For me, gedit, OpenOffice, and Lyx meet all my office / document creation needs (I probably use OO.o the least). I don't expect enough of people for LaTeX to be useful to much of anyone but professional publishers, but I love it. LaTeX won't ever be much use to the average person because it actually requires reading before just diving in, and that's just more than you can ask of the average user.
The one application I miss is Adobe Premiere for which there is just no viable substitute. *cry*
Agreed. If you got all this fancy hardware, I would hope that you were planning to use it for something. I was fortunate enough to build a pretty fancy machine for myself a bit more than a year ago ( X2 6400+ Black, 4gb ram, 8800gtx, and some other fun hardware ) and I run Ubuntu on it exclusively. It works for me.
I don't see what Vista has to offer that I couldn't get from XP if I wanted to use some piece of software that works best in Windows. Vista has nothing to offer, especially at the price. It is nice to hear that 7 has done a lot of back end clean up work, and if it out performs XP, then awesome, but that really doesn't offer an incentive to switch.
The one application that I find no reasonable alternative for is Adobe Premiere, but all that tells me is that there is an incentive to get a Mac.
Ok, you say Windows 7 != Vista, but Vista == Windows && Windows 7 == Windows, so there many similarities, and some differences. Rather than having an endless list of specifics, how much different is it compared to other possible juxtapositions? Are there more differences between 7 and Vista as there are between Ubuntu 8.10 and 8.04? 7.10? Debian? Fedora? Gentoo? Are there as many differences between 7 and Vista as there are differences between Linux Kernel 2.6.27 and 2.6.20? 2.6.16? 2.4.37? Is 7 as different from Vista as Mac OSX 10.5 and 10.4? 10.3? FreeBSD 7.1? FreeBSD 6.4?
Sorry, but by no measure is 7 a significant leap from Vista. XP was a brilliant merge of Windows 98 and NT 4 as much as Ubuntu was a leap from Debian, OSX was a leap from FreeBSD taking many design principles from OS9.
7 appears to have some significant progress from the original release of XP, but with respect to how long that has been, what has Apple done in the same period of time? Solaris? AIX? Linux? I think the only systems with less progress in that period of time has been OS/2, BeOS, and Debian GNU/HURD.
It is nice they are fixing the Vista problems. It is nice they are removing the bloatware, feature creep and all that jazz, and really taking a closer look at some of the performance issues that may only have been possible to see with a large user base like it has now.
Improvements in back-end performance, AWESOME! Screw the advertising, some of the best empirical data for comparison is the SDK release notes, which is the only think you can really look at after Microsoft's GUIs for everything. This is the only measure I can see as useful for judging what we are really going to see in Windows 7.
If so, what does that say? Some XP people may finally be willing to switch assuming money is not a factor once real software comes out for 7 that will not as well to a significant (even if only perceived) degree over XP. Vista people will be vilified, and thrilled about the new version that "met their attention". If they bought Vista, they will buy 7. Windows 7 user base will certainly pass up Vista long before XP (if that isn't blatantly obvious). The Windows dynasty will continue to live on for awhile longer.
So I think this brings us back to the original statement: Windows 7 != Vista? No. It is Vista done right and is the little step whose name was changed because the marketing department said so.
If 7 is somehow different than Vista after all the above named things, tell me how it is going to attract the Mac OSX user, the Ubuntu user, the Gentoo user, The Solaris User, the *BSD user, the AIX user. By portion, more users of any of those respective systems will upgrade, and if they dual boot, it will be with a Mac. Windows 7 will hope to hold its own users for a bit longer.
On another note, The real back end changed to Vista became a part of XP SP3. While it may be unlikely Windows 7 will be XP SP4, I am sure it will be Vista SP2.
Want to pay for the name change? Be the first one to have it on your system? Patronize Microsoft for their continued support of your favorite OS? Go ahead. It isn't new, its just Windows, sending that collection plate for another round.
ha ha, sorry, but this is funny. That was the whole issue with Vista as far as I understood it: You needed something like Q6600, 4GB of RAM, and an 8800GT and had to get ultimate edition for it to work correctly. If you didn't have the hardware, it ran very poorly. If you didn't get ultimate edition, then it INTENTIONALLY crippled your hardware from being able to perform to spec.
Have you even been listening at all?
Get home basic edition and install it on an Asus eee pc, then maybe you will have something to contribute to the conversation. I am perfectly open minded to hear you make the same arguments, I just don't get the feeling that you would.
Ok, my examples were quite exaggerated, but I was in real disagreement with the parent. More directly, I subscribe to the legal theory that people should not be disabled from breaking the law, otherwise the law is unable to evolve with the times. In your example with the police, they did shoot after, not before (complex circumstances aside).
Forking a project to get what you want is far from enabled for every citizen, but I feel GPL encourages people to write useful software because of the (even unlikely) threat of forking. EA was under no such threat with Spore; Spore was going to sell no matter what, even if customers had to go online and get a third party 'fix'. In the end, it made no difference to customers or EA. I guess it is just idealistic to expect from a company that my money goes towards making a more useful / entertaining product for me, and if that money is going to go towards any type of crippling of the software, there needs to be overwhelming justification and demand by customers. An example of this would be requiring registered accounts linked to a serial number per unit so that only people that bought the game can join in official events / servers or to enforce rules against griefing of any kind. Bots and gold sellers ruin a games play and economy. This is why with the 'controversial' DRM type software installed with World of Warcraft is tolerated because players understand how it contributes to the overall experience. While EA was looking to protect its investment, but the reality is that some people buy games and some people pirate games, but many do both. People that only pirate games are not going to start giving money for games that can't be hacked, at least not as much in mind paying customers are going to stop buying products when they pay for something and it won't work due to some kind of anti-theft device. Maybe it is only me, but I don't like being accused of being a criminal, ESPECIALLY when I couldn't have possibly known the criteria by which I am going to be judged. The law typically accounts (or should account) for this. Yes, mistakes are make as you cited above that can not be corrected, and as the police were scrutinized publicly for their actions, so was EA. But I think the third party hack is much more like "thou shalt not get caught" than due process or other legal theory (if that makes any sense).
I just believe there must be some better way that is both profitable and utilitarian. I'll admit I have no evidence to support that statement, just idealism.
I could just love to hate AT&T, and I think people are responsible for electing a bad congress has either supported or looked the other way when it comes to anything Bush could be praised or criticized for. Personally, I don't have enough faith in their general competency to even do anything with the information to really go "OMG SPYING!1!". I was also somewhat under the impression that as long as telephone infrastructure has existed in this country, it had more or less been recorded in its near entirety. I had always put this aside in my mind as wild conspiracy theory or who cares for the above named reason and I don't think my phone conversations would be very interesting from a national security perspective. However, legislation to justify the presidents actions isn't quite the same thing as legislation to 'clarify' what the law meant; I see that as an exceedingly 'rosy' take on the issue. We already have poison fruit doctrine in this country, so only thing to worry about at this point s whether or not it gets applied appropriately, and that investigators are not sloppy about going after real criminals. I see a big gray area there between "The law just wasn't clear, but that was what it really meant" and "If Bush broke the law, he must be (or would have been) impeached".
As far as what I am expecting of the next administration, I am pretty cynical. Too many things I may have 'hoped' to see 'change' have come and pass. I think the last issue I had any energy to care about nationally just had a giant shit dropped on it named Tom Perrelli.
I think while that is the future, we are just so far from that position, and peoples acceptance of things that should really put people in prison that brings out the radical voice. People accuse RMS of being radical, meanwhile Microsoft is talking about plans to develop a pay by the hour software model for HOME COMPUTERS!?!? The most disgusting part of the whole ordeal is that it has already received strong positive reviews. I mean really? Haven't we been through this song and dance with cell phone companies?!?
I am sure there are lots of people that would say "ooh, neat" and "what a great way to try many software titles" or "I love a company that gives me more choices", but all I can really say is RMS isn't nearly as crazy as everyone gives him credit for, he's just idealistic. Not his fault Ballmer would have a different vision for the world.
The difference is that there is choice. Few more features for a little less freedom on some respects, and giving that choice to the customer is one thing. Brutally crippled buggy software that spends more time monitoring your every action and reporting its finding back to the company in the name of piracy rather than actually doing anything useful meanwhile holding a near perfect monopoly over a particular function or industry through an abuse of the copyright / trademark / patent system crushing anything even remotely competitive begs justifiable homicide of the CEO / radically militant evangelical support for FOSS.
I agree RMS is quite 'out there' on the whole FOSS fundamentalism thing, but with some of the stuff companies have tried or have gotten away with, I can sympathize with a lack of open-mindedness to moderate solutions like those of nVidia.
A representative in the car I think is much more like FOSS because even with another person in the car you are not restricted from doing what ever you want, it is just that other people are going to know what you are doing. Police are the same way; they don't restrict you from doing anything, but they have the right to question your behavior and have the power to challenge your judgment. Again, that sounds much more like the community auditing of FOSS.
Proprietary software is like buying a car whose hood is welded shut for your safety and to protect your warranty which really only results in a necessity for the car to be replaced every time they identify a defect. Add to that a locking gas cap where only certified gas stations get the key, and you can't fill it up yourself. You get one radio station with a fixed volume with corporate approved content, but in their defense it is usually pretty good and what "most drivers want to listen to" anyway. And of course this is all easily justified as the company is simply exercising its freedom to protect its good name and the quality assurance of the vehicle.
These apple and orange rights, to me, sounds like debating my right to stab you when I am really really angry. Artificially manipulating the market giving a handicap to certain businesses so they can keep doing business in an outdated way doesn't help anyway. I look forward to a day where alienating customers with preemptive punishment won't just be considered "business as usual". But I can understand if it might take awhile, this being a country whose people are more concerned with the features of their iPhone than their service providers collusion to violate FISA.
But they actually get to audit the code and fix problems, which has been the big complaint from OSS advocates. And Microsoft uses the Intel compiler. Just compiling it yourself obviously doesn't mean anything; it is when it breaks you have the POWER to hypothetically do something about it. Noone else even has the hypothetical power, programmer or otherwise, and your only other recourse is to get a mac? I know that isn't the reality, for me, or a lot of other people, but it is the way things are in too many peoples mind right now.
I just like that the government stays hands free on the OSS issue, but when it comes to something important, they say "fuck that bullshit you sell to the consumer (you don't need the code), give us the damn code, like DUH"
oops, that was meant to be expert, a link to an AMAZING article that is frequently misquoted. I think because the original report (the link) is particularly difficult to find, but people love to cite by third party. The title perfectly explains it, "A Five-Stage Model of the Mental Activities Involved in Directed Skill Acquisition" aka the Dreyfus Model. If you have ever read anything of interest (such as The Pragmatic Programmer)that makes reference to the Dreyfus Model, the original report is well worth reading.
I find it hard to believe that you have spent more than a few months with Linux to not find many things radically different. A PART of Linux that tries to make itself compatible with people is give them ways to use their old knowledge to do the same old tasks on Linux that they did on windows. To say that Linux is only playing a catch up game tells me you should probably stick with Windows. IMO, I think Macs take the most common thing people want to do and put it into a one-click application. What you can do is REALLY awsome. Just check out youtube to see what people have done with iMovie. In business, the best thing you can do is take one thing and do it REALLY WELL. Try to expand too much, and you will just be beaten out by a large number of specialists. Linux doesn't NEED to attract or prove anything to anybody. It is awesome that people are starting companies and making big money off of Linux directly or indirectly, but that is not the core of what Linux has ever been about, at least for Linus Torvalds as I understand from a number of interviews I have read.
One thing to love and hate about design principles in Linux / FOSS is that it is based on creating the most productive software, not necessarily the most easy to understand or get started with software. Blender I think is the best example of this. There is a LOT to learn before you can do much of ANYTHING in blender. It is confusing and every button and modifier key does something different. The interface is... well atrocious in many ways. Until you "get it". Once you painfully climb that seemingly never ending vertical learning curve, you are FREE. Forget the mouse and just imagine what you want to see and type it out in a few bizarre incantations on your keyboard. IF you can remember all the crazy commands, Blender is FAST. If you can't remember, or simple don't like working that way, then Blender is not for you. What will not happen is Blender changing its interface to attract a greater number of people. Take it or leave it.
There is also the issue that at the heart, Linux is Free. Many great Windows apps are developed under Linux, or for Linux, then easily ported to Windows. Write an app for Windows, and it works on Windows. Write an app for Linux, and it will work on anything with a microprocessor with the right simple planning or forethought.
My killer, can not live without, Linux application is BASH. I get strange problems in my head where I want to look something up in a way that a regular search engine simply won't do. or some stat problem I want to double check via brute force (cause why not, it is another way to confirm an answer), a method that can not always be done mentally. This is where I jump on the computer, and in a few strange incantations in a terminal, I have just what I wanted.
Yes, we can do that too will always be a catchup came cause who knows what Microsoft will convince people they need next. That can't ever change unless Microsoft stops being main stream. This will be a cultural change. Linux is about the bringing the power of the computer to the users fingertips. Windows is more about meeting the needs of "Ohh, Internet, I want to do that!". We are just in a time where there are still so many people in that latter category. Linux is just a kernel, but it is also just a tool. There will always be new things added to Linux that people need for themselves that others will join in and contribute to, but gearing itself towards "sacrifice anything and everything to get the maximum number of people to use it" will, I pray, NEVER be the heart of Linux.
Specialist circumstances need specialized software. Web Server, embedded systems, data centers. Linux provides the tweakability to do killer things REALLY well. You just can't do that in Windows, certainly not in the way that a trained Linux specialist can really make things work.
The Year of Linux was 1996.
Just read the Halloween Documents to confirm that BY MICROSOFT! At this point in time Microsoft identified Linux
No offense, I think this is a little short sighted. I think the number one thing we have learned in this age is that INFORMATION is power. Stopping one missile is pointless, and gives away a powerful strategic advantage. Knowing what is going on, or even something as simple as knowing how often communications are taking place would give a strong advantage. Watch how they respond to various situations, or just know where they all are.
These systems aren't so stupid that they don't have mechanical safeties or backup systems.
The real weakness that will exist will be in what can be passively observed due to weakness. Think of a spy movie (or history); do they ever use the under cover operative to perform an assassination? Course not, it would be a terrible waste of a resource. Operatives report on targets daily routines, and think tanks look for weaknesses.
On another note, the main systems may be windows, but I highly doubt certain modules would be running windows. They would have proprietary systems that are purpose-built. There are also weaknesses in Intel/x86 chips that really wouldn't make them very good for weapons.
Something comforting, Military does get a different version of windows. The NSA may require certain back doors, but the military doesn't need to have them. Military also gets an open-source version of windows. You really think they are going to let Microsoft compile a binary for such an expensive piece of machinery? At least in the US, military required Microsoft to let them review, revise, and compile the code on their own, or they would not do any business with Microsoft. Too much security at risk otherwise. They just are not to share that code with anyone else.
Whatever it is, I bet it will be next weeks Slashdot article.
Despite the fact that they are calling windows an 'upgrade' doesn't mean these subs are still using the same technology you saw in 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. You are talking about people with TAX dollars here that has everyone afraid of terrorists! What would you build?
Either int will be a fixed size and longer ints will have another name, or you can explicitly state the size of int as a declaration. This has always been done and 'good coding' should include explicit declaration. It is when people cut corners and use "what works" that can quickly create regression bugs when backwards compatibility is integrated, but you didn't follow good coding guidelines. "That always worked fine suddenly stopped working" issue. This is also why a lot of those "bugs" don't get fixed.
People need to follow proper coding guidelines, not try to stop things from progressing. Programming has always been progressive in this way, and just relearning the new way has never been much of a way to keep up.
Yeah, that is one thing I have at least really appreciated from Microsoft is standardization. Wait...
I think I have heard exactly your argument as to why schools and government need to advocate for Linux, because open standards mean there is much less worry about compatibility, what software people have, and such. Loosely advocating or quietly necessitating Office 2007 for every student is absurd. I would much prefer "you can use the schools free and supported open standard, or get whatever product you like and it should be compatible / be easy to comply with standards". And subsidizing kids that just can't afford windows / office is a terrible "patch" to the problem. At my school I have had kids bring in documents for Claris and Correl Works, and honestly, the most difficult to work with till recently was.docx.
And yeah, things have changed. Some rooms now have "class sets" of laptops. The cell phone war was won by parents, but kids are asked to not be disruptive in class, technology related or otherwise, which usually means put on silent.
Many kids can stay more organized with a computer, not to mention that, particularly with FOSS, tools and educational games on laptops are cheaper alternatives to paper material. In my very small district of less than 2 dozen schools k-12, >$8M is spent per year on printer paper. Laptops are also much lighter weight than what I remember carrying in my backpack at that age. Extra money could be spent on development of any number of things that might help improve FOSS educational software.
Your area must have really cheap parking tickets. In San Francisco that is the 6 hour parking rate... which makes it much more like a cost of doing business.
There are guidelines for compliance, of course. You just have to ask if the user is 13 or over before collecting personally identifiable information directly from the user. It is weird, because you need to trust children to be truthful, but it makes compliance easy. But realistically, I think parents can tell their children "clicking the box when it is not true is bad, and it is for your own protection" is reasonable. It is a weak law with a narrow purpose.
I have seen different very clear disclaimers, sometimes they say 'content not suitable for children I can see people making the argument you mention, but I think it is false. It is perfectly possible to clearly express restrictions without freaking people out, like content rated PG. No one freaks out, but parents are informed that it may not be the kind of movie to leave a small child in front of unattended (if ever such an appropriate thing).
It is a bad law because it requires the internet to operate in a way that it does not. Compliance as it has actually been defined, best to my knowledge, is that you have to ask the user if they are under 13, and if so, either not collect any personal information, or get written consent from the parent. Most sites I have seen just don't let you fill out the personal parts that are typically optional. It is one of those "how much do I have to do to say I tried?" things. Laws generally ( no matter how many times we seem to get it wrong) need to be in easy to understand language for compliance. That is not the case here, and this a bad law, in addition to not really having a set purpose that it defines and meets. This law just doesn't do what it was supposed to do, because it is pretty easy to sneak out of. How Sony over looked the 'loopholes' is mind boggling and they should be be punished for such lame violations.
child, legally, means 13. There are BIG legal differences between children and minors (mutually exclusive, someone is only a child OR a minor, or neither.). So be happy, it is the way you wished. The term 'underage children' was a very poor choice of words, obviously.
Slashdot Mirror
For me, gedit, OpenOffice, and Lyx meet all my office / document creation needs (I probably use OO.o the least). I don't expect enough of people for LaTeX to be useful to much of anyone but professional publishers, but I love it. LaTeX won't ever be much use to the average person because it actually requires reading before just diving in, and that's just more than you can ask of the average user.
The one application I miss is Adobe Premiere for which there is just no viable substitute. *cry*
What are your deal breaker applications?
Agreed. If you got all this fancy hardware, I would hope that you were planning to use it for something. I was fortunate enough to build a pretty fancy machine for myself a bit more than a year ago ( X2 6400+ Black, 4gb ram, 8800gtx, and some other fun hardware ) and I run Ubuntu on it exclusively. It works for me.
I don't see what Vista has to offer that I couldn't get from XP if I wanted to use some piece of software that works best in Windows. Vista has nothing to offer, especially at the price. It is nice to hear that 7 has done a lot of back end clean up work, and if it out performs XP, then awesome, but that really doesn't offer an incentive to switch.
The one application that I find no reasonable alternative for is Adobe Premiere, but all that tells me is that there is an incentive to get a Mac.
Ok, you say Windows 7 != Vista, but Vista == Windows && Windows 7 == Windows, so there many similarities, and some differences. Rather than having an endless list of specifics, how much different is it compared to other possible juxtapositions? Are there more differences between 7 and Vista as there are between Ubuntu 8.10 and 8.04? 7.10? Debian? Fedora? Gentoo? Are there as many differences between 7 and Vista as there are differences between Linux Kernel 2.6.27 and 2.6.20? 2.6.16? 2.4.37? Is 7 as different from Vista as Mac OSX 10.5 and 10.4? 10.3? FreeBSD 7.1? FreeBSD 6.4?
Sorry, but by no measure is 7 a significant leap from Vista. XP was a brilliant merge of Windows 98 and NT 4 as much as Ubuntu was a leap from Debian, OSX was a leap from FreeBSD taking many design principles from OS9.
7 appears to have some significant progress from the original release of XP, but with respect to how long that has been, what has Apple done in the same period of time? Solaris? AIX? Linux? I think the only systems with less progress in that period of time has been OS/2, BeOS, and Debian GNU/HURD.
It is nice they are fixing the Vista problems. It is nice they are removing the bloatware, feature creep and all that jazz, and really taking a closer look at some of the performance issues that may only have been possible to see with a large user base like it has now.
Improvements in back-end performance, AWESOME! Screw the advertising, some of the best empirical data for comparison is the SDK release notes, which is the only think you can really look at after Microsoft's GUIs for everything. This is the only measure I can see as useful for judging what we are really going to see in Windows 7.
If so, what does that say? Some XP people may finally be willing to switch assuming money is not a factor once real software comes out for 7 that will not as well to a significant (even if only perceived) degree over XP. Vista people will be vilified, and thrilled about the new version that "met their attention". If they bought Vista, they will buy 7. Windows 7 user base will certainly pass up Vista long before XP (if that isn't blatantly obvious). The Windows dynasty will continue to live on for awhile longer.
So I think this brings us back to the original statement: Windows 7 != Vista? No. It is Vista done right and is the little step whose name was changed because the marketing department said so.
If 7 is somehow different than Vista after all the above named things, tell me how it is going to attract the Mac OSX user, the Ubuntu user, the Gentoo user, The Solaris User, the *BSD user, the AIX user. By portion, more users of any of those respective systems will upgrade, and if they dual boot, it will be with a Mac. Windows 7 will hope to hold its own users for a bit longer.
On another note, The real back end changed to Vista became a part of XP SP3. While it may be unlikely Windows 7 will be XP SP4, I am sure it will be Vista SP2.
Want to pay for the name change? Be the first one to have it on your system? Patronize Microsoft for their continued support of your favorite OS? Go ahead. It isn't new, its just Windows, sending that collection plate for another round.
But why should you care? You LOVE Windows!
ha ha, sorry, but this is funny. That was the whole issue with Vista as far as I understood it: You needed something like Q6600, 4GB of RAM, and an 8800GT and had to get ultimate edition for it to work correctly. If you didn't have the hardware, it ran very poorly. If you didn't get ultimate edition, then it INTENTIONALLY crippled your hardware from being able to perform to spec. Have you even been listening at all? Get home basic edition and install it on an Asus eee pc, then maybe you will have something to contribute to the conversation. I am perfectly open minded to hear you make the same arguments, I just don't get the feeling that you would.
Ok, my examples were quite exaggerated, but I was in real disagreement with the parent. More directly, I subscribe to the legal theory that people should not be disabled from breaking the law, otherwise the law is unable to evolve with the times. In your example with the police, they did shoot after, not before (complex circumstances aside).
Forking a project to get what you want is far from enabled for every citizen, but I feel GPL encourages people to write useful software because of the (even unlikely) threat of forking. EA was under no such threat with Spore; Spore was going to sell no matter what, even if customers had to go online and get a third party 'fix'. In the end, it made no difference to customers or EA. I guess it is just idealistic to expect from a company that my money goes towards making a more useful / entertaining product for me, and if that money is going to go towards any type of crippling of the software, there needs to be overwhelming justification and demand by customers. An example of this would be requiring registered accounts linked to a serial number per unit so that only people that bought the game can join in official events / servers or to enforce rules against griefing of any kind. Bots and gold sellers ruin a games play and economy. This is why with the 'controversial' DRM type software installed with World of Warcraft is tolerated because players understand how it contributes to the overall experience. While EA was looking to protect its investment, but the reality is that some people buy games and some people pirate games, but many do both. People that only pirate games are not going to start giving money for games that can't be hacked, at least not as much in mind paying customers are going to stop buying products when they pay for something and it won't work due to some kind of anti-theft device. Maybe it is only me, but I don't like being accused of being a criminal, ESPECIALLY when I couldn't have possibly known the criteria by which I am going to be judged. The law typically accounts (or should account) for this. Yes, mistakes are make as you cited above that can not be corrected, and as the police were scrutinized publicly for their actions, so was EA. But I think the third party hack is much more like "thou shalt not get caught" than due process or other legal theory (if that makes any sense).
I just believe there must be some better way that is both profitable and utilitarian. I'll admit I have no evidence to support that statement, just idealism.
I could just love to hate AT&T, and I think people are responsible for electing a bad congress has either supported or looked the other way when it comes to anything Bush could be praised or criticized for. Personally, I don't have enough faith in their general competency to even do anything with the information to really go "OMG SPYING!1!". I was also somewhat under the impression that as long as telephone infrastructure has existed in this country, it had more or less been recorded in its near entirety. I had always put this aside in my mind as wild conspiracy theory or who cares for the above named reason and I don't think my phone conversations would be very interesting from a national security perspective. However, legislation to justify the presidents actions isn't quite the same thing as legislation to 'clarify' what the law meant; I see that as an exceedingly 'rosy' take on the issue. We already have poison fruit doctrine in this country, so only thing to worry about at this point s whether or not it gets applied appropriately, and that investigators are not sloppy about going after real criminals. I see a big gray area there between "The law just wasn't clear, but that was what it really meant" and "If Bush broke the law, he must be (or would have been) impeached".
As far as what I am expecting of the next administration, I am pretty cynical. Too many things I may have 'hoped' to see 'change' have come and pass. I think the last issue I had any energy to care about nationally just had a giant shit dropped on it named Tom Perrelli.
I think while that is the future, we are just so far from that position, and peoples acceptance of things that should really put people in prison that brings out the radical voice. People accuse RMS of being radical, meanwhile Microsoft is talking about plans to develop a pay by the hour software model for HOME COMPUTERS!?!? The most disgusting part of the whole ordeal is that it has already received strong positive reviews. I mean really? Haven't we been through this song and dance with cell phone companies?!?
I am sure there are lots of people that would say "ooh, neat" and "what a great way to try many software titles" or "I love a company that gives me more choices", but all I can really say is RMS isn't nearly as crazy as everyone gives him credit for, he's just idealistic. Not his fault Ballmer would have a different vision for the world.
The difference is that there is choice. Few more features for a little less freedom on some respects, and giving that choice to the customer is one thing. Brutally crippled buggy software that spends more time monitoring your every action and reporting its finding back to the company in the name of piracy rather than actually doing anything useful meanwhile holding a near perfect monopoly over a particular function or industry through an abuse of the copyright / trademark / patent system crushing anything even remotely competitive begs justifiable homicide of the CEO / radically militant evangelical support for FOSS.
I agree RMS is quite 'out there' on the whole FOSS fundamentalism thing, but with some of the stuff companies have tried or have gotten away with, I can sympathize with a lack of open-mindedness to moderate solutions like those of nVidia.
A representative in the car I think is much more like FOSS because even with another person in the car you are not restricted from doing what ever you want, it is just that other people are going to know what you are doing. Police are the same way; they don't restrict you from doing anything, but they have the right to question your behavior and have the power to challenge your judgment. Again, that sounds much more like the community auditing of FOSS.
Proprietary software is like buying a car whose hood is welded shut for your safety and to protect your warranty which really only results in a necessity for the car to be replaced every time they identify a defect. Add to that a locking gas cap where only certified gas stations get the key, and you can't fill it up yourself. You get one radio station with a fixed volume with corporate approved content, but in their defense it is usually pretty good and what "most drivers want to listen to" anyway. And of course this is all easily justified as the company is simply exercising its freedom to protect its good name and the quality assurance of the vehicle.
These apple and orange rights, to me, sounds like debating my right to stab you when I am really really angry. Artificially manipulating the market giving a handicap to certain businesses so they can keep doing business in an outdated way doesn't help anyway. I look forward to a day where alienating customers with preemptive punishment won't just be considered "business as usual". But I can understand if it might take awhile, this being a country whose people are more concerned with the features of their iPhone than their service providers collusion to violate FISA.
Richard Nixon would be jealous.
You obviously haven't read the EULA.
But they actually get to audit the code and fix problems, which has been the big complaint from OSS advocates. And Microsoft uses the Intel compiler. Just compiling it yourself obviously doesn't mean anything; it is when it breaks you have the POWER to hypothetically do something about it. Noone else even has the hypothetical power, programmer or otherwise, and your only other recourse is to get a mac? I know that isn't the reality, for me, or a lot of other people, but it is the way things are in too many peoples mind right now.
I just like that the government stays hands free on the OSS issue, but when it comes to something important, they say "fuck that bullshit you sell to the consumer (you don't need the code), give us the damn code, like DUH"
">expert
oops, that was meant to be expert, a link to an AMAZING article that is frequently misquoted. I think because the original report (the link) is particularly difficult to find, but people love to cite by third party. The title perfectly explains it, "A Five-Stage Model of the Mental Activities Involved in Directed Skill Acquisition" aka the Dreyfus Model. If you have ever read anything of interest (such as The Pragmatic Programmer)that makes reference to the Dreyfus Model, the original report is well worth reading.
I find it hard to believe that you have spent more than a few months with Linux to not find many things radically different. A PART of Linux that tries to make itself compatible with people is give them ways to use their old knowledge to do the same old tasks on Linux that they did on windows. To say that Linux is only playing a catch up game tells me you should probably stick with Windows. IMO, I think Macs take the most common thing people want to do and put it into a one-click application. What you can do is REALLY awsome. Just check out youtube to see what people have done with iMovie. In business, the best thing you can do is take one thing and do it REALLY WELL. Try to expand too much, and you will just be beaten out by a large number of specialists. Linux doesn't NEED to attract or prove anything to anybody. It is awesome that people are starting companies and making big money off of Linux directly or indirectly, but that is not the core of what Linux has ever been about, at least for Linus Torvalds as I understand from a number of interviews I have read.
... well atrocious in many ways. Until you "get it". Once you painfully climb that seemingly never ending vertical learning curve, you are FREE. Forget the mouse and just imagine what you want to see and type it out in a few bizarre incantations on your keyboard. IF you can remember all the crazy commands, Blender is FAST. If you can't remember, or simple don't like working that way, then Blender is not for you. What will not happen is Blender changing its interface to attract a greater number of people. Take it or leave it.
One thing to love and hate about design principles in Linux / FOSS is that it is based on creating the most productive software, not necessarily the most easy to understand or get started with software. Blender I think is the best example of this. There is a LOT to learn before you can do much of ANYTHING in blender. It is confusing and every button and modifier key does something different. The interface is
There is also the issue that at the heart, Linux is Free. Many great Windows apps are developed under Linux, or for Linux, then easily ported to Windows. Write an app for Windows, and it works on Windows. Write an app for Linux, and it will work on anything with a microprocessor with the right simple planning or forethought.
My killer, can not live without, Linux application is BASH. I get strange problems in my head where I want to look something up in a way that a regular search engine simply won't do. or some stat problem I want to double check via brute force (cause why not, it is another way to confirm an answer), a method that can not always be done mentally. This is where I jump on the computer, and in a few strange incantations in a terminal, I have just what I wanted.
Yes, we can do that too will always be a catchup came cause who knows what Microsoft will convince people they need next. That can't ever change unless Microsoft stops being main stream. This will be a cultural change. Linux is about the bringing the power of the computer to the users fingertips. Windows is more about meeting the needs of "Ohh, Internet, I want to do that!". We are just in a time where there are still so many people in that latter category. Linux is just a kernel, but it is also just a tool. There will always be new things added to Linux that people need for themselves that others will join in and contribute to, but gearing itself towards "sacrifice anything and everything to get the maximum number of people to use it" will, I pray, NEVER be the heart of Linux.
Specialist circumstances need specialized software. Web Server, embedded systems, data centers. Linux provides the tweakability to do killer things REALLY well. You just can't do that in Windows, certainly not in the way that a trained Linux specialist can really make things work.
The Year of Linux was 1996.
Just read the Halloween Documents to confirm that BY MICROSOFT! At this point in time Microsoft identified Linux
No offense, I think this is a little short sighted. I think the number one thing we have learned in this age is that INFORMATION is power. Stopping one missile is pointless, and gives away a powerful strategic advantage. Knowing what is going on, or even something as simple as knowing how often communications are taking place would give a strong advantage. Watch how they respond to various situations, or just know where they all are.
These systems aren't so stupid that they don't have mechanical safeties or backup systems.
The real weakness that will exist will be in what can be passively observed due to weakness. Think of a spy movie (or history); do they ever use the under cover operative to perform an assassination? Course not, it would be a terrible waste of a resource. Operatives report on targets daily routines, and think tanks look for weaknesses.
On another note, the main systems may be windows, but I highly doubt certain modules would be running windows. They would have proprietary systems that are purpose-built. There are also weaknesses in Intel/x86 chips that really wouldn't make them very good for weapons.
Something comforting, Military does get a different version of windows. The NSA may require certain back doors, but the military doesn't need to have them. Military also gets an open-source version of windows. You really think they are going to let Microsoft compile a binary for such an expensive piece of machinery? At least in the US, military required Microsoft to let them review, revise, and compile the code on their own, or they would not do any business with Microsoft. Too much security at risk otherwise. They just are not to share that code with anyone else.
Whatever it is, I bet it will be next weeks Slashdot article.
Despite the fact that they are calling windows an 'upgrade' doesn't mean these subs are still using the same technology you saw in 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. You are talking about people with TAX dollars here that has everyone afraid of terrorists! What would you build?
Can I mod the moderator +5 funny for modding the parent -1 off-topic?
Either int will be a fixed size and longer ints will have another name, or you can explicitly state the size of int as a declaration. This has always been done and 'good coding' should include explicit declaration. It is when people cut corners and use "what works" that can quickly create regression bugs when backwards compatibility is integrated, but you didn't follow good coding guidelines. "That always worked fine suddenly stopped working" issue. This is also why a lot of those "bugs" don't get fixed.
People need to follow proper coding guidelines, not try to stop things from progressing. Programming has always been progressive in this way, and just relearning the new way has never been much of a way to keep up.
Yeah, that is one thing I have at least really appreciated from Microsoft is standardization. Wait...
.docx.
I think I have heard exactly your argument as to why schools and government need to advocate for Linux, because open standards mean there is much less worry about compatibility, what software people have, and such. Loosely advocating or quietly necessitating Office 2007 for every student is absurd. I would much prefer "you can use the schools free and supported open standard, or get whatever product you like and it should be compatible / be easy to comply with standards". And subsidizing kids that just can't afford windows / office is a terrible "patch" to the problem. At my school I have had kids bring in documents for Claris and Correl Works, and honestly, the most difficult to work with till recently was
And yeah, things have changed. Some rooms now have "class sets" of laptops. The cell phone war was won by parents, but kids are asked to not be disruptive in class, technology related or otherwise, which usually means put on silent.
Many kids can stay more organized with a computer, not to mention that, particularly with FOSS, tools and educational games on laptops are cheaper alternatives to paper material. In my very small district of less than 2 dozen schools k-12, >$8M is spent per year on printer paper. Laptops are also much lighter weight than what I remember carrying in my backpack at that age. Extra money could be spent on development of any number of things that might help improve FOSS educational software.
oh well, I know I am dreaming.
Your area must have really cheap parking tickets. In San Francisco that is the 6 hour parking rate... which makes it much more like a cost of doing business.
Look it up and let us know. Sounds interesting, but considering the article, might be confusing it with something else.
There are guidelines for compliance, of course. You just have to ask if the user is 13 or over before collecting personally identifiable information directly from the user. It is weird, because you need to trust children to be truthful, but it makes compliance easy. But realistically, I think parents can tell their children "clicking the box when it is not true is bad, and it is for your own protection" is reasonable. It is a weak law with a narrow purpose.
Violating peoples privacy rights doesn't hurt anyone, and it protects us from terrorism!
I think $750 is the typical pre-settlement offer, not the statutory fines. FBI warning of doom gives a 6 digit fine + possible jail time.
I have seen different very clear disclaimers, sometimes they say 'content not suitable for children
I can see people making the argument you mention, but I think it is false. It is perfectly possible to clearly express restrictions without freaking people out, like content rated PG. No one freaks out, but parents are informed that it may not be the kind of movie to leave a small child in front of unattended (if ever such an appropriate thing).
It is a bad law because it requires the internet to operate in a way that it does not. Compliance as it has actually been defined, best to my knowledge, is that you have to ask the user if they are under 13, and if so, either not collect any personal information, or get written consent from the parent. Most sites I have seen just don't let you fill out the personal parts that are typically optional. It is one of those "how much do I have to do to say I tried?" things. Laws generally ( no matter how many times we seem to get it wrong) need to be in easy to understand language for compliance. That is not the case here, and this a bad law, in addition to not really having a set purpose that it defines and meets. This law just doesn't do what it was supposed to do, because it is pretty easy to sneak out of. How Sony over looked the 'loopholes' is mind boggling and they should be be punished for such lame violations.
Songs: $200,000 fine for violating "rights" of.
Children: $33 fine for violating rights of.
Holy S**T, WhAt ThE F**k!?!
There, I fixed it for ya.
child, legally, means 13. There are BIG legal differences between children and minors (mutually exclusive, someone is only a child OR a minor, or neither.). So be happy, it is the way you wished. The term 'underage children' was a very poor choice of words, obviously.