CUPS is overkill for occasionally converting a document into a printer language and then sending it off. Worse, CUPS doesn't even do that all that reliably (OS X is stuck with the same flaky printing system as Linux).
Allowing Workers to freely migrate within the EU was a big mistake and will drive wages down.
Wages in the UK and EU are going down because there is lots of cheap labor available overseas.
Closing the borders to people or goods makes the situation worse, not better. If you stop people from coming, the same people are going to work elsewhere for less.
If you stop good from coming, then people will need to buy UK goods for more money and their money will be worth less.
Face it, the prosperity of the late 20th century is over. The UK has little competitive advantage over India or China, and hence its standard of living is going to equalize. Protectionists measures only make things worse. And the same is true for the US and Europe.
I'd be very surprised if the US is not already doing this, and just not making a point to let anyone know.
If the US does this, it's fairly recent; the US did not use to keep a lot of records. And if they don't let anybody know about it, that means that they can't be using it as part of regular legal proceedings (otherwise you'd know about it), which is a big part of the reason why people are concerned with the government collecting all this data. And US government agencies are restricted in the kind of data they can collect and how they can exchange it, while the UK is hoping to link all its databases.
I think people should stop this knee-jerk reaction assuming that privacy is better protected in Europe. You hear a lot about privacy issues in the US because people care passionately about it in the US and because Americans distrust their government, but that doesn't make privacy worse. Europe has a lot of laws protecting citizens from intrusion by private entities, but the laws for protecting citizens from government intrusion seem weaker to me. Even US border controls, which look quite intrusive for non-citizens, are not much different from some other Western democracies.
Making an argument that privacy is better protected in one nation compared to another requires looking at a lot of detailed legal and administrative facts, and actual cases.
If you set yourself up as "the open source guy", you'll frighten people and have a constant struggle on your hands. Besides, wholesale conversions generally come with big problems anyway, and people will blame open source for everything.
Instead, do things gradually. Start by introducing specific FOSS applications on Windows. Start offering Linux, but don't force anybody. Collect data on how much money and effort it takes to support Windows vs Linux. Migrate some server side applications to Linux and FOSS. Etc.
Look at hosted, platform neutral apps, like Google Apps or Zoho. There's a good cost argument to be made for them.
Objectively, what would they need a license for? There is nothing innovative in the x86 instruction set, and it has been cloned. Numerous times already.
Fingerprint readers only work for on-site identification with a trusted path between the reader and the thing being granted access to. If there is not trusted path, the fingerprint image is simply like a password--one that you can't change if it gets compromised.
No, the real solution is to use keychains. You don't need anything special for that. Just put all your keys in a keychain on a USB memory stick and carry that around.
All the software is already there on Gnome and OS X. The only trouble is that the keychain software doesn't use keychains on USB drives by default, so you have to go through some pain to set this up on every computer that you use. Also, you effectively have multiple keychains, for example one for Firefox and one from the operating system.
But Mono code will be limited practically to Linux. Or it might work on Windows in whatever limited way GTK stuff works there today. Certainly not likely to work on Mac's or various phone platforms.
The situation with Mono is no different than with C or C++: a lot of code is cross platform simply because it gets by with the common core library. GUI code in Mono is not cross-platform by default, but if you really want them, there are cross-platform GUI libraries available for Mono.
As C and C++ have shown, that's the right choice, while Java has conclusively demonstrated that the alternative, forcing everybody to use cross-platform libraries all the time, does not work.
Mono's mix of a common core library, platform specific libraries, and cross-platform libraries is a big advantage of Mono over Java.
But then we get into the topic of if Mono is.NET or an imitator.
Mono is not.NET or an imitator. Mono is a platform that consists of a compiler, a core library, a set of Linux libraries, and a set of Microsoft-compatibility libraries. The respective C equivalents are gcc, libc, Gtk+, and WINE. Not using Mono because you're afraid of Microsoft suing over.NET is like not using C because you're afraid of Microsoft suing over WINE.
If it gets too powerful, or too feature full, who's to say if MS doesn't retract their promise and claim that Mono is infringing on their patents, suing whatever company might have worked on said products?
Microsoft can just as well claim that GNU C++, or Qt, or Java, or anything else infringes on their patents. In fact, they have claimed that Linux infringes on their patents.
The situation with Mono is actually better because people have looked in much more detail at the patent situation than for other software; there are no relevant patents on the compiler, the core libraries, or the Linux libraries, which is what all the main C# applications for Linux are written in.
Just don't use the Windows emulation libraries; I think they aren't even installed by default on Ubuntu and they aren't all that useful.
A third party implementation of a standard defined by the first-party implementor is always going to lag behind the original.
Linux, GNU, GNU C++, libc, and many other tools that we take for granted all started out as clones of proprietary software from a litigious, monopolistic company. So did many other open source projects. If people had followed your reasoning, free software and open source software wouldn't exist... What matters is that when developers and end users pick a technology, they pick the leader, not the follower. Accepting Mono is giving up and giving in to Microsoft vendor lock-in.
Lucky for us, then, that Mono is not a follower. There are dozens of Mono-based desktop applications, and they are not based on.NET, but instead on Gtk# and other Linux technologies.
The situation with C# is really not much different from C++. There is an open language standard, there is a large set of Linux-native libraries, and there is a large set of Microsoft APIs. For C++ on Linux, you get GNU C++, Gtk+ and other FOSS libraries, plus WINE if you want it. For C# on Linux, you get the Mono C# compiler, Gtk# and lots of other FOSS C# libraries and bindings, plus a separate set of.NET libraries if you want them. Mono's.NET libraries seem to be used about as much as WINE, which is to say, not a whole lot. The FOSS C# libraries are just a lot better.
Yes, you can resolve the Fermi paradox if you assume that civilizations consistently destroy themselves after a short time (1000 years); you don't need to invoke communications range limits.
The question is: how and why are they destroying themselves? We are not talking about some or most civilizations offing themselves after 1000 years, we are talking about every single one of them, because if even a single civilization made it to an age of several million years, we should be seeing them.
As they get more popular, especially with non-expert users, more vulnerabilities will be found and exploited.
No, they won't. The difference of security between Linux and Windows isn't due to open source or due to popularity, it's due to software distribution: people get all their Linux software from the distributor; almost nobody needs to install third party applications. That eliminates most sources of viruses and malware.
Linux needs to stop the smug attitude because users don't care about smugness. They just want things to work!
Well, then switching from Windows to Linux is the first thing they should do, since things already work a lot better on Linux than they do on Windows.
When Windows users supposedly have problems with Linux, what they are really saying is that Linux doesn't work the way they are used to or with the software that they have used.
Guess what: you can't fix the problems with Windows and remain 100% compatible. If you want to be better than Windows, you need to be different and incompatible. Linux is better than Windows, hence it has a different user interface, different file formats, different system management, different software packaging, etc.
What a load of garbage! Open Office can send and receive those documents so long as they are not that complicated. And therein lies the issue.
Microsoft Office itself has serious interoperability problems between versions. As a result, you're no worse off using OpenOffice than you would be using Microsoft Office.
You are nervous to use OpenOffice because an translation error could hit you at the wrong moment.
I'm not. I'm nervous to use Microsoft Office because its file formats and user interface keep changing haphazardly, because it is buggier than OpenOffice, because it is prone to viruses, and because it is horrendously expensive.
I don't see why people are letting teachers like "Karen" remain anonymous. These people are paid for by tax dollars and are responsible to the public. If they promote commercial software to students and write nasty letters to non-profits, the public has a right to know.
Rather than getting into a pissing contest with her, he should just have said thank you, posted the letter on his blog, and sent a copy to the pta.
Even if it were easy to set up clients, I simply do not want a client. I use several computers, and I would have to configure each client to my liking: plug-ins, rules, highlighting, address book, etc.
I just want web-based E-mail, but I also want it off-line. The GMail/Gears combo gives me that. I'm probably not alone.
this is good *because* people are rarely offline
on
Offline Gmail Launched
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· Score: 3, Insightful
The two arguments against this seem to be (1) people rarely are offline, and (2) IMAP and POP already do this.
Well, if you put those two together, you know why this is a good thing: Gmail+Gears is good for people who are out of touch a few times a year (airplane etc.) and don't want the hassle of setting up a separate mail client and the bother of learning two different mail clients.
And a hassle it is. Right now, I use Thunderbird for off-line access, and I use it so rarely that on the few occasions I start it up, things usually take forever to sync and nothing works quite right.
Who says that anybody is "surprised"? It doesn't "surprise" me that people murder, steal, and cheat and that companies pollute, evade taxes, and bribe politicians.
It also requires that if you use MTP you cannot use Mass Storage, further annoying your customers and very neatly if "accidentally" meaning they don't work on Macs
Blaming Microsoft for the fact that Apple doesn't support MTP is ridiculous. Apple locked down iTunes so that you can't really use it with other players, and they tried to lock down the iPod so that you can't use it with other music management applications.
As for "screwing the entire non-Apple MP3 market", I think you give Microsoft too much credit; Microsoft has had virtually no impact either way. If you want an MP3 player, there are plenty of choices that cost almost nothing.
MP3 players are dead anyway; like PDAs, they are just becoming part of phones.
Slashdot Mirror
CUPS is overkill for occasionally converting a document into a printer language and then sending it off. Worse, CUPS doesn't even do that all that reliably (OS X is stuck with the same flaky printing system as Linux).
Allowing Workers to freely migrate within the EU was a big mistake and will drive wages down.
Wages in the UK and EU are going down because there is lots of cheap labor available overseas.
Closing the borders to people or goods makes the situation worse, not better. If you stop people from coming, the same people are going to work elsewhere for less.
If you stop good from coming, then people will need to buy UK goods for more money and their money will be worth less.
Face it, the prosperity of the late 20th century is over. The UK has little competitive advantage over India or China, and hence its standard of living is going to equalize. Protectionists measures only make things worse. And the same is true for the US and Europe.
I'd be very surprised if the US is not already doing this, and just not making a point to let anyone know.
If the US does this, it's fairly recent; the US did not use to keep a lot of records. And if they don't let anybody know about it, that means that they can't be using it as part of regular legal proceedings (otherwise you'd know about it), which is a big part of the reason why people are concerned with the government collecting all this data. And US government agencies are restricted in the kind of data they can collect and how they can exchange it, while the UK is hoping to link all its databases.
I think people should stop this knee-jerk reaction assuming that privacy is better protected in Europe. You hear a lot about privacy issues in the US because people care passionately about it in the US and because Americans distrust their government, but that doesn't make privacy worse. Europe has a lot of laws protecting citizens from intrusion by private entities, but the laws for protecting citizens from government intrusion seem weaker to me. Even US border controls, which look quite intrusive for non-citizens, are not much different from some other Western democracies.
Making an argument that privacy is better protected in one nation compared to another requires looking at a lot of detailed legal and administrative facts, and actual cases.
If you set yourself up as "the open source guy", you'll frighten people and have a constant struggle on your hands. Besides, wholesale conversions generally come with big problems anyway, and people will blame open source for everything.
Instead, do things gradually. Start by introducing specific FOSS applications on Windows. Start offering Linux, but don't force anybody. Collect data on how much money and effort it takes to support Windows vs Linux. Migrate some server side applications to Linux and FOSS. Etc.
Look at hosted, platform neutral apps, like Google Apps or Zoho. There's a good cost argument to be made for them.
Objectively, what would they need a license for? There is nothing innovative in the x86 instruction set, and it has been cloned. Numerous times already.
Fingerprint readers only work for on-site identification with a trusted path between the reader and the thing being granted access to. If there is not trusted path, the fingerprint image is simply like a password--one that you can't change if it gets compromised.
No, the real solution is to use keychains. You don't need anything special for that. Just put all your keys in a keychain on a USB memory stick and carry that around.
All the software is already there on Gnome and OS X. The only trouble is that the keychain software doesn't use keychains on USB drives by default, so you have to go through some pain to set this up on every computer that you use. Also, you effectively have multiple keychains, for example one for Firefox and one from the operating system.
I'm sure it will be just as successful as object-oriented databases and database-based operating systems!
But Mono code will be limited practically to Linux. Or it might work on Windows in whatever limited way GTK stuff works there today. Certainly not likely to work on Mac's or various phone platforms.
The situation with Mono is no different than with C or C++: a lot of code is cross platform simply because it gets by with the common core library. GUI code in Mono is not cross-platform by default, but if you really want them, there are cross-platform GUI libraries available for Mono.
As C and C++ have shown, that's the right choice, while Java has conclusively demonstrated that the alternative, forcing everybody to use cross-platform libraries all the time, does not work.
Mono's mix of a common core library, platform specific libraries, and cross-platform libraries is a big advantage of Mono over Java.
But then we get into the topic of if Mono is .NET or an imitator.
Mono is not .NET or an imitator. Mono is a platform that consists of a compiler, a core library, a set of Linux libraries, and a set of Microsoft-compatibility libraries. The respective C equivalents are gcc, libc, Gtk+, and WINE. Not using Mono because you're afraid of Microsoft suing over .NET is like not using C because you're afraid of Microsoft suing over WINE.
If it gets too powerful, or too feature full, who's to say if MS doesn't retract their promise and claim that Mono is infringing on their patents, suing whatever company might have worked on said products?
Microsoft can just as well claim that GNU C++, or Qt, or Java, or anything else infringes on their patents. In fact, they have claimed that Linux infringes on their patents.
The situation with Mono is actually better because people have looked in much more detail at the patent situation than for other software; there are no relevant patents on the compiler, the core libraries, or the Linux libraries, which is what all the main C# applications for Linux are written in.
Just don't use the Windows emulation libraries; I think they aren't even installed by default on Ubuntu and they aren't all that useful.
A third party implementation of a standard defined by the first-party implementor is always going to lag behind the original.
Linux, GNU, GNU C++, libc, and many other tools that we take for granted all started out as clones of proprietary software from a litigious, monopolistic company. So did many other open source projects. If people had followed your reasoning, free software and open source software wouldn't exist. .. What matters is that when developers and end users pick a technology, they pick the leader, not the follower. Accepting Mono is giving up and giving in to Microsoft vendor lock-in.
Lucky for us, then, that Mono is not a follower. There are dozens of Mono-based desktop applications, and they are not based on .NET, but instead on Gtk# and other Linux technologies.
The situation with C# is really not much different from C++. There is an open language standard, there is a large set of Linux-native libraries, and there is a large set of Microsoft APIs. For C++ on Linux, you get GNU C++, Gtk+ and other FOSS libraries, plus WINE if you want it. For C# on Linux, you get the Mono C# compiler, Gtk# and lots of other FOSS C# libraries and bindings, plus a separate set of .NET libraries if you want them. Mono's .NET libraries seem to be used about as much as WINE, which is to say, not a whole lot. The FOSS C# libraries are just a lot better.
Yes, you can resolve the Fermi paradox if you assume that civilizations consistently destroy themselves after a short time (1000 years); you don't need to invoke communications range limits.
The question is: how and why are they destroying themselves? We are not talking about some or most civilizations offing themselves after 1000 years, we are talking about every single one of them, because if even a single civilization made it to an age of several million years, we should be seeing them.
Obviously, Bill Gates is bringing the same skill and insight to his charitable efforts that made Windows what it is today.
I dunno why people keep complaining... I actually liked all four seasons of Lexx
I thoght they had already been back to Nodnol dlo doog.
As they get more popular, especially with non-expert users, more vulnerabilities will be found and exploited.
No, they won't. The difference of security between Linux and Windows isn't due to open source or due to popularity, it's due to software distribution: people get all their Linux software from the distributor; almost nobody needs to install third party applications. That eliminates most sources of viruses and malware.
Linux needs to stop the smug attitude because users don't care about smugness. They just want things to work!
Well, then switching from Windows to Linux is the first thing they should do, since things already work a lot better on Linux than they do on Windows.
When Windows users supposedly have problems with Linux, what they are really saying is that Linux doesn't work the way they are used to or with the software that they have used.
Guess what: you can't fix the problems with Windows and remain 100% compatible. If you want to be better than Windows, you need to be different and incompatible. Linux is better than Windows, hence it has a different user interface, different file formats, different system management, different software packaging, etc.
What a load of garbage! Open Office can send and receive those documents so long as they are not that complicated. And therein lies the issue.
Microsoft Office itself has serious interoperability problems between versions. As a result, you're no worse off using OpenOffice than you would be using Microsoft Office.
You are nervous to use OpenOffice because an translation error could hit you at the wrong moment.
I'm not. I'm nervous to use Microsoft Office because its file formats and user interface keep changing haphazardly, because it is buggier than OpenOffice, because it is prone to viruses, and because it is horrendously expensive.
I don't see why people are letting teachers like "Karen" remain anonymous. These people are paid for by tax dollars and are responsible to the public. If they promote commercial software to students and write nasty letters to non-profits, the public has a right to know.
Rather than getting into a pissing contest with her, he should just have said thank you, posted the letter on his blog, and sent a copy to the pta.
Unless there's an interface option I've missed, gmail is hardly cutting edge when it comes to web interfaces.
It's not cutting edge, but people still prefer it. Makes your head explode, doesn't it?
If I want to read a message in a new window, I have to open it, then find the little icon, then click it
Or you just shift-click it, like it says on the help screen.
Well, Thunderbird may be horrid, but others are even worse in my experience: Evolution, Outlook, etc.
Even if it were easy to set up clients, I simply do not want a client. I use several computers, and I would have to configure each client to my liking: plug-ins, rules, highlighting, address book, etc.
I just want web-based E-mail, but I also want it off-line. The GMail/Gears combo gives me that. I'm probably not alone.
The two arguments against this seem to be (1) people rarely are offline, and (2) IMAP and POP already do this.
Well, if you put those two together, you know why this is a good thing: Gmail+Gears is good for people who are out of touch a few times a year (airplane etc.) and don't want the hassle of setting up a separate mail client and the bother of learning two different mail clients.
And a hassle it is. Right now, I use Thunderbird for off-line access, and I use it so rarely that on the few occasions I start it up, things usually take forever to sync and nothing works quite right.
Why is anyone surprised?
Who says that anybody is "surprised"? It doesn't "surprise" me that people murder, steal, and cheat and that companies pollute, evade taxes, and bribe politicians.
I still want to see it reported and publicized.
It also requires that if you use MTP you cannot use Mass Storage, further annoying your customers and very neatly if "accidentally" meaning they don't work on Macs
Blaming Microsoft for the fact that Apple doesn't support MTP is ridiculous. Apple locked down iTunes so that you can't really use it with other players, and they tried to lock down the iPod so that you can't use it with other music management applications.
As for "screwing the entire non-Apple MP3 market", I think you give Microsoft too much credit; Microsoft has had virtually no impact either way. If you want an MP3 player, there are plenty of choices that cost almost nothing.
MP3 players are dead anyway; like PDAs, they are just becoming part of phones.
You can be "cool" simply by buying a shiny toy with an Apple logo? I guess "cool" isn't what it used to be.