Linux is not going to replace MS on the desktop ever.
I've been thinking about this lately. How many people do you know that changed from Windows to Linux, or other open OS? I can count at least three or four, directly influenced by me; and of one them is already making the minds of his students (he's a teacher). Besides these four, I know around 10 or so people that never used Windows again.
Now count how many people switched from Linux to Windows. I mean switched, not gone back. I never heard of anyone who used Linux for a year at least and said "Well, I think I'll use this Windows OS, it's much better! No more Linux."
What I mean is: the number of people who use Linux is growing; slowly, but steady. And Linux users, at least those that I know, talk about Linux to other people, and try to convince them so they will at least give a try.
One problem arises: I don't have the figures, but I belive more newbies start using Windows than Linux. So, although the total number of Linux users keeps growing, I don't know if the proportion to Windows users is keeping the same step.
Of course this means we should bring new users to Linux. Show them the new KDE 2.2, pretty apps, tell them that they are immune to virus/virii/viruses. Though I don't use it, I personally like KDE very much, specially for newbies. I've been wanting to install Linux for my family for a while, but the problem is always the same: my father receives MS Word documents all the time.
I'll think I'll take a look at the latest OpenOffice beta.:)
What I want is: open standards. So you can write a document in MS Word, send it to me, and I can open in me favorite editor.
I don't care if there's plenty of people using Windows. People have the rights to choose their tools. But the formats should be open, just like e-mail. Or pictures. Or sound. Why not the rest?
I cannot see why you can't have CD quality with an MP3 or OGG file, just because it has a lower bitrate or has compression. As I understand, the compression algorithm removes from the WAV frequencies we cannot hear; just like the JPEG picture format degrades the picture quality based on the human eye perception.
If I listen to a music encoded in MP3, OGG, or whatever, and find it undistinguible (sp?) from a CD, it *has* CD quality -- at least, for me -- even though I have lost data in the process. "Quality" is a relative term, and will vary from person to person.
Funny, the reason why gas prices have 3 digits after the comma is that "gas is sold in big quantities, so the third digit makes a lot of difference". Them why the third number is always a 9?
Now, to make this posting a little more related to the article, I'll comment on the chess stuff. What algorithm does gnuchess use? Is it just a brute force, search-and-destroy "quantum universe" calculator? i.e. does it calculate every possible move and then choose the best path? How would gnuchess on a very large MOSIX cluster of SMP systems compare to one of these other chess computer competitors?
If you were to fully develop the entire tree for all possible chess moves, the total number of board positions is about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, or (10^120), give or take a few. That's a very big number. For example, there have only been 10^26 nanoseconds since the big bang. There are only thought to be 10^75 atoms in the entire universe. When you consider that the Milky Way galaxy contains billions of suns and there are billions of galaxies, you can see that's a lot of atoms - chess is a pretty intricate game!
No computer is ever going to calculate the entire tree. What a chess computer tries to do is generate the board position tree 5 or 10 or 20 moves into the future. Assuming that there are about 20 possible moves for any board position, a 5-level tree contains 3,200,000 board positions. A 10-level tree contains about 10,000,000,000,000 (10 trillion) positions. The depth of the tree that a computer can calculate is controlled by the speed of the computer playing the game. The fastest chess computers can generate and evaluate millions of board positions per second.
I read here in Slashdot that you would need the energy of 15 supernovas just to store all the possible games in your computer's memory (according to thermodynamics' laws).
Of course, since I read it here in Slashdot, there's a 72,1489% chance of being wrong. People here always come up with numbers to prove their point.
Imagine someone tied a rope around your neighbor's cat, so hard that he becomes agressive. His cat sees your cat and tries to attack him. You take his cat and remove the rope, and everything is fine.
The counter-worm won't damage the infected server. It will put it back to its normal state.
I'd second that -- I've now had almost 14000 attacks on my server in the last 7 days. Apart from blowing out all the logs, it has cost me about $40 in bandwidth as well. Where can I send the bill?
MS has 48,000
employees, and carries a product line of over 1,200 products. 48k may seem big, but really, its
not a lot. Half of those are active engineers.
Over the past... I dunno, say 20 years... the media and entertainment industry has been hyping up and trying to plan the deployment of their ultimate wet dream: on-demand pay per view for everyone and everything.
We should do this: we should pay a tax to a worldwide media/entertainment global consortium. A monthly/annual fee. How about US$ 50.00 per month? Everyone pays, you have no choice.
In exchange, we could then watch/listen/copy any media we want, freely. We can download MP3s freely, distribute DVDs on gnutella. Anything. Free. No more hassle from DMCA, RIAA, FBI, etc, etc, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Linux is not going to replace MS on the desktop ever.
I've been thinking about this lately. How many people do you know that changed from Windows to Linux, or other open OS? I can count at least three or four, directly influenced by me; and of one them is already making the minds of his students (he's a teacher). Besides these four, I know around 10 or so people that never used Windows again.
Now count how many people switched from Linux to Windows. I mean switched, not gone back. I never heard of anyone who used Linux for a year at least and said "Well, I think I'll use this Windows OS, it's much better! No more Linux."
What I mean is: the number of people who use Linux is growing; slowly, but steady. And Linux users, at least those that I know, talk about Linux to other people, and try to convince them so they will at least give a try.
One problem arises: I don't have the figures, but I belive more newbies start using Windows than Linux. So, although the total number of Linux users keeps growing, I don't know if the proportion to Windows users is keeping the same step.
Of course this means we should bring new users to Linux. Show them the new KDE 2.2, pretty apps, tell them that they are immune to virus/virii/viruses. Though I don't use it, I personally like KDE very much, specially for newbies. I've been wanting to install Linux for my family for a while, but the problem is always the same: my father receives MS Word documents all the time.
I'll think I'll take a look at the latest OpenOffice beta. :)
(WTF is an invalid form key?)
What I want is: open standards. So you can write a document in MS Word, send it to me, and I can open in me favorite editor.
I don't care if there's plenty of people using Windows. People have the rights to choose their tools. But the formats should be open, just like e-mail. Or pictures. Or sound. Why not the rest?
If you think that you're really safe, click here. (Better not)
...why don't we just break through the Windows?
Can I try this at home? :)
I cannot see why you can't have CD quality with an MP3 or OGG file, just because it has a lower bitrate or has compression. As I understand, the compression algorithm removes from the WAV frequencies we cannot hear; just like the JPEG picture format degrades the picture quality based on the human eye perception.
If I listen to a music encoded in MP3, OGG, or whatever, and find it undistinguible (sp?) from a CD, it *has* CD quality -- at least, for me -- even though I have lost data in the process. "Quality" is a relative term, and will vary from person to person.
Shouldn't it be called Linamp, then?
You know...to be more secure, I always apply ROT13 twice.
Man, why are you encoding your posts?
Funny, the reason why gas prices have 3 digits after the comma is that "gas is sold in big quantities, so the third digit makes a lot of difference". Them why the third number is always a 9?
Use Debian stable, and add apt-get update and apt-get upgrade to your crontab.
Supernova? We waited a *long* time for the Big Bang, while we were all packed tight in a single geometric point!
lol :)
Now, to make this posting a little more related to the article, I'll comment on the chess stuff. What algorithm does gnuchess use? Is it just a brute force, search-and-destroy "quantum universe" calculator? i.e. does it calculate every possible move and then choose the best path? How would gnuchess on a very large MOSIX cluster of SMP systems compare to one of these other chess computer competitors?
If you were to fully develop the entire tree for all possible chess moves, the total number of board positions is about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, or (10^120), give or take a few. That's a very big number. For example, there have only been 10^26 nanoseconds since the big bang. There are only thought to be 10^75 atoms in the entire universe. When you consider that the Milky Way galaxy contains billions of suns and there are billions of galaxies, you can see that's a lot of atoms - chess is a pretty intricate game!
No computer is ever going to calculate the entire tree. What a chess computer tries to do is generate the board position tree 5 or 10 or 20 moves into the future. Assuming that there are about 20 possible moves for any board position, a 5-level tree contains 3,200,000 board positions. A 10-level tree contains about 10,000,000,000,000 (10 trillion) positions. The depth of the tree that a computer can calculate is controlled by the speed of the computer playing the game. The fastest chess computers can generate and evaluate millions of board positions per second.
Does somebody know if there is a 802.11 card form Palm? I've seen one for the Visor once, but I have a m100.
Of course, since I read it here in Slashdot, there's a 72,1489% chance of being wrong. People here always come up with numbers to prove their point.
Imagine someone tied a rope around your neighbor's cat, so hard that he becomes agressive. His cat sees your cat and tries to attack him. You take his cat and remove the rope, and everything is fine.
The counter-worm won't damage the infected server. It will put it back to its normal state.
(I am Slashdot's official lawyer)
I'd second that -- I've now had almost 14000 attacks on my server in the last 7 days. Apart from blowing out all the logs, it has cost me about $40 in bandwidth as well. Where can I send the bill?
Send Bill Gates to that place...
MS has 48,000 employees, and carries a product line of over 1,200 products. 48k may seem big, but really, its not a lot. Half of those are active engineers.
The other half are lawyers.
There's also a Windows screen saver that simulates BSODs.
What for?
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Over the past... I dunno, say 20 years... the media and entertainment industry has been hyping up and trying to plan the deployment of their ultimate wet dream: on-demand pay per view for everyone and everything.
We should do this: we should pay a tax to a worldwide media/entertainment global consortium. A monthly/annual fee. How about US$ 50.00 per month? Everyone pays, you have no choice.
In exchange, we could then watch/listen/copy any media we want, freely. We can download MP3s freely, distribute DVDs on gnutella. Anything. Free. No more hassle from DMCA, RIAA, FBI, etc, etc, etc.
I think everyone would win, in the end.
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My friend's computer is called mxyzptlk. Try hacking that!
$ nmap mtzplyk
Failed to resolve given hostname/IP: mtzplyk.
$ ping mztlplkt
ping: unknown host mztlplkt
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Check this link to see why unicode characters won't work on the internet:
http://dábliü.ämêricõ.îñamè.com/índiçý.html
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