Former White House cybersecurity adviser Howard Schmidt says the incident is typical...
Yow-ser, yow-ser, it just does that.
So Fix the Thing with Free Software.
on
The Future of the PDA
·
· Score: 2, Informative
All of the problems you describe are fixed with Familiar or Open Zaurus. I can strongly recommend either GPE or Opie on Zaurus. They both have graffiti packages that are first rate, good browsers and personal information managers. Opie, as a bonus, has a media player that does ogg, mp3 and everthing else you can think of. The newer media player is using Xine as a back end and does streaming media. Flashing the Zaurus is easy to do. I'd consider a M$ PDA a brick before flashing. Sharp's original software is pretty good but the open stuff is better.
GPE does X and portable Gnome applications. You can use Dilo, which works better than the IE you describe, or mini mozilla, which is slower but resizes images and does other cool stuff. Xstroke gives you full screen graffiti and is the best handwriting recognition I've ever seen. The PIM stuff is supposed to sync with Evolution.
Opie is it's own mini KDE environment and works well. It's supposed to sync with multisynk, but also imports the normal kontact files with ease. Embedded Konqueror is not as good as minimo, but it works well enough. The interface is mature, stable and good.
The built in MMC slot is well used by both, and you can run both at the same time on Zaurus.
Cheers, you don't have to wait for Apple to give you a PDA.
"Increasingly capable cellphones", as the summary puts it, will be the real challenge to the PDA.
Would you spend hours on the phone telling the phone company all about your friends and plans? No? Me neither. That is why my PDA will not be a cell phone unless I can install the software myself, like OpenZaurus. I have similar thoughts about trusting any information to Microsoft in any way.
Privacy aside, cell phone and M$ PDAs suck. M$'s handwriting recognition and interface continuse to be third rate. My old hadspring does a better job and Xstroke under GPE beats them both. Every now and then I check out models in stores and I've yet to see one that's usable. Most Cellphone PDA's, with additional arbitrary limitations are even worse. Blackberry is a usable device and older Treos have been OK, but then you start to get back to the trust issue.
Right now, most open source software tends to be tested and hacked on to at least make it run on PowerPC, for the benefit of Mac users. As the PowerPC Mac users switch to x86, who's going to care about PowerPC compatibility?
I'm hoping for more, not fewer PowerPC platforms. PowerPC continues to do more per watt than other hardware. It's better for the kinds of small, quiet systems most people really want. The Mac mini is a great example of the kind of system I'd like next. The same things make an attractive laptop. It would be nice to see IBM make Linux hardware and get back into the home market. They have what I want.
The real geniuses here are the SCO lawyers, for keeping this ridiculous dog & pony show going for as long as they have... They deserve respect, grudging though it my be.
a "properly licensed operating system" doesn't have to cost money.
I'd like to know what it really requires. Suppose my free software distribution does not have serial numbers for "accounting"? It would not be surprising for a country that throws people into jail for visiting the wrong web site to then force one rooted distro or another on everyone. Red tape is mostly about ending freedom.
People are buying BILLIONS of dollars of DRM protected content TODAY. So, it works well enough for most people
They are not buying WMAs, so that's not good enough. DVDs don't really sell as well as they could because of DRM. I don't buy them because I know my set top box won't last forever and that will be the end of them. The problems with other, better built systems like IPod come later. We will see if publishers survive the waves of betrayal they are generating. In the mean time, other publishers are going to jump right in and steal their market share.
Will your kids be able to share and enjoy your music? I was able to convert my mom's 45s, had a great time doing it and will be able to share that with my daughter. I'll be able to move and convert those files around as I please. That's what people expect from things they buy and they really won't accept less.
Yes, that does work but it has a few drawbacks. I've used that as a way to digitize my notes. A combination of lights makes a good source for multi colored graphs and pictures. It's faster than a flat bed scanner, but... it's not flat! Most camera lenses will "barrel" and "cussion" your picture.
A scanner can take more time, but it's worth the effort. Kooka works as well as the best Windoze software with them and you can scan in several photos at once. The quality, at all resolutions, is better than the camera method. It takes time to split them up, but you can save that task for later. With proper equipment layout, this can be almost as fast as the tripod way. You can find tough old HP scsi scanners at used computer shops and buy them for a song. Many USB scanners also have good sane backends. See the list of sane devices before you buy.
The easiest thing to do, is to use a photo scanner like this. I'd rather use kooka than a script but scripts are flexible and powerful.
Here's what my step brother found out when 7 feet of salty sewer water rode over his house:
Photo albums: bulky for travel. Left and ruined.
External hard drive: Great idea, but he left it and it was ruined.
CDs: washable and fully recovered.
Network: not used.
The big lesson was that forsight is required. The hard drive would have been best to run with, but it's fragile, so pack them well. A CD book good, but heavy unless you move to DVD. As usual, having multiple live copies is the easiest solution.
Everyone's pictures are important, so digitize them soon. My digitized pictures are outlasting the ink in my physical versions. Even older silver based black and white images are going away. Digitize as quickly as possible and store the originals as well as you can - correct humidity, acid free backing and all that. Real dissasters can and will take your physical copies. Give gift CDs to friends and family of the images you think are most important. That will protect you against fires in a way that is too expensive and time consuming with physical coppies.
I'd recommend you arrange to wind-up with both a digitized copy and an old-fashioned one.
Are there such things as "warranted hackers or virus attacks"?
Yes, anyone that gives M$ enough money will have access to the new Vista Total Information Awareness (VITA) system. This is what non-free is all about, sit back and enjoy it or dump the last of your second rate software.
if you have, say, a pirated copy of Excel Microsoft (or companies with similar software) can erase it, or anything else they want to erase, and not be held liable for it.
This is Bill's dream come true. They have already granted themselves this power in their EULAs. This law gives them unambiguous rights to carry out that EULA. So yes, they can "update" your boot loader, load your free software with keyloggers and spyware, wipe partitions and do what ever they want.
More ominously:
Additionally, that phrase fraudulent or other illegal activities means they can... Let the local district attorney know... [about whatever they find or think they find on your computer].
About the only thing worse than M$ having run of your computer would be M$ law enforcement. I predict a wave of bogus reports designed to harass people Bill does not like. We can only hope that law enforcement has the good sense to distrust such an obviously interested party.
If people want content and content providers don't make that content available on Linux, then people won't use Linux.
DRM won't work and only systems and artists who avoid it will profit and grow. Go visit the links I provided and tell me what content you are still lacking.
Ayers said. "Linux would be further relegated to use in servers and business computers, since it would not be providing the multimedia technologies demanded by consumers."
People want music and movies not some greedy pig's Digital Restrictions Management. The absolute failure of "Plays for Sure" to gain any market share is because the DRM sucks. No one wants dissapearing music and convoluted subscription plans. You can, right now, get movies and music outside of such restrictions and that's where people are going to go.
Archive.org has more than 33,000 live concerts and 70,000 recordings.
Star Wreck shows what kind of movie can be made with a good idea and a few junky old computers and a few hundred bucks.
That's just the beginning.
These are the new winners. Their work is excellent and they are the kind of people I want to spend my money on. Do you think for an instant that I'm going to corrupt my computer with crap that will lock them out? I'm not alone. People are already outraged by DRM'd CDs and the only people less trusted than Sony is Microsoft. When whole collections vanish they will really howl. The winners will sit pretty on their nice media and wonder what all the fuss is about. Their market share is going to go up and up.
I'm keeping my set top box for the old losers but it's going away. You can get them for $40 at the walmart and they do a nice slide show if you feed them a CD of your jpegs. I'll give the MPAA four bucks here and there to watch their little movies. That's all it takes to not feel like I live in a cave. As more content becomes available elsewhere, I'll spend less of my time and money on that set top box. I've already dropped cable TV and don't miss it.
their pricing provides no advantage over Microsoft
If that's true, it's good enough. Something that works better but costs the same will take market share. TCO is probably better on the Novell side and your data and employee's time is way to expensive to leave to Microsoft. By now, you have to have a hole in your head to use Exchange or any other M$ server.
This isn't new. Whenever you reveal in public something of particular worth, there's a possibility that some moron is going to attack you
That's why you need to know that some moron thinks your laptop is valuable. This has not always been the case. Paw shops have traditionally shied away from computers because they are tricky to fix and their value falls too quickly. Ebay has changed that. The reality of the situation is not as important as what the dirtbags think. It's a trend and it will spread as the bums migrate north and east for summer.
You also should know to NEVER buy a laptop on the street. No matter how good the deal looks. You are looking at a thief and you might be their next victim. Get away cleanly, without resistance, and report the suspicious activity to the police.
Please note that all typos made in the above post were due to my typing on a $100 computer. The keyboard is atrocious.
The $100 computer could just as easily have Konqueror, which highlights your spelling mistakes. That's the beauty of free software, programs that cost nothing works better than the OS that costs more than your hardware. I should know, my spelling is terrible.
One of the first things they'll typically do is fire up the browser. Then their IP is captured in my server's web log.... those kinds of people often just aren't that smart.
That's way too much credit. According to the article, the kind of person who's going to stab you in the chest for your laptop is going to sell it on the street for two hundred bucks. The article did not say so but they are junkies. They are not going to take the time to turn it on, much less check that it works. There are other dirtbags out there, the kind who steal textbooks and sell plasma. They won't stab you but will steal your laptop just the same.
The only thing that will work in the long term is to not buy laptops off the street. If you see someone selling, watch out! Stay out of reach or you will be the next victim. Smile as you move away and say something like, "Wow, that's nice but I don't have enough cash right now." Do what you can to get where lots of people are fast. When you are clear, call the police. Long after people start watching these dirt bags and their dealers will still be passing stories around about making hundreds of bucks off such an easy theft. It will take a long time and many loser examples before it stops. In the mean time... watch out.
I'm glad my laptop is a piece of shit. It's too bad a junkie won't know any better.
I'm going to stay away from places close to where the bums are for a while.
Admitting to anti-competitive practices would get them fined or jailed. I get this picture of Bill Gates patting a small dog on the head. "Good boy, you even fooled some of the Slashdot crowd for me. Have some more Designed for Vista stickers and a biter bone." Dog drools.
unlike Microsoft, they do it without being a monopoly.
My state has a sole source contract with Dell. For them, it's a monopoly and it sucks. Your state may have a similar contract. They swore it would save money, choke, gag.
It's not a perfect monopoly, yet. You can, with four months of effort and a PhD, purchase a non Dell laptop at LSU. Given the performance of some Dell laptops lately, the effort might be worth it. Act quickly, before they close the loopholes. Next they will forbid private laptops from connecting to the new interweb.
Condemning people for not using Linux instead of Windows, and the strong-arm tactics of some proprietary software makers that try to lock people into a certain product, are just two sides of the same coin.
I wonder if she would consider me irrational for saying that free software is overwhelmingly superior to Microsoft? That's M$'s FUD machine working as planned. It's the end result of a lot of Astroturfing and it's time to put a stop to it.
Tina has bought into a lot of FUD to say and think like that. The condemnation she senses is an overwhelming opinion of the technical and moral superiority of free software. There is really no comparing the two experiences anymore and anyone who uses well configured free software for their primary desktop for more than a month will agree. Saying so is not a condemnation of the user and I've never actually seen anyone be ugly about it. Microsoft has done an admirable job of convincing people that making such a judgement call makes someone into a "Zealot" or a fanatic, or some other insulting word for irrational person. It's their most effective FUD. It conditions Windows users to distrust free software users and creates self censorship in the less confident free software user. Like all lies, it blows up in their face when the user escapes.
The only time I've seen people angry is when they first realize how badly they have been lied to. It passes as they get used to their new, stable system. People who have never fallen into the trap feel no such anger. I've never seen an angry Mac, Solaris or Linux user, so the source of such irrational behavior must be Microsoft.
Linux has been ready and now it's better. It's been better in many ways for about ten years. Today, it's better in just about every way. From CUPS to Unreal Tournament, things just work. The only people who don't know that are people who don't use it. I don't have to be smug or angry about this. It's just an overwhelming and unavoidable fact.
How could it not be? XP is five years old and Vista promisses little more than massive bloat. At this point, Microsoft's inability to compete with the free software model is obvious. They don't have the manpower to fix things and their model does not care.
Insults are all Microsoft has left.
It's time to stop pretending there is any comparison between Microsoft's unstable, feature starved, inconsistent, single screen system and a modern free software distribution. Free software is technically superior and that superiority has worked it's way down to ease of installation and use. Self censorship does not prove your rationality, it proves that you have been bullied.
I had Mandrake 9.2 on my Pentium II-500 Thinkpad with 96 MB of RAM, and it was intolerably slow.
Blame the Window Manager. Window Maker or Enlightenment would do a better job than a full Mandrake KDE session. You can use Konqueror, Kicker, Kontact and other KDE applications without problem. A 233 MHz can run that and play music at you with Noatun without skipping with just a little more RAM. GIMP is also usable. OO is where you might want to draw the line. It's very slow to open and the average 70MB Power Point won't open.
Archives are good and this can be a useful service. Providing 80 select gigs on a hard drive to libraries and schools is a useful until US networks get where they should be. Their software can keep those 80 GB up to snuff at night. When you leave the cache, you... gasp... get the new content. In the mean time, things are much faster when it matters. Mirrored content will always be a good idea. Look at the debian distribution system, for example.
Good luck to the people at Webaroo. So long as they don't apply for stupid patents that give them an exclusive franchise to distribution systems, they are AOK.
The road warrior thing will flop, though. People are going to stay where there's a network or pay the $10. It's the one piece of live information that requires the hook up. The speed of the rest is gravy for those people.
Slashdot Mirror
Yow-ser, yow-ser, it just does that.
GPE does X and portable Gnome applications. You can use Dilo, which works better than the IE you describe, or mini mozilla, which is slower but resizes images and does other cool stuff. Xstroke gives you full screen graffiti and is the best handwriting recognition I've ever seen. The PIM stuff is supposed to sync with Evolution.
Opie is it's own mini KDE environment and works well. It's supposed to sync with multisynk, but also imports the normal kontact files with ease. Embedded Konqueror is not as good as minimo, but it works well enough. The interface is mature, stable and good.
The built in MMC slot is well used by both, and you can run both at the same time on Zaurus.
Cheers, you don't have to wait for Apple to give you a PDA.
Would you spend hours on the phone telling the phone company all about your friends and plans? No? Me neither. That is why my PDA will not be a cell phone unless I can install the software myself, like OpenZaurus. I have similar thoughts about trusting any information to Microsoft in any way.
Privacy aside, cell phone and M$ PDAs suck. M$'s handwriting recognition and interface continuse to be third rate. My old hadspring does a better job and Xstroke under GPE beats them both. Every now and then I check out models in stores and I've yet to see one that's usable. Most Cellphone PDA's, with additional arbitrary limitations are even worse. Blackberry is a usable device and older Treos have been OK, but then you start to get back to the trust issue.
I'm hoping for more, not fewer PowerPC platforms. PowerPC continues to do more per watt than other hardware. It's better for the kinds of small, quiet systems most people really want. The Mac mini is a great example of the kind of system I'd like next. The same things make an attractive laptop. It would be nice to see IBM make Linux hardware and get back into the home market. They have what I want.
Frauds deserve nothing more than jail.
I'd like to know what it really requires. Suppose my free software distribution does not have serial numbers for "accounting"? It would not be surprising for a country that throws people into jail for visiting the wrong web site to then force one rooted distro or another on everyone. Red tape is mostly about ending freedom.
Tom rides Cari-Begle's Rocket
and voice:
Humiliation!
Every chick would love that, right?
They are not buying WMAs, so that's not good enough. DVDs don't really sell as well as they could because of DRM. I don't buy them because I know my set top box won't last forever and that will be the end of them. The problems with other, better built systems like IPod come later. We will see if publishers survive the waves of betrayal they are generating. In the mean time, other publishers are going to jump right in and steal their market share.
Will your kids be able to share and enjoy your music? I was able to convert my mom's 45s, had a great time doing it and will be able to share that with my daughter. I'll be able to move and convert those files around as I please. That's what people expect from things they buy and they really won't accept less.
A scanner can take more time, but it's worth the effort. Kooka works as well as the best Windoze software with them and you can scan in several photos at once. The quality, at all resolutions, is better than the camera method. It takes time to split them up, but you can save that task for later. With proper equipment layout, this can be almost as fast as the tripod way. You can find tough old HP scsi scanners at used computer shops and buy them for a song. Many USB scanners also have good sane backends. See the list of sane devices before you buy.
The easiest thing to do, is to use a photo scanner like this. I'd rather use kooka than a script but scripts are flexible and powerful.
The big lesson was that forsight is required. The hard drive would have been best to run with, but it's fragile, so pack them well. A CD book good, but heavy unless you move to DVD. As usual, having multiple live copies is the easiest solution.
Everyone's pictures are important, so digitize them soon. My digitized pictures are outlasting the ink in my physical versions. Even older silver based black and white images are going away. Digitize as quickly as possible and store the originals as well as you can - correct humidity, acid free backing and all that. Real dissasters can and will take your physical copies. Give gift CDs to friends and family of the images you think are most important. That will protect you against fires in a way that is too expensive and time consuming with physical coppies.
I'd recommend you arrange to wind-up with both a digitized copy and an old-fashioned one.
Is there a way to end up with less?
Yes, anyone that gives M$ enough money will have access to the new Vista Total Information Awareness (VITA) system. This is what non-free is all about, sit back and enjoy it or dump the last of your second rate software.
if you have, say, a pirated copy of Excel Microsoft (or companies with similar software) can erase it, or anything else they want to erase, and not be held liable for it.
This is Bill's dream come true. They have already granted themselves this power in their EULAs. This law gives them unambiguous rights to carry out that EULA. So yes, they can "update" your boot loader, load your free software with keyloggers and spyware, wipe partitions and do what ever they want.
More ominously:
Additionally, that phrase fraudulent or other illegal activities means they can ... Let the local district attorney know ... [about whatever they find or think they find on your computer].
About the only thing worse than M$ having run of your computer would be M$ law enforcement. I predict a wave of bogus reports designed to harass people Bill does not like. We can only hope that law enforcement has the good sense to distrust such an obviously interested party.
DRM won't work and only systems and artists who avoid it will profit and grow. Go visit the links I provided and tell me what content you are still lacking.
Ayers said. "Linux would be further relegated to use in servers and business computers, since it would not be providing the multimedia technologies demanded by consumers."
People want music and movies not some greedy pig's Digital Restrictions Management. The absolute failure of "Plays for Sure" to gain any market share is because the DRM sucks. No one wants dissapearing music and convoluted subscription plans. You can, right now, get movies and music outside of such restrictions and that's where people are going to go.
That's just the beginning.
These are the new winners. Their work is excellent and they are the kind of people I want to spend my money on. Do you think for an instant that I'm going to corrupt my computer with crap that will lock them out? I'm not alone. People are already outraged by DRM'd CDs and the only people less trusted than Sony is Microsoft. When whole collections vanish they will really howl. The winners will sit pretty on their nice media and wonder what all the fuss is about. Their market share is going to go up and up.
I'm keeping my set top box for the old losers but it's going away. You can get them for $40 at the walmart and they do a nice slide show if you feed them a CD of your jpegs. I'll give the MPAA four bucks here and there to watch their little movies. That's all it takes to not feel like I live in a cave. As more content becomes available elsewhere, I'll spend less of my time and money on that set top box. I've already dropped cable TV and don't miss it.
If that's true, it's good enough. Something that works better but costs the same will take market share. TCO is probably better on the Novell side and your data and employee's time is way to expensive to leave to Microsoft. By now, you have to have a hole in your head to use Exchange or any other M$ server.
That's why you need to know that some moron thinks your laptop is valuable. This has not always been the case. Paw shops have traditionally shied away from computers because they are tricky to fix and their value falls too quickly. Ebay has changed that. The reality of the situation is not as important as what the dirtbags think. It's a trend and it will spread as the bums migrate north and east for summer.
You also should know to NEVER buy a laptop on the street. No matter how good the deal looks. You are looking at a thief and you might be their next victim. Get away cleanly, without resistance, and report the suspicious activity to the police.
The $100 computer could just as easily have Konqueror, which highlights your spelling mistakes. That's the beauty of free software, programs that cost nothing works better than the OS that costs more than your hardware. I should know, my spelling is terrible.
That's way too much credit. According to the article, the kind of person who's going to stab you in the chest for your laptop is going to sell it on the street for two hundred bucks. The article did not say so but they are junkies. They are not going to take the time to turn it on, much less check that it works. There are other dirtbags out there, the kind who steal textbooks and sell plasma. They won't stab you but will steal your laptop just the same.
The only thing that will work in the long term is to not buy laptops off the street. If you see someone selling, watch out! Stay out of reach or you will be the next victim. Smile as you move away and say something like, "Wow, that's nice but I don't have enough cash right now." Do what you can to get where lots of people are fast. When you are clear, call the police. Long after people start watching these dirt bags and their dealers will still be passing stories around about making hundreds of bucks off such an easy theft. It will take a long time and many loser examples before it stops. In the mean time ... watch out.
I'm glad my laptop is a piece of shit. It's too bad a junkie won't know any better.
I'm going to stay away from places close to where the bums are for a while.
unlike Microsoft, they do it without being a monopoly.
My state has a sole source contract with Dell. For them, it's a monopoly and it sucks. Your state may have a similar contract. They swore it would save money, choke, gag.
It's not a perfect monopoly, yet. You can, with four months of effort and a PhD, purchase a non Dell laptop at LSU. Given the performance of some Dell laptops lately, the effort might be worth it. Act quickly, before they close the loopholes. Next they will forbid private laptops from connecting to the new interweb.
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://narus.com
Condemning people for not using Linux instead of Windows, and the strong-arm tactics of some proprietary software makers that try to lock people into a certain product, are just two sides of the same coin.
I wonder if she would consider me irrational for saying that free software is overwhelmingly superior to Microsoft? That's M$'s FUD machine working as planned. It's the end result of a lot of Astroturfing and it's time to put a stop to it.
Tina has bought into a lot of FUD to say and think like that. The condemnation she senses is an overwhelming opinion of the technical and moral superiority of free software. There is really no comparing the two experiences anymore and anyone who uses well configured free software for their primary desktop for more than a month will agree. Saying so is not a condemnation of the user and I've never actually seen anyone be ugly about it. Microsoft has done an admirable job of convincing people that making such a judgement call makes someone into a "Zealot" or a fanatic, or some other insulting word for irrational person. It's their most effective FUD. It conditions Windows users to distrust free software users and creates self censorship in the less confident free software user. Like all lies, it blows up in their face when the user escapes.
The only time I've seen people angry is when they first realize how badly they have been lied to. It passes as they get used to their new, stable system. People who have never fallen into the trap feel no such anger. I've never seen an angry Mac, Solaris or Linux user, so the source of such irrational behavior must be Microsoft.
Linux has been ready and now it's better. It's been better in many ways for about ten years. Today, it's better in just about every way. From CUPS to Unreal Tournament, things just work. The only people who don't know that are people who don't use it. I don't have to be smug or angry about this. It's just an overwhelming and unavoidable fact.
How could it not be? XP is five years old and Vista promisses little more than massive bloat. At this point, Microsoft's inability to compete with the free software model is obvious. They don't have the manpower to fix things and their model does not care.
Insults are all Microsoft has left.
It's time to stop pretending there is any comparison between Microsoft's unstable, feature starved, inconsistent, single screen system and a modern free software distribution. Free software is technically superior and that superiority has worked it's way down to ease of installation and use. Self censorship does not prove your rationality, it proves that you have been bullied.
Blame the Window Manager. Window Maker or Enlightenment would do a better job than a full Mandrake KDE session. You can use Konqueror, Kicker, Kontact and other KDE applications without problem. A 233 MHz can run that and play music at you with Noatun without skipping with just a little more RAM. GIMP is also usable. OO is where you might want to draw the line. It's very slow to open and the average 70MB Power Point won't open.
Archives are good and this can be a useful service. Providing 80 select gigs on a hard drive to libraries and schools is a useful until US networks get where they should be. Their software can keep those 80 GB up to snuff at night. When you leave the cache, you ... gasp ... get the new content. In the mean time, things are much faster when it matters. Mirrored content will always be a good idea. Look at the debian distribution system, for example.
Good luck to the people at Webaroo. So long as they don't apply for stupid patents that give them an exclusive franchise to distribution systems, they are AOK.
The road warrior thing will flop, though. People are going to stay where there's a network or pay the $10. It's the one piece of live information that requires the hook up. The speed of the rest is gravy for those people.