I disagree that Compiz is nearly useless. It's very easy to switch desktops and find other windows while developing. It's almost as useful as a 2nd monitor.
In fact, Linux support is my #1 deciding factor in deciding on a laptop or video card. Like a lot of others I dual-boot, XP for gaming, Ubuntu for all else. Since nvidia & ATI are nearly equal, dollar for dollar, for gaming then Compiz support becomes the default deciding factor.
ATI supporting Linux opens up a whole world of, for instance, new laptop choices. The cheap embedded GPUs in the laptops will run Compiz without sweating.
You can get a modern, dual-core laptop that will run XP or Linux like a dream for under $500 these days. It's hardly worth dropping money on an older one.
Set it aside and install Linux on it and use it for a download, firewall, torrent, web, development, java, gcc, proxy, cvs, - whatever - server. A working computer you can hack around on is always worth something.
If I have something important to encrypt I encrypt it but otherwise it's not worth the trouble to hide everything just because I can.
Also, on a personal level it evokes an unpleasant "paranoid" feeling that is only slightly more off-putting than feeling like somebody could be reading my email. Maybe I just don't like the thought of Big Brother so I avoid thinking about it, who knows.
So in other words somebody might be reading my email but so what. Of the billions of emails floating around the 'net mine are just as boring as anybody else's.
Now, if I thought the Government were monitoring my email on an ongoing basis as a matter of policy I would encrypt everything just to screw with them. FU Sven and GW!
I want to coin a new phrase - The Inverse DRM Law: When media is constrained a proportionate technology will be invented to de-constrain it.
You beat me to the quote reference. "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin..."
The media people should have been paying attention to the software industry as they tried in vain to stop piracy. Now they're just trying to re-invent the wheel by throwing good money after bad.
Microsoft will always pay people to develop IE because it's their single most important app. They recognized a long time ago that the Web was the gateway into the Internet, and that the Internet was the future of computing. Microsoft sought to become the main gateway into the Internet by developing IE. If you're using IE you had to buy Windows, right?
This is why Apple has to keep developing Safari. The web is too important to hope Firefox or Opera will keep providing a browser for you.
So MS successfully trounced Netscape with a superior browser. Eventually they did what all big companies do - they got complacent. IE became huge and slow as they integrated more and more of it into the OS.
I don't think they expected Firefox to spring up, but it did because there was a market need. It's fast and easy to use. Now it's completely viable to get on the Web without giving Microsoft a dollar. I'm not sure they expected that to happen either, despite their best efforts to the contrary.
There's nothing worse than stumbling across something you wrote 10 minutes ago and having no idea how it works. I updated your idea to something more closely in-line with my brain.
Don't forget that downloads and torrents to the servers are lighting fast. Then you can just bring a thumb drive next time you go down to fix an "outage."
I totally agree. Sun, "the other Microsoft" held the I.T. world at gunpoint for a long time. While Windows was trying to catch up Linux ran the end-around until eventually Oracle and the other big boys jumped over.
Quoted with full awareness of the irony -
Basil Exposition: Austin, the Cold War is over! Austin Powers: Finally those capitalist pigs will pay for their crimes, eh? Eh comrades? Eh? Basil Exposition: Austin... we won. Austin Powers: Oh, smashing, groovy, yay capitalism!
Yeah but there's a big difference between having to actually decrypt the packets, even with a crib and a known weakness in the encryption, and having the keys to the kingdom.
I think you get what you pay for. I bought one of those dirt-cheap 256m sticks a long while back. It's a flimsy piece of plastic, but I expected that. But guess what, it still works.
Now I use a 2gb Kingston DataTraveler. It's very solidly built. I use it all the time and carry it with me always. I think it was about $20 last year. They're probably giving them away with a Happy Meal these days. I'm just waiting for the day I lose the little cap.
You can certainly buy very well-built models designed for travel. If you have to carry important data around with you I think the good ones are worth the extra dough.
And of course, it's highly plausible that this whole effort from Microsoft was intended solely to serve their own interests by creating the perception they were going to acquire, and they never intended to go through with it, for whatever arcane market reasons. On a deal this huge there's so much back-room strategy and PR feinting / posturing it's impossible for us normal geeks to get the real story. It's akin to planning the D-Day invasion while saying, 'yeah, we're thinking about sending a boat or two over there eventually.'
They're losing because they're complacent and huge.
They do a good job eventually but it's the story of low-hanging fruit. Microsoft is raking is barrels of cash because they can leverage their market position. Now suddenly, BOOM! UMPCs are all the rage. Agile companies like Asus can produce one within a year and Linux is infinitely flexible, especially with Ubuntu on board. They can produce a new distro in a quarter or two.
It would take at least two years with all hands on deck to produce "XP Light" for UMPC's. They know this so they probably subsidized the hardware on the higher-powered EEE to run XP. Problem solved! Besides, they've spent a gazillion dollars gambling on Vista and the trend towards more powerful computers. They don't want to admit they were wrong.
But the price is creeping up towards $600 now. The whole point was to make a $300 'Net surfer you can use from your kitchen.
MS will do their best to not miss this boat but they'll have to subsidize the hardware somehow to bring the price down, or hope people don't mind paying more.
I recently went on a keyboard hunt and ended up with an IBM Space Saver II. It's basically a compact Thinkpad keyboard with a trackpoint nubbin and mouse buttons on the bottom. There is no number pad and it's PS2 only, but I have an adapter and it works fine. Ubuntu recognizes the trackpoint too.
I found it on Ebay for about $30. If you do an ebay search for part number 37L0888 it should turn up. They are incredibly expensive to buy new.
If you're not terribly picky, a trick to getting a good clackity keyboard is to make friends with the I.T. guys. In our shop it used to be that every server came with a quality server keyboard and mouse. They immediately get thrown into a pile because the servers are all on KVM devices. Just go in and ask for one. They tend to be a lot nicer than the mushball keyboards the desktop PCs come with.
There really isn't a perfect way to release Linux distributions. With timed releases components are prioritized quickly, but some stuff gets left out. With feature-based releases you have to wait until some number of components are ready so the release date is a mystery.
I think it's great the way it is: each distro has their own method, you can pick the one that's right for you. It's the ultimate in technical Darwinism.
I'm still trying to figure out their angle on this. I don't know enough about the health care industry to say yet. What I DO know is what Google says in their FAQ:
1. Why is Google offering this product?
A: It's what we do...
6. If it's free, how does Google make money off Google Health? ...There are no ads in Google Health. Our primary focus is providing a good user experience and meeting our users' needs.
Linux and Mac to some extent are a solution because they're not targeted as much. Because they don't have the market share.
If the positions were somehow swapped and let's say Apple had the 92% market share, then malware authors would concentrate their efforts against OS X instead of Windows. (You can sub in the name of any OS you want, even the one that begins wih "L.")
It might not be as easy to compromise OS X or "L.", but malware authors are pretty clever. When there's money involved they'll find a way.
Yeah, but still. Having had to clean up some catastrophic messes that have been created by malware I still fantasize about one day beating the pulp out of one of those bastards.
I don't care what anybody says. I'm still impressed that the DARPA Initiative was able to slow time down on that Island and create that cool underground bunker where those scientists had to enter the code every 108 minutes.
I was going to suggest this too. I've had clients ask for live access to production databases over the years. The answer is always "No." No no no no no no no no no. Never. In this case it's our data, not theirs.
If direct access was a stipulation in the contract that'd be different. Then we could make arrangements to give them access to a reporting server, or to a set of pre-canned queries. There are many ways to structure this if you have time and resources.
Sometimes they really do need to run all kinds of big reports on data, and sometimes there's no reason somebody should come between the customer and the reports, introducing delays and charging $200 an hour for something they could be doing themselves. Shipping them a snapshot is one workable solution.
If Microsoft really cared about education so much, why wouldn't they just give Windows to the OLPC project for free? Man why do I always have to play the part of devil's advocate. I'm trying to simply the facts as they are. I see it like so:
A. OLPC is dedicated to giving 3rd world kids laptops so they can learn.
B. Microsoft is a for-profit business.
C. OLPC and Microsoft can help each other.
It is possible that OLPC has an advantage in using XP to further its goal. Somehow a group of people seem to think the OLPC had a mission to distribute OSS/Linux. That is not the case!
I am willing to hear Negroponte's rationale for putting XP on the laptops. I know enough about the guy to believe he's not a sell-out. There could be some strategic advantage to this deal. If it benefits MS at the same time - so what! If the kids are better off in the long run then I applaud the deal.
If they're NOT better off in the long run I'd like to hear why that is exactly. If it's just a ploy to hook kids on MS then I'd like to see some proof.
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I disagree that Compiz is nearly useless. It's very easy to switch desktops and find other windows while developing. It's almost as useful as a 2nd monitor.
In fact, Linux support is my #1 deciding factor in deciding on a laptop or video card. Like a lot of others I dual-boot, XP for gaming, Ubuntu for all else. Since nvidia & ATI are nearly equal, dollar for dollar, for gaming then Compiz support becomes the default deciding factor.
ATI supporting Linux opens up a whole world of, for instance, new laptop choices. The cheap embedded GPUs in the laptops will run Compiz without sweating.
You can get a modern, dual-core laptop that will run XP or Linux like a dream for under $500 these days. It's hardly worth dropping money on an older one.
Set it aside and install Linux on it and use it for a download, firewall, torrent, web, development, java, gcc, proxy, cvs, - whatever - server. A working computer you can hack around on is always worth something.
If I have something important to encrypt I encrypt it but otherwise it's not worth the trouble to hide everything just because I can.
Also, on a personal level it evokes an unpleasant "paranoid" feeling that is only slightly more off-putting than feeling like somebody could be reading my email. Maybe I just don't like the thought of Big Brother so I avoid thinking about it, who knows.
So in other words somebody might be reading my email but so what. Of the billions of emails floating around the 'net mine are just as boring as anybody else's.
Now, if I thought the Government were monitoring my email on an ongoing basis as a matter of policy I would encrypt everything just to screw with them. FU Sven and GW!
I want to coin a new phrase - The Inverse DRM Law: When media is constrained a proportionate technology will be invented to de-constrain it.
..."
You beat me to the quote reference. "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin
The media people should have been paying attention to the software industry as they tried in vain to stop piracy. Now they're just trying to re-invent the wheel by throwing good money after bad.
Microsoft will always pay people to develop IE because it's their single most important app. They recognized a long time ago that the Web was the gateway into the Internet, and that the Internet was the future of computing. Microsoft sought to become the main gateway into the Internet by developing IE. If you're using IE you had to buy Windows, right?
This is why Apple has to keep developing Safari. The web is too important to hope Firefox or Opera will keep providing a browser for you.
So MS successfully trounced Netscape with a superior browser. Eventually they did what all big companies do - they got complacent. IE became huge and slow as they integrated more and more of it into the OS.
I don't think they expected Firefox to spring up, but it did because there was a market need. It's fast and easy to use. Now it's completely viable to get on the Web without giving Microsoft a dollar. I'm not sure they expected that to happen either, despite their best efforts to the contrary.
Don't forget that downloads and torrents to the servers are lighting fast. Then you can just bring a thumb drive next time you go down to fix an "outage."
I totally agree. Sun, "the other Microsoft" held the I.T. world at gunpoint for a long time. While Windows was trying to catch up Linux ran the end-around until eventually Oracle and the other big boys jumped over.
Quoted with full awareness of the irony -
Basil Exposition: Austin, the Cold War is over!
Austin Powers: Finally those capitalist pigs will pay for their crimes, eh? Eh comrades? Eh?
Basil Exposition: Austin... we won.
Austin Powers: Oh, smashing, groovy, yay capitalism!
Yeah but there's a big difference between having to actually decrypt the packets, even with a crib and a known weakness in the encryption, and having the keys to the kingdom.
I think you get what you pay for. I bought one of those dirt-cheap 256m sticks a long while back. It's a flimsy piece of plastic, but I expected that. But guess what, it still works.
Now I use a 2gb Kingston DataTraveler. It's very solidly built. I use it all the time and carry it with me always. I think it was about $20 last year. They're probably giving them away with a Happy Meal these days. I'm just waiting for the day I lose the little cap.
You can certainly buy very well-built models designed for travel. If you have to carry important data around with you I think the good ones are worth the extra dough.
If a teenager from Seattle can hack WOPPER with an acoustic modem and 8-bit computers....
They're losing because they're complacent and huge.
They do a good job eventually but it's the story of low-hanging fruit. Microsoft is raking is barrels of cash because they can leverage their market position. Now suddenly, BOOM! UMPCs are all the rage. Agile companies like Asus can produce one within a year and Linux is infinitely flexible, especially with Ubuntu on board. They can produce a new distro in a quarter or two.
It would take at least two years with all hands on deck to produce "XP Light" for UMPC's. They know this so they probably subsidized the hardware on the higher-powered EEE to run XP. Problem solved! Besides, they've spent a gazillion dollars gambling on Vista and the trend towards more powerful computers. They don't want to admit they were wrong.
But the price is creeping up towards $600 now. The whole point was to make a $300 'Net surfer you can use from your kitchen.
MS will do their best to not miss this boat but they'll have to subsidize the hardware somehow to bring the price down, or hope people don't mind paying more.
I recently went on a keyboard hunt and ended up with an IBM Space Saver II. It's basically a compact Thinkpad keyboard with a trackpoint nubbin and mouse buttons on the bottom. There is no number pad and it's PS2 only, but I have an adapter and it works fine. Ubuntu recognizes the trackpoint too.
I found it on Ebay for about $30. If you do an ebay search for part number 37L0888 it should turn up. They are incredibly expensive to buy new.
If you're not terribly picky, a trick to getting a good clackity keyboard is to make friends with the I.T. guys. In our shop it used to be that every server came with a quality server keyboard and mouse. They immediately get thrown into a pile because the servers are all on KVM devices. Just go in and ask for one. They tend to be a lot nicer than the mushball keyboards the desktop PCs come with.
Where I'm at I'm lucky if I can get anybody at all to read my email. Especially my boss.
There really isn't a perfect way to release Linux distributions. With timed releases components are prioritized quickly, but some stuff gets left out. With feature-based releases you have to wait until some number of components are ready so the release date is a mystery.
I think it's great the way it is: each distro has their own method, you can pick the one that's right for you. It's the ultimate in technical Darwinism.
"Why don't you quite whining and help us develop and release the software you're re-packaging and trying to make money from."
This was a good article. The Internet was actually useful today.
I second this one. But, that's cuz I always lean towards Perl.
1. Why is Google offering this product?
A: It's what we do...
6. If it's free, how does Google make money off Google Health?
...There are no ads in Google Health. Our primary focus is providing a good user experience and meeting our users' needs.
So they're just being nice guys I guess.
What I also found is... Health Care is a $2 Trillion industry, and that the industry spends $30 billion per year on marketing.
If Google cannot be up front about their motives, how can I trust them to be discrete with my medical records?
I think this is a lousy idea and I doubt it'll work. But the upside potential is so huge it's becoming easy to see why they made the investment.
Linux and Mac to some extent are a solution because they're not targeted as much. Because they don't have the market share.
If the positions were somehow swapped and let's say Apple had the 92% market share, then malware authors would concentrate their efforts against OS X instead of Windows. (You can sub in the name of any OS you want, even the one that begins wih "L.")
It might not be as easy to compromise OS X or "L.", but malware authors are pretty clever. When there's money involved they'll find a way.
Yeah, but still. Having had to clean up some catastrophic messes that have been created by malware I still fantasize about one day beating the pulp out of one of those bastards.
I don't care what anybody says. I'm still impressed that the DARPA Initiative was able to slow time down on that Island and create that cool underground bunker where those scientists had to enter the code every 108 minutes.
I was going to suggest this too. I've had clients ask for live access to production databases over the years. The answer is always "No." No no no no no no no no no. Never. In this case it's our data, not theirs.
If direct access was a stipulation in the contract that'd be different. Then we could make arrangements to give them access to a reporting server, or to a set of pre-canned queries. There are many ways to structure this if you have time and resources.
Sometimes they really do need to run all kinds of big reports on data, and sometimes there's no reason somebody should come between the customer and the reports, introducing delays and charging $200 an hour for something they could be doing themselves. Shipping them a snapshot is one workable solution.
A. OLPC is dedicated to giving 3rd world kids laptops so they can learn.
B. Microsoft is a for-profit business.
C. OLPC and Microsoft can help each other.
It is possible that OLPC has an advantage in using XP to further its goal. Somehow a group of people seem to think the OLPC had a mission to distribute OSS/Linux. That is not the case!
I am willing to hear Negroponte's rationale for putting XP on the laptops. I know enough about the guy to believe he's not a sell-out. There could be some strategic advantage to this deal. If it benefits MS at the same time - so what! If the kids are better off in the long run then I applaud the deal.
If they're NOT better off in the long run I'd like to hear why that is exactly. If it's just a ploy to hook kids on MS then I'd like to see some proof.