Which is why people need to learn how to at least do simple repairs themselves. This is whats happening in the "Computers for everyone" world, those who know how to do simple things can make a ton of money ripping off those that don't know how. It doesn't help that for a simple error Windows locks up in a scary blue screen that for those who only know how to check E-Mail and watch videos on YouTube. MS could take a good step by having a diagnostic tool with Windows built in (and no "safe mode" doesn't count) that has Memtest and other utilities to let people know whats wrong with their computer rather then some useless hex codes. But I guess with MS now having anti-virus/spyware utilities they have no reason to change Windows, just to make people pay more.
1. These are Third World Countries its not America or Europe, these children don't have the choice between staying at home watching TV for a day or going to school, its either go to school or go to work in many times unsanitary conditions for substandard wages, however though if its between going to school or feeding yourself for a few months because your parents are dying from *insert sickness here* and the cure is either not invented (like AIDS) or expensive (Malaria) to cure.
2. If your starving/sick/dehydrated it doesn't matter if you have perfect attendance to school if in a year if you don't have the money your going to die.
3. Yes it should be easy for the kids to change their laptops to cash if thats what they are going to need to survive, as for the governments thats why they should be handed out by third parties independent of governments.
I fully support the project but to say that the children should have a laptop rather then food/clean water/medicine is totally outrageous. Im not advacating that these children should sell the laptops, but I would rather them do that then die.
The problem with that is, for some children, the $150 they can get from it would be worth more then the computer. For example if you can use that $150 to buy food or medicine or other needs. I'm all for this project (The more Linux users the better) but if your trying to stop them from reselling them, it has the same effects of the RIAA/MPAA trying to stop you from reselling music/movies. It should be the children's property, not the government's, if they want to sell it to us westerners fine, if they want to use it like they intended let the do that.
Does Wine support DirectX? Can I install Microsoft's DirectX under Wine?
Wine itself provides a DirectX implementation that, although it has a few bugs left, should run fine. Wine supports DirectX 9.0c at this time. Plans for DirectX 10 are underway.
If you attempt to install Microsoft's DirectX, you'll run into some problems. You can install the runtime, but it will not run. The runtime needs access to the Windows drivers, and Wine cannot access them for obvious reasons. The only native Microsoft DLLs that could be useful anyway are the d3dx9_xx.dll type ones, and these require you to accept Microsoft's license. Regardless, don't try and do this.
No, there won't be a major Linux malware epidemic. For these reasons:
1. The average user won't be running as root so when you are there, theres nothing you can mess up enough to make the system unusable
2. Linux was designed with the Internet in mind, Windows wasn't, for example, binary files must be flagged to execute them before they execute making it nearly impossible for you to just "visit a webpage" and be infected
3. The code is open and more people will be finding out security flaws before crackers do, also there are faster patches then Windows and you can patch it yourself.
4. There are enough differences to make there be just about impossible to make a script to infect the core portions such as there are many different web browsers, lynx, elinks, Firefox, Konqueror, Galeon.... and many programs can run in non-interactive mode making hiding malware harder.
5. The base of developers grows proportional to the base of users, where as MS has to hire more people, Linux programmers don't need to get paid and can be from ANY country, ANY age, ANY religion etc. to contribute code.
So no, there is little threat of malware in Linux the way it is in Windows.
Why do we even have the FCC? The government needs to deregulate communications to encourage competition, take for instance the OS market that M$ with its illegal business practices manage to have a monopoly, next look at sky high cell phone fees all of these could benefit with government deregulation, I don't want my (far too high) tax dollars going to support MS, or any other company that only keeps its position due to flawed laws created by lobbyists with far too much power under companies with 0% innovation. The government should serve it's citizens, not trample their rights.
Well then your forgetting Red Hat who has open code, Open source and still makes a profit and Canonical who have the fully open source Ubuntu. Sure they don't make billions like MS, but they have something that MS doesn't have and thats respect and loyal customers. Thats what gave Apple it's edge (even though they seem to be loosing it with iPhone price cuts and the like) and something that MS doesn't have and its killing them.
Well I agree that there needs to be better applications for Linux, however your reasons are incorrect. I don't know of an application for videoconferencing off the top of my head because I don't use that, for editing videos try KDENLIVE http://www.kdenlive.org/, for MP3s thats simply a patent restricted format, just tell your government to reject software patents, for video games try to run your windows games in WINE and there are many Linux games, try some of those, just because its not 3-D doesn't mean that its bad. And OOo has a sideshow presentation software included with it.
Totally agreed. I would have bought an iPhone if I could make applications for it/use it on any network without fear of voiding the warranty or Apple bricking it. Apple has always been a company that goes in cycles, they come up with a great product (the apple 2) then make bad decisions (Apple 3 and Lisa) then make a good one (Mac) then go back to bad ones (firing Jobs) then a good one (acquiring NEXTSTEP and making OSX) But now they are back to a series of bad decisions and its going to hurt Apple. If I buy an iPhone Apple has already made its money. If I program a new program for it, Apple has still made its money and it should still be under warranty. If I take the hard disk out of it and hit it with a hammer, it shouldn't be under warranty. Apple and the rest of the phone companies need to stop making them closed platforms and open them to be the embedded computers they are. Oh well, Apple just lost $600 from that and thats just me.
How about almost all notebooks, business or otherwise still use XP, I can only hope that the author was thinking that the rest were Macs or have switched to Linux or BSD, because no one, not even the "non-technical people" don't like Vista and its showing.
The fact though remains, customization is and will be the "killer feature" of OSS. If a big company "upgrades" to Vista, they most likely will have to retrain most of its employees. If that same company chooses to go to Linux, the sysadmin can customize it to behave almost exactly like XP with the exception of admin tasks which most companies don't want the normal employee to do such as installing/removing software. Just take a look at Office 2007, it looks TOTALLY different, behaves differently and takes up more resources with no way to use the old GUI, had it been say OpenOffice you could add a theme to restore the old look and optimize the code by either compiling it or taking out unneeded features to make it be faster.
Halo 2 "supposedly" won't work on XP yet it does http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo2#Windows_XP_compatibility When WINE reverse engineers Direct X 10, Linux will become respected for games, because no real gamer wants to get vista, why because the drivers are generally non-existent and it takes FAR more hardware to get it to run to an XP level, most gamers want 4 Gigs of RAM to act like 4 Gigs of RAM not like 1 Gig running on XP, it doesn't help when theres no good drivers for video cards. And if the WINE team can reverse-engineer Direct X 10 before Vista gets decent drivers... It could be that Linux may overtake windows for games.
Because Microsoft can't innovate or compete. The last time Microsoft "innovated" is when they bought some other software company. Even MS-DOS was bought, everything else they steal from Apple or the Free Software community. IE was even bought. Nothing MS can do has been innovated, They are a abusive monopoly and can't compete when the OS market isn't controlled by them. Apple and Linux have been superior ever sense they started. Vista is just Microsoft's latest failure, they took the worst of Windows, Mac and Linux, added tons of DRM and have outrageous system requirements it is no wonder no one WANTS vista, and now with Dell and HP selling Linux based PCs, Microsoft's monopoly will decline sharply. Good bye Microsoft, the world will be better without you holding back innovation.
Yes, but the problem is with PDAs are that they aren't stand-alone computers. I would rather have a hackable N800 then a PDA that can access, word, excel and a strange web browser that can't render hardly anything. Thats what PDAs have turned into, something that can access a watered down word processor, spreadsheet and internet. Now if Apple can let us
1. Let Us Access the terminal for us Linux/UNIX geeks
2. Put a decent web browser with Flash or Gnash(A free flash plugin)
3. Let us download binaries and run it, I don't want to have to sync it all the time with my Linux PC to just download a binary to execute.
4. Let us put OUR programs into it rather then waiting for some company to make you pay $20 for a watered down version of a PC application
If Apple can let us do those 4 things, I would buy it in a heartbeat, otherwise, I'd just buy a N800.
Yes people have hard work creating content and yes I think that it should be protected. However, when that "protection" comes in conflict with MY privacy or is a huge hassle for me, what incentive does it give me to not download a "pirated" copy of it or just switch to a free alternitive (I use Open Office because M$ doesn't have Word on Linux, not that I would want to use that anyways) The reason it can't be "real" property is because how they "protect" it, when I walk out of a mall, and the security thing dings, (because of an accident, I don't steal) they don't put me in handcuffs, take me out to a waiting police car and then go through everything I bought trying to find what they think I stole, they usually admit that it was their mistake when I show them the receipt. Proprietary companies on the other hand think that whenever their "detectors" go off, they should call me a thief and put me in handcuffs. The main reason I switched to an all Linux computer was because I wouldn't have to waste CPU cycles of Vista (or any other proprietary software) trying to make sure I'm not doing something I shouldn't. DRM is unethical, broken by design and should be boycotted.
What's the point of legally owning an mp3?
Well we shouldn't have to worry about not legaly owning the mp3 however you can be assured that it won't stop you from putting it on your iPod or iPhone, or any other digital audio player. You can listen to it on Linux (provided you have the right codecs) Mac, or even Windows. Also they can't "expire". However I think we need more then just mp3 format, we need ogg, and any others you so choose.
Really, they need to have come up with this ages ago. Because in order to combat "piracy" they think they need to DRM everything. So in the end I as the end user end up paying extra for things, such as buying the CD to start with, then another to get it on my iPod, then another time to get it on an iPhone. All this DRM has done is made me rethink whether or not I should even pay for my music. At least you would think that by buying the "genuine" CD it would be less hassle then downloading it... Oh well, seems like the record companies don't even Want to make a profit.
I don't get why they (the record companies) think that renting music is a better business model, renting tangible things make sense, for example 2 people can't own the same car and drive it at the same time so renting a car makes sense, however when you can make as many copies as you want of music with no cost (not even bandwidth if they distribute via torrents) Why they think they need to DRM everything is beyond me, and to think that they think that all the "pirates" just buy the song and try to rip it is laughable, there not going to go to iTunes and buy a song for 99 cents and copy it and distribute it, and the sooner record companies realize that I shouldn't be restricted to proprietary formats the better.
What we need is a total abolishment of software patents and for M$ to be forced to let competitors to M$ to be installed on computers. There is no point in confusing computer customers any more, most think that the OS is the computer and without the OS the computer isn't a computer, so then they pay $xx to buy the OS and $xx to have someone install it. That is a bad idea. Why? Because M$ can have greater profits, because they can charge the default amount not the OEM amount for Windows. And when software patents are destroyed, wine and other projects can legally try to run Windows binaries without fear of legal troubles. If this law gets passed this is only going to make computers more expensive and more of where an average Joe can't make it work without paying some guy to make it work when they have already installed it. Linux and other Open-Source OSes need to win by making the OS better then M$ not by cowering behind laws and rulings.
They blame the "pirates" for poor media sales, they prosecute the "pirates" and now that they have gone astray from the law the "pirates" are going to win a big legal battle. The circle of life is complete.
How can people be justifying a $100 operating system that took over five years as "decent" and think that it is acceptable? If you consider Linux or BSD to be "decent" thats not half bad because your downloading it from free and paying around 10 cents for the CD to burn it to. The main thing that made Windows win over Linux is that it was familiar, Vista has thrown that out of the window, and more and more people are seeing that if they have to learn a new OS, it might as well be something free that doesn't with every release make the GUI unfamiliar, in both the newest Gnome and KDE betas, if you can still use them without new training, something that is making Linux more of an option then Vista.
Slashdot Mirror
Which is why people need to learn how to at least do simple repairs themselves. This is whats happening in the "Computers for everyone" world, those who know how to do simple things can make a ton of money ripping off those that don't know how. It doesn't help that for a simple error Windows locks up in a scary blue screen that for those who only know how to check E-Mail and watch videos on YouTube. MS could take a good step by having a diagnostic tool with Windows built in (and no "safe mode" doesn't count) that has Memtest and other utilities to let people know whats wrong with their computer rather then some useless hex codes. But I guess with MS now having anti-virus/spyware utilities they have no reason to change Windows, just to make people pay more.
Actually that wasn't what I said...
1. These are Third World Countries its not America or Europe, these children don't have the choice between staying at home watching TV for a day or going to school, its either go to school or go to work in many times unsanitary conditions for substandard wages, however though if its between going to school or feeding yourself for a few months because your parents are dying from *insert sickness here* and the cure is either not invented (like AIDS) or expensive (Malaria) to cure.
2. If your starving/sick/dehydrated it doesn't matter if you have perfect attendance to school if in a year if you don't have the money your going to die.
3. Yes it should be easy for the kids to change their laptops to cash if thats what they are going to need to survive, as for the governments thats why they should be handed out by third parties independent of governments.
I fully support the project but to say that the children should have a laptop rather then food/clean water/medicine is totally outrageous. Im not advacating that these children should sell the laptops, but I would rather them do that then die.
The problem with that is, for some children, the $150 they can get from it would be worth more then the computer. For example if you can use that $150 to buy food or medicine or other needs. I'm all for this project (The more Linux users the better) but if your trying to stop them from reselling them, it has the same effects of the RIAA/MPAA trying to stop you from reselling music/movies. It should be the children's property, not the government's, if they want to sell it to us westerners fine, if they want to use it like they intended let the do that.
Sort of, Im not that aware of the project on that page, but WINE is trying to get it to Linux/XP
http://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ#head-fbaa851e07d7484640cc10b6d0c48abc741260b2
from that page
Does Wine support DirectX? Can I install Microsoft's DirectX under Wine? Wine itself provides a DirectX implementation that, although it has a few bugs left, should run fine. Wine supports DirectX 9.0c at this time. Plans for DirectX 10 are underway. If you attempt to install Microsoft's DirectX, you'll run into some problems. You can install the runtime, but it will not run. The runtime needs access to the Windows drivers, and Wine cannot access them for obvious reasons. The only native Microsoft DLLs that could be useful anyway are the d3dx9_xx.dll type ones, and these require you to accept Microsoft's license. Regardless, don't try and do this.
No, there won't be a major Linux malware epidemic. For these reasons:
1. The average user won't be running as root so when you are there, theres nothing you can mess up enough to make the system unusable
2. Linux was designed with the Internet in mind, Windows wasn't, for example, binary files must be flagged to execute them before they execute making it nearly impossible for you to just "visit a webpage" and be infected
3. The code is open and more people will be finding out security flaws before crackers do, also there are faster patches then Windows and you can patch it yourself.
4. There are enough differences to make there be just about impossible to make a script to infect the core portions such as there are many different web browsers, lynx, elinks, Firefox, Konqueror, Galeon.... and many programs can run in non-interactive mode making hiding malware harder.
5. The base of developers grows proportional to the base of users, where as MS has to hire more people, Linux programmers don't need to get paid and can be from ANY country, ANY age, ANY religion etc. to contribute code.
So no, there is little threat of malware in Linux the way it is in Windows.
Why do we even have the FCC? The government needs to deregulate communications to encourage competition, take for instance the OS market that M$ with its illegal business practices manage to have a monopoly, next look at sky high cell phone fees all of these could benefit with government deregulation, I don't want my (far too high) tax dollars going to support MS, or any other company that only keeps its position due to flawed laws created by lobbyists with far too much power under companies with 0% innovation. The government should serve it's citizens, not trample their rights.
I (and most of /.) find that rootkits are malware. So if they can try to sue us why can't we sue them for their many many rootkits
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/20/084233&tid=141
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/27/1334210
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/24/213256
All are slashdotted stories about (3!!) different Sony rootkits
Well then your forgetting Red Hat who has open code, Open source and still makes a profit and Canonical who have the fully open source Ubuntu. Sure they don't make billions like MS, but they have something that MS doesn't have and thats respect and loyal customers. Thats what gave Apple it's edge (even though they seem to be loosing it with iPhone price cuts and the like) and something that MS doesn't have and its killing them.
Well I agree that there needs to be better applications for Linux, however your reasons are incorrect. I don't know of an application for videoconferencing off the top of my head because I don't use that, for editing videos try KDENLIVE http://www.kdenlive.org/, for MP3s thats simply a patent restricted format, just tell your government to reject software patents, for video games try to run your windows games in WINE and there are many Linux games, try some of those, just because its not 3-D doesn't mean that its bad. And OOo has a sideshow presentation software included with it.
Totally agreed. I would have bought an iPhone if I could make applications for it/use it on any network without fear of voiding the warranty or Apple bricking it. Apple has always been a company that goes in cycles, they come up with a great product (the apple 2) then make bad decisions (Apple 3 and Lisa) then make a good one (Mac) then go back to bad ones (firing Jobs) then a good one (acquiring NEXTSTEP and making OSX) But now they are back to a series of bad decisions and its going to hurt Apple. If I buy an iPhone Apple has already made its money. If I program a new program for it, Apple has still made its money and it should still be under warranty. If I take the hard disk out of it and hit it with a hammer, it shouldn't be under warranty. Apple and the rest of the phone companies need to stop making them closed platforms and open them to be the embedded computers they are. Oh well, Apple just lost $600 from that and thats just me.
How about almost all notebooks, business or otherwise still use XP, I can only hope that the author was thinking that the rest were Macs or have switched to Linux or BSD, because no one, not even the "non-technical people" don't like Vista and its showing.
The fact though remains, customization is and will be the "killer feature" of OSS. If a big company "upgrades" to Vista, they most likely will have to retrain most of its employees. If that same company chooses to go to Linux, the sysadmin can customize it to behave almost exactly like XP with the exception of admin tasks which most companies don't want the normal employee to do such as installing/removing software. Just take a look at Office 2007, it looks TOTALLY different, behaves differently and takes up more resources with no way to use the old GUI, had it been say OpenOffice you could add a theme to restore the old look and optimize the code by either compiling it or taking out unneeded features to make it be faster.
Halo 2 "supposedly" won't work on XP yet it does http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo2#Windows_XP_compatibility When WINE reverse engineers Direct X 10, Linux will become respected for games, because no real gamer wants to get vista, why because the drivers are generally non-existent and it takes FAR more hardware to get it to run to an XP level, most gamers want 4 Gigs of RAM to act like 4 Gigs of RAM not like 1 Gig running on XP, it doesn't help when theres no good drivers for video cards. And if the WINE team can reverse-engineer Direct X 10 before Vista gets decent drivers... It could be that Linux may overtake windows for games.
Because Microsoft can't innovate or compete. The last time Microsoft "innovated" is when they bought some other software company. Even MS-DOS was bought, everything else they steal from Apple or the Free Software community. IE was even bought. Nothing MS can do has been innovated, They are a abusive monopoly and can't compete when the OS market isn't controlled by them. Apple and Linux have been superior ever sense they started. Vista is just Microsoft's latest failure, they took the worst of Windows, Mac and Linux, added tons of DRM and have outrageous system requirements it is no wonder no one WANTS vista, and now with Dell and HP selling Linux based PCs, Microsoft's monopoly will decline sharply. Good bye Microsoft, the world will be better without you holding back innovation.
Yes, but the problem is with PDAs are that they aren't stand-alone computers. I would rather have a hackable N800 then a PDA that can access, word, excel and a strange web browser that can't render hardly anything. Thats what PDAs have turned into, something that can access a watered down word processor, spreadsheet and internet. Now if Apple can let us 1. Let Us Access the terminal for us Linux/UNIX geeks 2. Put a decent web browser with Flash or Gnash(A free flash plugin) 3. Let us download binaries and run it, I don't want to have to sync it all the time with my Linux PC to just download a binary to execute. 4. Let us put OUR programs into it rather then waiting for some company to make you pay $20 for a watered down version of a PC application If Apple can let us do those 4 things, I would buy it in a heartbeat, otherwise, I'd just buy a N800.
Yes people have hard work creating content and yes I think that it should be protected. However, when that "protection" comes in conflict with MY privacy or is a huge hassle for me, what incentive does it give me to not download a "pirated" copy of it or just switch to a free alternitive (I use Open Office because M$ doesn't have Word on Linux, not that I would want to use that anyways) The reason it can't be "real" property is because how they "protect" it, when I walk out of a mall, and the security thing dings, (because of an accident, I don't steal) they don't put me in handcuffs, take me out to a waiting police car and then go through everything I bought trying to find what they think I stole, they usually admit that it was their mistake when I show them the receipt. Proprietary companies on the other hand think that whenever their "detectors" go off, they should call me a thief and put me in handcuffs. The main reason I switched to an all Linux computer was because I wouldn't have to waste CPU cycles of Vista (or any other proprietary software) trying to make sure I'm not doing something I shouldn't. DRM is unethical, broken by design and should be boycotted.
Will it have a rootkit with it?
What's the point of legally owning an mp3? Well we shouldn't have to worry about not legaly owning the mp3 however you can be assured that it won't stop you from putting it on your iPod or iPhone, or any other digital audio player. You can listen to it on Linux (provided you have the right codecs) Mac, or even Windows. Also they can't "expire". However I think we need more then just mp3 format, we need ogg, and any others you so choose.
A downgrade to 3.1 would be better even still. My old monochrome laptop on a Pentium 1, runs faster then most XP computers Ive tried.
Really, they need to have come up with this ages ago. Because in order to combat "piracy" they think they need to DRM everything. So in the end I as the end user end up paying extra for things, such as buying the CD to start with, then another to get it on my iPod, then another time to get it on an iPhone. All this DRM has done is made me rethink whether or not I should even pay for my music. At least you would think that by buying the "genuine" CD it would be less hassle then downloading it... Oh well, seems like the record companies don't even Want to make a profit.
I don't get why they (the record companies) think that renting music is a better business model, renting tangible things make sense, for example 2 people can't own the same car and drive it at the same time so renting a car makes sense, however when you can make as many copies as you want of music with no cost (not even bandwidth if they distribute via torrents) Why they think they need to DRM everything is beyond me, and to think that they think that all the "pirates" just buy the song and try to rip it is laughable, there not going to go to iTunes and buy a song for 99 cents and copy it and distribute it, and the sooner record companies realize that I shouldn't be restricted to proprietary formats the better.
No, Linux will not be "Annihilated" although I do think that this could cause some forking to happen in the kernel...
What we need is a total abolishment of software patents and for M$ to be forced to let competitors to M$ to be installed on computers. There is no point in confusing computer customers any more, most think that the OS is the computer and without the OS the computer isn't a computer, so then they pay $xx to buy the OS and $xx to have someone install it. That is a bad idea. Why? Because M$ can have greater profits, because they can charge the default amount not the OEM amount for Windows. And when software patents are destroyed, wine and other projects can legally try to run Windows binaries without fear of legal troubles. If this law gets passed this is only going to make computers more expensive and more of where an average Joe can't make it work without paying some guy to make it work when they have already installed it. Linux and other Open-Source OSes need to win by making the OS better then M$ not by cowering behind laws and rulings.
They blame the "pirates" for poor media sales, they prosecute the "pirates" and now that they have gone astray from the law the "pirates" are going to win a big legal battle. The circle of life is complete.
How can people be justifying a $100 operating system that took over five years as "decent" and think that it is acceptable? If you consider Linux or BSD to be "decent" thats not half bad because your downloading it from free and paying around 10 cents for the CD to burn it to. The main thing that made Windows win over Linux is that it was familiar, Vista has thrown that out of the window, and more and more people are seeing that if they have to learn a new OS, it might as well be something free that doesn't with every release make the GUI unfamiliar, in both the newest Gnome and KDE betas, if you can still use them without new training, something that is making Linux more of an option then Vista.