But how many people just click around in their cache? I think that this is more of not, "you downloaded some files your computer is compromised" but rather, "some files are on your desktop, you double click on them, and your computer is compromised"
Honestly, I don't get how this is a major Safari problem, I am sure Firefox can be configured to do the exact same thing, it just so happens that Apple already configured it to. Firefox still opens up 4 windows asking what you want to do with the script.
Ok, but how is that really going to work? It isn't like you can go up to a computer in *insert computer store here*, pop in a gNewSense CD and see if all the hardware is detected. And it isn't like you can usually find the real model name of a piece of wireless hardware (yes it may be called D-Link but the real card could be Atheros, Realtec, Etc.) to compare it to a list.
Why don't they extend their four freedoms on other goods? Shouldn't we get the access to "sources" of other information (video, audio, textual) we buy/own/license, too?
Honestly, that is a great idea and it is already taking hold in response to the actions of the *AA. Extremism one way breeds extremism the other way, for example, if we only had "nice" non-free software (no DRM, no serial codes, no activation, relatively bug-free, not over-priced, etc.) the F/OSS campaign wouldn't have taken hold, now we have Vista with DRM and WGA, XP with WGA, buggy MS and other software that is overpriced and that is only fueling the extremism the other way to 100% F/OSS.
No, it would be like someone being vegan and trying to get everyone else to not eat cheese/steak and not only making it voluntary but trying to move for a cheese/steak ban. Honestly, is there a point for a 100% open-source distro, yes, is taking Ubuntu and taking out precisely what made Ubuntu popular and calling it totally *free* a good idea? Not really.
Everyone knows that locking-down content is utterly futile, in comparison to the provisions of a well-implemented digital rights management system.
Oh yes, as if DRM is unbreakable! One quote that I have heard (don't remember where) but it was "The only DRM that doesn't get cracked are the ones that no one cares about the content on them". Just about every DRM scheme known to mankind has been broken in some way or another. Honestly, the less DRM/locked-down-content we have, the less problems you have and the less people are going to be out to crack/hack it (just look at the PS3, because Sony made installing Linux on it very easy, there has been a smaller effort to crack it compared to say, the Wii)
PDFs are (at least somewhat) open. There is little need for Adobe to release a non-bloatware, open-source PDF reader. However, with Flash they should as Flash is not open. Adobe is not needed for PDFs, they are for Flash.
Sometimes we should not only see the short-term pleasure that our system works, but also the long-term interest to be able to live in freedom. Of course the convenience of getting all machines to work seems most important now, but free software is not about convenience, it's about ethics.
Freedom should never come before functionality, and even more so when the functionality is important and the freedom is minor. For example, unless you are a kernel hacker, a well-coded proprietary driver and a well-coded free driver makes little difference to you. 99% of Ubuntu is free and most of it is the important stuff (the main kernel, all the applications, GUI, Window manager, etc.) only about 1% or less is proprietary (wireless, graphic card drivers, etc.). And the one thing that worries me about gNewSense is that by default you can't install any proprietary applications (such as Flash) and the free alternatives (such as GNASH) are nowhere near up to par.
Yeah, NVidia and Adobe are really feeling the heat to provide source code now that millions of Linux users have demonstrated that a little temporary convenience thanks to binary blobs is acceptable.
No, but ATI did, and look, they have open-sourced some drivers. Once ATI starts to, NVidia will, once GNASH starts becoming usable, Adobe will feel the pressure to make Flash better. It is called competition, it is something that these companies really haven't had to deal with, though, with Linux they have to compete, and not having a monopoly, they are.
But our justice system was founded on the principles of you are innocent until proven guilty, with a RIAA case, it is the exact opposite, you need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you are innocent, rather then the RIAA prove you are guilty. And some of the people have gotten fines put on them for very little solid evidence and all the evidence wasn't even enough to convict them (so someone had a few songs in their shared folders, but they can't even prove they are or were being shared!).
What innovations? I haven't seen a MS product that was original yet! Just about everything has been taken from either A) Mac B) Other programs which the MS equivalent has killed such as IE from Netscape C) Unix or D) Other programs that have done it better then the MS implementation. Even Bob seems to have roots in various child-friendly applications. And if you don't believe me just tell me one MS innovation that doesn't have roots in other programs.
There's a lot of extremely good commercial software out there about which you have been evidently living in complete ignorance of for about as long as the same three decades I mentioned.
Honestly, most commercial software just plain sucks. Not from a "I can't copy this or modify the source" way but the fact that it breaks, has outdated documentation, gives cryptic error messages. For example, the other day I was using some software that is critical for the business that I was at. It was a Windows program and worked fine for about 2-3 years and then it just suddenly stopped working. So I pull out the documentation (now granted the company bought this software about 2-3 years ago) it was in a spiral book and the first steps were of installing it... in DOS!!! Now the system that this was installed was a low-end XP notebook, and so none of the documentation was even remotely relevant (they did tell you how to use it in Windows but it seemed like an afterthought and it only covered Windows 95!) and this was the only software for the job (it was to enter in data for a remote system to control access). So I tried to reinstall it, didn't work. So I thought about uninstalling it and reinstalling it until I realized that the database (which you couldn't export without the program working) backups were made in 2006!!! So in the end I was left with cryptic error messages, a program that would install but still have the same problem, and the company that sold us the software changed hands so many times that Im not even sure what it is called anymore.
About the only commercial software I would call "good" would be some proprietary games. The rest either suffer from not enough documentation, cryptic error messages, lack of company support, a program that can easily be replaced with a F/OSS solution or a horrible UI.
While everything up to 3.11 was just a fancy shell for DOS, windows 95 was (almost) a real OS. (mainly because you didn't have to type 'win' in a DOS prompt after start-up, it loaded on its own, like magic)
I don't know if this is an odd experience or not but on a used laptop that has Windows 3.1 on it, I never have had to type Win to start Windows it always started by itself, however it being a used laptop and me not messing with it much, I don't know if they added a script to type in "win" every time it booted up.
Ah, I remember way back when Windows XP was released, all the Lunix zealots tried to paint that as a failure, too.
Compared to Windows 2K XP was a failure from the user's standpoint. Though, the upgrade path was from ME to XP for the home users making XP much, much, much better. But for those of use on Windows 2K, XP was just extra bloat. XP also suffered from major security holes, I can't remember how much spyware I remember taking off of people's computers before Service Pack 2 introduced the concept of basic security. Windows 2K also didn't suffer from WGA or other DRM nonsense.
I predict that when the next desktop version of Windows is released, all the Lunix Zealots will be whinging about how terrible it is compared to Vista, and how Vista was the Greatest OS EVAR.
Actually, I don't think that will be the case. I think that MS has learned the lesson that DRM-laden OSes will not sell and remove the DRM and bloat from Windows 7, if it goes according to their plans (which I honestly doubt it will....) it may be a decent OS. But if it is inferior to free products (such as Linux) of course those using it are going to complain.
Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free? The fact is, no one besides us has invested a lot of money in hobby software.
Perhaps Mr. Gates should look to such people such as Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Ian Murdock, Larry Wall, etc.
In reality, they can push the Windows API into a new direction. Have TWO versions of Windows.
Windows World - Windows with all the compatible stuff to make it run yesteryear software.
Windows Beyond - Windows, smaller, faster, lighter with NO legacy support.
There you go. Much like an SUV and a sports car. Both nice and can easily merge into the market as needed.
A more sane method though, would be to develop a compatibility layer between the old API and new API. For example, if a program was specified to run in the new API it would, otherwise it would run in the old API. However, everything would be coded in the new API but just have a compatibility layer much as how WINE lets you run Windows programs on Linux.
"It was easier for Apple to make Linux user friendly than it was for them to fix Windows"
Actually, I believe the quote would have been it was easier for Apple to make UNIX user friendly, because OS X is mostly BSD with a nice GUI and although Linux is very similar to BSD (and other UNIX variants) OS X doesn't run Linux it runs BSD.
Windows 95 actually wasn't that bad. If you ignore all the random BSODs, it was a decently advanced OS for the time. Though just about everyone knew that Macs were better, it offered a cheap, easy-to-learn GUI for DOS that could run older Windows applications. And other then OS/2 (which really wasn't much different then Windows...) and a few obscure variants of UNIX (remember, this was before Linux could be installed without being a technology wizard) you didn't have much choice if you had an Intel computer other then to use '95 and honestly, compared to recent failures, '95 wasn't so bad....
Now, software is another matter, of course, but given enough hardware, developing the software is a matter of time.
But we will need much, much better hardware if we intend to program it in 20 years. You only need to look at Vista to see that programmers today don't care or can't program with limited resources, and even when we get the hardware, no programming method has been found to replicate the human mind, meaning that we will need even more hardware to make it work and even more hardware for the futuristic programming methods that will make Vista seem like it is well-coded. You only need to look at speech recognition to see how this goes, back in the '70s and '80s it was always we needed better hardware, faster CPUs, never software, now look at today, where even though it has improved, even on modern hardware (2 Gigs of RAM, dual core CPU...) it is both slow and error prone. I imagine the project of the human brain to be the same.
MS already does that. Because Windows source code is so closely guarded, independent, law-abiding security companies or individuals can't really see what they are vulnerable too. However, the non-law-abiding malware companies and virus writers can simply attack known weak points by either A) getting an illegal copy of Windows source or B) trying attacks until they work. About the only company that produces anti-malware that would need to introduce threats would be MS and Windows One Care (or whatever they call their anti-virus) which, rather then patching Windows and including a decent Anti-Virus built-in, would rather people pay $25 or however much it is to get their brand.
Why did we start killing them?
Were they a threat to us?
Were they even there before?
Why did we start killing Hitler and the Nazis?
Were they a threat to us?
Were they even there before the US was in Europe politically?
Answer those questions yourself, using the same reasoning tactics the USA should have never been involved in WWII (at least in Europe). Your reasoning seems to suggest that we should have let Hitler take over all of Europe because he didn't attack America directly.
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But how many people just click around in their cache? I think that this is more of not, "you downloaded some files your computer is compromised" but rather, "some files are on your desktop, you double click on them, and your computer is compromised"
Honestly, I don't get how this is a major Safari problem, I am sure Firefox can be configured to do the exact same thing, it just so happens that Apple already configured it to. Firefox still opens up 4 windows asking what you want to do with the script.
Safari's core (KHTML/WebKit) is open source and has been used in some F/OSS projects, most notably Konqueror.
Ok, but how is that really going to work? It isn't like you can go up to a computer in *insert computer store here*, pop in a gNewSense CD and see if all the hardware is detected. And it isn't like you can usually find the real model name of a piece of wireless hardware (yes it may be called D-Link but the real card could be Atheros, Realtec, Etc.) to compare it to a list.
Honestly, that is a great idea and it is already taking hold in response to the actions of the *AA. Extremism one way breeds extremism the other way, for example, if we only had "nice" non-free software (no DRM, no serial codes, no activation, relatively bug-free, not over-priced, etc.) the F/OSS campaign wouldn't have taken hold, now we have Vista with DRM and WGA, XP with WGA, buggy MS and other software that is overpriced and that is only fueling the extremism the other way to 100% F/OSS.
No, it would be like someone being vegan and trying to get everyone else to not eat cheese/steak and not only making it voluntary but trying to move for a cheese/steak ban. Honestly, is there a point for a 100% open-source distro, yes, is taking Ubuntu and taking out precisely what made Ubuntu popular and calling it totally *free* a good idea? Not really.
Oh yes, as if DRM is unbreakable! One quote that I have heard (don't remember where) but it was "The only DRM that doesn't get cracked are the ones that no one cares about the content on them". Just about every DRM scheme known to mankind has been broken in some way or another. Honestly, the less DRM/locked-down-content we have, the less problems you have and the less people are going to be out to crack/hack it (just look at the PS3, because Sony made installing Linux on it very easy, there has been a smaller effort to crack it compared to say, the Wii)
PDFs are (at least somewhat) open. There is little need for Adobe to release a non-bloatware, open-source PDF reader. However, with Flash they should as Flash is not open. Adobe is not needed for PDFs, they are for Flash.
Freedom should never come before functionality, and even more so when the functionality is important and the freedom is minor. For example, unless you are a kernel hacker, a well-coded proprietary driver and a well-coded free driver makes little difference to you. 99% of Ubuntu is free and most of it is the important stuff (the main kernel, all the applications, GUI, Window manager, etc.) only about 1% or less is proprietary (wireless, graphic card drivers, etc.). And the one thing that worries me about gNewSense is that by default you can't install any proprietary applications (such as Flash) and the free alternatives (such as GNASH) are nowhere near up to par.
No, but ATI did, and look, they have open-sourced some drivers. Once ATI starts to, NVidia will, once GNASH starts becoming usable, Adobe will feel the pressure to make Flash better. It is called competition, it is something that these companies really haven't had to deal with, though, with Linux they have to compete, and not having a monopoly, they are.
But our justice system was founded on the principles of you are innocent until proven guilty, with a RIAA case, it is the exact opposite, you need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you are innocent, rather then the RIAA prove you are guilty. And some of the people have gotten fines put on them for very little solid evidence and all the evidence wasn't even enough to convict them (so someone had a few songs in their shared folders, but they can't even prove they are or were being shared!).
In general though, Windows 2K is much faster then XP and so if more bloat == complete then I guess I know why Vista is so Bloated... I mean complete.
What innovations? I haven't seen a MS product that was original yet! Just about everything has been taken from either A) Mac B) Other programs which the MS equivalent has killed such as IE from Netscape C) Unix or D) Other programs that have done it better then the MS implementation. Even Bob seems to have roots in various child-friendly applications. And if you don't believe me just tell me one MS innovation that doesn't have roots in other programs.
Honestly, most commercial software just plain sucks. Not from a "I can't copy this or modify the source" way but the fact that it breaks, has outdated documentation, gives cryptic error messages. For example, the other day I was using some software that is critical for the business that I was at. It was a Windows program and worked fine for about 2-3 years and then it just suddenly stopped working. So I pull out the documentation (now granted the company bought this software about 2-3 years ago) it was in a spiral book and the first steps were of installing it... in DOS!!! Now the system that this was installed was a low-end XP notebook, and so none of the documentation was even remotely relevant (they did tell you how to use it in Windows but it seemed like an afterthought and it only covered Windows 95!) and this was the only software for the job (it was to enter in data for a remote system to control access). So I tried to reinstall it, didn't work. So I thought about uninstalling it and reinstalling it until I realized that the database (which you couldn't export without the program working) backups were made in 2006!!! So in the end I was left with cryptic error messages, a program that would install but still have the same problem, and the company that sold us the software changed hands so many times that Im not even sure what it is called anymore.
About the only commercial software I would call "good" would be some proprietary games. The rest either suffer from not enough documentation, cryptic error messages, lack of company support, a program that can easily be replaced with a F/OSS solution or a horrible UI.
I don't know if this is an odd experience or not but on a used laptop that has Windows 3.1 on it, I never have had to type Win to start Windows it always started by itself, however it being a used laptop and me not messing with it much, I don't know if they added a script to type in "win" every time it booted up.
Compared to Windows 2K XP was a failure from the user's standpoint. Though, the upgrade path was from ME to XP for the home users making XP much, much, much better. But for those of use on Windows 2K, XP was just extra bloat. XP also suffered from major security holes, I can't remember how much spyware I remember taking off of people's computers before Service Pack 2 introduced the concept of basic security. Windows 2K also didn't suffer from WGA or other DRM nonsense.
I predict that when the next desktop version of Windows is released, all the Lunix Zealots will be whinging about how terrible it is compared to Vista, and how Vista was the Greatest OS EVAR.
Actually, I don't think that will be the case. I think that MS has learned the lesson that DRM-laden OSes will not sell and remove the DRM and bloat from Windows 7, if it goes according to their plans (which I honestly doubt it will....) it may be a decent OS. But if it is inferior to free products (such as Linux) of course those using it are going to complain.
Perhaps Mr. Gates should look to such people such as Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Ian Murdock, Larry Wall, etc.
A more sane method though, would be to develop a compatibility layer between the old API and new API. For example, if a program was specified to run in the new API it would, otherwise it would run in the old API. However, everything would be coded in the new API but just have a compatibility layer much as how WINE lets you run Windows programs on Linux.
Actually, I believe the quote would have been it was easier for Apple to make UNIX user friendly, because OS X is mostly BSD with a nice GUI and although Linux is very similar to BSD (and other UNIX variants) OS X doesn't run Linux it runs BSD.
Windows 95 actually wasn't that bad. If you ignore all the random BSODs, it was a decently advanced OS for the time. Though just about everyone knew that Macs were better, it offered a cheap, easy-to-learn GUI for DOS that could run older Windows applications. And other then OS/2 (which really wasn't much different then Windows...) and a few obscure variants of UNIX (remember, this was before Linux could be installed without being a technology wizard) you didn't have much choice if you had an Intel computer other then to use '95 and honestly, compared to recent failures, '95 wasn't so bad....
Osama attacked us on 9/11 (similar to the Japanese on perl harbor which I am comparing it to)
Iraq had a tyrant and was allied with Osama and other terrorist groups (similar to Hitler and Nazi Germany which I am comparing it to)
But we will need much, much better hardware if we intend to program it in 20 years. You only need to look at Vista to see that programmers today don't care or can't program with limited resources, and even when we get the hardware, no programming method has been found to replicate the human mind, meaning that we will need even more hardware to make it work and even more hardware for the futuristic programming methods that will make Vista seem like it is well-coded. You only need to look at speech recognition to see how this goes, back in the '70s and '80s it was always we needed better hardware, faster CPUs, never software, now look at today, where even though it has improved, even on modern hardware (2 Gigs of RAM, dual core CPU...) it is both slow and error prone. I imagine the project of the human brain to be the same.
MS already does that. Because Windows source code is so closely guarded, independent, law-abiding security companies or individuals can't really see what they are vulnerable too. However, the non-law-abiding malware companies and virus writers can simply attack known weak points by either A) getting an illegal copy of Windows source or B) trying attacks until they work. About the only company that produces anti-malware that would need to introduce threats would be MS and Windows One Care (or whatever they call their anti-virus) which, rather then patching Windows and including a decent Anti-Virus built-in, would rather people pay $25 or however much it is to get their brand.
My bad, It should have read Hitler never came and bombed us directly like Osama
Why did we start killing Hitler and the Nazis?
Were they a threat to us?
Were they even there before the US was in Europe politically?
Answer those questions yourself, using the same reasoning tactics the USA should have never been involved in WWII (at least in Europe). Your reasoning seems to suggest that we should have let Hitler take over all of Europe because he didn't attack America directly.