Vaguely; I briefly tried Kubuntu a couple of weeks ago, but really it's been a couple of years since I last seriously used Linux on the desktop.
Trip to space?
I vaguely remember talk of some private citizen or other going up, but I didn't really take a lot of notice - not particularly exciting scientifically, never going to be an option for me.
Worms and trojans sneak in through exploits in programs running on those ports.
No, trojans are executed by the user in the belief that it is an application that the user wants (or needs) to run. Viruses hook on to other executables, causing themselves to be run when that executable is run; they generally fork (or similar), execute the real executable, then seek out other executables to infect. Worms are the only self-mobile code, and do indeed seek out open ports to exploit holes in the software listening on them.
Apart from that, you're right, viruses are not sneaking in through open ports. Anything that is getting in of its own accord is a worm by definition. If there really are viruses getting on to these things, then I suspect we're not being told the whole story, which really doesn't make giving recommendations very easy...
No, IANAL, but a 20 second google search found this:
Interpretation is related to the independent creation rather than the idea behind the creation. For example, your idea for a book would not itself be protected, but the actual content of a book you write would be. In other words, someone else is still entitled to write their own book around the same idea, provided they do not directly copy or adapt yours to do so.
Really though, this is utterly, utterly basic stuff. Ideas are not copyrightable, only a particular expression of the idea. Thus, I can write all the books I want about kids going to a school for wizards and having adventures, but if I try to write about Harry Potter, *then* I'm up shit creek.
If it were otherwise, then the fiction book trade would die over night as people sued each other left and right. There really aren't very many different plots, once you strip them down to the essential details.
Well done. I've been using Windows for the past 9 years, and I have yet to see a single virus/trojan/worm or similar take over my PC.
Trust me, if and when the masses switch to Linux, the malcontents will follow. Just as people run as administrator now, so they'll either run as root or get used to typing in the root password when prompted; they'll *still* hose their systems. Failing that, they'll hose their own files if not the entire machine (and with most home machines serving either a single person or a small family group, there's not a great deal of difference between the two).
Last time I checked, you dont purchase Linux. It's Free.
"Linux is only free if you don't value your time."
Or, to put it a slightly less inciteful way, while switching to Linux may cost you nothing in monetary terms, you have to take a time and effort hit - you have to learn a new way of working, figure out what apps replace the ones you're used to, how to use them, etc.
It may not cost any money, but switching to a new environment is *never* free.
And correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think XP did have hyperthreading support - I thought they didn't come out with hyperthreading until after XP came out. ..
XP supports hyperthreading in that the chip appears to be two processors to the OS. If you look in Task Manager, you get 2 CPU graphs. I don't know how XP Home handles that, although given that HT is standard on all Pentiums now I expect it does. As Home is only licenced for unoprocessor machines, however, if it can't tell the difference between two processors and a single processor with HT, it'll either refuse to use more than one "processor" or just plain refuse to run.
As an aside, I've had problems in the past with commercial software not playing well with multi-processor HT systems. About 4 years ago, a Verity K2 Enterprise (a search engine and taxonomy suite) install misidentified a dual-proc Xeon system as having 4 processors, and refused to run as we were only licenced for two processors... I've heard similar stories about other per-processor licenced software from around the same time.
Really, XP Home couldn't join a domain, couldn't use more then one processor (but it could use HyperThreading if available on the processor), didn't have IIS, didn't have Dynamic Disk support, and ASR
You're forgetting remote desktop - Pro allows incoming rdp connections, Home doesn't. That and IIS were the initial reasons why I spent the extra on Pro; having since upgraded to an X2, I'm glad I did.
If you were to bother to read the requirements page, you'll see that one of the requirements is "A broadband internet connection of at least 512KB (1MB is recommended)".
This service does not provide connectivity, that's a separate requirement. Also, I don't know quite why PC Doctor is getting so upset about this. I briefly checked out the Sky by Broadband info a week or two ago, and from a few minutes clicking around the linked site it was perfectly plain to me that it involved installing the Kontiki P2P app. Ok, they may not shout it from the front page, but they're not exactly hiding the fact, either.
On top of that, the service is free to existing qualifying customers. It's not like you're paying to have the eevil Sky corporation steal your bandwidth...
This may be a dumb question, but why can't Java just provide access to the existing desktop GUI (Windows, OSX, QT, whatever)
That's fine on Windows and OSX, but what of Linux, Solaris, etc? Do Sun support QT or GTK? Or both? What about Motif? What should happen if none of the supported toolkits are available? Fall back on Swing/AWT or just bomb?
More to the point, though, suppose Sun did code in transparent support for QT, GTK and Motif. If I have all three installed, how does Java know which one to use? Using the GTK one while I'm running KDE (for example) is going to look just as odd as the "native" Java GUI toolkit does now...
Yes, I do. My current boss worked his way up the ranks from programmer, through senior programmer and finally to development manager. In a previous career, he was an electrical engineer, doing hardware stuff.
Sure, there are a lot of bosses who know nothing but the business side of things, but believe it or not they're not *all* like that.
everytime I read a comment here bemoaning how many useless features mobile phones have "that nobody use".
Based on these statistics, people in the UK send roughly 50 times as many text messages each year as people in the US. Factoring in the relative population sizes, on average we send 250 times as many SMSs as you guys do.
You might not use those "useless features" on your phones, but we most certainly do. Entire message boards exist solely to compare the picture quality and associated features of the various camera phones, which is a serious deciding factor for some people when buying a new phone...
Patches are released once a month, so you can easily achieve almost 4 weeks of uptime on XP and still apply patches. Add to that that not every patch release cycle requires a reboot, and you can indeed get months of uptime even when applying patches.
Yeah, I know it's a joke, but it's not a funny one:)
Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it's made up drivel. I appreciate that not everyone has a degree-level education in physics, but that's what google and wikipedia are for...
From the third hit on that search, I get the following:
"Microsoft was also one of the first companies to buy into SCO's licensing program, taking two licenses from SCO worth more than $12 million, according to sources close to SCO."
Not exactly thousands, and while it's a lot of money, it's a tiny drop in the ocean for MS. They also do have Unix products (eg Services for Unix), so perhaps they were just covering their arses for that? They're probably getting pretty sick of being sued...
I spend upwards of 10 hours a day staring at a computer screen; what I'm looking at had better be aesthetically pleasing.
It *does* serve a purpose - it makes my day that little bit more enjoyable. Decorating your house serves no real purpose (unless you're trying to sell it), but most people want something a little nicer than bare walls. People decorate their cubicles and offices - a photo here, a plant there.
I don't see why a desktop should be any different.
Then it is for the courts to decide on it. If that's the case, then in any individual case it's fine for the hardware to be seized - it's just become evidence in a court case, after all.
Yes, it sucks for those involved, but until a court rules that this is legal and they have no case to answer, expect more seizures.
I see your point, and in fact my gut reaction is to agree with you, but I can't help wondering if a court wouldn't rule differently.
We're not talking about a summary, or a selected passage, we're talking about something that can only be generated by processing the whole of the original work. It's not so much an excerpt as a distillation. Now that may still be fair, but I have a nagging disquiet that it may be ruled to be a derivative work, rather than an excerpt or similar.
To use a book analogy, I'm not sure how far you'd get if you carefully took 1% of a book's content, taking pains to retain the essential meaning of the work.
Linux is a kernel that typically uses GNU userland.
Windows is an operating system, including a kernel and userland.
I don't know about you, but when every single person I know says "Linux", they're using it as a short-cut for "Linux distribution" - ie the kernel, userland tools, everything. Similarly, when people say "NT" they mean "Windows NT", not the NT kernel and subsystems (which techincally is all that NT is - Windows runs on top of NT).
I bought my OEM copy of XP Pro along with a hardware upgrade a couple of years ago. Last week, I performed a major system upgrade - processor, motherboard, RAM, hard drives, graphics card, PSU. I had a little trouble with the drivers for my RAID array, which lead to me installing XP a couple of times in a three day period.
I reactivated XP twice in that period, with no problems at all. I've reactivated several times over the past couple of years due to various hardware tinkerings, and I have never had to pay or had any problems - I've never even had to speak to a human about it.
I don't know what your father or your friends are doing, but it's certainly a lot more than just installing a DVD burner (which I did without needing to reactivate, by the way).
Slashdot Mirror
Well thank Dog for that :)
I remember the episode, but not in enough detail to remember the brand names - thanks.
Panaphonics? Sorny? Someone's taking the piss, and I'm just afraid that it isn't you...
A little company called Canonical?
/. reader..
;p
Nope.
A small Linux distro called Ubuntu?
Vaguely; I briefly tried Kubuntu a couple of weeks ago, but really it's been a couple of years since I last seriously used Linux on the desktop.
Trip to space?
I vaguely remember talk of some private citizen or other going up, but I didn't really take a lot of notice - not particularly exciting scientifically, never going to be an option for me.
You call yourself a
Now you're just envious of my UID
Worms and trojans sneak in through exploits in programs running on those ports.
No, trojans are executed by the user in the belief that it is an application that the user wants (or needs) to run. Viruses hook on to other executables, causing themselves to be run when that executable is run; they generally fork (or similar), execute the real executable, then seek out other executables to infect. Worms are the only self-mobile code, and do indeed seek out open ports to exploit holes in the software listening on them.
Apart from that, you're right, viruses are not sneaking in through open ports. Anything that is getting in of its own accord is a worm by definition. If there really are viruses getting on to these things, then I suspect we're not being told the whole story, which really doesn't make giving recommendations very easy...
Well, I can't say that I knew of him, big name or not, so for those of you who were similarly ignorant, here is a link to his biography.
No, IANAL, but a 20 second google search found this:
Interpretation is related to the independent creation rather than the idea behind the creation. For example, your idea for a book would not itself be protected, but the actual content of a book you write would be. In other words, someone else is still entitled to write their own book around the same idea, provided they do not directly copy or adapt yours to do so.
From here.
Really though, this is utterly, utterly basic stuff. Ideas are not copyrightable, only a particular expression of the idea. Thus, I can write all the books I want about kids going to a school for wizards and having adventures, but if I try to write about Harry Potter, *then* I'm up shit creek.
If it were otherwise, then the fiction book trade would die over night as people sued each other left and right. There really aren't very many different plots, once you strip them down to the essential details.
Well done. I've been using Windows for the past 9 years, and I have yet to see a single virus/trojan/worm or similar take over my PC.
Trust me, if and when the masses switch to Linux, the malcontents will follow. Just as people run as administrator now, so they'll either run as root or get used to typing in the root password when prompted; they'll *still* hose their systems. Failing that, they'll hose their own files if not the entire machine (and with most home machines serving either a single person or a small family group, there's not a great deal of difference between the two).
Last time I checked, you dont purchase Linux. It's Free.
"Linux is only free if you don't value your time."
Or, to put it a slightly less inciteful way, while switching to Linux may cost you nothing in monetary terms, you have to take a time and effort hit - you have to learn a new way of working, figure out what apps replace the ones you're used to, how to use them, etc.
It may not cost any money, but switching to a new environment is *never* free.
And correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think XP did have hyperthreading support - I thought they didn't come out with hyperthreading until after XP came out. . .
XP supports hyperthreading in that the chip appears to be two processors to the OS. If you look in Task Manager, you get 2 CPU graphs. I don't know how XP Home handles that, although given that HT is standard on all Pentiums now I expect it does. As Home is only licenced for unoprocessor machines, however, if it can't tell the difference between two processors and a single processor with HT, it'll either refuse to use more than one "processor" or just plain refuse to run.
As an aside, I've had problems in the past with commercial software not playing well with multi-processor HT systems. About 4 years ago, a Verity K2 Enterprise (a search engine and taxonomy suite) install misidentified a dual-proc Xeon system as having 4 processors, and refused to run as we were only licenced for two processors... I've heard similar stories about other per-processor licenced software from around the same time.
Really, XP Home couldn't join a domain, couldn't use more then one processor (but it could use HyperThreading if available on the processor), didn't have IIS, didn't have Dynamic Disk support, and ASR
You're forgetting remote desktop - Pro allows incoming rdp connections, Home doesn't. That and IIS were the initial reasons why I spent the extra on Pro; having since upgraded to an X2, I'm glad I did.
In addition to providing access to the internet
If you were to bother to read the requirements page, you'll see that one of the requirements is "A broadband internet connection of at least 512KB (1MB is recommended)".
This service does not provide connectivity, that's a separate requirement. Also, I don't know quite why PC Doctor is getting so upset about this. I briefly checked out the Sky by Broadband info a week or two ago, and from a few minutes clicking around the linked site it was perfectly plain to me that it involved installing the Kontiki P2P app. Ok, they may not shout it from the front page, but they're not exactly hiding the fact, either.
On top of that, the service is free to existing qualifying customers. It's not like you're paying to have the eevil Sky corporation steal your bandwidth...
This may be a dumb question, but why can't Java just provide access to the existing desktop GUI (Windows, OSX, QT, whatever)
That's fine on Windows and OSX, but what of Linux, Solaris, etc? Do Sun support QT or GTK? Or both? What about Motif? What should happen if none of the supported toolkits are available? Fall back on Swing/AWT or just bomb?
More to the point, though, suppose Sun did code in transparent support for QT, GTK and Motif. If I have all three installed, how does Java know which one to use? Using the GTK one while I'm running KDE (for example) is going to look just as odd as the "native" Java GUI toolkit does now...
Actually, the last two are also domestic issues...
You forgot RIPA, of course - hand over your encryption keys or go to gaol, tell anyone the demand was made and go to gaol...
Why do people always assume that someone who doesn't speak badly of Microsoft is a troll?
Yes, I do. My current boss worked his way up the ranks from programmer, through senior programmer and finally to development manager. In a previous career, he was an electrical engineer, doing hardware stuff.
Sure, there are a lot of bosses who know nothing but the business side of things, but believe it or not they're not *all* like that.
'Even the grammer nazi's get it wrong sometimes.'
I assume that was intentional?
everytime I read a comment here bemoaning how many useless features mobile phones have "that nobody use".
Based on these statistics, people in the UK send roughly 50 times as many text messages each year as people in the US. Factoring in the relative population sizes, on average we send 250 times as many SMSs as you guys do.
You might not use those "useless features" on your phones, but we most certainly do. Entire message boards exist solely to compare the picture quality and associated features of the various camera phones, which is a serious deciding factor for some people when buying a new phone...
Patches are released once a month, so you can easily achieve almost 4 weeks of uptime on XP and still apply patches. Add to that that not every patch release cycle requires a reboot, and you can indeed get months of uptime even when applying patches.
:)
Yeah, I know it's a joke, but it's not a funny one
Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it's made up drivel. I appreciate that not everyone has a degree-level education in physics, but that's what google and wikipedia are for...
From the third hit on that search, I get the following:
"Microsoft was also one of the first companies to buy into SCO's licensing program, taking two licenses from SCO worth more than $12 million, according to sources close to SCO."
Not exactly thousands, and while it's a lot of money, it's a tiny drop in the ocean for MS. They also do have Unix products (eg Services for Unix), so perhaps they were just covering their arses for that? They're probably getting pretty sick of being sued...
I spend upwards of 10 hours a day staring at a computer screen; what I'm looking at had better be aesthetically pleasing.
It *does* serve a purpose - it makes my day that little bit more enjoyable. Decorating your house serves no real purpose (unless you're trying to sell it), but most people want something a little nicer than bare walls. People decorate their cubicles and offices - a photo here, a plant there.
I don't see why a desktop should be any different.
Then it is for the courts to decide on it. If that's the case, then in any individual case it's fine for the hardware to be seized - it's just become evidence in a court case, after all.
Yes, it sucks for those involved, but until a court rules that this is legal and they have no case to answer, expect more seizures.
I see your point, and in fact my gut reaction is to agree with you, but I can't help wondering if a court wouldn't rule differently.
We're not talking about a summary, or a selected passage, we're talking about something that can only be generated by processing the whole of the original work. It's not so much an excerpt as a distillation. Now that may still be fair, but I have a nagging disquiet that it may be ruled to be a derivative work, rather than an excerpt or similar.
To use a book analogy, I'm not sure how far you'd get if you carefully took 1% of a book's content, taking pains to retain the essential meaning of the work.
Linux is a kernel that typically uses GNU userland.
Windows is an operating system, including a kernel and userland.
I don't know about you, but when every single person I know says "Linux", they're using it as a short-cut for "Linux distribution" - ie the kernel, userland tools, everything. Similarly, when people say "NT" they mean "Windows NT", not the NT kernel and subsystems (which techincally is all that NT is - Windows runs on top of NT).
I bought my OEM copy of XP Pro along with a hardware upgrade a couple of years ago. Last week, I performed a major system upgrade - processor, motherboard, RAM, hard drives, graphics card, PSU. I had a little trouble with the drivers for my RAID array, which lead to me installing XP a couple of times in a three day period.
I reactivated XP twice in that period, with no problems at all. I've reactivated several times over the past couple of years due to various hardware tinkerings, and I have never had to pay or had any problems - I've never even had to speak to a human about it.
I don't know what your father or your friends are doing, but it's certainly a lot more than just installing a DVD burner (which I did without needing to reactivate, by the way).