The "small cheap box" for ARM hardware means different things to different audiences.
Back in the 80's, the IBM PC was the definition of a small cheap box albeit it cost around 5,000$CAN. Enough to run some apps for work and some games for the kids. Then IBM PC Clones/Compatibles came along and started to redefine what small and what cheap meant. We could get decent capabillity equivalent to the what IBM was currently selling but at a fraction of the cost if we were willing to take a risk on lesser known brand names. GATEWAY, DELL, and the every other PC Compatible reseller were easily able to sell their kit since everybody out there had no computer whatsoever at home and thought they could use one, but didn't know what exactly to get yet. $UCKER was written on everyone's forehead back then.
Now everybody's a bit wiser and have a bunch of different pc's laptops and crazy reseller/support stories under our belts. We don't buy quite as often and try to make them last as long as possible.
So with all that in mind, when we buy something, we buy with the intent that it will last and not just for two years which is what the resellers sweet spot is.
I bought a few "small cheap ARM boards"...rock64, odroid-c2, zoomtak u-plus....4GB RAM or 2GB RAM in them. The speed of them is respectable. The RAM capacity does not compare with intel-based low-end gaming pc's. The storage capacity for arm boards also suffer and does not compare well in the general sense. Can I easily plunk in an m.2, sata into one of these arm boards? No I can't because all the varieties of all these different arm boards are so ALL-OVER-THE-PLACE in terms of offerings that they don't consistently offer the same kind of storage in all these devices and you can't expect anything easy when you shop around for "small cheap arm box" because they don't compare well to "small cheap intel gaming box" which better defines the "small cheap box" since it easily handles the load for SOHO and you teenager gaming requirements.
In other words, Linux is right. ARM won't win in the server space because it needs to conquer or at least compete in the work at home space first before it can have an opportunity to work as a server on-site or in the clouds for that matter. Working at home for me means 32GB RAM with 8+ cores CPU and GPU with newer sata/m.2 storage options like ssd/nvme and fiber included. No arm board at present provides that at a decent price. I'm not looking for a 25$ to a 50$ system. I'm looking more for the average $1000 to 2000$ GAMING desktop that could also be a SOHO office. ARM manufacturers don't have standards to make such a thing happen. most motherboards for pc's can handle most of that with the default price except for fiber capability. The ARM-based MACCHIATOBIN board is darn close, but it needed a default GPU to come with it to make it more general purpose rather than just for networking, but did it conform to the new server boot standard ? How come it can just handle 16GB RAM when any supermicro intel-based server motherboard can have 512GB to 1TB RAM installed on them?? The price points for these are awesome by the way. I have yet to see comparable ARM capability without sacrificing something or paying 6-10 times the price.
Having a new server boot standard for ARM is good, but we need similar standards for smaller boards also. We shouldn't be arguing about graphics drivers for linux at this point. They should come included for every distro be it ARM or intel or riscv without any discussion that it will crap out in production. Works at home means works on the servers....ARM-based SOHOs small cheap boxes and servers need decent GPU capability right from the start and not as extra option you have to pay for...It should be included as it usually is when you buy a PC desktop system.
Huawei and their Kirin SOC's are awesome. I plan to buy a SBC built with SOC similar to their MATE 20 Pro for Linux when they become available.
Consumer freedoms are hampered by listening to all this USA economic intervention. The small guys lose in this scenario with less product variety. No. I won't accept this. Canada should not heed to this request.
I have consistently purchased Google Nexus phones because I can unlock them if they aren't. I also want alternative operating systems not necessarily Android. Ubuntu Touch on my Nexus 5 from the ubports has been a good experience for me lately athough sometimes I do miss all those other apps around in the Google Play Store. I was actually considering to buy a Huawei Android phone for my next purchase because they are feature-full.
If I cannot unlock my potential phone, that implies I won't be purchasing said phone. I guess I'll be sticking to those phones that are directly supported from Google either Pixel 2 or Pixel 3.
Yes, the Ariane 5 did self-destruct as instructed in the software which was running on redundant hardware. Because ultimately, it was the software that made the decision to self-destruct. No human in the loop and BANG. It leaves no room for corrective course of action from any human experts. http://www.nytimes.com/1996/12... "When the guidance system shut down, it passed control to an identical, redundant unit, which was there to provide backup in case of just such a failure. But the second unit had failed in the identical manner a few milliseconds before. It was running the same software."
Back to SpaceX and their auto-self-destruct without any humans in the loop to save cash by giving the illusion that they don't have to employ military personnel to babysit spacex launches. The topic up for debate here is "human reaction time envelope" as the rationale for delegating all responsibility to correct/self-destruct to the hardware/software system. The other topic for debate is should any country trust a corporation to launch stuff into without any monitoring/intervention capability allocated into the budget? SpaceX is giving the sales pitch that they will be saving the company money and saving government tax dollars by asking the U.S. and other countries to trust them. Should we? Should we trust SpaceX software/hardware engineers will have done a correct impact analysis on everything? Not to be bleak here, but engineers were also responsible for impact analysis of nuclear power plants/offshore-drilling stations for which the world is still paying for to clean up.
Bottom Line: we need humans in the loop and government intervention in order to force the greatest of deliberation on matters that do not distinguish borders.
I'm over 50 years old and have seen Microsoft dominate and used every tactic to stay there. As RMS said, this is yet another tactic by Microsoft to cloak its true goal to extinguish GNU/Linux. Lots of Microserfs will say the opposite because it's in their intere$ts. GNU/Linux and associated Digital freedoms are not about placing Micro$oft's interests first. It's disappointing to see Canonical becoming complicit with Microsoft at this extraordinary level as to let them into the GNU/Linux kernel, the core of everything GNU/Linux. It's also a great way to destroy GNU/Linux currently superior performance to ensure Windows has the best benchmarks effectively giving Microsoft the green light to more profit.
I for one would never use this Microsoft/Canonical kernel and will be sticking to the Non-Microsoft stuff. I would love to see what Linus Torvalds has to say about this. Which one is more important: Keeping Microsoft #1 or Digital Freedom?
This article certainly does not reflect what I perceive are the best distros and certainly does not elaborate or go far enough to compare the different capabilities with an extended list of other distros in a matrix.
For me, the proposed comparison criteria would be: -user able to create customized live thumb image with a reasonable amount of time -user able to update the packages quickly and easily -user able to find packages of interest quickly and easily -user able to create own packages quickly and easily -desktop agnostic. No default desktop. Users must choose themselves which one they want. -user documentation up-to-date enough to most relevant and trending Linux Distros issues: security configuration for server and non-server alike, desktop, printer, network, filesystems, media player softwares, peer-to-peer softwares, digital-freedom and anonymity.
Arch IMHO is the best. It covers the above with archiso, pacman, yaourt, kde/gnome/other desktops, archwiki covers how to make packages easily and make them available through "Arch User Repositories"(AUR) and installing them through yaourt. b2im tool for manjaro was the closest and fastest way to customize a thumb-image, but lacked support for customizing an image with AUR packages. archiso can be customized with AUR packages. http://www.xcfa.tuxfamily.org/...
Debian Sid is equivalent, but I have classified it as second-best because it takes more time to create & customize a live thumb image especially with an extra persistent partition on the thumb itself. It should be straightforward to do and yet it still is not straightforward to do. live-build takes more than a couple of weeks to customize and it is complex procedure to succeed with both bios and uefi.
Antergos and Manjaro were inspired from Arch. Parrot, Backtrack, Kali, Ubuntu were inspired from Debian BUT ARE NOT DEBIAN. Dare I say a LINUX DISTRO is like a food to be prepared and consumed. If that is the case, which would you prefer depends on your personality. If you prefer to prepare your food yourself, you will go to a grocery store with fresh, unprocessed food products(i.e. Arch/Debian/Fedora), but if you are in a hurry/tired then you could possibly prefer something prepared for you(i.e. Redhat, Ubuntu, Parrot, Kali, Manjaro, Antergos.)
I wouldn't impose my opinion on others to use a particular distro, but I am of the opinion everyone would be healthier by preparing/using the fresh produce and straight from the source: Arch, Debian, Fedora. When you go with the faster food(i.e. Redhat, Ubuntu, Parrot, Kali, Manjaro, Antergos) there are always consequences/constraints, less-recent packages, vendor-lock-in/"take or leave it".
Smalltalk "Object-Oriented" versus C++ "Object-Oriented" versus golang types versus other languages? It's not that simple a question really.
We all use some programming languages and related grammar mechanisms to get some sense of a solution delivered. Smalltalk may be valid as an OO language, but I recall why I did not adopt it as my primary tool when it was first introduced. Crazy expensive!!! Software price to acquire it was more exclusive than other offerings. GUI apis within the ide were text-based not Windows-based which wasn't impressive compared to existing X-Window/Unix offerings with C/C++ at the time. Documentation for it was a well-kept secret behind a paywall so there wasn't any motivation for anyone to learn it even if they didn't have the means to acquire it. GNU smalltalk only appeared much later, but no killer open-source apps surfaced that used it and smalltalk didn't attract other developers to consider using by being inspired by example source code. Not enough useful sample source code out in the wild as open-source.
As an example of a killer open-source app with a great influence for developers to flock to it: bittorrent which uses python and gtk for the gui api.
As another example of another killer open-source app with a great influence for developers to flock to it: docker which uses golang(Google Go) and virtual machine & virtualization apis. golang is my go-to programming language to get things done these days. I prefer it over c++ or java every day of the week. golang lacks UML round-trip tools found in c++ and java, but developers are still flocking to it for certain niche purposes at the moment, but eventually the depth and breadth of the golang offerings will match everything found in c++/java.
Ultimately, if a proposed programming language tool isn't open-source and free and run on every piece of existing hardware by default, it will never fly and SMALLTALK did not fly. It crashed and burned.
I agree and would like to re-enforce this with a concrete example that recently occurred. I completed a first phase of an appliance using golang and it has been straightforward to design and implement. The second phase however needs a more enlightened view of the design from which I can quickly iterate behaviour and structure changes. I prefer UML collaboration/communication diagrams for such refactoring considering the grown file count and lines of code involved. My brain can only remember so much in one shot so these CASE tools become essential after a while for me. I have failed to find a decent UML modeler tool for golang. There are no golang round-trip engineering UML CASE tools out there. Plantuml was very close, but lacked golang support and does not have collaboration/communication diagram capability. In tools like Rational and Visual Paradigm you can flip the view from sequential diagram to communication diagram, but layout tweaking is always necessary to better reflect the designer's vision of the behaviour/structure of a system/subsystem.
A lack of good tools slows our ability to improve systems. Time is precious. Golang is a great language, but some of its surrounding toolset to accelerate everybody's ability to maintain and build larger more complex systems are lacking and in this particular case golang lacks UML support. You can still achieve a great deal, but when communicating larger more complex systems to a team greater than one person, you need tools to communicate your proposed maintenance/requirements/use case changes effectively and UML for golang would be exactly that. I'm sure prodigies will state that "if you're missing the tool, just create it yourself". If a tool can be created within a reasonable time-frame by myself, I would. UML/CASE tools aren't something I can build over a week or weekend.
For those discussing php, even php doesn't have UML/CASE tools that provide round-trip engineering for it which constrains it to be used for smaller systems. C++ and Java both have strong UML/CASE round-trip engineering support, but aren't as enjoyable to work with on smaller projects in my humble opinion. Smaller projects usually grow to involve more that one person and that's where UML/CASE tools shine.
Going back to the original question are the flawed languages creating bad software? The languages themselves might not be entirely flawed, but as we are human and are certainly flawed, we need support to prevent/warn us we are mistaken as early as possible before our handicrafts reach production. UML/CASE helps us to clarify or perception of the behaviour/structure to others within a team. If there is no team or UML/CASE or decent tools surrounding the programming language, there is a higher probability things will get out of hand because of the inability to transfer the knowledge of the system away from the original creator of the system.
Perhaps the wind and precipitation levels and disrupt the ability to measure the actual emitted pollutions in the regions, but my personal experience going to China varied. I was able to live happily there for 3 years and my immune system slowly deteriorated to the point had coughs, sore throats, ear aches and ultimately constant sinus congestion. The locals that live there adapted by eating various foods and intaking known remedies to allow them to cope, but everyone would agree there are overcast(low stratus cloud) days we all feel like zombies and everyone is suffering. I recently returned to China for a two-week vacation in Changchun, for roughly half the trip I was bed-ridden because of pollution-related and jetlag. Perhaps it's just because I'm getting older and my body can't take it as much, but as soon as I returned back to Canada, everything cleared up in a week or so and I was healthy again.
I appreciate all this research about those polluted cities. It's certainly progress to help these polluted cities in order for everyone to not cope, but to enjoy healthy lives. I believe a great number of people don't have the courage to speak up about this issue mainly because many believe "that's life...live with it" and don't try to fix it. People are more productive when they have their good health; it's in their interest to fix this problem.
Options 1, 2, 3 may seem reasonable, but when there is no open-source that is adequate, it is an opportunity for those who want it to make it happen within open-source. Identifying the missing feature is important and crowdsourcing that feature request among other like-minded individuals seems to be working.
You're absolutely right about "When you don't have possession of the object code either and can't even choose to stay with the version you liked, you well and truly have no freedom." Here is an example of having no freedom to stay with a certain version of the binaries as stated by Trevor Pott which I respect a great deal for his lucidity and ability to to express it: 1)microsoft office tool bar changed to ribbon bar when nobody wanted it breaking the original agreement of service. 2)microsoft "unlimited one drive" cloud storage to "limited 5GB one drive" cloud storage breaking the original agreement of service. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2... This isn't just Microsoft. This the big 5 software and the big 5 telecom not listening to their customers. This is the big 5 software and big 5 telecom simply saying "take it or leave it" attitude/approach with their customers. You can see it in their billing arrangements no pre-paid credit cards accepted. You can see it when you move to different software/telecom providers, the big 5 software/big 5 telecom make it very painful to move. This is about doing everything to take away your digital freedom in subtle ways, preventing competition and preserving their cash cows.
You're absolutely right about "software as a service" being a threat to open-source and digital-freedom. As an example, OFFICE365 is attempting to replace office by offering everything through the web-browser. Oddly enough open365 was released recently. Is open365 entirely opensource? Can we install open365 within the lan? Can we build the open365 binaries ourselves? If so as you said we do preserve our digital freedom.
As for the Linux Advocate promoting non-free software on Linux, I disagree with his point of view because it defeats the purpose of going with an open-source operating system. Non-free software is exactly that NO DIGITAL FREEDOM. There has been a compromise made already, BINARY BLOB hardware drivers especially for cpu/motherboard/graphics cards/network card are have always been present and made available in order to simply use the operating-system, but above that is where the line is drawn. Most software-developers would tend to want to make those binary blobs go away, but for the sake of practicality, many throw in the towel and use those binary blobs. Most gamer fans would tend to throw away the os and run windows to get their games running. Valve Steam is certainly a wonderful entry point for gamers to be introduced to Linux and is acceptable provided it resides in a strict jail ensuring the rest of the normal GNU/Linux software repos remain unaffected by its use and especially the learning and "under-the-hood" "do-it-yourself" aspects of GNU/Linux.
BIG 5 TELECOM ARE THE ONES PLACING THE MOST NON-FREE BINARIES ON YOUR CELL-PHONE/INTERNET INFRASTRUCTURE. IT IS TO THEIR BENEFIT IN PRESERVING THEIR CASH COW, BUT IT CRUSHES INDIVIDUALS' DIGITAL FREEDOM. HOW DID THE BIG 5 TELECOM GET AWAY WITH THAT? "REGULATORY CAPTURE". "Regulatory capture" is another very subtle example of destroying digital freedom through the use of political power. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2... The thing about using non-free software and using the same-old same-old internet service providers means they remain cash cows without any breathing room for "incumbents" or disruptive technology players. The illusion of room for opportunity in those niche markets are there, but the reality is those big 5 software and telecom players in either U.S.A. or any other country just buy out/choke an
Welcome to Capitalism. If there is no money to be made in placing effort to be duly diligent about security, then no effort will be placed. That simple. That's what the SNAFU is in the U.S.A. and in Canada. I can't confirm anywhere else. I'm in a privileged position to influence and have the ear of some decision making clients on these matters, but if it hurts their pocket, they just stick their heads back in the sand and say "la la la I'm not hearing you." I got paid for providing them advice, they get paid to keep the company afloat by making the tough decisions.
Businesses buy hardware known to only be good for a couple of years, but stretch it for 10 maybe 20 years if they can get away with it. Ditto for software PURCHASES. Companies stay afloat by continuously resolving crises rather than preventing them.
A strong percentage of businesses rely on I.T. to manage facilitate their workflow, but that doesn't matter. That's life.
I don't agree with this, but that's the observation about those holding the strings to the money purse.
IF GOVERNMENT REGULATION WOULD IMPOSE SOMETHING THROUGH TAX INCENTIVES TO UPDATE HARDWARE/SOFTWARE PERHAPS CYBERSECURITY WOULD BE DIFFERENT TODAY.
What you call "Pedantic" which means to be "overly concerned with minute details", I call being vigilant towards the subtle hopefully under-the-radar tactics Microsoft attempts to use to "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" GNU/Linux. GNU/Linux represents our best interests with respect, preserve and protect to DIGITAL FREEDOMS. MICROSOFT and CANONICAL in this particular arrangement do not.
To demonstrate this further: 0)Microsoft Windows 10 is not open-source. The part that runs the win64 shell for the MS/Canonical stuff is not open-source either.
1)BUILDING YOUR OWN CUSTOMIZED ISO TO INSTALL YOUR CUSTOMIZED OPERATING SYSTEM: I will assume MS/CANONICAL are not going to port live-build, archiso, buildiso or b2im. These tools are about building custom.iso images that you can build your own bootable thumb drives with. THAT IS DIGITAL FREEDOM. Will these be built to create win64-based CANONICAL iso images with windows 10 included? Let me know when this happens. WHEN HELL FREEZES OVER.
2)BACKWARD COMPATIBILITY/SUPPORT FOR LEGACY OS: Microsoft/CANONICAL do not have the consumers' interests at heart. They have only Microsoft's interests at heart. Their feature has not been demonstrated to work on legacy windows os' nor will Microsoft/Canonical invest any effort towards this. It makes no business sense for them. On the other hand, alternative capability called "MSys2" works on a greater number of Windows OS's NOT JUST Windows 10 in 32-bit and 64-bit. MSys2 behaves exactly the same as ArchLinux with respect to Linux Filesystem Hierarchy, package manager(pacman), compiler tools and GUI API's(GTK/GTKMM).
3)Microsoft's attempt to pollute the open-source code base with win64-only api calls encouraging vendor lock-in. As a result brainshare will increase their efforts/dependency on win64 api calls. That's not in the interest of DIGITAL FREEDOM to encourage or adopt any such thing. 4)Microsoft's attempt to EXTEND the bells and whistles(MOSTLY GUI or PRODUCTIVITY add-ons) with win64-only api calls with their offering further encouraging vendor lock-in. 5)Deliberately missing pieces in the GNU/win64 platform to further encourage/force developers to pay for those missing pieces which they had for free on the regular GNU/LINUX. THAT'S THE HOOK. That's not in the interest of DIGITAL FREEDOM either.
I wouldn't touch this stuff because the behaviour and the entire original offering which is the original GNU/Linux is not exactly the same with respect to preserving your YOUR DIGITAL FREEDOM.
SUMMING IT UP: Don't touch anything to do with Microsoft api's because it leads consumers/developers to a path of contraints/restrictions and vendor lock-in and some kind of Microsoft TAXES ultimately.
You won't find any such taxes within the original GNU/Linux with all its DIGITAL FREEDOMS preserved intact. The original ArchLinux/Debian/Fedora/Suse are what you are looking for. NOT WINDOWS 10.
If I recall correctly, the reason we call our usual distros like Fedora GNU/Linux or Debian GNU/Linux or Arch GNU/Linux is because the GNU part is the userspace stuff and the Linux part is the kernel.
Since the Linux kernel has been replaced with the Microsoft Win64 OS Kernel they could call it "GNU/MS-Win64". There is one huge problem with this. It's the perfect definition of an oxymoron because GNU which in itself is the very definition of Libre Digital Freedom versus the very opposite that is Microsoft vendor restriction, lock-in hiding source code wherever Microsoft sees fit. Note how they haven't released it as open-source yet. Note they haven't released MS-Win64 as open-source yet either.
Consumers beware of Microsoft. I could understand Canonical's position. They're hurting for cash it seems. It reminds me of all the people working for Trump's propaganda machine to for him. They must have been paid a lot of money to help Trump gain so much reddit.com space and along with those paid to throw mud at Trump's opponents. It this case it's Microsoft doing their best to pay money for making Microsoft look like they love Linux when in fact and behind the scenes they are extorting people for patent violations because they are using Linux or using anything not Microsoft-based they haven't paid MS a levy/tariff for. Microsoft also likes to make all the other non-Microsoft affiliated GNU/Linux distros look less appealing by hiring people to throw mud at those non-Microsoft affiliated GNU/Linux distros. After all GNU/Linux is not aligned with Microsoft's ambitions of Canonical UBUNTU/Win64.
I wouldn't recommend anything Microsoft to anyone. That implies I won't recommend GNU/MS-Win64 or Canonical UBUNTU/Win64 to anyone anytime soon. BOTTOM LINE: MICROSOFT IS NOT COOL. GNU/LINUX IS.
More importantly is the impact on lucidity. If you are under the influence of marijuana, odds are your capability to make decisions has been impacted. For example, you're at a party, somebody first offers you some alcohol and you have a drink....LUCIDITY LEVEL DOWN. Then, somebody offers you some marijuana and you inhale...LUCIDITY LEVEL DOWN. Then, somebody offers you something else that's harder, you totally think you're in control, but you want to be friends with all these pretty people so you say what the hell. LUCIDITY LEVEL DOWN TO A POINT WHERE YOUR LIFE IS RUINED BECAUSE THE CRACK/COCAINE/HEROINE YOU JUST INGESTED TOOK OVER YOUR LIFE. Marijuana sales/marketers are certainly behind these articles being published and it exploits the weaknesses of our HUMAN NATURE. I would certainly keep my radar on about these individuals writing about such crap: Nicholas J. Jackson, Joshua D. Isen, Rubin Khoddam, Daniel Irons, Catherine Tuvblad, William G. Iacono, Matt McGue, Adrian Raine, Laura A. Baker. These guys might attempt to write another "twins-study finds no evidence that coffee provides beneficial effect for staying awake and promoting bowel movements". I would prefer to use their articles to wipe my bum after a bowel movement after drinking my coffee.
MORAL OF THE STORY: make your ancestors proud, value your life, keep your lucidity. There is nothing worth your while being around those people offering you so-called poisons legal or not. Go home to your family and thank God you're still alive with your whole head screwed on right. Attempt to contribute to society in meaningful ways.
Lately, I have experience the greatest pain wasting enormous amounts of time flashing installing phones with different versions of Android, then different versions of Ubuntu touch. I also wasted time on small arm-based tv boxes and wanna-be-mini-pc-but-not arm-based boards. They all have something in common: kernel updates seem to require entire re-installs on their internal memory in order for them to behave as expected. THE BIGGEST PROBLEM is there are no consistent generic vanilla flavor kernels that run on all these small-form factor devices/boards making the updates and security/privacy a nightmare because these ARM-SOC manufacturers are not diligent about providing an easy to upgrade without re-install for ANDROID or GNU / Linux. ALL OF THEM HAVE DIFFERENT KERNELS. ALL OF THEM REQUIRE A DIFFERENT BUILD RECIPE WHICH IN MY EXPERIENCE HAVE ALL FAILED TO BUILD because of their entirely different build requirement personalities.
UNTIL ALL THE ARM DEVICE MANUFACTURERS GET THEIR ACT TOGETHER, I'M GOING TO CONTINUE BUYING INTEL/AMD DEVICES NOT ONLY FOR DESKTOP AND SERVER, BUT START BUYING INTEL/AMD FOR INTERNET OF THINGS DEVICES BECAUSE THEY SUPPORT GNU/LINUX AND EASILY UPGRADE WITHOUT RE-INSTALLING THE ENTIRE SYSTEM. For the sake of security, it's the only sane thing to do, otherwise you will be at risk and you will be exposed to present and upcoming ARM security vulnerabilities and the "take it or leave it" attitude that arm-based manufacturers have.
There is one excepion I have respect for Applied Micro ARM-based stuff is server quality, but VERY EXPENSIVE and in a different market. At the opposite side of the spectrum: ROCKCHIP has a lot of work to do to make me buy their hardware and recommend it to others.
Re: systemd is one reason not to use Debian.
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Kali Linux 2.0 Released
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I use Debian unstable. It's wonderful with gnome and where necessary lxde is good too. Kali 2.0 on USB 3.0 boots up fast on 2 laptops, a server and desktop I tried. Intel and and CPUs. Systemd is looking good IMHO. The only problems I have are building Kali images for amd64 and armhf myself. It didn't build successfully for me. This points to some rough spots live-build. I'm also experiencing live-build pain directly on two boards armhf with ROCKCHIP. More docs and support from Rockchip directly would be nice.
Microsoft is the Anti-Christ. This tool does not benefit the community. Using gcc/c++ benefits the community. Using Mono only benefits Microsoft because that encourages everyone to try Mono and then the developers end of feeling limited on the Linux MONO IDE because it is deliberately crippled with less bells and whistles than the MICROSOFT WINDOWS-BASED.NET IDE.
The bottom-line long-term strategy for Microsoft is to suck money out of developers pockets on an ongoing basis. Their agenda about Linux was revealed years ago with the "halloween papers" their real strategy was "Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt" towards Linux;"Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" Linux. For as long as Linux afficionados remain vigilant, that's not going to happen if Linux developers continue to use gcc/g++. I clearly recommend ignoring all Microsoft offerings on an eternal basis. I look forward to the day that Microsoft is irrelevant in the software domain. Move on. Nothing to see here.
GENERAL RULE OF THUMB: NEVER ALLOW REMOTE ACCESS TO THE ROUTERS. ONLY PHYSICAL ACCESS DIRECTLY IS THE BETTER APPROACH. In Canada, when you use a vdsl2 modem, it usually needs to be a BELL provided modem. The default password is something BELL provides to you to connect to their network. The wifi access/router access password can be changed yes.
Where problems arise that I have noticed recently are local wifi-hackers ddos'ing not only BELL vdsl2 modem wifi access points, but also if you have a bridged modem after that providing other wifi access points, then those wifi-hackers will ddos those also. I goes without saying, there is more than ddos'ing happening here. I wasn't really curious enough to sniff the actual traffic, but once I turned off both the bell wifi access point and the bridged modem's wifi access point, problems went away and the bandwidth and expected responsive connection behaviour was back to normal. If you really need wifi, turn it on for the limited time that you need it rather than all the time. That will minimize the attack surface.
Sure there are parameters for defending against ddos, separate vlans per user, etc, BUT firewalls on each computer on the lan is what really matters the most. ADOBE FLASH is the biggest virus injector of them all. I'm happy Youtube doesn't use it anymore. I hope the other web sites get rid of ADOBE FLASH also. There is no reason not to use open-source streaming servers like flumotion and encoders like ffmpeg/theora. daala video is coming soon I hope.
I didn't specifically say it would displace GM. I didn't specifically say open-source software. I said a similar pattern of open-source arriving within the parts manufacturing "community" in the form of "Do Ii Yourself"(DIY) and possibly labeled in the same GNU/LINUX family in order for it to be easily recognizable as protecting individuals freedoms to hack software/hardware to their personalized or desired general-purpose. "MAKER" or DIY actually already are certainly the same side as the GNU perspective but typically deal with smaller scale things, but there is nothing there to constrain gear-heads/makers/DIY crowds to push the envelope to include cars/car-parts/trucks/planes/etc...
With respect to GM specifically, being that you asked. They let go many of their I.T. consultants when they downsized. There definitely was a brain-drain moving away from GM. There will be market change as a consequence. It will eventually impact GM. It's a good bet some of the Ex-GM employees would embrace the DIY/MAKER tech because it does indeed have a disruptive potential enough to give their ex-employer the finger.
Nice word "black swan". The old-boys club of car manufacturing would like to brain-wash everyone with the concept no small team could ever disrupt their industry, but that's false. All you need is a core team of smart gear-heads that believe in "open-source" to catalyze with easy to reproduce recipes for all the different parts necessary to make some kind of vanilla general-purpose car/suv/truck. Everyone including gear-head special-interest groups want DIY car-building to happen because we need more affordable alternatives. How and who make it happen does matter and it will happen. If the old-boys club of car manufacturing allowed this to happen and actually spurred its growth at least they could make it a win-win for all parties concerned. Otherwise given time the old-boys club of car manufacturing will just end up extinct like the dinosaurs.
Another device with mobile characteristics disrupted the industry: Mobile phones, first with Android, then with Ubuntu Touch on it. The next iteration will be with GNU/Linux Desktop on it.
I envision a similar pattern of events will happen with cars eventually with GNU/Linux Desktop on them, but highly affordable and configurable.
"If Google wants Android users to all be up to date they need to take a standard distro like Fedora or Debian and make it run its own window manager which is Android and its GUI. They need to get vendors to focus on upstreaming their changes and maintaining high quality code."
I agree about taking a standard distro like Fedora or Debian. I agree about the manufacturers/vendors complying to upstream their changes to the standard distro and even before the product ships. The desktop linux emulator should be able to just run it without manufacturer-specific tools akin to usb hard-drives or usb speakers. I disagree with Android's GUI/Window Manager because it's api doesn't comply with standard desktop Fedora/Debian Gnome window-manager api's. In fact as you said GOOGLE rewrote the entire binary building process exclusively for java-friendly apis deliberately for dare I say vendor-lockin. Some people would call it innovation. I call it stupidity because it is a total rewrite with no effort to directly reuse all the experience from C/C++ except for the magic reserved exclusively for the NDK/JNI experts. If you need something custom requiring extra peripherals in Android, there is no way a user can achieve this with just the "ANDROID SDK". They have to contact the NDK/JNI experts. If the GUI had been developed entirely in C/C++ using the standard APIs or with new touch-enabling additions now available in standard Fedora/Debian, then any C/C++ developer can directly access a wanted feature and use it withour requiring some NDK/JNI expert. The other advantage of using the standard Fedora/Debian distro is that everyday, there are new programming languages introduced special bindings to interface with old style c libs which means they are not contrained to simply C/C++ nor just java. A relevant example is golang with gtk3 bindings, mongodb database bindings. Getting masochistic, golang now has qml bindings(go-qml) which actually run on ubuntu touch but there is talk to attempt to run it on android also. The android golang with go-qml is a real-headache. There are success stories about c/C++ with qt on android, but again it is highly masochistic because there are required java building tools in the mix i.e. ant/javac although the entire app should be in c/c++.
Ubuntu Touch/Phone is the future, but they need to bring down that 2-second delay when loading any of the apps. Apart from that every app once up is actually more responsive than Android. i.e. Youtube runs better on Ubuntu Touch on my Nexus 4 than it did on Android 4/5 with the bluetooth on. That's quite impressive considering wifi, bluetooth, intensive network bandwidth, high-resolution video are all being used at the same time for this all with a standard GNU/Linux under-the-hood. Hats off to Canonical Ubuntu for this. Running a lil'debi chroot in Android is impressive too, but slow since it is running along side android and unable to occupy all the device ram as android can. It's pretty cool to try it, but pointless if you want a Debian Gnome gui on your phone because that capability isn't available yet. That's the number one item on my wish list: DEBIAN GNOME GNU/LInux with touch on my phone because Android simply doesn't fulfill my digital freedom requirements.
Yes, English is by far the most practical and easiest to write in because Chinese and Japanese with their bombardment of characters to learn to write and pronounce requires too much time and discipline to master. Korean I am told is simpler. The grammars for Chinese, Japanese and Korean are simpler than English and Latin languages. That explains why there are so many people that speak Chinese/Japanese, but it doesn't necessarily mean that everyone likes to write in these languages. In fact both my wife and mother-in-law seem to avoid writing Chinese or English anything altogether. I can vouch French writing is a big PITA all because the elders of the French Academy decided to make it so. I won't assume anything about Italian and Spanish, but would love to hear if it's also a big PITA to write in those languages.
Perhaps if romanized pinyin/hangul-romaja/Katakana-Hiragana merged together and China/Japan/Korea adopted that rather than writing in traditional characters, they're vocabularies and grammars could potentially overtake English as the most popular language on the planet.
Why place so much effort on according stuff with special suffixes everywhere when writing just to conform to traditional discipline and cultural norms? The world itself has bigger problems to focus its efforts on than emanating correct spelling and aesthetically beautiful writing. It is true computers help us with these spelling/aesthetics problems, but shouldn't it be a priority to get everyone one the planet to understand each other in order to unite rather than oppress? We all have thoughts to express about the world regardless of spelling and aesthetics aptitudes.
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The "small cheap box" for ARM hardware means different things to different audiences.
Back in the 80's, the IBM PC was the definition of a small cheap box albeit it cost around 5,000$CAN. Enough to run some apps for work and some games for the kids. Then IBM PC Clones/Compatibles came along and started to redefine what small and what cheap meant. We could get decent capabillity equivalent to the what IBM was currently selling but at a fraction of the cost if we were willing to take a risk on lesser known brand names. GATEWAY, DELL, and the every other PC Compatible reseller were easily able to sell their kit since everybody out there had no computer whatsoever at home and thought they could use one, but didn't know what exactly to get yet. $UCKER was written on everyone's forehead back then.
Now everybody's a bit wiser and have a bunch of different pc's laptops and crazy reseller/support stories under our belts. We don't buy quite as often and try to make them last as long as possible.
So with all that in mind, when we buy something, we buy with the intent that it will last and not just for two years which is what the resellers sweet spot is.
I bought a few "small cheap ARM boards"...rock64, odroid-c2, zoomtak u-plus....4GB RAM or 2GB RAM in them. The speed of them is respectable. The RAM capacity does not compare with intel-based low-end gaming pc's. The storage capacity for arm boards also suffer and does not compare well in the general sense. Can I easily plunk in an m.2, sata into one of these arm boards? No I can't because all the varieties of all these different arm boards are so ALL-OVER-THE-PLACE in terms of offerings that they don't consistently offer the same kind of storage in all these devices and you can't expect anything easy when you shop around for "small cheap arm box" because they don't compare well to "small cheap intel gaming box" which better defines the "small cheap box" since it easily handles the load for SOHO and you teenager gaming requirements.
In other words, Linux is right. ARM won't win in the server space because it needs to conquer or at least compete in the work at home space first before it can have an opportunity to work as a server on-site or in the clouds for that matter. Working at home for me means 32GB RAM with 8+ cores CPU and GPU with newer sata/m.2 storage options like ssd/nvme and fiber included. No arm board at present provides that at a decent price. I'm not looking for a 25$ to a 50$ system. I'm looking more for the average $1000 to 2000$ GAMING desktop that could also be a SOHO office. ARM manufacturers don't have standards to make such a thing happen. most motherboards for pc's can handle most of that with the default price except for fiber capability. The ARM-based MACCHIATOBIN board is darn close, but it needed a default GPU to come with it to make it more general purpose rather than just for networking, but did it conform to the new server boot standard ? How come it can just handle 16GB RAM when any supermicro intel-based server motherboard can have 512GB to 1TB RAM installed on them?? The price points for these are awesome by the way. I have yet to see comparable ARM capability without sacrificing something or paying 6-10 times the price.
Having a new server boot standard for ARM is good, but we need similar standards for smaller boards also. We shouldn't be arguing about graphics drivers for linux at this point. They should come included for every distro be it ARM or intel or riscv without any discussion that it will crap out in production. Works at home means works on the servers....ARM-based SOHOs small cheap boxes and servers need decent GPU capability right from the start and not as extra option you have to pay for...It should be included as it usually is when you buy a PC desktop system.
This screws up all Canadian relations with Canada. Stop this. Release Ms. Meng.
Whatever beefs China has with the U.S.A. should be left between them.
Trumps ways of improving China - U.S.A. relations are terrible. It's going to hurt all countries concerned rather than helping them.
Have you heard that there are toilet bowl cleaners with Trumps head on them now? Made in Canada as of today.
Huawei and their Kirin SOC's are awesome. I plan to buy a SBC built with SOC similar to their MATE 20 Pro for Linux when they become available.
Consumer freedoms are hampered by listening to all this USA economic intervention. The small guys lose in this scenario with less product variety. No. I won't accept this. Canada should not heed to this request.
I have consistently purchased Google Nexus phones because I can unlock them if they aren't. I also want alternative operating systems not necessarily Android. Ubuntu Touch on my Nexus 5 from the ubports has been a good experience for me lately athough sometimes I do miss all those other apps around in the Google Play Store. I was actually considering to buy a Huawei Android phone for my next purchase because they are feature-full.
If I cannot unlock my potential phone, that implies I won't be purchasing said phone. I guess I'll be sticking to those phones that are directly supported from Google either Pixel 2 or Pixel 3.
Yes, the Ariane 5 did self-destruct as instructed in the software which was running on redundant hardware. Because ultimately, it was the software that made the decision to self-destruct. No human in the loop and BANG. It leaves no room for corrective course of action from any human experts.
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/12...
"When the guidance system shut down, it passed control to an identical, redundant unit, which was there to provide backup in case of just such a failure. But the second unit had failed in the identical manner a few milliseconds before. It was running the same software."
Back to SpaceX and their auto-self-destruct without any humans in the loop to save cash by giving the illusion that they don't have to employ military personnel to babysit spacex launches.
The topic up for debate here is "human reaction time envelope" as the rationale for delegating all responsibility to correct/self-destruct to the hardware/software system.
The other topic for debate is should any country trust a corporation to launch stuff into without any monitoring/intervention capability allocated into the budget? SpaceX is giving the sales pitch that they will be saving the company money and saving government tax dollars by asking the U.S. and other countries to trust them. Should we? Should we trust SpaceX software/hardware engineers will have done a correct impact analysis on everything? Not to be bleak here, but engineers were also responsible for impact analysis of nuclear power plants/offshore-drilling stations for which the world is still paying for to clean up.
Bottom Line: we need humans in the loop and government intervention in order to force the greatest of deliberation on matters that do not distinguish borders.
I'm over 50 years old and have seen Microsoft dominate and used every tactic to stay there. As RMS said, this is yet another tactic by Microsoft to cloak its true goal to extinguish GNU/Linux. Lots of Microserfs will say the opposite because it's in their intere$ts. GNU/Linux and associated Digital freedoms are not about placing Micro$oft's interests first. It's disappointing to see Canonical becoming complicit with Microsoft at this extraordinary level as to let them into the GNU/Linux kernel, the core of everything GNU/Linux. It's also a great way to destroy GNU/Linux currently superior performance to ensure Windows has the best benchmarks effectively giving Microsoft the green light to more profit.
I for one would never use this Microsoft/Canonical kernel and will be sticking to the Non-Microsoft stuff. I would love to see what Linus Torvalds has to say about this. Which one is more important: Keeping Microsoft #1 or Digital Freedom?
This article certainly does not reflect what I perceive are the best distros and certainly does not elaborate or go far enough to compare the different capabilities with an extended list of other distros in a matrix.
For me, the proposed comparison criteria would be:
-user able to create customized live thumb image with a reasonable amount of time
-user able to update the packages quickly and easily
-user able to find packages of interest quickly and easily
-user able to create own packages quickly and easily
-desktop agnostic. No default desktop. Users must choose themselves which one they want.
-user documentation up-to-date enough to most relevant and trending Linux Distros issues: security configuration for server and non-server alike, desktop, printer, network, filesystems, media player softwares, peer-to-peer softwares, digital-freedom and anonymity.
Arch IMHO is the best. It covers the above with archiso, pacman, yaourt, kde/gnome/other desktops, archwiki covers how to make packages easily and make them available through "Arch User Repositories"(AUR) and installing them through yaourt.
b2im tool for manjaro was the closest and fastest way to customize a thumb-image, but lacked support for customizing an image with AUR packages. archiso can be customized with AUR packages.
http://www.xcfa.tuxfamily.org/...
Debian Sid is equivalent, but I have classified it as second-best because it takes more time to create & customize a live thumb image especially with an extra persistent partition on the thumb itself. It should be straightforward to do and yet it still is not straightforward to do. live-build takes more than a couple of weeks to customize and it is complex procedure to succeed with both bios and uefi.
Antergos and Manjaro were inspired from Arch. Parrot, Backtrack, Kali, Ubuntu were inspired from Debian BUT ARE NOT DEBIAN. Dare I say a LINUX DISTRO is like a food to be prepared and consumed. If that is the case, which would you prefer depends on your personality. If you prefer to prepare your food yourself, you will go to a grocery store with fresh, unprocessed food products(i.e. Arch/Debian/Fedora), but if you are in a hurry/tired then you could possibly prefer something prepared for you(i.e. Redhat, Ubuntu, Parrot, Kali, Manjaro, Antergos.)
I wouldn't impose my opinion on others to use a particular distro, but I am of the opinion everyone would be healthier by preparing/using the fresh produce and straight from the source: Arch, Debian, Fedora. When you go with the faster food(i.e. Redhat, Ubuntu, Parrot, Kali, Manjaro, Antergos) there are always consequences/constraints, less-recent packages, vendor-lock-in/"take or leave it".
Smalltalk "Object-Oriented" versus C++ "Object-Oriented" versus golang types versus other languages?
It's not that simple a question really.
We all use some programming languages and related grammar mechanisms to get some sense of a solution delivered.
Smalltalk may be valid as an OO language, but I recall why I did not adopt it as my primary tool when it was first introduced.
Crazy expensive!!! Software price to acquire it was more exclusive than other offerings.
GUI apis within the ide were text-based not Windows-based which wasn't impressive compared to existing X-Window/Unix offerings with C/C++ at the time. Documentation for it was a well-kept secret behind a paywall so there wasn't any motivation for anyone to learn it even if they didn't have the means to acquire it.
GNU smalltalk only appeared much later, but no killer open-source apps surfaced that used it and smalltalk didn't attract other developers to consider using by being inspired by example source code. Not enough useful sample source code out in the wild as open-source.
As an example of a killer open-source app with a great influence for developers to flock to it: bittorrent which uses python and gtk for the gui api.
As another example of another killer open-source app with a great influence for developers to flock to it: docker which uses golang(Google Go) and virtual machine & virtualization apis. golang is my go-to programming language to get things done these days. I prefer it over c++ or java every day of the week. golang lacks UML round-trip tools found in c++ and java, but developers are still flocking to it for certain niche purposes at the moment, but eventually the depth and breadth of the golang offerings will match everything found in c++/java.
Ultimately, if a proposed programming language tool isn't open-source and free and run on every piece of existing hardware by default, it will never fly and SMALLTALK did not fly. It crashed and burned.
I agree and would like to re-enforce this with a concrete example that recently occurred. I completed a first phase of an appliance using golang and it has been straightforward to design and implement. The second phase however needs a more enlightened view of the design from which I can quickly iterate behaviour and structure changes. I prefer UML collaboration/communication diagrams for such refactoring considering the grown file count and lines of code involved.
My brain can only remember so much in one shot so these CASE tools become essential after a while for me. I have failed to find a decent UML modeler tool for golang. There are no golang round-trip engineering UML CASE tools out there. Plantuml was very close, but lacked golang support and does not have collaboration/communication diagram capability. In tools like Rational and Visual Paradigm you can flip the view from sequential diagram to communication diagram, but layout tweaking is always necessary to better reflect the designer's vision of the behaviour/structure of a system/subsystem.
A lack of good tools slows our ability to improve systems. Time is precious. Golang is a great language, but some of its surrounding toolset to accelerate everybody's ability to maintain and build larger more complex systems are lacking and in this particular case golang lacks UML support. You can still achieve a great deal, but when communicating larger more complex systems to a team greater than one person, you need tools to communicate your proposed maintenance/requirements/use case changes effectively and UML for golang would be exactly that. I'm sure prodigies will state that "if you're missing the tool, just create it yourself". If a tool can be created within a reasonable time-frame by myself, I would. UML/CASE tools aren't something I can build over a week or weekend.
For those discussing php, even php doesn't have UML/CASE tools that provide round-trip engineering for it which constrains it to be used for smaller systems.
C++ and Java both have strong UML/CASE round-trip engineering support, but aren't as enjoyable to work with on smaller projects in my humble opinion. Smaller projects usually grow to involve more that one person and that's where UML/CASE tools shine.
Going back to the original question are the flawed languages creating bad software? The languages themselves might not be entirely flawed, but as we are human and are certainly flawed, we need support to prevent/warn us we are mistaken as early as possible before our handicrafts reach production.
UML/CASE helps us to clarify or perception of the behaviour/structure to others within a team. If there is no team or UML/CASE or decent tools surrounding the programming language, there is a higher probability things will get out of hand because of the inability to transfer the knowledge of the system away from the original creator of the system.
There is a more detailed pdf available to this:
http://apps.who.int/iris/bitst...
Interactive Pollution Map shows Harbin, Changchun, Shenyang, Beijing among a multitude of others:
http://maps.who.int/airpolluti...
Perhaps the wind and precipitation levels and disrupt the ability to measure the actual emitted pollutions in the regions, but my personal experience going to China varied. I was able to live happily there for 3 years and my immune system slowly deteriorated to the point had coughs, sore throats, ear aches and ultimately constant sinus congestion. The locals that live there adapted by eating various foods and intaking known remedies to allow them to cope, but everyone would agree there are overcast(low stratus cloud) days we all feel like zombies and everyone is suffering. I recently returned to China for a two-week vacation in Changchun, for roughly half the trip I was bed-ridden because of pollution-related and jetlag. Perhaps it's just because I'm getting older and my body can't take it as much, but as soon as I returned back to Canada, everything cleared up in a week or so and I was healthy again.
I appreciate all this research about those polluted cities. It's certainly progress to help these polluted cities in order for everyone to not cope, but to enjoy healthy lives. I believe a great number of people don't have the courage to speak up about this issue mainly because many believe "that's life...live with it" and don't try to fix it. People are more productive when they have their good health; it's in their interest to fix this problem.
Hats off for mentioning this issue on Slashdot.
Options 1, 2, 3 may seem reasonable, but when there is no open-source that is adequate, it is an opportunity for those who want it to make it happen within open-source. Identifying the missing feature is important and crowdsourcing that feature request among other like-minded individuals seems to be working.
You're absolutely right about "When you don't have possession of the object code either and can't even choose to stay with the version you liked, you well and truly have no freedom." Here is an example of having no freedom to stay with a certain version of the binaries as stated by Trevor Pott which I respect a great deal for his lucidity and ability to to express it:
1)microsoft office tool bar changed to ribbon bar when nobody wanted it breaking the original agreement of service.
2)microsoft "unlimited one drive" cloud storage to "limited 5GB one drive" cloud storage breaking the original agreement of service.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
This isn't just Microsoft. This the big 5 software and the big 5 telecom not listening to their customers. This is the big 5 software and big 5 telecom simply saying "take it or leave it" attitude/approach with their customers. You can see it in their billing arrangements no pre-paid credit cards accepted. You can see it when you move to different software/telecom providers, the big 5 software/big 5 telecom make it very painful to move. This is about doing everything to take away your digital freedom in subtle ways, preventing competition and preserving their cash cows.
You're absolutely right about "software as a service" being a threat to open-source and digital-freedom. As an example, OFFICE365 is attempting to replace office by offering everything through the web-browser. Oddly enough open365 was released recently. Is open365 entirely opensource? Can we install open365 within the lan? Can we build the open365 binaries ourselves? If so as you said we do preserve our digital freedom.
As for the Linux Advocate promoting non-free software on Linux, I disagree with his point of view because it defeats the purpose of going with an open-source operating system. Non-free software is exactly that NO DIGITAL FREEDOM. There has been a compromise made already, BINARY BLOB hardware drivers especially for cpu/motherboard/graphics cards/network card are have always been present and made available in order to simply use the operating-system, but above that is where the line is drawn. Most software-developers would tend to want to make those binary blobs go away, but for the sake of practicality, many throw in the towel and use those binary blobs. Most gamer fans would tend to throw away the os and run windows to get their games running. Valve Steam is certainly a wonderful entry point for gamers to be introduced to Linux and is acceptable provided it resides in a strict jail ensuring the rest of the normal GNU/Linux software repos remain unaffected by its use and especially the learning and "under-the-hood" "do-it-yourself" aspects of GNU/Linux.
BIG 5 TELECOM ARE THE ONES PLACING THE MOST NON-FREE BINARIES ON YOUR CELL-PHONE/INTERNET INFRASTRUCTURE.
IT IS TO THEIR BENEFIT IN PRESERVING THEIR CASH COW, BUT IT CRUSHES INDIVIDUALS' DIGITAL FREEDOM.
HOW DID THE BIG 5 TELECOM GET AWAY WITH THAT? "REGULATORY CAPTURE". "Regulatory capture" is another very subtle example of destroying digital freedom through the use of political power.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
The thing about using non-free software and using the same-old same-old internet service providers means they remain cash cows without any breathing room for "incumbents" or disruptive technology players. The illusion of room for opportunity in those niche markets are there, but the reality is those big 5 software and telecom players in either U.S.A. or any other country just buy out/choke an
You made my weekend :)
Pardon my ignorance but I noticed the download links for it were through mega and not bittorrent links. Why?
Welcome to Capitalism. If there is no money to be made in placing effort to be duly diligent about security, then no effort will be placed. That simple.
That's what the SNAFU is in the U.S.A. and in Canada. I can't confirm anywhere else. I'm in a privileged position to influence and have the ear of some decision making clients on these matters, but if it hurts their pocket, they just stick their heads back in the sand and say "la la la I'm not hearing you." I got paid for providing them advice, they get paid to keep the company afloat by making the tough decisions.
Businesses buy hardware known to only be good for a couple of years, but stretch it for 10 maybe 20 years if they can get away with it.
Ditto for software PURCHASES. Companies stay afloat by continuously resolving crises rather than preventing them.
A strong percentage of businesses rely on I.T. to manage facilitate their workflow, but that doesn't matter. That's life.
I don't agree with this, but that's the observation about those holding the strings to the money purse.
IF GOVERNMENT REGULATION WOULD IMPOSE SOMETHING THROUGH TAX INCENTIVES TO UPDATE HARDWARE/SOFTWARE PERHAPS CYBERSECURITY WOULD BE DIFFERENT TODAY.
What you call "Pedantic" which means to be "overly concerned with minute details",
I call being vigilant towards the subtle hopefully under-the-radar tactics Microsoft attempts to use to "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" GNU/Linux.
GNU/Linux represents our best interests with respect, preserve and protect to DIGITAL FREEDOMS. MICROSOFT and CANONICAL in this particular arrangement do not.
To demonstrate this further:
0)Microsoft Windows 10 is not open-source. The part that runs the win64 shell for the MS/Canonical stuff is not open-source either.
1)BUILDING YOUR OWN CUSTOMIZED ISO TO INSTALL YOUR CUSTOMIZED OPERATING SYSTEM: I will assume MS/CANONICAL are not going to port live-build, archiso, buildiso .iso images that you can build your own bootable thumb drives with. THAT IS DIGITAL FREEDOM. Will these be built to create win64-based CANONICAL iso images with windows 10 included? Let me know when this happens. WHEN HELL FREEZES OVER.
or b2im. These tools are about building custom
2)BACKWARD COMPATIBILITY/SUPPORT FOR LEGACY OS: Microsoft/CANONICAL do not have the consumers' interests at heart. They have only Microsoft's interests at heart. Their feature has not been demonstrated to work on legacy windows os' nor will Microsoft/Canonical invest any effort towards this. It makes no business sense for them. On the other hand, alternative capability called "MSys2" works on a greater number of Windows OS's NOT JUST Windows 10 in 32-bit and 64-bit. MSys2 behaves exactly the same as ArchLinux with respect to Linux Filesystem Hierarchy, package manager(pacman), compiler tools and GUI API's(GTK/GTKMM).
3)Microsoft's attempt to pollute the open-source code base with win64-only api calls encouraging vendor lock-in. As a result brainshare will increase their efforts/dependency on win64 api calls. That's not in the interest of DIGITAL FREEDOM to encourage or adopt any such thing.
4)Microsoft's attempt to EXTEND the bells and whistles(MOSTLY GUI or PRODUCTIVITY add-ons) with win64-only api calls with their offering further encouraging vendor lock-in.
5)Deliberately missing pieces in the GNU/win64 platform to further encourage/force developers to pay for those missing pieces which they had for free on the regular GNU/LINUX. THAT'S THE HOOK. That's not in the interest of DIGITAL FREEDOM either.
I wouldn't touch this stuff because the behaviour and the entire original offering which is the original GNU/Linux is not exactly the same with respect to preserving your YOUR DIGITAL FREEDOM.
SUMMING IT UP: Don't touch anything to do with Microsoft api's because it leads consumers/developers to a path of contraints/restrictions and vendor lock-in and some kind of Microsoft TAXES ultimately.
You won't find any such taxes within the original GNU/Linux with all its DIGITAL FREEDOMS preserved intact. The original ArchLinux/Debian/Fedora/Suse are what you are looking for. NOT WINDOWS 10.
If I recall correctly, the reason we call our usual distros like Fedora GNU/Linux or Debian GNU/Linux or Arch GNU/Linux is because the GNU part is the userspace stuff and the Linux part is the kernel.
Since the Linux kernel has been replaced with the Microsoft Win64 OS Kernel they could call it "GNU/MS-Win64". There is one huge problem with this.
It's the perfect definition of an oxymoron because GNU which in itself is the very definition of Libre Digital Freedom versus the very opposite that is Microsoft vendor restriction, lock-in hiding source code wherever Microsoft sees fit. Note how they haven't released it as open-source yet. Note they haven't released MS-Win64 as open-source yet either.
Consumers beware of Microsoft. I could understand Canonical's position. They're hurting for cash it seems. It reminds me of all the people working for Trump's propaganda machine to for him. They must have been paid a lot of money to help Trump gain so much reddit.com space and along with those paid to throw mud at Trump's opponents. It this case it's Microsoft doing their best to pay money for making Microsoft look like they love Linux when in fact and behind the scenes they are extorting people for patent violations because they are using Linux or using anything not Microsoft-based they haven't paid MS a levy/tariff for. Microsoft also likes to make all the other non-Microsoft affiliated GNU/Linux distros look less appealing by hiring people to throw mud at those non-Microsoft affiliated GNU/Linux distros. After all GNU/Linux is not aligned with Microsoft's ambitions of Canonical UBUNTU/Win64.
I wouldn't recommend anything Microsoft to anyone. That implies I won't recommend GNU/MS-Win64 or Canonical UBUNTU/Win64 to anyone anytime soon.
BOTTOM LINE: MICROSOFT IS NOT COOL. GNU/LINUX IS.
More importantly is the impact on lucidity.
If you are under the influence of marijuana, odds are your capability to make decisions has been impacted.
For example, you're at a party, somebody first offers you some alcohol and you have a drink....LUCIDITY LEVEL DOWN.
Then, somebody offers you some marijuana and you inhale...LUCIDITY LEVEL DOWN.
Then, somebody offers you something else that's harder, you totally think you're in control, but you want to be friends with all these pretty people so you say what the hell. LUCIDITY LEVEL DOWN TO A POINT WHERE YOUR LIFE IS RUINED BECAUSE THE CRACK/COCAINE/HEROINE YOU JUST INGESTED TOOK OVER YOUR LIFE. Marijuana sales/marketers are certainly behind these articles being published and it exploits the weaknesses of our HUMAN NATURE. I would certainly keep my radar on about these individuals writing about such crap: Nicholas J. Jackson, Joshua D. Isen, Rubin Khoddam, Daniel Irons, Catherine Tuvblad, William G. Iacono, Matt McGue, Adrian Raine, Laura A. Baker. These guys might attempt to write another "twins-study finds no evidence that coffee provides beneficial effect for staying awake and promoting bowel movements". I would prefer to use their articles to wipe my bum after a bowel movement after drinking my coffee.
MORAL OF THE STORY: make your ancestors proud, value your life, keep your lucidity. There is nothing worth your while being around those people offering you so-called poisons legal or not. Go home to your family and thank God you're still alive with your whole head screwed on right. Attempt to contribute to society in meaningful ways.
Lately, I have experience the greatest pain wasting enormous amounts of time flashing installing phones with different versions of Android, then different versions of Ubuntu touch. I also wasted time on small arm-based tv boxes and wanna-be-mini-pc-but-not arm-based boards. They all have something in common: kernel updates seem to require entire re-installs on their internal memory in order for them to behave as expected. THE BIGGEST PROBLEM is there are no consistent generic vanilla flavor kernels that run on all these small-form factor devices/boards making the updates and security/privacy a nightmare because these ARM-SOC manufacturers are not diligent about providing an easy to upgrade without re-install for ANDROID or GNU / Linux. ALL OF THEM HAVE DIFFERENT KERNELS. ALL OF THEM REQUIRE A DIFFERENT BUILD RECIPE WHICH IN MY EXPERIENCE HAVE ALL FAILED TO BUILD because of their entirely different build requirement personalities.
UNTIL ALL THE ARM DEVICE MANUFACTURERS GET THEIR ACT TOGETHER, I'M GOING TO CONTINUE BUYING INTEL/AMD DEVICES NOT ONLY FOR DESKTOP AND SERVER, BUT START BUYING INTEL/AMD FOR INTERNET OF THINGS DEVICES BECAUSE THEY SUPPORT GNU/LINUX AND EASILY UPGRADE WITHOUT RE-INSTALLING THE ENTIRE SYSTEM. For the sake of security, it's the only sane thing to do, otherwise you will be at risk and you will be exposed to present and upcoming ARM security vulnerabilities and the "take it or leave it" attitude that arm-based manufacturers have.
There is one excepion I have respect for Applied Micro ARM-based stuff is server quality, but VERY EXPENSIVE and in a different market.
At the opposite side of the spectrum: ROCKCHIP has a lot of work to do to make me buy their hardware and recommend it to others.
I use Debian unstable. It's wonderful with gnome and where necessary lxde is good too. Kali 2.0 on USB 3.0 boots up fast on 2 laptops, a server and desktop I tried. Intel and and CPUs. Systemd is looking good IMHO. The only problems I have are building Kali images for amd64 and armhf myself. It didn't build successfully for me. This points to some rough spots live-build. I'm also experiencing live-build pain directly on two boards armhf with ROCKCHIP. More docs and support from Rockchip directly would be nice.
Microsoft is the Anti-Christ. This tool does not benefit the community. Using gcc/c++ benefits the community. Using Mono only benefits Microsoft because that encourages everyone to try Mono and then the developers end of feeling limited on the Linux MONO IDE because it is deliberately crippled with less bells and whistles than the MICROSOFT WINDOWS-BASED .NET IDE.
The bottom-line long-term strategy for Microsoft is to suck money out of developers pockets on an ongoing basis. Their agenda about Linux was revealed years ago with the "halloween papers" their real strategy was "Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt" towards Linux;"Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" Linux. For as long as Linux afficionados remain vigilant, that's not going to happen if Linux developers continue to use gcc/g++. I clearly recommend ignoring all Microsoft offerings on an eternal basis. I look forward to the day that Microsoft is irrelevant in the software domain. Move on. Nothing to see here.
GENERAL RULE OF THUMB: NEVER ALLOW REMOTE ACCESS TO THE ROUTERS.
ONLY PHYSICAL ACCESS DIRECTLY IS THE BETTER APPROACH. In Canada, when you use a vdsl2 modem, it usually needs to be a BELL provided modem. The default password is something BELL provides to you to connect to their network. The wifi access/router access password can be changed yes.
Where problems arise that I have noticed recently are local wifi-hackers ddos'ing not only BELL vdsl2 modem wifi access points, but also if you have a bridged modem after that providing other wifi access points, then those wifi-hackers will ddos those also. I goes without saying, there is more than ddos'ing happening here. I wasn't really curious enough to sniff the actual traffic, but once I turned off both the bell wifi access point and the bridged modem's wifi access point, problems went away and the bandwidth and expected responsive connection behaviour was back to normal. If you really need wifi, turn it on for the limited time that you need it rather than all the time. That will minimize the attack surface.
Sure there are parameters for defending against ddos, separate vlans per user, etc, BUT firewalls on each computer on the lan is what really matters the most.
ADOBE FLASH is the biggest virus injector of them all. I'm happy Youtube doesn't use it anymore. I hope the other web sites get rid of ADOBE FLASH also.
There is no reason not to use open-source streaming servers like flumotion and encoders like ffmpeg/theora. daala video is coming soon I hope.
I didn't specifically say it would displace GM. I didn't specifically say open-source software.
I said a similar pattern of open-source arriving within the parts manufacturing "community" in the form of "Do Ii Yourself"(DIY) and possibly labeled in the same GNU/LINUX family in order for it to be easily recognizable as protecting individuals freedoms to hack software/hardware to their personalized or desired general-purpose. "MAKER" or DIY actually already are certainly the same side as the GNU perspective but typically deal with smaller scale things, but there is nothing there to constrain gear-heads/makers/DIY crowds to push the envelope to include cars/car-parts/trucks/planes/etc...
With respect to GM specifically, being that you asked. They let go many of their I.T. consultants when they downsized. There definitely was a brain-drain moving away from GM. There will be market change as a consequence. It will eventually impact GM. It's a good bet some of the Ex-GM employees would embrace the DIY/MAKER tech because it does indeed have a disruptive potential enough to give their ex-employer the finger.
Nice word "black swan". The old-boys club of car manufacturing would like to brain-wash everyone with the concept no small team could ever disrupt their industry, but that's false. All you need is a core team of smart gear-heads that believe in "open-source" to catalyze with easy to reproduce recipes for all the different parts necessary to make some kind of vanilla general-purpose car/suv/truck. Everyone including gear-head special-interest groups want DIY car-building to happen because we need more affordable alternatives. How and who make it happen does matter and it will happen. If the old-boys club of car manufacturing allowed this to happen and actually spurred its growth at least they could make it a win-win for all parties concerned. Otherwise given time the old-boys club of car manufacturing will just end up extinct like the dinosaurs.
Another device with mobile characteristics disrupted the industry: Mobile phones, first with Android, then with Ubuntu Touch on it. The next iteration will be with GNU/Linux Desktop on it.
I envision a similar pattern of events will happen with cars eventually with GNU/Linux Desktop on them, but highly affordable and configurable.
"If Google wants Android users to all be up to date they need to take a standard distro like Fedora or Debian and make it run its own window manager which is Android and its GUI. They need to get vendors to focus on upstreaming their changes and maintaining high quality code."
I agree about taking a standard distro like Fedora or Debian.
I agree about the manufacturers/vendors complying to upstream their changes to the standard distro and even before the product ships. The desktop linux emulator should be able to just run it without manufacturer-specific tools akin to usb hard-drives or usb speakers.
I disagree with Android's GUI/Window Manager because it's api doesn't comply with standard desktop Fedora/Debian Gnome window-manager api's. In fact as you said GOOGLE rewrote the entire binary building process exclusively for java-friendly apis deliberately for dare I say vendor-lockin. Some people would call it innovation. I call it stupidity because it is a total rewrite with no effort to directly reuse all the experience from C/C++ except for the magic reserved exclusively for the NDK/JNI experts. If you need something custom requiring extra peripherals in Android, there is no way a user can achieve this with just the "ANDROID SDK". They have to contact the NDK/JNI experts. If the GUI had been developed entirely in C/C++ using the standard APIs or with new touch-enabling additions now available in standard Fedora/Debian, then any C/C++ developer can directly access a wanted feature and use it withour requiring some NDK/JNI expert. The other advantage of using the standard Fedora/Debian distro is that everyday, there are new programming languages introduced special bindings to interface with old style c libs which means they are not contrained to simply C/C++ nor just java. A relevant example is golang with gtk3 bindings, mongodb database bindings.
Getting masochistic, golang now has qml bindings(go-qml) which actually run on ubuntu touch but there is talk to attempt to run it on android also. The android golang with go-qml is a real-headache. There are success stories about c/C++ with qt on android, but again it is highly masochistic because there are required java building tools in the mix i.e. ant/javac although the entire app should be in c/c++.
Ubuntu Touch/Phone is the future, but they need to bring down that 2-second delay when loading any of the apps. Apart from that every app once up is actually more responsive than Android. i.e. Youtube runs better on Ubuntu Touch on my Nexus 4 than it did on Android 4/5 with the bluetooth on. That's quite impressive considering wifi, bluetooth, intensive network bandwidth, high-resolution video are all being used at the same time for this all with a standard GNU/Linux under-the-hood. Hats off to Canonical Ubuntu for this. Running a lil'debi chroot in Android is impressive too, but slow since it is running along side android and unable to occupy all the device ram as android can. It's pretty cool to try it, but pointless if you want a Debian Gnome gui on your phone because that capability isn't available yet. That's the number one item on my wish list: DEBIAN GNOME GNU/LInux with touch on my phone because Android simply doesn't fulfill my digital freedom requirements.
Yes, English is by far the most practical and easiest to write in because Chinese and Japanese with their bombardment of characters to learn to write and pronounce requires too much time and discipline to master. Korean I am told is simpler. The grammars for Chinese, Japanese and Korean are simpler than English and Latin languages. That explains why there are so many people that speak Chinese/Japanese, but it doesn't necessarily mean that everyone likes to write in these languages. In fact both my wife and mother-in-law seem to avoid writing Chinese or English anything altogether. I can vouch French writing is a big PITA all because the elders of the French Academy decided to make it so. I won't assume anything about Italian and Spanish, but would love to hear if it's also a big PITA to write in those languages.
Perhaps if romanized pinyin/hangul-romaja/Katakana-Hiragana merged together and China/Japan/Korea adopted that rather than writing in traditional characters, they're vocabularies and grammars could potentially overtake English as the most popular language on the planet.
Why place so much effort on according stuff with special suffixes everywhere when writing just to conform to traditional discipline and cultural norms? The world itself has bigger problems to focus its efforts on than emanating correct spelling and aesthetically beautiful writing. It is true computers help us with these spelling/aesthetics problems, but shouldn't it be a priority to get everyone one the planet to understand each other in order to unite rather than oppress? We all have thoughts to express about the world regardless of spelling and aesthetics aptitudes.