you breathe or blink. Bill's attitude is probably very much along the lines of ``let them eat cake.''
Yah, like Microsoft Bob with the reversed OK and Cancel buttons, those useless disappearing menus, and that fsking PITA paperclip. Oh, and dear old Word, with Format-everything-else in the Format menu, but Format-Page in [drum roll...] the file menu! Of course! No thanks.
``Simplicity,'' yes, but simple not in the sense of easy to use. Simple in the sense of having important bits missing, like security (CodeRed/SirCam/PWL-files/CIFS-hole-de-jour,PPTP,. ..), timesharing (WinModems), user awareness (Windows login), reliability (all, especially Bill's '98 USB scanner driver :-), consistency (NT GUI routing != text) standards (Kerberos/AD/IE-MIME-handling), flexibility (FIND.EXE,EDLIN.COM), honesty (DR-DOS crash code in WFW3, ``IE is necessary for Windows''), and much else. Any modern Linux installer and/or system management toolset (think DrakConf) eats Windows for manageability, and Konqueror (for one example) stands between Explorer and WorkPlaceShell for elegance and consistency.
For...? Stepping on HTML mines? It took them a hell of a long time to get IE smooth, most of the Open browsers are up on it in half the time.
Samsung make even more beautiful chips (Alphas) but Intel may not let them play in that space for long. And tell me that Intel haven't pulled out all the stops to cut AMD, Firewire and everyone else who even smells of competitor off at the knees, I dare you...
Yes, and haven't Microsoft just used that ability to the hilt whenever opportunity arose? Have they stopped? Will they ever? Discuss.
Would it impact your gross stupidity at all to learn that eight times as many car accident victims are maimed for life as are killed outright? And even more are permanently handicapped? What you are advocating would cause a dramatic increase in the societal burden of caring for incapacitated accident victims, which is the direct opposite of where your pious bullshit was evidently directed.
The trick is to prevent M$ from altering ``what people want'' to suit their accunting department.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Take Code Red.The problem is not that Microsoft products are insecure. Code Red exploits a flaw for which the patch was available a month ago.
This is a good point. I really like the Mac OS X solution and which that other unix variants would adopt a similar solution. At scheduled intervals, the machine will contact a central database at Apple looking for software updates. The user may select one or more. These are then downloaded and automatically installed (usually without requiring a reboot). If a security hole is found, a patch is made available on the server and 'average' users should pick it up eventually.
Before readers get too caught up in the details, there are some potential drawbacks to this scheme. One: the centralized server means that Apple gets to control which 3rd party tools can be updatd. Two: it might be possible to spoof the server IP and send out fake updates. There are solutions to each of these. The key thing is that updates are easy and largely automatic.
Given one hour to live, the student replied: "I'd spend it with professor FP who can make an hour seem like a lifetime."
"640GB ought to be enough for anybody." --Bill Gates, 2020
:-/
Hopefully ram prices will be decent then
----------
Check out my blackbox styles
It's not that, pound for pound, Windows is 'easier' to use, it's the fact that most users have 'grown up' with Windows - it's familiar. Frankly, I had more problems going from Win 3.1 to Win 9x than I did Win 9x to Linux. Ah, those were the days, wondering where file manager was, what this Windows Explorer thing did, and why, why in God's name, when I attempted to move a program it insisted on making a shortcut. ;)
;P
:)
As for a unified front.. I'm torn here. On one hand, I like variety, on the other, I almost wish Gnome and KDE would merge and get squashed. Ugh, horrible horrible rip offs of Win 9x they are.
Seriously, though, this stuff about 'showing a unified front' will never happen with Linux. Linux has never, still isn't, and never will be about 'taking down Microsoft' - it's about hacking. It's about choices. Unified fronts limit choices, and the lot of us don't like that.
(That aside, I still agree most users don't need Linux. Just as Grandma doesn't need a 1ghz Athlon with half a gig of ram to play solitaire and check her email, she doesn't need Linux either.)
As long as you're not listening to zealots who jumped on the bandwagon for lack of anything else to do, Linux has already achieved its objectives.
One thing I noticed is that the whole "homogeny" thing is based around the fact that Windows is the only operating system.
Isn't that pretty much true right now (and for the past 5 years)?
I can find tons of "normal people" who think that Windows IS what runs a computer. By definition.
The homogeny only needs to be extended to appliances, like toasters and even traffic lights, to be _exactly_ as scary in real life as the author intended!
This may seem like a far-off non-threat, but the possibility exists for real danger when every machine on Earth is running the same OS.
that all available bandwidth will be used up by CodeRed 1007, a sentient replicating virus. Furthermore, since A***e has patented everything, the virus will be put in jail for copying itself.
Having free, open alternatives allow innovations to take place that would not be possible in Windows. There is often far more inventiveness going on at the fringe then at the core. If the innovations are important enough, they may get ported, or even convince users to leave MS. It is not necessary for everyone to know about *nix right now, good, useful new features and programs will stand on their own.
On a last quick note, I would also add that happily, windows does not seem to scale well in any direction except up:) Maybe we'll see toasters with 512MB of ram in a few years but... I doubt it. I don't want to play chess with my microwave, I just want to reheat the damn pizza! -_^
Another spokesman was quoted as saying, "WOOHOO! I was able to update libc... now only 10 more dependancies left... and of course the 100 that those first 10 depend on." Several of the package developers got together with the application developers and laughed at how every new release that adds functionality that is badly needed seems to require the upgrading of some package or lib that is only 0.0.0.0.00001 versions newer than the last."
And in other news, Windows continues to dominate the world because so many Linux developers have their heads so far up their asses that they couldn't realize that their egos should be destroyed before sitting down to write any code. Chief microsoft spokesman Bill Gates 2.0.14 [netfeed: MyClone released to the general public, with testimony from its makers own clones (rumored to have been produced from BSD)] was reported as saying that he has a very large spot in his enhanced heart for Debian. "If Debian hadn't been there to screw the pooch for Linux, then my company might have just dissapeared alltogether... thanks for not policing yourselves guys"
I thought with MS it was more a case of talking out of, or what could be pulled out of, it.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Compare what ships with Debian to what ships with Windows.
:-).
Compare the severity of the exploits (e.g. DSA-067 gets you limited control of the Apache user, CodeRed gets you unlimited control of the whole machine) and the difficulty of using them (DSA-071 or 068 cause an application or service crash in special circumstances, SirCam sends your secrets around the world).
That's like equating FIND.EXE with grep, or EDLIN.COM with vi, and being proud of the DOS app having less known vulnerabilities.
You're comparing strawberries and potatoes, Doug.
Microsoft don't ship TCPdump, so nobody reports vulnerabilities in it. There are dozens of webmail apps available for Linux, and most are reported at places like Debian. There is just one shipped with Windows (Outlook) and little else gets its bugs reported (-: maybe because Outlook fills quota quite handily all by itself?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Just another useless article that nobody should read... bad non-fiction
If only we could get Bill to go hide in a bunker
Get Drunk In Sydney
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
Windows, Windows Everywhere huh? Nice title for a page with a pop-up AND a pop-under.
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
Nah, we Slack users are generally peaceful people. We won't force you to switch to the One True Distribution. We'll just sit back and quietly laugh at you until you see the light.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Good article! But then again, Dave Wilson is one of the few tech reporters in posession of a clue.
I thought the message was simple, and sobering. Kind of like saying: "Careful of those cute little mice, you might catch the Hanta virus." Also I was wondering how you were reading Linux Today and happened to come across the article in the L.A. Times?
being on /., i'm surprised no one posted this one yet:
:)
windows.cx
Windows is already a wombat:
Waste
Of
Money,
Brains
Aand
Time
MAB
Or just lame, yeah you know, the kind of stupidity that gives geekdom a bad name. It's nice to know some know nothing weenie crackhead from the LA times who probably got his job on all fours has something critical to say about computers.
On the desktop, yes. Something like 95% penetration. Not in server-space (halleluyah!) else CR2 would have pretty much axed the Internet for a fortnight.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Is why every little troll here uses the Communist comparision as some kind of insult. Of course Open Source development (Especially under GPL and GPL like licences) is inherintly Communist. Of course RMS's ultimate goal is to wipe out proprietery software.
Is this a result of American education and coldwar brainwashing? Almost certainly. Is it an insult? No, 'fraid not.
The more I used, the more I learned and the easier linux became, and the harder MS looked. Looking back on things, it's amazing to me that anyone would trust configurations to anything but a human readable text file. The amount of trust required of MS to do anything is amazing. Good grief, just look at that sloppy NetBIOS. Look at all the hidden stuff. How does anyone memorize that awful pile of symbols that are the ever shifting MS interface? Work, with NT desktops, it painfully constricted and limiting. No compilers, how can people stand it? Only a single window manager with a single virtual screen? Only one crippled shell? I have no regrets as 98 dies on it's last machines in my house. It sucked, then it died. Win2k? No way!
The sooner you move, the happier you will be. The things you learn from MS are either counter productive or plain useless. Want stability, get Debian potato. Want privacy, get ssh.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Will the metaphor of 'windows' still be around in 2020?
I thought that we would have evolved to something more multi-dimensional - rooms, say?
In other news, Mozilla has achieved the much-vaunted "five-nines" status. Mozilla 0.99999 was released earlier this February, and most coders on the project still claim that 1.0 will be finished "soon."
Apple must not mind too awful much. I attended an Apple shindig at a school whose purpose was convince everybody that OS X is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Don't get me wrong, I think OS X is GREAT technology but its going to take a little more hammering on it to make it insanely great. Anyhoo, this engineer who was leading the talk mentioned to me that he liked Linux on one of his PPC machines. He especially liked that he could run it with a super stripped down desktop and get lots of "speed".
The only reason I can think of that Apple would mind is that Linux allows one to put off retiring the old machine here and there. We are using a 233Mhz Beige G3 Desktop as an inventory and troubleticket database as well as a file/web server for our tech dept. The machine is running Debian and is fast and "just works" at it's appointed duties. I'm sure Apple would love to sell us a G4 running OS X Server to do the same thing. Since the machine is the Desktop model and not a tower, I run it headless underneath my desk. It stays out of the way too.
ps. We did upgrade the memory and disk in the thing but spent less than 100 to make a spiffy server out of it.
you know the future truly sucks when you get up one morning and try to make a pot of coffee only to find the coffee pot display says "Hacked by Chinese".
After Code Red, the WinBox is rooted.
Even when the next Apache exploit is found, it only gains access as the user "apache", and even that will frequently be in a chroot jail.
Security is not a firewall.
Security is not a bug-free program.
Security is not even a set of procedures.
Security is a process, and encompasses all of the above. Security also realizes that accidents happen, and attempts to minimize the aftereffects.
That is one place Windows falls down, there is inadequate system partitioning. IIS and its bevy of extensions run with Admin authority. No dedicated accounts, no chroot jails, etc. At least not by default.
Default security has been pretty bad on Linux, but gets better all the time. Furthermore, there are releases geared toward the server business that are much tighter, by default.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Bill Gates was quoted as having said, "My Ass makes a really neat sound when you put things in it." Things put in My Ass will eventually be expelled - so it's a good place to put things that aren't important, but just might be something you want to hang on to for a while: similar to a time-delayed self-emptying "recycle bin". If you download a lot of shareware but only get around to installing some of it, then forget what the hell it was in the first place, you could put it in My Ass.
"My Ass doesn't like it when things are in there too long, so it boots them out after a while."
There have been some problems with the My Ass feature. Gates said, "We're having a few problems with My Ass right now - it seems that there are only so many things you can put in My Ass before it becomes an issue."
I advocated this for my non technical wife and she likes it. She prefers Netscape to IE and is learning to like GIMP better than paint shop pro (who can afford photoshop?). At work, she uses Star Office, and will soon be wishing it ran on a better OS.
Not having worked with C++ much, I can't say much about debugging it. The book I learned C++ with came with GCC, but I used Watcom at the time and have not needed anything more than C since. Having GCC as a free, stable (both API and output code) compiler more than makes up for any inconvienence I might feel not using that horrible MS Developer's Studio package, shudders at the bad memories. In any case, I suspect this concern has about as much validity as wanting to run IIS instead of Apache, Media dominated Video players over free Video for Linux programs or any of the other obsurdly constricting and unfree software you can spend your hard earned cash on instead of using what is freely available, freely changeable and technically superior.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
..."but don't forget who made PCs easy enough to use that many people bought them" ... (Amiga, Apple, Commodore, who, I give up. The (IBM) PC was late to the game with a real GUI, it was only respectable because it had the IBM name on it) , lowering the cost of PCs/parts (which happened because the big monopoly at the time *IBM* didn't think they could make money on PCs). Look people hate Microsoft because Microsoft has used unfair tactics and (almost always copied thier competition) inferior technology (MS third times the charm mentality) to "win". By ruthlessly crushing thier competition (usually by leveraging thier OS monopoly) they have dramatically retarted the growth of software (imagine if you will a world where there was real competition between Operating Systems, Office Software, and browsers, we see something like this with hardware [AMD and Intel] and the results are amazing). It's not just that people hate being told what to do, some people realize that the retardation of the technology has a long term negative impact that humanity should not be burdened with.
Until our children are no longer molded into castrated sheep democracy remains a fake and a danger. -A. S. Neill
Provided patches are made to any software that is out there to continue it's usefulness, the only difference I can see is if those "patches" are paid for or not ...
This sounds to me like linuxite FUD, only its funny.
.net to manifest and go through its maturation period - and then get overtaken by the open source community. Then nobody'll have to care whether its linux or windows or whatever...
Maybe its THUD, or truly humorous fear uncertainty and doubt?
Personally I can't wait for
The natural refute to what I've said, is that Linux will afford a greater degree of variety in each of its implementations, while Windows will likely be the same software, with the same vulnerabilities on every device that runs it.
That too, however is unfair. Witness the X-Box--A very slim kernel (it's smaller than WindowsCE) with extraneous functionality ripped out. Microsoft is capable of de-bloating their kernel.
Further, the idea that security exploits would exist across device implementations is pretty absurd. Beyond the possibility of bugs in, say, the Networking stack or race conditions in the kernel, this simply isn't likely to happen. A toaster would not need to run IIS, and so would not run IIS, hence it has no fear of Code Red.
This is akin to arguing against the ubiquetious (no, I do know how to spell that. My apologies) adoption of Linux because of say, the exploit in piranha from a while back.
Many of you hate Windows because it's mainstream (whether you admit it or not is another story). Just like many people *LOVE* music bands until they make it big and become very popular. Then, as many of the "original" fans realize that the band has become popular/famous, etc - they no longer feel a part of "something special" and then accuse them of "selling out." And then they start all over again. Come on - think about it, all Linux users are part of this tight-knit group - for now - each with their distro preferences, etc.
;-) Sometimes I wonder if some of you are the equivalent of the blind-faith sports fans, where their team can commit no foul and any other team is hated with a passion.
This issue, coupled with the fact that many people are jealous/angry of Microsoft's "power" over many parts of the IT industry blurrs many of your opinions.
Don't take this as flamebait/trolling. I hated Microsoft until I realized the reason - control. People hate being told what to do, what to use. Unfortunately, some things in society lend themselves to this type of thing. It's much easier to write 1 application and have it work on *most* consumer computers. Microsoft's development tools are much more refined than Linux's (from my own limited personal knowledge) - though Borland's recent release of Kylix is a step in the right direction.
Sure, Linux is making strides - but don't forget who made PCs easy enough to use that many people bought them, lowering the cost of PCs/parts.
Yes, I have some experience with different flavors of Linux, Unix, etc. It's just an operating system folks - like any other - including Microsoft Windows
Why is it that nobody goes into an uproar when someone finds a bug in Debian? "Well it doesn't slow down the internet to a crawl like Code Red." - THAT'S BECAUSE NOT EVERYONE IS RUNNING DEBIAN! If 50% of web-enabled PCs were running Debian, etc - you'd have the same damned problem.
I hope most people who develop applications for windows would agree with me that "windows" is not a homogenous thing. For a start there's windows95/98/NT/ME/2000/CE. CE is obviously very different from the rest so I'll ignore it for the rest of the discussion. This leaves 95/98/NT/ME/2000. They are simply NOT homogenous. You cannot treat them as such. Something that works fine on 98 will not work on 95. NT increases the problem by having multiple service packs. Also, the presence/absence of large pieces of software will greatly affect the behaviour of the platform (especially IE). Even the ORDER that things are installed in can have an impact. (I'm sure some of us have gone mad trying to remember did we install x before or after we installed service pack n, and was that before or after we installed y, and if it was was it y professional or y enterprise, and if we did, did we select the foo option?). One commercial application I worked on had a bug in the installer(created by installshield) that on windows NT service pack 4 would completely fsck the user's computer to the point where it was un-bootable and needed to be re-formatted, but worked fine on every other combination of windows we tested. Windows is NOT a homogenous platform.
It would be great if all computers everywhere could talk to each other and work with each other without the amount of fuss we have to go through to do it today. The problem is lack of standards. If MS would use standard protocols, and commercial vendors would bother to write portable code, we wouldn't have a problem with OS dominating the world we'd have a variety of OSen that work together. Virii/worms/hackers would not be able to attack everyone because of that variety... at least not as easily.
The Anti-Blog
"I believe that the glut of existing, functioning, equipment will have more of an influence on the future than homoganisation of the available
platforms."
This is actually true. One day, looking for a free pentium box to build a linux file server, I went down to the city landfill, (believe me, you wouldn't believe what people throw away after they get that new 1gig Athlon to browse ebay...)
It was like cracking Fort Knox; it's almost as if there's a legal (or at least cultural) edict to destroy these "obsolete" useful machines, lest they fall into others' hands and prevent them from buying new product. It's shameful, actually.
In time, the courts will address no crimes but those against Profit.
Or, rather, I'm going to sell them to someone else (Kelloggs, whoever makes cornflour, Green Giant etc.) for a vast profit and let them bother with the cloning. I'll just pop in occasionally to make unhelpful comments - "Maybe you should try repairing the freezer damage to the chromosones with frog DNA..."
Ooooh, or now I think about it, I could just buy tinned corn and then I wouldn't have to worry about keeping the freezer running.
Awwww, damnit, I really need to stop telling everyone my ideas...
In 2005, Microsoft filed a complaint under the DMCA which accused all Linux users of circumvention for writing anything compatible with Windows XS on the grounds that the source code was seekrit and only illegal disassembly could have given them the ability to write a program that could function on it. Microsoft then managed to successfully prosecute RMS for contributory negligence after he continued screaming that it's not Linux but GNU/Linux and it was his idea to begin with. Stallman received a Gnine-year sentence, with time served if he'd promise no more recursive acronyms.
In 2007, The Supreme Court handed down the "Typesetters' Union v. LameWebDesign IPO" decision (commonly known as the "FontSanity" case) which upheld a lower court's ruling making the use of multiple mixed font sizes, colours and cases on one page illegal (based on community standards, just like the obscenity laws). Steve Gibson got a five-year stint at Leavenworth, where he spent his time pointing out that the bars on the windows were not really secure and that ALL THAT SPACE between them could be USED by ANYONE TO get OUT of JAIL!!!
And while the letter mentioned the Apple religion, it left out the Slackware fundamentalists' revolt of 2011, which targeted all distros containing installers and GUIs. Hundreds wree left helpless at the CLI and millions of files were lost as people helplessly typed in two-letter combinations in the hopes that something would happen.
The future ain't pretty, people.
woof.