>but realistically if the united states wants to monitor your communications PGP isn't going to stop them...
Tell that to Phil Zimmermann. Here's some background to help out:
>Philip R. Zimmermann is the creator of Pretty Good Privacy. For that, he was the target of a three-year criminal investigation, because the government held that US export restrictions for cryptographic software were violated when PGP spread all around the world following its 1991 publication as freeware. Despite the lack of funding, the lack of any paid staff, the lack of a company to stand behind it, and despite government persecution, PGP nonetheless became the most widely used email encryption software in the world.
That doesn't sound like the niography of a man sympathetic to the US government, does it?
>Are you sure the authors aren't part of the united states government?
That's probably a very small part of the reason why Zimmermann ensured PGP was exported, even if it was illegal at the time.
>Are you sure the authors aren't vulnerable to blackmail or bribery?
You can't be vulnerable to blackmail when there's nothing for someone to take. That's why full details of PGP are available.
>Do you really think that when the french government fell victim to echelon it was becuase they where sending everything in plain text.
No, but I would suggest they had used the default levels of encryption availiable in various software packages. These levels of encryption are breakable by supercomputers in reasonable amounts of time.
I would also suggest they could have screwed up and sent keys plaintext, or that their SSH sessions were man-in-the-middle attacked (for example) and no one paid attention to the warnings.
4096-bit PGP-style encryption is simply not possible to break in any reasonable amount of time.
If you are truly worried about a piece of information you have, and you properly follow all security rules, then you are safe for quite a while, IMHO.
The US couldn't even get the clipper project beta tested without everyone on earth finding out about it. If they can't even do that, how the heck are they going to crack messages you actually put some effort in to encrypt?
>How about all the people in between the authors and the distribution you use?
That's why I prefer to use software that is used internationally, and software that includes source code. Hence, I prefer GNU/Linux.
>You don't have a budget of 50 billion dollars and control over a small army of world class mathematicians.
Money might buy faster machines, but world class mathematicians will agree -- properly implemented (mathematically) cryptography is unbreakable except by brute force.
>I don't think you really understand what level the NSA is on...
I do, but there's no way the NSA has a machine this fast. There's simply no way known or conceived by anyone to create a processor fast enough to crack extra-high-level encryption fast enough for it to be useful.
I suppose they could have 100 million Athlon chips crunching away on it, but in all seriousness, does anyone not think that people at the AMD factory wouldn't leak this? They'd have to ramp up production 1000x to handle this sort of demand!
You can control people within your grasp, but when you would have to trust someone like me (who could probably get some sort of job at AMD, even if it is just stuffing the processors into boxes) its just not possible to cover it up.
>Isn't that what the Nazis said about Egnima? The Complancy that went with having an "unbreakable" encryption led to errors in procedure that aided in breaking it.
Enigma had the only serious fatal flaw in any encryption standard that has ever existed: An assumption that the enemy would never be able to get their hands on the specs for the encryption.
Assuming the enemy cannot see how your cipher works causes a lack of proper review.
Most modern ciphers (such as DES and RSA) have been checked by ally and enemy alike and, apart from brute force attacks, I am told by experts that mathematically there is no way to break them if they are implemented correctly.
I suppose if one could bend the laws of mathematics you'd be able to break modern ciphers in a heartbeat. But I think anyone with that power would have much more interesting things they could apply it to!
Triple-DES or RSA possibly. I hear PGP supports Blowfish and IDEA as well.
>your amatuerish understanding of cryptography is giving you a false sense of security i see...
Until it was illegal I hacked satellite smartcards as a sideline. I see you haven't, since you haven't even bothered reading the stats on the maximum encryption PGP/GPG and the encruption they use can provide by default. We haven't even completely broken the crapply 56-bit (or was it 128-but, I can't remember) DES encryption used by ROM3 satellite cards, so why the heck do you think the gov't can break 4096-bit encryption alone?
Just because I don't know everything about cryptography doesn't mean I can't find you thousands of webpages that will ensure that your amateurish understanding of encryption is highly flawed.
>if you think the NSA can't get through those you are being niave.
If you think that the NSA has a exa-hertz machine for each message they want to decrypt, and can wait 10 years before they can use it for another task, maybe.
I think that's just a crazy conspiracy theorists way to think about things, though.
4096-bit encryption, IMHO, won't be broken in our lifetime. After I'm dead, I really don't give a crap what they do with any data related to me...
If you search around the uspto, you'll find Microsoft has a little known patent for a door with a hinge that protects the pins from being removed while the door is closed... Beats the hell out of me what Microsoft would want to become a building supplies company, but hey, its there!
(BTW: Slashdot is very broken lately. I have to hit submit twice before messages are posted!)
>you wouldn't have ever heard of any of the artists you listen to today
Huh, I wasn't under the impression that all the good electronica was produced by Sony.
Well, I'm thumbing through my collection, and other than a couple of virgin releases, I don't see much by major name labels.
I could live without those two CDs
>The costs involved in producing and massively distributing an album are so high that no startup band could ever hope to afford them.
Yes, I mean it costs me $20 a month for a usenet account, and it costs about $100 a month for a business-level high speed internet connection, so at $120 a month to post your CD to usenet and have everyone in the world have it, I'd say the distribution costs are massively high.
As far as producing goes, I again suppose that if your entire band can't afford the couple of thousand renting a studio for a couple of nights costs, perhaps you're broke and need to MMF?
>they have precisely a snowball's chance in Hell of distributing nationwide.
When did Usenet go offline? I seem to have missed this...
I did notice in another post you complain about pots making downloading slow.
Well, you can download overnight one high-quality album over most POTS lines (I know because I've done that before I got high-speed, and I connected at 21.6k).
One album a night is more than most people can afford with the current $20 an album system.
I also noticed you mentioned that standalone MP3 players are expensive. I suggest you look more closely. It cost me $75 for my last portable MP3 player. If that's expensive, I'd like to buy my chocolate bars for $0.25 each again!:)
And yes, this MP3 player has a simple headphone out jack. I had to buy a "special" cable from my mini-mart to convert from a headphone jack to RCA jacks. Cost me $3...
(sorry if this double posts... slashdot crapped out last time)
>What I already see happening is the start of a movement to put the teeth back in the public side of the copyright bargain.
Here's a little "proof" that the people are (finally) starting to wake up and fight back. In a nutshell: A long time politician loses because his party sits with their thumbs up their asses while the supreme court takes away a long standing Canadian right: The right to watch American television. Its not directly copyright, but it sure does smack of the same style of a lot of today's copyright laws.
If this party loses their majority government in the upcoming Federal election due to this law I think it would bring tears to my eyes to finally see Canada wake up and tell this government we won't take US-style save-the-company-before-the-people politics lying down.
>Perhaps it will remain an "old dream" and become even older if Linux advocates continue to stereotype the userbase needed to achieve their dream.
Sure, it could. But the fact remains that a LOT of us don't want users using Linux unless they have a clue. Put simply -- stupid people will make Linux look bad. They'll do dumb things like logging in as root, for example, deleting everything, and then blame the O/S for not having a "recycle bin". Then the next possible convert, who may have just a little more clue than that will hear the stupid user scream about how horrible Linux is and we'll lose out on someone else.
For certain people, the future of Linux remains better if they don't try it. Its like the 2-10 rule of management. A happy customer will probably tell two people about the product. An unhappy customer, though, will probably tell ten people about how horrible the product is.
I think the elitism is helping keep those people who have no business running Linux away, and I think its a good thing.
>Users do not come from a magic hole in the sky. They will come from Windows, Mac, etc.
I think the users ready for Linux will give it a try despite the elitism and once they do they'll be ready for the power of Linux, and they'll never look back at their toy operating system.
>So in some magical way this is different from people who have to use Windows for specific applications?
Very much so. They can get the same job elsewhere, for example. Or they can create a new application if they are willing to put enough effort in (anyone can program if they put in the time). Or they can talk with the employer.
There are a multitude of non-discriminatory ways of avoiding software elitism so I don't consider it a particularly bad or damaging thing (unless you are Bill Gates, in which case you could consider it personal). Not to mention the fact that unlike racism, being a windows user doesn't make you feel uncomfortable walking in the park, it doesn't get you beat up at night, and it doesn't prevent you from getting another job (unless the employer requires Linux as a skill).
>If they depend on MS Office, what you are saying is they should remain stereotyped as stupid Windows users?
If they depend on MS Office then they need to try the alternatives. Unlike your race, which you can't change unless you're as unlucky as Michael Jackson, you can change office suites at any time of the day. Well, that's assuming you have an employer that embraces new ideas. If you don't, perhaps its time you stop working for the conformity factory?:-)
>This is a constant onslaught of negativity towards Microsoft and their userbase.
I know. It says something, does it.
It either says that most all Linux users refuse to "admit" windows is better, or we, as a group, would prefer that people come into using Linux 100%, rather than just try it out and bitch and moan that simple tasks are somehow hard (that's what you get for going about something halfassed!).
>Erm. I don't use Windows.
Well hey, what're you worried about?
Perhaps if you did use it you might discover it is as bad, if not worse than what you've heard all us elitists saying.
What I'm getting at is that if a company makes a cheap nail that shatters when hit by a hammer, the users who continue to use those nails deserve to get insulted by us that use the quality nails. IMHO, if you do something stupid and continue to do it without ever reconsidering your position on what you're doing, you're just asking for it...
>try pasting from something that uses one clipboard to something that uses another sometime
Now why would one want to do that?
If you're in X, you use an X term.
If you're in X and you switch between it and a console constantly, you're asking for trouble (some of the X drivers tend to get unstable when you switch like that too often).
But, I suppose that's an incompatibility. Just like its not possible to paste from real DOS (not a DOS Box) to Windows 9x, even though Windows 9x simply runs on top of DOS.
But its not an incompatibility that really means too much...
>That's called elitism, and it actually alienates people.
Yup, it does alienate people. That's the point. If you have a group of people who are all at a minimum skill level who are not interested in working alongside people of a lower, or non-existant skill level its a very effective way of keeping them out.
For example, telling these jokes in the server room keeps button pushing morons (yup, I said the word) out. Good thing, too.
As far as it being elitism, you're totally correct. Just as the Cable Guy will get the cable installed extra fast for someone who knows enough not to do certain things that would ruin the cable, he'll take longer (and, due to time constraints) do a poorer job for someone he expects to break it anyways.
Its human nature, and in this case its not a particularly bad thing either. It gives people an incentive to improve upon their skillsets and broaden their horizons.
>There are plenty of other ways to joke about Linux and viruses than to stereotype a group (Windows' users) as having a low IQ.
Sure, but they aren't as effective in ensuring those people you don't want to associate with stay away, are they?
>Perhaps the reason people claim Linux is a religion or for fanatics is because they are alienated by crap like this.
And this a bad thing... why?
If you can't have an open mind to a community then you'll find you'll be eaten alive in it.
Elitism is only wrong when its done maliciously against attributes people cannot, or should not change (such as [but not limited to] race or disability).
An OS is something you can change, and if one has such a thin skin they can't take a jibe or two from someone on the opposite side of the fence on such a light issue perhaps they have some personal issues to deal with first?
>I've been in whatever this "Linux community" is for a number of years now and I'm feeling increasingly alienated. There is too much negativity towards Microsoft and too much seriousness about Linux for the masses.
Well, I would humbly suggest you're just looking in the wrong places. If you want to use windows and Linux equally, why not join in with people making Linux-Windows compatibility software, like Win4Lin, Wine, Codeweavers, Bochs and VmWare?
Whenever I hear that I think back to the 70's when secretaries and data entry experts often with barely a high-school diploma were using VT100 terminals running other, far more difficult to use and administer OSes (including old variants of UNIX). They were able to get their jobs done.
Either people have become less intelligent over these past 30 years, or people have let Microsoft kid themselves into thinking that they aren't intelligent enough to do what their mothers and fathers once did.
Why is it that a secretary can't use vi? I watched one use it yesterday in MPE/iX.
>That maybe there is something you are missing in the fact that there are hundreds of millions of people who are more willing to pay for Windows than get linux for free?
There's nothing missing in it. Its simply a problem of modern home computers. Since you aren't locked into running a certain operating system on the machine whoever has the highest marketshare will always win out.
I believe that if someone were to release a well priced, friendly to use, UNIX-like OS only computer, and it were properly marketed with software on the shelves ready to buy, there'd be some hope in taking the market back.
Back in the good/bad old days when hardware was tied to operating systems like that, you had diversity -- You could use an Atari, Commodore, Apple, Macintosh, or many other computers. Unless that happens again Windows will stay put unless linux passes windows by 10x the usability.
>Why not use existing drivers for other video cards instead? (like NVIDIA)
Because the broadcast studio will expect this hardware to be in use for at least half a decade. They aren't like PC users -- I wouldn't expect them to be throwing out their hardware every couple of years.
So, what happens when NVidia does a 3dfx? It took less than that amount of time for 3dfx to go from hero to zero, so it certainly can happen again.
You guessed it, they have to buy all new hardware from a vendor that is intelligent enough to provide open source drivers if they expect to ever update X, had they gone with NVidia.
For a broadcast studio, this could mean millions, not to mention that the downtime will cost even more dearly.
With open source, and open hardware specs The Weather Channel can expect a smooth ride should they find new software incompatible with their existing drivers. All they have to do is update them themselves. They don't have to wait days or weeks for another company to fix it for them (assming they are still in business).
I dunno how slashdot ate your post like that, but I've got one thing to respond to:
>If those compromises no longer make sense, we should consider moving.
And if everyone rural areas to the city, cities would have the added burden of housing 20-50% more people. As it stands, most people around here are fighting for apartments. Can you imagine what will happen to property prices if we all moved into the city? Heck, can you imagine the homeless rates?
In all seriousness, if everyone had thought like that 200 years ago, everyone would live in one big city, and 90% of North America would be absolutely open to being stolen by other countries! Not to mention how much more damage two planes would do when they land on the city's arcologies (the only solution that provides everyone with everything possible)!
I made my choice, and I'm willing to pay for it. But, as I've seen city traffic going through my city quintuple to the point that my 300 person town is almost at the point of having a traffic light, I wonder just how much the city people really would owe us if we put a toll on that road. Or maybe we could all play fair, and either the city people could pay most of our road tax, not use our roads, or, better yet, give us something we'd like -- reasonably priced broadband.
We might burden you by wanting broadband at your rates (even though it'll increase your price a couple of bucks a month) but city people benefit from rural areas with fresh produce, shortcut roads, and a place they can sightsee in (even if that does piss us all off:-).
I consider the tradeoff more than fair. I question if city people would be willing to live without fresh produce, shortcut roads, and some nice countryside they can visit on their weekends as willingly as I'd live without a phone line (because, if that happened, I'd try it for a while).
>I don't mean this to flame, but why it is so critical for rural areas to have broadband internet.
Do you want to vote online?
Not until everyone can at a reasonable pace (most rural communities connect at 9600 baud - 21.6kbps -- absolutely useless for the modern internet).
Would you like to get rid of your telephone and only use your broadband connection?
Not until everyone one you would ever need to call has access to broadband.
>They already mostly have 56K dialup
As a rural resident, I can tell you that you've been lied to. Most of us are connecting at rates barely faster than a 14.4k modem, and most of us have enough line noise that getting a 24/7 connection is next to impossible.
Of course, if you're still on a party line (pretty much only found in rural areas now) getting on the internet would be a tag-team sport.
>Why do they have a right to broadband
I dunno, maybe because most of your food was produced by these people?
If you continue to treat rural folk as a second class, you can stop expecting first class eats. I mean, it goes with the territory. The more 3rd world countries surpass rural areas for access to amenities, the more likely your food's going to taste like its come from the third world!
And yes, I've heard from at least one local farmer who's pissed that he can't get broadband for his milk farm business. I don't know how he'd use it, though, so don't ask (I'm one of those SUV driving people who you'd rather not see spending any money in your city).
>except for the situation in which people and companies move to these rural areas specifically to save on taxes and land costs, while whining about the lack of services.
Most rural people who do this are willing to pay extra for extra services. I, for example, am paying $150 CDN a month for always-on high-speed internet. I would humbly suggest that your taxes fund $1, maybe $2 a month of your high-speed internet.
If anything, we pay more, and often are willing to pay more.
>They then of course proceed to create excess traffic and pollute our cities as they drive the 50 miles into the city in their SUVs to see a movie.
That's ok. Considering that the bulk of wealth (at least in my town) comes from people living outside of the downtown areas (where the city is most built up, and where DSL is everywhere), we'll just stop putting money into your city. How long do you think that theater will last when no one is buying the $5 cokes?
>I have yet to see any compelling need for universal broadband.
With ubiquity comes application.
If you can trust that anyone you sell a product has access to broadband, you'll build it in.
You are the reason why its taken over a decade after the introduction of broadband before there's been any real interest in broadband online console gaming.
>If someone can figure how to make a profit on wireless, that would be better.
They're trying, but unfortunately the equipment costs, and monthly service fees are not something that even people with money are willing to pay.
>They often can't have a fire station within a 1/2 mile
We do. Many, if not most, rural communities do. Without our volunteer fire department I have no clue what farmers would do when their barns and silos set on fire, not to mention the many times they save idiots from the city when they cause a crashe by driving 20 km/h on an 80 km/h.
>and they are generally not going to be within the limitation of a DSL line.
'Tis true, tis true. Ma Bell has made some very poor choices when building exchanges out in the country, and when the city expands into the country, they often have to pay dearly for it.
>Stop Whining
Sure, but don't expect a lot of home stereo MP3 players to have broadband jacks, and don't expect to be able to phone a lot of people with your new toy broadband phone, or easily watch movies online, or many of the other things that people with broadband want to do until everyone can get it.
We're whining because many of us are willing to pay almost 5 times what you pay for broadband, but somehow companies think even that won't make them money.
BTW: I'd suggest that us rural people are why North America has been stuck with such a pathetic cell phone system (CDMA is good to 5x the distance as GSM). I'd enjoy it if we can keep people like you, who consider us a second class, from getting their hands on broadband enabled devices in the same way. >:-D
TTYL, and remember, ubiquity is what got Microsoft where it is today, and its why Linux is having such a tough time in the market.
>Or, you could use Internet Explorer for Solaris or HP-UX.
Yes, internet explorer version 5.01. Might I also suggest they use Mosaic for maximum compatibility?;-)
>The fact remains that Internet Explorer will render all major companies' web sites, whereas Mozilla will not.
I suppose IE 6 will render all Internet Explorer 6 documents, yes. However, IE 5 cannot properly render Internet Explorer 6 documents (a web page ceases to be so as soon as it doesn't follow web standards).
So, you may as well use Mozilla. It can render more sites/documents more faithfully than IE 5.
>Stating that you know Photoshop is infinitely more valuable than stating that you know the GIMP, when you're applying to professional art firms.
That's why you let the art students have machines with Photoshop installed. They all use Macs anyways, so what's the problem?
The rest of the students, such as Mechnical Engineers (for example) are simply not interested in working at an art firm. For these people, GIMP is better, since if they have the occasion to make a little graphic for the company, they can freely download and use the GIMP on the company's machine. Otherwise, it will cost the company many hundreds of dollars which they won't spend.
>Macros are used regularly in large business's documents,
Huh? I work at a government institution, employing hundreds of people. I remember seeing a macro once. I don't call that regular.
>I wouldn't consider tables, charts, and forms to be obscure or rarely-used features.
Then you haven't talked to the users that try them once and go insane trying to format them. For most people, they find it difficult to know what it even means when the icon on their mouse changes from an I-beam to a crop-tool, so they simply avoid these features. If they are using them, they've been trained to do so. Well, I figure, if you can learn it once, then you can learn it twice, twice as fast.
>Call me back in a year or two.
Well, as many others have experienced, we won't call you -- you'll call us. I'll enjoy my $50/hr. Linux tutoring job. And if it never materializes, or I have another job before that (very likely), I'm simply happy to know that I have 5 computers at home and that I can afford the software on all of them.
And, as we've seen, while software piracy will always be with us, its becoming an uphill struggle to even do something as simple as buy one copy of Windows XP for 5 machines, even if you'll be the only user on any of them at a time. It might technically be piracy, but I don't think anyone here would consider copying software onto multiple machines that only you use is wrong.
And no, I really don't care what software the company I work for (that is, unless I start my own business:) uses, as long as I'm not paying for it.
I went full time as a Linux user 2 months ago (up from being a part time user/sysadmin for the past 6-7 years for the linux boxes on my home network), and I've never looked back.
Driving, however, requires you pass a test. If you somehow thought you could drive 100 mph the first time you turn a key, they'd be scraping pure idiocy from the highway.
>Build your own house?
A job for an entire crew of professionals
However, one could expect someone of intelligence to be able to read the manual to their self-build shed and come out with something that doesn't fall down at the slightest touch.
>Hell, can you cook your own food?
If you decided to cook a polenta without even knowing what one was (like me), you'd probably end up with a potato omlette. But, because I know I don't know what's in one, I'd look it up (like I just did) and realise you'd use cornmeal, not potatoes.
>Then why are these people dumb because they aren't computer experts?
Because they set out to do a complex task without informing themselves on how to do even the most basic tasks related to it.
I wouldn't even attempt to cook something if I didn't know a teaspoon from a tablespoon. So why can't I expect the same from a computer user?
All I expect is a user to understand the difference between sharing everything, and sharing nothing.
>They can turn them on and (hopefully) get their job done, but thats about it.
Which is all fine, dandy, and intelligent. But if one of those users decides to install and use a completely foreign application despite the fact that even the most basic concept of how it works befuddles them (such as sharing being a two way street) they have no business doing it until they learn the basics.
Going headlong into any task without getting a basic grip of things shows a lack of intelligence.
As a tech support guy, what bothers me is when I say "tell me what the titlebar says" or "minimize the program", or "click start/run/type command/hit enter" and they tell me "It says the time", "I minimized it, but don't you need it running?", "It says I don't have that program installed".
Knowing what basic window decorations are named is like knowing what pedal is named the "accelerator", which is named the "brakes" and where the "clutch" is, and where the "gearshift" is. If you don't know those terms, you have no business being behind a wheel (unless its an automatic, but I'm not talking about Macs here!:-)
In the case of Kazaa, one should have a firm understanding of what an "options" dialog is, and how to use one!
This really is no different from school, actually.
> it would be like being able to go to any house alarm, and hitting the "9" key about a dozen times and it will automatically shut itself off, regardless of what the "security code" was set to.
Erm... we're talking Microsoft here.
If Bob were to "hack" the security code, he'd just had to type the wrong one in three times and he'd no only have entry to the house, he'd be able to lock the owners out by entering a fresh security code!
You're confusing another discussion with this one.
Well, let me break it down into smaller pieces so its easier to digest (emphasis mine):
*IF* Microsoft FREELY RELEASED......all its products
Afaik, Microsoft has no quality grep or tar tools. Perhaps they're buried in MSVC (never bothered checking -- although I do know it comes with a horribly broken make, and I think it includes touch), but I'm pretty sure that they aren't of the same caliber as the GNU project's set of tools. As far as most of the UNIX toolset goes (which I would suggest is the basis of why "geeks" like Linux so much -- It sure is why Linus created it), Microsoft has created very little (they couldn't even get FTP [along with many other utilities, such as ping, route, and tracert, IIRC] right, so they had to take that from BSD).
...and the open source community fixed everything
Fixing something does not mean creating something that doesn't exist. If that's how you fix things I'd put forth that you're inventing, not fixing.
If Microsoft has coded an entire set of UNIX utilities, please point it out to me. While pointing out a Microsoft tar/grep exists (if they do) might make you feel good, I'm still right in principle.
>You can get grep for Win32. You can get tar for Win32. You can get X support for Win32.
Sure, you can download cygwin and install third party tools that never touched a Microsoft codebase in their life (if any are GNU I'm sure RMS would love to talk with the cygwin people). But that doesn't count, since we're talking about fixing Microsoft's software here, not GNU/BSD software.
And yes, that very much was me. I don't take kindly to people as cowardly as that moron. And I certainly don't understand why someone without even a basic understanding of DOS wouldn't at least read slashdot a while and get a feeling for the community. Slashdot doesn't take well to people who can't even use DOS properly, and most certainly doesn't take well to trolls.
Oh, putting the finishing touches on this post: Inferring my post was stupid when you didn't even bother to read what you're replying to would come under PKB.
My true belief... *IF* Microsoft FREELY RELEASED (BSD license) all its products (including source), and the open source community fixed everything, the slashdot community would stay with Linux and continue to rail on the products.
Have you considered that even if all the problems were fixed, windows itself isn't a particularly powerful operating system for geeks?
It might work perfectly, but any O/S that lacks even simple utilities like grep and tar and doesn't come with X support is NOT going to be popular with true techies!
Slashdot Mirror
>but realistically if the united states wants to monitor your communications PGP isn't going to stop them...
Tell that to Phil Zimmermann. Here's some background to help out:
>Philip R. Zimmermann is the creator of Pretty Good Privacy. For that, he was the target of a three-year criminal investigation, because the government held that US export restrictions for cryptographic software were violated when PGP spread all around the world following its 1991 publication as freeware. Despite the lack of funding, the lack of any paid staff, the lack of a company to stand behind it, and despite government persecution, PGP nonetheless became the most widely used email encryption software in the world.
That doesn't sound like the niography of a man sympathetic to the US government, does it?
>Are you sure the authors aren't part of the united states government?
That's probably a very small part of the reason why Zimmermann ensured PGP was exported, even if it was illegal at the time.
>Are you sure the authors aren't vulnerable to blackmail or bribery?
You can't be vulnerable to blackmail when there's nothing for someone to take. That's why full details of PGP are available.
>Do you really think that when the french government fell victim to echelon it was becuase they where sending everything in plain text.
No, but I would suggest they had used the default levels of encryption availiable in various software packages. These levels of encryption are breakable by supercomputers in reasonable amounts of time.
I would also suggest they could have screwed up and sent keys plaintext, or that their SSH sessions were man-in-the-middle attacked (for example) and no one paid attention to the warnings.
4096-bit PGP-style encryption is simply not possible to break in any reasonable amount of time.
If you are truly worried about a piece of information you have, and you properly follow all security rules, then you are safe for quite a while, IMHO.
The US couldn't even get the clipper project beta tested without everyone on earth finding out about it. If they can't even do that, how the heck are they going to crack messages you actually put some effort in to encrypt?
>How about all the people in between the authors and the distribution you use?
That's why I prefer to use software that is used internationally, and software that includes source code. Hence, I prefer GNU/Linux.
>You don't have a budget of 50 billion dollars and control over a small army of world class mathematicians.
Money might buy faster machines, but world class mathematicians will agree -- properly implemented (mathematically) cryptography is unbreakable except by brute force.
>I don't think you really understand what level the NSA is on...
I do, but there's no way the NSA has a machine this fast. There's simply no way known or conceived by anyone to create a processor fast enough to crack extra-high-level encryption fast enough for it to be useful.
I suppose they could have 100 million Athlon chips crunching away on it, but in all seriousness, does anyone not think that people at the AMD factory wouldn't leak this? They'd have to ramp up production 1000x to handle this sort of demand!
You can control people within your grasp, but when you would have to trust someone like me (who could probably get some sort of job at AMD, even if it is just stuffing the processors into boxes) its just not possible to cover it up.
>Isn't that what the Nazis said about Egnima? The Complancy that went with having an "unbreakable" encryption led to errors in procedure that aided in breaking it.
Enigma had the only serious fatal flaw in any encryption standard that has ever existed: An assumption that the enemy would never be able to get their hands on the specs for the encryption.
Assuming the enemy cannot see how your cipher works causes a lack of proper review.
Most modern ciphers (such as DES and RSA) have been checked by ally and enemy alike and, apart from brute force attacks, I am told by experts that mathematically there is no way to break them if they are implemented correctly.
I suppose if one could bend the laws of mathematics you'd be able to break modern ciphers in a heartbeat. But I think anyone with that power would have much more interesting things they could apply it to!
>what kind of 4096 bit encryption...
Triple-DES or RSA possibly. I hear PGP supports Blowfish and IDEA as well.
>your amatuerish understanding of cryptography is giving you a false sense of security i see...
Until it was illegal I hacked satellite smartcards as a sideline. I see you haven't, since you haven't even bothered reading the stats on the maximum encryption PGP/GPG and the encruption they use can provide by default. We haven't even completely broken the crapply 56-bit (or was it 128-but, I can't remember) DES encryption used by ROM3 satellite cards, so why the heck do you think the gov't can break 4096-bit encryption alone?
Just because I don't know everything about cryptography doesn't mean I can't find you thousands of webpages that will ensure that your amateurish understanding of encryption is highly flawed.
Thank you.
>if you think the NSA can't get through those you are being niave.
If you think that the NSA has a exa-hertz machine for each message they want to decrypt, and can wait 10 years before they can use it for another task, maybe.
I think that's just a crazy conspiracy theorists way to think about things, though.
4096-bit encryption, IMHO, won't be broken in our lifetime. After I'm dead, I really don't give a crap what they do with any data related to me...
Just a point of interest:
If you search around the uspto, you'll find Microsoft has a little known patent for a door with a hinge that protects the pins from being removed while the door is closed... Beats the hell out of me what Microsoft would want to become a building supplies company, but hey, its there!
(BTW: Slashdot is very broken lately. I have to hit submit twice before messages are posted!)
>you wouldn't have ever heard of any of the artists you listen to today
:)
Huh, I wasn't under the impression that all the good electronica was produced by Sony.
Well, I'm thumbing through my collection, and other than a couple of virgin releases, I don't see much by major name labels.
I could live without those two CDs
>The costs involved in producing and massively distributing an album are so high that no startup band could ever hope to afford them.
Yes, I mean it costs me $20 a month for a usenet account, and it costs about $100 a month for a business-level high speed internet connection, so at $120 a month to post your CD to usenet and have everyone in the world have it, I'd say the distribution costs are massively high.
As far as producing goes, I again suppose that if your entire band can't afford the couple of thousand renting a studio for a couple of nights costs, perhaps you're broke and need to MMF?
>they have precisely a snowball's chance in Hell of distributing nationwide.
When did Usenet go offline? I seem to have missed this...
I did notice in another post you complain about pots making downloading slow.
Well, you can download overnight one high-quality album over most POTS lines (I know because I've done that before I got high-speed, and I connected at 21.6k).
One album a night is more than most people can afford with the current $20 an album system.
I also noticed you mentioned that standalone MP3 players are expensive. I suggest you look more closely. It cost me $75 for my last portable MP3 player. If that's expensive, I'd like to buy my chocolate bars for $0.25 each again!
And yes, this MP3 player has a simple headphone out jack. I had to buy a "special" cable from my mini-mart to convert from a headphone jack to RCA jacks. Cost me $3...
(sorry if this double posts... slashdot crapped out last time)
>What I already see happening is the start of a movement to put the teeth back in the public side of the copyright bargain.
Here's a little "proof" that the people are (finally) starting to wake up and fight back. In a nutshell: A long time politician loses because his party sits with their thumbs up their asses while the supreme court takes away a long standing Canadian right: The right to watch American television. Its not directly copyright, but it sure does smack of the same style of a lot of today's copyright laws.
If this party loses their majority government in the upcoming Federal election due to this law I think it would bring tears to my eyes to finally see Canada wake up and tell this government we won't take US-style save-the-company-before-the-people politics lying down.
>Perhaps it will remain an "old dream" and become even older if Linux advocates continue to stereotype the userbase needed to achieve their dream.
:-)
Sure, it could. But the fact remains that a LOT of us don't want users using Linux unless they have a clue. Put simply -- stupid people will make Linux look bad. They'll do dumb things like logging in as root, for example, deleting everything, and then blame the O/S for not having a "recycle bin". Then the next possible convert, who may have just a little more clue than that will hear the stupid user scream about how horrible Linux is and we'll lose out on someone else.
For certain people, the future of Linux remains better if they don't try it. Its like the 2-10 rule of management. A happy customer will probably tell two people about the product. An unhappy customer, though, will probably tell ten people about how horrible the product is.
I think the elitism is helping keep those people who have no business running Linux away, and I think its a good thing.
>Users do not come from a magic hole in the sky. They will come from Windows, Mac, etc.
I think the users ready for Linux will give it a try despite the elitism and once they do they'll be ready for the power of Linux, and they'll never look back at their toy operating system.
>So in some magical way this is different from people who have to use Windows for specific applications?
Very much so. They can get the same job elsewhere, for example. Or they can create a new application if they are willing to put enough effort in (anyone can program if they put in the time). Or they can talk with the employer.
There are a multitude of non-discriminatory ways of avoiding software elitism so I don't consider it a particularly bad or damaging thing (unless you are Bill Gates, in which case you could consider it personal). Not to mention the fact that unlike racism, being a windows user doesn't make you feel uncomfortable walking in the park, it doesn't get you beat up at night, and it doesn't prevent you from getting another job (unless the employer requires Linux as a skill).
>If they depend on MS Office, what you are saying is they should remain stereotyped as stupid Windows users?
If they depend on MS Office then they need to try the alternatives. Unlike your race, which you can't change unless you're as unlucky as Michael Jackson, you can change office suites at any time of the day. Well, that's assuming you have an employer that embraces new ideas. If you don't, perhaps its time you stop working for the conformity factory?
>This is a constant onslaught of negativity towards Microsoft and their userbase.
I know. It says something, does it.
It either says that most all Linux users refuse to "admit" windows is better, or we, as a group, would prefer that people come into using Linux 100%, rather than just try it out and bitch and moan that simple tasks are somehow hard (that's what you get for going about something halfassed!).
>Erm. I don't use Windows.
Well hey, what're you worried about?
Perhaps if you did use it you might discover it is as bad, if not worse than what you've heard all us elitists saying.
What I'm getting at is that if a company makes a cheap nail that shatters when hit by a hammer, the users who continue to use those nails deserve to get insulted by us that use the quality nails. IMHO, if you do something stupid and continue to do it without ever reconsidering your position on what you're doing, you're just asking for it...
>try pasting from something that uses one clipboard to something that uses another sometime
Now why would one want to do that?
If you're in X, you use an X term.
If you're in X and you switch between it and a console constantly, you're asking for trouble (some of the X drivers tend to get unstable when you switch like that too often).
But, I suppose that's an incompatibility. Just like its not possible to paste from real DOS (not a DOS Box) to Windows 9x, even though Windows 9x simply runs on top of DOS.
But its not an incompatibility that really means too much...
>That's called elitism, and it actually alienates people.
Yup, it does alienate people. That's the point. If you have a group of people who are all at a minimum skill level who are not interested in working alongside people of a lower, or non-existant skill level its a very effective way of keeping them out.
For example, telling these jokes in the server room keeps button pushing morons (yup, I said the word) out. Good thing, too.
As far as it being elitism, you're totally correct. Just as the Cable Guy will get the cable installed extra fast for someone who knows enough not to do certain things that would ruin the cable, he'll take longer (and, due to time constraints) do a poorer job for someone he expects to break it anyways.
Its human nature, and in this case its not a particularly bad thing either. It gives people an incentive to improve upon their skillsets and broaden their horizons.
>There are plenty of other ways to joke about Linux and viruses than to stereotype a group (Windows' users) as having a low IQ.
Sure, but they aren't as effective in ensuring those people you don't want to associate with stay away, are they?
>Perhaps the reason people claim Linux is a religion or for fanatics is because they are alienated by crap like this.
And this a bad thing... why?
If you can't have an open mind to a community then you'll find you'll be eaten alive in it.
Elitism is only wrong when its done maliciously against attributes people cannot, or should not change (such as [but not limited to] race or disability).
An OS is something you can change, and if one has such a thin skin they can't take a jibe or two from someone on the opposite side of the fence on such a light issue perhaps they have some personal issues to deal with first?
>I've been in whatever this "Linux community" is for a number of years now and I'm feeling increasingly alienated. There is too much negativity towards Microsoft and too much seriousness about Linux for the masses.
Well, I would humbly suggest you're just looking in the wrong places. If you want to use windows and Linux equally, why not join in with people making Linux-Windows compatibility software, like Win4Lin, Wine, Codeweavers, Bochs and VmWare?
>The problem isn't a lack of clipboards, it is inconsistency in application usage.
Huh?
In X, left-drag to select, middle click to paste.
In GPM, left-drag to select, right click to paste.
Well, technically you've got me, but if chaging one mouse button confuses you then you aren't ready to use a clipboard anyways.
>Did you know that X != Linux?
Well, if you are getting that abstract, I'm going to say windows is nothing more than win.com, and in that case, it has no clipboard.
A clipboard is useless unless you have something to use it in (explorer or X).
>Linux is too difficult for end users
Whenever I hear that I think back to the 70's when secretaries and data entry experts often with barely a high-school diploma were using VT100 terminals running other, far more difficult to use and administer OSes (including old variants of UNIX). They were able to get their jobs done.
Either people have become less intelligent over these past 30 years, or people have let Microsoft kid themselves into thinking that they aren't intelligent enough to do what their mothers and fathers once did.
Why is it that a secretary can't use vi? I watched one use it yesterday in MPE/iX.
>That maybe there is something you are missing in the fact that there are hundreds of millions of people who are more willing to pay for Windows than get linux for free?
There's nothing missing in it. Its simply a problem of modern home computers. Since you aren't locked into running a certain operating system on the machine whoever has the highest marketshare will always win out.
I believe that if someone were to release a well priced, friendly to use, UNIX-like OS only computer, and it were properly marketed with software on the shelves ready to buy, there'd be some hope in taking the market back.
Back in the good/bad old days when hardware was tied to operating systems like that, you had diversity -- You could use an Atari, Commodore, Apple, Macintosh, or many other computers. Unless that happens again Windows will stay put unless linux passes windows by 10x the usability.
Just my 2 cents.
>It doesn't matter unless you're in a Nielsen family.
What if he has to subscribe to it?
>Why not use existing drivers for other video cards instead? (like NVIDIA)
Because the broadcast studio will expect this hardware to be in use for at least half a decade. They aren't like PC users -- I wouldn't expect them to be throwing out their hardware every couple of years.
So, what happens when NVidia does a 3dfx? It took less than that amount of time for 3dfx to go from hero to zero, so it certainly can happen again.
You guessed it, they have to buy all new hardware from a vendor that is intelligent enough to provide open source drivers if they expect to ever update X, had they gone with NVidia.
For a broadcast studio, this could mean millions, not to mention that the downtime will cost even more dearly.
With open source, and open hardware specs The Weather Channel can expect a smooth ride should they find new software incompatible with their existing drivers. All they have to do is update them themselves. They don't have to wait days or weeks for another company to fix it for them (assming they are still in business).
I dunno how slashdot ate your post like that, but I've got one thing to respond to:
:-).
>If those compromises no longer make sense, we should consider moving.
And if everyone rural areas to the city, cities would have the added burden of housing 20-50% more people. As it stands, most people around here are fighting for apartments. Can you imagine what will happen to property prices if we all moved into the city? Heck, can you imagine the homeless rates?
In all seriousness, if everyone had thought like that 200 years ago, everyone would live in one big city, and 90% of North America would be absolutely open to being stolen by other countries! Not to mention how much more damage two planes would do when they land on the city's arcologies (the only solution that provides everyone with everything possible)!
I made my choice, and I'm willing to pay for it. But, as I've seen city traffic going through my city quintuple to the point that my 300 person town is almost at the point of having a traffic light, I wonder just how much the city people really would owe us if we put a toll on that road. Or maybe we could all play fair, and either the city people could pay most of our road tax, not use our roads, or, better yet, give us something we'd like -- reasonably priced broadband.
We might burden you by wanting broadband at your rates (even though it'll increase your price a couple of bucks a month) but city people benefit from rural areas with fresh produce, shortcut roads, and a place they can sightsee in (even if that does piss us all off
I consider the tradeoff more than fair. I question if city people would be willing to live without fresh produce, shortcut roads, and some nice countryside they can visit on their weekends as willingly as I'd live without a phone line (because, if that happened, I'd try it for a while).
>Major University Study
I did a search for this "Major University". It seems the city of "Major" and their University are extremely busy...
>I don't mean this to flame, but why it is so critical for rural areas to have broadband internet.
Do you want to vote online?
Not until everyone can at a reasonable pace (most rural communities connect at 9600 baud - 21.6kbps -- absolutely useless for the modern internet).
Would you like to get rid of your telephone and only use your broadband connection?
Not until everyone one you would ever need to call has access to broadband.
>They already mostly have 56K dialup
As a rural resident, I can tell you that you've been lied to. Most of us are connecting at rates barely faster than a 14.4k modem, and most of us have enough line noise that getting a 24/7 connection is next to impossible.
Of course, if you're still on a party line (pretty much only found in rural areas now) getting on the internet would be a tag-team sport.
>Why do they have a right to broadband
I dunno, maybe because most of your food was produced by these people?
If you continue to treat rural folk as a second class, you can stop expecting first class eats. I mean, it goes with the territory. The more 3rd world countries surpass rural areas for access to amenities, the more likely your food's going to taste like its come from the third world!
And yes, I've heard from at least one local farmer who's pissed that he can't get broadband for his milk farm business. I don't know how he'd use it, though, so don't ask (I'm one of those SUV driving people who you'd rather not see spending any money in your city).
>except for the situation in which people and companies move to these rural areas specifically to save on taxes and land costs, while whining about the lack of services.
Most rural people who do this are willing to pay extra for extra services. I, for example, am paying $150 CDN a month for always-on high-speed internet. I would humbly suggest that your taxes fund $1, maybe $2 a month of your high-speed internet.
If anything, we pay more, and often are willing to pay more.
>They then of course proceed to create excess traffic and pollute our cities as they drive the 50 miles into the city in their SUVs to see a movie.
That's ok. Considering that the bulk of wealth (at least in my town) comes from people living outside of the downtown areas (where the city is most built up, and where DSL is everywhere), we'll just stop putting money into your city. How long do you think that theater will last when no one is buying the $5 cokes?
>I have yet to see any compelling need for universal broadband.
With ubiquity comes application.
If you can trust that anyone you sell a product has access to broadband, you'll build it in.
You are the reason why its taken over a decade after the introduction of broadband before there's been any real interest in broadband online console gaming.
>If someone can figure how to make a profit on wireless, that would be better.
They're trying, but unfortunately the equipment costs, and monthly service fees are not something that even people with money are willing to pay.
>They often can't have a fire station within a 1/2 mile
We do. Many, if not most, rural communities do. Without our volunteer fire department I have no clue what farmers would do when their barns and silos set on fire, not to mention the many times they save idiots from the city when they cause a crashe by driving 20 km/h on an 80 km/h.
>and they are generally not going to be within the limitation of a DSL line.
'Tis true, tis true. Ma Bell has made some very poor choices when building exchanges out in the country, and when the city expands into the country, they often have to pay dearly for it.
>Stop Whining
Sure, but don't expect a lot of home stereo MP3 players to have broadband jacks, and don't expect to be able to phone a lot of people with your new toy broadband phone, or easily watch movies online, or many of the other things that people with broadband want to do until everyone can get it.
We're whining because many of us are willing to pay almost 5 times what you pay for broadband, but somehow companies think even that won't make them money.
BTW: I'd suggest that us rural people are why North America has been stuck with such a pathetic cell phone system (CDMA is good to 5x the distance as GSM). I'd enjoy it if we can keep people like you, who consider us a second class, from getting their hands on broadband enabled devices in the same way. >:-D
TTYL, and remember, ubiquity is what got Microsoft where it is today, and its why Linux is having such a tough time in the market.
>Or, you could use Internet Explorer for Solaris or HP-UX.
;-)
:) uses, as long as I'm not paying for it.
Yes, internet explorer version 5.01. Might I also suggest they use Mosaic for maximum compatibility?
>The fact remains that Internet Explorer will render all major companies' web sites, whereas Mozilla will not.
I suppose IE 6 will render all Internet Explorer 6 documents, yes. However, IE 5 cannot properly render Internet Explorer 6 documents (a web page ceases to be so as soon as it doesn't follow web standards).
So, you may as well use Mozilla. It can render more sites/documents more faithfully than IE 5.
>Stating that you know Photoshop is infinitely more valuable than stating that you know the GIMP, when you're applying to professional art firms.
That's why you let the art students have machines with Photoshop installed. They all use Macs anyways, so what's the problem?
The rest of the students, such as Mechnical Engineers (for example) are simply not interested in working at an art firm. For these people, GIMP is better, since if they have the occasion to make a little graphic for the company, they can freely download and use the GIMP on the company's machine. Otherwise, it will cost the company many hundreds of dollars which they won't spend.
>Macros are used regularly in large business's documents,
Huh? I work at a government institution, employing hundreds of people. I remember seeing a macro once. I don't call that regular.
>I wouldn't consider tables, charts, and forms to be obscure or rarely-used features.
Then you haven't talked to the users that try them once and go insane trying to format them. For most people, they find it difficult to know what it even means when the icon on their mouse changes from an I-beam to a crop-tool, so they simply avoid these features. If they are using them, they've been trained to do so. Well, I figure, if you can learn it once, then you can learn it twice, twice as fast.
>Call me back in a year or two.
Well, as many others have experienced, we won't call you -- you'll call us. I'll enjoy my $50/hr. Linux tutoring job. And if it never materializes, or I have another job before that (very likely), I'm simply happy to know that I have 5 computers at home and that I can afford the software on all of them.
And, as we've seen, while software piracy will always be with us, its becoming an uphill struggle to even do something as simple as buy one copy of Windows XP for 5 machines, even if you'll be the only user on any of them at a time. It might technically be piracy, but I don't think anyone here would consider copying software onto multiple machines that only you use is wrong.
And no, I really don't care what software the company I work for (that is, unless I start my own business
I went full time as a Linux user 2 months ago (up from being a part time user/sysadmin for the past 6-7 years for the linux boxes on my home network), and I've never looked back.
>Can you repair your own car?
:-)
A professional job intended for a mechanic.
Driving, however, requires you pass a test. If you somehow thought you could drive 100 mph the first time you turn a key, they'd be scraping pure idiocy from the highway.
>Build your own house?
A job for an entire crew of professionals
However, one could expect someone of intelligence to be able to read the manual to their self-build shed and come out with something that doesn't fall down at the slightest touch.
>Hell, can you cook your own food?
If you decided to cook a polenta without even knowing what one was (like me), you'd probably end up with a potato omlette. But, because I know I don't know what's in one, I'd look it up (like I just did) and realise you'd use cornmeal, not potatoes.
>Then why are these people dumb because they aren't computer experts?
Because they set out to do a complex task without informing themselves on how to do even the most basic tasks related to it.
I wouldn't even attempt to cook something if I didn't know a teaspoon from a tablespoon. So why can't I expect the same from a computer user?
All I expect is a user to understand the difference between sharing everything, and sharing nothing.
>They can turn them on and (hopefully) get their job done, but thats about it.
Which is all fine, dandy, and intelligent. But if one of those users decides to install and use a completely foreign application despite the fact that even the most basic concept of how it works befuddles them (such as sharing being a two way street) they have no business doing it until they learn the basics.
Going headlong into any task without getting a basic grip of things shows a lack of intelligence.
As a tech support guy, what bothers me is when I say "tell me what the titlebar says" or "minimize the program", or "click start/run/type command/hit enter" and they tell me "It says the time", "I minimized it, but don't you need it running?", "It says I don't have that program installed".
Knowing what basic window decorations are named is like knowing what pedal is named the "accelerator", which is named the "brakes" and where the "clutch" is, and where the "gearshift" is. If you don't know those terms, you have no business being behind a wheel (unless its an automatic, but I'm not talking about Macs here!
In the case of Kazaa, one should have a firm understanding of what an "options" dialog is, and how to use one!
This really is no different from school, actually.
> it would be like being able to go to any house alarm, and hitting the "9" key about a dozen times and it will automatically shut itself off, regardless of what the "security code" was set to.
Erm... we're talking Microsoft here.
If Bob were to "hack" the security code, he'd just had to type the wrong one in three times and he'd no only have entry to the house, he'd be able to lock the owners out by entering a fresh security code!
>You're confusing the OS and the applications
...all its products
...and the open source community fixed everything
You're confusing another discussion with this one.
Well, let me break it down into smaller pieces so its easier to digest (emphasis mine):
*IF* Microsoft FREELY RELEASED...
Afaik, Microsoft has no quality grep or tar tools. Perhaps they're buried in MSVC (never bothered checking -- although I do know it comes with a horribly broken make, and I think it includes touch), but I'm pretty sure that they aren't of the same caliber as the GNU project's set of tools. As far as most of the UNIX toolset goes (which I would suggest is the basis of why "geeks" like Linux so much -- It sure is why Linus created it), Microsoft has created very little (they couldn't even get FTP [along with many other utilities, such as ping, route, and tracert, IIRC] right, so they had to take that from BSD).
Fixing something does not mean creating something that doesn't exist. If that's how you fix things I'd put forth that you're inventing, not fixing.
If Microsoft has coded an entire set of UNIX utilities, please point it out to me. While pointing out a Microsoft tar/grep exists (if they do) might make you feel good, I'm still right in principle.
>You can get grep for Win32. You can get tar for Win32. You can get X support for Win32.
Sure, you can download cygwin and install third party tools that never touched a Microsoft codebase in their life (if any are GNU I'm sure RMS would love to talk with the cygwin people). But that doesn't count, since we're talking about fixing Microsoft's software here, not GNU/BSD software.
And yes, that very much was me. I don't take kindly to people as cowardly as that moron. And I certainly don't understand why someone without even a basic understanding of DOS wouldn't at least read slashdot a while and get a feeling for the community. Slashdot doesn't take well to people who can't even use DOS properly, and most certainly doesn't take well to trolls.
Oh, putting the finishing touches on this post: Inferring my post was stupid when you didn't even bother to read what you're replying to would come under PKB.
Have you considered that even if all the problems were fixed, windows itself isn't a particularly powerful operating system for geeks?
It might work perfectly, but any O/S that lacks even simple utilities like grep and tar and doesn't come with X support is NOT going to be popular with true techies!
1,380 gopher links?
Try this.