There are plenty of examples of arbitrary "things" that move faster than the speed of light. For example, take a laser pointer and point it at the moon. As you move your hand, you can get that dot moving across the surface of the moon way faster than the speed of light. However, this can't be used to transmit information faster than c; it still takes a few seconds for the light to get from your moving hand to the surface of the moon.
The group velocity of photons is just another one of those things. The summary refers to a "pulse" that "propagates"; they almost certainly mean the group velocity, which is useless to transmit information.
"By default, the root account is locked in Ubuntu. This means you cannot login as root or use su."
The password is not random; it simply does not exist. The account is locked, which means NO root login is possible ANYWHERE, not through a console, not through su, not through X, not through SSH, nowhere. sudo works by asking a daemon (already running as root, spawned by init) to run the process for it; the daemon does the authentication itself, which is totally separate from normal account methods.
You can easily change it to have an ordinary root password, and can have sudo use that instead. Just sudo visudo, add "rootpw" to the list of options, then sudo passwd and enter something in. Takes, like, two seconds. I did it. (Just sudo -i in a separate shell first in case you screw it up).
For ordinary users, it really is better to have sudo than it is to have a separate root password. The reason Ubuntu is set up this way is not to prevent people from getting root access, but to prevent viruses and spyware. Users simply don't need a separate root password.
Also, is your installation CD comment about Ubuntu? I've never even heard of that.
Yes, but most profitable applications of botnets involve using the internet connection (e.g. sending spam). This is by far limited by the bandwidth available, not by the processing speed of the computers. There's plenty of processing speed left over to do this sort of hack on the side.
Exactly. There are plenty of examples of open source projects that are proprietary, and that may not be redistributed; e.g. Pine, Cedega. You can view the source, in some cases you can modify it and compile your own version, but you may NOT redistribute your changes (not even for free).
"Open source" has absolutely nothing to do with the development process or the rights you have with that source. It simply means the source is open for viewing and for educational use and that's it.
On that page there's a hugely overcomplicated guide on getting it working; Feisty will tremendously simplify things, especially since it comes with Wine 0.9.30. Here's how you'd install WoW in Feisty:
1) Install your video card drivers. This involves clicking Applications->Add Applications, clicking Advanced, and choosing nvidia-glx for NVidia cards or xorg-driver-fglrx for ATI. Much simpler than on Windows. 2) Restart X (press CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE). 3) Put the WoW install CD in the drive. 4) Browse to your CD-rom (/media/cdrom) and double-click Installer.exe 5) Do the Next-Next-Finish dance 6) Double click the icon on your desktop to launch the game.
So it's pretty much identical to Windows, except the CD won't autorun.:/
The one after it might be. I've heard the release cycle as of Dapper was meant to be first an LTS release, then a release with radical new changes (ala Upstart), then a polished release-of-awesome, then back to LTS again. That's probably just speculation; take it with a large grain of salt.
Development on the various software packages obviously continues as normal; the freeze means new releases of software are not incorporated into Feisty. If a new version of, say, Firefox comes out today, it won't be included in Feisty; it will have to wait for the next release. This ensures there are no longer any major code changes to anything in the repositories, giving us two solid months to test the entire operating system to fix any bugs that may turn up.
Of course, you can still install newer versions of applications manually. They just won't be made available in the repositories.
I've been beta-testing Kubuntu Feisty for about a month now, and it's amazing. It's already a huge improvement over Edgy. Everything is so intuitive and easy to use; Feisty is going to kick ass.
Some of the new stuff they've added are a new wireless network manager by default, big improvements to the package installation system, easy codec/flash installation, lots of user interface tweaks... It looks so polished now, I love it.
Actually I loved D2, I've poured hundreds of hours into it. Back in high-school my friends and I were addicted; we'd have week-long LAN parties, where a few friends would bring their computers over to my house for days on end, and we'd play all night every night and even drive home on our school lunch breaks just to get that extra half-hour in. We were addicted.
Thing is, I never cared about collecting things. I don't even pick anything up when I play until I get at least to Nightmare difficulty, aside from the occasional staff/wand with + to spells for cash. I just slaughter as many monsters as I can. You may have somewhat of a point about people liking collecting things, but I never really saw it.
Actually, most OEM versions of Windows DO come with DVD support. They also come with WMV support for videos embedded online. Those are really the most important parts, and are essential for a machine to just work.
As far as DivX/XviD goes, wherever they are used legally (which is rare), they generally point to a page on getting the codecs installed on Windows. If they're being used for piracy, the end-user knows a guy who knows a nerd who can tell him about the codecs. Both of these cases work because it's Windows, because everyone's nerd knows how to do this on Windows. We need to offer these pre-installed on Linux, otherwise the average end-user will be lost.
Holy shit. I just laughed at first, but then I thought "Hey, I wonder if it actually DOES mention UAC..." I don't know what to say. Mod parent insightful.
I agree, but how else are they going to make it economically feasible? No one is going to buy a Linux desktop if it costs a hundred dollars MORE than one with Vista. It needs to be competitively priced, otherwise this whole exercise is worthless.
Should make the average user's life easier when they want to listen to/watch their media files
No. The OEM version of Ubuntu should have codecs pre-installed. The operating system can cost $30 instead of free, and this cost can be transparent to the user. If you want Ubuntu to succeed, they can't half-ass "Just Work". The user can't be required to take any extra steps whatsoever to get a working desktop (and codecs is one of the bare necessities of a working desktop).
As far as cost goes, yes, Linux desktops may well cost more than Windows ones because Dell gets paid for craplets. As unattractive as this may be, we should investigate whether this is feasible on Linux. For example, what if Linux desktops came with Skype or Flash pre-installed? That's the sort of software that Dell could be paid to include by default; they should start talking to these companies to see if they can't get this done.
Moving documents to and creating a text document on a removable hard drive were the most *plausible* examples, and could cause a security confirmation -- if he doesn't have permissions to write on the removable hard drive. Big surprise there. In linux, a unix flavor, or OSX, he wouldn't be able to do it at all -- unless he always logs in as root. That's outright false. I've used all manner of removable hard drives, mp3 players, and usb keys in Ubuntu, and I've *never* had to put in my root password. It mounts automatically, I can create, delete, and exchange files at will, and the Safely Remove procedure is far more elegant and clean than it is in Windows.
You seem to have completely avoided my question. Let me quote the revelant bit for you:
I only have 512 megs of RAM I don't care if a gig is enough. I care if half a gig is enough. I KNOW it will run Vista, but the only reason I'm interested in Vista is because of Aero. Can I turn Aero on even if I don't meet "Vista Ready"? And why, in the past few months of searching the internets, can't I find a straight answer to this question?
Does it run Aero? I'm sick of hearing how much RAM Vista can eat; I consider that a pro, not a con, because it's effectively using the resources you give it. I want to know what it actually needs. If I have only half a gig of ram, can I still turn on the fancy UI, even if it's sluggish? Or will Vista refuse entirely?
I'd consider myself a Linux power-user, and I like eye-candy. Beryl here is perfectly smooth and fast, playing videos, games, cube rotation, wobbly, etc. I only have 512 megs of RAM and 128 megs of VRAM on a single geForce 6600, and Beryl doesn't say boo; it pushes my two monitors beautifully.
If I added a stick of RAM to this box running Linux, I probably wouldn't even notice a difference. If I need to get an extra stick of RAM just to use Aero, what's the point of Vista?
How is this any more complicated than "double click on setup.exe"? Seems a hell of a lot simpler; you don't do the NextNextFinish dance, you don't have to agree to any license, it doesn't ask you where you want it installed...
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly.
There are plenty of examples of arbitrary "things" that move faster than the speed of light. For example, take a laser pointer and point it at the moon. As you move your hand, you can get that dot moving across the surface of the moon way faster than the speed of light. However, this can't be used to transmit information faster than c; it still takes a few seconds for the light to get from your moving hand to the surface of the moon.
The group velocity of photons is just another one of those things. The summary refers to a "pulse" that "propagates"; they almost certainly mean the group velocity, which is useless to transmit information.
That article is wrong. It's just written by some blogger. Here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RootSudo
"By default, the root account is locked in Ubuntu. This means you cannot login as root or use su."
The password is not random; it simply does not exist. The account is locked, which means NO root login is possible ANYWHERE, not through a console, not through su, not through X, not through SSH, nowhere. sudo works by asking a daemon (already running as root, spawned by init) to run the process for it; the daemon does the authentication itself, which is totally separate from normal account methods.
You can easily change it to have an ordinary root password, and can have sudo use that instead. Just sudo visudo, add "rootpw" to the list of options, then sudo passwd and enter something in. Takes, like, two seconds. I did it. (Just sudo -i in a separate shell first in case you screw it up).
For ordinary users, it really is better to have sudo than it is to have a separate root password. The reason Ubuntu is set up this way is not to prevent people from getting root access, but to prevent viruses and spyware. Users simply don't need a separate root password.
Also, is your installation CD comment about Ubuntu? I've never even heard of that.
Actually it's blank; the root account is just locked.
Yes, but most profitable applications of botnets involve using the internet connection (e.g. sending spam). This is by far limited by the bandwidth available, not by the processing speed of the computers. There's plenty of processing speed left over to do this sort of hack on the side.
They're firing back at the total and utter destruction of AACS by using... lawyers.
Yeah. That'll stop piracy.
Exactly. There are plenty of examples of open source projects that are proprietary, and that may not be redistributed; e.g. Pine, Cedega. You can view the source, in some cases you can modify it and compile your own version, but you may NOT redistribute your changes (not even for free).
"Open source" has absolutely nothing to do with the development process or the rights you have with that source. It simply means the source is open for viewing and for educational use and that's it.
You also need to tell Wine to use OpenGL by adding a couple lines config file. It's step 4 in the appdb link I posted. So one additional step.
Actually, WoW really does work right out of the box with Wine. It has entirely Gold or Platinum status on WineHQ:8 2
:/
http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?iVersionId=64
On that page there's a hugely overcomplicated guide on getting it working; Feisty will tremendously simplify things, especially since it comes with Wine 0.9.30. Here's how you'd install WoW in Feisty:
1) Install your video card drivers. This involves clicking Applications->Add Applications, clicking Advanced, and choosing nvidia-glx for NVidia cards or xorg-driver-fglrx for ATI. Much simpler than on Windows.
2) Restart X (press CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE).
3) Put the WoW install CD in the drive.
4) Browse to your CD-rom (/media/cdrom) and double-click Installer.exe
5) Do the Next-Next-Finish dance
6) Double click the icon on your desktop to launch the game.
So it's pretty much identical to Windows, except the CD won't autorun.
It won't.
The one after it might be. I've heard the release cycle as of Dapper was meant to be first an LTS release, then a release with radical new changes (ala Upstart), then a polished release-of-awesome, then back to LTS again. That's probably just speculation; take it with a large grain of salt.
GP, simply hop into a terminal and type:
sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop
sudo apt-get remove ubuntu-desktop
sudo apt-get autoremove
No need to reinstall anything; it's that easy to switch. If you liked KDE in Mandrake, you'll surely like KDE in Kubuntu.
Development on the various software packages obviously continues as normal; the freeze means new releases of software are not incorporated into Feisty. If a new version of, say, Firefox comes out today, it won't be included in Feisty; it will have to wait for the next release. This ensures there are no longer any major code changes to anything in the repositories, giving us two solid months to test the entire operating system to fix any bugs that may turn up.
Of course, you can still install newer versions of applications manually. They just won't be made available in the repositories.
I've been beta-testing Kubuntu Feisty for about a month now, and it's amazing. It's already a huge improvement over Edgy. Everything is so intuitive and easy to use; Feisty is going to kick ass.
Some of the new stuff they've added are a new wireless network manager by default, big improvements to the package installation system, easy codec/flash installation, lots of user interface tweaks... It looks so polished now, I love it.
Here are the Herd release announcements, containing a subset of the changes Feisty brings:
https://wiki.kubuntu.org/FeistyFawn/Herd1/Kubuntu
https://wiki.kubuntu.org/FeistyFawn/Herd2/Kubuntu
https://wiki.kubuntu.org/FeistyFawn/Herd3/Kubuntu
https://wiki.kubuntu.org/FeistyFawn/Herd4/Kubuntu
Actually I loved D2, I've poured hundreds of hours into it. Back in high-school my friends and I were addicted; we'd have week-long LAN parties, where a few friends would bring their computers over to my house for days on end, and we'd play all night every night and even drive home on our school lunch breaks just to get that extra half-hour in. We were addicted.
Thing is, I never cared about collecting things. I don't even pick anything up when I play until I get at least to Nightmare difficulty, aside from the occasional staff/wand with + to spells for cash. I just slaughter as many monsters as I can. You may have somewhat of a point about people liking collecting things, but I never really saw it.
This is very true. This is what made Diablo 2 so popular; some people love just slaughtering vast hordes of enemies.
Oh, and of course, MP3 audio. What Windows user has ever heard of codecs for MP3s?
Actually, most OEM versions of Windows DO come with DVD support. They also come with WMV support for videos embedded online. Those are really the most important parts, and are essential for a machine to just work.
As far as DivX/XviD goes, wherever they are used legally (which is rare), they generally point to a page on getting the codecs installed on Windows. If they're being used for piracy, the end-user knows a guy who knows a nerd who can tell him about the codecs. Both of these cases work because it's Windows, because everyone's nerd knows how to do this on Windows. We need to offer these pre-installed on Linux, otherwise the average end-user will be lost.
Holy shit. I just laughed at first, but then I thought "Hey, I wonder if it actually DOES mention UAC..." I don't know what to say. Mod parent insightful.
Here's the ad on Youtube:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=g37Z8Scbj8E
I agree, but how else are they going to make it economically feasible? No one is going to buy a Linux desktop if it costs a hundred dollars MORE than one with Vista. It needs to be competitively priced, otherwise this whole exercise is worthless.
No. The OEM version of Ubuntu should have codecs pre-installed. The operating system can cost $30 instead of free, and this cost can be transparent to the user. If you want Ubuntu to succeed, they can't half-ass "Just Work". The user can't be required to take any extra steps whatsoever to get a working desktop (and codecs is one of the bare necessities of a working desktop).
As far as cost goes, yes, Linux desktops may well cost more than Windows ones because Dell gets paid for craplets. As unattractive as this may be, we should investigate whether this is feasible on Linux. For example, what if Linux desktops came with Skype or Flash pre-installed? That's the sort of software that Dell could be paid to include by default; they should start talking to these companies to see if they can't get this done.
You're full of shit.
I only have 512 megs of RAM I don't care if a gig is enough. I care if half a gig is enough. I KNOW it will run Vista, but the only reason I'm interested in Vista is because of Aero. Can I turn Aero on even if I don't meet "Vista Ready"? And why, in the past few months of searching the internets, can't I find a straight answer to this question?
Does it run Aero? I'm sick of hearing how much RAM Vista can eat; I consider that a pro, not a con, because it's effectively using the resources you give it. I want to know what it actually needs. If I have only half a gig of ram, can I still turn on the fancy UI, even if it's sluggish? Or will Vista refuse entirely?
I'd consider myself a Linux power-user, and I like eye-candy. Beryl here is perfectly smooth and fast, playing videos, games, cube rotation, wobbly, etc. I only have 512 megs of RAM and 128 megs of VRAM on a single geForce 6600, and Beryl doesn't say boo; it pushes my two monitors beautifully.
If I added a stick of RAM to this box running Linux, I probably wouldn't even notice a difference. If I need to get an extra stick of RAM just to use Aero, what's the point of Vista?
I still don't understand why people make this argument. Look:
e bxj7.png
http://img503.imageshack.us/my.php?image=installd
How is this any more complicated than "double click on setup.exe"? Seems a hell of a lot simpler; you don't do the NextNextFinish dance, you don't have to agree to any license, it doesn't ask you where you want it installed...