guess that depends on whose desktop you're referring to. Linux is already popular on geek desktops. Getting Linux on the desktops of your average Joe (or Jane) is entirely different.
I would be mightily impressed if a distribution of Linux was released that my mother could use easily.
The problem is, those features that make the Linux desktop attractive to the geek is exactly those features that make it difficult for otherse to use. My mother doesn't want to hear about command lines, and permissions, and filesystems and the such. She just wants to log on to AOL.
Will the development of a desktop for the masses involve such massive changes to the basic concepts of Linux so as to make it unattractive to the the geek? And more importantly, will the geek willingly "dumb down" the distribution for the desktop. I will have to say no. Linux exists as it is today because we have designed it for our own use, not for Aunt Tillie.
So then it falls on the commerical companies to develop a Linux distribution for the average person. Lindows is the first attempt at this, but even they have been hampered by the unique semantics of a POSIX system (permissions!).
I have resigned myself to the fact that Linux will never reach widespread popularity on the desktop. However, I do know that the platform of tommorrow will *not* be the desktop - it will be the palmtop, PDA, or set top box. The world is obviously moving to a more embedded and more distributed environment. Luckily, thats where Linux shines.
Don't waste your time getting Linux on the desktop. Instead, spend your time getting rid of the desktop itself.
If you get a map showing you how to get to Grandma's house faster (but it happens to go by the wolf's den), do you follow it without caution, or do you grab a shotgun first?
I don't think that the question here is if the.NET architecture is a good idea (it is), and if we should implement it (we should).
The point of the editorial (and of the/. post), is to wonder if we are setting ourselves up to be eaten by Microsoft (or indeed, anyone who may lay claim to the Mono libraries). It has become clear that Gnome could be effectively taken out through the current licencing. Microsoft would love to beat us at our own game - and use its influence on other companies to pull rank on Gnome and kill it, especially if Gnome/Mono does becomes a huge success.
Too much money is at stake in the next round of operating systems to leave anything to chance. Microsoft (and Intel for that matter) is setting themselves up for a free shot at Gnome if it ever starts threating the status quo. Thats scary to me.
They have a tendency to sneak their way into practically everything: cars, mobile phones, PSIONs, even your Gameboy Advance.
And this is a problem?
The ARM architecture has consistantly shown to be a cheap and easy to use processor with low power requirements, and a complete set of integrated components. Whats more, the ARM chips are fully supported under both Linux and Pocket PC.
It is not by chance that most of the PDAs being readied for production this year are StrongArm based (see here for a list of those PDAs that support Linux).
I'm not one to support a monopoly for the sake of having a monopoly, but if a company manages to crawl to the top based on superior products, I can only say one thing: w00t.
What about the people living next door to the crack house? Should they not be able to get a pizza as well? How about the good houses that get anonymously accused of being crack houses?
The fact of the matter is, for every legimiate spammer on the list (even the well administrated ones), there is another placed there unfairly.
In the three weeks preceding the much awaited dumping of ORBS, we started dropping mail from 4 different valid mailing lists and 1 valid business (it was a brick and mortar business - no web presence, just an e-mail server). One of the lists was LKML (and I have no idea why it was on the list), and the other three had the misfortune of being on the same web hosting service as a spammer.
The brick and mortar was on the list because of an open relay (which was a good reason to be listed), however once it was closed, they were not allowed to be removed, though their level of e-mail is about 20 - 30 message a day, and they have never send a spam in their existance.
The problem is that we are all living in close proximity here - legit businesses are only a few digits away from spammers (just like the real world). And the knee jerk reaction that most sysadmins take in dealing with the situation is similar in nature to burning half your mail daily because the postmark is similar to a known junk mailer. And burning is a reasonable analogy, because blocked emails don't get archived or analyzed, they get tossed, lock stock and barrel.
Its so easy for a sysadmin to install a blacklist and never worry about it again (unless of course, *he* starts losing messages).
The price for having a spam free existance is to constantly monitor and evaluate the system, not to light a match and walk away.
Sheesh, this is like saying, "I'll mow your lawn, but occastionally, I reserve the right to kill the lawn..."
What you should have said was:
"I'll mow your lawn for free, but occassionally, I reserve the right to kill the lawn"
Thats more correct. If you want no lawn killing, then you pay for the privilage. Sourceforge is no different. Taco said it best - you get what you pay for. If you don't like it, don't use it. There are plenty of ISPs that will be willing to sell you some disk space and a SSH server.
Why would they bother? The BSD license is entirely free, unlike the GPL.
But the copyright notices still need to be there.
But I doubt there's much BSD licensed code inside Windows anyway...
Actually the urban legend states that the entire TCP/IP stack in Windows is based on the BSD stack.
So if the rumors are true, and its is based on the BSD, then Microsoft would need to make sure that all the copyright notices were not removed. Otherwise, we're talking lawsuit city (as well as a PR shitstorm).
Re:How completely totally absurd.
on
Linux on the iMac G4
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
So, why, why WHY would somebody waste their time installing Linux on such a machine?
Maybe perhaps because they prefer Linux? Its all about choice - many people would prefer to run Linux on any given processor. You may prefer to run OS X, and that is your choice. Many people prefer to run Windows, and thats their choice. Thats something that most zelots don't understand - the whole fight is about choice.
I'll venture a guess: Because it isn't about practicality. It isn't about what makes sense. It's all about "Linux as Religion"
Yet, you crow on and on about OS X - If you could run OS X on a X86, would you? Would that be pratical? Would that make sense? Or would that be a religious preference?
For me personally, it makes much more sense and it is much more pratical to run Linux than OS X. Hearing that Linux runs on one of these boxes makes me more likely to buy one. But thats my choice (you know, free, as in speech).
Look, the article only mentioned commercials once, and in passing. Thats not the issue here. I mean, what the hell does Universal care which commercials you are watching? They want the revenue from the movies and shows - that includes VCR, DVD and royalties from pay networks.
What they're more worried about is the fact that you can record and store digital quality shows and movies. That means, that they think they will lose revenue from all the folks who would normally buy the Simpson's DVD, but instead catalog all the episodes on a hard drive somewhere.
What they don't realize is that people are not likely to do this nearly as much as they think. Movies often come out on DVD before they come out on pay TV, I believe that the benefits of the DVD far outweight the value of taking the movie from HBO and storing it somwhere on a disk. I also believe that most people who would buy a Simpsons DVD set would still buy one, owing to the fact that syndicated episodes are cut for time. In short, people who normally would buy these DVDs would still do so, regardless of TiVo.
Yes, these lawsuits are useless, and generally a waste of time. But ever since the beginning of time, the industry has been unable to keep up with technology - and running to the courts has always been the great equalizer.
There is a point that I think generally has been missed - The BSA gets a whole boat load of money for each "successful investigation", and it gets to keep every penny. Is this scary to anyone else? Its obvious that at some point, income will be more important than actually catching legitimate pirated software.
It seems to me that in the interest of making everybody's salary, they would be like Ken Starr - they would just keep going and going until they found some questionable software. There are a million ways to attack.
What if they started going back to Windows 3.1 and beyond? Many businesses still run these old systems (we do for testing). Do *you* know where your DOS 3.1 reciept is?
And imagine this: They start offering rewards for successful tips. Hey, there would be no end to the money.
Yeah, but you grant a non-exclusive licence to Google - There is nothing stopping you from making millions of dollars from your own technology, they would just use it for the 10K they paid you.
So, if you are really smart and you do make technology that people want, not only do you have software you can licence yourself, you also got paid to do it.
I like the Googlesaic idea - You could index each picture in the database by the average of its color and brightness, and use that to construct your mosaic - the resulting picture would be huge, though
Well, if happiness is bliss, and bliss is ignorance, and ignorance is a form of stupidity, then it follows that the Declaration of Independence guarantees your right to be an idiot.
Man, you made a really good point, and I hate to disagree with you - but most of your more advanced "special editions" either have some interactive game (that at least knows if you pressed the right answer or not), or something that works in your DVD drive on the computer, or some program designed to work with the internet in some fashion. Check the back of your Matrix DVD, for example.
So, it only takes a supersimple "click on the rabbit for a game" program, and bang - Its an exectable program with lots and lots of media.
Doesn't make it right, but hey, there's money to be had. As long as you are paying for 'em, they'll try to get more out of you. The solution - Don't buy or rent the DVDs and you should be fine.
Re:No nagging on the install!
on
Lindows Reviewed
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Excellent. It sounds like Lindows has taken Linux a giant leap towards the ease-of-use that modern desktop users demand. This might actually be competitive in the marketplace
So, lemme get this straight. You are saying that the reason Linux isn't competitive in the marketplace is because they have too much security? That typing in an additional password is a bad thing?
Even if the only reason you have a password is to avoid executing all of your binaries as root, so you might actually have a secure machine, even if you do open that Snow White and the Seven dwarfs e-mail?
Thats very insightful. Worthy of a mod point, if I had one... But wait a second.... Don't you have to enter a password for NT? And more importantly, if you want to change something in NT, you need an Administrator password (or at least an Administrator to give you permission)? And last time I checked, NT was "competitive in the market place".
Yes! Hmmm.... Very interesting.
Maybe that few seconds of nagging isn't so bad after all.
If it doesn't take off? It takes years to develop that kind of new architecture. By then AMD will have it swept.
Just like Intel owned the Pentium market, or the older x86 market for that matter?
The 64 bit architcture will have an enormous shelf life, and Intel knows that the battle for market share won't be fought now, but in a few years as the chipsets mature, and demand increases.
So it is well within Intel's interests to follow the Itanium and x86-64 architecture (and hell, they've got the money to do it).
provided you use a sensible list of address (jobs@company.com for example)
Sending a e-mail to a list of companies with established e-mail addresses for resumes is not a bad thing. Its the same as sending resumes via snail mail from the classifieds.
Spamming is when you send a resume to webmaster @ every dot com address saying "If you're looking for an employee, consider me". That is unsolicited spam. Shiftman did something similar, and was completely unapologietic for it, so he is getting attacked.
First of all, you wouldn't see traffic coming from www.yahoo.com:80, because when you connect, the HTTP server will open a high numbered port to communicate with you.
Secondly, out going TCP connections always have high numbered ports, because the lower number ports are reserved.
Can you imagine the amount of computing power they would need to maintain to prove something like this? They would need regularlly sniff packets from every connection, try to figure out the OS, store the data, and continue. Thats not to mention that about half the time the OS will come up "unknown". Oh, and by the way, heres an extra $10 on your bill to pay for the army of people to maintain this.
There is no attempt made to randomize this source port field selection and a clever heuristic could probably fingerprint it.
That would probably be a 5 line patch to randomize it.
1. Accessing several different websites at the time.
I could easily be communicating with multiple IPs at the same time. Remember that a website is just an IP address.
2. Port forwarding to computers using different operating systems
The TCP packet gets reconstructed and re checksumed when it gets translated, so all outgoing packets will have the same signature as the NAT box.
3. SMTP headers containing references to domain names used only by the LAN
Well, these shouldn't be getting past the firewall, but even then, they can't prove that I'm not an idiot and trying to contact bad names (hey man, I didn't know I had to add a domain name...).
If you were a former bank manager in Austin, and you didn't know how these things worked, then either you worked at a blood bank, or I should move my money somewhere else.
It all has to do with the fact that we, as a society, are willing to assign wealth to unrealized assets (unsold stocks, options, bonds, etc..). And when the value of the unrealized assets drops, we perceive a decrease in the wealth of the individual that holds them.
For example, I would guess that our good friend Bill Gates probably has somewhere in the 20 - 30 million dollar range of true assets (this would include his houses, trust funds, cars, wife's jewelry, greenbacks in his wallet, gigantic money vault in which he swims, etc..) However, we peg him at $74.645400 billion because he holds somewhere in the area of 141 million shares of Microsoft (plus holdings in other areas). So when the stock price of Microsoft tanks tommorrow morning on news of the AOL suit (from $66 down to about $60), then we would say that Gatesy-boy had "wealth evaporation" of $846 million dollars. However, he still has his houses, cars and wife's jewelry - so his assets have not changed, just his potential.
Slashdot Mirror
guess that depends on whose desktop you're referring to. Linux is already popular on geek desktops. Getting Linux on the desktops of your average Joe (or Jane) is entirely different.
I would be mightily impressed if a distribution of Linux was released that my mother could use easily.
The problem is, those features that make the Linux desktop attractive to the geek is exactly those features that make it difficult for otherse to use. My mother doesn't want to hear about command lines, and permissions, and filesystems and the such. She just wants to log on to AOL.
Will the development of a desktop for the masses involve such massive changes to the basic concepts of Linux so as to make it unattractive to the the geek? And more importantly, will the geek willingly "dumb down" the distribution for the desktop. I will have to say no. Linux exists as it is today because we have designed it for our own use, not for Aunt Tillie.
So then it falls on the commerical companies to develop a Linux distribution for the average person. Lindows is the first attempt at this, but even they have been hampered by the unique semantics of a POSIX system (permissions!).
I have resigned myself to the fact that Linux will never reach widespread popularity on the desktop. However, I do know that the platform of tommorrow will *not* be the desktop - it will be the palmtop, PDA, or set top box. The world is obviously moving to a more embedded and more distributed environment. Luckily, thats where Linux shines.
Don't waste your time getting Linux on the desktop. Instead, spend your time getting rid of the desktop itself.
If you get a map showing you how to get to Grandma's house faster (but it happens to go by the wolf's den), do you follow it without caution, or do you grab a shotgun first?
.NET architecture is a good idea (it is), and if we should implement it (we should).
/. post), is to wonder if we are setting ourselves up to be eaten by Microsoft (or indeed, anyone who may lay claim to the Mono libraries). It has become clear that Gnome could be effectively taken out through the current licencing. Microsoft would love to beat us at our own game - and use its influence on other companies to pull rank on Gnome and kill it, especially if Gnome/Mono does becomes a huge success.
I don't think that the question here is if the
The point of the editorial (and of the
Too much money is at stake in the next round of operating systems to leave anything to chance. Microsoft (and Intel for that matter) is setting themselves up for a free shot at Gnome if it ever starts threating the status quo. Thats scary to me.
I caught it from some girl.
:)
Man, if I had a dollar everytime I've heard somebody say that..
They have a tendency to sneak their way into practically everything: cars, mobile phones, PSIONs, even your Gameboy Advance.
And this is a problem?
The ARM architecture has consistantly shown to be a cheap and easy to use processor with low power requirements, and a complete set of integrated components. Whats more, the ARM chips are fully supported under both Linux and Pocket PC.
It is not by chance that most of the PDAs being readied for production this year are StrongArm based (see here
for a list of those PDAs that support Linux).
I'm not one to support a monopoly for the sake of having a monopoly, but if a company manages to crawl to the top based on superior products, I can only say one thing: w00t.
Don't like living in a crack house? Move.
What about the people living next door to the crack house? Should they not be able to get a pizza as well? How about the good houses that get anonymously accused of being crack houses?
The fact of the matter is, for every legimiate spammer on the list (even the well administrated ones), there is another placed there unfairly.
In the three weeks preceding the much awaited dumping of ORBS, we started dropping mail from 4 different valid mailing lists and 1 valid business (it was a brick and mortar business - no web presence, just an e-mail server). One of the lists was LKML (and I have no idea why it was on the list), and the other three had the misfortune of being on the same web hosting service as a spammer.
The brick and mortar was on the list because of an open relay (which was a good reason to be listed), however once it was closed, they were not allowed to be removed, though their level of e-mail is about 20 - 30 message a day, and they have never send a spam in their existance.
The problem is that we are all living in close proximity here - legit businesses are only a few digits away from spammers (just like the real world). And the knee jerk reaction that most sysadmins take in dealing with the situation is similar in nature to burning half your mail daily because the postmark is similar to a known junk mailer. And burning is a reasonable analogy, because blocked emails don't get archived or analyzed, they get tossed, lock stock and barrel.
Its so easy for a sysadmin to install a blacklist and never worry about it again (unless of course, *he* starts losing messages).
The price for having a spam free existance is to constantly monitor and evaluate the system, not to light a match and walk away.
Sheesh, this is like saying, "I'll mow your lawn, but occastionally, I reserve the right to kill the lawn..."
What you should have said was:
"I'll mow your lawn for free, but occassionally, I reserve the right to kill the lawn"
Thats more correct. If you want no lawn killing, then you pay for the privilage. Sourceforge is no different. Taco said it best - you get what you pay for. If you don't like it, don't use it. There are plenty of ISPs that will be willing to sell you some disk space and a SSH server.
For the love of God, won't you please mod this up???
Why would they bother? The BSD license is entirely free, unlike the GPL.
But the copyright notices still need to be there.
But I doubt there's much BSD licensed code inside Windows anyway...
Actually the urban legend states that the entire TCP/IP stack in Windows is based on the BSD stack.
So if the rumors are true, and its is based on the BSD, then Microsoft would need to make sure that all the copyright notices were not removed. Otherwise, we're talking lawsuit city (as well as a PR shitstorm).
So, why, why WHY would somebody waste their time installing Linux on such a machine?
Maybe perhaps because they prefer Linux? Its all about choice - many people would prefer to run Linux on any given processor. You may prefer to run OS X, and that is your choice. Many people prefer to run Windows, and thats their choice. Thats something that most zelots don't understand - the whole fight is about choice.
I'll venture a guess: Because it isn't about practicality. It isn't about what makes sense. It's all about "Linux as Religion"
Yet, you crow on and on about OS X - If you could run OS X on a X86, would you? Would that be pratical? Would that make sense? Or would that be a religious preference?
For me personally, it makes much more sense and it is much more pratical to run Linux than OS X. Hearing that Linux runs on one of these boxes makes me more likely to buy one. But thats my choice (you know, free, as in speech).
Look, the article only mentioned commercials once, and in passing. Thats not the issue here. I mean, what the hell does Universal care which commercials you are watching? They want the revenue from the movies and shows - that includes VCR, DVD and royalties from pay networks.
What they're more worried about is the fact that you can record and store digital quality shows and movies. That means, that they think they will lose revenue from all the folks who would normally buy the Simpson's DVD, but instead catalog all the episodes on a hard drive somewhere.
What they don't realize is that people are not likely to do this nearly as much as they think. Movies often come out on DVD before they come out on pay TV, I believe that the benefits of the DVD far outweight the value of taking the movie from HBO and storing it somwhere on a disk. I also believe that most people who would buy a Simpsons DVD set would still buy one, owing to the fact that syndicated episodes are cut for time. In short, people who normally would buy these DVDs would still do so, regardless of TiVo.
Yes, these lawsuits are useless, and generally a waste of time. But ever since the beginning of time, the industry has been unable to keep up with technology - and running to the courts has always been the great equalizer.
There is a point that I think generally has been missed - The BSA gets a whole boat load of money for each "successful investigation", and it gets to keep every penny. Is this scary to anyone else? Its obvious that at some point, income will be more important than actually catching legitimate pirated software.
It seems to me that in the interest of making everybody's salary, they would be like Ken Starr - they would just keep going and going until they found some questionable software. There are a million ways to attack.
What if they started going back to Windows 3.1 and beyond? Many businesses still run these old systems (we do for testing). Do *you* know where your DOS 3.1 reciept is?
And imagine this: They start offering rewards for successful tips. Hey, there would be no end to the money.
Very, very scary.
Yeah, but you grant a non-exclusive licence to Google - There is nothing stopping you from making millions of dollars from your own technology, they would just use it for the 10K they paid you.
So, if you are really smart and you do make technology that people want, not only do you have software you can licence yourself, you also got paid to do it.
Where is the evil in that?
I like the Googlesaic idea - You could index each picture in the database by the average of its color and brightness, and use that to construct your mosaic - the resulting picture would be huge, though
Well, if happiness is bliss, and bliss is ignorance, and ignorance is a form of stupidity, then it follows that the Declaration of Independence guarantees your right to be an idiot.
Who are you to stand in the way of freedom?
What kind of soulless, greed-driven monster came up with this?
I know!
And after they have given us all of that television for free, you think they would be more understanding.
(dumbass....)
Man, you made a really good point, and I hate to disagree with you - but most of your more advanced "special editions" either have some interactive game (that at least knows if you pressed the right answer or not), or something that works in your DVD drive on the computer, or some program designed to work with the internet in some fashion. Check the back of your Matrix DVD, for example.
So, it only takes a supersimple "click on the rabbit for a game" program, and bang - Its an exectable program with lots and lots of media.
Doesn't make it right, but hey, there's money to be had. As long as you are paying for 'em, they'll try to get more out of you. The solution - Don't buy or rent the DVDs and you should be fine.
Excellent. It sounds like Lindows has taken Linux a giant leap towards the ease-of-use that modern desktop users demand. This might actually be competitive in the marketplace
So, lemme get this straight. You are saying that the reason Linux isn't competitive in the marketplace is because they have too much security? That typing in an additional password is a bad thing?
Even if the only reason you have a password is to avoid executing all of your binaries as root, so you might actually have a secure machine, even if you do open that Snow White and the Seven dwarfs e-mail?
Thats very insightful. Worthy of a mod point, if I had one... But wait a second.... Don't you have to enter a password for NT? And more importantly, if you want to change something in NT, you need an Administrator password (or at least an Administrator to give you permission)? And last time I checked, NT was "competitive in the market place".
Yes! Hmmm.... Very interesting.
Maybe that few seconds of nagging isn't so bad after all.
If it doesn't take off? It takes years to develop that kind of new architecture. By then AMD will have it swept.
Just like Intel owned the Pentium market, or the older x86 market for that matter?
The 64 bit architcture will have an enormous shelf life, and Intel knows that the battle for market share won't be fought now, but in a few years as the chipsets mature, and demand increases.
So it is well within Intel's interests to follow the Itanium and x86-64 architecture (and hell, they've got the money to do it).
provided you use a sensible list of address (jobs@company.com for example)
Sending a e-mail to a list of companies with established e-mail addresses for resumes is not a bad thing. Its the same as sending resumes via snail mail from the classifieds.
Spamming is when you send a resume to webmaster @ every dot com address saying "If you're looking for an employee, consider me". That is unsolicited spam. Shiftman did something similar, and was completely unapologietic for it, so he is getting attacked.
P.S. You want to fuck with me?
:)
Thanks for the laugh...
First of all, you wouldn't see traffic coming from www.yahoo.com:80, because when you connect, the HTTP server will open a high numbered port to communicate with you.
Secondly, out going TCP connections always have high numbered ports, because the lower number ports are reserved.
TCP Sequence Numbers
Can you imagine the amount of computing power they would need to maintain to prove something like this? They would need regularlly sniff packets from every connection, try to figure out the OS, store the data, and continue. Thats not to mention that about half the time the OS will come up "unknown". Oh, and by the way, heres an extra $10 on your bill to pay for the army of people to maintain this.
There is no attempt made to randomize this source port field selection and a clever heuristic could probably fingerprint it.
That would probably be a 5 line patch to randomize it.
1. Accessing several different websites at the time.
I could easily be communicating with multiple IPs at the same time. Remember that a website is just an IP address.
2. Port forwarding to computers using different operating systems
The TCP packet gets reconstructed and re checksumed when it gets translated, so all outgoing packets will have the same signature as the NAT box.
3. SMTP headers containing references to domain names used only by the LAN
Well, these shouldn't be getting past the firewall, but even then, they can't prove that I'm not an idiot and trying to contact bad names (hey man, I didn't know I had to add a domain name...).
they even rated Enron a "Strong Buy" when the stock was near its all time high.
To be fair, everybody rated Enron as a Strong Buy, because there were no indications that the Enron executives were such a bunch of evil folks.
As a former Bank manager in Austin.
If you were a former bank manager in Austin, and you didn't know how these things worked, then either you worked at a blood bank, or I should move my money somewhere else.
It all has to do with the fact that we, as a society, are willing to assign wealth to unrealized assets (unsold stocks, options, bonds, etc..). And when the value of the unrealized assets drops, we perceive a decrease in the wealth of the individual that holds them.
For example, I would guess that our good friend Bill Gates probably has somewhere in the 20 - 30 million dollar range of true assets (this would include his houses, trust funds, cars, wife's jewelry, greenbacks in his wallet, gigantic money vault in which he swims, etc..) However, we peg him at $74.645400 billion because he holds somewhere in the area of 141 million shares of Microsoft (plus holdings in other areas). So when the stock price of Microsoft tanks tommorrow morning on news of the AOL suit (from $66 down to about $60), then we would say that Gatesy-boy had "wealth evaporation" of $846 million dollars. However, he still has his houses, cars and wife's jewelry - so his assets have not changed, just his potential.