The network-enabled "clipbook" in NT4, while crude, worked well enough in 1997 or so. Copy/paste between terminal server (or remote desktop as it's called now) sessions is completely transparent.
Transparent? I doubt it. It's only transparent if it's available and easy to use.
Does remote desktop comes with XP Home? Is it as easy to set up as "ssh -X hostname"? Why is it that just about everyone who runs free software knows how to use network tools but just about no one knows how to use the "easy" system? The average windoze user is not going to come anywhere close to such convenience. I could be wrong because I don't waste my time with the crap, but my impression is that M$ networking services are asymmetrical, buggy, expensive and shrouded in secrecy designed to bugger interoperability.
I would not compare that to a system that works symmetrically out of the box from any modern free software distribution. For those afraid of the command line, there's always the KDE utilities.
Like I said, I could be wrong. There could really be this fantastic, network aware clipboard from M$ that I've never seen used at home, or at any large or small company I've ever worked for. Pigs one day might fly too.
Nothing drives me nuts in Linux like trying to cut something out of a KDE window and paste it into a Gnome window.... Now show me how the different clipboards that exist on a single Linux Desktop can even cut from one and paste to another.
That's a very old and dealt with issue.
There are a few old applications around that might be annoying but most work better than anything in the windoze world. Almost all the common methods of cutting and pasting, shift-delete/insert, ctrl-c/v, and alt entered menus with shortcuts. I routinely do things like cut text from Kate (KDE) into gnumeric (GNOME) without a problem. Gnome not only sees the clipboard, it calls up the text import tool and gets it right. Tools like KDE's klipper give you your clipboard history for all applications, not just a few, and it lives on your taskbar. If that's not good enough, most applications also cut and paste through ssh -X forwarding. That's right, you can cut and paste across the network, through multiple machines. Do any of the M$ "Desktop Anywhere" type interfaces do that right?
For the past decade, my Linux books have been calling me a "Complete Idiot" and a "Dummy" for reading them. Finally, one that only thinks I'm a "Geek!"
Those were geared to Windows users and readers of such books are still mostly such.
You may have been happier with the earlier Unleashed series or those from O'Reilly without fancy adjectives. Some of the better books leave the decorations out of their words.
The only people to blame are consumers. Demand something else and you'll get it.
No, I blame voters and the big dumb companies that control their media.
The US used to not trade with non free countries. That's not true anymore and we are all poorer for it, despite having piles of cheap slave labor stuff around.
There is little hypocrisy and no sin in buying those cheap goods though. By allowing companies their share of the exploitation, the government has set up a system where those who do wrong will win in all but a few markets. On an individual level, you too will fail to compete if you hobble yourself.
The easy way to break out is to change everyone's import and export laws to reflect public indignation. The indignation is coming but it has to be global.
The hard way to break out is to help China liberate itself. Money and living standards alone won't do it.
Please wear a suit when trying to meet with foreign dignitaries.
Please be better informed in your insults to the free software community and the ideals of your own country. RMS, for all his lack of vanity, does not stink. The same can not be said of the PM or his normal guests.
You do know that Mr. Gates is famous for both his informal attire and his bad hygiene, don't you? See here:
The photo also unintentionally captures classic Gates: completely wrecked hair, terrible looking clothes, generally slovenly appearance, and two glazed eyes staring out past thick glasses. This image changed very little over the bulk of Gates' career, with the shower taps running at much less frequency than the money taps. It should also be noted that this isn't some heaping of sour grapes from the gutter staring up at Bill's mountain of success; throughout the time he has been known in public, Bill's dedication to all-nighters and in-the-trenches energy ensured a number of high-profile press conferences and demonstrations where his lack of hygiene became as breathtaking as the product being demonstrated.
Mr. Gates was welcomed as a head of state on his visit.
Embarrassing indeed but some things smell worse than body odor. When money trumps morals and law, it's not good to be on either side. While there is great shame for the PM in selling out his fellow countrymen, there is also great shame in trying to buy him. There's plenty of stink to go around on this one and clothes are small stuff in the big picture.
Normal people make a meeting... Or if failing that they write the grievance down and hand deliver it.
That's what he did, many times. No one wanted to talk to them, so they took their written grievances and 165,000 signatures and knocked on the door of a public building. The police told them to go away and would not accept the signatures.
This was a purely political move. The signatures are available on line. The refusal to meet or to accept any input whatsoever from the groups opposed to DADVSI sends them a message: we don't care what you think.
Normal people don't act that way. When software experts, such as Sun and the FSF can both agree that something is wrong with a technical law, you owe it to yourself to listen. Ignoring knowlegable input is more commonly known as acting like an ass.
Yeah, Manip, you're a troll and I should not be feeding you. Such crap is as good as any for expressing my surprise and outrage at what I just read about. The people behind DADVSI are using force to get their nasty little laws passed and they will use force when they are broken by people doing nothing wrong. I'm ashamed that those companies are mostly based in the US.
MS employ thousands of people and thus in fact do increase the total value of the market.
Thousands of French people? I was unaware of the great positive economic impact purchasing non free softare from a foreign country had. That makes me feel so good, I might just spend a large portion of my own money to replace my free software, despite the fact that free software works better. I mean, sometimes we have to put aside technological arguments to make sure big dumb companies can continue fucking us. That's the American way, right? Really though, I doubt you would feel the same way if M$TF were French and their software offered poor English support.
About 165,000 French citizens think the French DCMA will harm them and the French economy. Many of those signatures come from French and US companies that think the law is bad for everyone. Sun was on the list if you want a "reputable" software opinion. Digging a little closer to the PM's territory are many signatures from French software companies, artists and others who feel as if they were not part of the process. Those are people who would like to be able to compete but will be hampered by this new law.
The only thing more difficult and expensive than freedom is slavery.
As a monopoly they simply want to charge as much as the market will bear
And then some. A monopoly provider will always maximize their profits at a price well above what a free market would bear. They don't care that fewer people can afford their service as long as they get to squeeze more out of those who can. The net result for them is more money for less effort. The net result for everyone else is a much lower level of service. That's exactly what the people who fought tooth and nail against modems want.
As long as government keeps other people from laying lines to provide local service and as long as the Bells claim common carrier status, net neutrality should be a given. It is sad that anyone would even consider otherwise.
It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that there can be a difference between a person's public and private opinions. In Rosen's case, maybe the difference is extreme.
If you read carefully, you find she expresses almost no opinion at all:
I don't honestly know what I would have done about the individual lawsuits had I stayed..... the lawsuits have outlived most of their usefulness
It's all very slimy and favorable talk about something she knows that people hate. The only conclusion we can draw is that she thinks they were "useful".
It's obvious that we have to look further than this apologetic press release by a has been. RIAA policy and actions speak volumes more than her words. Her record is available for all to see. As you would expect, it was all about protecting established interests: DRM, DMCA, crushing Napster and Grockster. Her work was essentially expanding the RIAA artist "protection" racket into the very medium that would other wise set them free. Her blog continues in this line:
... record companies need to work harder to implemnt a strategy that legitimizes more p2p sites and expands the download and subscription pool by working harder with the tech community to get devices and music services to work better together.
That's the same old bullshit. What it boils down to is that everyone should pay them, our way or the highway and no one else prospers. It's excellence by exclusion instead of competition.
Fuck them. As she has noticed, by her annoyance with the best non-free music service selling RIAA crap, it's not going to work. The factors that created the RIAA, scarcity and government control of the airwaves, are gone. It's easy enough to prosper when others don't try to limit and control distribution channels.
If I was given the choice these people have been given, and I had 3-6 months of expenses in my savings, I'd tell them to, "Train my replacement your own damn selves." I might even do it if I didn't have such savings, depending on how blatantly it was presented to me.
Actually, most people want every damn penny out of the bastards. They are firing you. Making a show won't change that fact, it will only keep you from getting the pile of money they have promised you if you don't run away screaming. Getting everyone to quit at the same time might harm the bank but it won't do you any good.
I the severance package was promissed for such involuntary dismissal there may be a contract violation. If so, the bank deserves punishment.
How about outlawing electronic easedropping without written consent? I won't use Macromedia Flash because it turns the microphone on. That's creepy and all non free software with a microphone can do the same thing. It would be better if that kind of thing were against the law.
In the mean time, I avoid non free software and even have bad thoughts about my cell phone.
mount(8) isn't the only way to access media, and a lot of others do not require root.
Yeah, but only root can change the fstab. Just make sure all removable media mounts noexec. This eliminates user click attacks and forces the user to actually copy and change the exec attribute of the file to run it.
The removable media device setting is a flag contained within the SCSI Inquiry Data response to the SCSI Inquiry command. Bit 7 of byte 1 (indexed from 0) is the Removable Media Bit (RMB). A RMB set to zero indicates that the device is not a removable media device.
So, how hard do you think it would be to make a USB auto run?
But hey, the mighty Ctrl-Alt-Delete login will protect you, right?
Huh? What about cdroms? What about floppy disks? I think the point is, if a user finds a data disk of any format, they might try to see what is on the disk.
From man mount, Debian Etch:
noexec Do not allow direct execution of any binaries on the mounted file system. (Until recently it was possible to run binaries anyway using a command like/lib/ld*.so/mnt/binary. This trick fails since Linux 2.4.25 / 2.6.0.)
There you have it. Contrast this with autorun by default on most Fortune 500 Windoze desktops.
MicroSoft So why are we talking about their 'tools?'
Ask the author Allison Linn who used the term no less than six times to describe the Garry and Ace (GA) piracy check "tool". She must have gotten the term from all of the Softies she talked to. They kept telling her that Windoze is not hard and that they want to put it in every computer in the world. Some 60% of those offered the tool accepted, wow.
Microsoft wants a safety switch in case this tool starts causing PCs around the world to explode. Thus the program checks with Microsoft once a day to see if it should shut itself off.
Fan-fucking-tastic! M$ is finally going to turn off all their spambots and DDoS units that regularly explode their portion of the net. What? It does not do that and they don't care? Yep, no change detected.
Here's the quickest way to turn off this Gary and Ace "tool".
Ho hum, redundancy in a summary blurb. How about mindless and meaningless redundancy in a world wide advertising campaign?
M$ spent millions of dollars telling people that Windoze 2000 and XP were "based on NT Technology". NT itself stood for "Net Technology", making XP into a Technology Technology. What does it do? We don't know!
We can hope your doctor has better bedside manner than Agent Smith:
You are going to help us, Mr. Anderson, whether you want to or not.
Smith nods and the other two rip open his shirt.
From a case taken out of his suit coat, Smith removes a long, fiber-optic wire tap.
Neo struggles helplessly as Smith dangles the wire over his exposed abdomen. Horrified, he watches as the electronic device animates, become an organic creature that resembles a hybrid of an insect and a fluke worm.
Thin, whisker-like tendrils reach out and probe into Neo's navel. He bucks wildly as Smith drops the creature which looks for a moment like an uncut umbilical cord -- Before it begins to burrow its, tail thrashing as it worms its way inside.
no $50/year subscription = No OneCare. Whoever thought up this name is genious, it shows the true feelings of the company that creates the OS that the subscription fixes.
What makes you think the next $50 will fix anything?
Google. Uses python and their own database servers they developped. Problems? Never.
bbc.co.uk - a GIANT site supplied with continuous news and audio. Runs on perl. Nothing else could cope.
Slashdot. Copes with the traffic that destroys anything it links to. Perl again. Rarely down. And lastly
Wikipedia. Runs with PHP and MySQL! Their servers blow weekly, copious lengths of downtime, search function regularly disabled. Pages are nearly always slow to respond. QED
Be fair to Wikipedia. They are more media rich and interactive than any of above and their service does not blow as badly as all that. In fact, the service is good enough to justify deployment at any organization if not of the Wiki used by Wikipedia then any of the other four or five choices.
for the average user learning to use a Linux OS is even more unproductive than turning off a Windows machine.
How true that is depends on what you are trying to do with the user, but it's always false in the long run.
If you are an ISP, you win both ways. When a typical user turns off an XP machine, your network's spam and DDoS load drops. The same thing happens regardless of the state of the Linux machine, though at first you will have to answer a few support questions any user of your service has to ask.
If you are a network administrator, you win big time. A few fanboys might be upset at losing their favorite non free junk, but most users could care less as long as things work and work they will! Turning off the XP computer has the same benefits for you as the ISP and you also have less industrial espionage to worry about. Say goodbye to pesky keyloggers.
As a home user you also win. You may have a few newbie questions, but Vista promosses much of the same confusion. Things are much better in the free world. You can play and work without fear of the OS turning itself off and losing things you care about.
[Q: Which VB apps do not look professional]... any time the look of windows changes (which incidently it hasn't done significantly since 1995), a new dll will be released that will allow VB coders to use that new interface enhancement.
Yes, that 1995 interface is what I'm talking about. Vista will almost bring it up to KDE 2.x standards, but VB has been "depreciated" and probably won't come along for the ride as usual.
Slashdot Mirror
Transparent? I doubt it. It's only transparent if it's available and easy to use.
Does remote desktop comes with XP Home? Is it as easy to set up as "ssh -X hostname"? Why is it that just about everyone who runs free software knows how to use network tools but just about no one knows how to use the "easy" system? The average windoze user is not going to come anywhere close to such convenience. I could be wrong because I don't waste my time with the crap, but my impression is that M$ networking services are asymmetrical, buggy, expensive and shrouded in secrecy designed to bugger interoperability.
I would not compare that to a system that works symmetrically out of the box from any modern free software distribution. For those afraid of the command line, there's always the KDE utilities.
Like I said, I could be wrong. There could really be this fantastic, network aware clipboard from M$ that I've never seen used at home, or at any large or small company I've ever worked for. Pigs one day might fly too.
That's a very old and dealt with issue.
There are a few old applications around that might be annoying but most work better than anything in the windoze world. Almost all the common methods of cutting and pasting, shift-delete/insert, ctrl-c/v, and alt entered menus with shortcuts. I routinely do things like cut text from Kate (KDE) into gnumeric (GNOME) without a problem. Gnome not only sees the clipboard, it calls up the text import tool and gets it right. Tools like KDE's klipper give you your clipboard history for all applications, not just a few, and it lives on your taskbar. If that's not good enough, most applications also cut and paste through ssh -X forwarding. That's right, you can cut and paste across the network, through multiple machines. Do any of the M$ "Desktop Anywhere" type interfaces do that right?
Those were geared to Windows users and readers of such books are still mostly such.
You may have been happier with the earlier Unleashed series or those from O'Reilly without fancy adjectives. Some of the better books leave the decorations out of their words.
Still, whatever gets you there is good.
Don't bite that chicken unless it's cooked!
The only people to blame are consumers. Demand something else and you'll get it.
No, I blame voters and the big dumb companies that control their media.
The US used to not trade with non free countries. That's not true anymore and we are all poorer for it, despite having piles of cheap slave labor stuff around.
There is little hypocrisy and no sin in buying those cheap goods though. By allowing companies their share of the exploitation, the government has set up a system where those who do wrong will win in all but a few markets. On an individual level, you too will fail to compete if you hobble yourself.
The easy way to break out is to change everyone's import and export laws to reflect public indignation. The indignation is coming but it has to be global.
The hard way to break out is to help China liberate itself. Money and living standards alone won't do it.
Please be better informed in your insults to the free software community and the ideals of your own country. RMS, for all his lack of vanity, does not stink. The same can not be said of the PM or his normal guests.
You do know that Mr. Gates is famous for both his informal attire and his bad hygiene, don't you? See here:
The photo also unintentionally captures classic Gates: completely wrecked hair, terrible looking clothes, generally slovenly appearance, and two glazed eyes staring out past thick glasses. This image changed very little over the bulk of Gates' career, with the shower taps running at much less frequency than the money taps. It should also be noted that this isn't some heaping of sour grapes from the gutter staring up at Bill's mountain of success; throughout the time he has been known in public, Bill's dedication to all-nighters and in-the-trenches energy ensured a number of high-profile press conferences and demonstrations where his lack of hygiene became as breathtaking as the product being demonstrated.
Mr. Gates was welcomed as a head of state on his visit.
Embarrassing indeed but some things smell worse than body odor. When money trumps morals and law, it's not good to be on either side. While there is great shame for the PM in selling out his fellow countrymen, there is also great shame in trying to buy him. There's plenty of stink to go around on this one and clothes are small stuff in the big picture.
That's what he did, many times. No one wanted to talk to them, so they took their written grievances and 165,000 signatures and knocked on the door of a public building. The police told them to go away and would not accept the signatures.
This was a purely political move. The signatures are available on line. The refusal to meet or to accept any input whatsoever from the groups opposed to DADVSI sends them a message: we don't care what you think.
Normal people don't act that way. When software experts, such as Sun and the FSF can both agree that something is wrong with a technical law, you owe it to yourself to listen. Ignoring knowlegable input is more commonly known as acting like an ass.
Yeah, Manip, you're a troll and I should not be feeding you. Such crap is as good as any for expressing my surprise and outrage at what I just read about. The people behind DADVSI are using force to get their nasty little laws passed and they will use force when they are broken by people doing nothing wrong. I'm ashamed that those companies are mostly based in the US.
MS employ thousands of people and thus in fact do increase the total value of the market.
Thousands of French people? I was unaware of the great positive economic impact purchasing non free softare from a foreign country had. That makes me feel so good, I might just spend a large portion of my own money to replace my free software, despite the fact that free software works better. I mean, sometimes we have to put aside technological arguments to make sure big dumb companies can continue fucking us. That's the American way, right? Really though, I doubt you would feel the same way if M$TF were French and their software offered poor English support.
About 165,000 French citizens think the French DCMA will harm them and the French economy. Many of those signatures come from French and US companies that think the law is bad for everyone. Sun was on the list if you want a "reputable" software opinion. Digging a little closer to the PM's territory are many signatures from French software companies, artists and others who feel as if they were not part of the process. Those are people who would like to be able to compete but will be hampered by this new law.
The only thing more difficult and expensive than freedom is slavery.
And then some. A monopoly provider will always maximize their profits at a price well above what a free market would bear. They don't care that fewer people can afford their service as long as they get to squeeze more out of those who can. The net result for them is more money for less effort. The net result for everyone else is a much lower level of service. That's exactly what the people who fought tooth and nail against modems want.
As long as government keeps other people from laying lines to provide local service and as long as the Bells claim common carrier status, net neutrality should be a given. It is sad that anyone would even consider otherwise.
If you read carefully, you find she expresses almost no opinion at all:
I don't honestly know what I would have done about the individual lawsuits had I stayed. .... the lawsuits have outlived most of their usefulness
It's all very slimy and favorable talk about something she knows that people hate. The only conclusion we can draw is that she thinks they were "useful".
It's obvious that we have to look further than this apologetic press release by a has been. RIAA policy and actions speak volumes more than her words. Her record is available for all to see. As you would expect, it was all about protecting established interests: DRM, DMCA, crushing Napster and Grockster. Her work was essentially expanding the RIAA artist "protection" racket into the very medium that would other wise set them free. Her blog continues in this line:
That's the same old bullshit. What it boils down to is that everyone should pay them, our way or the highway and no one else prospers. It's excellence by exclusion instead of competition.
Fuck them. As she has noticed, by her annoyance with the best non-free music service selling RIAA crap, it's not going to work. The factors that created the RIAA, scarcity and government control of the airwaves, are gone. It's easy enough to prosper when others don't try to limit and control distribution channels.
Actually, most people want every damn penny out of the bastards. They are firing you. Making a show won't change that fact, it will only keep you from getting the pile of money they have promised you if you don't run away screaming. Getting everyone to quit at the same time might harm the bank but it won't do you any good.
I the severance package was promissed for such involuntary dismissal there may be a contract violation. If so, the bank deserves punishment.
In the mean time, I avoid non free software and even have bad thoughts about my cell phone.
mount(8) isn't the only way to access media, and a lot of others do not require root.
Yeah, but only root can change the fstab. Just make sure all removable media mounts noexec. This eliminates user click attacks and forces the user to actually copy and change the exec attribute of the file to run it.
The removable media device setting is a flag contained within the SCSI Inquiry Data response to the SCSI Inquiry command. Bit 7 of byte 1 (indexed from 0) is the Removable Media Bit (RMB). A RMB set to zero indicates that the device is not a removable media device.
So, how hard do you think it would be to make a USB auto run?
But hey, the mighty Ctrl-Alt-Delete login will protect you, right?
Huh? What about cdroms? What about floppy disks? I think the point is, if a user finds a data disk of any format, they might try to see what is on the disk.
From man mount, Debian Etch:
noexec Do not allow direct execution of any binaries on the mounted file system. (Until recently it was possible to run binaries anyway using a command like /lib/ld*.so /mnt/binary. This trick fails since Linux 2.4.25 / 2.6.0.)
There you have it. Contrast this with autorun by default on most Fortune 500 Windoze desktops.
Ask the author Allison Linn who used the term no less than six times to describe the Garry and Ace (GA) piracy check "tool". She must have gotten the term from all of the Softies she talked to. They kept telling her that Windoze is not hard and that they want to put it in every computer in the world. Some 60% of those offered the tool accepted, wow.
Fan-fucking-tastic! M$ is finally going to turn off all their spambots and DDoS units that regularly explode their portion of the net. What? It does not do that and they don't care? Yep, no change detected.
Here's the quickest way to turn off this Gary and Ace "tool".
And there you will find the ass that tried to start a riot. I can do without Java and all the bull shit that goes along with it, thanks.
M$ spent millions of dollars telling people that Windoze 2000 and XP were "based on NT Technology". NT itself stood for "Net Technology", making XP into a Technology Technology. What does it do? We don't know!
a little roachy terminator.
Gizmo is almost as bad.
What makes you think the next $50 will fix anything?
Be fair to Wikipedia. They are more media rich and interactive than any of above and their service does not blow as badly as all that. In fact, the service is good enough to justify deployment at any organization if not of the Wiki used by Wikipedia then any of the other four or five choices.
There's no such thing as job security through obscurity.
It's a joke, laugh.
How true that is depends on what you are trying to do with the user, but it's always false in the long run.
If you are an ISP, you win both ways. When a typical user turns off an XP machine, your network's spam and DDoS load drops. The same thing happens regardless of the state of the Linux machine, though at first you will have to answer a few support questions any user of your service has to ask.
If you are a network administrator, you win big time. A few fanboys might be upset at losing their favorite non free junk, but most users could care less as long as things work and work they will! Turning off the XP computer has the same benefits for you as the ISP and you also have less industrial espionage to worry about. Say goodbye to pesky keyloggers.
As a home user you also win. You may have a few newbie questions, but Vista promosses much of the same confusion. Things are much better in the free world. You can play and work without fear of the OS turning itself off and losing things you care about.
Yes, that 1995 interface is what I'm talking about. Vista will almost bring it up to KDE 2.x standards, but VB has been "depreciated" and probably won't come along for the ride as usual.