I guess this is going no-where, since it's an AC comment, but:
* Demonstrate a Ubunut machine running side by side
Easy enough, although comparatively expensive to bring the Mac in.
* No idiotic package management
What's idiotic about installing an app and having it install everything you need for you?
* Apps can be installed by simply dragging them anywhere in the file system
Depending on how they're distributed, you can do that anyway (with one minor extra step of "extract from archive"). That's how I installed Firefox, Thunderbird and Eclipse (amongst others) on my machine. If someone really wanted to then they could potentially get around that and bundle it as a.bin file.
At the end of the day it seems like a bad idea, though, because a) it lets you install arbitrary junk that could be dangerous and b) you either have dependency issues that you have to resolve yourself or you end up bundling all of the dependencies in every individual package (which as well as making downloads much larger than necessary means potential licensing issues and potential out of date frameworks)
* Apps can be just dragged to the trash when no longer needed
See above.
* A bundle type system for application resources
Huh?
* Perform the most common actions Apple's target demographic performs everyday: checking/writing Mail, webbrowsing with flash, etc., importing photos
That'd be Thunderbird/KMail/Evolution, Firefox/Konqueror/Opera, F-Spot/DigiKam, amongst others then. Flash is a touch more awkward (unless your distro bundles SWF-dec), but then a Windows machine doesn't exactly have a smooth ride with it pre-installed either, and I don't think Mac does.
* Same level of fonts and font selection
Linux supports TTF, so as long as you pay the license then you're fine there.
* Same level of UI widget layout spacing across every single item of every single application demoed
If you're using the same toolkits, you should get that. Failing that it's the application developer's fault, just the same as it was Apple's fault for (at one time) having the possibility of about four different UI themes at once on different windows.
* Remove every single thing in Ubunut that has absolutely nothing to do with photos, mail, webbrowsing, movies
That'd be a re-spin. Perfectly possible, but no-one has yet bothered to do it. Try doing that, and making a media spin (like Studio 64) and a gaming spin and an educational spin and numerous religious spins and the rest with Mac.
* Come up with an equally compelling and easy to say/remember/talk about names for a drop in replacement for iPhoto, iMovie etc
That's just marketing. "F-Spot" for photo management isn't exactly hard, and neither is Totem for video or Exaile/Banshee for music. They're not the same "generic with a single character prefix", but that's because open source projects don't want to try to trademark a concept that covers all of the alternatives.
Besides, most Gnome distros now label your menu items by purpose (e.g. "Web Browser" or "Email Client" or "Messaging Client" instead).
* One to one feature completeness with iPhoto,iMovie etc with every single operation taking as many or less steps to accomplish
What about additional features that they don't have? The core functionality is probably already there (how many things can you do in a photo manager? F-Spot already manages, tags, shows a timeline, and does basic editing) and any extra ones probably don't have much demand. Software doesn't have to be feature-for-feature matching to compete.
* Not a single instance or case of having to edit X config or other types of files no matter what the hell goes wrong with the system
Bullet-proof X is designed to solve "X fails and shows command line" and "config doesn't work so X won't start" by auto-configuring and falling back to generic defaults.
* No freezing or other UI glitches when apps are busy computing like Linux apps do now
The best language to teach him is $trendy_language_of_the_moment. If you don't teach him that then he'll never get anywhere. How can people hope to encourage people to learn when they're using $formerly_trendy_language? It's just so horrible that I'd rather gouge someone else's eyes out with a spoon that use it instead of $trendy_language_of_the_moment!
Orange did this in the UK at least 18 months ago, I think. Tech Support wouldn't tell me how to get round it (they didn't seem to understand that I didn't feel it was a "feature"), but I found other DNS servers on the Net.
AFAIK none of it is anywhere close to DPI, though. All the other services do is have a DNS server that goes "If I can't find a legit domain then return the IP of the ISP's web server" and the web server is set to listen for all requests, regardless of domain, and then does a search/advert page based on what domain you used.
Even ignoring the technical aspects it breaks, it's just wrong on so many levels.
But Wikipedia is still a website, so we still need to support HTTP and HTML in 100 years, which still leaves you in the same situation of maintaining stuff that supports old standards. As well as that it means maintaining the 100+ year old servers that Wikipedia runs on, and all of the data they store.
Either that or you just maintain the data in ever newer formats (replace.txt with.odf with whatever comes next, etc), which means the 100+ year life isn't as useful for archiving purposes as something shorter lived could be used and replaced each time the content is transcribed.
One way or the other you're maintaining something for 100+ years to be able to be able to read the data - either the server with the information about the format, or the data format itself.
Shame the early Ubuntu's began with W and B and completely messed up that scheme;)
As for whether it is in 2.6.43.-12b34_+omicron-rc6, that depends how much an omicron is and what effect it has on adding it the the 12th build of the 34th beta of 2.6.43, which is now in RC6 status.
Besides, I heard the Parameterized Ultra-Fair Order One Irreversible Hypoxic Process Scheduler is in the newest kernel. Wait, is that in 2.6.26.10, or not? Version numbers still tell you nothing about what's in it. However you name it, you've got to look up what features are in it.
Flash memory chips with a potential lifetime of hundreds of years have been developed by Japanese scientists.
All well and good, but what about reading the data? Will we have the connectors and required document parsers in hundreds of years? Or will we be stuck with data on this amazingly long lasting device that we can't read?
Still, at least it seems to boost the number of writes as well, which is a bonus for general usage.
Clearly, some aspects of games could be improved by having a better knowledge of average PC specs or knowing which parts of the games are more entertaining to the users.
Better knowledge of PC specs? How about a nice and simple plain English "can we send your processor speed, amount of memory and graphics card model to ourselves along with no other data so we can work out how powerful a computer people run the game on?". It tells you exactly what they're doing and why, and as a one-off process (with an optional "send again" like Smolt on Linux) would let people keep it updated as they upgrade if they wanted to.
Knowing which parts of the games are more entertaining? How about beta testers or surveys? You can't collect and phone-back useful data about who likes what parts of the game. Just because an area is popular doesn't mean it's liked. The user could be lost, repeating the same area, trying to track down some damnable little item that they need to progress, and so on. The only way to even remotely accurately record emotions is to ask about them (although people may misremember/lie).
Why is this such a hard concept for companies? I'll quite happily disable my network connection if necessary while playing a game. If it needs to phone home, explain why and make sure you have a good reason. The best results are, on the whole, either one-off with informed consent (post-install hardware profiles) or out-of-game questionnaires (what the user liked).
Check "Make a rule", click "Deny". Problem solved.
The problem then is that developers (or publishers forcing developers) just go "Check for phone-home response. Not got one? Don't start." The majority of companies wouldn't see a problem with it either, as long as the box says "requires an internet connection".
I am always slightly confused as to how these companies think it is a good idea, though. Surely it's a normal human reaction to not trust an unknown disclosure? And surely the people making the decisions are, to some degree, 'normal' humans? So surely they should have an insight in to the fact that people won't like it? Or is that assuming too much?
I would consider laws keeping guns locked up analogous to building code requiring outdoor pools to be behind a fence. It keeps children out, for their safety and also for insurance purposes.
Locking away guns: Legislation to stop people getting hurt/killed. Building regs to keep pools behind fences: Legislation to stop people getting hurt/killed. Making some law so you can prosecute someone when they perform an illegal action while trespassing on someone's network: Legislation to do the police's work for them (tracking the criminal) that has nothing to do with people getting hurt.
So yes, locking guns away is analogous to your example, but not the topic of the conversation.
Except that it can (depending on the garden) be easier to spot the wireless intruder, or at least have a record of it. Most routers I've seen will keep a log of connections, so even if you're not watching then it is. If you're not watching your mail box then you never know who has been in it.
Hell, I live in a terraced house, my front garden is about 10ft at the most, our mail box is right by the door, and I still don't notice when the postman delivers the mail 90%+ of the time! Move it down a long garden of a larger house with the possibility of foliage in the way and what chance do you stand?
True, to a degree. There would have be other OSes, because some crazy (and talented) people would decide they wanted to spend their time reverse engineering it and making their own wrapper, just like people do for the graphics drivers. It would admittedly be a lot further behind, though.
Just imagine how the world would have been if Intel just released x86 processors without specifying its instruction set and without providing any wrapping layer that does the accessing for you, like the nVidia binary drivers do. Getting my point?
There, fixed that for you. nVidia not releasing specs means you have to use their drivers. Intel not releasing specs for x86 would mean you can't do anything with it, fullstop. Yes, some OSes end up in a similar situation, but I don't see the Amiga OS crew complaining.
More on topic, it sounds promising. If only I didn't have a Radeon X800. Maybe when I make my Myth TV box I'll get an nVidia.
I think I'm correct in saying that in some places there are things you ARE required to secure. I'm thinking in particular of firearms
That's a bit of a stretch! Firearms are, by definition, dangerous weapons. Their purpose is to be dangerous - they have no other sensible use. The reasons why anyone should ever need a firearm of their own or why it is considered sensible for a common civilian to have one is another matter, though.
A more sensible comparison is either an external mail box, a cordless phone left in the garden, or similar communication measures. Someone can start using your mail box and picking things up before you do just because it's easily accessible, but does that make you responsible for what they might get delivered to your house? Or someone sees you've left your cordless phone for your landline in the garden. If they call some terrorist friends (since they're the "hot group" of the last seven years to scare people with) and organise some terrorist event then how responsible are you, legally, that they saw an opportunity and took it?
As for logging stuff, try getting your standard Netgear router to log a sufficient level of detail. Yes, it might log connections and attempts on blocked ports, but no-where near what the police would require to be useful to meet the regulations.
Yes, I knew of a couple, but as you said it isn't a design goal. By making it a design goal then.Net is more amenable to multiple languages. Just compare the list of JVM languages to the list of CLI languages, several of which are official and standard.
I don't quite see why there should be any issues in the realm of trust with the CLR/CLI - I don't have any trust issues with the Mono team. Yes, the interfaces are potentially a touch less stable, but at the same time Microsoft won't want to cut off its nose to spite its face and kill Mono by altering the interfaces, which would also cause older.Net apps for Windows to break..Net also has the advantage (from my point of view) of better integration with the OS. Want to design a Windows app? You've got System.Windows.Forms built in. Want to design a Gnome app? You've got GTK# as a common wrapper. Want to design a Mac OS X app? You've got Cocoa# starting. Want to design a KDE app? You've got a Qt binding in the works (it was Qt# but it died and another project has started up that I can't remember the name of). What about Java? You've got AWT (which is old and ugly), Swing (which is newer and stands out on any desktop) or Swing (which generally looks native, but which would generally also require you to bundle the JAR with your app, making the download considerably bigger in a lot of cases).
The way Microsoft released the specifications for the.NET it is not encumbered. Plus, there aren't really many alternatives for using C#/.NET.
It (C#) is a fine language, built on the learn lessons from earlier languages.
Exactly. I like my Linux, I like my open source, I'm in the middle of making my own open source app, we use almost entirely open source and Java at work, but I still think C#/.Net is a great idea. Java is the only close competitor, especially for cross-platform, and then it's "one language for one VM" instead of "any number of languages that allow an even greater range of developers for one VM".
Also, what core parts of Gnome are tied to Mono? Okay, so there's Tomboy for notes, F-Spot for photo management and Banshee for music/video, but none of them are a requirement. It's not like you lose text editors, calculators or any of the really core parts (or, hell, even the whole Gnome desktop) if you uninstall Mono. My work machine doesn't even have any Mono libraries installed on it and I'm running Fedora 9 perfectly fine!
By all means keep your machine.Net/Mono free if you want, but please don't complain about what appears to be a non-issue for the actual core of Gnome.
Re:Do you access the net from your work computer?
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TrueCrypt 6.0 Released
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· Score: 1
Yes I do access the net on my work machine, but at that point it is on a work-owned machine and they feel it's secure enough behind various firewalls that it's safe on my machine (and on the SVN server I connect to). Given the company I work for, I'd hope it was reasonably secure as well.
That's not the point, though. The point was that I use it as an "in transit" system in case the USB hard disk is lost. The company is happy for me to carry stuff around on the condition that it isn't easy for them to lose commercially sensitive/proprietary data if I lose the disk.
Re:It's not a silver bullet but it's good enough..
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TrueCrypt 6.0 Released
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· Score: 1
I don't understand the paranoid people here who believes in plausible deniability, decoy drive and other such thing. I also wonder if the same people only use their computers in safe room with controlled EM environment and bullet proof shade. I didn't know either that so many people carried state secrets around international airports. To those I will say that if the NSA/FSB/Interpol/MI4/Mossad/Mafia or even the local police wants the content of your drive they will get it. period. It doesn't matter what you do. Unless of course you also work for one of the aforementioned in which case you might have been trained to accept that your life is worth less than the content of said drive.
It does seem like it's often taken further than is realistic. If you want true plausible deniability then you'd want a custom app, not an app that is known to have hidden areas.
I see it as more useful for personal secrets - e.g. someone keeps their financial documents "secret" in the outer layer, but then hides blackmailable material (affairs, pornographic preferences etc) and other things they don't want people to see when they reveal the outer layer. Different people will, of course, have different combinations of what they want to put in each layer.
Personally, I just use TrueCrypt because work says I've got to do it to take source code off-site securely.
I'm assuming that the dangerous kind of terrorist or spy will have had enough training to know that ticking the 'No' box is the best way to continue about their business...
Ah, but if they then catch you as a spy/terrorist they can slap another charge on you - falsifying information on an official document (or whatever it might be called);)
But that's a Firefox extension, and the people who install it tend to _think_ they know what they're doing with it.
I agree that it's a terrible idea on the whole (pre-fetching links that you might not follow, hitting the server with multiple requests to chunk the page, etc) but at least it should be doing it to cache it rather than fetching the page and discarding it and making the user fetch it again (according to previous reports).
I wonder how much of the old Firefox usage is old installs in Linux? You can't use the built-in updater if you installed the RPM/DEB because the permissions are (or should be) wrong for letting you write to the folder. AFAIK there's only a few distros who have moved to Firefox 3 so far, so the rest would be showing up as out-dated.
Similarly for Windows, if they're counting Firefox 3 as "up to date" then how many people are still on old v2s because they don't know about v3?
If you're American then surely you'd be hating the Freedoms from that European country called Freedom that's between Germany and Spain?
(This post is a dig at the American tantrum where they changed "French Fries" to "Freedom Fries" and not an implication that France is the nation of Freedom;) )
Okay, maybe "12p is as high as it goes for the main providers"? I'd forgotten that groups like Tesco have their own branded networks (which will probably just be piggy-backing someone else) and might try to get users in with other benefits like cheaper calls.
Only in that way people have that gets them in to huge debt where they think "I can't afford $Y now, so instead I'll pay three, four, five or more times $Y over a period of time, making it far more in reality but less in my mind because each individual number is smaller".
I'm just glad I'm on OpenOffice already, even at work. Not that MS Office tends to be part of a Linux install anyway!
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I guess this is going no-where, since it's an AC comment, but:
* Demonstrate a Ubunut machine running side by side
Easy enough, although comparatively expensive to bring the Mac in.
* No idiotic package management
What's idiotic about installing an app and having it install everything you need for you?
* Apps can be installed by simply dragging them anywhere in the file system
Depending on how they're distributed, you can do that anyway (with one minor extra step of "extract from archive"). That's how I installed Firefox, Thunderbird and Eclipse (amongst others) on my machine. If someone really wanted to then they could potentially get around that and bundle it as a .bin file.
At the end of the day it seems like a bad idea, though, because a) it lets you install arbitrary junk that could be dangerous and b) you either have dependency issues that you have to resolve yourself or you end up bundling all of the dependencies in every individual package (which as well as making downloads much larger than necessary means potential licensing issues and potential out of date frameworks)
* Apps can be just dragged to the trash when no longer needed
See above.
* A bundle type system for application resources
Huh?
* Perform the most common actions Apple's target demographic performs everyday: checking/writing Mail, webbrowsing with flash, etc., importing photos
That'd be Thunderbird/KMail/Evolution, Firefox/Konqueror/Opera, F-Spot/DigiKam, amongst others then. Flash is a touch more awkward (unless your distro bundles SWF-dec), but then a Windows machine doesn't exactly have a smooth ride with it pre-installed either, and I don't think Mac does.
* Same level of fonts and font selection
Linux supports TTF, so as long as you pay the license then you're fine there.
* Same level of UI widget layout spacing across every single item of every single application demoed
If you're using the same toolkits, you should get that. Failing that it's the application developer's fault, just the same as it was Apple's fault for (at one time) having the possibility of about four different UI themes at once on different windows.
* Remove every single thing in Ubunut that has absolutely nothing to do with photos, mail, webbrowsing, movies
That'd be a re-spin. Perfectly possible, but no-one has yet bothered to do it. Try doing that, and making a media spin (like Studio 64) and a gaming spin and an educational spin and numerous religious spins and the rest with Mac.
* Come up with an equally compelling and easy to say/remember/talk about names for a drop in replacement for iPhoto, iMovie etc
That's just marketing. "F-Spot" for photo management isn't exactly hard, and neither is Totem for video or Exaile/Banshee for music. They're not the same "generic with a single character prefix", but that's because open source projects don't want to try to trademark a concept that covers all of the alternatives.
Besides, most Gnome distros now label your menu items by purpose (e.g. "Web Browser" or "Email Client" or "Messaging Client" instead).
* One to one feature completeness with iPhoto,iMovie etc with every single operation taking as many or less steps to accomplish
What about additional features that they don't have? The core functionality is probably already there (how many things can you do in a photo manager? F-Spot already manages, tags, shows a timeline, and does basic editing) and any extra ones probably don't have much demand. Software doesn't have to be feature-for-feature matching to compete.
* Not a single instance or case of having to edit X config or other types of files no matter what the hell goes wrong with the system
Bullet-proof X is designed to solve "X fails and shows command line" and "config doesn't work so X won't start" by auto-configuring and falling back to generic defaults.
* No freezing or other UI glitches when apps are busy computing like Linux apps do now
Dell? At least they probably do on their Ubuntu pre-installs (Firefox).
The best language to teach him is $trendy_language_of_the_moment. If you don't teach him that then he'll never get anywhere. How can people hope to encourage people to learn when they're using $formerly_trendy_language? It's just so horrible that I'd rather gouge someone else's eyes out with a spoon that use it instead of $trendy_language_of_the_moment!
Orange did this in the UK at least 18 months ago, I think. Tech Support wouldn't tell me how to get round it (they didn't seem to understand that I didn't feel it was a "feature"), but I found other DNS servers on the Net.
AFAIK none of it is anywhere close to DPI, though. All the other services do is have a DNS server that goes "If I can't find a legit domain then return the IP of the ISP's web server" and the web server is set to listen for all requests, regardless of domain, and then does a search/advert page based on what domain you used.
Even ignoring the technical aspects it breaks, it's just wrong on so many levels.
But Wikipedia is still a website, so we still need to support HTTP and HTML in 100 years, which still leaves you in the same situation of maintaining stuff that supports old standards. As well as that it means maintaining the 100+ year old servers that Wikipedia runs on, and all of the data they store.
Either that or you just maintain the data in ever newer formats (replace .txt with .odf with whatever comes next, etc), which means the 100+ year life isn't as useful for archiving purposes as something shorter lived could be used and replaced each time the content is transcribed.
One way or the other you're maintaining something for 100+ years to be able to be able to read the data - either the server with the information about the format, or the data format itself.
Shame the early Ubuntu's began with W and B and completely messed up that scheme ;)
As for whether it is in 2.6.43.-12b34_+omicron-rc6, that depends how much an omicron is and what effect it has on adding it the the 12th build of the 34th beta of 2.6.43, which is now in RC6 status.
Besides, I heard the Parameterized Ultra-Fair Order One Irreversible Hypoxic Process Scheduler is in the newest kernel. Wait, is that in 2.6.26.10, or not? Version numbers still tell you nothing about what's in it. However you name it, you've got to look up what features are in it.
All well and good, but what about reading the data? Will we have the connectors and required document parsers in hundreds of years? Or will we be stuck with data on this amazingly long lasting device that we can't read?
Still, at least it seems to boost the number of writes as well, which is a bonus for general usage.
Better knowledge of PC specs? How about a nice and simple plain English "can we send your processor speed, amount of memory and graphics card model to ourselves along with no other data so we can work out how powerful a computer people run the game on?". It tells you exactly what they're doing and why, and as a one-off process (with an optional "send again" like Smolt on Linux) would let people keep it updated as they upgrade if they wanted to.
Knowing which parts of the games are more entertaining? How about beta testers or surveys? You can't collect and phone-back useful data about who likes what parts of the game. Just because an area is popular doesn't mean it's liked. The user could be lost, repeating the same area, trying to track down some damnable little item that they need to progress, and so on. The only way to even remotely accurately record emotions is to ask about them (although people may misremember/lie).
Why is this such a hard concept for companies? I'll quite happily disable my network connection if necessary while playing a game. If it needs to phone home, explain why and make sure you have a good reason. The best results are, on the whole, either one-off with informed consent (post-install hardware profiles) or out-of-game questionnaires (what the user liked).
The problem then is that developers (or publishers forcing developers) just go "Check for phone-home response. Not got one? Don't start." The majority of companies wouldn't see a problem with it either, as long as the box says "requires an internet connection".
I am always slightly confused as to how these companies think it is a good idea, though. Surely it's a normal human reaction to not trust an unknown disclosure? And surely the people making the decisions are, to some degree, 'normal' humans? So surely they should have an insight in to the fact that people won't like it? Or is that assuming too much?
Locking away guns: Legislation to stop people getting hurt/killed.
Building regs to keep pools behind fences: Legislation to stop people getting hurt/killed.
Making some law so you can prosecute someone when they perform an illegal action while trespassing on someone's network: Legislation to do the police's work for them (tracking the criminal) that has nothing to do with people getting hurt.
So yes, locking guns away is analogous to your example, but not the topic of the conversation.
Except that it can (depending on the garden) be easier to spot the wireless intruder, or at least have a record of it. Most routers I've seen will keep a log of connections, so even if you're not watching then it is. If you're not watching your mail box then you never know who has been in it.
Hell, I live in a terraced house, my front garden is about 10ft at the most, our mail box is right by the door, and I still don't notice when the postman delivers the mail 90%+ of the time! Move it down a long garden of a larger house with the possibility of foliage in the way and what chance do you stand?
True, to a degree. There would have be other OSes, because some crazy (and talented) people would decide they wanted to spend their time reverse engineering it and making their own wrapper, just like people do for the graphics drivers. It would admittedly be a lot further behind, though.
There, fixed that for you. nVidia not releasing specs means you have to use their drivers. Intel not releasing specs for x86 would mean you can't do anything with it, fullstop. Yes, some OSes end up in a similar situation, but I don't see the Amiga OS crew complaining.
More on topic, it sounds promising. If only I didn't have a Radeon X800. Maybe when I make my Myth TV box I'll get an nVidia.
That's a bit of a stretch! Firearms are, by definition, dangerous weapons. Their purpose is to be dangerous - they have no other sensible use. The reasons why anyone should ever need a firearm of their own or why it is considered sensible for a common civilian to have one is another matter, though.
A more sensible comparison is either an external mail box, a cordless phone left in the garden, or similar communication measures. Someone can start using your mail box and picking things up before you do just because it's easily accessible, but does that make you responsible for what they might get delivered to your house? Or someone sees you've left your cordless phone for your landline in the garden. If they call some terrorist friends (since they're the "hot group" of the last seven years to scare people with) and organise some terrorist event then how responsible are you, legally, that they saw an opportunity and took it?
As for logging stuff, try getting your standard Netgear router to log a sufficient level of detail. Yes, it might log connections and attempts on blocked ports, but no-where near what the police would require to be useful to meet the regulations.
Yes, I knew of a couple, but as you said it isn't a design goal. By making it a design goal then .Net is more amenable to multiple languages. Just compare the list of JVM languages to the list of CLI languages, several of which are official and standard.
I don't quite see why there should be any issues in the realm of trust with the CLR/CLI - I don't have any trust issues with the Mono team. Yes, the interfaces are potentially a touch less stable, but at the same time Microsoft won't want to cut off its nose to spite its face and kill Mono by altering the interfaces, which would also cause older .Net apps for Windows to break. .Net also has the advantage (from my point of view) of better integration with the OS. Want to design a Windows app? You've got System.Windows.Forms built in. Want to design a Gnome app? You've got GTK# as a common wrapper. Want to design a Mac OS X app? You've got Cocoa# starting. Want to design a KDE app? You've got a Qt binding in the works (it was Qt# but it died and another project has started up that I can't remember the name of). What about Java? You've got AWT (which is old and ugly), Swing (which is newer and stands out on any desktop) or Swing (which generally looks native, but which would generally also require you to bundle the JAR with your app, making the download considerably bigger in a lot of cases).
Exactly. I like my Linux, I like my open source, I'm in the middle of making my own open source app, we use almost entirely open source and Java at work, but I still think C#/.Net is a great idea. Java is the only close competitor, especially for cross-platform, and then it's "one language for one VM" instead of "any number of languages that allow an even greater range of developers for one VM".
Also, what core parts of Gnome are tied to Mono? Okay, so there's Tomboy for notes, F-Spot for photo management and Banshee for music/video, but none of them are a requirement. It's not like you lose text editors, calculators or any of the really core parts (or, hell, even the whole Gnome desktop) if you uninstall Mono. My work machine doesn't even have any Mono libraries installed on it and I'm running Fedora 9 perfectly fine!
By all means keep your machine .Net/Mono free if you want, but please don't complain about what appears to be a non-issue for the actual core of Gnome.
Yes I do access the net on my work machine, but at that point it is on a work-owned machine and they feel it's secure enough behind various firewalls that it's safe on my machine (and on the SVN server I connect to). Given the company I work for, I'd hope it was reasonably secure as well.
That's not the point, though. The point was that I use it as an "in transit" system in case the USB hard disk is lost. The company is happy for me to carry stuff around on the condition that it isn't easy for them to lose commercially sensitive/proprietary data if I lose the disk.
It does seem like it's often taken further than is realistic. If you want true plausible deniability then you'd want a custom app, not an app that is known to have hidden areas.
I see it as more useful for personal secrets - e.g. someone keeps their financial documents "secret" in the outer layer, but then hides blackmailable material (affairs, pornographic preferences etc) and other things they don't want people to see when they reveal the outer layer. Different people will, of course, have different combinations of what they want to put in each layer.
Personally, I just use TrueCrypt because work says I've got to do it to take source code off-site securely.
Ah, but if they then catch you as a spy/terrorist they can slap another charge on you - falsifying information on an official document (or whatever it might be called) ;)
Yeah, this is never going to cause huge panics amongst the dumb/easily influenced when they mess their test up and get dodgy results.
Yet another way to part the gullible from his money, I guess.
But that's a Firefox extension, and the people who install it tend to _think_ they know what they're doing with it.
I agree that it's a terrible idea on the whole (pre-fetching links that you might not follow, hitting the server with multiple requests to chunk the page, etc) but at least it should be doing it to cache it rather than fetching the page and discarding it and making the user fetch it again (according to previous reports).
I wonder how much of the old Firefox usage is old installs in Linux? You can't use the built-in updater if you installed the RPM/DEB because the permissions are (or should be) wrong for letting you write to the folder. AFAIK there's only a few distros who have moved to Firefox 3 so far, so the rest would be showing up as out-dated.
Similarly for Windows, if they're counting Firefox 3 as "up to date" then how many people are still on old v2s because they don't know about v3?
If you're American then surely you'd be hating the Freedoms from that European country called Freedom that's between Germany and Spain?
(This post is a dig at the American tantrum where they changed "French Fries" to "Freedom Fries" and not an implication that France is the nation of Freedom ;) )
Okay, maybe "12p is as high as it goes for the main providers"? I'd forgotten that groups like Tesco have their own branded networks (which will probably just be piggy-backing someone else) and might try to get users in with other benefits like cheaper calls.
Only in that way people have that gets them in to huge debt where they think "I can't afford $Y now, so instead I'll pay three, four, five or more times $Y over a period of time, making it far more in reality but less in my mind because each individual number is smaller".
I'm just glad I'm on OpenOffice already, even at work. Not that MS Office tends to be part of a Linux install anyway!