You're right about a lot of things, OS X is a finished product and Linux, even in distribution form, is not. OS X is a great operating system and I've used it a lot, but there are significant problems.
Almost every one of the current problems with the usability of OS X, from the lack of a maximize function, to the lack of text on the dock for each application (extra wasted time to hover), to the window control buttons being far too small, stem directly from OS X being owned by Apple. It is one thing to make the default a certain way, but Apple refuses to even allow a choice, and that is the problem. They go so far as to sue people who attempt to offer configuration. It's about Apple demanding that the system stay exactly a certain way.
The other major problem is Apples complete and total monopoly over their hardware. Yes you can buy any mouse you want, I'm talking about the system itself. Apple hardware is X86 hardware with the exception of the EFI, and they have gone out of their way to make the rest of the system different. The current unsaid reason for this monopoly is that it's necessary for vertical integration, but this is false and makes little sense, the same thing could be accomplished with basic effort and planning, but that would not benefit Apple and hence doesn't happen.
Apple does make nice hardware but so do other companies, in fact some other companies make better hardware than Apple that lasts longer and holds up better. People want OS X, the hardware is just a nice side effect, and not everyone cares.
It's almost like Apple and their users want the entire system to remain a repressed minority. OS X could be great but not while Apple owns it, literally and figuratively.
This post compares interfaces, at some point "Gnome Vs. KDE" has to turn into a real discussion because there IS a problem.
My personal opinion is that currently Ubuntu with Gnome is the "Face" of Linux on the desktop, and it is very lacking for a lot of users. When people see problems with Ubuntu it reflects badly on Linux, in some cases because of Gnome itself, and sometimes because of things Ubuntu did. This is not an attack on Ubuntu, I like Ubuntu and the project is a good thing for Linux, I have used each Ubuntu release extensively and I am very familiar with them, but there are other distributions, and there are absolutely other desktop environments that are more useful for most users.
There is a huge difference in functionality and capability between Gnome and KDE. In some cases Gnome drops below the bare minimum especially with system management, while KDE is disorganized and complicated but offers more functionality and configuration options, both in the interface and the system itself.
One thing that I do know, Ubuntu has created virtually separate distributions with Ubuntu and Kubuntu. And even though the backend repository is the same, there are 2 different CDs with redundant packages, this is definitely a big problem.
As an example of what would be preferable, the OpenSuSE system offers a choice during the installation and describes each desktop environment. There is also a good opportunity with Dell, they could offer both of them on first boot since there is no space premium.
I think people here are missing the point, GPL isn't a fucking freedom parade, its protection for software that would otherwise just be stolen and used elsewhere. If anything BSD makes that more likely to happen, not less likely.
GPL protects projects that want to focus on making good code, knowing that their efforts will be appreciated by others and not just ripped off, if you don't like that don't use GPL code and shut the fuck up about it.
The original idea was not to make everything as free as possible, this isn't a world of absolutes its merely necessary to compete with companies that can and do steal code.
Re:Binary drivers for Intel Wireless cards? Why?
on
Dell Linux Details
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· Score: 2, Insightful
So, tell me exactly what about the firmware for the intel wlan cards you were planning to modify? The driver is where you would implement frame grabbing or packet injection so tell me exactly what you would accomplish with the firmware source....
I agree that its a good goal to have things open source but in areas that it doesn't matter, you are wasting your time and a lot of peoples effort.
Yea, but most of that software is developed outside of the country where the patents apply, some of it in countries that don't even recognize software patents. Thats not even considering that some of these companies don't have a right to patent certain things. Going after people who develop WMV codecs for instance, can only hurt Microsoft, and in my opinion this is an interoperability issue, Microsoft doesn't have a right to bitch about people coding for a platform they refuse to support.
The same holds true for other codecs, however there IS a valid MP3 codec for linux in the form of the helix engine, and packages are available from Realplayer that dont actually force you to use their player.
DVDs are another issue, and i would go so far as to claim that CSS would not have been cracked so quickly if they had just released a player of some kind for Linux, it could have been open source for the most part with the CSS closed source, or just simply closed source entirely.
MPEG4 on the other hand i consider to be a standard at this point, and licensing should not be necessary. MPEG-LA is well supported already and it does them no good to go after open source codecs, it does however hurt the format.
What I would like to see happen is for Dell to pay licensing, Novell paid Real to allow them to include Realplayer for MP3 support, thus SLED has MP3 support out of the box. There are even Banshee and Amarok packages that utilize the Helix (realplayer) backend for just this purpose.
I can guarantee that if Dell just installs a stock Ubuntu installation with Gnome, people will have a lot of problems. Particularly in the system management area, gnome is very lacking, and Novell includes their YAST system on top of Gnome for this reason. If Dell doesn't include a similar system it will reflect badly on both Dell and Ubuntu but also Linux in general.
"route the packets from point A and point B, thus making some hop in the sequence critical for delivering the message"
In a well designed network, nothing is dependent on one hop, no matter where it is. We call this a multi homed network and most ISPs utilize more than one path to a certain area of the net.
Another thing to consider is that link state routing protocols are capable of quickly seeing that a route is down and picking another route from the topology table, and inserting that route into the routing table, in most cases this is very very quick. Inside an ISPs network this would be OSPF, or between ISPs or other providers this would be BGP, both of which are capable of managing outages as long as a backup route has been provisioned, and in the case of a large ISP, you can be sure it has.
So to sum things up, a given network node in an ISP typically has more than one connection to areas that cover certain IP ranges, if one of the available paths goes down, the routing protocol in use will quickly see that the link is down and start routing over the 2nd link.
I fail to see why people think something needs to change, and this article sounds like they are trying to fix something that isn't actually broken.
If Apple comes back out and says "oh yea we're actually bringing PPC machines back, should have mentioned that last time eh?" people will not put up with it anymore, even on servers.
They have switched arch multiple times now, each time showing a complete lack of planning for the future, and every time they end up having to code a VM into the next OS to run older applications. This time they actually switched to an arch that they spent the last 12 years bitching about. So either Apple fabricates marketing, or they are completely wrong on one side or the other.
It's sad really, OS X is a good operating system and most of its problems stem from being owned by Apple, insisting things be exactly a certain way, it is ruining their chances for a lot of opportunities.
I think people are assuming that because something is on a PC, you must watch it on a PC monitor. I have had an HDTV since 2002, and i have had a VGA>component transcoder connecting it to my media pc for the last 3 years, i use 960x540p resolution and SPDIF audio.
Microsoft is overstepping their rights, it is their update system, they control what happens. And since when is it ok to block a certain channel or show from even being WATCHED? Way to completely ruin your own products Microsoft.
Either way, people seem to forget that you got that internet connection through some other point in your house, it shouldn't be THAT hard to block that ip range at the firewall.
That could mean the firewall on your system, the Vista firewall can do it with an IPSEC rule (yes that is below the layer where IE has any influence) and any number of ip range blocking apps can do it, protowall comes to mind.
It could also be easily done at the gateway if you aren't using an incompetent firewall/router.
Microsoft has shown repeatedly that it has no problem implementing software locks, so if they really cared i have no doubt they would try to force ad views.
I think you partially missed the point, Vista is a total blackbox, to a much further degree than XP was or ever could be.
What we care about are things that Microsoft developed and intended to utilize in Vista to enforce software and media licensing, some of which which could easily be retasked to be more invasive and spy on the user, either intentionally or by accident through malicious software taking over. Some are not present, but some are, the rest can be added later after people are no longer complaining. Microsoft has shown it fully intends to utilize things like these in the future, so none of this is conspiracy theory.
Of most concern is the "Nexus", the secure kernel space capable of protecting specific parts of the system, preventing the user (and as a side effect, malware) from accessing or altering secure applications. This was primarily intended to stop users from circumventing software locks or DRM for media or software while the system was online, this was the first half of the system that is not currently present as far as we know.
The second half of the system that IS present is Secure Startup. The name was changed to Bitlocker at launch to market it as a user protection scheme. However Secure Startup was developed to be the offline half of the system intended to protect vulnerable software locks or DRM systems. By encrypting the main volume, users are prevented from circumventing DRM systems while the system is offline. The SS system also measures the bootloader to ensure it is not starting in a way that would break the chain of security. The encryption benefit to users is a side effect.
Some of the "Trusted" features of Vista are not in the system yet, some are, but the rest of the "Trusted" system will likely be installed with a service pack or update, at which time people will have already upgraded to Vista, and you can either choose to upgrade the components required, like the TPM or Processor, or simply not use the applications that will require them.
Most people don't care because it's just a development name, and people get that usually. Lots of other system development names are used by the media all the time. Ubuntu simply focuses too much on the code name because they don't really have release names, and for sure with releases this close together I wouldn't really consider them to be distinct systems anyway.
On the other hand Mac is a name Apple actually uses in advertising. Mac is your buddy, not your ultra secure Unix workstation. Apple loses a lot of my support with the stuff they refuse to change, perhaps the old worthless Mac OS9 was worthy of the stupid Mac name, but when they switched to OS X which is 10,000x superior in every way, they should have dropped dumb name and gone professional. If they keep the dumb name they will never make it as a business desktop the way Microsoft has.
Heres what is going to happen, things like NTFS, FAT32, or the SMB protocol perhaps are covered by MS patents, but all that will happen is people will just use the existing code if it's no longer actively developed. We already use code that people claim is illegal, like DeCSS, and it really doesn't matter in any meaningful way, Microsoft's claims have no bearing on the majority of the Linux using world, much of which is not in the US.
The rest of the 'items' that probably don't even fall under their worthless invalid patents, can be easily re-written to avoid whatever routines, processes, methods etc, they think they have a right to "own".
With regards to the Novell deal, if it does turn out that projects cease to be developed, they are the only one who is immune to this monkey-fuck patent crap, so in order for Novell to continue using these things they would have to develop them internally, because I guarantee that after GPLv3 people are not going to develop things FOR Novell in normal community style ala OpenSuSE only to have them turn around and play Microsoft's games.
Its not that complicated to add wiring, the electrical connections are simple and easy to do, what takes time and effort is threading wires through a wall, especially between floors where there isn't really an open space. Duct work solves this VERY nicely, and CAT5 can be purchased with special outer shielding so that it holds up to heat and cold in a duct.
If you live in a house with a basement you can pretty easily run wire wherever you want, i have CAT5 going to 3 different switches around the house from a central server room, and separate wire runs for phone and DSL, it wasn't that hard to choose the places the cables come up carefully but not everyone can do that. An apartment is probably somewhere you can't even allow a service guy to do it, but for most houses if you really need wiring it can be done.
Either way this story is really stupid, if you don't like the lights put a fucking spot of black epoxy on it, you'll never see it again.
Im not sure the wine people should be wasting time developing direct3d functionality, it has no use in Linux but for games, any other 3D functionality would use opengl, and lets face it games are not important.
When Wine is capable of running most of the normal windows apps, allowing for additional libraries needed etc, THEN you can spend your time screwing with games, but until then work on things that matter to the majority of Linux users, that is NOT games.
It is in everyone's interest to both secure Windows and stop malware in general, because an infected box can be used for things other than gathering info on the owner, which then affects people who have nothing to do with Windows.
For instance, botnets generally are made up of windows PCs, but are used to DDoS attack Unix webservers for ransom or political gain. They can also be used to attack network nodes such as vulnerable Cisco routers or corporate firewalls, it's a generic proxy model of attack which can be used for any number of attack vectors on any number of different systems. Recently there was even a browser exploit that allowed an attacker to use the box as a security scanner for vulnerable websites, this affected ALL systems, including OS X and Linux.
So, you can see windows is a huge part of the problem and everyone would be better off if it died, but it benefits everyone to stop malware, even if it means fixing problems Microsoft can't or wont fix themselves.
Strictly speaking the analog hole is any interconnect that is NOT digital, because there is no real way to encode an analog signal such that only the intended devices can interpret it. You can try of course but it gets very complicated
Obviously analog will always be subject to this lack of protection because speakers all contain 2 wire analog input, so unless we start hardening speakers like a DoD mainframe there will always be a way to get analog audio by cutting the speaker cone and setting volume level equal to ~1v like RCA line level.
Video is a bit different of course, but rest assured that until televisions are similarly hardened there will be a way to get analog, and probably even digital signals from inside them.
We need to start separating the discussion about piracy from the discussion about DRM, because they aren't entirely linked. DRM is most likely intended to stop sharing between friends, and will never stop real piracy. Until they really do implement a system that stops "break once run everywhere" we will always have piracy because all devices will agree to play media. To turn the system around you need to change the odds into a sort of break once run once system.
I very much agree with you, we are pushing hardware companies away in a number of ways, for instance we demand they open source things that they aren't legally allowed to release code for, and who are we to demand they break the license agreements that got them where they are? And then to make things worse, if they are interested enough in Linux to develop a driver and release it as a binary (As their only real option), they get bitched at more for not giving out the source, and I can tell you what the result will be, companies will stop trying because they have only options that bring them bad press, and then Linux will be in a worse situation than now.
We also seem to be breaking things very very often.
I can upgrade the kernel from 2.6.18 to 2.6.19 and end up with modules that don't load anymore, and thats ridiculous. We allow excuses like "Well all you have to do is recompile after you install a toolchain", I don't want a toolchain installed on a production server, nor do i want to compile because of a kernel update. If we stop accepting unreasonable fixes like this, things will change, but if we keep allowing the lowest possible solution to become standard (recompiling all the time), we will never change.
You guys all missed the point that they are trying to make Solaris more LINUX like, not more BSD like.
And even if that weren't the case it would still not be desirable to use the FreeBSD tools because of how much people like them (or not), they are as bass ackwards as the Solaris tools are now, so it wouldn't even be an improvement.
Ive used all of them for quite a while, never at the same time, but apt is far easier to work with than the freebsd tools, which i have seen fail numerous times on simple tasks, both the binary updates and the ports system.
In any case I realize they aren't ALL build tools, but the last thing you want on a secured machine is a compiler, it's an unnecessary risk and doesn't even need to be there.
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You're right about a lot of things, OS X is a finished product and Linux, even in distribution form, is not. OS X is a great operating system and I've used it a lot, but there are significant problems.
Almost every one of the current problems with the usability of OS X, from the lack of a maximize function, to the lack of text on the dock for each application (extra wasted time to hover), to the window control buttons being far too small, stem directly from OS X being owned by Apple. It is one thing to make the default a certain way, but Apple refuses to even allow a choice, and that is the problem. They go so far as to sue people who attempt to offer configuration. It's about Apple demanding that the system stay exactly a certain way.
The other major problem is Apples complete and total monopoly over their hardware. Yes you can buy any mouse you want, I'm talking about the system itself. Apple hardware is X86 hardware with the exception of the EFI, and they have gone out of their way to make the rest of the system different. The current unsaid reason for this monopoly is that it's necessary for vertical integration, but this is false and makes little sense, the same thing could be accomplished with basic effort and planning, but that would not benefit Apple and hence doesn't happen.
Apple does make nice hardware but so do other companies, in fact some other companies make better hardware than Apple that lasts longer and holds up better. People want OS X, the hardware is just a nice side effect, and not everyone cares.
It's almost like Apple and their users want the entire system to remain a repressed minority. OS X could be great but not while Apple owns it, literally and figuratively.
This post compares interfaces, at some point "Gnome Vs. KDE" has to turn into a real discussion because there IS a problem.
My personal opinion is that currently Ubuntu with Gnome is the "Face" of Linux on the desktop, and it is very lacking for a lot of users. When people see problems with Ubuntu it reflects badly on Linux, in some cases because of Gnome itself, and sometimes because of things Ubuntu did. This is not an attack on Ubuntu, I like Ubuntu and the project is a good thing for Linux, I have used each Ubuntu release extensively and I am very familiar with them, but there are other distributions, and there are absolutely other desktop environments that are more useful for most users.
There is a huge difference in functionality and capability between Gnome and KDE. In some cases Gnome drops below the bare minimum especially with system management, while KDE is disorganized and complicated but offers more functionality and configuration options, both in the interface and the system itself.
One thing that I do know, Ubuntu has created virtually separate distributions with Ubuntu and Kubuntu. And even though the backend repository is the same, there are 2 different CDs with redundant packages, this is definitely a big problem.
As an example of what would be preferable, the OpenSuSE system offers a choice during the installation and describes each desktop environment. There is also a good opportunity with Dell, they could offer both of them on first boot since there is no space premium.
I think people here are missing the point, GPL isn't a fucking freedom parade, its protection for software that would otherwise just be stolen and used elsewhere. If anything BSD makes that more likely to happen, not less likely.
GPL protects projects that want to focus on making good code, knowing that their efforts will be appreciated by others and not just ripped off, if you don't like that don't use GPL code and shut the fuck up about it.
The original idea was not to make everything as free as possible, this isn't a world of absolutes its merely necessary to compete with companies that can and do steal code.
So, tell me exactly what about the firmware for the intel wlan cards you were planning to modify? The driver is where you would implement frame grabbing or packet injection so tell me exactly what you would accomplish with the firmware source....
I agree that its a good goal to have things open source but in areas that it doesn't matter, you are wasting your time and a lot of peoples effort.
Fluendo MP3 decoder is technically free, and its source is MIT licensed, they simply request a distribution agreement.
Helix engine is also available, Novell does this by using Realplayer and the Helix-banshee package.
Yea, but most of that software is developed outside of the country where the patents apply, some of it in countries that don't even recognize software patents. Thats not even considering that some of these companies don't have a right to patent certain things. Going after people who develop WMV codecs for instance, can only hurt Microsoft, and in my opinion this is an interoperability issue, Microsoft doesn't have a right to bitch about people coding for a platform they refuse to support.
The same holds true for other codecs, however there IS a valid MP3 codec for linux in the form of the helix engine, and packages are available from Realplayer that dont actually force you to use their player.
DVDs are another issue, and i would go so far as to claim that CSS would not have been cracked so quickly if they had just released a player of some kind for Linux, it could have been open source for the most part with the CSS closed source, or just simply closed source entirely.
MPEG4 on the other hand i consider to be a standard at this point, and licensing should not be necessary. MPEG-LA is well supported already and it does them no good to go after open source codecs, it does however hurt the format.
What I would like to see happen is for Dell to pay licensing, Novell paid Real to allow them to include Realplayer for MP3 support, thus SLED has MP3 support out of the box. There are even Banshee and Amarok packages that utilize the Helix (realplayer) backend for just this purpose.
I can guarantee that if Dell just installs a stock Ubuntu installation with Gnome, people will have a lot of problems. Particularly in the system management area, gnome is very lacking, and Novell includes their YAST system on top of Gnome for this reason. If Dell doesn't include a similar system it will reflect badly on both Dell and Ubuntu but also Linux in general.
"route the packets from point A and point B, thus making some hop in the sequence critical for delivering the message"
In a well designed network, nothing is dependent on one hop, no matter where it is. We call this a multi homed network and most ISPs utilize more than one path to a certain area of the net.
Another thing to consider is that link state routing protocols are capable of quickly seeing that a route is down and picking another route from the topology table, and inserting that route into the routing table, in most cases this is very very quick. Inside an ISPs network this would be OSPF, or between ISPs or other providers this would be BGP, both of which are capable of managing outages as long as a backup route has been provisioned, and in the case of a large ISP, you can be sure it has.
So to sum things up, a given network node in an ISP typically has more than one connection to areas that cover certain IP ranges, if one of the available paths goes down, the routing protocol in use will quickly see that the link is down and start routing over the 2nd link.
I fail to see why people think something needs to change, and this article sounds like they are trying to fix something that isn't actually broken.
"Stability of AM2/AM2+/AM3 is one of biggest AMD's advantage over LGA775 and should be put forward."
Are you SERIOUSLY trying to say that 3 separate AM- systems are more stable than one socket?
If Apple comes back out and says "oh yea we're actually bringing PPC machines back, should have mentioned that last time eh?" people will not put up with it anymore, even on servers.
They have switched arch multiple times now, each time showing a complete lack of planning for the future, and every time they end up having to code a VM into the next OS to run older applications. This time they actually switched to an arch that they spent the last 12 years bitching about. So either Apple fabricates marketing, or they are completely wrong on one side or the other.
It's sad really, OS X is a good operating system and most of its problems stem from being owned by Apple, insisting things be exactly a certain way, it is ruining their chances for a lot of opportunities.
I think people are assuming that because something is on a PC, you must watch it on a PC monitor. I have had an HDTV since 2002, and i have had a VGA>component transcoder connecting it to my media pc for the last 3 years, i use 960x540p resolution and SPDIF audio.
Microsoft is overstepping their rights, it is their update system, they control what happens. And since when is it ok to block a certain channel or show from even being WATCHED? Way to completely ruin your own products Microsoft.
Now that I've seen goatSHE i wish people would use it instead.
:D
Chick just ain't too bad
yes yes i know the point was to be annoying but hey i can dream
Either way, people seem to forget that you got that internet connection through some other point in your house, it shouldn't be THAT hard to block that ip range at the firewall.
That could mean the firewall on your system, the Vista firewall can do it with an IPSEC rule (yes that is below the layer where IE has any influence) and any number of ip range blocking apps can do it, protowall comes to mind.
It could also be easily done at the gateway if you aren't using an incompetent firewall/router.
Microsoft has shown repeatedly that it has no problem implementing software locks, so if they really cared i have no doubt they would try to force ad views.
Eh, if you think some batteries are dangerous just wait till you hit a capacitor that big the wrong way :D
Dunno, the SEC doesn't announce things I do...
maybe if the SEC announces something about a company to the world, it's bad?
I think you partially missed the point, Vista is a total blackbox, to a much further degree than XP was or ever could be.
What we care about are things that Microsoft developed and intended to utilize in Vista to enforce software and media licensing, some of which which could easily be retasked to be more invasive and spy on the user, either intentionally or by accident through malicious software taking over. Some are not present, but some are, the rest can be added later after people are no longer complaining. Microsoft has shown it fully intends to utilize things like these in the future, so none of this is conspiracy theory.
Of most concern is the "Nexus", the secure kernel space capable of protecting specific parts of the system, preventing the user (and as a side effect, malware) from accessing or altering secure applications. This was primarily intended to stop users from circumventing software locks or DRM for media or software while the system was online, this was the first half of the system that is not currently present as far as we know.
The second half of the system that IS present is Secure Startup. The name was changed to Bitlocker at launch to market it as a user protection scheme. However Secure Startup was developed to be the offline half of the system intended to protect vulnerable software locks or DRM systems. By encrypting the main volume, users are prevented from circumventing DRM systems while the system is offline. The SS system also measures the bootloader to ensure it is not starting in a way that would break the chain of security. The encryption benefit to users is a side effect.
Some of the "Trusted" features of Vista are not in the system yet, some are, but the rest of the "Trusted" system will likely be installed with a service pack or update, at which time people will have already upgraded to Vista, and you can either choose to upgrade the components required, like the TPM or Processor, or simply not use the applications that will require them.
Most people don't care because it's just a development name, and people get that usually. Lots of other system development names are used by the media all the time. Ubuntu simply focuses too much on the code name because they don't really have release names, and for sure with releases this close together I wouldn't really consider them to be distinct systems anyway.
On the other hand Mac is a name Apple actually uses in advertising. Mac is your buddy, not your ultra secure Unix workstation. Apple loses a lot of my support with the stuff they refuse to change, perhaps the old worthless Mac OS9 was worthy of the stupid Mac name, but when they switched to OS X which is 10,000x superior in every way, they should have dropped dumb name and gone professional. If they keep the dumb name they will never make it as a business desktop the way Microsoft has.
Heres what is going to happen, things like NTFS, FAT32, or the SMB protocol perhaps are covered by MS patents, but all that will happen is people will just use the existing code if it's no longer actively developed. We already use code that people claim is illegal, like DeCSS, and it really doesn't matter in any meaningful way, Microsoft's claims have no bearing on the majority of the Linux using world, much of which is not in the US.
The rest of the 'items' that probably don't even fall under their worthless invalid patents, can be easily re-written to avoid whatever routines, processes, methods etc, they think they have a right to "own".
With regards to the Novell deal, if it does turn out that projects cease to be developed, they are the only one who is immune to this monkey-fuck patent crap, so in order for Novell to continue using these things they would have to develop them internally, because I guarantee that after GPLv3 people are not going to develop things FOR Novell in normal community style ala OpenSuSE only to have them turn around and play Microsoft's games.
I'm getting tired of worthless stories getting approved by whatever monkey is editing for this site.
Just because he makes arrogant claims that no one believes, doesn't mean you need to repeat this crap. No one believes him, no one cares what he says.
You are spreading it around by posting the story here, Stop It.
Its not that complicated to add wiring, the electrical connections are simple and easy to do, what takes time and effort is threading wires through a wall, especially between floors where there isn't really an open space. Duct work solves this VERY nicely, and CAT5 can be purchased with special outer shielding so that it holds up to heat and cold in a duct.
If you live in a house with a basement you can pretty easily run wire wherever you want, i have CAT5 going to 3 different switches around the house from a central server room, and separate wire runs for phone and DSL, it wasn't that hard to choose the places the cables come up carefully but not everyone can do that. An apartment is probably somewhere you can't even allow a service guy to do it, but for most houses if you really need wiring it can be done.
Either way this story is really stupid, if you don't like the lights put a fucking spot of black epoxy on it, you'll never see it again.
Im not sure the wine people should be wasting time developing direct3d functionality, it has no use in Linux but for games, any other 3D functionality would use opengl, and lets face it games are not important.
When Wine is capable of running most of the normal windows apps, allowing for additional libraries needed etc, THEN you can spend your time screwing with games, but until then work on things that matter to the majority of Linux users, that is NOT games.
It is in everyone's interest to both secure Windows and stop malware in general, because an infected box can be used for things other than gathering info on the owner, which then affects people who have nothing to do with Windows.
For instance, botnets generally are made up of windows PCs, but are used to DDoS attack Unix webservers for ransom or political gain. They can also be used to attack network nodes such as vulnerable Cisco routers or corporate firewalls, it's a generic proxy model of attack which can be used for any number of attack vectors on any number of different systems. Recently there was even a browser exploit that allowed an attacker to use the box as a security scanner for vulnerable websites, this affected ALL systems, including OS X and Linux.
So, you can see windows is a huge part of the problem and everyone would be better off if it died, but it benefits everyone to stop malware, even if it means fixing problems Microsoft can't or wont fix themselves.
Strictly speaking the analog hole is any interconnect that is NOT digital, because there is no real way to encode an analog signal such that only the intended devices can interpret it. You can try of course but it gets very complicated
Obviously analog will always be subject to this lack of protection because speakers all contain 2 wire analog input, so unless we start hardening speakers like a DoD mainframe there will always be a way to get analog audio by cutting the speaker cone and setting volume level equal to ~1v like RCA line level.
Video is a bit different of course, but rest assured that until televisions are similarly hardened there will be a way to get analog, and probably even digital signals from inside them.
We need to start separating the discussion about piracy from the discussion about DRM, because they aren't entirely linked. DRM is most likely intended to stop sharing between friends, and will never stop real piracy. Until they really do implement a system that stops "break once run everywhere" we will always have piracy because all devices will agree to play media. To turn the system around you need to change the odds into a sort of break once run once system.
I very much agree with you, we are pushing hardware companies away in a number of ways, for instance we demand they open source things that they aren't legally allowed to release code for, and who are we to demand they break the license agreements that got them where they are? And then to make things worse, if they are interested enough in Linux to develop a driver and release it as a binary (As their only real option), they get bitched at more for not giving out the source, and I can tell you what the result will be, companies will stop trying because they have only options that bring them bad press, and then Linux will be in a worse situation than now.
We also seem to be breaking things very very often.
I can upgrade the kernel from 2.6.18 to 2.6.19 and end up with modules that don't load anymore, and thats ridiculous. We allow excuses like "Well all you have to do is recompile after you install a toolchain", I don't want a toolchain installed on a production server, nor do i want to compile because of a kernel update. If we stop accepting unreasonable fixes like this, things will change, but if we keep allowing the lowest possible solution to become standard (recompiling all the time), we will never change.
You guys all missed the point that they are trying to make Solaris more LINUX like, not more BSD like.
And even if that weren't the case it would still not be desirable to use the FreeBSD tools because of how much people like them (or not), they are as bass ackwards as the Solaris tools are now, so it wouldn't even be an improvement.
Ive used all of them for quite a while, never at the same time, but apt is far easier to work with than the freebsd tools, which i have seen fail numerous times on simple tasks, both the binary updates and the ports system.
In any case I realize they aren't ALL build tools, but the last thing you want on a secured machine is a compiler, it's an unnecessary risk and doesn't even need to be there.