I think it's very unlikely that it takes that long most of the time. In fact, I would even call that a freak occurance.
Dell's supply chain model depends on the system being on the shipping dock roughly 1 hour after the parts hit the recieving dock. I used to work for the company that set up their Ireland plant to do this.
No system is perfect, and there will always be a few cases where things go horribly wrong, but most of the time Dell should ship within a few days even if they don't have the parts for your system on hand.
Can you actually name someone who's seriously using Linux as a BIOS or QNX as a desktop OS? I'm not talking experimental/hobby use, I'm talking about "production" systems.
That's the critical difference here.
FWIW, I use Linux and QNX. Linux is a great server OS as well as, IMNSHO, a great desktop OS. QNX is great a great high availability/"embedded" OS, and in fact based on my experience I would strongly recommend QNX for something like an ATM.
I don't know what a rolf is but Yast has gotten better with each release.
Question answered. And I agree about YaST, and I've been using SuSE since 6.1. I think the grandparent is smoking crack. Or maybe just trolling. Is there a difference?
I've been using SuSE for 4 years now. YaST is a really great tool, and it gets better with every release, but it most definately WILL overwrite your config files. With more recent versions it isn't as much of a problem as you can configure most everything in YaST, but in older versions it was definately an issue.
Example: for a long time I couldn't get the YaST mouse config module to work write, so I had to edit XF86Config by hand to make the wheel work. That was fine, but I had to redo it every time sax ran, which meant every time I installed new Nvidia drivers for example.
That seems to have been fixed, as well as most of the other cases I've run into, but it's not perfect yet. I'm hoping that when I get around to installing 9.0 (or more likely 9.1 at this point) it'll let me enable 3D acceleration AND 24-bit color without any hand editing (needed for only one game, grrrr!).
There's no money in consumer electronics, period. It's a "we have to sell 100M of these to break even on R&D" kind of business. Margins might still be a bit better than that on portable mp3 players, but they won't be for long, and the more players there are in the market the faster margins will drop.
Obviously it's been a while since you've tried to find anything on download.com that was both free AND useful. The combination is pretty much non-existant these days.
As mentioned by others, most of the freeware developers have moved on to Free platforms, BUT a lot of that stuff has been ported to Windows. TheOpenCD has a good listing of Open Source stuff that's been ported. Check the forums if you don't find exactly what you're looking for, as a lot of apps don't get included on the CD for various reasons (space, duplication of functionality, etc).
Sorry, but Wal-Mart, by it's continued profitability, proves you wrong. There are plenty of other examples in just about every industry. The company that sells cheap crap but has good advertising consistently does better than the company that focuses on quality. Why do you think Target is doing so much better than any of those department stores that, for example, sell towels that actually get you dry and don't fall apart in the dryer?
For most people Windows is perfect. For most people the ability to send/recieve e-mail, shop ebay and amazon, and play a few games is enough. For these people Linux and BSD (I'm not even going to bother including Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, etc) would be useless.
I don't get this. You say that you're a Linux user, and yet you still think all these things can't be done on Linux? I've been doing all these things on Linux for quite a while now, and so has my wife, who's one of the least technical people you're likely to meet.
Maybe you should try a different distro if you honestly think Linux is inherently more difficult. I like Suse, personally, but I suspect there are others that are similarly well designed.
Of course I regularly run updates, and my virus scanner updates hourly and runs nightly, but you should do that with any PC.
A computer is a tool. Any tool that requires that much maintainance just to keep it running is seriously flawed.
And for the record, my Linux systems autoupdate weekly and don't need a virus scanner at all. I've had no problems at all, so I think it's reasonable to conclude that no, you shouldn't have to do that with any PC provided you run software that's well designed.
You say that, but all the redhat installs I've done have been larger than any of the XP installs i've done.
Before or after you get all the drivers and apps installed which make it actually useful? You know, all that stuff thats already there when you finish a typical Linux install?
If you're going to compare installs, you should try comparing installs that are actually equivalent.
If my heirs want to profit from IP they should have to come up with their own great ideas. The concept of IP is supposed to promote progress in science and culture, not to allow up to 5 or 6 generations to be leeches on the rest of society. Life + 75 years is fscking ludicrous!
No matter what resolution you rise to, you will always be short of analog.
Wrong! Digital has already surpassed film.
One of the products I support is a Telecine, which converts film to video. When our high end telecine went to "2k" (2k horizontal lines of resolution, or 3096x2048) telecine operators were complaining that the video output looked grainy. That's because the resolution was high enough that they were actually seeing the grain of the film. Our current high end does 2k in realtime (30fps) and 4k at 7.5fps. IMNSHO film is dead, it's just a matter of time before the artists realize this.
FYI, 1080p HDTV should be roughly equivalent resolution to average quality film. That's what's typically used for digital cinematography today. I've heard rumors of 2k cameras, but I don't know if someone's actually selling them, or if they're just in developement.
Is the original analog film actual used to create the final cut (either physically or be analog copying) or is the entire process digitised
Depends. For some films it may only get digitized when they want to release it on VHS/DVD. For others, like LotR, post-production is almost entirely digital. I don't know about you, but I thought LotR looked pretty good, even on a big screen.
Disclaimer: I am not an engineer, and this is not necessarily the Official Party Line, but it is my opinion as a repair center tech for Thomson, which owns Technicolor and Grass Valley Group, so I'm not totally talking out of my ass here.
Of course letting your kid watch TV for 12+ hours/day must feel like vacation. Spending some time playing and interact with him/her might be best though.
Sometimes all my daughter wants to do, especially if she's sick, is have me sit and watch "Barbie in the Nutcracker" with her. One viewing of that certainly feels like 12+ hours to me!
Then there's her Teletubbies video, which is like an hour long acid flashback. That is a seriously strange show!
In my admittedly brief search I didn't find any indication that it had been ported to Mac, and it doesn't seem like the sort of thing you'd want to try running under emulation on an iBook.
Just what do our friends at the DVD CCA have to say about the "DVD Authoring" standard?
A whole lotta "nothin" as long as you aren't using CSS/region coding. Without that useless crap, it's basically just MPEG2 on a high capacity disc.
Is this something home users who don't have thousands and thousands to spend will ever be able to do legally?
Yes, right now. Even pro solutions are not so many thousands these days, unless you're talking serious mass-production. That's a little out of the scope of "authoring", though.
Woah there! Put the collander down and back away from the tinfoil!
First of all, I'm very much aware of how the music industry works. I used to be a musician myself, and I have several friends who have among them been involved in every aspect of it, including but not limited to members of signed bands, recording engineers, scouts, and executive positions. A few have even done all of those. Additionally, I've been reading/. for a long time, and have probably read far more articles on copyright and the doings of the Senator from Disney than you have. I agree that the RIAA is a wreched hive of scum and villainy.
However, that's largely irrelevant to this particular discussion, and several of your points are simply wrong.
As an example of the way things work now, let's say you share a music file. The RIAA logs on to the network and finds "this IP is sharing this file". They then bully your ISP into divulging their records, and then threaten to sue you for millions, and "allow" you to settle for thousands.
Aside from the bullying, this is exactly how it SHOULD work, and the bullying only works because the people who run the ISPs are generally spineless wimps who choose to submit to improperly filed subpoenas. If you have an issue, why don't you take it up with your ISP?
If I were sharing a music file, I'd be breaking the law, and the "victim" certainly has a right to seek recompense.
Image that! An adult being held accountable for the actions of a minor in their charge, what a novel concept. Oh wait, NO IT ISN'T!
What if your machine gets a virus and sets itself up as a file swapping node?
Well then you'd have a pretty good defense, wouldn't you? Regardless of what powers you think the RIAA has, they aren't judge, jury, and executioner, they're merely the plaintiff.
Another problem with the RIAA, is that they fail to meet their established purpose. They are supposed to facilitate music and protect musicians, but instead do the exact opposite.
No, you fail to understand their purpose. It's the Record INDUSTRY Association, NOT the Record Artists Association. Their purpose is to protect the interests of the record companies which are members, and they perform that function quite well.
There is, to my knowledge, no such organization for musicians. Thats because, by and large, musicians are a bunch of flakey whiners, even more so than actors, and that's saying something! If the musicians are sick of getting the shaft, then the musicians need to get off their asses and do something about it; either they avoid the trap and self-publish (and I know several who do just that), or they organize, ala SAG.
And with the exception of Metallica (who, as everyone knows were replaced by pod people replicants late in '97), how many musicians can you name that are in favor of the RIAA's legal thrashings about?
While Metallica hasn't released a decent album in over 10 years, they have remained true to themselves. It's their music, they created it, they own the rights to it, and they want it distributed to the world on their own terms. It may be stupid, but stupid != wrong, and a band as established as they are has nothing to gain from filesharing, and quite a bit to lose.
The FBI currently doesn't have that much leeway in pursuing criminals.
Copyright infringement is a civil matter, not a criminal matter, so the rules are different. There's a lot more leeway in civil law.
Now consider that they're still lobbying.
That is their right. It's also your right to lobby against them. Do you vote? Do you write letters to your representatives? Do you do anything to support the EFF? If you don't like what's going on, do something about it.
Currently, the laws that govern this kind of behavior are the result of some of the most intense lobbying ever. They're over
But this was in response to the grandparent, who suggested that the original article's author simply needed to use "mp3burn -o 'dev=x,x,x speed=XX' *mp"--so I guess he hasn't used Linux much, either. And it was in response to that suggestion that I was commenting.
In that context I certainly agree. As for him not using Linux much, well, I didn't say I don't use CLI, quite the contrary, I said that I had yet to encounter anything I needed to do in Linux that could only be done in CLI.
Well, that's not entirely true. To my knowledge there is no GUI equivalent to the pipe, and that in itself is a pretty solid arguement for the CLI. Still, though, as far as accomplishing a task it's totally possible to do all your Linux stuff in a GUI, though doing it through the CLI is often easier/faster, provided you take the time to learn how to read man pages (reading them is a skill, and once you have it they are incredibly useful).
Not according to the Google Zeitgeist. I will concede it's not a perfect tool for measuring desktop usage--but can you offer a better one?
No, I can't, as it's not something I'm generally interested in. However, there have been several reports in the last couple of years that have variously put Linux above or below Mac in terms of desktop marketshare. In such situations I generally assume that the truth is somewhere in the middle, which would put Mac and Linux roughly equal.
And trust me, Mac users have as much reason to forge their UA as do Linux users; it just may be a little more difficult, but still quite possible.
This may be true, but Apple markets its products to a much less tech-savvy crowd than Linux, so I think it's much less likely that a Mac user will do so than a Linux user.
As for myself, I've never forged my UA and it's never cause me a problem, so frankly I don't see why there's a percieved need to do this at all.
Does Linux have an IDE that will quickly and painlessly bolt GUIs onto CLI tools?
Linux does have several tools for doing this. The Qt and GNOME toolkits come to mind, and of course TCL/TK and wxWindows, and a few more I'm sure. How quick or painless they might be I don't know, as I've never used any of them. All my programming has been strictly CLI oriented so far, though in my defense I've yet to write anything I deem good enough to release to the outside world.
With it, the next time someone says "you just need to type foo with flag -RvgT (but not capital V!) the very next poster can link to his GUI tool that's a frontend to the suggestion, and 10x as many people will use it, including your grandma.
Of course I don't expect anyone to be perfact, but I do expect them to be aware of their limitations and try to account/compensate for them.
The critical issue with Windows security is that Windows is insecure by design. The root causes of many of it's holes are billed as features. Linux and BSD don't suffer from this.
I'm not arguing that FOSS is 100% secure, I think we can both agree that's impossible. I AM arguing that FOSS is MORE SECURE than Windows due to fundamental design decisions and support philosophy. Microsoft admits that there are fundamental security flaws in Windows which can only be fixed by a complete redesign of the system, and in the same breath implied that it wasn't going to happen. Linus, on the other hand, has proven that he's perfectly willing to rip out and replace whole systems, even in the "stable" kernel, if he sees a need to do so.
As for keeping things updated, Linux wins again. The MS update system is simply inconvenient, and that in itself is a barrier to it's use. Even at work, where updates are automatically pushed to my Windows machine, I still lose probably 30-45 minutes of productive time per week to reboots and clicking "OK" on pointless pop-up message boxes, AND on top of that I had to be given local Admin status for many of those patches to even install properly, so even keeping things properly updated entails some otherwise unnecessary security risk.
Contrast this with my several Linux systems where keeping up-to-date is a truely automatic, BACKGROUND process, requiring no user interaction at all. The only time I've lost to updates on Linux is the time I occasionally take to check the logs and make sure that it is infact downloading and installing patches. AND, since Linux is a real multiuser OS, it's perfectly capable of applying patches without a superuser logged in. (caveat: I only use Suse, but there's no reason any other Linux system couldn't be the same)
When all of this is taken into consideration it seems pretty obvious that the statement that Linux is just as insecure as Windows is just plain stupid.
Think about it: The time it takes people who use an MS infra-structure to port what they have over to the new MS infra-structure... couldn't that have been used to port it to say... a Unix based one? Really, it can be done. Better uptimes, few if any worms or virii... and depending on what version of the OS you choose, free upgrades and quality support from the online community.
Hell, if you MUST run some critical app on windows, why not run it inside of a virtual machine? Time to upgrade hardware? Just install the Unix os and then copy over the virtual machine image. Bam... hardware upgraded with only a few minutes of downtime. License keys are happy, software runs in the "same" environment, just faster.
This isn't always a viable option. I use a custom app for programming firmware on a product I support which needs to run on win9x because it has to have direct access to the parallel port and NIC. I suspect a Think about it: The time it takes people who use an MS infra-structure to port what they have over to the new MS infra-structure... couldn't that have been used to port it to say... a Unix based one? Really, it can be done. Better uptimes, few if any worms or virii... and depending on what version of the OS you choose, free upgrades and quality support from the online community.
Hell, if you MUST run some critical app on windows, why not run it inside of a virtual machine? Time to upgrade hardware? Just install the Unix os and then copy over the virtual machine image. Bam... hardware upgraded with only a few minutes of downtime. License keys are happy, software runs in the "same" environment, just faster. I suspect it wouldn't work on a virtual machine for the same reason it won't work on winnt: hardware abstraction.
As for porting it, it's just not worth it. Certainly, everyone involved with it understands the value of FOSS, all the human interface for the thing is done with Linux, but the worldwide market for the product is at most 300 units.
In general I agree with you, but my point is that there are circumstances where it just doesn't make sense to even think about ditching MS.
Now, move all your non-tech savy users over to linux and let everyone know that you have.
What you would find is linux being hit just as hard as windows in the worm/spyware category.
That's a nice theory, but it falls down when it meets reality.
I moved all my non-tech savvy users (my entire family) to Linux, and Linux has most definately NOT been hit just as hard in the worm/spyware category. In fact, it hasn't been hit at all.
Can a windows system be just as secure as a linux system? Sure it can, you just need to do the setup right.
And that is exactly my point: on Windows you need to be tech savvy AND willing spend the time doing the research to find and plug all the little holes. On Linux, I've never had to think about it.
As long as that is the mindset of your average user (by average, I mean overall average, not average by OS), then whichever OS has the majority of users will be the "least" secure, and have the most worms and spyware.
You're right about this, but for the wrong reasons. The most popular OS isn't insecure because it's used by more average users, it's insecure because it's targeted more often. You say there is just as much of a worm/spyware problem on Linux, but where are they? I've only ever heard of one worm on Linux, and I've never heard of Linux spyware.
Regardless of the reason, the simple fact is that Linux IS more secure, even for the average user! It's foolish not to take advantage of that fact.
Good thing you never have to patch linux to keep it secure and up to date, right? I don't get why all the linux people are always acting like you just install it and its set for the rest of its lifecycle.
I honestly don't know how many patches Linux needs compared to Windows since I run Suse. Suse's YOU (Yast Online Update) can be set up for TRUE automatic operation, and by automatic I mean it doesn't bug me with pop-up message windows telling me what it's doing, and it hasn't yet told me I needed to reboot "for these changes to take effect." It's a true automatic background process.
There's no reason any other distro couldn't be the same.
But until Linux is able to be run for day to day operation without the use of the CLI at all it will not gain mass marketshare acceptance.
I use Linux exclusively at home, and I can't remember the last time I've had to use the CLI for day to day stuff. There are distros, such as Suse, that are already "there" in this regard.
Seriously, when I read comments like this I think "What was the last Linux you used, Red Hat 5?"
Now, maybe Linux doesn't want to be as "dumbed down" as OS X--fine...Either live with niche desktop usage, or change the way the apps work so that no CLI is required.
Was this intentionally ironic? You are aware that Linux and Mac have a roughly equal share of the desktop market, aren't you?
No software that's installed by default, and in fact, almost no software that wasn't originally Unix based, uses the CLI as a primary tool of interaction.
For desktop use that's great. For more "serious" use scripting is key, and you lose too much of that when you go to a primarily GUI oriented model. It's far easier to slap a GUI frontend on a CLI app than the other way around. If all you're targeting is the desktop that's probably irrelevant, but if your intent is to be a serious contender in servers or embedded, it's a way better idea to do it the way it's being done on Linux.
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I think it's very unlikely that it takes that long most of the time. In fact, I would even call that a freak occurance.
Dell's supply chain model depends on the system being on the shipping dock roughly 1 hour after the parts hit the recieving dock. I used to work for the company that set up their Ireland plant to do this.
No system is perfect, and there will always be a few cases where things go horribly wrong, but most of the time Dell should ship within a few days even if they don't have the parts for your system on hand.
Can you actually name someone who's seriously using Linux as a BIOS or QNX as a desktop OS? I'm not talking experimental/hobby use, I'm talking about "production" systems.
That's the critical difference here.
FWIW, I use Linux and QNX. Linux is a great server OS as well as, IMNSHO, a great desktop OS. QNX is great a great high availability/"embedded" OS, and in fact based on my experience I would strongly recommend QNX for something like an ATM.
I don't know what a rolf is but Yast has gotten better with each release.
Question answered. And I agree about YaST, and I've been using SuSE since 6.1. I think the grandparent is smoking crack. Or maybe just trolling. Is there a difference?
I've been using SuSE for 4 years now. YaST is a really great tool, and it gets better with every release, but it most definately WILL overwrite your config files. With more recent versions it isn't as much of a problem as you can configure most everything in YaST, but in older versions it was definately an issue.
Example: for a long time I couldn't get the YaST mouse config module to work write, so I had to edit XF86Config by hand to make the wheel work. That was fine, but I had to redo it every time sax ran, which meant every time I installed new Nvidia drivers for example.
That seems to have been fixed, as well as most of the other cases I've run into, but it's not perfect yet. I'm hoping that when I get around to installing 9.0 (or more likely 9.1 at this point) it'll let me enable 3D acceleration AND 24-bit color without any hand editing (needed for only one game, grrrr!).
There's no money in consumer electronics, period. It's a "we have to sell 100M of these to break even on R&D" kind of business. Margins might still be a bit better than that on portable mp3 players, but they won't be for long, and the more players there are in the market the faster margins will drop.
Obviously it's been a while since you've tried to find anything on download.com that was both free AND useful. The combination is pretty much non-existant these days.
As mentioned by others, most of the freeware developers have moved on to Free platforms, BUT a lot of that stuff has been ported to Windows. TheOpenCD has a good listing of Open Source stuff that's been ported. Check the forums if you don't find exactly what you're looking for, as a lot of apps don't get included on the CD for various reasons (space, duplication of functionality, etc).
Sorry, but Wal-Mart, by it's continued profitability, proves you wrong. There are plenty of other examples in just about every industry. The company that sells cheap crap but has good advertising consistently does better than the company that focuses on quality. Why do you think Target is doing so much better than any of those department stores that, for example, sell towels that actually get you dry and don't fall apart in the dryer?
Effectiveness is not subjective.....it just depends on what you're measuring or base-lining to be effective.
So in other words... it's subjective!
For most people Windows is perfect. For most people the ability to send/recieve e-mail, shop ebay and amazon, and play a few games is enough. For these people Linux and BSD (I'm not even going to bother including Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, etc) would be useless.
I don't get this. You say that you're a Linux user, and yet you still think all these things can't be done on Linux? I've been doing all these things on Linux for quite a while now, and so has my wife, who's one of the least technical people you're likely to meet.
Maybe you should try a different distro if you honestly think Linux is inherently more difficult. I like Suse, personally, but I suspect there are others that are similarly well designed.
Of course I regularly run updates, and my virus scanner updates hourly and runs nightly, but you should do that with any PC.
A computer is a tool. Any tool that requires that much maintainance just to keep it running is seriously flawed.
And for the record, my Linux systems autoupdate weekly and don't need a virus scanner at all. I've had no problems at all, so I think it's reasonable to conclude that no, you shouldn't have to do that with any PC provided you run software that's well designed.
You say that, but all the redhat installs I've done have been larger than any of the XP installs i've done.
Before or after you get all the drivers and apps installed which make it actually useful? You know, all that stuff thats already there when you finish a typical Linux install?
If you're going to compare installs, you should try comparing installs that are actually equivalent.
And that right should NOT extend to their heirs!
Amen to that!
If my heirs want to profit from IP they should have to come up with their own great ideas. The concept of IP is supposed to promote progress in science and culture, not to allow up to 5 or 6 generations to be leeches on the rest of society. Life + 75 years is fscking ludicrous!
No matter what resolution you rise to, you will always be short of analog.
Wrong! Digital has already surpassed film.
One of the products I support is a Telecine, which converts film to video. When our high end telecine went to "2k" (2k horizontal lines of resolution, or 3096x2048) telecine operators were complaining that the video output looked grainy. That's because the resolution was high enough that they were actually seeing the grain of the film. Our current high end does 2k in realtime (30fps) and 4k at 7.5fps. IMNSHO film is dead, it's just a matter of time before the artists realize this.
FYI, 1080p HDTV should be roughly equivalent resolution to average quality film. That's what's typically used for digital cinematography today. I've heard rumors of 2k cameras, but I don't know if someone's actually selling them, or if they're just in developement.
Is the original analog film actual used to create the final cut (either physically or be analog copying) or is the entire process digitised
Depends. For some films it may only get digitized when they want to release it on VHS/DVD. For others, like LotR, post-production is almost entirely digital. I don't know about you, but I thought LotR looked pretty good, even on a big screen.
Disclaimer: I am not an engineer, and this is not necessarily the Official Party Line, but it is my opinion as a repair center tech for Thomson, which owns Technicolor and Grass Valley Group, so I'm not totally talking out of my ass here.
Of course letting your kid watch TV for 12+ hours/day must feel like vacation. Spending some time playing and interact with him/her might be best though.
Sometimes all my daughter wants to do, especially if she's sick, is have me sit and watch "Barbie in the Nutcracker" with her. One viewing of that certainly feels like 12+ hours to me!
Then there's her Teletubbies video, which is like an hour long acid flashback. That is a seriously strange show!
In my admittedly brief search I didn't find any indication that it had been ported to Mac, and it doesn't seem like the sort of thing you'd want to try running under emulation on an iBook.
Just what do our friends at the DVD CCA have to say about the "DVD Authoring" standard?
A whole lotta "nothin" as long as you aren't using CSS/region coding. Without that useless crap, it's basically just MPEG2 on a high capacity disc.
Is this something home users who don't have thousands and thousands to spend will ever be able to do legally?
Yes, right now. Even pro solutions are not so many thousands these days, unless you're talking serious mass-production. That's a little out of the scope of "authoring", though.
You could try MS Flight Simulator
On an iBook?
Woah there! Put the collander down and back away from the tinfoil!
/. for a long time, and have probably read far more articles on copyright and the doings of the Senator from Disney than you have. I agree that the RIAA is a wreched hive of scum and villainy.
First of all, I'm very much aware of how the music industry works. I used to be a musician myself, and I have several friends who have among them been involved in every aspect of it, including but not limited to members of signed bands, recording engineers, scouts, and executive positions. A few have even done all of those. Additionally, I've been reading
However, that's largely irrelevant to this particular discussion, and several of your points are simply wrong.
As an example of the way things work now, let's say you share a music file. The RIAA logs on to the network and finds "this IP is sharing this file". They then bully your ISP into divulging their records, and then threaten to sue you for millions, and "allow" you to settle for thousands.
Aside from the bullying, this is exactly how it SHOULD work, and the bullying only works because the people who run the ISPs are generally spineless wimps who choose to submit to improperly filed subpoenas. If you have an issue, why don't you take it up with your ISP?
If I were sharing a music file, I'd be breaking the law, and the "victim" certainly has a right to seek recompense.
They've busted grandparents who's grandkids downloaded music.
Image that! An adult being held accountable for the actions of a minor in their charge, what a novel concept. Oh wait, NO IT ISN'T!
What if your machine gets a virus and sets itself up as a file swapping node?
Well then you'd have a pretty good defense, wouldn't you? Regardless of what powers you think the RIAA has, they aren't judge, jury, and executioner, they're merely the plaintiff.
Another problem with the RIAA, is that they fail to meet their established purpose. They are supposed to facilitate music and protect musicians, but instead do the exact opposite.
No, you fail to understand their purpose. It's the Record INDUSTRY Association, NOT the Record Artists Association. Their purpose is to protect the interests of the record companies which are members, and they perform that function quite well.
There is, to my knowledge, no such organization for musicians. Thats because, by and large, musicians are a bunch of flakey whiners, even more so than actors, and that's saying something! If the musicians are sick of getting the shaft, then the musicians need to get off their asses and do something about it; either they avoid the trap and self-publish (and I know several who do just that), or they organize, ala SAG.
And with the exception of Metallica (who, as everyone knows were replaced by pod people replicants late in '97), how many musicians can you name that are in favor of the RIAA's legal thrashings about?
While Metallica hasn't released a decent album in over 10 years, they have remained true to themselves. It's their music, they created it, they own the rights to it, and they want it distributed to the world on their own terms. It may be stupid, but stupid != wrong, and a band as established as they are has nothing to gain from filesharing, and quite a bit to lose.
The FBI currently doesn't have that much leeway in pursuing criminals.
Copyright infringement is a civil matter, not a criminal matter, so the rules are different. There's a lot more leeway in civil law.
Now consider that they're still lobbying.
That is their right. It's also your right to lobby against them. Do you vote? Do you write letters to your representatives? Do you do anything to support the EFF? If you don't like what's going on, do something about it.
Currently, the laws that govern this kind of behavior are the result of some of the most intense lobbying ever. They're over
But this was in response to the grandparent, who suggested that the original article's author simply needed to use "mp3burn -o 'dev=x,x,x speed=XX' *mp"--so I guess he hasn't used Linux much, either. And it was in response to that suggestion that I was commenting.
In that context I certainly agree. As for him not using Linux much, well, I didn't say I don't use CLI, quite the contrary, I said that I had yet to encounter anything I needed to do in Linux that could only be done in CLI.
Well, that's not entirely true. To my knowledge there is no GUI equivalent to the pipe, and that in itself is a pretty solid arguement for the CLI. Still, though, as far as accomplishing a task it's totally possible to do all your Linux stuff in a GUI, though doing it through the CLI is often easier/faster, provided you take the time to learn how to read man pages (reading them is a skill, and once you have it they are incredibly useful).
Not according to the Google Zeitgeist. I will concede it's not a perfect tool for measuring desktop usage--but can you offer a better one?
No, I can't, as it's not something I'm generally interested in. However, there have been several reports in the last couple of years that have variously put Linux above or below Mac in terms of desktop marketshare. In such situations I generally assume that the truth is somewhere in the middle, which would put Mac and Linux roughly equal.
And trust me, Mac users have as much reason to forge their UA as do Linux users; it just may be a little more difficult, but still quite possible.
This may be true, but Apple markets its products to a much less tech-savvy crowd than Linux, so I think it's much less likely that a Mac user will do so than a Linux user.
As for myself, I've never forged my UA and it's never cause me a problem, so frankly I don't see why there's a percieved need to do this at all.
Does Linux have an IDE that will quickly and painlessly bolt GUIs onto CLI tools?
Linux does have several tools for doing this. The Qt and GNOME toolkits come to mind, and of course TCL/TK and wxWindows, and a few more I'm sure. How quick or painless they might be I don't know, as I've never used any of them. All my programming has been strictly CLI oriented so far, though in my defense I've yet to write anything I deem good enough to release to the outside world.
With it, the next time someone says "you just need to type foo with flag -RvgT (but not capital V!) the very next poster can link to his GUI tool that's a frontend to the suggestion, and 10x as many people will use it, including your grandma.
Agreed!
Of course I don't expect anyone to be perfact, but I do expect them to be aware of their limitations and try to account/compensate for them.
The critical issue with Windows security is that Windows is insecure by design. The root causes of many of it's holes are billed as features. Linux and BSD don't suffer from this.
I'm not arguing that FOSS is 100% secure, I think we can both agree that's impossible. I AM arguing that FOSS is MORE SECURE than Windows due to fundamental design decisions and support philosophy. Microsoft admits that there are fundamental security flaws in Windows which can only be fixed by a complete redesign of the system, and in the same breath implied that it wasn't going to happen. Linus, on the other hand, has proven that he's perfectly willing to rip out and replace whole systems, even in the "stable" kernel, if he sees a need to do so.
As for keeping things updated, Linux wins again. The MS update system is simply inconvenient, and that in itself is a barrier to it's use. Even at work, where updates are automatically pushed to my Windows machine, I still lose probably 30-45 minutes of productive time per week to reboots and clicking "OK" on pointless pop-up message boxes, AND on top of that I had to be given local Admin status for many of those patches to even install properly, so even keeping things properly updated entails some otherwise unnecessary security risk.
Contrast this with my several Linux systems where keeping up-to-date is a truely automatic, BACKGROUND process, requiring no user interaction at all. The only time I've lost to updates on Linux is the time I occasionally take to check the logs and make sure that it is infact downloading and installing patches. AND, since Linux is a real multiuser OS, it's perfectly capable of applying patches without a superuser logged in. (caveat: I only use Suse, but there's no reason any other Linux system couldn't be the same)
When all of this is taken into consideration it seems pretty obvious that the statement that Linux is just as insecure as Windows is just plain stupid.
Think about it: The time it takes people who use an MS infra-structure to port what they have over to the new MS infra-structure... couldn't that have been used to port it to say... a Unix based one? Really, it can be done. Better uptimes, few if any worms or virii... and depending on what version of the OS you choose, free upgrades and quality support from the online community.
Hell, if you MUST run some critical app on windows, why not run it inside of a virtual machine? Time to upgrade hardware? Just install the Unix os and then copy over the virtual machine image. Bam... hardware upgraded with only a few minutes of downtime. License keys are happy, software runs in the "same" environment, just faster.
This isn't always a viable option. I use a custom app for programming firmware on a product I support which needs to run on win9x because it has to have direct access to the parallel port and NIC. I suspect a Think about it: The time it takes people who use an MS infra-structure to port what they have over to the new MS infra-structure... couldn't that have been used to port it to say... a Unix based one? Really, it can be done. Better uptimes, few if any worms or virii... and depending on what version of the OS you choose, free upgrades and quality support from the online community.
Hell, if you MUST run some critical app on windows, why not run it inside of a virtual machine? Time to upgrade hardware? Just install the Unix os and then copy over the virtual machine image. Bam... hardware upgraded with only a few minutes of downtime. License keys are happy, software runs in the "same" environment, just faster. I suspect it wouldn't work on a virtual machine for the same reason it won't work on winnt: hardware abstraction.
As for porting it, it's just not worth it. Certainly, everyone involved with it understands the value of FOSS, all the human interface for the thing is done with Linux, but the worldwide market for the product is at most 300 units.
In general I agree with you, but my point is that there are circumstances where it just doesn't make sense to even think about ditching MS.
Slashdot is THE main way that Linux manages to eat away at productivity. (even when I'm at a windows box)
Yeah, but that's PEBKAC, not a problem with the system.
Now, move all your non-tech savy users over to linux and let everyone know that you have.
What you would find is linux being hit just as hard as windows in the worm/spyware category.
That's a nice theory, but it falls down when it meets reality.
I moved all my non-tech savvy users (my entire family) to Linux, and Linux has most definately NOT been hit just as hard in the worm/spyware category. In fact, it hasn't been hit at all.
Can a windows system be just as secure as a linux system? Sure it can, you just need to do the setup right.
And that is exactly my point: on Windows you need to be tech savvy AND willing spend the time doing the research to find and plug all the little holes. On Linux, I've never had to think about it.
As long as that is the mindset of your average user (by average, I mean overall average, not average by OS), then whichever OS has the majority of users will be the "least" secure, and have the most worms and spyware.
You're right about this, but for the wrong reasons. The most popular OS isn't insecure because it's used by more average users, it's insecure because it's targeted more often. You say there is just as much of a worm/spyware problem on Linux, but where are they? I've only ever heard of one worm on Linux, and I've never heard of Linux spyware.
Regardless of the reason, the simple fact is that Linux IS more secure, even for the average user! It's foolish not to take advantage of that fact.
Good thing you never have to patch linux to keep it secure and up to date, right? I don't get why all the linux people are always acting like you just install it and its set for the rest of its lifecycle.
I honestly don't know how many patches Linux needs compared to Windows since I run Suse. Suse's YOU (Yast Online Update) can be set up for TRUE automatic operation, and by automatic I mean it doesn't bug me with pop-up message windows telling me what it's doing, and it hasn't yet told me I needed to reboot "for these changes to take effect." It's a true automatic background process.
There's no reason any other distro couldn't be the same.
But until Linux is able to be run for day to day operation without the use of the CLI at all it will not gain mass marketshare acceptance.
I use Linux exclusively at home, and I can't remember the last time I've had to use the CLI for day to day stuff. There are distros, such as Suse, that are already "there" in this regard.
Seriously, when I read comments like this I think "What was the last Linux you used, Red Hat 5?"
Now, maybe Linux doesn't want to be as "dumbed down" as OS X--fine...Either live with niche desktop usage, or change the way the apps work so that no CLI is required.
Was this intentionally ironic? You are aware that Linux and Mac have a roughly equal share of the desktop market, aren't you?
No software that's installed by default, and in fact, almost no software that wasn't originally Unix based, uses the CLI as a primary tool of interaction.
For desktop use that's great. For more "serious" use scripting is key, and you lose too much of that when you go to a primarily GUI oriented model. It's far easier to slap a GUI frontend on a CLI app than the other way around. If all you're targeting is the desktop that's probably irrelevant, but if your intent is to be a serious contender in servers or embedded, it's a way better idea to do it the way it's being done on Linux.