So wait, what does this mean, exactly? It's a hobby system that's cute to fiddle with then turn it off when I want to do "real" work?
Yeah, more or less. I guess it depends on what your definition of real work is. I'd recommend Linux (Ubuntu) to anyone with half a brain and a bit of patience that needs a desktop OS without the bloatware of Windows or the ridiculous expense of Mac. That is, as long as your only desktop needs are office software, internet and communication apps, and a few nifty games to kill time now and then.
I know the moment I stop listing what Ubuntu can do some fanboi will come along to remark, "But Linux can do X too!" Yes, it can. It can do everything and almost out of the box too. With a bit of tweaking the results will be almost as good as you could get with software developed by paid professionals that do this for the first eight hours of their day, not hobbyists who do this for the last few hours as long as they're not too tired or the kids or spouse aren't in need of something or there isn't a LAN party going on down the hall...
Of course, a bit of tweaking usually turns into a bit more tweaking, which turns into a weekend project, which turns into a weeks long search of every possible application that does a certain thing. At the end of all this you realize that you've just spent weeks fiddling with Linux trying to get it to do what you ask of it only to find that it really can't. True story - I was looking for photo workflow software.
The only thing that would discourage the use of cars in the US is populating the country as densely as Europe and slapping down some mass transit lines all over it.
After spending the better part of 2 days on the phone with Amazon support staff I had to threaten that the next person they'd be hearing from was my lawyer... all to get tracking information on a package that was almost 2 weeks overdue. This sort of shit seems unbelievable until it actually happens to you.
We love the old franchises we grew up with and we want to see more of the same, but this has been proven again and again to be a legal dead end. Instead of going underground, forcing the people who worked on this into anonymity, and risking litigation, why not just create a new franchise along the same lines as the old one and distribute that? The gaming industry has done it. How many action RPGs are really just Rogue clones? I'm sure fan productions could do the same.
...fixing the problem by introducing more competition and making an education more critical to just being able to get by in America.
Do you realize just how much bitching and moaning would occur if people were forced to do anything to get by in this country? You don't need an education, welfare will take care of you. You don't need to procreate responsibly, welfare will take care of your kids. You don't need to watch your weight, you'll get disability pay and nobody will dare blame you for it. Hell, you don't need to take care of yourself at all - modern medicine will strive to keep you alive forever and they'll probably succeed depending on what your definition of alive is.
I'm sure this applies to plenty of other 'civilized' places in the world. I can only hope that there is a sudden outbreak of common sense before we suffocate in our own shit so we can find that happy middle ground between countries where responsibility is a dirty word and countries where responsibility means having to take a piss in the woods with your AK47 out.
This is because:
1. Every geek in the universe plays at least one Blizzard game and Linux geeks are no exception.
2. Blizzard games take so long to make they're technologically obsolete before they are released.
There's got to be an agency for climate change so that it can be put on display for the benefit of politicians, get wrapped up in bureaucratic bullshit, and never get anything done. This is no different than a company performing a hostile takeover of a competitor except that the government doesn't have to answer to any antitrust laws.
There's not a single anti-virus software out there that's worth the trouble to pirate, let alone pay for. The virus database is always one step behind virus makers. The heuristic virus detection is awful and is much more likely to mark legitimate software as a virus than the virus itself. And if you do happen to get infected with a virus and it actually gets detected there's no way the anti-virus is going to clean it out completely.
So far you could say the same things for anti-spyware software. But wait, there's more. Unique to antivirus software is the virus-like quality of the software itself. Have you ever tried to uninstall one of these things? Working at a university PC support center I used to see this a LOT. You're never going to get every last bit of the antivirus software off a computer. And then what happens when you want to install a new antivirus? Or when a user wants to be 'extra safe' and installs two antivirus programs simultaneously?/facepalm
I say no thanks to that. Get a router with a firewall and sit behind it. Make sure everyone on your network is smart about suspicious links, scripts, email, IMs, etc. Common sense is free and works much better than anti-* software. When all else fails, reformat & reinstall.
The problem with basic scientific research is that, more often than not, it will be worthless for decades. No one wants to fund a gamble that might, if we are lucky, pay off in 30-40 years.
First, corporations started looking for ways to pad the bottom line once per quarter. Then, hedge funds looked for ways to make a buck at the end of the day. To hell with anything but the bottom line. Now the media has told us that the only way we're going to get out of the slump we're in is to spend more so we can start the cycle all over again. With such a short-sighted view is it any wonder that we dove headlong off this economic cliff? We're no better than a bunch of lemmings. What we need is to set our priorities straight and a bit of long term research would do much to help that. Not that I expect more than a token amount of this money, if it ever materializes, to get into the right hands.
It's not really that bad as long as it's REALLY 2 MBit and not 2 MBit kinda sorta every other Thursday at 3 AM and most of the time it's really no faster than 56 KBps.
I'm not worried about the Justice Department taking over **AA lawsuits, I'm worried that because the whole lawsuit angle isn't working for them we'll see a whole lot of new censorship legislation and anti-consumer business practices. With Congress, the president, and ISPs all bought it's only a matter of time before something really scary rolls out... something that'll make the Great Firewall of China look like an elementary school Internet filter.
We only take action when our bean counters say we've sustained enough damage to cover the cost of change. Just look at flight safety regulations, or car safety regulations, or food safety regulations, or environmental regulations...
Judging by the recent trial of TPB, following the letter of the law in Sweden is not enough to defend yourself if the case ends up in court.
TPB's trial is the norm rather than the exception. If you think the letter of the law is enough to keep you safe in court try getting out of a traffic ticket where you know you're in the right. This applies in any country.
So, what are all the users of TPB considering doing to support the folks behind TPB, who have supported them, in some way, in past?
I'm sure they'll consider doing many things. They might consider sending a donation to pay for the fines. They might consider boycotting *AA titles. They might consider getting on the/. soapbox and adding a comment to this thread. They might consider some sort of public demonstration.
They probably won't do anything. I for one will continue reading my morning/. and then find some way to occupy myself for the next 7 hours.
There's no such thing as public outrage anymore. I saw a group of old folks standing near a busy intersection the other day holding up signs to bring home US troops. Is that the 21st century version of public outrage? That's a handful of old folks holding up signs on a street corner. Hardly the second American revolution.
The individuals in charge of society know that the general public is an impotent, flabby creature. The public provides them with sustenance and makes feeble noises when chunks are torn from it, but it won't defend itself from attack. It knows better than to try.
When individuals take action, those in charge strike back. They know to strike early and hard. This trial is a perfect example. Does anyone seriously think these guys will become martyrs? Martyrdom implies that others will be inspired by their sacrifice to pick up the fight where they fell. Another tracker might pop up. Hooray? If it gets big enough, it'll get cut down again.
Meanwhile the folks in charge tighten their control over this little issue because they see it's growing out of hand. ISPs will get in on it. Content distributors will get in on it. The government has always been in on it by virtue of its existence as the legitimating force of those in power. This little issue of file sharing will be brought under control. Not stopped, mind you, because there are maybe 2% of the file sharing population who actually would take a stand if pressed to it. There will be devices (IRC, Usenet) allowed to continue existing to act as pressure valves to pacify that active minority. Everyone else will go on with their happy, cattle-like existence and more or less forget that this happened because there are, after all, more important things to worry about. Speaking of which, my hour's almost up and I still have/. to read.
Expect to see much more of this as cloud computing takes off. Every application you use will be licensed to you and subject to the whim of your vendor. Eventually we'll talk about the good old days when we owned our computers and everything on them.
Slashdot Mirror
Linux is a hobby system
So wait, what does this mean, exactly? It's a hobby system that's cute to fiddle with then turn it off when I want to do "real" work?
Yeah, more or less. I guess it depends on what your definition of real work is. I'd recommend Linux (Ubuntu) to anyone with half a brain and a bit of patience that needs a desktop OS without the bloatware of Windows or the ridiculous expense of Mac. That is, as long as your only desktop needs are office software, internet and communication apps, and a few nifty games to kill time now and then.
I know the moment I stop listing what Ubuntu can do some fanboi will come along to remark, "But Linux can do X too!" Yes, it can. It can do everything and almost out of the box too. With a bit of tweaking the results will be almost as good as you could get with software developed by paid professionals that do this for the first eight hours of their day, not hobbyists who do this for the last few hours as long as they're not too tired or the kids or spouse aren't in need of something or there isn't a LAN party going on down the hall...
Of course, a bit of tweaking usually turns into a bit more tweaking, which turns into a weekend project, which turns into a weeks long search of every possible application that does a certain thing. At the end of all this you realize that you've just spent weeks fiddling with Linux trying to get it to do what you ask of it only to find that it really can't. True story - I was looking for photo workflow software.
I seriously wonder who comes up with that kind of ideas.
Catbert
The only thing that would discourage the use of cars in the US is populating the country as densely as Europe and slapping down some mass transit lines all over it.
After spending the better part of 2 days on the phone with Amazon support staff I had to threaten that the next person they'd be hearing from was my lawyer... all to get tracking information on a package that was almost 2 weeks overdue. This sort of shit seems unbelievable until it actually happens to you.
We love the old franchises we grew up with and we want to see more of the same, but this has been proven again and again to be a legal dead end. Instead of going underground, forcing the people who worked on this into anonymity, and risking litigation, why not just create a new franchise along the same lines as the old one and distribute that? The gaming industry has done it. How many action RPGs are really just Rogue clones? I'm sure fan productions could do the same.
...those who mind their own business and those who do not.
...fixing the problem by introducing more competition and making an education more critical to just being able to get by in America.
Do you realize just how much bitching and moaning would occur if people were forced to do anything to get by in this country? You don't need an education, welfare will take care of you. You don't need to procreate responsibly, welfare will take care of your kids. You don't need to watch your weight, you'll get disability pay and nobody will dare blame you for it. Hell, you don't need to take care of yourself at all - modern medicine will strive to keep you alive forever and they'll probably succeed depending on what your definition of alive is.
I'm sure this applies to plenty of other 'civilized' places in the world. I can only hope that there is a sudden outbreak of common sense before we suffocate in our own shit so we can find that happy middle ground between countries where responsibility is a dirty word and countries where responsibility means having to take a piss in the woods with your AK47 out.
At least it'll take the really dumb Windows users out of the loop for a while so the rest of us don't look so bad.
This is because:
1. Every geek in the universe plays at least one Blizzard game and Linux geeks are no exception.
2. Blizzard games take so long to make they're technologically obsolete before they are released.
There's got to be an agency for climate change so that it can be put on display for the benefit of politicians, get wrapped up in bureaucratic bullshit, and never get anything done. This is no different than a company performing a hostile takeover of a competitor except that the government doesn't have to answer to any antitrust laws.
There's not a single anti-virus software out there that's worth the trouble to pirate, let alone pay for. The virus database is always one step behind virus makers. The heuristic virus detection is awful and is much more likely to mark legitimate software as a virus than the virus itself. And if you do happen to get infected with a virus and it actually gets detected there's no way the anti-virus is going to clean it out completely.
/facepalm
So far you could say the same things for anti-spyware software. But wait, there's more. Unique to antivirus software is the virus-like quality of the software itself. Have you ever tried to uninstall one of these things? Working at a university PC support center I used to see this a LOT. You're never going to get every last bit of the antivirus software off a computer. And then what happens when you want to install a new antivirus? Or when a user wants to be 'extra safe' and installs two antivirus programs simultaneously?
I say no thanks to that. Get a router with a firewall and sit behind it. Make sure everyone on your network is smart about suspicious links, scripts, email, IMs, etc. Common sense is free and works much better than anti-* software. When all else fails, reformat & reinstall.
If this were a commercial company, they would go out of business for making such a stupid decision.
More likely they'd get a bailout.
Playing copyrighted music out in the open like that?! Better hope the RIAA doesn't get wind of this.
The problem with basic scientific research is that, more often than not, it will be worthless for decades. No one wants to fund a gamble that might, if we are lucky, pay off in 30-40 years.
First, corporations started looking for ways to pad the bottom line once per quarter. Then, hedge funds looked for ways to make a buck at the end of the day. To hell with anything but the bottom line. Now the media has told us that the only way we're going to get out of the slump we're in is to spend more so we can start the cycle all over again. With such a short-sighted view is it any wonder that we dove headlong off this economic cliff? We're no better than a bunch of lemmings. What we need is to set our priorities straight and a bit of long term research would do much to help that. Not that I expect more than a token amount of this money, if it ever materializes, to get into the right hands.
Bad enough we have all those dead bodies cluttering up meatspace. Now they'll be cluttering up cyberspace too!
If you have something to share, just post it to YouTube. If the police are interested they know where to look.
It's not really that bad as long as it's REALLY 2 MBit and not 2 MBit kinda sorta every other Thursday at 3 AM and most of the time it's really no faster than 56 KBps.
I'm not worried about the Justice Department taking over **AA lawsuits, I'm worried that because the whole lawsuit angle isn't working for them we'll see a whole lot of new censorship legislation and anti-consumer business practices. With Congress, the president, and ISPs all bought it's only a matter of time before something really scary rolls out... something that'll make the Great Firewall of China look like an elementary school Internet filter.
We only take action when our bean counters say we've sustained enough damage to cover the cost of change. Just look at flight safety regulations, or car safety regulations, or food safety regulations, or environmental regulations...
...we'll be able to use our monthly bandwidth allowance in under one second. Hooray?
I agree. I always run in calf-high work boots. I could go tumbling down the side of a mountain and my feet would be A-OK! And they're waterproof.
This crap needs to end.
So end it.
Judging by the recent trial of TPB, following the letter of the law in Sweden is not enough to defend yourself if the case ends up in court.
TPB's trial is the norm rather than the exception. If you think the letter of the law is enough to keep you safe in court try getting out of a traffic ticket where you know you're in the right. This applies in any country.
So, what are all the users of TPB considering doing to support the folks behind TPB, who have supported them, in some way, in past?
I'm sure they'll consider doing many things. They might consider sending a donation to pay for the fines. They might consider boycotting *AA titles. They might consider getting on the /. soapbox and adding a comment to this thread. They might consider some sort of public demonstration.
/. and then find some way to occupy myself for the next 7 hours.
/. to read.
They probably won't do anything. I for one will continue reading my morning
There's no such thing as public outrage anymore. I saw a group of old folks standing near a busy intersection the other day holding up signs to bring home US troops. Is that the 21st century version of public outrage? That's a handful of old folks holding up signs on a street corner. Hardly the second American revolution.
The individuals in charge of society know that the general public is an impotent, flabby creature. The public provides them with sustenance and makes feeble noises when chunks are torn from it, but it won't defend itself from attack. It knows better than to try.
When individuals take action, those in charge strike back. They know to strike early and hard. This trial is a perfect example. Does anyone seriously think these guys will become martyrs? Martyrdom implies that others will be inspired by their sacrifice to pick up the fight where they fell. Another tracker might pop up. Hooray? If it gets big enough, it'll get cut down again.
Meanwhile the folks in charge tighten their control over this little issue because they see it's growing out of hand. ISPs will get in on it. Content distributors will get in on it. The government has always been in on it by virtue of its existence as the legitimating force of those in power. This little issue of file sharing will be brought under control. Not stopped, mind you, because there are maybe 2% of the file sharing population who actually would take a stand if pressed to it. There will be devices (IRC, Usenet) allowed to continue existing to act as pressure valves to pacify that active minority. Everyone else will go on with their happy, cattle-like existence and more or less forget that this happened because there are, after all, more important things to worry about. Speaking of which, my hour's almost up and I still have
Expect to see much more of this as cloud computing takes off. Every application you use will be licensed to you and subject to the whim of your vendor. Eventually we'll talk about the good old days when we owned our computers and everything on them.