One very serious point to being "free" is that, if you are serious about security, you want as much of your software to be available for security audit as possible.
Yes, but who is *that* serious about security other than the government and hopefully the government doesn't rely on a distro but instead compiles Linux by hand. For most (as in 99.9999% of) people, having the kernel, applications and some drivers open sourced is good enough.
Another serious point to being "free" is reliability. Linux is reliable because it is open. Dilute the openness, and the reliability gets watered down, too.
Yes, but a system isn't exactly reliable if some key parts of the hardware doesn't work (Wi-Fi card, graphics card, modem, etc). Sure, GNewSense might be great for developers, but for most, if not all people, GNewSense is simply a nuisance.
This could be a major stumbling block for California .
There, fixed it for you. Everyone knows that 75% of the people in charge in California are insane, the rest of the US couldn't care if it could possibly contain cancer causing substances becuase the rest of the world knows not to care about California's labels.
Lets see... Because it seems like everything can cause cancer there. Cigarettes will cause cancer in a lot of people's lifetimes even with moderate smoking. A lot of the things that California requires warning labels to be put on only will cause you cancer if you eat 4000 of them in a year, inject them into your blood, etc. Excess warning labels only make people not read them and you know what happened when the little boy called wolf a bit too many times...
So? Linux systems share a lot of design flaws (like X-Windows). But they are slowly being corrected.
Yes, that is what I have been saying, that there will come a point (and I think it will be before 30 years from now) that UNIX just simply won't cut it. That the only way to fix UNIX is to rewrite it from scratch.
Again, HURD is UNIX based. Linux will last until UNIX based systems don't work for the needs of the day. And I think that it will come before 30-50 years from now.
Any OS which is coded in a forward looking fashion can keep up with changes over the years as long as changes and fixes are made when they become necessary. And there's somebody there to make the changes. Expecting to wait 10 years to fix architecture problems does not lead to good results.
But Linux wasn't coded in a forward looking fashion. It was coded for a specific machine that Linus had. UNIX was coded in a forward looking fashion, but now it is past the machines that it was trying to get in the future. What we need is an OS that improves on UNIX and Linux. For example, Plan 9 tried to do that (http://plan9.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/FAQ/index.html#INTRODUCTION) because some of the flaws of UNIX were too deep to fix with patches, etc.
Yes, but even the fundamental architecture of Windows has changed from DOS based to NT based. If we changed the fundamental architecture of Linux to be different than a UNIX based OS then it isn't really Linux is it? But what really makes Linux, Linux? It has to be more than just a brand, because we already have brands of Linux (Ubuntu, Slackware, Fedora, SuSE, etc). Think of it this way, we have Ford which is a brand and then there are sub-brands (Explorer, Mustang, F-150) but none of them are, say, an airplane.
Yes, but by usable I mean more than just being able to run the most recent applications. I mean really relevant to that day's technology. If we get speech recognition down and that's what everyone uses 20 years from now, some of the UNIX filenames need to be renamed or the entire structure changed. And sure, Linux will be usable in the same way that Windows is usable: using a legacy system to deal with today's technology.
But Windows still shares some of the same design flaws as previous Windows versions. Heck, even NT still shares some of the flaws in DOS. Linux, being a UNIX-like OS will share some of the same flaws as UNIX. Now, UNIX doesn't seem to have as many flaws as DOS-based systems did, but I imagine that by 2038 we will have found them and will need a totally new system. And yes, Linux 1.0 and Linux 2.6 share little to no code, but they share the same design, and there will come a time that UNIX is a bad design for the current technology.
Yes but there comes a time that we have to get rid of UNIX and come up with something better. Today isn't the time to do it, and perhaps 20 years down the road isn't time to do it either, but eventually we have to come up with something that addresses some of the flaws of UNIX.
With Linux being open source, compatibility shouldn't be much of a problem to port applications to the new kernel.
The problem is, when you rely on ideas made in the '80s and code written in the '90s it doesn't help you solve the problems in the 2030s.
I want to be a thousand percent confident that this organization will be around for the next 30 to 50 years because Linux isn't going away,'
That is a bad idea. Think about how much has changed in 30 years with technology. Now accelerate that change with the internet, etc. It is a very bad idea for Linux to still be used in 30 to 50 years. Now, there will be some use for it, to see how much software has changed, etc. But for a system written in 1991 to be useful in 2038 it has to have the fundamental architecture changed.
Will there be an open source OS that is good to be used in 2038? Yes. Is Linux it? Nope. Not unless you still think that the MS-DOS system is still useful today, or that Windows 3.1 laptop.
Seriously, why, if they still insist on sticking to XP do they have an application as part of the GUI but clearly still have the XP bar at the bottom? Wouldn't it be better for a system that is supposed to be low end and cheap to at least use the normal XP GUI or a totally different shell?
American monopoly. Not plural. Intel isn't a monopoly anymore with AMD becoming more than just a clone manufacturer of x86 CPUs. And actually in most physical stores, AMD is just as common, if not more common than Intel CPUs. MS on the other hand, clearly has a monopoly.
Rising sea levels are already damaging coast line and harming fresh water life. Maple syrup producing seasons are shortening. This affects industries in an immediate way. States are losing tax revenue due to Maple Syrup production going to Canada and tourism being affected by damaged bodies of fresh water.
Lets see... First off not everyone lives by the sea and if it doesn't happen to them, they don't care about it. Secondly I have yet to see the statue of liberty underwater nor any other American landmark, most people in the US don't care about things that don't happen in the USA. Secondly, maple syrup effects very few people and the tax losses are minor at best and can also be explained due to the failing economy.
Many people also can't be bothered to learn the facts behind issues when they vote. What's your point?
My point is that people don't care. I'm not saying global warming exists or it is made up, I am simply stating that people won't care about it unless it affects them, and so far it doesn't affect them. (and by them I mean the average citizen of the USA)
As I stated, global warming is already affecting many people. If you disagree, then you have your head in the sand.
Affecting who? Give me a real world example on how the average American is affected by global warming. Heck, give me a real world example on how the average person in Europe, Australia or Asia is affected by global warming.
Climate change denial has got to be the (second) largest example of cognitive dissonance and self-deception in history. Let's hope reason and logic come back into fashion soon.
Wow, believe it or not, most people aren't going to care about a theory that A) Doesn't affect them B) has many people that reject it C) Has no short or medium-term impact and D) has no effects right now.
I question the need of mainframes today. Now, they are great for running legacy programs (such as payroll, etc) but other than for backwards-compatibly, what advantage does a mainframe have compared to say, a server?
When ReactOS becomes needed. Right now we don't need a Windows clone. We need to move away from open source software is a cheap knockoff of Windows and Mac. We need our own identity. Linux gives us an identity other than Windows.
Is there some reason why they aren't asking Time Warner, Cox, AT&T and others each about their practices?
Because it is easy to get around the blocks that they have, however Comcast uses Sandvine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandvine#Controversy) to throttle the BT packets and inject false information. The rest basically just block or slow down traffic to certain ports. The reason injecting packets is so big of a deal is that where does it stop? Can I inject false information into an e-mail that is being sent? IM message? Etc?
Yes, but it leads to insecurity further down the road. For example, you give your girlfriend (yes I know most/.ers probably don't have one) your password to a social networking site either through an auto log-in browser, or by telling her it. Anyways, 3 months down the road you and your girlfriend break up, so, knowing your password she goes onto your social networking site account and vandalizes it with random crap and perhaps changes the password. Your reputation is ruined.
A better way to fix it would be a good/etc/hosts file that blocks all adservers and malware. So even if it did direct you to an evil site, it would be blocked.
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One very serious point to being "free" is that, if you are serious about security, you want as much of your software to be available for security audit as possible.
Yes, but who is *that* serious about security other than the government and hopefully the government doesn't rely on a distro but instead compiles Linux by hand. For most (as in 99.9999% of) people, having the kernel, applications and some drivers open sourced is good enough.
Another serious point to being "free" is reliability. Linux is reliable because it is open. Dilute the openness, and the reliability gets watered down, too.
Yes, but a system isn't exactly reliable if some key parts of the hardware doesn't work (Wi-Fi card, graphics card, modem, etc). Sure, GNewSense might be great for developers, but for most, if not all people, GNewSense is simply a nuisance.
This could be a major stumbling block for California .
There, fixed it for you. Everyone knows that 75% of the people in charge in California are insane, the rest of the US couldn't care if it could possibly contain cancer causing substances becuase the rest of the world knows not to care about California's labels.
Is there a strange group out there that wants to go back to a tribal hunter/gatherer type existence? Take our population down to a couple of million?
Yes, they are called environmentalists.
Lets see... Because it seems like everything can cause cancer there. Cigarettes will cause cancer in a lot of people's lifetimes even with moderate smoking. A lot of the things that California requires warning labels to be put on only will cause you cancer if you eat 4000 of them in a year, inject them into your blood, etc. Excess warning labels only make people not read them and you know what happened when the little boy called wolf a bit too many times...
So? Linux systems share a lot of design flaws (like X-Windows). But they are slowly being corrected.
Yes, that is what I have been saying, that there will come a point (and I think it will be before 30 years from now) that UNIX just simply won't cut it. That the only way to fix UNIX is to rewrite it from scratch.
Again, HURD is UNIX based. Linux will last until UNIX based systems don't work for the needs of the day. And I think that it will come before 30-50 years from now.
Any OS which is coded in a forward looking fashion can keep up with changes over the years as long as changes and fixes are made when they become necessary. And there's somebody there to make the changes. Expecting to wait 10 years to fix architecture problems does not lead to good results.
But Linux wasn't coded in a forward looking fashion. It was coded for a specific machine that Linus had. UNIX was coded in a forward looking fashion, but now it is past the machines that it was trying to get in the future. What we need is an OS that improves on UNIX and Linux. For example, Plan 9 tried to do that (http://plan9.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/FAQ/index.html#INTRODUCTION) because some of the flaws of UNIX were too deep to fix with patches, etc.
Yes, but even the fundamental architecture of Windows has changed from DOS based to NT based. If we changed the fundamental architecture of Linux to be different than a UNIX based OS then it isn't really Linux is it? But what really makes Linux, Linux? It has to be more than just a brand, because we already have brands of Linux (Ubuntu, Slackware, Fedora, SuSE, etc). Think of it this way, we have Ford which is a brand and then there are sub-brands (Explorer, Mustang, F-150) but none of them are, say, an airplane.
Yes, but by usable I mean more than just being able to run the most recent applications. I mean really relevant to that day's technology. If we get speech recognition down and that's what everyone uses 20 years from now, some of the UNIX filenames need to be renamed or the entire structure changed. And sure, Linux will be usable in the same way that Windows is usable: using a legacy system to deal with today's technology.
But Windows still shares some of the same design flaws as previous Windows versions. Heck, even NT still shares some of the flaws in DOS. Linux, being a UNIX-like OS will share some of the same flaws as UNIX. Now, UNIX doesn't seem to have as many flaws as DOS-based systems did, but I imagine that by 2038 we will have found them and will need a totally new system. And yes, Linux 1.0 and Linux 2.6 share little to no code, but they share the same design, and there will come a time that UNIX is a bad design for the current technology.
Yes but there comes a time that we have to get rid of UNIX and come up with something better. Today isn't the time to do it, and perhaps 20 years down the road isn't time to do it either, but eventually we have to come up with something that addresses some of the flaws of UNIX.
With Linux being open source, compatibility shouldn't be much of a problem to port applications to the new kernel.
The problem is, when you rely on ideas made in the '80s and code written in the '90s it doesn't help you solve the problems in the 2030s.
I want to be a thousand percent confident that this organization will be around for the next 30 to 50 years because Linux isn't going away,'
That is a bad idea. Think about how much has changed in 30 years with technology. Now accelerate that change with the internet, etc. It is a very bad idea for Linux to still be used in 30 to 50 years. Now, there will be some use for it, to see how much software has changed, etc. But for a system written in 1991 to be useful in 2038 it has to have the fundamental architecture changed.
Will there be an open source OS that is good to be used in 2038? Yes. Is Linux it? Nope. Not unless you still think that the MS-DOS system is still useful today, or that Windows 3.1 laptop.
Ok, thats fair, but I can't go into any major retailer and get a system that isn't Windows.
Seriously, why, if they still insist on sticking to XP do they have an application as part of the GUI but clearly still have the XP bar at the bottom? Wouldn't it be better for a system that is supposed to be low end and cheap to at least use the normal XP GUI or a totally different shell?
the American monopolies
American monopoly. Not plural. Intel isn't a monopoly anymore with AMD becoming more than just a clone manufacturer of x86 CPUs. And actually in most physical stores, AMD is just as common, if not more common than Intel CPUs. MS on the other hand, clearly has a monopoly.
Yes, but the USA doesn't have a free market.
Rising sea levels are already damaging coast line and harming fresh water life. Maple syrup producing seasons are shortening. This affects industries in an immediate way. States are losing tax revenue due to Maple Syrup production going to Canada and tourism being affected by damaged bodies of fresh water.
Lets see... First off not everyone lives by the sea and if it doesn't happen to them, they don't care about it. Secondly I have yet to see the statue of liberty underwater nor any other American landmark, most people in the US don't care about things that don't happen in the USA. Secondly, maple syrup effects very few people and the tax losses are minor at best and can also be explained due to the failing economy.
Many people also can't be bothered to learn the facts behind issues when they vote. What's your point?
My point is that people don't care. I'm not saying global warming exists or it is made up, I am simply stating that people won't care about it unless it affects them, and so far it doesn't affect them. (and by them I mean the average citizen of the USA)
As I stated, global warming is already affecting many people. If you disagree, then you have your head in the sand.
Affecting who? Give me a real world example on how the average American is affected by global warming. Heck, give me a real world example on how the average person in Europe, Australia or Asia is affected by global warming.
Climate change denial has got to be the (second) largest example of cognitive dissonance and self-deception in history. Let's hope reason and logic come back into fashion soon.
Wow, believe it or not, most people aren't going to care about a theory that A) Doesn't affect them B) has many people that reject it C) Has no short or medium-term impact and D) has no effects right now.
By legacy I mean the old programs written in the '80s in COBOL rather than more modern programs written in, say, C.
I question the need of mainframes today. Now, they are great for running legacy programs (such as payroll, etc) but other than for backwards-compatibly, what advantage does a mainframe have compared to say, a server?
When ReactOS becomes needed. Right now we don't need a Windows clone. We need to move away from open source software is a cheap knockoff of Windows and Mac. We need our own identity. Linux gives us an identity other than Windows.
Clearly this is simply meaning that Vista has stolen enough ideas from OS X to make even a make user endorse it.
Is there some reason why they aren't asking Time Warner, Cox, AT&T and others each about their practices?
Because it is easy to get around the blocks that they have, however Comcast uses Sandvine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandvine#Controversy) to throttle the BT packets and inject false information. The rest basically just block or slow down traffic to certain ports. The reason injecting packets is so big of a deal is that where does it stop? Can I inject false information into an e-mail that is being sent? IM message? Etc?
Yes, but it leads to insecurity further down the road. For example, you give your girlfriend (yes I know most /.ers probably don't have one) your password to a social networking site either through an auto log-in browser, or by telling her it. Anyways, 3 months down the road you and your girlfriend break up, so, knowing your password she goes onto your social networking site account and vandalizes it with random crap and perhaps changes the password. Your reputation is ruined.
A better way to fix it would be a good /etc/hosts file that blocks all adservers and malware. So even if it did direct you to an evil site, it would be blocked.