First of all some simple statistics will tell you that most of the ads are seen by people. Sure we often use the ad-space to quickly get some more chips or go to the bathroom. But overall people will usually watch the ad and often not even mute it.
Secondly click-throughs are not a good measure of the effectivness of an ad. Advertising is about mindshare, not information. The whole point of marketing is to create a feel about your product. You want people to associate your product with good things, take one look at Microsoft ads and car ads. While ads will often inform, you can buy x for a low low price of $100!, those types of ads are the minority for most markets.
Just by using the term 'dumbed down' you defeat the point of a Newbie's Linux. It shouldn't be dumbed down. Either it has a very smooth and gradual learning curve, which is one thing that Linux, CLI, and Unix in general doesn't deal with, or it has a flawless level of useability.
That's easy to say. But it's just not easy to make a gradual learning curve. By putting a GUI in place people learn to expect to *always* have their GUI. Before you know it they won't use anything else. Unfortunatly easy means having GUIs, wizards that do all the work for you, etc. Basically all the lower level stuff hidden out of view. This really defeats any type of learning.
I started off on an XT with DOS and am glad of it. I had to use the command line. I had to understand how it worked. If I didn't start off like that I really don't think I'd have had such a easy time learning the more low-level stuff.
As an example, Apple's OS and hardware have demonstrated levels of proficiency in both tasks. As much as people criticize the design decisions, a single user interface is ideal for people who
Ahh... What *isn't* a single user interface? Do you mean a single-user OS?
are figuring out information flow, computers, tasks, etc. A single mouse button, so people don't have to fear that if they do an incorrect action, something irrecoverable can happen because there is only one action. A single menu bar, so people *always* know where to look for info and stuff, without having to figure out what app has the focus.
The Mac-style menu bar isn't one menu bar. It's just that each menu bar you would see at the top of the app window appears at the top-left hand corner of the screen. When you switch apps the menu bar changes. I'd say it's harder to figure out then Windows style menubars. But it's much faster as you can just flick your wrist and your cursor is instantly there.
Windows has Win9x and WinNT. The first being for your average joe who just wants Office and the Net to work and the second being for servers. Why shouldn't Linux do that? We already have Caldera Linux for the newbies. If you want "power-user" system you can use Debian among others. There is no reason that all the distros should look and act the same. What's good for a newbie is hell for a power user after all.
It only makes sense to have different Linux's for different people. You can't please everyone. We don't all run an identical kernel. Nor should we run identical distros that are all dumbed down for new users.
Calling up someone's boss is just plain nasty. IBM used to do this if you recomended mainframes other then IBM's. They sure don't do that now. That sort of action is just downright dirty.
It doesn't have to run with root permissions, it will run just fine without although it will give a error message asking if you really want to run it with no permissions.
strace shows that it is doing what it says it does, scanning everything. As for what it's really looking for... Who knows?
Since the main goal of the defensive patent is to allow free software to use technology, and not to kill Microsoft and other "competitors", why not just register as many software patents as possible on usefull algorithms etc. and then just not enforce them *at all* I'm no lawyer but wouldn't that mean that someone else wouldn't be able to patent the same technology even if you lose your patent since you are not protecting it?
When you think about it domain names are like mining claims. In the Voisy's Bay "gold rush" (they were actually mining nickel) one company spent a few million on buying up the mining rights to huge amounts of land. This cost them a fortune. (I believe around 3 million) OTOH it gave them the *chance* to make a fortune. In the case of domain names it's not really that cheap to buy up large numbers of them. But if you strike it big you're in luck and you might be able to pay off your investment.
The MPAA says that companies are lossing millions of dollars of revenue. Don't they mean they are lossing a chance to make millions of dollars of revenue by controlling all information?
Re:Why not just use the Crusoe as a G4?
on
Darwin on Crusoe?
·
· Score: 1
It does apply. But even though you're computer caches the results of your harddrive with a disk cache a faster harddrive is still a good thing right? Since the cache applies equally well to both RISC and CISC CISC will get higher performence as what's feeding the cache, the decoder, runs faster.
Re:Why not just use the Crusoe as a G4?
on
Darwin on Crusoe?
·
· Score: 2
But "riscified" doesn't mean a thing since the instructions are in a completely different instruction set. So they still have to be converted which takes up lots of time for those hundreds of little RISC instructions.
Re:Why not just use the Crusoe as a G4?
on
Darwin on Crusoe?
·
· Score: 4
That's right. CISC chips depend on a small number of big instructions running relitivly slowly. RISC chips depend on lots of little instructions running super fast. The Crusoe can't translate RISC instructions efficiently because there are so many of them all at once. So RISC gets pretty bad performence compared to CISC.
This doesn't just apply to the Crusoe. Any emulator has the same problem.
Licenses already prohibit releasing benchmarks of the software without written permission by the software manufacture. AOL could cancel the accounts of people who said bad things about AOL if they wanted to.
If reverse engineering wasn't allowed there would be no PC compatibles. The BIOS of the first non-IBM computers was made by Phoenx. They used the clean-room reverse engineering process.
The abserd conditions of many software licenses must be *stopped* If this doesn't happen... How could a Linux Office clone read MS Office files? How could we have made MP3 players if the MP3 format was locked up? How could WINE or DosEMU be created?
It is *not* illegal for a car manufacture to have it's engineers take apart a competitors car. Why should software be any different?
Non-disclosure agreements for employees are one thing. But shrink-wrap licenses can be basically NDA's for *everyone*
Due to the design of ext2fs, and *many* other filesystems, there is no way to undelete a file. In dos the directory entry would be left behind and you *might* be able to undelete your file, *if* the file wasn't fragmented. Just about any other good filesystem such as ext2fs, NTFS, etc. quickly reclaims the space taken up from deleted files for performence and doesn't save the directory entry.
If you do delete a file you might be able to recover it, but there aren't many ways to automate ext2fs undeletion. For help see the Ext2fs-Undeletion mini-HOWTO.
Since Transmeta isn't yet being used in any laptops, but AMD is, I think AMD needs to take the blame. Of course when Transmeta's chips start to get used I expect to see some Transmeta caused price cuts.
There is both a Linux and Slashdot group on Seti@Home. If you want to help out just go to the Seti@Home website and download the client. After installing the client you can just join the Slashdot or Linux group by going to the groups link on the main page. Search for the group you want. Then just join the group.
The Slashdot group currently has 424 members and has computed 47953 packets.
The Linux group currently has 344 members and has computed 146283 packets. (there are a few *really* good systems in the Linux group that process the bulk of those packets)
There is a serious problem with those defacement statistics. What if WinNT sysadmins tend to be not as good and UNIX sysadmins? I wouldn't be suprised that on a whole your average WinNT sysadmin isn't as good as your average UNIX sysadmin. After all UNIX is far more forbidding then then WinNT. What OS do you think your average newbie will use?
This sounds like a discussion we've had before on slashdot. As a consumer, *I* think I'm paying for the content. *They*, the people selling it to me, think I'm paying for a license to watch it, and forget about it forever after until I want to pay for it again. If I can tape shows off of TV, I should be able to do this.
Such useage is covered by fair use provisions. Fair use doesn't apply to corporations trying to make a buck through ad revenues, even if those corporations are small.
iCraveTV is trying to make money by giving viewers access to TV that they normally wouldn't be able to watch. This isn't your Mom taping shows you loved in your homeland. This is a company trying to make a buck. There is a big differnce between small-scale distribution and the massive distribution iCraveTV provides.
I think iCraveTV should go the legitimit route and pay broadcasters the same way your local cable company does.
iCraveTV is doing something that is illegal IMO. They are basically redistributing TV programs without any permissions what-so-ever. It may not be fashionable to support big business but in this case I think the little guy deserves to lose.
TV signals are still copyrighted. They are not to be rebroadcasted. Just because TV is free doesn't mean it's right to rebroadcast it without the broadcasters permission.
If iCraveTV is smart they will try to make a deal with the broadcasters. If they are dumb they will fight a lawsuit they have no chance of winning. Be smart, make a deal.
Notice that 800x255 resolution? Unless they can get the res higher I'm not buying.:( OTOH Once the resolution is around 800x600 I think this type of technology is a valid alternative to standard monitors. Sure you can't view it with other people. But 52 virtual inches is pretty good for $500. Now I wonder what the refresh rate is...
Year-based naming may be nice and easy to follow. But you have to remember that when you say Windows 95 it "feels" old. Tieing the name to the year the software was released is just a way of making sure people remember how old their software is.
Slashdot Mirror
First of all some simple statistics will tell you that most of the ads are seen by people. Sure we often use the ad-space to quickly get some more chips or go to the bathroom. But overall people will usually watch the ad and often not even mute it.
Secondly click-throughs are not a good measure of the effectivness of an ad. Advertising is about mindshare, not information. The whole point of marketing is to create a feel about your product. You want people to associate your product with good things, take one look at Microsoft ads and car ads. While ads will often inform, you can buy x for a low low price of $100!, those types of ads are the minority for most markets.
Just by using the term 'dumbed down' you defeat the point of a Newbie's Linux. It shouldn't be dumbed down. Either it has a very smooth and gradual learning curve, which is one thing that Linux, CLI, and Unix in general doesn't deal with, or it has a flawless level of useability.
That's easy to say. But it's just not easy to make a gradual learning curve. By putting a GUI in place people learn to expect to *always* have their GUI. Before you know it they won't use anything else. Unfortunatly easy means having GUIs, wizards that do all the work for you, etc. Basically all the lower level stuff hidden out of view. This really defeats any type of learning.
I started off on an XT with DOS and am glad of it. I had to use the command line. I had to understand how it worked. If I didn't start off like that I really don't think I'd have had such a easy time learning the more low-level stuff.
As an example, Apple's OS and hardware have demonstrated levels of proficiency in both tasks. As much as people criticize the design decisions, a single user interface is ideal for people who
Ahh... What *isn't* a single user interface? Do you mean a single-user OS?
are figuring out information flow, computers, tasks, etc. A single mouse button, so people don't have to fear that if they do an incorrect action, something irrecoverable can happen because there is only one action. A single menu bar, so people *always* know where to look for info and stuff, without having to figure out what app has the focus.
The Mac-style menu bar isn't one menu bar. It's just that each menu bar you would see at the top of the app window appears at the top-left hand corner of the screen. When you switch apps the menu bar changes. I'd say it's harder to figure out then Windows style menubars. But it's much faster as you can just flick your wrist and your cursor is instantly there.
Windows has Win9x and WinNT. The first being for your average joe who just wants Office and the Net to work and the second being for servers. Why shouldn't Linux do that? We already have Caldera Linux for the newbies. If you want "power-user" system you can use Debian among others. There is no reason that all the distros should look and act the same. What's good for a newbie is hell for a power user after all.
It only makes sense to have different Linux's for different people. You can't please everyone. We don't all run an identical kernel. Nor should we run identical distros that are all dumbed down for new users.
Calling up someone's boss is just plain nasty. IBM used to do this if you recomended mainframes other then IBM's. They sure don't do that now. That sort of action is just downright dirty.
It doesn't have to run with root permissions, it will run just fine without although it will give a error message asking if you really want to run it with no permissions.
strace shows that it is doing what it says it does, scanning everything. As for what it's really looking for... Who knows?
Since the main goal of the defensive patent is to allow free software to use technology, and not to kill Microsoft and other "competitors", why not just register as many software patents as possible on usefull algorithms etc. and then just not enforce them *at all* I'm no lawyer but wouldn't that mean that someone else wouldn't be able to patent the same technology even if you lose your patent since you are not protecting it?
When you think about it domain names are like mining claims. In the Voisy's Bay "gold rush" (they were actually mining nickel) one company spent a few million on buying up the mining rights to huge amounts of land. This cost them a fortune. (I believe around 3 million) OTOH it gave them the *chance* to make a fortune. In the case of domain names it's not really that cheap to buy up large numbers of them. But if you strike it big you're in luck and you might be able to pay off your investment.
The MPAA says that companies are lossing millions of dollars of revenue. Don't they mean they are lossing a chance to make millions of dollars of revenue by controlling all information?
It does apply. But even though you're computer caches the results of your harddrive with a disk cache a faster harddrive is still a good thing right? Since the cache applies equally well to both RISC and CISC CISC will get higher performence as what's feeding the cache, the decoder, runs faster.
But "riscified" doesn't mean a thing since the instructions are in a completely different instruction set. So they still have to be converted which takes up lots of time for those hundreds of little RISC instructions.
That's right. CISC chips depend on a small number of big instructions running relitivly slowly. RISC chips depend on lots of little instructions running super fast. The Crusoe can't translate RISC instructions efficiently because there are so many of them all at once. So RISC gets pretty bad performence compared to CISC.
This doesn't just apply to the Crusoe. Any emulator has the same problem.
Note that JFS isn't complete yet. The README says that hard and soft links do not work, you can't *write* to a JFS filesystem, reading is still in progress and it will only work on the Intel architecture due to endian problems. If you want to use a journeling file system now you should probably try ext3
2.The blank media costs more
That may be true now but it won't be true in a few years. When cd-burners first came out they were very expensive. They aren't now.
OTOH You are right in that the encrypted disks can easilly be copied already. This is *playback* protection, not copy protection.
Licenses already prohibit releasing benchmarks of the software without written permission by the software manufacture. AOL could cancel the accounts of people who said bad things about AOL if they wanted to.
If reverse engineering wasn't allowed there would be no PC compatibles. The BIOS of the first non-IBM computers was made by Phoenx. They used the clean-room reverse engineering process.
The abserd conditions of many software licenses must be *stopped* If this doesn't happen... How could a Linux Office clone read MS Office files? How could we have made MP3 players if the MP3 format was locked up? How could WINE or DosEMU be created?
It is *not* illegal for a car manufacture to have it's engineers take apart a competitors car. Why should software be any different?
Non-disclosure agreements for employees are one thing. But shrink-wrap licenses can be basically NDA's for *everyone*
Due to the design of ext2fs, and *many* other filesystems, there is no way to undelete a file. In dos the directory entry would be left behind and you *might* be able to undelete your file, *if* the file wasn't fragmented. Just about any other good filesystem such as ext2fs, NTFS, etc. quickly reclaims the space taken up from deleted files for performence and doesn't save the directory entry.
If you do delete a file you might be able to recover it, but there aren't many ways to automate ext2fs undeletion. For help see the Ext2fs-Undeletion mini-HOWTO.
Since Transmeta isn't yet being used in any laptops, but AMD is, I think AMD needs to take the blame. Of course when Transmeta's chips start to get used I expect to see some Transmeta caused price cuts.
There is both a Linux and Slashdot group on Seti@Home. If you want to help out just go to the Seti@Home website and download the client. After installing the client you can just join the Slashdot or Linux group by going to the groups link on the main page. Search for the group you want. Then just join the group.
The Slashdot group currently has 424 members and has computed 47953 packets.
The Linux group currently has 344 members and has computed 146283 packets. (there are a few *really* good systems in the Linux group that process the bulk of those packets)
The correct URL for the un asked question is http://slashdot.org/co mments.pl?sid=00/01/17/1119222&cid=110
There is a serious problem with those defacement statistics. What if WinNT sysadmins tend to be not as good and UNIX sysadmins? I wouldn't be suprised that on a whole your average WinNT sysadmin isn't as good as your average UNIX sysadmin. After all UNIX is far more forbidding then then WinNT. What OS do you think your average newbie will use?
This sounds like a discussion we've had before on slashdot. As a consumer, *I* think I'm paying for the content. *They*, the people selling it to me, think I'm paying for a license to watch it, and forget about it forever after until I want to pay for it again. If I can tape shows off of TV, I should be able to do this.
Such useage is covered by fair use provisions. Fair use doesn't apply to corporations trying to make a buck through ad revenues, even if those corporations are small.
iCraveTV is trying to make money by giving viewers access to TV that they normally wouldn't be able to watch. This isn't your Mom taping shows you loved in your homeland. This is a company trying to make a buck. There is a big differnce between small-scale distribution and the massive distribution iCraveTV provides.
I think iCraveTV should go the legitimit route and pay broadcasters the same way your local cable company does.
iCraveTV is doing something that is illegal IMO. They are basically redistributing TV programs without any permissions what-so-ever. It may not be fashionable to support big business but in this case I think the little guy deserves to lose.
TV signals are still copyrighted. They are not to be rebroadcasted. Just because TV is free doesn't mean it's right to rebroadcast it without the broadcasters permission.
If iCraveTV is smart they will try to make a deal with the broadcasters. If they are dumb they will fight a lawsuit they have no chance of winning. Be smart, make a deal.
Notice that 800x255 resolution? Unless they can get the res higher I'm not buying. :( OTOH Once the resolution is around 800x600 I think this type of technology is a valid alternative to standard monitors. Sure you can't view it with other people. But 52 virtual inches is pretty good for $500. Now I wonder what the refresh rate is...
Meetings like this raise a question, Who pays for all this? It can't be cheap to get 20 developers from around the world to Paris.
Have you every thought that maybe Hemos and CmdrTaco are embarrassed by the slashdot code?
Year-based naming may be nice and easy to follow. But you have to remember that when you say Windows 95 it "feels" old. Tieing the name to the year the software was released is just a way of making sure people remember how old their software is.