How's that modded informative? I strongly doubt that new users need to even see someting beyond/home/user/. And for the more experienced the *nix directory structure is far more useful, logical and flexible than a Windows one. It's not that hard if you are "hyper-involved PC-user". Granted, it IS harder if you are "hyper-involved Windows-user" which is more likely to be the case, but they will bitch about anything that doesn't look or behave like Windows.
Microsoft is playing a win-win game in Russia (pun intended). First, pirated software invades the market and secures 99% of desktop OS and Office applications markets for them. Then, pressure is being put on government as piracy is cited as one of the top reasons which prevent Russia to join the WTO. Note that it is mostly US government which does the pressure there, not Microsoft. The company is just milking the market while getting rid of pirates which brought them the market in the first place.
The best thing is — little to no MS involvement is needed: pirates will win the market as people would choose something that should cost money over something that shouldn't if both items cost the same. US will put a pressure on Russia anyway (and software sales are good exports too). The government in Russia will eagerly use piracy claims against opposition which they view as Western shills (for them it is using enemy's weapons against the enemy). Last but not least — companies and people will buy MS products as everybody is using them and government is after those who don't buy licensed copies. The business is being done for Microsoft, they just have sit back and collect the money.
AC is right though. There is business of selling shiny licenses for Linux' distributions, even Mandriva does that in Russia. Shiny papers are usually enough to shake off the raids. If the government want to disrupt your business badly however, no amount of licenses will help.
Russia's government wants to join the WTO badly. Software piracy is cited as one of the major obstacle for them. So they need to conduct anti-piracy raids. And while they're at it, why not smash some anti-government groups in the process?
For Microsoft it is business as usual — they get their share of "buy licenses" PR without risking backlash from the government (which will happen if they sue wrong people).
The priorities are somehow wrong in TFA and in popular opinion on/. IMO. Opposition groups are pawns here, seen as expendable by both government and Microsoft. Russia's government isn't facing any real competition right now, they can afford to ignore such groups altogether. Neither is Microsoft going to lose the vast marketshare gained by pirates for them.
Anarchy and overall decay which ensued in the 90-s are often seen from the outside as "freedom". It is actually little wonder that the pendulum made its way back. Liberal democracy is being associated with chaos in Russia so these ideas will not be popular for years to come.
Russians government's motivation is actually very clear — rampant computer piracy is often cited as a major obstacle which prevents Russia from joining the WTO. So there will be anti-piracy raids anyway. That anti-government groups will be smashed in a process is just a welcome side effect.
As for Microsoft — business as usual for them. They even made some bad blood with the government lately suing people left and right including a school's director for using pirated software which came with PC's. It has even sparked government-backed initiative of providing open source for educational usage. Granted in a country with Russia's corruption you only may imagine the level of obstacles put in front of that initiative — open source does not have juicy paybacks Microsoft can provide.
Citation needed if you are not joking. Also, I am unaware of Russian authorities using some kind of Bundestrojaner. They are usually much less sophisticated than that.
The interesting thing is: the Canonical seems to want to make some kind of an AppStore for commercial software on Ubuntu which will be integrated into software manager along with all the software from repositories. So you get the best of both worlds: the user can get everything from software manager, but does not have to. Doesn't solve the problem completely, but it is the best one can get without losing essential freedoms.
>A competent administrator most likely could secure Windows so the user cannot run the virus anyway. As seen from other comments, NASA does not have competent administrators. Nor does the Pentagon given the 2008 outbreak. Ether the bar of competency is too high for those or it is not that easy as you clame. Just sayin'.
>some things still have to be downloaded as.deb,.rpm,.sh or.tar.gz files Some few is still much better than all of them. As newbies aren more likely to use Ubuntu then Debian, Firefox and Nvidia are already covered. Not 100% sure about Canon, but I think that my gf's MFU from Canon worked without the need of manual installation with Lucid. Besides, Canonical tries to put commercial software to the install manager as well. With them being the biggest desktop vendor it is yet another step towards security.
To play the devil's advocate — a sufficient motivated user is always able to set privileges to the downloaded file. Yet you have to keep in mind that ex-Windows users are the ones who is more vulnerable to this as in Linux we have repositories as a standard way of installing software, not download-n-run Windows-way. In Windows, users are trained to download and launch shit (and to click yes if asked), Linux users are trained to start software manager. So there will be a statistically significant number of Linux newbies who won't fail for that trick provided they don't have fresh memories of less elegant systems.
A competent administrator would probably just noexec the users into oblivion (although that will create some unwanted side-effects). How many will be able to invoke a shell manually?
New users keep coming as even more PCs are sold. Blinded by marketspeak about how easy a PC (i.e. Windows) is, they refuse to learn. That is very unfortunate because said people have vast computing powers that easily outperform supercomputers just a few decades old. Coupled with the attitude that their time is too valuable to learn something about computers they use (insert your favorite car analogy here) this refusal to educate themselves creates an ever growing problem for the network as a whole: when a PC is infected to a crawl these people tend to buy a new one, with even more computing power.
To be fair, bing now finds it too. But I noticed that middle-click paste does not work on bing's input field for me (chrome 6 on openSuse 11.3). Google's does work.
Here, have a look: http://bash.org/?244321 And leave your geek card while you're on your way off slashdot.
Re:Flickery Display using S-Video under Intel i945
on
Ubuntu 10.10 Beta Released
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I know perfectly well what my grandma is using her PC for, I will set up everything for her anyway. If there's a problem, I am still the one who is being asked about it, so I better use a system which doesn't break that easy.
So yeah, my grandmas* don't know what ssh with reverse forwarding is, but they have it set up so I can log on to them any time from anywhere (their PCs connect to my shell server). Important is, they can't break anything, they don't have root password. If there's an issue I can fix it in no time using ssh or (forwarded as well) vnc. Hell, they don't know what a terminal IS, that's what I'm for!
Could they install or configure an OS themselves? No. Can they use any OS I show them how to use (where the browser is, where the pictures are etc.)? Yes. Have I been bothered more often when they weren't using Linux? Hell yes!
So Linux IS grandma-ready.
*ok, my grandma doesn't have a PC, but my mom an my aunt do and technically they are grandmas.
Smart thing will be also to switch to new LTS in about half a year after it has been released. So those who use 8.04 LTS should consider updating to 10.04 sometime next month or even later this year.
You can't really have a revolution every six month. New package's versions, new kernel, that's not something you can review, especially if nothing ground-braking has happened in these packages. Besides, you can't comment on stability as well with the release being still beta.
Actually. I had a colleague once who has closed all the programs by double-clicking program icon top left. He could not explain why does he do this himself, he did it purely out of habit. But then it hit me: Windows 3.11. What many forgot, it did not have the "close" button, you could close the window by double-clicking top left icon. So even for Microsoft the "close" has been top left once.
Noticed how they blame Sony's Playstation (Japanese company), but fail to mention Microsoft's Xbox (US' company)? Or even using "game console" as a more general term?
Slashdot Mirror
YMMV, took me a few days on Win7 to get BSoD-ded on system start due to a registry error last time I tried it. Didn't do anything fancy, too.
Here, take a look. There are still BSoD-s in Win7: http://i9.fastpic.ru/big/2010/0907/37/23c437d559fa2998ad61http://i9.fastpic.ru/big/2010/0907/37/23c437d559fa2998ad6100b188a2d937.png00b188a2d937.png
How's that modded informative? /home/user/. And for the more experienced the *nix directory structure is far more useful, logical and flexible than a Windows one. It's not that hard if you are "hyper-involved PC-user". Granted, it IS harder if you are "hyper-involved Windows-user" which is more likely to be the case, but they will bitch about anything that doesn't look or behave like Windows.
I strongly doubt that new users need to even see someting beyond
To be fair — anything other than Windows XP with default theme is enough to confuse a police officer.
Microsoft is playing a win-win game in Russia (pun intended). First, pirated software invades the market and secures 99% of desktop OS and Office applications markets for them. Then, pressure is being put on government as piracy is cited as one of the top reasons which prevent Russia to join the WTO. Note that it is mostly US government which does the pressure there, not Microsoft. The company is just milking the market while getting rid of pirates which brought them the market in the first place.
The best thing is — little to no MS involvement is needed: pirates will win the market as people would choose something that should cost money over something that shouldn't if both items cost the same. US will put a pressure on Russia anyway (and software sales are good exports too). The government in Russia will eagerly use piracy claims against opposition which they view as Western shills (for them it is using enemy's weapons against the enemy). Last but not least — companies and people will buy MS products as everybody is using them and government is after those who don't buy licensed copies. The business is being done for Microsoft, they just have sit back and collect the money.
AC is right though. There is business of selling shiny licenses for Linux' distributions, even Mandriva does that in Russia. Shiny papers are usually enough to shake off the raids. If the government want to disrupt your business badly however, no amount of licenses will help.
Russia's government wants to join the WTO badly. Software piracy is cited as one of the major obstacle for them. So they need to conduct anti-piracy raids. And while they're at it, why not smash some anti-government groups in the process?
For Microsoft it is business as usual — they get their share of "buy licenses" PR without risking backlash from the government (which will happen if they sue wrong people).
The priorities are somehow wrong in TFA and in popular opinion on /. IMO. Opposition groups are pawns here, seen as expendable by both government and Microsoft. Russia's government isn't facing any real competition right now, they can afford to ignore such groups altogether. Neither is Microsoft going to lose the vast marketshare gained by pirates for them.
Anarchy and overall decay which ensued in the 90-s are often seen from the outside as "freedom". It is actually little wonder that the pendulum made its way back. Liberal democracy is being associated with chaos in Russia so these ideas will not be popular for years to come.
Russians government's motivation is actually very clear — rampant computer piracy is often cited as a major obstacle which prevents Russia from joining the WTO. So there will be anti-piracy raids anyway. That anti-government groups will be smashed in a process is just a welcome side effect.
As for Microsoft — business as usual for them. They even made some bad blood with the government lately suing people left and right including a school's director for using pirated software which came with PC's. It has even sparked government-backed initiative of providing open source for educational usage. Granted in a country with Russia's corruption you only may imagine the level of obstacles put in front of that initiative — open source does not have juicy paybacks Microsoft can provide.
Citation needed if you are not joking. Also, I am unaware of Russian authorities using some kind of Bundestrojaner. They are usually much less sophisticated than that.
There has been KIN 2?!!
The interesting thing is: the Canonical seems to want to make some kind of an AppStore for commercial software on Ubuntu which will be integrated into software manager along with all the software from repositories. So you get the best of both worlds: the user can get everything from software manager, but does not have to.
Doesn't solve the problem completely, but it is the best one can get without losing essential freedoms.
>A competent administrator most likely could secure Windows so the user cannot run the virus anyway.
As seen from other comments, NASA does not have competent administrators. Nor does the Pentagon given the 2008 outbreak. Ether the bar of competency is too high for those or it is not that easy as you clame. Just sayin'.
>some things still have to be downloaded as .deb, .rpm, .sh or .tar.gz files
Some few is still much better than all of them.
As newbies aren more likely to use Ubuntu then Debian, Firefox and Nvidia are already covered. Not 100% sure about Canon, but I think that my gf's MFU from Canon worked without the need of manual installation with Lucid.
Besides, Canonical tries to put commercial software to the install manager as well. With them being the biggest desktop vendor it is yet another step towards security.
Exactly. Does Steve Jobs look healthy for you? Now you know the reason why.
It is not that hard. This one just tricks a user into launching an executable. The rest are just technicalities.
To play the devil's advocate — a sufficient motivated user is always able to set privileges to the downloaded file.
Yet you have to keep in mind that ex-Windows users are the ones who is more vulnerable to this as in Linux we have repositories as a standard way of installing software, not download-n-run Windows-way. In Windows, users are trained to download and launch shit (and to click yes if asked), Linux users are trained to start software manager. So there will be a statistically significant number of Linux newbies who won't fail for that trick provided they don't have fresh memories of less elegant systems.
A competent administrator would probably just noexec the users into oblivion (although that will create some unwanted side-effects). How many will be able to invoke a shell manually?
New users keep coming as even more PCs are sold. Blinded by marketspeak about how easy a PC (i.e. Windows) is, they refuse to learn. That is very unfortunate because said people have vast computing powers that easily outperform supercomputers just a few decades old. Coupled with the attitude that their time is too valuable to learn something about computers they use (insert your favorite car analogy here) this refusal to educate themselves creates an ever growing problem for the network as a whole: when a PC is infected to a crawl these people tend to buy a new one, with even more computing power.
That is why Steve Jobs takes a bite of every Apple he sells — to make sure there are no worms inside.
To be fair, bing now finds it too. But I noticed that middle-click paste does not work on bing's input field for me (chrome 6 on openSuse 11.3). Google's does work.
Our planet is already secure — you cannot escape it.
Here, have a look: http://bash.org/?244321
And leave your geek card while you're on your way off slashdot.
I know perfectly well what my grandma is using her PC for, I will set up everything for her anyway.
If there's a problem, I am still the one who is being asked about it, so I better use a system which doesn't break that easy.
So yeah, my grandmas* don't know what ssh with reverse forwarding is, but they have it set up so I can log on to them any time from anywhere (their PCs connect to my shell server). Important is, they can't break anything, they don't have root password. If there's an issue I can fix it in no time using ssh or (forwarded as well) vnc. Hell, they don't know what a terminal IS, that's what I'm for!
Could they install or configure an OS themselves? No. Can they use any OS I show them how to use (where the browser is, where the pictures are etc.)? Yes. Have I been bothered more often when they weren't using Linux? Hell yes!
So Linux IS grandma-ready.
*ok, my grandma doesn't have a PC, but my mom an my aunt do and technically they are grandmas.
Smart thing will be also to switch to new LTS in about half a year after it has been released.
So those who use 8.04 LTS should consider updating to 10.04 sometime next month or even later this year.
You can't really have a revolution every six month. New package's versions, new kernel, that's not something you can review, especially if nothing ground-braking has happened in these packages. Besides, you can't comment on stability as well with the release being still beta.
Actually.
I had a colleague once who has closed all the programs by double-clicking program icon top left. He could not explain why does he do this himself, he did it purely out of habit. But then it hit me: Windows 3.11. What many forgot, it did not have the "close" button, you could close the window by double-clicking top left icon. So even for Microsoft the "close" has been top left once.
Noticed how they blame Sony's Playstation (Japanese company), but fail to mention Microsoft's Xbox (US' company)? Or even using "game console" as a more general term?