Interesting little fact: The word "factoid" means (or originally meant) a bit of untrue information purported and propagated as a true fact due to its presentation in the media.
I think lots of the people who pass on Microsoft software hate Microsoft for historical reasons. Some of those reasons may hold today (their anticompetitive practices--I know that I don't want to support a company that works that way!) and some are less so (usability, which has increased quite a bit since the Windows95 days--though it still may not be for everyone) and some may never reasonably be expected to change (openness of the software, community support, etc.)
I work in a total FreeBSD shop, and we've never seen the problems you've seen. Off the top of my head, we have FreeBSD deployed as firewalls in about 40 boxes, and probably that number in servers, too.
Of course, we're not running IRC--could these problems be systemic to that use?
Generally speaking, MySQL doesn't perform that much better than Postgresql if the former is using the MyISAM engine. Turn on InnoDB (for silly things like transactions and foreign keys) and Postgresql typically wins out.
Of course, if you're just using your database as a data store--an easy way to store data with convenient, known methods for finding and updating that data, you may be ok with just MySQL/MyISAM. If you're using your database as an actual, relational database and looking for data integrity enforced there instead of in your application, you might want to look at Postgresql.
You have to be wary with pkg_add. It will only grab packages from the -version-release branch (which are not updated--they're static for that release.) For example, if you're running 6.2, you'll find that pkg_add tracks this URL for packages: ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-6.2-release/Latest/
FreeBSD doesn't have distros because FreeBSD itself is very much like a distro. It's not a requirement from the FreeBSD team--rather, FreeBSD is a complete operating environment akin to a Linux distribution.
There's nothing technically or legally preventing me from creating a new installer that uses the FreeBSD kernel and FreeBSD userland, with some modifications to the default packages installed. In fact, peoplehavedone just that. PFSense even calls it a distribution of FreeBSD.
I think the main reason that more of them haven't cropped up is because they're just not all that necessary. Since FreeBSD comes with the ability to add third-party software in using a repository (extremely similar to Gentoo's Portage, as the Gentoo team based some of their design decisions on BSD ports), so there's not much to add. If you notice, the major Linux distros of times past largely differed in the software repository and default options for precompiled packages.
especially as stupid license nazis stop us sharing code *shakes fist* Well, if it violates the license, I don't know what you want. *shrug*
I think that it's a horribly misunderstood license. While the concepts themselves are easy to understand, when you get into the nitty gritty details of interoperating with other software, things get sticky really quickly.
BSD is so much easier, but you run the risk of someone doing more with your code (and getting paid for it) than you did, without getting anything out of it. Personally, that doesn't bother me all that much.
It's an interesting example of inflation in action, when you think about it.
Ultimately, though eBay is going to have to change their business model or go out of business. As a buyer, it's hard to find a good deal on something because of all of the fees. About the only time that I use eBay is when I'm looking for something really rare, and even then, I often find better deals on other sites.
eBay used to be a place where buyers could get something for a little cheaper than the retail outlet, and sellers could get a little more for something than if they tried to sell to a used X store or a garage sale. All that's changed with the constantly increasing fees that have to be passed on to the bidder.
It's not a matter of "cleaning up the mess." It's a matter of party perception.
The point is that the impact from Bush's policies hasn't really hit with full force yet. The party which has the most power when it hits will be the one to take brunt of the blame. I'm betting that it hits within 4 years, simply because there's only so much you can gain by lowering interest rates (people have to want to borrow money for this to matter) and by printing more money (because sooner or later, inflation catches up to you.)
When the fit hits the shan, the government is going to have a lot of cleanup work to do. Among other things, they're probably going to have to give a lot of handouts for a while. People who aren't in need are going to grumble about this. People who are in need are going to grumble about the economy in general. And they're all going to be pointing their fingers at the then-current leaders. And I'd bet money that the next person to run on the opposing team^Wparty gets eight years without breaking a sweat.
They both probably know that there's little chance for a Democrat to win in 4 years, let alone in 8, if a Democrat wins this time around. Our next president will have a hell of a big job cleaning up the mess of the last X years (some people say X is 8, some say 16, but the actual number is largely irrelevant.)
It really might be best (for democrats) in the long run for McCain to win the general election this time around. In 4 years when no one can deny that the country is in a shithole and even traditional non-voters are crying for change, the Democrats could win in a landslide with mandate, no matter who they run.
Rush Limbaugh called for this very thing on his show, so lots of otherwise non-strategic people knew that going out to vote for Hillary was a good thing for the Republican party.
Of course, this presumes a team mentality. I guess since we're in that position as it is, it makes sense to play it as a game.
Of course, an ignorant (and worse, stupid) population voting is almost as bad. I've known of people who (at least claimed) to have voted for a particular candidate because he was expected to win. When you have people voting for that reason alone, it's pretty hard to take politics seriously.
Yeah, but these kinds of people never really want to look at the optimistic side of things, or debate how things might turn out. They have their knee-jerk reactions, and they're going to stick by them come Hell or high water.
Me? I don't know how universal health care would turn out. Realistically, it's just an easy gimmick for the Democratic party to play upon, after Michael Moore's numbers came out and showed that a sizable percentage of people (read: potential voters) don't have insurance. It's just like when the Republican party discovered that pretending to have Christian values is a good way to get votes.
No one ever bothers mentioning that caring for your neighbor is a Christian value....
People like to hold things in their hands. We're already seeing people who bought into digital downloads losing "their" content due to hardware failure and distributor's inability to allow re-authorization, as well as services simply closing down. Microsoft is in the former category (if your Xbox 360 dies, you will experience problems trying to play downloaded content on your replacement) and Google is in the latter (they closed a video download service, though at least they refunded people their money eventually.) If companies manage to address these issues, great. Until then, I won't be "buying" content online.
Apple's done a reasonable job, though you still have to authorize your account online. Once you authorize a computer, you never have to be online to play your content. You can easily back your content up and play it on any authorized computer. The only way this can really be a problem is if they stop authorizing computers for some reason (either they go out of business or decide to force people to upgrade in some way.) It's still a not-so-happy proposition, but it's a compromise I'd be willing to make for extremely lower prices. In addition, for their music at least, you can burn it to a non-DRM format, which means that even if the above situations happen, you won't be completely out of luck.
I never said your complaint was invalid, just that it's not as much of a problem as many people are making it out to be. Sematics. You initially said, outright, that "loading a page" on the iPhone was generally faster than on a 3G phone. In saying that, you're essentially saying that my complaint is wrong and invalid. Just because you never used the word doesn't mean that it wasn't lurking in the subtext.
3G on an iPhone would definitely be faster than EDGE is on an iPhone. You, and those like you, seem to conflate this with, "therefore the iPhone is fatally flawed, useless, and less useful than this here 3G phone". I didn't say that it was a fatal flaw. I said that it was what kept me from buying an iPhone. Having a phone with a faster data rate, and comparing page load time between the two, I concluded that it wasn't for me. I already think that page loads are too slow on my current phone--I don't want to "upgrade" to something slower, even if there are other benefits (which you pointed out, and which I agree with.) To me, the other benefits aren't enough to overcome the drawbacks.
I guess that I misspoke a little bit when I said that the lack of 3G was what kept me from buying the iPhone--realistically, it was the lack of speed, particularly compared to my current phone. And my assumption was that 3G on the iPhone would make it faster--an assumption which isn't necessarily valid, but which will be correct most of the time, if you're comparing similar devices.
But lacking 3G does not cripple the iPhone even *remotely* as much as some people seem to think. I guess that you weren't explicitly targeting me in that sentence, but just in case, I don't think that lack of 3G cripples the iPhone. I'm sure it's quite usable, and believe me, I'd love to have a decent, free e-mail client and web browser on my phone. But I can't--I have to pay for those features. I can't pay to get my iPhone to have a higher data rate[1].
One thing, perhaps you are missing, is that EDGE is *much* faster than many people think. Maybe the problem is that you're lumping me into the crowd. You seem to imply here that EDGE is faster than I think. If not, I don't see the point in saying that I'm missing the point--I'm not trying to explain why the iPhone sucks and why no one will ever buy one (that would be a fool's errand)--I'm trying to say why I don't want one. And I am quite aware of EDGE's data-rate.
As you said yourself, 3G is not ideal for web browsing. I agree. That's why I don't choose to go to something that's even worse.
The biggest problem is latency. I'm honestly not trying to be argumentative here, but I've heard that 3G is actually worse than EDGE on latency. I've heard this mostly from people who use SSH across these networks, and I trust their judgement since SSH is performance is going to be heavily impacted by latency.
[1] Well, that's not entirely true, since I could have a Windows smartphone with 3G sharing its connection via WiFi, picked up by the iPhone--but that's getting kinda ridiculous.
Unless it's being limited by rendering speed, 3G is likely to be faster than EDGE on the same phone. Just because you're comparing slow devices to the iPhone doesn't mean that my complaint is invalid. It also doesn't begin to address other uses of the Internet, such as downloading attachments from e-mail or syncing a large mailstore, both of which will be immune to the data-rate obfuscating effects of rendering speed.
Does that centralized server vet every piece of code? If not, this is probably even less secure than going directly to the source--there's one more potential place where the package could be compromised.
(full disclosure: I use Linux as my primary home machine, and a Mac as my work machine.)
There are, of course, some things that do require a data/code mix, like a spreadsheet, but most don't. DRM (Digital Restrictions on Media) must have code in the data. A WiMP file has built in DRM and you can imbed a virus there. And MP3 or Ogg is pure data, and the only way an Ogg or MP3 file can infect your system is a programming error in the player. It is not an essential part of DRM that code be included in data. It's quite possible for the data to be wrapped in more data (encrypted with a key), and decoded with a separate program.
Try not to let your hatred of DRM fool you into spreading FUD.
#2. A database (that can be updated) of what the MOST COMMON files are in which directories OF THE OS and their various identifying characteristics. Such databases exist and are freely available. If I remember to, I'll post a followup comment later on with the links (I can't find them right now.)
Of course, the main problem is that checksums can be forged if the system is already compromised. You'd have to do with with the bootable CD you mentioned--but are most users going to bother? The bootable CD will also need Internet access for updates, and this isn't as easy as solution as you might think. Lots of people use wifi--getting every vendor's wifi drivers will be hard. Some wired network cards aren't natively supported by Windows--so you'll need those drivers, too.
You're absolutely correct that enumerating goodness is better than enumerating badness, but it's still going to be an incredibly difficult problem. Worse, will the A/V maker be able to keep up-to-date with Windows updates? What happens to the user who runs the product between updates, quarantines a mess of Windows DLLs, and then can't log back in upon reboot? There are a lot of difficult-to-solve problems with this approach.
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting little fact: The word "factoid" means (or originally meant) a bit of untrue information purported and propagated as a true fact due to its presentation in the media.
I think lots of the people who pass on Microsoft software hate Microsoft for historical reasons. Some of those reasons may hold today (their anticompetitive practices--I know that I don't want to support a company that works that way!) and some are less so (usability, which has increased quite a bit since the Windows95 days--though it still may not be for everyone) and some may never reasonably be expected to change (openness of the software, community support, etc.)
You don't get those calls anymore? Man, I still do, even after about 8 years of almost exclusively using Linux.
Did you file a bug report and contact that port's maintainer?
I work in a total FreeBSD shop, and we've never seen the problems you've seen. Off the top of my head, we have FreeBSD deployed as firewalls in about 40 boxes, and probably that number in servers, too.
Of course, we're not running IRC--could these problems be systemic to that use?
Generally speaking, MySQL doesn't perform that much better than Postgresql if the former is using the MyISAM engine. Turn on InnoDB (for silly things like transactions and foreign keys) and Postgresql typically wins out.
Of course, if you're just using your database as a data store--an easy way to store data with convenient, known methods for finding and updating that data, you may be ok with just MySQL/MyISAM. If you're using your database as an actual, relational database and looking for data integrity enforced there instead of in your application, you might want to look at Postgresql.
You have to be wary with pkg_add. It will only grab packages from the -version-release branch (which are not updated--they're static for that release.) For example, if you're running 6.2, you'll find that pkg_add tracks this URL for packages:
ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-6.2-release/Latest/
And the software is over a year old.
If you want updated packages, you will need to set some environment variables to force you to track a -stable URL (such as ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-6-stable/Latest/). See man pkg_add for details.
Of course, just compiling from ports is probably the easiest way, if you've got a fast enough computer.
FreeBSD doesn't have distros because FreeBSD itself is very much like a distro. It's not a requirement from the FreeBSD team--rather, FreeBSD is a complete operating environment akin to a Linux distribution.
There's nothing technically or legally preventing me from creating a new installer that uses the FreeBSD kernel and FreeBSD userland, with some modifications to the default packages installed. In fact, people have done just that. PFSense even calls it a distribution of FreeBSD.
I think the main reason that more of them haven't cropped up is because they're just not all that necessary. Since FreeBSD comes with the ability to add third-party software in using a repository (extremely similar to Gentoo's Portage, as the Gentoo team based some of their design decisions on BSD ports), so there's not much to add. If you notice, the major Linux distros of times past largely differed in the software repository and default options for precompiled packages. especially as stupid license nazis stop us sharing code *shakes fist* Well, if it violates the license, I don't know what you want. *shrug*
I think that it's a horribly misunderstood license. While the concepts themselves are easy to understand, when you get into the nitty gritty details of interoperating with other software, things get sticky really quickly.
BSD is so much easier, but you run the risk of someone doing more with your code (and getting paid for it) than you did, without getting anything out of it. Personally, that doesn't bother me all that much.
It's an interesting example of inflation in action, when you think about it.
Ultimately, though eBay is going to have to change their business model or go out of business. As a buyer, it's hard to find a good deal on something because of all of the fees. About the only time that I use eBay is when I'm looking for something really rare, and even then, I often find better deals on other sites.
eBay used to be a place where buyers could get something for a little cheaper than the retail outlet, and sellers could get a little more for something than if they tried to sell to a used X store or a garage sale. All that's changed with the constantly increasing fees that have to be passed on to the bidder.
It's not a matter of "cleaning up the mess." It's a matter of party perception.
The point is that the impact from Bush's policies hasn't really hit with full force yet. The party which has the most power when it hits will be the one to take brunt of the blame. I'm betting that it hits within 4 years, simply because there's only so much you can gain by lowering interest rates (people have to want to borrow money for this to matter) and by printing more money (because sooner or later, inflation catches up to you.)
When the fit hits the shan, the government is going to have a lot of cleanup work to do. Among other things, they're probably going to have to give a lot of handouts for a while. People who aren't in need are going to grumble about this. People who are in need are going to grumble about the economy in general. And they're all going to be pointing their fingers at the then-current leaders. And I'd bet money that the next person to run on the opposing team^Wparty gets eight years without breaking a sweat.
The problem is that most Americans don't see the economy as tanking, so that's a horrible platform on which to run.
They both probably know that there's little chance for a Democrat to win in 4 years, let alone in 8, if a Democrat wins this time around. Our next president will have a hell of a big job cleaning up the mess of the last X years (some people say X is 8, some say 16, but the actual number is largely irrelevant.)
It really might be best (for democrats) in the long run for McCain to win the general election this time around. In 4 years when no one can deny that the country is in a shithole and even traditional non-voters are crying for change, the Democrats could win in a landslide with mandate, no matter who they run.
Rush Limbaugh called for this very thing on his show, so lots of otherwise non-strategic people knew that going out to vote for Hillary was a good thing for the Republican party.
Of course, this presumes a team mentality. I guess since we're in that position as it is, it makes sense to play it as a game.
Of course, an ignorant (and worse, stupid) population voting is almost as bad. I've known of people who (at least claimed) to have voted for a particular candidate because he was expected to win. When you have people voting for that reason alone, it's pretty hard to take politics seriously.
Yeah, but these kinds of people never really want to look at the optimistic side of things, or debate how things might turn out. They have their knee-jerk reactions, and they're going to stick by them come Hell or high water.
Me? I don't know how universal health care would turn out. Realistically, it's just an easy gimmick for the Democratic party to play upon, after Michael Moore's numbers came out and showed that a sizable percentage of people (read: potential voters) don't have insurance. It's just like when the Republican party discovered that pretending to have Christian values is a good way to get votes.
No one ever bothers mentioning that caring for your neighbor is a Christian value....
People like to hold things in their hands. We're already seeing people who bought into digital downloads losing "their" content due to hardware failure and distributor's inability to allow re-authorization, as well as services simply closing down. Microsoft is in the former category (if your Xbox 360 dies, you will experience problems trying to play downloaded content on your replacement) and Google is in the latter (they closed a video download service, though at least they refunded people their money eventually.) If companies manage to address these issues, great. Until then, I won't be "buying" content online.
Apple's done a reasonable job, though you still have to authorize your account online. Once you authorize a computer, you never have to be online to play your content. You can easily back your content up and play it on any authorized computer. The only way this can really be a problem is if they stop authorizing computers for some reason (either they go out of business or decide to force people to upgrade in some way.) It's still a not-so-happy proposition, but it's a compromise I'd be willing to make for extremely lower prices. In addition, for their music at least, you can burn it to a non-DRM format, which means that even if the above situations happen, you won't be completely out of luck.
Here's that link:
http://www.nsrl.nist.gov/RDS_Notes.htm
The Sony DRM was a separate program which auto-installed (due to Windows autorun.) It accompanied data, however they were partitioned on the disk.
The code+data thing that most people talk about is putting code to be executed in the data segment of memory.
I guess that I misspoke a little bit when I said that the lack of 3G was what kept me from buying the iPhone--realistically, it was the lack of speed, particularly compared to my current phone. And my assumption was that 3G on the iPhone would make it faster--an assumption which isn't necessarily valid, but which will be correct most of the time, if you're comparing similar devices. But lacking 3G does not cripple the iPhone even *remotely* as much as some people seem to think. I guess that you weren't explicitly targeting me in that sentence, but just in case, I don't think that lack of 3G cripples the iPhone. I'm sure it's quite usable, and believe me, I'd love to have a decent, free e-mail client and web browser on my phone. But I can't--I have to pay for those features. I can't pay to get my iPhone to have a higher data rate[1]. One thing, perhaps you are missing, is that EDGE is *much* faster than many people think. Maybe the problem is that you're lumping me into the crowd. You seem to imply here that EDGE is faster than I think. If not, I don't see the point in saying that I'm missing the point--I'm not trying to explain why the iPhone sucks and why no one will ever buy one (that would be a fool's errand)--I'm trying to say why I don't want one. And I am quite aware of EDGE's data-rate.
As you said yourself, 3G is not ideal for web browsing. I agree. That's why I don't choose to go to something that's even worse. The biggest problem is latency. I'm honestly not trying to be argumentative here, but I've heard that 3G is actually worse than EDGE on latency. I've heard this mostly from people who use SSH across these networks, and I trust their judgement since SSH is performance is going to be heavily impacted by latency.
[1] Well, that's not entirely true, since I could have a Windows smartphone with 3G sharing its connection via WiFi, picked up by the iPhone--but that's getting kinda ridiculous.
I haven't heard of such a device, but it sounds like a neat design.
Unless it's being limited by rendering speed, 3G is likely to be faster than EDGE on the same phone. Just because you're comparing slow devices to the iPhone doesn't mean that my complaint is invalid. It also doesn't begin to address other uses of the Internet, such as downloading attachments from e-mail or syncing a large mailstore, both of which will be immune to the data-rate obfuscating effects of rendering speed.
Does that centralized server vet every piece of code? If not, this is probably even less secure than going directly to the source--there's one more potential place where the package could be compromised.
(full disclosure: I use Linux as my primary home machine, and a Mac as my work machine.)
Try not to let your hatred of DRM fool you into spreading FUD.
Of course, the main problem is that checksums can be forged if the system is already compromised. You'd have to do with with the bootable CD you mentioned--but are most users going to bother? The bootable CD will also need Internet access for updates, and this isn't as easy as solution as you might think. Lots of people use wifi--getting every vendor's wifi drivers will be hard. Some wired network cards aren't natively supported by Windows--so you'll need those drivers, too.
You're absolutely correct that enumerating goodness is better than enumerating badness, but it's still going to be an incredibly difficult problem. Worse, will the A/V maker be able to keep up-to-date with Windows updates? What happens to the user who runs the product between updates, quarantines a mess of Windows DLLs, and then can't log back in upon reboot? There are a lot of difficult-to-solve problems with this approach.