All corporate entities have one common philosophy "maximize profit".
To me that sounds redundant.. but I guess on slashdot where all corporations are corrupt and evil it comes as a shock when one corpropate entity who *claims* their philosophy is not to be "evil" turns around and does something.. errr.. business-savy, logical, sensible, take your choice.
Business and morals don't always mix. But heck, morals and morals don't always mix and that's apparent here. The chinese government wants to censor what's coming in. But that's a whole other debate.
If google, like any global corporation, is losing out on revenue by alienating a certain demographic then they are going to do what they can to change that. Even if, as a private company, they did not do so before. Now they have shareholders to deal with who want a little bit of that proverbial coin (no pun intended).
The truth is, google makes more money by globalizing, and selling adwords to companies who have something to sell to the chinese demographic (their population is among the largest in the world afterall) than it does off of slashdot geeks who want them to be "not evil".
You think switching all adult sites over to a new TLD would be "simple" ? What about sites like thehun.net that get 2 billion visitors per day, half of which are type-in. You just want them to switch over and lose a couple million per year? What about situations where there's paysites like babes.com and babes.tv.. you can only have one babes.xxx.. who gets it ?
People invest a lot of money in domains. Domain reselling is one of the biggest businesses on the Internet. Asking an established industry to switch over to a new TLD is extremely unreasonable.
Of course I don't want kids on my sites.. but there is no easy solution. There is no magic switch that will make everyone happy and cost no one money. The sad fact is, that any kind of law change is going to have a dramatic effect on the industry as a whole... and people who invested a lot of money to establish their business as it is will see it just vanish.
This doesn't affect only porn being sold to minors. Actually, I don't think people are too worried about that, because unless the kid stole a credit card or is billing their parents phone number to access a paysite via a dialer then that's not really an issue.
This mostly affects free porn.. which drives the entire online porn industry.
I'm an adult webmaster and I make my money running free sites which promote paysites. That's how the majority of webmasters operate who don't have the money or time to invest in a paysite... and paysites depend on such affiliates to get them business.
We don't sell porn to minors. We don't sell anything to anyone. We offer free samples in hopes that the surfer will sign-up at a sponsor's paysite and we get a comission.
Please tell me how it's my responsibility to keep kids off of my sites.. or how I'm commiting a crime if a kid types in my domain name or finds me in google. Tell me what I'm supposed to do.
If I convert my sites to AVS and require a credit card as a form of age verification I'll go out of business. There's plenty of other free sites who don't require a credit card number.
Yes but it's safe to say that Mandrake 9.2 is newer software than the hardware it has been installed on.
My point is that in 2 years or so new devices will come out and those devices will come with cds that include windows drivers, not linux drivers. Maybe things don't "just work" all the time in windows but having a cd-rom with drivers that are supposed to work, or work sometimes, is a hell of a lot better than having no drivers at all and having to download the latest kernel, recompile, reboot, modprobe this and that etc.
XP is the "latest greatest", and it's down right stable compared to 9x/ME.
Simplicity has nothing to do with anything. XP really isn't that simple to use, at least compared to MacOS, yet Windows still has the majority of the market share.
There a few reasons people use Windows:
1) It came with their computer. 2) They have no reason to change. 3) Everything imaginable, just, plain, works.
I'll elaborate on point #3. Devices, apps, games etc. You can walk in to any Staples or Best Buy and pick up any piece of software or any printer, digital camera, mp3 player etc. bring it home, plug it in, insert the cd-rom and presto! it just works.
Even if Linux is a million times faster and a million times more stable and has a replacement application for every common windows app if you take away that one little piece of convenience you may as well forget it.
KDE and Gnome are very windows-like and any person who's been using a Windows computer for more than a year will pick up how to use those two desktops with very little effort. I'm even reminded of a recent article published here on/. about a non-biased study which claimed that KDE is pretty much just as easy to use as XP.
Yet why change? What's the problem exactly that Linux is supposedly able to fix? Stability? I'm running XP right now and I've had more hardware issues than software.
The only thing I can really think of that Linux offers over XP, for non-tech users, is security and the ammount of free (as in cash, not beer) software that's available for it.
I work professionally as a UNIX admin right now. I deal mainly with Linux boxes, though we have some Solaris. I used to use Linux exclusively on my desktop, and to this day I wouldn't dream of using a non *nix OS at work. I can think of millions of advantages that Linux has over windows for coders, web developers, sysadmins and anyone who's really techie and likes to hack at their computer... but for people who just want to check their e-mail, surf the web, look at pictures of their grand children, listen to mp3s etc. I can't really think of any reason to justify them switching to Linux. No matter how easy it is to use.
Now don't get me wrong. There are hidden costs to using Windows, such as MS licensing, the MS tax etc. Considering that I do look forward to the day when Linux is installed on every new desktop PC being pushed out of Future Shop and when every single device will work on Linux out of the box, ditto for games and apps. But until then I just can't see recommending Linux to anyone but my techie friends.
No. These are people who spent 3-4 years in CS programs in University learning to code (and by that I don't mean html, I mean c/c++, assembly, java etc.) and are making $40-$50k per year now in real software development and who don't give a fuck what a word was used for for the last 50 years.
Because seriously... do you also get pissed when people refer to homosexuals as "gay" because the last 50 years has used a different meaning for that word?
Grow up. The real of the world doesn't have time to care about a single fucking word regardless of what people before them used it for.
"Computer people" do use the word "hacker" to refer to a computer criminal. The only people that I have ever met who use "cracker" instead of "hacker" are the 1337 linux user zealot types who want to refer to themselves as hackers and not be considered criminals.
I've worked in IT for the past 5 years and I very rarely come across a linux coder or sysadmin who doesn't use "hacker" to refer to a computer criminal. The fact is, that the majority of people do use hacker... even those who would be considered "hackers" in the so-called 'correct' sense of the word.
I used to be the type who would constantly pitch linux to windows users and call myself a hacker... until I grew up and realized that I just don't have the energy to give a damn about something so trivial as a word. Majority rules. Hacker has been taken. Pick a different word if you're so bent up on labeling yourself.
Actually I think that you underestimate the importance of commercial applications, at least on the desktop.
Most of the Windows users that I know, being regular joes who don't know or care what an operating system is, like to walk into a store and pick up any ol' game/office app/music software etc. whatever it is and they like to go home and put it in their cd-rom and it just runs.
Very few people who aren't tech-oriented like to search the Internet for applications that suit their needs unless they already know the specific application they're looking for and know they can get it on the 'net.
So maybe Free/GPL applications will replace commercial applications, but not until you can buy them on a store shelf. If you have to search freshmeat and then hope that they have rpms or whatever packages already available for your specific distro/version then forget it. Nobody will bother except people who have the time... and trust me people who have jobs, kids and other responsibilities (who happen to make up the majority of the "desktop market") barely have the time to sit down and play a game on their computer let alone put in all the hours of searching/downloading/compiling/installing dependancies etc. involved in getting free/gpl application installed and running on Linux, or any other free *nix.
Don't get me wrong, I've been a *nix admin and software engineer for 5 years. I love Linux, BSD and free software. I have Mandrake 9.1 installed on a secondary hard drive on my desktop (and I have Linux exclusively at work - I couldn't imagine using windows for my job) and even though Linux may be easy enough for the mass to use now, I just don't see little joey switching to Linux until he can stick in GTA Vice City and just have it run. Or when Stacy can load her music mixing software cd that she got for $30 at Staples in the bargain bin etc.
People are scared of change and people are lazy. Those are two facts about human nature that you must accept. No one really gives a shit about free software unless you mean free of charge... and even then for most people it's worth paying a few bucks if it means they can be lazy and not have to do any work to install it and get it up and running.
Convenience sells almost as well as sex. That's why so much money is spent on air conditioners and remote controls. Until Linux and other free *nixes are CONVENIENT they won't sell to the mass. Sure they're easy, but Windows is still more convenient simply because you can buy any application on a store shelf and just have it run.
I disagree because of Linux kernel's binary loading. ELF is standard enough, but all other systems that use ELF still have their own implementations and there is no native binary compatibility... FreeBSD can emulate but that's pretty much all I know of.
So what does this have to do with anything? Well the major thing setting Linux back (aside from sheer motivation to switch operating systems) is, arguably, mainly commercial applications. So any applications that will be ported/written for a *nix system and on the store shelves at Staples or The Future Shop will be for Linux.
So while KDE/Gnome/XFree86 all run on most free *nix systems it's the commercial applications that will set Linux apart from the rest IMO.
I disagree with the common case that "all games today are eye candy and the real innovation was in the 80's etc."
Of course, there are games that are manufacturered purely to capitalize on a market. Such as games based on movies and tv shows (who wants to be a millionaire rings a bell). However, there are games out there that are breath-taking in an eye candy sense and also in a game sense.
For example, Quake III Arena might be remembered for it's graphics but it also brought multi player internet gaming to a whole new level.
Half life may be a similar concept but it has really brought game hacking and modifications forward. Maybe not truely novel concepts (quakeI had internet play and ID was allowing users to hack their games for a while) but they really created their own cult followings and people play those games for hours just as people played the paralax scrolling games of the late 80's early 90's for hours too.
What about GTA and the ever so popular vice city? I think vice city is probably THE perfect game (for me anyway). It combines so many different types of games into one: role playing, fighting, racing, mission based, shoot-em-up, business etc. Plus it brings you into this whole virtual culture and world where every detail from the people on the side walks to the radio stations are considered. Making it more of an interactive movie that sucks you in and keeps you there.
How about The Sims? Another novel concept. My wife still plays that game for hours at a time. She's got her own little neighbourhood kicking where she can control everything and build up her characters etc. What do you call that kind of game? Role playing? Simulation? I'm not so sure. I definitely don't remember any games in the 80's and early 90's having a game concept like that.
The fact is that gaming is just like any other business. The people who are there to capitalize on it want to market proven products that aren't so risk based. So you do get a lot of games comming out that just seem to be the same as last month's big eye candy. You see this in movies and music and television too. But don't neglect the games that do bring new concepts forward. They're there, you just have to notice them.
Let's say I have a single lock on the handle of my front door... with no dead bolt. Along comes someone and kicks the door open and proceeds to rob my house. While he's robbing my house he steals a cd that I borrowed from my friend. Are you saying that *I* should be arrested because I failed to install an adequate dead bolt on my front door and thus the robber stole a cd that didn't belong to me?
What's adequate? Let's say I did install a dead bolt but the robber was sophisticated enough to pick both locks? In this case I shouldn't be arrested because I had "adequate" security and was victimized by a "skilled" robber who had the proper knowledge that surpassed my own in lock technology?
The fact is that the hacker got a password. It was a weak password, but in my analogy that's the equivalent of having a single handle lock and no dead bolt. He simply kicked the door open. It's still breaking and entering. What happens if the server was "adequately" secured but the hacker managed to gain access via a remote exploit in the FTP server that he himself discovered and no one else knew about? How will the law define that they "adequately" secured the server?
It's like you're looking for something to bitch at. Seriously can you honestly blame people for not wanting to say:
"Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux (an operating system kernel, which is the underlying interface to hardware devices and other system resources and not a complete package of applications/tools etc. that may or may not be GNU and copyrighted by the FSF)...."
This isn't a troll. I'm seriously a little tired of hearing from people complaining about the general public calling it Linux vs. GNU/Linux.
Give credit where credit is due, but Linux is NOT GNU and GNU is NOT Linux. It's nitpicking to draw distinction between the kernel and the other applications which comprise the entire system. You don't need GNU for Linux and therefore the two are not mutually inclusive.
Of course that is definitely not to undermine all the incredible work that the FSF and GNU project have done, but I mean as far as I'm concerned Linux is an operating system. It's a system that allows for the operation of a computer. Sure yout need an "/sbin/init" program to fire up some sort of user interface to the system, but that doesn't have to be GNU software. So I think if anyone is going to nitpick at anything it should be at distributions who pack GNU software with Linux and then only call it Linux. But complaining about a journalist referring to Linux as an operating system?
Hopefully with more larger companies offering Linux on desktops more people will consider switching and thus more commercial applications will become available.
That and the prediction that Linux will surpass Apple in desktop usage next year.
I have lots of friends that I met from other completely non-tech message boards that I participate on. In the chat rooms I've been asked on many occasion by these people about switching to Linux which has always surprised me because I've never mentioned it to anyone. They know that I work professionally as a computer programmer and that's about it.
A few years ago I used to pitch Linux to everyone who didn't care. I stopped for just that reason... no one cared. Now I find those same people are starting to care. Why? Because they hear about it from companies like Wallmart, HP, Dell etc. so now all of a sudden it must mean something.
Yes and not only that but remember Jon Johansen? 15 year old kid in Norway indicted because of he wrote DeCSS which was a violation of the DMCA.
Be careful because the Internet isn't turning out to be the borderless "space" that everyone thought. Apparently American laws do apply outside of the US.. when it comes to the Internet anyway.
About 2 years ago I started gettting interested in recording audio on my PC... and rather than spend lots of cash on hardware recording equipment I felt that PC recording had more advantages (cost, scalability etc.)
At the time my PC was 100% Linux. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any software what so ever (well.. there was bcast2000 but it had lots of problems with synchronizing tracks). So I made a small Windows partition and found loads of goodies (CoolEdit, Cubase, FruityLoops.. ).
Realizing what was available to me I stuck with Windows and started to get very serious about recording. I decided to invest in equipment and software. I bought a few shure sm57 microphones and when it came to the sound card I decided to get a system called the Aardvark Direct Pro Q10 (here if you're interested) which combines 8 professional grade XLR microphone preamps in a rack mountable unit that connects to a card in your PC.
So.. until this is support on Linux (not very good odds since not only are the drivers required, but also the mixing software), any HDR/DAW software for Linux will not do me any good... which is unfortunate because I would love to throw together a linux box specifically for recording.
Also ISP support... it may seem obvious but I don't know of a single ISP in my city that supports IPv6 yet. I admit I could just not be looking hard enough... but it makes sense since Windows doesn't support it yet so why should ISPs spend the time and money.
The fact is that most Windows users won't care or know about what IP version they're using. So it's not really up to them to "decide" to use IPv4 or IPv6. The key is ISP support. Until you have both of those no one will switch.
I would gladly switch to IPv6 today, but even if Windows did support it my ISP doesn't so it just can't happen.
Wether the average gamer has the technical skills to configure X or recompile the kernel or not is completely irrelevant.
I've worked as a UNIX sysadmin and C/C++ coder on Linux exclusively. I'm perfectly capable of recompiling the kernel, configuring X, compiling and installing libraries etc. That doesn't mean that when I'm ready to sit down and play a game for a few hours that I want to.
If I have to touch X or the kernel or any libraries I'm out. I will not touch the game. I'll just boot up my Windows partition which is ready for those instances.
When I was a teenager playing with the insides of Linux was fun. Not only that but it landed me jobs. Now that I'm all grown up and have other things to do it's my work, and while I do enjoy my work, it is quite different from my play time.
When it comes to games I just expect the thing to fucking work. It has nothing to do with wether or not I'm capable of tweaking things, it has to do with wether or not I WANT to.
So the point is.. if a professionally competent UNIX admin / hacker won't tweak his system so he can play the latest game on Linux you can be sure as hell that no regular joe will even consider it.
I recommend to a lot of my freinds who constantly whine about Windows that they give Linux a try... but the one thing I make very clear is that if they are gamers they shouldn't even consider it. Aside from that, Linux will meet all their needs, but it is no where near being a competent gaming system.
I'm fully aware of apt-get and it's "work-alikes" (I did mention I was a sys-admin for 5 years right?). In fact at my most recent job we mantained all Mandrake 8.2 machines and insisted on the use of urpmi. We actually hosted our own updates mirror specificially for using urpmi to install security updates.
Urpmi and apt-get are nice. However, there's a couple problems.
On my home machine I was running Mandrake 8.2 and I did not / could not take the time to upgrade to 9.0. I was meaning to for a while. I wanted to check it out but it just wasn't a priority. Well pretty soon all the mirrors stopped hosting Mandrake 8.2 RPMS save for security updates. So if I wanted to install anything through urpmi I either had to have the cds (wich I had lost or given away since I didn't need them thanks to the Internet - at the time of course) or I was screwed.
The second problem is the following scenario. You're browsing the Internet and you see "amazing prog" that looks like a lot of fun. You do a quick "urpmi" and get no package found. Thank God you see there's rpms available so you dl them. You either double click it or "su; rpm -ivh package-name" and you get "sorry you don't have glibc 2.1". Doesn't matter that you have 2.2.3. This rpm insists on 2.1.
I know the following would be a packaging problem, but what about newer versions of libraries that aren't availble in your current urpmi database. Or newer versions of libraries that aren't backwards compatible with the ones that the rpm depends on.
That's also assuming there even is an rpm.
It's just a big a nightmare. I happen to know what the problems are because of my Unix background but that's irrelevant. I honestly don't care why they work or why they don't as long as they just work.
I would never dream of using Windows at work as a sys admin and I try to stick to Unix programming positions... but at home if it doesn't "just work" then I've got better things to do.
Well I'm strongly against security through obscurity as a security infrastructure. However, as long as you have a solid, proven security infrastructure protecting your enviornment then adding a bit of obscurity over the top as an added layer can only be benefitial.
If I know that I've done everything to protect my x86 Linux box from an attack if the attacker already knows it's an x86 Linux box, what distro it's running, has access to my network (assuming the attacker is an employee) etc. then why not make it so that script kiddies will think it's a commodore 64 and will try and exploit it as so?
Though security through obscurity is not a good idea as the only form of protection, it can add another blanket of support and I'm all for that as long as you understand what you're doing and why.
I'm sure a lot of people will love this. I'm not sure it's really the right way to concentrate, though. I know a lot of people don't like learning new things, but I believe that most people are going to care more about the applications rather than the interface. Most newbies I've come across have no problem getting used to WindowMaker or KDE etc.. In fact most of the people I've introduce to Linux have surprisingly preferred WindowMaker to KDE or Gnome. People who have never used anything other than windows.
It's when they realize that they don't have the applications that they love, and the so-called "viable replacements" well.. suck compared to what they use on windows.
I love Unix. I'm an ex programmer and sys-admin. For the past 5 years I worked as both and concentrated on Linux, Solaris and OpenBSD. I'm a guitar teacher now because I got sick of the IT world but I still love technology and Unix with a passion and feel right at home when I'm using bash, vi, gcc etc.
But I use Windows on my desktop.
I use Windows because of applications. I do a lot of sound recording and processing when I'm at home and I just can't find viable replacements for Cubase SX, Fruityloops, Cooledit Pro, Kazaa and not to mention I'm still hooked on The Sims and I like to know that if I walk into a software store I can take anything off of the shelf and bring it home and know that it'll work.
Worst of all I hate compiling software. Yeah I know funny since I'm a coder but seriously I don't have the time in a day to spend 3 hours trying to make a program that I download work on my system. I hate downloading an rpm and having it bitch about dependencies especially dependencies that I can't satisfy.
It's not worth the trouble anymore. When I was 15 and started using Redhat 4.something it was fun and I flew. I picked it up and fell in love and I tried to convert everyone and their grandmother to Unix. But 6 years later I have a house to maintain, kids to raise, a wife to spend time with, a job to work at etc. When I sit down at the computer I expect to click a little button and have things just work. Like magic. I wanna click "download" and in 5-10 minutes be running the program. No compiling. No dependancies etc.
So to wrap all this ranting up. I'm just not sure how important a desktop enviornment that mimicks Windows is going to benefit newbies. I think applications need more thought and work first. If you have to compile it to work then it's just not worth it. If it only works on Redhat 7.2 and not Slackware then it's just not worth it. I know people realize that I just don't want to see that realization forgotten and lost.
My cousins have the game but I don't own a PS2 nor own the PC version. My fiance and I play it everytime we're at my aunt's house. My fiance likes it more than I do! (yes we're heterosexual and she's female... lol)
Anyway she's bugging me to spend the money to purchase a PS2 just so we can get that game. As much as I'd love to we just can't afford it.
Moral of the story... there are attractive females out there who enjoy what men do and are completely "feminine" as well.
I know a lot of people are hoping that.ogg will prevail as a result of this but unfortunately I fear something much worse.
I'm already seeing a ton of songs in.wma format. On P2P systems and from friends. It brings back chilling memories of the not so long ago pre-decent-office-suite-4-linux days where I had to continually bitch and moan in vain that I'm not able to make use of a particular format.
Mp3 is still the most dominant format but I honestly don't think.ogg will be there to save the day if it disappears. I have yet to see one single.ogg file EVER availble for download on a P2P system but I have seen the occasional.wma. So windows media is gradually gaining acceptance. If mp3s die out I highly doubt.ogg has a good chance to take it's place.
It'd be a damn coinkadink that two independent code bases would be compiled into an identical DLL.
I'd say it's certainly possible but what XVID has demostrated has me in awe. That's damn near impossible.
As long as they can demostrate large and complex blocks of assembly which are identicle then you're right: there's almost no way that could happen with two independant code blocks.
However, it is possible, just not to this extent. An exmaple would be if two blocks of code independantly implemented quick sort or Euler's algorithm. In that case I would expect those two peices of assembly (provided that they were compiled with the same compiler) to most likely be identicle beacause those are algorithms that are so popular and refined that almost every developer implements them in the same way.
But in this case XVID has certainly demonstrated the large and complex blocks of identicle assembly to prove that they were ripped off. And not only that but that the pieces of identicle code occur at almost the same offsets in the dll!! That's a very good indication that Sigma has extended on, or simply modified, XVID's original code base.
I sure hope they can somehow find the resources to sue Sigma's pants off. I will certainly make a donation if they go that route.
There's a biological desire there to use meat as a source of protein.
I don't see this. I agree that there's a whole ton of vegetarian products that try to look and taste like meat. I'm not too sure as to why but I think it has to do with the fact that people who do eat meat who have to cator to vegetarians are at a loss for what to make them.
If you're hosting your brother's birthday party, your sister is vegetarian and you're barbequeing burgers then what do you cook for her that doesn't take any more time the burgers? Well veggie burgers seem appropriate....
I could be wrong of course. Maybe there are vegetarians who actually request these products but to speak for myself I don't.
I personally can't stand veggie-dogs and veggie-burgers and veggie-whatever. I'm a vegetarian and have no desire to eat anything that tastes, smells or physically ressembles meat.
So speak for yourself when you claim that there's a biological desire. I think that the majority of people have grown up to be accustomed to meat products and so of course they crave what they know and like...
I have a hard time believing that there's any biology behind it.
I expect the option of anonymity and privacy and identity and freedom etc.
It's all about choice and freedom. If I want to be anonymous in a so-called "free" country I should. If I want privacy I should be entitled to that as well. As well as anything else that I damn well please as long as it's within the scope of myself and no one else.
Should no one be allowed these things?
Wether I'm actually going to make use of them or not if irrelevant. As long as they're available to me then that's all that matters.
Slashdot Mirror
All corporate entities have one common philosophy "maximize profit".
.. but I guess on slashdot where all corporations are corrupt and evil it comes as a shock when one corpropate entity who *claims* their philosophy is not to be "evil" turns around and does something .. errr .. business-savy, logical, sensible, take your choice.
To me that sounds redundant
Business and morals don't always mix. But heck, morals and morals don't always mix and that's apparent here. The chinese government wants to censor what's coming in. But that's a whole other debate.
If google, like any global corporation, is losing out on revenue by alienating a certain demographic then they are going to do what they can to change that. Even if, as a private company, they did not do so before. Now they have shareholders to deal with who want a little bit of that proverbial coin (no pun intended).
The truth is, google makes more money by globalizing, and selling adwords to companies who have something to sell to the chinese demographic (their population is among the largest in the world afterall) than it does off of slashdot geeks who want them to be "not evil".
You think switching all adult sites over to a new TLD would be "simple" ? What about sites like thehun.net that get 2 billion visitors per day, half of which are type-in. You just want them to switch over and lose a couple million per year? What about situations where there's paysites like babes.com and babes.tv .. you can only have one babes.xxx .. who gets it ?
People invest a lot of money in domains. Domain reselling is one of the biggest businesses on the Internet. Asking an established industry to switch over to a new TLD is extremely unreasonable.
Of course I don't want kids on my sites.. but there is no easy solution. There is no magic switch that will make everyone happy and cost no one money. The sad fact is, that any kind of law change is going to have a dramatic effect on the industry as a whole... and people who invested a lot of money to establish their business as it is will see it just vanish.
This doesn't affect only porn being sold to minors. Actually, I don't think people are too worried about that, because unless the kid stole a credit card or is billing their parents phone number to access a paysite via a dialer then that's not really an issue.
This mostly affects free porn.. which drives the entire online porn industry.
I'm an adult webmaster and I make my money running free sites which promote paysites. That's how the majority of webmasters operate who don't have the money or time to invest in a paysite... and paysites depend on such affiliates to get them business.
We don't sell porn to minors. We don't sell anything to anyone. We offer free samples in hopes that the surfer will sign-up at a sponsor's paysite and we get a comission.
Please tell me how it's my responsibility to keep kids off of my sites.. or how I'm commiting a crime if a kid types in my domain name or finds me in google. Tell me what I'm supposed to do.
If I convert my sites to AVS and require a credit card as a form of age verification I'll go out of business. There's plenty of other free sites who don't require a credit card number.
Yes but it's safe to say that Mandrake 9.2 is newer software than the hardware it has been installed on.
My point is that in 2 years or so new devices will come out and those devices will come with cds that include windows drivers, not linux drivers. Maybe things don't "just work" all the time in windows but having a cd-rom with drivers that are supposed to work, or work sometimes, is a hell of a lot better than having no drivers at all and having to download the latest kernel, recompile, reboot, modprobe this and that etc.
- Garett
XP is the "latest greatest", and it's down right stable compared to 9x/ME.
/. about a non-biased study which claimed that KDE is pretty much just as easy to use as XP.
.. but for people who just want to check their e-mail, surf the web, look at pictures of their grand children, listen to mp3s etc. I can't really think of any reason to justify them switching to Linux. No matter how easy it is to use.
Simplicity has nothing to do with anything. XP really isn't that simple to use, at least compared to MacOS, yet Windows still has the majority of the market share.
There a few reasons people use Windows:
1) It came with their computer.
2) They have no reason to change.
3) Everything imaginable, just, plain, works.
I'll elaborate on point #3. Devices, apps, games etc. You can walk in to any Staples or Best Buy and pick up any piece of software or any printer, digital camera, mp3 player etc. bring it home, plug it in, insert the cd-rom and presto! it just works.
Even if Linux is a million times faster and a million times more stable and has a replacement application for every common windows app if you take away that one little piece of convenience you may as well forget it.
KDE and Gnome are very windows-like and any person who's been using a Windows computer for more than a year will pick up how to use those two desktops with very little effort. I'm even reminded of a recent article published here on
Yet why change? What's the problem exactly that Linux is supposedly able to fix? Stability? I'm running XP right now and I've had more hardware issues than software.
The only thing I can really think of that Linux offers over XP, for non-tech users, is security and the ammount of free (as in cash, not beer) software that's available for it.
I work professionally as a UNIX admin right now. I deal mainly with Linux boxes, though we have some Solaris. I used to use Linux exclusively on my desktop, and to this day I wouldn't dream of using a non *nix OS at work. I can think of millions of advantages that Linux has over windows for coders, web developers, sysadmins and anyone who's really techie and likes to hack at their computer.
Now don't get me wrong. There are hidden costs to using Windows, such as MS licensing, the MS tax etc. Considering that I do look forward to the day when Linux is installed on every new desktop PC being pushed out of Future Shop and when every single device will work on Linux out of the box, ditto for games and apps. But until then I just can't see recommending Linux to anyone but my techie friends.
- Garett
No. These are people who spent 3-4 years in CS programs in University learning to code (and by that I don't mean html, I mean c/c++, assembly, java etc.) and are making $40-$50k per year now in real software development and who don't give a fuck what a word was used for for the last 50 years.
Because seriously... do you also get pissed when people refer to homosexuals as "gay" because the last 50 years has used a different meaning for that word?
Grow up. The real of the world doesn't have time to care about a single fucking word regardless of what people before them used it for.
- Garett
"Computer people" do use the word "hacker" to refer to a computer criminal. The only people that I have ever met who use "cracker" instead of "hacker" are the 1337 linux user zealot types who want to refer to themselves as hackers and not be considered criminals.
I've worked in IT for the past 5 years and I very rarely come across a linux coder or sysadmin who doesn't use "hacker" to refer to a computer criminal. The fact is, that the majority of people do use hacker... even those who would be considered "hackers" in the so-called 'correct' sense of the word.
I used to be the type who would constantly pitch linux to windows users and call myself a hacker... until I grew up and realized that I just don't have the energy to give a damn about something so trivial as a word. Majority rules. Hacker has been taken. Pick a different word if you're so bent up on labeling yourself.
- Garett
Actually I think that you underestimate the importance of commercial applications, at least on the desktop.
Most of the Windows users that I know, being regular joes who don't know or care what an operating system is, like to walk into a store and pick up any ol' game/office app/music software etc. whatever it is and they like to go home and put it in their cd-rom and it just runs.
Very few people who aren't tech-oriented like to search the Internet for applications that suit their needs unless they already know the specific application they're looking for and know they can get it on the 'net.
So maybe Free/GPL applications will replace commercial applications, but not until you can buy them on a store shelf. If you have to search freshmeat and then hope that they have rpms or whatever packages already available for your specific distro/version then forget it. Nobody will bother except people who have the time... and trust me people who have jobs, kids and other responsibilities (who happen to make up the majority of the "desktop market") barely have the time to sit down and play a game on their computer let alone put in all the hours of searching/downloading/compiling/installing dependancies etc. involved in getting free/gpl application installed and running on Linux, or any other free *nix.
Don't get me wrong, I've been a *nix admin and software engineer for 5 years. I love Linux, BSD and free software. I have Mandrake 9.1 installed on a secondary hard drive on my desktop (and I have Linux exclusively at work - I couldn't imagine using windows for my job) and even though Linux may be easy enough for the mass to use now, I just don't see little joey switching to Linux until he can stick in GTA Vice City and just have it run. Or when Stacy can load her music mixing software cd that she got for $30 at Staples in the bargain bin etc.
People are scared of change and people are lazy. Those are two facts about human nature that you must accept. No one really gives a shit about free software unless you mean free of charge... and even then for most people it's worth paying a few bucks if it means they can be lazy and not have to do any work to install it and get it up and running.
Convenience sells almost as well as sex. That's why so much money is spent on air conditioners and remote controls. Until Linux and other free *nixes are CONVENIENT they won't sell to the mass. Sure they're easy, but Windows is still more convenient simply because you can buy any application on a store shelf and just have it run.
- Garett
I disagree because of Linux kernel's binary loading. ELF is standard enough, but all other systems that use ELF still have their own implementations and there is no native binary compatibility... FreeBSD can emulate but that's pretty much all I know of.
So what does this have to do with anything? Well the major thing setting Linux back (aside from sheer motivation to switch operating systems) is, arguably, mainly commercial applications. So any applications that will be ported/written for a *nix system and on the store shelves at Staples or The Future Shop will be for Linux.
So while KDE/Gnome/XFree86 all run on most free *nix systems it's the commercial applications that will set Linux apart from the rest IMO.
- Garett
I disagree with the common case that "all games today are eye candy and the real innovation was in the 80's etc."
Of course, there are games that are manufacturered purely to capitalize on a market. Such as games based on movies and tv shows (who wants to be a millionaire rings a bell). However, there are games out there that are breath-taking in an eye candy sense and also in a game sense.
For example, Quake III Arena might be remembered for it's graphics but it also brought multi player internet gaming to a whole new level.
Half life may be a similar concept but it has really brought game hacking and modifications forward. Maybe not truely novel concepts (quakeI had internet play and ID was allowing users to hack their games for a while) but they really created their own cult followings and people play those games for hours just as people played the paralax scrolling games of the late 80's early 90's for hours too.
What about GTA and the ever so popular vice city? I think vice city is probably THE perfect game (for me anyway). It combines so many different types of games into one: role playing, fighting, racing, mission based, shoot-em-up, business etc. Plus it brings you into this whole virtual culture and world where every detail from the people on the side walks to the radio stations are considered. Making it more of an interactive movie that sucks you in and keeps you there.
How about The Sims? Another novel concept. My wife still plays that game for hours at a time. She's got her own little neighbourhood kicking where she can control everything and build up her characters etc. What do you call that kind of game? Role playing? Simulation? I'm not so sure. I definitely don't remember any games in the 80's and early 90's having a game concept like that.
The fact is that gaming is just like any other business. The people who are there to capitalize on it want to market proven products that aren't so risk based. So you do get a lot of games comming out that just seem to be the same as last month's big eye candy. You see this in movies and music and television too. But don't neglect the games that do bring new concepts forward. They're there, you just have to notice them.
- Garett
I disagree.
Let's say I have a single lock on the handle of my front door... with no dead bolt. Along comes someone and kicks the door open and proceeds to rob my house. While he's robbing my house he steals a cd that I borrowed from my friend. Are you saying that *I* should be arrested because I failed to install an adequate dead bolt on my front door and thus the robber stole a cd that didn't belong to me?
What's adequate? Let's say I did install a dead bolt but the robber was sophisticated enough to pick both locks? In this case I shouldn't be arrested because I had "adequate" security and was victimized by a "skilled" robber who had the proper knowledge that surpassed my own in lock technology?
The fact is that the hacker got a password. It was a weak password, but in my analogy that's the equivalent of having a single handle lock and no dead bolt. He simply kicked the door open. It's still breaking and entering. What happens if the server was "adequately" secured but the hacker managed to gain access via a remote exploit in the FTP server that he himself discovered and no one else knew about? How will the law define that they "adequately" secured the server?
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Garett
OMG who really cares.
...."
It's like you're looking for something to bitch at. Seriously can you honestly blame people for not wanting to say:
"Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux (an operating system kernel, which is the underlying interface to hardware devices and other system resources and not a complete package of applications/tools etc. that may or may not be GNU and copyrighted by the FSF)
This isn't a troll. I'm seriously a little tired of hearing from people complaining about the general public calling it Linux vs. GNU/Linux.
Give credit where credit is due, but Linux is NOT GNU and GNU is NOT Linux. It's nitpicking to draw distinction between the kernel and the other applications which comprise the entire system. You don't need GNU for Linux and therefore the two are not mutually inclusive.
Of course that is definitely not to undermine all the incredible work that the FSF and GNU project have done, but I mean as far as I'm concerned Linux is an operating system. It's a system that allows for the operation of a computer. Sure yout need an "/sbin/init" program to fire up some sort of user interface to the system, but that doesn't have to be GNU software. So I think if anyone is going to nitpick at anything it should be at distributions who pack GNU software with Linux and then only call it Linux. But complaining about a journalist referring to Linux as an operating system?
- Garett
Hopefully with more larger companies offering Linux on desktops more people will consider switching and thus more commercial applications will become available.
That and the prediction that Linux will surpass Apple in desktop usage next year.
I have lots of friends that I met from other completely non-tech message boards that I participate on. In the chat rooms I've been asked on many occasion by these people about switching to Linux which has always surprised me because I've never mentioned it to anyone. They know that I work professionally as a computer programmer and that's about it.
A few years ago I used to pitch Linux to everyone who didn't care. I stopped for just that reason... no one cared. Now I find those same people are starting to care. Why? Because they hear about it from companies like Wallmart, HP, Dell etc. so now all of a sudden it must mean something.
This is exciting news ineed.
- Garett
Yes and not only that but remember Jon Johansen? 15 year old kid in Norway indicted because of he wrote DeCSS which was a violation of the DMCA.
Be careful because the Internet isn't turning out to be the borderless "space" that everyone thought. Apparently American laws do apply outside of the US.. when it comes to the Internet anyway.
- Garett
Exactly.
... and rather than spend lots of cash on hardware recording equipment I felt that PC recording had more advantages (cost, scalability etc.)
.. ).
.. until this is support on Linux (not very good odds since not only are the drivers required, but also the mixing software), any HDR/DAW software for Linux will not do me any good... which is unfortunate because I would love to throw together a linux box specifically for recording.
About 2 years ago I started gettting interested in recording audio on my PC
At the time my PC was 100% Linux. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any software what so ever (well.. there was bcast2000 but it had lots of problems with synchronizing tracks). So I made a small Windows partition and found loads of goodies (CoolEdit, Cubase, FruityLoops
Realizing what was available to me I stuck with Windows and started to get very serious about recording. I decided to invest in equipment and software. I bought a few shure sm57 microphones and when it came to the sound card I decided to get a system called the Aardvark Direct Pro Q10 (here if you're interested) which combines 8 professional grade XLR microphone preamps in a rack mountable unit that connects to a card in your PC.
So
- Garett
Also ISP support... it may seem obvious but I don't know of a single ISP in my city that supports IPv6 yet. I admit I could just not be looking hard enough... but it makes sense since Windows doesn't support it yet so why should ISPs spend the time and money.
The fact is that most Windows users won't care or know about what IP version they're using. So it's not really up to them to "decide" to use IPv4 or IPv6. The key is ISP support. Until you have both of those no one will switch.
I would gladly switch to IPv6 today, but even if Windows did support it my ISP doesn't so it just can't happen.
- Garett
Wether the average gamer has the technical skills to configure X or recompile the kernel or not is completely irrelevant.
.. if a professionally competent UNIX admin / hacker won't tweak his system so he can play the latest game on Linux you can be sure as hell that no regular joe will even consider it.
I've worked as a UNIX sysadmin and C/C++ coder on Linux exclusively. I'm perfectly capable of recompiling the kernel, configuring X, compiling and installing libraries etc. That doesn't mean that when I'm ready to sit down and play a game for a few hours that I want to.
If I have to touch X or the kernel or any libraries I'm out. I will not touch the game. I'll just boot up my Windows partition which is ready for those instances.
When I was a teenager playing with the insides of Linux was fun. Not only that but it landed me jobs. Now that I'm all grown up and have other things to do it's my work, and while I do enjoy my work, it is quite different from my play time.
When it comes to games I just expect the thing to fucking work. It has nothing to do with wether or not I'm capable of tweaking things, it has to do with wether or not I WANT to.
So the point is
I recommend to a lot of my freinds who constantly whine about Windows that they give Linux a try... but the one thing I make very clear is that if they are gamers they shouldn't even consider it. Aside from that, Linux will meet all their needs, but it is no where near being a competent gaming system.
- Garett
I'm fully aware of apt-get and it's "work-alikes" (I did mention I was a sys-admin for 5 years right?). In fact at my most recent job we mantained all Mandrake 8.2 machines and insisted on the use of urpmi. We actually hosted our own updates mirror specificially for using urpmi to install security updates.
Urpmi and apt-get are nice. However, there's a couple problems.
On my home machine I was running Mandrake 8.2 and I did not / could not take the time to upgrade to 9.0. I was meaning to for a while. I wanted to check it out but it just wasn't a priority. Well pretty soon all the mirrors stopped hosting Mandrake 8.2 RPMS save for security updates. So if I wanted to install anything through urpmi I either had to have the cds (wich I had lost or given away since I didn't need them thanks to the Internet - at the time of course) or I was screwed.
The second problem is the following scenario. You're browsing the Internet and you see "amazing prog" that looks like a lot of fun. You do a quick "urpmi" and get no package found. Thank God you see there's rpms available so you dl them. You either double click it or "su; rpm -ivh package-name" and you get "sorry you don't have glibc 2.1". Doesn't matter that you have 2.2.3. This rpm insists on 2.1.
I know the following would be a packaging problem, but what about newer versions of libraries that aren't availble in your current urpmi database. Or newer versions of libraries that aren't backwards compatible with the ones that the rpm depends on.
That's also assuming there even is an rpm.
It's just a big a nightmare. I happen to know what the problems are because of my Unix background but that's irrelevant. I honestly don't care why they work or why they don't as long as they just work.
I would never dream of using Windows at work as a sys admin and I try to stick to Unix programming positions... but at home if it doesn't "just work" then I've got better things to do.
Well I'm strongly against security through obscurity as a security infrastructure. However, as long as you have a solid, proven security infrastructure protecting your enviornment then adding a bit of obscurity over the top as an added layer can only be benefitial.
If I know that I've done everything to protect my x86 Linux box from an attack if the attacker already knows it's an x86 Linux box, what distro it's running, has access to my network (assuming the attacker is an employee) etc. then why not make it so that script kiddies will think it's a commodore 64 and will try and exploit it as so?
Though security through obscurity is not a good idea as the only form of protection, it can add another blanket of support and I'm all for that as long as you understand what you're doing and why.
I'm sure a lot of people will love this. I'm not sure it's really the right way to concentrate, though. I know a lot of people don't like learning new things, but I believe that most people are going to care more about the applications rather than the interface. Most newbies I've come across have no problem getting used to WindowMaker or KDE etc.. In fact most of the people I've introduce to Linux have surprisingly preferred WindowMaker to KDE or Gnome. People who have never used anything other than windows.
It's when they realize that they don't have the applications that they love, and the so-called "viable replacements" well.. suck compared to what they use on windows.
I love Unix. I'm an ex programmer and sys-admin. For the past 5 years I worked as both and concentrated on Linux, Solaris and OpenBSD. I'm a guitar teacher now because I got sick of the IT world but I still love technology and Unix with a passion and feel right at home when I'm using bash, vi, gcc etc.
But I use Windows on my desktop.
I use Windows because of applications. I do a lot of sound recording and processing when I'm at home and I just can't find viable replacements for Cubase SX, Fruityloops, Cooledit Pro, Kazaa and not to mention I'm still hooked on The Sims and I like to know that if I walk into a software store I can take anything off of the shelf and bring it home and know that it'll work.
Worst of all I hate compiling software. Yeah I know funny since I'm a coder but seriously I don't have the time in a day to spend 3 hours trying to make a program that I download work on my system. I hate downloading an rpm and having it bitch about dependencies especially dependencies that I can't satisfy.
It's not worth the trouble anymore. When I was 15 and started using Redhat 4.something it was fun and I flew. I picked it up and fell in love and I tried to convert everyone and their grandmother to Unix. But 6 years later I have a house to maintain, kids to raise, a wife to spend time with, a job to work at etc. When I sit down at the computer I expect to click a little button and have things just work. Like magic. I wanna click "download" and in 5-10 minutes be running the program. No compiling. No dependancies etc.
So to wrap all this ranting up. I'm just not sure how important a desktop enviornment that mimicks Windows is going to benefit newbies. I think applications need more thought and work first. If you have to compile it to work then it's just not worth it. If it only works on Redhat 7.2 and not Slackware then it's just not worth it. I know people realize that I just don't want to see that realization forgotten and lost.
</rant>
You poor, poor soul.
My cousins have the game but I don't own a PS2 nor own the PC version. My fiance and I play it everytime we're at my aunt's house. My fiance likes it more than I do! (yes we're heterosexual and she's female... lol)
Anyway she's bugging me to spend the money to purchase a PS2 just so we can get that game. As much as I'd love to we just can't afford it.
Moral of the story... there are attractive females out there who enjoy what men do and are completely "feminine" as well.
- Garett
I know a lot of people are hoping that .ogg will prevail as a result of this but unfortunately I fear something much worse.
.wma format. On P2P systems and from friends. It brings back chilling memories of the not so long ago pre-decent-office-suite-4-linux days where I had to continually bitch and moan in vain that I'm not able to make use of a particular format.
.ogg will be there to save the day if it disappears. I have yet to see one single .ogg file EVER availble for download on a P2P system but I have seen the occasional .wma. So windows media is gradually gaining acceptance. If mp3s die out I highly doubt .ogg has a good chance to take it's place.
I'm already seeing a ton of songs in
Mp3 is still the most dominant format but I honestly don't think
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Garett
It'd be a damn coinkadink that two independent code bases would be compiled into an identical DLL.
I'd say it's certainly possible but what XVID has demostrated has me in awe. That's damn near impossible.
As long as they can demostrate large and complex blocks of assembly which are identicle then you're right: there's almost no way that could happen with two independant code blocks.
However, it is possible, just not to this extent. An exmaple would be if two blocks of code independantly implemented quick sort or Euler's algorithm. In that case I would expect those two peices of assembly (provided that they were compiled with the same compiler) to most likely be identicle beacause those are algorithms that are so popular and refined that almost every developer implements them in the same way.
But in this case XVID has certainly demonstrated the large and complex blocks of identicle assembly to prove that they were ripped off. And not only that but that the pieces of identicle code occur at almost the same offsets in the dll!! That's a very good indication that Sigma has extended on, or simply modified, XVID's original code base.
I sure hope they can somehow find the resources to sue Sigma's pants off. I will certainly make a donation if they go that route.
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Garett
There's a biological desire there to use meat as a source of protein.
I don't see this. I agree that there's a whole ton of vegetarian products that try to look and taste like meat. I'm not too sure as to why but I think it has to do with the fact that people who do eat meat who have to cator to vegetarians are at a loss for what to make them.
If you're hosting your brother's birthday party, your sister is vegetarian and you're barbequeing burgers then what do you cook for her that doesn't take any more time the burgers? Well veggie burgers seem appropriate....
I could be wrong of course. Maybe there are vegetarians who actually request these products but to speak for myself I don't.
I personally can't stand veggie-dogs and veggie-burgers and veggie-whatever. I'm a vegetarian and have no desire to eat anything that tastes, smells or physically ressembles meat.
So speak for yourself when you claim that there's a biological desire. I think that the majority of people have grown up to be accustomed to meat products and so of course they crave what they know and like...
I have a hard time believing that there's any biology behind it.
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Garett
I expect the option of anonymity and privacy and identity and freedom etc.
It's all about choice and freedom. If I want to be anonymous in a so-called "free" country I should. If I want privacy I should be entitled to that as well. As well as anything else that I damn well please as long as it's within the scope of myself and no one else.
Should no one be allowed these things?
Wether I'm actually going to make use of them or not if irrelevant. As long as they're available to me then that's all that matters.
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Garett