Here we go again. I see the normal old OSS arguments that only apply to the old OSS Linux has.
If ALSA is so great, why did it never get copied out side of Linux?
Anyone else prefer having proper file interfaces for things like, Unix should do?
If I want to write sound I write to/dev/dsp1 if I want to read sound I read from/dev/dsp1.
If I want to write sound out to a second sound card, I write to/dev/dsp2. Nice simple device addressing system.
Now I use ASLA, because the Linux support is all geared that way, and it has always worked for me, but every time I have to deal with it directly, even addressing the right device, I recoil from it's ugly complexity.
ALSA can't kill OSS because Linux isn't the only open Unix platform and the others won't willingly take ALSA.
I have no doubt that ALSA can do things OSS can't, but how many users need those things? Don't mess up the whole design to nicely support a few fringe cases. I want to go back to Unix fundamentals. ALSA is like something from the Windows world, not the Unix one. Plan9 still looks like the future to me, and ALSA is going the the wrong way. ALSA depresses me.:-(
Good for the IT guys. You know you have good people if they don't impliment a bad solution that won't work, regardless of pressure from above. It's a bandwidth/latency issue. It gets to a point where you are better of sending lots of data slowly then small amounts fast. No amount of screaming, shouting and jumping up and down at IT is going to help.
A trained pigeon with a large enough capacity USB stick stuck to it will be faster than the internet in almost any country. It scales great too, just add more pigeons. It's a pipe. The problem is the latency sucks. The post office (or in this case pigeon army) has unlimited bandwidth, but terrible latency. If you want to send some one a few blue rays' worth of data, do you email it? Then your fired. Just put them in the damn post, it will get there much faster.
I grew up with computers round the house. I started learning BBC BASIC when I was 8, and when we got our own computer (Acorn A3000) I started programming games for myself, brother and friends.
I saw my mum type one day, and was in owe of the speed and wanted to learn. She taught me and I am for ever greatfull. I feel sorry for programmers with more years under their belt than me, almost single finger typing. True, mostly in programming, raw speed isn't important, but it is sometimes, and it is as a user of any text program. I will be passing it on to my children, but not everyone will have the advantage of parents able to teach them, and because of that, it should be taught in school.
I blame the masses not being able to type for the fall of the buckle spring keyboard!;-)
Maya introduced python support a while ago, but the Maya binding was just the same as MEL (Maya own script language). This isn't sooo bad, except when it comes to user interfaces, where it sucks very badly. I'm sorry, it does. Most people have been moving from MEL to python, and this makes the MEL interface stuff more of a sticking point because it looks even worse from a python perspective.
In a gernal effort of the Maya development team to make the Maya code common for all the platforms, they have moved the interface to QT for all platforms. There was excitement that this mean pyQT could be used for interfaces. But then their was liencing confusion. Can they use it, can they not? Would they have to get 'up top' to buy it so they could? Now with a LGPL everyone knows where they stand. They can use it and don't have to try and convice management to part with any money. Their stuff doesn't have to be openned (which often they want to do but are not allowed). This is a good thing for the Maya python scripters. Autodesk would be silly not to include this lib as part of Maya's standard python enviroment (but even if they didn't it could still be used). It's a good thing for the lib because it means any improvement/fixes that Autodesk deside to make, they have to give out. Everyone is a winner. Without the LGPL protection, Autodesk would "rape" this project. That is their way. Think Apple, but not as "cool" and more evil.;-)
Put this in a netbook form factor, maybe with HD TV out too, and it's the perfect multimedia Linux pocket companion. Getting very close now to what I'm waiting for.
It's learning in a monoculture that is the problem. If there isn't a monoculture the fundamentals are clear because they are common. This isn't just computers but of everything. It's humans being human. In regards to software, when teaching a type of software, which is more important than teaching a peace of software, more than one implimentation of the type of program should be shown. Learning to a specific piece of software, is frankly stupid, it'll all be different next release, let alone when the kids leave school. Plus you are teaching the kids "there is no choice, no diversity, don't question".
To me, you answered your own question about monopoly. A monoply causes a monoculture of applications. A monoculture means people blow differences out of proportion. If there isn't a monoculture the fundamentals are clear because they are common. This isn't just computers but of almost everything. It's humans being human.
It does seam to lack a true node system (Maya does this very well). But Blender's main problem is it's interface. I could rant all day why Max sucks, but I won't. I don't really know Blender, but it's fans seam to love it, and the movies look good. It's seams loved because of it's low foot print, high speed, runs on many OSs, is free and feature packed. It can export to POV-ray, and if Blenders render isn't good enough, and POV-ray renderer isn't good enough, as POV-ray is quite a well known standard, maybe you can import it into the required proprietary render. Make it user friendly and it could become the firefox of the 3D world.:-)
I work in a games company and was involved in art tools for many years.
Anyone technical who digs into 3DS comes to hate it with a passion. It's a mess in desperate in need of a rewrite. Blender IS better to develop for. API/scripting aside, the rigging stuff in 3DS Max is terrible, it's not a proper animation package, we have dropped it here for animation, after it failed to do the job so badly it's supporters lost all authority on the matter. Maya is used for animation, Max if used at all, is used only by modelers. Blender IS better than Max for animation.
There are artists here who love Blender (but it's only home they use it).
The ones who have tried it and hate it, hate it because the interface is so different for Max/Maya. They don't want to learn a new interface. It's hard to argue it can't be used for high quality work when there is high quality work done with it (Big bunny, Elephant dream and others).
I'm not involved with art tools and artists any more, but I keep in contact with those that are, and Blender is certainly one to watch. Especially as Maya quality decays under Autodesk and XSI is beginning to decay too. Why Autodesk was allowed to own Max, Maya and XSI is beyond me. Blender is one of a few of rays of hope.
I really agree with this point.
People learn Excel instead of spread sheets.
The problem is, give them another spread sheet, or Excel with a new interface, and their world melts.
But also it is a learning computers/programming question.
I also think Windows is not as a nutritious platform to learn from. When I was growing up, computers where relatively open, or at least the Acorn was, nearly everything was a mix of BASIC and ARM code. The Acorn was itching to be programmed. A disproportion of programmers I have worked with cut their teeth on the Acorn as a child. Where are our replacements coming from? Uni? I think the problems of learning programming purely from the education system are well documented here, not saying they are all crap, but there is certainly no shortage of those that are. Very few Windows kids seem to come out programmers.
Linux is even more nutritious platform, more so then platforms like the Acorn ever where. Not just because everything is open but because of its rich server heritage. The openness is not just in the source, but in documents and books explaining how parts work and why. There are no dark secrets and black boxes, everything is done in the open to those interested. I learnt more in the last few years of playing with Linux at home then I have in the last ten programming on Windows for a living. I think this is why Windows people fear the penguin, if all this is right, it means they are behind where they could be. The big thing I think Windows breaks is your understanding of filesystems. Explaining a virtual filesystem to a Windows (userland only) programmer can melt their mind, explaining the "proc" folder has done that at least a few times. Those who think filesystems don't matter, don't understand how powerful this simple abstraction is. They have never seen a device file, it's hidden from their world, they don't know it's all under their feet. Which goes back to Windows breaking your understanding of filesystems.
My kids will be Linux kids and they will know more about computers because of it.
It only makes sense with tasks where you are working end to end and know how to do it. If you don't know where to go next, swapping tasks until you do can make you more productive. No point banging your head at some thing if you aren't making real progress. Let your subconscious chew on it while you do something else. (I'm under no illusions, my subconscious is smarter then me, I'm just a sub routine!;-) )
If I'm interested and know exactly what needs doing, the music will run out, email builds up, hours go by and I don't notice. If I'm stuck and uninterested, the silence is oppressive and I need distraction. If I'm stuck and uninterested but force myself through it, the solution is a hack waiting to be replaced. (Of course some times, it just needs doing, and there may be no "nice" way.)
I certainly wouldn't be more productive in a silence nazti's boot camp. I'd leave for some where more creative pretty quick.
The brain is going to be good at configuring itself. I think this study was looking at the wrong kind of multitasking. Test them to see if they are better at multitasking what they have been multitasking.
I can't help thinking this is just thin-client + mainframe again, and just like every other time the model has come around, it's being pushed as the future.
Even if it is easy to recompile Windows application on a different process architecture, the option isn't there because all the applications are closed source. Each vendor of each application will decide which applications are worth porting. Aside the fact that many Linux applications are already compilable on different process architectures, it's all open, anything not already portable, can be made so without external involvement. No cost analysis, sales drones, cross company politics, etc etc. Win7 being ported to ARM would give you only a few apps. Win7 on a ARM netbook won't be half as useful to a power users as Linux on a ARM netbook, and a normal user will just be confused they can't install and use their Windows applications.
Never seen a DM8000 on offer any where in the UK, there always "out of stock" or "coming soon". The price looks to dear anyway, now you tell me it can only handle a few formats. I thought you could get vlc for it. It's a shame it's pricy and not up to spec, because other than that, it's exactly what I want. Maybe one of the Linux ARM/Nvidia netbook would fix the bill. DVB cards would be nice, but is increasingly less important.
I don't want another fan heater in the liver room.
At the moment the TV is just another screen for the desktop, the TV menu system is something I knocked together with pyGame, MPlayer and pyLIRC. Job done (all the existing media software was fat and/or HD only). If I'm going to get a separate machine for media, I want it not to add more noise or notable heat/power use.
My perfect media machine is something like a SheevaPlug with Scart + HDMI (future proofing) output. If you can fit DVB input too, great. A affordable modern available DreamBox. A x86 fan heater doesn't fit the bill to me.
I can see the logic, but it's flawed. It's thinking of software like any other engineering. It's not. It's right on the edge of what our little monkey brains can deal with. The people for this are probably for big design up front, thinking software engineers have ignored everything from normal engineering. But this is not the case, normal engineering development models were the first tried. No development model works perfectly in software, I'm sorry, but there is no magic bullet. Software is not bridges or cars. We are left doing the best we can, which is iteration and test,test and test again. I personally feel that working openly gives the best results, i.e "with enough eye balls, all bugs are shallow", but the project needs critical mass before that kicks in.
Jobs should be allocated on skills. Not paper. The process of getting the paper should give you the skills. If not, it's worthless.
If the course is looking worthless, perhaps it is, and it's not worth wasting more time and money on it. If you spent 3 years of your life doing a worthless course, what does it say about you? You're left 3 years older and still lacking the required skills.
I dropped out of a virtual reality course (name should have been a clue, but I was young and naive) after a year and a half because all my learning was self taught and the course interfered. It was all very disappointing and depressing. Dropping out was like a weight off my shoulders. I spent six months moving my C++ programming from the Acorn to Windows and then got a job doing 3D engine programming. It's nearly a decade later now and I have seen very "qualified" programmers not worth the space they use up. I'm sure some of the good programmers I know are better for having done "good" courses, but I don't think a good course can make a bad programmer good and plenty of good programmers who did "bad" courses have told me it was a waste of time.
Ultimately I think market forces have caused many courses to set the bar too low, and not to raise it high enough during the course (or recruiting of lecturers?). Maybe some come back from people who complete the courses and come out without employable skills is a good thing.
I, and no doubt many others, would argue it is more secure. If anything it's even more secure for non-technical people as they aren't going to stray from the standard software repositories. At the moment, many many many many non-technical people use Windows, as admin, with little security settings, installing software from all over the place. That is just asking for the huge bot nets we have. Worse is that almost all of what security there is, is closed, so at least partly, operating on security via obscurity.
This is not just about market share.
More market share would be nice, but for that, people need to learn about computers not Windows, word processing, not Word, spread sheets not Excel, etc etc, and that requires a change of mind set. Linux will never be a better Windows. It's a whole new mind set. If it import the Windows mind set or stay small, I say stay small. How ever, I do feel 1% doesn't reflect reality, but maybe I live/work in a technical bubble.
I don't by the market share argument. Linux is already very widely spread, just not on the desktop. It should be a target for hacks now as the many web servers running it should be juicy targets.
Also, because of package management, malware and adware is never go to be an issue, not unless you add a infected repository. My bet is most "normal" linux users, don't add repositories anyway. They just think of add/remove software as if it was a less polished iStore. They don't install stuff from any random place, and chances are don't know how to.
The old home-use admin-login issue, I admit, isn't as fair to shout windows down for anymore as steps have been taken as of Vista to address this weakness.
You second argument is that open source is going to be less secure. This is a big debate. One I think the open source guys have all but won. "Security via obscurity is no security at all." etc etc. I go with that because if a company thinks no one knows, or will know, I doubt they will fix it, it's a cost analysis thing. Where as when some finds a open source one, they shout about it, which is fine, they deserve the cred.
I don't think simulating a brain is impossible.
I do think by truly doing so the result would grow concious, else it's not a proper simulation.
But I think we are no where near the understanding to be able to do this.
The brain is the most complex arrangement of matter we know of. Much of this kind of research seams to rely on each cell not really doing any computation, but my bet is that they do. My bet is each cell some kind of mini computer, and how brain is a insanely complex dynamic network of these.
I think we will be enhancing our brains before we can create new ones.
Slashdot Mirror
Here we go again. I see the normal old OSS arguments that only apply to the old OSS Linux has.
/dev/dsp1 if I want to read sound I read from /dev/dsp1. /dev/dsp2. Nice simple device addressing system.
:-(
If ALSA is so great, why did it never get copied out side of Linux?
Anyone else prefer having proper file interfaces for things like, Unix should do?
If I want to write sound I write to
If I want to write sound out to a second sound card, I write to
Now I use ASLA, because the Linux support is all geared that way, and it has always worked for me, but every time I have to deal with it directly, even addressing the right device, I recoil from it's ugly complexity.
ALSA can't kill OSS because Linux isn't the only open Unix platform and the others won't willingly take ALSA.
I have no doubt that ALSA can do things OSS can't, but how many users need those things? Don't mess up the whole design to nicely support a few fringe cases. I want to go back to Unix fundamentals. ALSA is like something from the Windows world, not the Unix one. Plan9 still looks like the future to me, and ALSA is going the the wrong way. ALSA depresses me.
Good for the IT guys. You know you have good people if they don't impliment a bad solution that won't work, regardless of pressure from above. It's a bandwidth/latency issue. It gets to a point where you are better of sending lots of data slowly then small amounts fast. No amount of screaming, shouting and jumping up and down at IT is going to help.
A trained pigeon with a large enough capacity USB stick stuck to it will be faster than the internet in almost any country. It scales great too, just add more pigeons. It's a pipe. The problem is the latency sucks. The post office (or in this case pigeon army) has unlimited bandwidth, but terrible latency. If you want to send some one a few blue rays' worth of data, do you email it? Then your fired. Just put them in the damn post, it will get there much faster.
I grew up with computers round the house. I started learning BBC BASIC when I was 8, and when we got our own computer (Acorn A3000) I started programming games for myself, brother and friends.
;-)
I saw my mum type one day, and was in owe of the speed and wanted to learn. She taught me and I am for ever greatfull. I feel sorry for programmers with more years under their belt than me, almost single finger typing. True, mostly in programming, raw speed isn't important, but it is sometimes, and it is as a user of any text program. I will be passing it on to my children, but not everyone will have the advantage of parents able to teach them, and because of that, it should be taught in school.
I blame the masses not being able to type for the fall of the buckle spring keyboard!
This is a very good thing for Maya scripters.
;-)
Maya introduced python support a while ago, but the Maya binding was just the same as MEL (Maya own script language). This isn't sooo bad, except when it comes to user interfaces, where it sucks very badly. I'm sorry, it does. Most people have been moving from MEL to python, and this makes the MEL interface stuff more of a sticking point because it looks even worse from a python perspective.
In a gernal effort of the Maya development team to make the Maya code common for all the platforms, they have moved the interface to QT for all platforms. There was excitement that this mean pyQT could be used for interfaces. But then their was liencing confusion. Can they use it, can they not? Would they have to get 'up top' to buy it so they could? Now with a LGPL everyone knows where they stand. They can use it and don't have to try and convice management to part with any money. Their stuff doesn't have to be openned (which often they want to do but are not allowed). This is a good thing for the Maya python scripters. Autodesk would be silly not to include this lib as part of Maya's standard python enviroment (but even if they didn't it could still be used). It's a good thing for the lib because it means any improvement/fixes that Autodesk deside to make, they have to give out. Everyone is a winner. Without the LGPL protection, Autodesk would "rape" this project. That is their way. Think Apple, but not as "cool" and more evil.
Max should be taken out back and shot. When in a less kind mood I would do the same for the users who think it's good.
Doh. Wrong tab! Sorry
Put this in a netbook form factor, maybe with HD TV out too, and it's the perfect multimedia Linux pocket companion. Getting very close now to what I'm waiting for.
Then this is for you: ;-)
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xlkkw_nin-happiness-in-slavery_music
It's learning in a monoculture that is the problem. If there isn't a monoculture the fundamentals are clear because they are common. This isn't just computers but of everything. It's humans being human. In regards to software, when teaching a type of software, which is more important than teaching a peace of software, more than one implimentation of the type of program should be shown. Learning to a specific piece of software, is frankly stupid, it'll all be different next release, let alone when the kids leave school. Plus you are teaching the kids "there is no choice, no diversity, don't question".
To me, you answered your own question about monopoly. A monoply causes a monoculture of applications. A monoculture means people blow differences out of proportion. If there isn't a monoculture the fundamentals are clear because they are common. This isn't just computers but of almost everything. It's humans being human.
It does seam to lack a true node system (Maya does this very well). But Blender's main problem is it's interface. I could rant all day why Max sucks, but I won't. I don't really know Blender, but it's fans seam to love it, and the movies look good. It's seams loved because of it's low foot print, high speed, runs on many OSs, is free and feature packed. It can export to POV-ray, and if Blenders render isn't good enough, and POV-ray renderer isn't good enough, as POV-ray is quite a well known standard, maybe you can import it into the required proprietary render. Make it user friendly and it could become the firefox of the 3D world. :-)
I work in a games company and was involved in art tools for many years. Anyone technical who digs into 3DS comes to hate it with a passion. It's a mess in desperate in need of a rewrite. Blender IS better to develop for. API/scripting aside, the rigging stuff in 3DS Max is terrible, it's not a proper animation package, we have dropped it here for animation, after it failed to do the job so badly it's supporters lost all authority on the matter. Maya is used for animation, Max if used at all, is used only by modelers. Blender IS better than Max for animation. There are artists here who love Blender (but it's only home they use it). The ones who have tried it and hate it, hate it because the interface is so different for Max/Maya. They don't want to learn a new interface. It's hard to argue it can't be used for high quality work when there is high quality work done with it (Big bunny, Elephant dream and others). I'm not involved with art tools and artists any more, but I keep in contact with those that are, and Blender is certainly one to watch. Especially as Maya quality decays under Autodesk and XSI is beginning to decay too. Why Autodesk was allowed to own Max, Maya and XSI is beyond me. Blender is one of a few of rays of hope.
I really agree with this point. People learn Excel instead of spread sheets. The problem is, give them another spread sheet, or Excel with a new interface, and their world melts. But also it is a learning computers/programming question. I also think Windows is not as a nutritious platform to learn from. When I was growing up, computers where relatively open, or at least the Acorn was, nearly everything was a mix of BASIC and ARM code. The Acorn was itching to be programmed. A disproportion of programmers I have worked with cut their teeth on the Acorn as a child. Where are our replacements coming from? Uni? I think the problems of learning programming purely from the education system are well documented here, not saying they are all crap, but there is certainly no shortage of those that are. Very few Windows kids seem to come out programmers. Linux is even more nutritious platform, more so then platforms like the Acorn ever where. Not just because everything is open but because of its rich server heritage. The openness is not just in the source, but in documents and books explaining how parts work and why. There are no dark secrets and black boxes, everything is done in the open to those interested. I learnt more in the last few years of playing with Linux at home then I have in the last ten programming on Windows for a living. I think this is why Windows people fear the penguin, if all this is right, it means they are behind where they could be. The big thing I think Windows breaks is your understanding of filesystems. Explaining a virtual filesystem to a Windows (userland only) programmer can melt their mind, explaining the "proc" folder has done that at least a few times. Those who think filesystems don't matter, don't understand how powerful this simple abstraction is. They have never seen a device file, it's hidden from their world, they don't know it's all under their feet. Which goes back to Windows breaking your understanding of filesystems. My kids will be Linux kids and they will know more about computers because of it.
It only makes sense with tasks where you are working end to end and know how to do it. If you don't know where to go next, swapping tasks until you do can make you more productive. No point banging your head at some thing if you aren't making real progress. Let your subconscious chew on it while you do something else. (I'm under no illusions, my subconscious is smarter then me, I'm just a sub routine! ;-) )
If I'm interested and know exactly what needs doing, the music will run out, email builds up, hours go by and I don't notice. If I'm stuck and uninterested, the silence is oppressive and I need distraction. If I'm stuck and uninterested but force myself through it, the solution is a hack waiting to be replaced. (Of course some times, it just needs doing, and there may be no "nice" way.)
I certainly wouldn't be more productive in a silence nazti's boot camp. I'd leave for some where more creative pretty quick.
The brain is going to be good at configuring itself. I think this study was looking at the wrong kind of multitasking. Test them to see if they are better at multitasking what they have been multitasking.
I can't help thinking this is just thin-client + mainframe again, and just like every other time the model has come around, it's being pushed as the future.
Well, not that shocked....
Even if it is easy to recompile Windows application on a different process architecture, the option isn't there because all the applications are closed source. Each vendor of each application will decide which applications are worth porting. Aside the fact that many Linux applications are already compilable on different process architectures, it's all open, anything not already portable, can be made so without external involvement. No cost analysis, sales drones, cross company politics, etc etc. Win7 being ported to ARM would give you only a few apps. Win7 on a ARM netbook won't be half as useful to a power users as Linux on a ARM netbook, and a normal user will just be confused they can't install and use their Windows applications.
Never seen a DM8000 on offer any where in the UK, there always "out of stock" or "coming soon". The price looks to dear anyway, now you tell me it can only handle a few formats. I thought you could get vlc for it. It's a shame it's pricy and not up to spec, because other than that, it's exactly what I want. Maybe one of the Linux ARM/Nvidia netbook would fix the bill. DVB cards would be nice, but is increasingly less important.
I don't want another fan heater in the liver room. At the moment the TV is just another screen for the desktop, the TV menu system is something I knocked together with pyGame, MPlayer and pyLIRC. Job done (all the existing media software was fat and/or HD only). If I'm going to get a separate machine for media, I want it not to add more noise or notable heat/power use. My perfect media machine is something like a SheevaPlug with Scart + HDMI (future proofing) output. If you can fit DVB input too, great. A affordable modern available DreamBox. A x86 fan heater doesn't fit the bill to me.
I can see the logic, but it's flawed. It's thinking of software like any other engineering. It's not. It's right on the edge of what our little monkey brains can deal with. The people for this are probably for big design up front, thinking software engineers have ignored everything from normal engineering. But this is not the case, normal engineering development models were the first tried. No development model works perfectly in software, I'm sorry, but there is no magic bullet. Software is not bridges or cars. We are left doing the best we can, which is iteration and test,test and test again. I personally feel that working openly gives the best results, i.e "with enough eye balls, all bugs are shallow", but the project needs critical mass before that kicks in.
Jobs should be allocated on skills. Not paper. The process of getting the paper should give you the skills. If not, it's worthless.
If the course is looking worthless, perhaps it is, and it's not worth wasting more time and money on it. If you spent 3 years of your life doing a worthless course, what does it say about you? You're left 3 years older and still lacking the required skills.
I dropped out of a virtual reality course (name should have been a clue, but I was young and naive) after a year and a half because all my learning was self taught and the course interfered. It was all very disappointing and depressing. Dropping out was like a weight off my shoulders. I spent six months moving my C++ programming from the Acorn to Windows and then got a job doing 3D engine programming. It's nearly a decade later now and I have seen very "qualified" programmers not worth the space they use up. I'm sure some of the good programmers I know are better for having done "good" courses, but I don't think a good course can make a bad programmer good and plenty of good programmers who did "bad" courses have told me it was a waste of time.
Ultimately I think market forces have caused many courses to set the bar too low, and not to raise it high enough during the course (or recruiting of lecturers?). Maybe some come back from people who complete the courses and come out without employable skills is a good thing.
I, and no doubt many others, would argue it is more secure. If anything it's even more secure for non-technical people as they aren't going to stray from the standard software repositories. At the moment, many many many many non-technical people use Windows, as admin, with little security settings, installing software from all over the place. That is just asking for the huge bot nets we have. Worse is that almost all of what security there is, is closed, so at least partly, operating on security via obscurity.
This is not just about market share.
More market share would be nice, but for that, people need to learn about computers not Windows, word processing, not Word, spread sheets not Excel, etc etc, and that requires a change of mind set. Linux will never be a better Windows. It's a whole new mind set. If it import the Windows mind set or stay small, I say stay small. How ever, I do feel 1% doesn't reflect reality, but maybe I live/work in a technical bubble.
I don't by the market share argument. Linux is already very widely spread, just not on the desktop. It should be a target for hacks now as the many web servers running it should be juicy targets.
Also, because of package management, malware and adware is never go to be an issue, not unless you add a infected repository. My bet is most "normal" linux users, don't add repositories anyway. They just think of add/remove software as if it was a less polished iStore. They don't install stuff from any random place, and chances are don't know how to.
The old home-use admin-login issue, I admit, isn't as fair to shout windows down for anymore as steps have been taken as of Vista to address this weakness.
You second argument is that open source is going to be less secure. This is a big debate. One I think the open source guys have all but won. "Security via obscurity is no security at all." etc etc. I go with that because if a company thinks no one knows, or will know, I doubt they will fix it, it's a cost analysis thing. Where as when some finds a open source one, they shout about it, which is fine, they deserve the cred.
I don't think simulating a brain is impossible.
I do think by truly doing so the result would grow concious, else it's not a proper simulation.
But I think we are no where near the understanding to be able to do this.
The brain is the most complex arrangement of matter we know of. Much of this kind of research seams to rely on each cell not really doing any computation, but my bet is that they do. My bet is each cell some kind of mini computer, and how brain is a insanely complex dynamic network of these.
I think we will be enhancing our brains before we can create new ones.