The next version of LSB is supposed to define much more desktop functionality, and even an installation interface (hopefully this would include package names as well). I wouldn't say that LSB has to take everything (or even most things) from all major distros. The distros seem happy these days to adhere to LSB as long as it defines a core functionality that does not overreach or grow too fast.
But while distros are adhering to the LSB standard, application developers and users are oblivious to the standard. It is not being marketed to them, though it should be. Instead they keep talking of this imaginary "Linux" OS when they should be referring to "LSB".
The 6 mo. distro cycle is indeed destructive as you say. Even with Ubuntu which settles on an LTS version every couple years, the intermediary versions end up pulling the tech-savvy power users away from the non-techies still plodding away with LTS; this diminishes the former group's ability to assist the latter group. Either that, or the Joe Users end up constantly harrangued by the techies to keep upgrading their OS.
The hottest new doodads are very nice to have around... IF they are merely add-ons. In OS X I can replace my samba with the very latest version, but the fact that all new OS X 10.4 installs start off with the same basic version of samba is extremely important to platform stability. Eventually, Apple will incorporate the major new samba release into a future OS X upgrade.
The anarchy you speak of is a grave concern. The trick will be to convince a large enough group of people that LSB-compliant stuff is the defacto starting point... the thing you reach for and work on before you try anything else. We will also need to be tolerant of elite techies who want to do things their own way, as long as they do not advertise their wares as LSB. Think of it as 'standards etiquette': Everyone has freedom to do whatever except where it comes to false claims. People just need to be made aware of LSB and learn to ask for it in their OS and apps (i.e. when writing letters to Adobe) in order for that dynamic to take effect.
But how Linux distros use package managers is a big part of problem, as I pointed out. Part of the reason is that every complex Linux program has a complex set of dependencies, nitpicking about this-and-that component within what should be the OS.
OS X has a package manager, and while it is seldom used, the dependency checks are mostly limited to "OS X v 10.3.9 and above", perhaps the Java and Quicktime versions installed. You don't get an app installation failure that tells the user their OS doesn't have necessary library versions in a piecemeal fashion. "Your repo doesn't have a recent-enough sound server, or xml parsing library or messaging bus" is gibberish to most people: You can't possibly expect it to be meaningful to them. But Linux coders have been accultured to foisting this experience on their users, whereas an OS X coder will try to hit two or three well-defined environments, i.e. the versions of OS X, and include what those environments don't offer into the Appdir.
So you would have them distribute these bad boys another way ?, with out any control or testing to see if they are broken ?
Are you kidding? Testing is the author's responsibility, and for personal computing, distribution should be also. Distro managers can't be expected to know the carefully considered use cases and scenarios that thousands of apps were written to fulfill, so their testing and distributing role should be minimal-to-none.
Your as free as you want to be.. fact is so free you can make your own distro that installs applications the way you want to install them.
This is a very old and tiresome mantra.
Time and effort are not free.
What you call "no package management", I call package management without hairy and bug-ridden central databases. No user should have to wrestle with a dependency database to install an application of their choice, much less a repository that distributes apps that are poorly understood and rarely used by the ones compiling configuring and packaging those apps. It is one of the main reasons why Linux apps are feature-poor, as devs have learned to dread the hassles of functionality that breaks across distros.
Not only should there BE a box (a Linux standard), but it is time to build a better one that means something to average users.
Thanks for your response about OO shells. I think that the MS 'monad' idea will become extremely attractive, and whereas most of my post concerns end-users and budding developers, there will have to be some work even on the sysadmin front.
As it is now, the *nix (incl Linux) domain is turning off a lot of young people because of silly things like commands and switches that have no rhyme/reason, highly-unique and nasty configs like httpd.conf and xorg.conf, and having to learn vi even when they are told that webmin and the desktop environment will (mostly) take care of conf files.
An OO shell would permit options completion and promote greater consistency with option switches, making usage a great deal simpler. In addition, add an editor like 'nano' to the standard so that admins can choose between vi and something more straightforward.
1. An easy, approachable Hardware Compatibility lookup website. It would consolidate all the compatibility info from kernel & X11 devs, major distros, OEMs and also allow end-users to add their input. FWIW, the HCL at linuxquestions.org is an interesting start but nowhere near exhaustive or current enough to empower Linux users (not hackers) to confidently purchase new equipment.
1a. A certification program for drivers that allows products which meet criteria to bear a special Linux compatibility trademark emblem.
2. Fix the sound architecture. Blocking of sound output still occurs after many years of ALSA. There is no GOOD reason why Harriet shouldn't hear her softphone ring or calendar alarms just because a minimized web page contains a Flash object. Telling her to muck about in the CLI, to buy a pricier multi-channel soundcard, or to learn about sound servers and juggle them is beyond the pale.
3. Create an excellent default IDE for the LSB Desktop environment. The IDE will be geared to target the LSB Desktop spec by default, with desktop applications as the focus. Something you would write a video editor or DVD burner with, not so much a video card or disk driver. GORM on steroids: If it doesn't inspire budding application developers like XCode and Visual Studio then Linux will not inspire application developers to write. Linux will not benefit from many more systems developers at this point because its the apps that matter: The apps sell the platform.
3a. Well-rounded API documentation for the LSB Desktop target, ala MSDN or Apple Developer Connection, eventually integrated with IDE.
4. Enable app developers to become as independent as possible, such that distro managers do not insert themselves between the developers and their users. Distros ought to distribute OS software, and for the most part stay the F*ck away from controlling installation of particular applications. High-level package managers like APT, YUM, etc. should stick to managing (or mangling) the OS dependency tree and leave apps the hell alone! Provide dependency targets in the OS repo like "LSB Desktop", and only one or two others like "Java 6". Then, accept that all the extra stuff you supply on top of LSB is ONLY extra, and will get used when and if the user decides in specific cases.
4a. Ensure those budding app developers can easily share their work with friends and customers. Make appdirs like on OS X and Gobo Linux a standard. Dear God, please.
5. Hacker culture works extremely poorly for application software today. Fund efforts to spread the discipline of user-centered product development. Teach FOSS developers the concepts and ropes of SDLC and Rational Unified Process, with emphasis on adding actor definitions and use-cases to docs and project wikis so that these elements are continually refined and re-thought eventually becoming the centerpiece of requirements. Create use-case instances (scenarios) in close association with unit/app testing scripts. Anything to keep developer minds on the kinds of users and situations the software is meant to satisfy. Encourage budding Business Analysts to do 6-12 month stints with FOSS projects.
6. Create settings persistence (configuration) APIs for crucial system services like X11, Samba, Apache, sound, etc. Get these projects to set and manage their own config files, as no one else seems capable for doing this consistently or well. Maybe when they have to write AND parse their own config data, they will stop creating needlessly bizarre & open-ended formats that umpteen distro tools only understand halfway.
7. Next-generation, object oriented shell based on something like Ruby, Python or even Groovy.
Lastly, all of the above must be in the spirit of fulfilling primary personal computing scenarios like app and driver installation, and configuration of essential services (change screen res, use a network share, etc) in a predictable manner. Unlike MS and Apple, Linux does not yet grok PC land because
Those exporting countries are willing sit on trillion+ dollar reserves because oil typically hasn't been available for import with any currency other than US dollars. Cutting a deal with Saudi Arabia (the OPEC swing producer) to price oil only in dollars in exchange for propping up their oppressive dictatorship, has caused the rest of OPEC to fall in line... at least until 2000 when Iraq switched from the dollar to trading oil exclusively in euros.
In other words, there was an artificially-maintained relationship between oil and the US dollar, creating great demand for our currency and causing the world to subsidize the lavish/wasteful lifestyles of so many Americans. The more oil gets pumped to third parties, the more demand there is for greenbacks, and the more we can print up over here to send abroad in exchange for real goods and services.
The oil-backed dollar is sometimes called the 'petrodollar'.
Since 2000 Iran, Russia and Venezuela have started trading in euros as well and as of last month Iran has thrown down the gauntlet and excluded the dollar. Last month was also when China decided to start spending/investing that pile of dollars (their first investment fund, with more to follow, is $300bn.).
IRI to stop pricing oil in dollars 12:34:24 È.Ù Islamic Republic of Iran plans to stop pricing oil in dollars, IRI's Central Bank governor told IRIB on Friday.
"Iran plans to stop selling its oil in dollars," Ebrahim Sheibani said, adding that Islamic Republic of Iran had reduced its assets held in dollars to 20 percent.
Islamic Republic of Iran declared in December it would replace the dollar with the euro in foreign transactions and state-held foreign assets.
Linux only just got the ability to accommodate user-space drivers (and I hope it works). Many critical peripherals do not get timely or well-supported drivers, even though what they need most is a stable ABI and not blazing speed.
(Run-on sentence alert...)
Additionally, Linux audio is a failure. Even ALSA. There simply should not be any blocking of audio I/O at this stage. Relying on a happy coincidence between the app developers' sound server choice, Distro-X's favorite sound server, and/or the presence of premium multi-channel (instead of single-channel) soundcard HW just to keep sound apps working, accessibility aids speaking, softphones and calendar alarms ringing when they should be (instead of sitting mute because a Flash animation was left running in a minimized web page somewhere) is just not cutting it. Or how about a call not going through because an email or calendar alert went off or watching a video/audio stream at the wrong time?
Here are some wrong answers that are often repeated to me by the clueless:
* User was supposed to buy the premium sound hardware (which doesn't even claim Linux compatibility)
* User should pay attention to what apps are using which sound servers, and juggle the apps accordingly.
* User only has to visit ALSA development site, open a CLI and read Howtos.
* User can install and configure the mixing OSS driver any time they want (its free as in beer until the trial expires).
* User clearly did something wrong if Skype for Linux is either silent or echoes like a tin canyon on every single PC + distro they've tried.
* User deserves it because they haven't given up their real life to get in touch with their inner penguin.
* Blocking sound output is appropriate default behavior.
* User is accessing the wrong mixer panel: Run alsamixer from the CLI instead.
* User lazily ran their app from the supplied icon instead of from the CLI using an esddsp, artsdsp or similar wrapper.
Clearly this mountain and a half of BS and misdirected blame stems largely from Linus' inability to tackle this crucial problem after all these years. Neither he nor his delegates are capable in this area, although somehow I wouldn't be surprised if they rationalized it by thinking the issue of smooth audio output (icky desktop feature) was beneath them.
Suburbia is a huge aggravating factor in our energy problems, whereas urban environments with avg building height of 4 or more stories are far more efficient. They suddenly enable walking, biking, convenient bus and lightrail networks. Heating and cooling become more efficient just from building configuration.
But since the White Flight in the 1950s, most Americans have hated urbanity. I think many are going to have to change their minds.
1) Well now you're just getting into an entirely different type of speculation WRT Skype service. Still, anyone could test their streams for randomness and sound the alarm if the encryption is no longer present.
2) It can't be simple tapping. But I will concede that an MITM attack would be similar to what Skype would ostensibly need to do to enable eavesdropping. The problem is, implemented full-scale, integrated with their normal services, there would likely be some major mistakes/glitches and IMO its probable that's just what we saw last week. At the very least they would need to add a lot of in-house supernode systems to make it work, and that would have a large impact at their data centers.
The only alternative to changing their router logic to prevent P2P mode and effect MITM is to change the client apps themselves, which is impractical for a number of reasons.
Most of what we're quibbling about here is "Skype just moved to comply with the new law" vs. "Skype's privacy claim was a blatant lie and they could already eavesdrop". The former stance represents the simplest explanation: Skype had no motive to break client-client security up to this point.
1) No one has a shred of evidence that the NSA can crack freely-available crypto. And there is no theory that would make it plausible/practical.
2) Because nothing like it has been done before, and eBay (the parent company) has been knocked offline for nearly as long even after attempting far more trivial changes to their auction system.
Skype originally only had to provide access to the POTS interfaces because that's all that CALEA covered; and that was easy since POTS is unencrypted and its already been done for decades. But now the law applies to all international information that passes through the USA... POTS, VOIP or DATA.
One of the reasons the gov't is panicking over non-telephony (non-POTS) traffic is that much of it is encrypted and cannot be spied on without extremely complicated measures employed by all/any digital carriers involved.
So, of COURSE the NSA can tap POTS lines without callers having the slightest suspicion. But as soon as the connections become IP-IP (and P2P) with strong modern encryption, then they are sent flat on their asses. In Skype's case nothing will help them with that signal other than a significant re-working of the service which allows, say, a supernode to act as a man-in-the-middle between what would otherwise be an uncrackable P2P link.
The law says any traffic routed through USA can be eavesdropped, so I was being simplistic when I said USA-International.
AFAIK the surveillance Skype could do up to this point was only at a POTS interface (SkypeOut or SkypeIn). Otherwise, the P2P calls were 'secure' with only the source & dest identities and call length being known to 3rd parties.
It probably has more to do with Skype retooling for eavesdropping requirements under the new wiretap law. Skype handles a lot of international traffic, encrypted and often in a P2P fashion, so a major change is necessary in order to comply.
From what little I know about Skype, the network can cause both parties in a Skype-Skype call to route through a third party, a supernode (this is done to defeat firewall complications). So perhaps they would be able to start routing all USA-international traffic through in-house supernodes where the stream could be tapped. (Anyone want to correct me? Clarify?)
I use a combo of ImgLikeOpera (set to load only images from originating site) and NoScript. The former handles images from off the main site, and the latter handles flash-based stuff. After the page loads, I can click on either extension's icon if I want to see the unloaded stuff.
Personally I like this combo because I am not against ads per-se, just against pervasive imbedded ad schemes like Doubleclick that track and profile private browsing. So if the site I'm reading hosts image ads at their site, they'll load in my browser automatically.
You make a good point, and I'd like to add that we should be questioning this assumption that small children should be allowed to play on the info superhighway by themselves at all.
Yet, I get the feeling that American parents want to sit little Johnny in front of the computer and walk away just like they do with the TV.
It's an awesome idea. Everyone should be going through a 3-day introduction course that includes cyber-safety.
I wonder if they will cover basic things like paying attention to SSL certificate warnings, and not executing email attachments.
Of course, there is a lot modern OSes could do to help (but don't), like superimposing an executable signifier (such as a red exclamation mark) over the icons of all executables. User interfaces confuse people about the difference between code and data, and the spread of trojans is the unfortunate result.
Seeing a movie is like watching a cartoon dressed-up like reality: An animation 'skinned' in flesh-and-blood.
The movies use lots of tricks now (mostly CGI) to aim for a transcendent quality in action sequences. At the same time, there is also a trend toward hyper-realist imagery (through CGI) in both video games and movies. I can see how the tight association of this action-transcendence with realist imagery could hamper a student's sense of real physical phenomena.
Presumably having Dell's hypervisor load instantly at power-up could prevent other virtualizers from running, including hypervisor-based rootkits like Blue Pill.
I discovered noatime about 5 years ago, right about the same time I learned that DMA was turned off by default. I was horrified to hear that Linus' opinion of DMA at the time was 'no performance gain'.
I'm surprised Linus is just cluing in now about atime updates: The noatime workaround is listed in all kinds of performance-tuning guides.
People might just want more HD space, instead of a backup.
But if we assume that the included drive will remain roomy enough, that still leaves the question of why a $1000+ computer has no robust expansion slots. IMHO, adding a PC Card slot would be extremely simple for Apple.
Instead, Apple have made the iMac considerably thinner which I think adds little value.
The notion (or assumption) of "the Linux OS" is a very unfortunate and confusing delusion in the world of software. It causes otherwise intelligent techies to start talking about a mythical FOSS operating system "Linux" as if users who are exposed to its various userland environments are having a shared experience. Yet the methods for setting up printers, network shares and applications can be wildly divergent between distros (or... the methods are mostly the same, just ignore the page and-a-half extra shell instructions for distro-X in order to get a supporting subsystem up and running).
Maybe you could say that each distro family like Debian/Ubuntu/Mepis, RedHat/CentOS/Fedora, Mandriva/PCLOS kind of represent an OS. Or perhaps you could say that LSB defines what could be considered an OS (almost).
On the whole, "Linux OS" is a misleading and self-defeating term when used outside of systems-programming environs. It raises expectations about user interface and interoperability standards that just don't exist between the distros.
Using your logic, I think a much better argument can be made for keeping the monitor/CPU seperate, than for making people use external boxes for more HD space. If extra boxes on the desktop aren't a big deal, then the monitor/CPU combo isn't well-justified.
Anyway, I suppose one could go with the 17" Macbook and trade some screen real estate for greater expandability. I just think people should question why Apple's laptops are more expandable than their desktops.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/Specifications
The next version of LSB is supposed to define much more desktop functionality, and even an installation interface (hopefully this would include package names as well). I wouldn't say that LSB has to take everything (or even most things) from all major distros. The distros seem happy these days to adhere to LSB as long as it defines a core functionality that does not overreach or grow too fast.
But while distros are adhering to the LSB standard, application developers and users are oblivious to the standard. It is not being marketed to them, though it should be. Instead they keep talking of this imaginary "Linux" OS when they should be referring to "LSB".
The 6 mo. distro cycle is indeed destructive as you say. Even with Ubuntu which settles on an LTS version every couple years, the intermediary versions end up pulling the tech-savvy power users away from the non-techies still plodding away with LTS; this diminishes the former group's ability to assist the latter group. Either that, or the Joe Users end up constantly harrangued by the techies to keep upgrading their OS.
The hottest new doodads are very nice to have around... IF they are merely add-ons. In OS X I can replace my samba with the very latest version, but the fact that all new OS X 10.4 installs start off with the same basic version of samba is extremely important to platform stability. Eventually, Apple will incorporate the major new samba release into a future OS X upgrade.
The anarchy you speak of is a grave concern. The trick will be to convince a large enough group of people that LSB-compliant stuff is the defacto starting point... the thing you reach for and work on before you try anything else. We will also need to be tolerant of elite techies who want to do things their own way, as long as they do not advertise their wares as LSB. Think of it as 'standards etiquette': Everyone has freedom to do whatever except where it comes to false claims. People just need to be made aware of LSB and learn to ask for it in their OS and apps (i.e. when writing letters to Adobe) in order for that dynamic to take effect.
OS X has a package manager, and while it is seldom used, the dependency checks are mostly limited to "OS X v 10.3.9 and above", perhaps the Java and Quicktime versions installed. You don't get an app installation failure that tells the user their OS doesn't have necessary library versions in a piecemeal fashion. "Your repo doesn't have a recent-enough sound server, or xml parsing library or messaging bus" is gibberish to most people: You can't possibly expect it to be meaningful to them. But Linux coders have been accultured to foisting this experience on their users, whereas an OS X coder will try to hit two or three well-defined environments, i.e. the versions of OS X, and include what those environments don't offer into the Appdir.
Are you kidding? Testing is the author's responsibility, and for personal computing, distribution should be also. Distro managers can't be expected to know the carefully considered use cases and scenarios that thousands of apps were written to fulfill, so their testing and distributing role should be minimal-to-none.
This is a very old and tiresome mantra.
Time and effort are not free.
What you call "no package management", I call package management without hairy and bug-ridden central databases. No user should have to wrestle with a dependency database to install an application of their choice, much less a repository that distributes apps that are poorly understood and rarely used by the ones compiling configuring and packaging those apps. It is one of the main reasons why Linux apps are feature-poor, as devs have learned to dread the hassles of functionality that breaks across distros.
Not only should there BE a box (a Linux standard), but it is time to build a better one that means something to average users.
Thanks for your response about OO shells. I think that the MS 'monad' idea will become extremely attractive, and whereas most of my post concerns end-users and budding developers, there will have to be some work even on the sysadmin front.
As it is now, the *nix (incl Linux) domain is turning off a lot of young people because of silly things like commands and switches that have no rhyme/reason, highly-unique and nasty configs like httpd.conf and xorg.conf, and having to learn vi even when they are told that webmin and the desktop environment will (mostly) take care of conf files.
An OO shell would permit options completion and promote greater consistency with option switches, making usage a great deal simpler. In addition, add an editor like 'nano' to the standard so that admins can choose between vi and something more straightforward.
1. An easy, approachable Hardware Compatibility lookup website. It would consolidate all the compatibility info from kernel & X11 devs, major distros, OEMs and also allow end-users to add their input. FWIW, the HCL at linuxquestions.org is an interesting start but nowhere near exhaustive or current enough to empower Linux users (not hackers) to confidently purchase new equipment.
1a. A certification program for drivers that allows products which meet criteria to bear a special Linux compatibility trademark emblem.
2. Fix the sound architecture. Blocking of sound output still occurs after many years of ALSA. There is no GOOD reason why Harriet shouldn't hear her softphone ring or calendar alarms just because a minimized web page contains a Flash object. Telling her to muck about in the CLI, to buy a pricier multi-channel soundcard, or to learn about sound servers and juggle them is beyond the pale.
3. Create an excellent default IDE for the LSB Desktop environment. The IDE will be geared to target the LSB Desktop spec by default, with desktop applications as the focus. Something you would write a video editor or DVD burner with, not so much a video card or disk driver. GORM on steroids: If it doesn't inspire budding application developers like XCode and Visual Studio then Linux will not inspire application developers to write. Linux will not benefit from many more systems developers at this point because its the apps that matter: The apps sell the platform.
3a. Well-rounded API documentation for the LSB Desktop target, ala MSDN or Apple Developer Connection, eventually integrated with IDE.
4. Enable app developers to become as independent as possible, such that distro managers do not insert themselves between the developers and their users. Distros ought to distribute OS software, and for the most part stay the F*ck away from controlling installation of particular applications. High-level package managers like APT, YUM, etc. should stick to managing (or mangling) the OS dependency tree and leave apps the hell alone! Provide dependency targets in the OS repo like "LSB Desktop", and only one or two others like "Java 6". Then, accept that all the extra stuff you supply on top of LSB is ONLY extra, and will get used when and if the user decides in specific cases.
4a. Ensure those budding app developers can easily share their work with friends and customers. Make appdirs like on OS X and Gobo Linux a standard. Dear God, please.
5. Hacker culture works extremely poorly for application software today. Fund efforts to spread the discipline of user-centered product development. Teach FOSS developers the concepts and ropes of SDLC and Rational Unified Process, with emphasis on adding actor definitions and use-cases to docs and project wikis so that these elements are continually refined and re-thought eventually becoming the centerpiece of requirements. Create use-case instances (scenarios) in close association with unit/app testing scripts. Anything to keep developer minds on the kinds of users and situations the software is meant to satisfy. Encourage budding Business Analysts to do 6-12 month stints with FOSS projects.
6. Create settings persistence (configuration) APIs for crucial system services like X11, Samba, Apache, sound, etc. Get these projects to set and manage their own config files, as no one else seems capable for doing this consistently or well. Maybe when they have to write AND parse their own config data, they will stop creating needlessly bizarre & open-ended formats that umpteen distro tools only understand halfway.
7. Next-generation, object oriented shell based on something like Ruby, Python or even Groovy.
Lastly, all of the above must be in the spirit of fulfilling primary personal computing scenarios like app and driver installation, and configuration of essential services (change screen res, use a network share, etc) in a predictable manner. Unlike MS and Apple, Linux does not yet grok PC land because
Those exporting countries are willing sit on trillion+ dollar reserves because oil typically hasn't been available for import with any currency other than US dollars. Cutting a deal with Saudi Arabia (the OPEC swing producer) to price oil only in dollars in exchange for propping up their oppressive dictatorship, has caused the rest of OPEC to fall in line... at least until 2000 when Iraq switched from the dollar to trading oil exclusively in euros.
In other words, there was an artificially-maintained relationship between oil and the US dollar, creating great demand for our currency and causing the world to subsidize the lavish/wasteful lifestyles of so many Americans. The more oil gets pumped to third parties, the more demand there is for greenbacks, and the more we can print up over here to send abroad in exchange for real goods and services.
The oil-backed dollar is sometimes called the 'petrodollar'.
Since 2000 Iran, Russia and Venezuela have started trading in euros as well and as of last month Iran has thrown down the gauntlet and excluded the dollar. Last month was also when China decided to start spending/investing that pile of dollars (their first investment fund, with more to follow, is $300bn.).
IRI to stop pricing oil in dollars
12:34:24 È.Ù
Islamic Republic of Iran plans to stop pricing oil in dollars, IRI's Central Bank governor told IRIB on Friday.
"Iran plans to stop selling its oil in dollars," Ebrahim Sheibani said, adding that Islamic Republic of Iran had reduced its assets held in dollars to 20 percent.
Islamic Republic of Iran declared in December it would replace the dollar with the euro in foreign transactions and state-held foreign assets.
(Run-on sentence alert...)
Additionally, Linux audio is a failure. Even ALSA. There simply should not be any blocking of audio I/O at this stage. Relying on a happy coincidence between the app developers' sound server choice, Distro-X's favorite sound server, and/or the presence of premium multi-channel (instead of single-channel) soundcard HW just to keep sound apps working, accessibility aids speaking, softphones and calendar alarms ringing when they should be (instead of sitting mute because a Flash animation was left running in a minimized web page somewhere) is just not cutting it. Or how about a call not going through because an email or calendar alert went off or watching a video/audio stream at the wrong time?
Here are some wrong answers that are often repeated to me by the clueless:
* User was supposed to buy the premium sound hardware (which doesn't even claim Linux compatibility)
* User should pay attention to what apps are using which sound servers, and juggle the apps accordingly.
* User only has to visit ALSA development site, open a CLI and read Howtos.
* User can install and configure the mixing OSS driver any time they want (its free as in beer until the trial expires).
* User clearly did something wrong if Skype for Linux is either silent or echoes like a tin canyon on every single PC + distro they've tried.
* User deserves it because they haven't given up their real life to get in touch with their inner penguin.
* Blocking sound output is appropriate default behavior.
* User is accessing the wrong mixer panel: Run alsamixer from the CLI instead.
* User lazily ran their app from the supplied icon instead of from the CLI using an esddsp, artsdsp or similar wrapper.
Clearly this mountain and a half of BS and misdirected blame stems largely from Linus' inability to tackle this crucial problem after all these years. Neither he nor his delegates are capable in this area, although somehow I wouldn't be surprised if they rationalized it by thinking the issue of smooth audio output (icky desktop feature) was beneath them.
...to put not too fine a point on it.
Suburbia is a huge aggravating factor in our energy problems, whereas urban environments with avg building height of 4 or more stories are far more efficient. They suddenly enable walking, biking, convenient bus and lightrail networks. Heating and cooling become more efficient just from building configuration.
But since the White Flight in the 1950s, most Americans have hated urbanity. I think many are going to have to change their minds.
1) Well now you're just getting into an entirely different type of speculation WRT Skype service. Still, anyone could test their streams for randomness and sound the alarm if the encryption is no longer present.
2) It can't be simple tapping. But I will concede that an MITM attack would be similar to what Skype would ostensibly need to do to enable eavesdropping. The problem is, implemented full-scale, integrated with their normal services, there would likely be some major mistakes/glitches and IMO its probable that's just what we saw last week. At the very least they would need to add a lot of in-house supernode systems to make it work, and that would have a large impact at their data centers.
The only alternative to changing their router logic to prevent P2P mode and effect MITM is to change the client apps themselves, which is impractical for a number of reasons.
Most of what we're quibbling about here is "Skype just moved to comply with the new law" vs. "Skype's privacy claim was a blatant lie and they could already eavesdrop". The former stance represents the simplest explanation: Skype had no motive to break client-client security up to this point.
1) No one has a shred of evidence that the NSA can crack freely-available crypto. And there is no theory that would make it plausible/practical.
2) Because nothing like it has been done before, and eBay (the parent company) has been knocked offline for nearly as long even after attempting far more trivial changes to their auction system.
Skype originally only had to provide access to the POTS interfaces because that's all that CALEA covered; and that was easy since POTS is unencrypted and its already been done for decades. But now the law applies to all international information that passes through the USA... POTS, VOIP or DATA.
One of the reasons the gov't is panicking over non-telephony (non-POTS) traffic is that much of it is encrypted and cannot be spied on without extremely complicated measures employed by all/any digital carriers involved.
So, of COURSE the NSA can tap POTS lines without callers having the slightest suspicion. But as soon as the connections become IP-IP (and P2P) with strong modern encryption, then they are sent flat on their asses. In Skype's case nothing will help them with that signal other than a significant re-working of the service which allows, say, a supernode to act as a man-in-the-middle between what would otherwise be an uncrackable P2P link.
The law says any traffic routed through USA can be eavesdropped, so I was being simplistic when I said USA-International.
AFAIK the surveillance Skype could do up to this point was only at a POTS interface (SkypeOut or SkypeIn). Otherwise, the P2P calls were 'secure' with only the source & dest identities and call length being known to 3rd parties.
It probably has more to do with Skype retooling for eavesdropping requirements under the new wiretap law. Skype handles a lot of international traffic, encrypted and often in a P2P fashion, so a major change is necessary in order to comply.
From what little I know about Skype, the network can cause both parties in a Skype-Skype call to route through a third party, a supernode (this is done to defeat firewall complications). So perhaps they would be able to start routing all USA-international traffic through in-house supernodes where the stream could be tapped. (Anyone want to correct me? Clarify?)
I use a combo of ImgLikeOpera (set to load only images from originating site) and NoScript. The former handles images from off the main site, and the latter handles flash-based stuff. After the page loads, I can click on either extension's icon if I want to see the unloaded stuff.
Personally I like this combo because I am not against ads per-se, just against pervasive imbedded ad schemes like Doubleclick that track and profile private browsing. So if the site I'm reading hosts image ads at their site, they'll load in my browser automatically.
OTOH, Flash is just obnoxious no matter what.
You make a good point, and I'd like to add that we should be questioning this assumption that small children should be allowed to play on the info superhighway by themselves at all.
Yet, I get the feeling that American parents want to sit little Johnny in front of the computer and walk away just like they do with the TV.
It's an awesome idea. Everyone should be going through a 3-day introduction course that includes cyber-safety.
I wonder if they will cover basic things like paying attention to SSL certificate warnings, and not executing email attachments.
Of course, there is a lot modern OSes could do to help (but don't), like superimposing an executable signifier (such as a red exclamation mark) over the icons of all executables. User interfaces confuse people about the difference between code and data, and the spread of trojans is the unfortunate result.
Well, the burger-flippers can vote and don't seem very critical of programs like SDI.
That's why I care.
Seeing a movie is like watching a cartoon dressed-up like reality: An animation 'skinned' in flesh-and-blood.
The movies use lots of tricks now (mostly CGI) to aim for a transcendent quality in action sequences. At the same time, there is also a trend toward hyper-realist imagery (through CGI) in both video games and movies. I can see how the tight association of this action-transcendence with realist imagery could hamper a student's sense of real physical phenomena.
I doubt such a small correction would be enough to satisfy the neocon/corporate agenda.
However, the trend of specious global warming "skeptic" stories on slashdot are probably much appreciated.
Presumably having Dell's hypervisor load instantly at power-up could prevent other virtualizers from running, including hypervisor-based rootkits like Blue Pill.
I discovered noatime about 5 years ago, right about the same time I learned that DMA was turned off by default. I was horrified to hear that Linus' opinion of DMA at the time was 'no performance gain'.
I'm surprised Linus is just cluing in now about atime updates: The noatime workaround is listed in all kinds of performance-tuning guides.
People might just want more HD space, instead of a backup.
But if we assume that the included drive will remain roomy enough, that still leaves the question of why a $1000+ computer has no robust expansion slots. IMHO, adding a PC Card slot would be extremely simple for Apple.
Instead, Apple have made the iMac considerably thinner which I think adds little value.
The notion (or assumption) of "the Linux OS" is a very unfortunate and confusing delusion in the world of software. It causes otherwise intelligent techies to start talking about a mythical FOSS operating system "Linux" as if users who are exposed to its various userland environments are having a shared experience. Yet the methods for setting up printers, network shares and applications can be wildly divergent between distros (or... the methods are mostly the same, just ignore the page and-a-half extra shell instructions for distro-X in order to get a supporting subsystem up and running).
Maybe you could say that each distro family like Debian/Ubuntu/Mepis, RedHat/CentOS/Fedora, Mandriva/PCLOS kind of represent an OS. Or perhaps you could say that LSB defines what could be considered an OS (almost).
On the whole, "Linux OS" is a misleading and self-defeating term when used outside of systems-programming environs. It raises expectations about user interface and interoperability standards that just don't exist between the distros.
Using your logic, I think a much better argument can be made for keeping the monitor/CPU seperate, than for making people use external boxes for more HD space. If extra boxes on the desktop aren't a big deal, then the monitor/CPU combo isn't well-justified.
Anyway, I suppose one could go with the 17" Macbook and trade some screen real estate for greater expandability. I just think people should question why Apple's laptops are more expandable than their desktops.