Amazon, $30 was the first thing on the list. I don't like Amazon, nor do I know if it will work. Sony's got issues with magic gate and all that.
If it works, it rocks. You will still have to open a prompt as root to mount the device, but any user can copy the files so you will be spared the "chown me./files -R" amd chgrp strokes. I use gqview to look at and select my files for copy. It's been much easier for me do this than it has been to get any USB thingy working. The gphoto2 interface might change my mind, but I don't know it because I have not needed it. Card readers are generally faster than the cards themselves and much faster than USB1 and the configuration is already done. Open Zaurus has a neat automount set up. One day I'll figure it out and put it onto my laptop.
I'll bet your to-do list looks like more fun than mine. Keep on treking.
How do you think things will get better? There are few if any local independent news papers because they have all been crushed by big coroprate owned national broadcasters and "news" services like MSNBC. The same people have made sure that individuals have a hard time publishing on the internet, so everyone has to go through providers or portals where they can be shut down. Now the loop is being closed with black box voting, which is impossible to audit. Even if you could tell people the truth, they won't be able to do anything about it.
Your site mentioned trouble with a "card reader" in close proximity to talk about a digital camera. If you have compact flash, just use your laptop's PCMCIA card slot and a $15 adaptor. It is recognized by the kernel as a hard disk,/dev/hde1 in my case. "mount/dev/hde1/mnt -t msdos" works for me. It's faster than USB 1 and works without all the USB pain. As a bonus, you get to use cfdisk, and can make e2 partitions for getting infromation to your Zaurus with reasonable names, user and execution information. This may also work for other flash media cards, but I have not tried them out.
My OS and networking software works just fine without my ISP's support. All I need from my ISP are a few simple pieces of information about their network, IP addresses of gateways, domain name servers and my own box. Now that they have forced everyone onto evil, dial up style dhcp, I don't even need that. I don't need them to tell me what to put into/etc/networking/interfaces, my OS comes with very good documentation. That's the way the internet is supposed to work, by standard and consistent interfaces which are platform independent.
It amazes me how ignroant Windoze keeps people about the actual workings of their computers. The owner of my computer store told me to "speak english" when I told him that a client's ISP was not resolving names and that the client needed an ISP that had reliable DNS or they needed to run their own. That few of my tech peers could even begin to trouble shoot such a basic problem was a shock to me, but I started to understand why ISP help desk jobs would be like hell.
Why anyone would give preference to software that is so unifomrative is beyond me. I'd much rather be able to walk someone through a simple text file edit than have to remember or script out a bunch of mouse clicks for each and every varient of windoze. "Right click on my computer", says the tech, "What's a right click and where is it on my computer?" a reasonable client might ask as they look for a button on the right side of their machine. That is hell. I don't even want to think of the reason ISP's seem to favor the vector for "I love you", "code red", klez, blaster and all those other nasties.
The world will be a much better place under free software. It's not just easier to run, it's easier to help people with too. Remote administration under free software actually works. I would be comfortable giving my cable company a user account on my packet filter. I'm not comfortable making them root on my computer with their awful windoze CD which is famous for breaking computers.
Of coures I'm not nasty about any of this to the poor devil on the other end of the phone. I play along as best as I can. When they say "reboot" I restart networking with "/etc/init.d/networking restart". This actually fixed a problem after a dhcp change of address. It's much easier for all concerned when I simply try to extract real information from their windozy script. The fact of the matter is that I know my software works, works well and is not subject to arbitrary changes sent via email or other worm. Nothing changes on my end, so it's just a mater of time before I figure out what changed on their end. I don't want to make getting there hard for anyone. It's rare I have to call anyway.
If you are not a rocket scientist, that translates to much zoom per pound mass.
Does the "California Space Authority" bother anyone else besides me? What's next, Arnold calling himself "big chief" of independent California and wearing feathers on his head?
Nope. My computers work. If they used XP, I might be angry with all the broken promisses, adverts and poor perfomance. As it is, I get what I need and don't waste much time with broken crap.
GNU's greatest accomplishment has been teaching us to love again. *sniff*
True, if it were not for GNU, I would really hate my PC. Because my software is free, I know I own my computer. They serve me well, and I love them and the people who make them work. I can contrast this to the common eXPerience of popup adverts, runaway worms, Gator, and all that crap that makes the web unusable and isolates users.
The truth, however, is that picking operating system X or Y would not guarantee that something similar could not happen again.
Let's give credit where credit is due, shall we? The inverse of your statement is true. Picking Windblows garuntees you will have some kind of virus, worm or whatever eat your machine at some time. It's a simple matter of poor design. Having a mail client that auto executes crap like sounds from anyone on the world wide web as "administrator" or root is brain dead. Microsoft's Outlook does just that by default and I'm not sure you can make it or Internet Exploder do anything else. This is why we have I Love You, Blaster, Code Red, Slammer, Swen, Klez, Bugbear, and all year after year.
A monoculture of OpenBSD would not be good, but it would be vastly better. Any free software offers enough variety to give you the diversity you seek. Not everyone who runs Debian uses Exim, for instance. Debian has 7,000+ packages available and there is lots of functional repetition. This redundancy makes even a monoculture of Debian boxes look far more diverse than a bunch of M$ crap which must ALL have the same mail client, browser, media players and other fat ugly software integrated into the GUI.
You're forgetting that there are actaully some smart people in the banking industry that will realize that having your ATM's running windows hooked up to the internet is a bad idea. The people that make these kinds of decisions are not fools.
What? You must not have read the O'Riely write up. They said the main driver behind this stupid transition was:
They would prefer Windows, a platform they consider 'open' in that it is compatible with their internal corporate networks.
This statement is covered in stupidity and ignorance. What good will this "compatibility" do if the silly things don't talk to the "internal" network? If they talk to the internal network and the internal network recieves email and browses the web, the dumb things are part of the internet. So, what we are left with is an ignorant big dog pushing a "standard" down because he likes his excell sheets. That's not very smart.
And then they say Windows Me is not affected, not is 98, or 95, but you should upgrade to the newest versions.
You have to wonder how many security flaws they introduced with their supposed "patches".
An objective person looking a the list would simply conclude that Microsft has always been and will always be garbage. The fact that all M$ OS have flaws should not make people want to buy the next one.
Essentially three times the FUD, bashing, turfing, and... well, slashdot.
Let's see. Where I work, I get to see about six M$ infested computers a day comming in for wipe and reload. As many of these people are using XP with "patches" and all that, I'm under the impression that all of the M$ band-aids are perfectly useless workarounds for intentionally flawed OS design. These people lose all of their stuff, email, photos, settings, everything that makes computers usefull, and $75. I'd like to write a post for every one of those people that Microsoft lets down, but I'll settle for one or two a day.
Much like a TV. That's what Intel/MS wants to do, make the PC into a "proper" consumer device.
The irony of that statement is rich. Just like an RCA TV perhaps? RCA used to dominate TV sales, distribution and service. What else whould you expect from the evil radio corporation that crushed the inventor of TV? In any case, they made crappy TVs that needed much service. Everyone in the supply train but the customer was happy until others started making reliable TVs. RCA lost out and has yet to recover. My free software run computers dont' need to be turned off and don't blow up if they are. M$ boot times, registry corruption and other marketing induced garbage are not a factor. Instant off to me is just another M$ workaround and is best avoided. That's what people think of "consumer devices."
No big deal, as they are also cheaper and better at what they do than Microsoft is. The package delivers what the vast majority of home computer users say they want, and it does it for much less than Dell, Gateway and other M$ corrupted PC makers can. In the last few months, the vast majority of home computer users have been let down by Microsoft in one way or another. If Microsoft is the metric, Lindows will come out 1.0+.
The staying power of Lindows has surprised me. I thoght they would be washed out by now. That they are still here verifies their plan and it's implementation.
The education you seek is ongoing and costly. People are losing all of their files and having their systems completely screwed by all of these nasty Microsoft transmitted worms. As they pay for new systems and start from scratch, they realize just how shitty software from Microsoft is. They were promissed a computer that was easy to use, reliable and secure. What they are now getting is a lecture on virus definitions, "patches", "updates" and all sorts of other trouble. What they need to hear is that free software delivers on the original prommise. They sill soon hear that. Isn't that what drove many of us to free software to begin with?
My grandmother doesn't know a thing about Windows Update, because she assumes the computer is safe. So what can I do?
Put her on Debian. Set up a desktop icon to run kppp or put her on a cable modem. Set up a chorn job to apt-get update and upgrade. SSH into that box every now an then to make sure things are going well. Then, sleep well.
This guy is smoking crack. No such proposal will ever fly. End users have been let down and are in a mood to hang people not pay fines.
The users are not at fault and have been let down by Microsoft, "computer experts" and news organizations. They have been told for years that Windows is a reliable and secure operating system that is easy for novices to use. People selling microsoft infested computer have been happy to spout the party lines. For years the press has shielded Microsoft from a bad reputation by refering to M$ transmitted worms as "computer worms". All of it adds up to a rapidly diminishing ignorance: Microsoft has never been easy, secure or reliable.
Now that the end user is suffering more than ever, this idiot proposes to fine them? Patching, upgrading and virus scans are all in vain, yet the end user has been pumping much energy and money into all of these things and they are still getting hit. So having been so let down, people are going to go after the people who have been lying to them. I give this silly idea about 1/1000 chance of becoming law.
Once again, free software shines. I'm not sure how the silly IE thing works, but reasonable OS simply use Google's web form. Yes, Mozilla does have it, but, it's just another web page. Also, on reasonable OS, you browse the web with an underprivalidged user that can't change any real system files and it's impossible for Google or any other web site to actually modify the browser. IE, on the other hand, was intentionally designed to be raped. This is how many M$ worms propagate and wreck people's computers.
Really, all M$ software is designed to be abused by Microsoft at will. The upgrade train has been automated. Where once you had to actually buy games or new programs to get "patches" and "updates" to sytem files like ActiveX, DirectX and other DLL hell files, Microsoft has finally moved up to web distribution. Now Microsoft users feel compelled by fear of worms and viruses to push the "update" advertisment that pops up on their screen without asking. System obsolescence is garunteed and as before the only way to keep a M$ box working is to not install newer software on it or use it for browsing and email.
This Xbox thing that prevents free software from running is sure to find it's way to XP. XP already has a patented and secret filesystem, NTFS, and this was done simply to frustrate free software users. While systems like Knoppix can read and write to one of the three NTFS version, distributing software like that is a risky proposition in the US as the writers and distributors may be charged with patent infringment. NTFS adds very little to user data security for the cost, and certianly adds less than other freely available file systems such as ext3. The xbox is Micsrosoft's user lockin test bed and anyone who ever bought one has helped fund the next generation of screw you hardware.
If you would not contribute to this kind of behavior, dump Microsoft now while the alternatives work.
Both ATI and nVidia are guilty of trying to stack things in their favor dishonestly.... My decision in graphics cards is based on my past experience and driver support. In this area nVidia still winds hands down. If ATI wants to sell me a card, they're going to need to beef up their Linux driver support big time.
From what little I've read, both companies have fantastic hardware that's rendered useless by software. ATI apears to have an advantage at the moment because it's drivers work with Direct X 9 from Microsoft. If all the best eyecandy is dependent of Microsoft junk, we might start expecting better performance from the free software world with 5 year old equipment.
Microsoft stuff is a pain in the ass. If I want the Nvidia stuff to work well, I have to use Direct X 8? WTF? Can you even have DX8 an DX9 on the same box? Will my next game screw all my old ones? How long will I be able to use my nice new $200 video card with stuff like that going on? In the free software world, things are modularized and live together without a problem. Combine those issues with big fat M$ security problems and you have the reason gaming boards and software are not selling like they used to and the market is never going to grow. Most people would rather spend $200 for a PS/2, which also has awsome hardware, that just works. I know this is the reason I have not bothered with games recently, I'm just not willing to sift through the bullshit to get performance that won't be there after the next Windoze update.
Unlike the mandate of open source, a mandate of open standards would not be open to the risk of a legally enforced monopoly.
Wow, that's some wrong stuff. A mandate which requires software to have it's souce code available is simply a specification. That no more leads to a monopoly than requiring nuts and bolts to conform to ASME standards. Anyone can open their source. Those that don't simply want to screw you.
An AC, posting an anti-M$-bash form letter that answers nothing specifically, asks:
I reckon you're the only one over the age of 14 on this board who still writes "M$." Why would we take you seriously?
Because Eric Raymond is not Bill Gates worst nightmare, people at local computer shops recommending free software is. It's painfully obvious that Microsoft is letting their customers down. Left in the lurch, people are going to fix the problem themselves. I'm not exceptional. There are many others like me, all thinking the same thing. Someone is going to figure out how to make free software pay at the local retail level and then you and your corporate masters will learn a different tune. It will sound something like IBM's current free software song.
This needs to be reported because it needs to be combated. It need to be reported as long as "you need to keep up with the current patches and virus checkers and all that shit" is passed off as popular wisdom. M$ is trying to blame the user for it's own software failures and therby force restrictions on email, www, and all computer usage that would be benificial to themselves and harmful to free software.
The user is never at fault for poor software, especially closed source crap the user can't fix if they could or wanted to fix.
Virus checkers, email restrictions, firewalls and all that are in vain when faced with the reality of closed source distribution. I work for a small computer shop. The only software we can put on all the broken computers that come in for repair is the user's original software and any updates M$ lets you. The vast majority of computers out there run EOL'd systems like 95 and 95. Customers lack the skills needed to diagnose the problems or do the best fix, a wipe and reload. It cost them about $75 if they have all of their software, and they are loath to pay for the time it takes to load up all the patches and updates that won't protect them from next week's worm. I can't blame them for feeling that way. Nor can I blame them for wanting to email their friends. Those that have lost their software generally end up throwing their machine away or go find some nasty cracked copy of M$ shit because they don't want to spen the $109 and equpment purchase needed for an OEM copy of Windoze. The net result is the same in every case, boxes that are just as easy to bust as the day they were made. But, so what? Even the dilligent are getting burnt.
I have recomended Mozilla for people who absolutly must have M$. My little brother told me that an XP update broke Mozilla and made it terribly slow, but Netscape still works. Woot.
I'd recomend Debian or Red Hat and sell CDs for the same price as a driver disk, but my boss is worried about support. I'm not sure what kind of "support" could be worse than the mess most Windoze users now find themselves in. Still, he's the boss. The day, however, I can make money doing it, he's going to like it. I'm starting to think that the store's usual $4 per CD burnt and the 30 minutes it takes to install a dual boot of any linux system might be cheaper fixing Windoze. Blinding the windoze side to the network makes it last longer so that it can do the things it does well for the user.
I'm starting to see the path of least resistance here. Demo the system with Knoppix to prove hardware use. Blind Windoze, dual boot and set them loose. Actually doing something beats the hell out of bitching and moaning. It can work.
Well, they don't say that, but if you include the number of infected Windows desktops this year, I have a pretty good feeling it would be a LOT more than 12,000, even if you only include infections designed to give control to an outside party (as opposed to simply spreading).
The majority of these machines still run on dial up modems, and they get hacked too! At the small retail computer store I work at, we get about 10 systems a day broken like this. Many others are owned but we can't prove it with a quick virus scan.
That's a very high number. There are about 500,000 people in my town. If we extrapolate that to all 250,000,000 million US people we get:
10( broken users/day)/500,000(home town people) * 250,000,000 (US) = 500 broken users a day in US. Or 15,500 last month.
Note that my shop is not the only one in town or the bussiest. I imagine that figure is off by one or two orders of magnitude.
Anyone working for any large company that has again been shut down by another Microsoft transmitted dissease, knows the score here. Whoever says free software is less secure than Microsoft shit is either paid to say it or woefully ignorant.
I'd be interested to know exactly what kind of volume of music the RIAA claims this 12-year-old girl shared to garner herself one of 200-some-odd lawsuits, supposedly aimed at "top" file-sharers.
The message is, "We don't care how big or how small you are, or how insignificant you think you are or how bad a place you think you live, or what you think you are entitled too, We're going to come get you and make you pay what you don't have."
It's going to backfire. Threatening a 12 year old girl goes down wrong everywhere. The days of those idiots packaging and selling people their own culture are over. People are going to make and package their stuff without the middle men.
I've gotten over 100 spams a day from fuckwits with infected boxen and open proxies on cox.net, attbi.com, rr.com, and other broadband cable/DSL providers.... I've already defeated it - by blocking all traffic from those subnets.
You have not defeated anything. You have simply fragmented your tiny portion of the net. Unless YOU are M$N or AOL, the chances of you seving anyone I want to talk to are vanishingly small. All you have done is hurt your users a little.
You need an attitude adjustment to really solve the problem. Your users are not "fuckwitts", they are people who have been listening to people like you and me. Do you really think the average user hears enough to know just how insecure Windoze is and how bad it is for the net? No they don't, and you and I are in part to blame. Everytime your shrink from telling the truth about software, you make the problem worse. Education is the solution. While we can't expect everyone to build their own software, there's no reason the average person can't use free software to avoid all the hastles of M$ junk.
One key component of that education could be to restrict services based on OS. If someone uses M$, even behind a firewall, block their ports. This CAN be done at the cable or DSL modem and should be. This would reduce the trouble you have, and put the oduim right where it belongs.
The idea extends to deep-linking cases. If deep-linking allows you to skip past the ads on a web page and is supposedly illegal because of that, why aren't pin-point citations (where you cite both the book and the page on the book where the quote is from) illegal?
Or, gasp, a reference to a specific page in an advert loaded magazine? I hate how magazines are putting more and more adverts before the table of contents. Paging through adverts for SUVs, cell phones batteries, M$ junk, and other stuff from people who want to screw everyone is particularly gauling when you are trying to make use of National Geographic magazine, which is obsensibly devoted to exploration and careful management of natural resources.
It's nice that someone somewhere is going to keep the web from being even more obnoxious and less useful than dead tree publications want to be. The question now is if the US will try to screw it's own citicens by declaring Holland an IP rouge state and having ISPs censoring the sites that will spring up there. We shall see.
Slashdot Mirror
Amazon, $30 was the first thing on the list. I don't like Amazon, nor do I know if it will work. Sony's got issues with magic gate and all that.
If it works, it rocks. You will still have to open a prompt as root to mount the device, but any user can copy the files so you will be spared the "chown me ./files -R" amd chgrp strokes. I use gqview to look at and select my files for copy. It's been much easier for me do this than it has been to get any USB thingy working. The gphoto2 interface might change my mind, but I don't know it because I have not needed it. Card readers are generally faster than the cards themselves and much faster than USB1 and the configuration is already done. Open Zaurus has a neat automount set up. One day I'll figure it out and put it onto my laptop.
I'll bet your to-do list looks like more fun than mine. Keep on treking.
How do you think things will get better? There are few if any local independent news papers because they have all been crushed by big coroprate owned national broadcasters and "news" services like MSNBC. The same people have made sure that individuals have a hard time publishing on the internet, so everyone has to go through providers or portals where they can be shut down. Now the loop is being closed with black box voting, which is impossible to audit. Even if you could tell people the truth, they won't be able to do anything about it.
Vote against this kind of thing NOW.
I hate USB.
It amazes me how ignroant Windoze keeps people about the actual workings of their computers. The owner of my computer store told me to "speak english" when I told him that a client's ISP was not resolving names and that the client needed an ISP that had reliable DNS or they needed to run their own. That few of my tech peers could even begin to trouble shoot such a basic problem was a shock to me, but I started to understand why ISP help desk jobs would be like hell.
Why anyone would give preference to software that is so unifomrative is beyond me. I'd much rather be able to walk someone through a simple text file edit than have to remember or script out a bunch of mouse clicks for each and every varient of windoze. "Right click on my computer", says the tech, "What's a right click and where is it on my computer?" a reasonable client might ask as they look for a button on the right side of their machine. That is hell. I don't even want to think of the reason ISP's seem to favor the vector for "I love you", "code red", klez, blaster and all those other nasties.
The world will be a much better place under free software. It's not just easier to run, it's easier to help people with too. Remote administration under free software actually works. I would be comfortable giving my cable company a user account on my packet filter. I'm not comfortable making them root on my computer with their awful windoze CD which is famous for breaking computers.
Of coures I'm not nasty about any of this to the poor devil on the other end of the phone. I play along as best as I can. When they say "reboot" I restart networking with "/etc/init.d/networking restart". This actually fixed a problem after a dhcp change of address. It's much easier for all concerned when I simply try to extract real information from their windozy script. The fact of the matter is that I know my software works, works well and is not subject to arbitrary changes sent via email or other worm. Nothing changes on my end, so it's just a mater of time before I figure out what changed on their end. I don't want to make getting there hard for anyone. It's rare I have to call anyway.
If you are not a rocket scientist, that translates to much zoom per pound mass.
Does the "California Space Authority" bother anyone else besides me? What's next, Arnold calling himself "big chief" of independent California and wearing feathers on his head?
Nope. My computers work. If they used XP, I might be angry with all the broken promisses, adverts and poor perfomance. As it is, I get what I need and don't waste much time with broken crap.
Heh, your computer might be more useful more often if you actually READ slashdot instead of trolling it or dreaming of it's destruction.
True, if it were not for GNU, I would really hate my PC. Because my software is free, I know I own my computer. They serve me well, and I love them and the people who make them work. I can contrast this to the common eXPerience of popup adverts, runaway worms, Gator, and all that crap that makes the web unusable and isolates users.
Let's give credit where credit is due, shall we? The inverse of your statement is true. Picking Windblows garuntees you will have some kind of virus, worm or whatever eat your machine at some time. It's a simple matter of poor design. Having a mail client that auto executes crap like sounds from anyone on the world wide web as "administrator" or root is brain dead. Microsoft's Outlook does just that by default and I'm not sure you can make it or Internet Exploder do anything else. This is why we have I Love You, Blaster, Code Red, Slammer, Swen, Klez, Bugbear, and all year after year.
A monoculture of OpenBSD would not be good, but it would be vastly better. Any free software offers enough variety to give you the diversity you seek. Not everyone who runs Debian uses Exim, for instance. Debian has 7,000+ packages available and there is lots of functional repetition. This redundancy makes even a monoculture of Debian boxes look far more diverse than a bunch of M$ crap which must ALL have the same mail client, browser, media players and other fat ugly software integrated into the GUI.
What? You must not have read the O'Riely write up. They said the main driver behind this stupid transition was:
They would prefer Windows, a platform they consider 'open' in that it is compatible with their internal corporate networks.
This statement is covered in stupidity and ignorance. What good will this "compatibility" do if the silly things don't talk to the "internal" network? If they talk to the internal network and the internal network recieves email and browses the web, the dumb things are part of the internet. So, what we are left with is an ignorant big dog pushing a "standard" down because he likes his excell sheets. That's not very smart.
Banks are not realy this stupid are they?
You have to wonder how many security flaws they introduced with their supposed "patches".
An objective person looking a the list would simply conclude that Microsft has always been and will always be garbage. The fact that all M$ OS have flaws should not make people want to buy the next one.
Let's see. Where I work, I get to see about six M$ infested computers a day comming in for wipe and reload. As many of these people are using XP with "patches" and all that, I'm under the impression that all of the M$ band-aids are perfectly useless workarounds for intentionally flawed OS design. These people lose all of their stuff, email, photos, settings, everything that makes computers usefull, and $75. I'd like to write a post for every one of those people that Microsoft lets down, but I'll settle for one or two a day.
The irony of that statement is rich. Just like an RCA TV perhaps? RCA used to dominate TV sales, distribution and service. What else whould you expect from the evil radio corporation that crushed the inventor of TV? In any case, they made crappy TVs that needed much service. Everyone in the supply train but the customer was happy until others started making reliable TVs. RCA lost out and has yet to recover. My free software run computers dont' need to be turned off and don't blow up if they are. M$ boot times, registry corruption and other marketing induced garbage are not a factor. Instant off to me is just another M$ workaround and is best avoided. That's what people think of "consumer devices."
No big deal, as they are also cheaper and better at what they do than Microsoft is. The package delivers what the vast majority of home computer users say they want, and it does it for much less than Dell, Gateway and other M$ corrupted PC makers can. In the last few months, the vast majority of home computer users have been let down by Microsoft in one way or another. If Microsoft is the metric, Lindows will come out 1.0+.
The staying power of Lindows has surprised me. I thoght they would be washed out by now. That they are still here verifies their plan and it's implementation.
My grandmother doesn't know a thing about Windows Update, because she assumes the computer is safe. So what can I do?
Put her on Debian. Set up a desktop icon to run kppp or put her on a cable modem. Set up a chorn job to apt-get update and upgrade. SSH into that box every now an then to make sure things are going well. Then, sleep well.
The users are not at fault and have been let down by Microsoft, "computer experts" and news organizations. They have been told for years that Windows is a reliable and secure operating system that is easy for novices to use. People selling microsoft infested computer have been happy to spout the party lines. For years the press has shielded Microsoft from a bad reputation by refering to M$ transmitted worms as "computer worms". All of it adds up to a rapidly diminishing ignorance: Microsoft has never been easy, secure or reliable.
Now that the end user is suffering more than ever, this idiot proposes to fine them? Patching, upgrading and virus scans are all in vain, yet the end user has been pumping much energy and money into all of these things and they are still getting hit. So having been so let down, people are going to go after the people who have been lying to them. I give this silly idea about 1/1000 chance of becoming law.
Really, all M$ software is designed to be abused by Microsoft at will. The upgrade train has been automated. Where once you had to actually buy games or new programs to get "patches" and "updates" to sytem files like ActiveX, DirectX and other DLL hell files, Microsoft has finally moved up to web distribution. Now Microsoft users feel compelled by fear of worms and viruses to push the "update" advertisment that pops up on their screen without asking. System obsolescence is garunteed and as before the only way to keep a M$ box working is to not install newer software on it or use it for browsing and email.
This Xbox thing that prevents free software from running is sure to find it's way to XP. XP already has a patented and secret filesystem, NTFS, and this was done simply to frustrate free software users. While systems like Knoppix can read and write to one of the three NTFS version, distributing software like that is a risky proposition in the US as the writers and distributors may be charged with patent infringment. NTFS adds very little to user data security for the cost, and certianly adds less than other freely available file systems such as ext3. The xbox is Micsrosoft's user lockin test bed and anyone who ever bought one has helped fund the next generation of screw you hardware.
If you would not contribute to this kind of behavior, dump Microsoft now while the alternatives work.
From what little I've read, both companies have fantastic hardware that's rendered useless by software. ATI apears to have an advantage at the moment because it's drivers work with Direct X 9 from Microsoft. If all the best eyecandy is dependent of Microsoft junk, we might start expecting better performance from the free software world with 5 year old equipment.
Microsoft stuff is a pain in the ass. If I want the Nvidia stuff to work well, I have to use Direct X 8? WTF? Can you even have DX8 an DX9 on the same box? Will my next game screw all my old ones? How long will I be able to use my nice new $200 video card with stuff like that going on? In the free software world, things are modularized and live together without a problem. Combine those issues with big fat M$ security problems and you have the reason gaming boards and software are not selling like they used to and the market is never going to grow. Most people would rather spend $200 for a PS/2, which also has awsome hardware, that just works. I know this is the reason I have not bothered with games recently, I'm just not willing to sift through the bullshit to get performance that won't be there after the next Windoze update.
Wow, that's some wrong stuff. A mandate which requires software to have it's souce code available is simply a specification. That no more leads to a monopoly than requiring nuts and bolts to conform to ASME standards. Anyone can open their source. Those that don't simply want to screw you.
I reckon you're the only one over the age of 14 on this board who still writes "M$." Why would we take you seriously?
Because Eric Raymond is not Bill Gates worst nightmare, people at local computer shops recommending free software is. It's painfully obvious that Microsoft is letting their customers down. Left in the lurch, people are going to fix the problem themselves. I'm not exceptional. There are many others like me, all thinking the same thing. Someone is going to figure out how to make free software pay at the local retail level and then you and your corporate masters will learn a different tune. It will sound something like IBM's current free software song.
The user is never at fault for poor software, especially closed source crap the user can't fix if they could or wanted to fix.
Virus checkers, email restrictions, firewalls and all that are in vain when faced with the reality of closed source distribution. I work for a small computer shop. The only software we can put on all the broken computers that come in for repair is the user's original software and any updates M$ lets you. The vast majority of computers out there run EOL'd systems like 95 and 95. Customers lack the skills needed to diagnose the problems or do the best fix, a wipe and reload. It cost them about $75 if they have all of their software, and they are loath to pay for the time it takes to load up all the patches and updates that won't protect them from next week's worm. I can't blame them for feeling that way. Nor can I blame them for wanting to email their friends. Those that have lost their software generally end up throwing their machine away or go find some nasty cracked copy of M$ shit because they don't want to spen the $109 and equpment purchase needed for an OEM copy of Windoze. The net result is the same in every case, boxes that are just as easy to bust as the day they were made. But, so what? Even the dilligent are getting burnt.
I have recomended Mozilla for people who absolutly must have M$. My little brother told me that an XP update broke Mozilla and made it terribly slow, but Netscape still works. Woot.
I'd recomend Debian or Red Hat and sell CDs for the same price as a driver disk, but my boss is worried about support. I'm not sure what kind of "support" could be worse than the mess most Windoze users now find themselves in. Still, he's the boss. The day, however, I can make money doing it, he's going to like it. I'm starting to think that the store's usual $4 per CD burnt and the 30 minutes it takes to install a dual boot of any linux system might be cheaper fixing Windoze. Blinding the windoze side to the network makes it last longer so that it can do the things it does well for the user.
I'm starting to see the path of least resistance here. Demo the system with Knoppix to prove hardware use. Blind Windoze, dual boot and set them loose. Actually doing something beats the hell out of bitching and moaning. It can work.
The majority of these machines still run on dial up modems, and they get hacked too! At the small retail computer store I work at, we get about 10 systems a day broken like this. Many others are owned but we can't prove it with a quick virus scan.
That's a very high number. There are about 500,000 people in my town. If we extrapolate that to all 250,000,000 million US people we get:
10( broken users/day)/500,000(home town people) * 250,000,000 (US) = 500 broken users a day in US. Or 15,500 last month.
Note that my shop is not the only one in town or the bussiest. I imagine that figure is off by one or two orders of magnitude.
Anyone working for any large company that has again been shut down by another Microsoft transmitted dissease, knows the score here. Whoever says free software is less secure than Microsoft shit is either paid to say it or woefully ignorant.
The message is, "We don't care how big or how small you are, or how insignificant you think you are or how bad a place you think you live, or what you think you are entitled too, We're going to come get you and make you pay what you don't have."
It's going to backfire. Threatening a 12 year old girl goes down wrong everywhere. The days of those idiots packaging and selling people their own culture are over. People are going to make and package their stuff without the middle men.
You have not defeated anything. You have simply fragmented your tiny portion of the net. Unless YOU are M$N or AOL, the chances of you seving anyone I want to talk to are vanishingly small. All you have done is hurt your users a little.
You need an attitude adjustment to really solve the problem. Your users are not "fuckwitts", they are people who have been listening to people like you and me. Do you really think the average user hears enough to know just how insecure Windoze is and how bad it is for the net? No they don't, and you and I are in part to blame. Everytime your shrink from telling the truth about software, you make the problem worse. Education is the solution. While we can't expect everyone to build their own software, there's no reason the average person can't use free software to avoid all the hastles of M$ junk.
One key component of that education could be to restrict services based on OS. If someone uses M$, even behind a firewall, block their ports. This CAN be done at the cable or DSL modem and should be. This would reduce the trouble you have, and put the oduim right where it belongs.
Or, gasp, a reference to a specific page in an advert loaded magazine? I hate how magazines are putting more and more adverts before the table of contents. Paging through adverts for SUVs, cell phones batteries, M$ junk, and other stuff from people who want to screw everyone is particularly gauling when you are trying to make use of National Geographic magazine, which is obsensibly devoted to exploration and careful management of natural resources.
It's nice that someone somewhere is going to keep the web from being even more obnoxious and less useful than dead tree publications want to be. The question now is if the US will try to screw it's own citicens by declaring Holland an IP rouge state and having ISPs censoring the sites that will spring up there. We shall see.