2- Lindows is an operating system designed to take place of Windows by allowing you to run Windows apps without running Windows.
So is "Linux" just a cheap take off of "Unix"?
3- Lindows is an obvious play on the name "Windows", and it's unlikely that it was 'accidental' or based on something else such as "LinuxwINDOWSystem" or somesuch. Based on it's goal : Offer users the ability to run Windows apps in a Linux environment... Sorry, it's unlikely that they were NOT aware of it.
And Linux allows the ability to run Unix apps in a Linus environment.
Really, so what of it;)
It will succeed or fail on whether or not it actually does run the apps, not on whether it sounds like it could.
I am not however reaching down into the company pockets to buy 6 new Mac (we just bought 6 new PC's however) until I see a usable OS, reasonably competitive speed hardware, and the notion that further spending on the Mac platform is warranted for a professional outfit.
For most people, the speed of the hardware isn't that important these days. If you want speed, just get a 2 GHz AMD and install windows 95. No messy overhead from the OS.
Seriously, most people want to run certain apps, and if its web browsing, eMail, word processing, etc, then speed is the least of their issues. If its video editing then a lot of RAM and HD space is probably more important than CPU speed, and gaming enjoyment relates more to the quality of your graphic cards and sound systems (and the quality of the game you are playing).
Of all the reasons to grumble about the iMac's, speed is probably the least important. Functionality is what counts - the most useful computer I have has 8 MB RAM and a 33 MHz processor - it fits in the palm of my hand and seems fast enough to me.
Maybe he's kind of smart, so writing this code may take him, say, 5 minutes. So his time is worth $1/min.
Well, I hope that he didn't spend too many dollars writing his post then. Would have cost him a few dollars in time just to write about what he wasn't going to pay for.
You assume wrong. USB 1 "high-speed" mode is 12Mbps. That is on the wire, NOT anywhere near useable throughput. On a good day, with the wind at it's back a USB device can push 800KBytes/second.
Yes. Its even worse than that in fact. USB also has low speed modes for keyboards, etc, and they each get an equal timeslice. So sharing with a low speed mode keyboard will take out alot of your bandwidth. This problem will get much worse with USB 2.0 as it supports all the earlier modes.
Firewire has this problem too for 2.0, but the timeslice is much smaller (to provide smaller packet sizes given its proportionately higher speed rating)
p.s. In case you think that I'm an idiot for not being able to configure IPv6 on Linux -- I'll tell you that I was kernel contributer in the pre-1.0 kernels.
I know your pain. I was never up to being a kernel contributor, but I wrote a fair bit of code from assembly level (multiple CPU types) upwards.
I still can't get SAMBA to talk with a windows NT share. Its reassuring to know I'm not the only stupid one around.
Although they formalized a counter-example to an already special case, which precludes generalization of the concept, that does not mean other specific cases do not apply.
Of course, mostly the DRM people are interested in making things sufficiently hard to do, not impossible.
They are driven by profit, not purity of outcome, so if a scheme costs more to run than it delivers, it will not be used.
Likewise, tweaking a DRM system to maximise returns involves evaluating the cost of the DRM system itself, and the hassle it gives to legitimate customeers. Just having a 100% success rate means nothing if you only have 2 customers left.
They are going to have to support a vast number of devices and hardware that just don't happen on the mac.
Plus the fun of trying to provide a dual boot situation - given the average user as well as the tendancy for MS installers to trounce over anything in their way. Just doing a non destructive repartitioning would be interesting.
And as for reading the filesystem that are already there (people will want their data, right?) - well at the least it would compromise security (The new OS would probably not respect account privledges as you would be root) and at the worst would stand a real chance of corrupting the existing system.
Overall, as a clean install, it might be a goer (I'd be interested), but how many people are in that market?
Whoever moderated the parent as "interesting" is a fucking moron.
And I see you got modded down for making a fair comment. No way would I have called your comment "flamebait".
Anyway, If you feel strongly about it reading this, go a metamoderate now. Someone will get the above moderations pop up in front of them if enough people metamoderate (even one quick look each).
Just my 2c worth - at least there is a system here on/. to fix these sorts of strange moderations.
There are countries where it is legal make, sell and buy pirated software, but it is still illegal for me to import it to the UK and use it here.
So if I am a european citizen and I have a laptop with microsoft products on it, I can't use it in the US?
And conversely, if I have a US laptop, might it be illegal to use it in certain ways in Europe because it affects the EULA (although this is probably less of an issue)?
When you get your computer in the US or the EU, you don't get a disclaimer saying that it can't be used in another country - surely a common issue for any laptop sale?
I don't know what the laws in your country are, but here in EU, EULAs can be totally ignored. I don't actually sign them, and clicking a button (or whatever the program asks me to do) doesn't count as a valid contract.
So if I buy my software in the EU where the EULA doesn't count, can I use it in the US where they do? If you didn't buy it in the US, and didn't agree to the EULA, at what point did you break a US law?
I think that for gamers 802.11b (or even 802.16 or whatever it is called) makes more sense - no aiming, no major configuration issues. Lots of repeaters if you want to spread over > 100 metres. Sure, anyone can tap in easily - isn't that the point?
Using lasers just complicates things and creates a whole lot more ways for the system to fail than radio frequency spectrum.
For gamers and more generally interactive communications a low ping is more important than huge bandwidth.
Probably the latency will be bad for gamers, but then again are you really suggesting that gamers will want some city wide network for gaming? If they are logging on to some sort of centralised server (ie., where you don't know who you are playing with) wouldn't hitting the internet directly make more sense? Fast connection through high speed routers with a wide audience to find a suitable opponent for a fragfest.
If its a LAN party type thing, then as per above - 802.11b or similar.
If you really need point to point communications, you can still use this sort of technology with a satellite dish and point the signal with similar line of sight accuracy. I know of line of sight RF communications in the 2.4 GHz band over kilometeres.
AIDS is disappearing, smallpox is dead, anthrax is nothing to worry about, ebola - isolated, bubonic plague - gone, etc.
Actually alot of these diseases are evolving very rapidly. As in resistance to antibiotics and antivirals is a very new phenomena in terms of human pathogens.
Either we will have to develop new technologies to deal with this, or evolve our immune system to deal with this. Or start dying from infections in our twenties again, like the good old days.
We have seen microsoft do this before - complete turn arounds. I think we are seeing one right now.
I still remember (in fact own) a copy of IE version 1.0. Which you had to pay money for. Before they realised that to dominate the internet (which they do, at least as far as browsing goes) they had to give away browsers because they had left it too late.
It only took them 3 years to pretty much turn around the market, and now its pretty much locked down. (Yes I know - I'm using Opera to write this too, but really, IE owns the market in market share).
I don't believe that they will be able to fix their software overnight. Bill never plans for tomorrow, he plans for where they will be in 5 years.
If that means that he has to buy a *nix and get someone to write a compatibility layer and it takes 5 years, do you think that will stop him?
Because, if he does get security under control, its a whole new market for him.
Be afraid. The result will be closed source (unless he really cant find a closed source way to do it - in which case he will go open), and it will be secure, and it won't happen in 2002. But it will happen. (It may even be a better thing for the average user - but if you were that you wouldn't be reading this now?)
That said, it'd be a damn cool thing if we had it, and if a team ever succeeds in constructing one, I'll personally buy a beer for every member of the project.
Thats a generous offer. Considering it takes 100 people to make a good game these days (esp if you count the game testers).
I would imagine that this sort of project would involve 1000+ people (probably a gross underestimate). At least you could probably by the beer at wholsale prices!
Its essential that we move to this level of secondary storage, or there is a real danger that tertiary storage systems (such as tape, DVD) may actually be able to keep up!
Seriously , the big problem here is not having the data online, but figuring how to recover it if you lose it.
Not that RAID is a bad thing, but I have seen RAID systems go down - I lost a day's work (not archived by myself) when my web hosting company's raid system failed completely. (They were most apologetic and offered some compensation, but the data was very gone for all their customers - I believe they bought new RAID systems from another vendor immediately thereafter).
I thought it would show Jar-Jar's progress towards enlightenment and progression to a Jedi Knight himself. Similar to that which we saw with Luke Skywalker starting as a simple farm hand....
I can see it now, by episode 3 a master in his own right, wielding a light sabre and slicing those from the dark side into pieces (To the cutting victory cries such as "yousa going to be twosa")
I guess that is why I don't install my OS in the C:/ drive. I think that you would have to be mad to ignore the OS calls as that drive might not even exist (under NT/2K/XP).
I don't do this to screw up spyware, just to have separate partitions for data and programs.
Its actually alot faster to use button combinations rather than a roller wheel. You don't need alot of buttons to do that, either.
Or, if you want a good but portable keyboard, use a one handed one:
http://www.halfkeyboard.com/
Either of these concepts would work much better in a PDA than a roller wheel - where you have multiple rolls then a press for each character. Unlike every other alternative (graffiti, keyboard, half keyboard) this one takes multiple actions per character, and you would have to look at the screen to know which character you were at because its state dependent.
Mobile phones are also banned because they had big problems in taking out a network if used in the air - especially the old analouge ones. They broadcast at full power all the time. With line of sight to most towers in a metropolitan area, they would take out a channel in every base station.
If everyone rang as the plane was over the metro area ("hi honey, im coming in to land now, see you for dinner") then you can take out an entire cities mobile phone capability.
actually the primary reason is due to concerns about EMR interfering with the aircraft systems.
I still worry about this one. Really, they ought to shield their electronics better. It shouldn't be that easy to wreck the navigation stuff on a plane. Otherwise what is to stop a terrorist on a hilltop from aiming a parabolic dish at the tarmac? This is a critical concern now. Why board a plane to down it if you could do it with almost total safety from a distance?
I keep on thinking that you really shouldn't be able to mess with airplanes that easily. I mean, if a gameboy can bring down a 747, why don't they make the things a little more secure. Well, thats why they tell us to turn our electronic equipment off during a flight, isn't it? Although how you turn off your digital watch is beyond me.
Anyway, I don't think that you would get access to the plane itself, just the airport computer systems. Which should be locked down fairly well I would presume, as most employees would have to have limited access only to the bits of the system that they were entitled to use, even if you could get onto the network itself.
In fact, in a site as big as an airport, you would have to assume that the network was compromised from the start - after all, anyone could find a spare network port even before wireless. You couldn't provide security on the basis of physical network access limitations.
Just because we have 802.11b doesn't really change alot in terms of security.
Slashdot Mirror
2- Lindows is an operating system designed to take place of Windows by allowing you to run Windows apps without running Windows.
;)
So is "Linux" just a cheap take off of "Unix"?
3- Lindows is an obvious play on the name "Windows", and it's unlikely that it was 'accidental' or based on something else such as "LinuxwINDOWSystem" or somesuch. Based on it's goal : Offer users the ability to run Windows apps in a Linux environment... Sorry, it's unlikely that they were NOT aware of it.
And Linux allows the ability to run Unix apps in a Linus environment.
Really, so what of it
It will succeed or fail on whether or not it actually does run the apps, not on whether it sounds like it could.
My 2c worth,
Michael
I am not however reaching down into the company pockets to buy 6 new Mac (we just bought 6 new PC's however) until I see a usable OS, reasonably competitive speed hardware, and the notion that further spending on the Mac platform is warranted for a professional outfit.
For most people, the speed of the hardware isn't that important these days. If you want speed, just get a 2 GHz AMD and install windows 95. No messy overhead from the OS.
Seriously, most people want to run certain apps, and if its web browsing, eMail, word processing, etc, then speed is the least of their issues. If its video editing then a lot of RAM and HD space is probably more important than CPU speed, and gaming enjoyment relates more to the quality of your graphic cards and sound systems (and the quality of the game you are playing).
Of all the reasons to grumble about the iMac's, speed is probably the least important. Functionality is what counts - the most useful computer I have has 8 MB RAM and a 33 MHz processor - it fits in the palm of my hand and seems fast enough to me.
Just my 2c worth
Michael
This was much less intrusive than the awful pop-ups I envisioned when I read about the subsription service
/. viewer, I'd suspect mostly the latter.
Yes, pop ups are either:
a) Intrusive
or
b) Disabled
With the typical
Michael
Maybe he's kind of smart, so writing this code may take him, say, 5 minutes. So his time is worth $1/min.
Well, I hope that he didn't spend too many dollars writing his post then. Would have cost him a few dollars in time just to write about what he wasn't going to pay for.
Michael
You assume wrong. USB 1 "high-speed" mode is 12Mbps. That is on the wire, NOT anywhere near useable throughput. On a good day, with the wind at it's back a USB device can push 800KBytes/second.
Yes. Its even worse than that in fact. USB also has low speed modes for keyboards, etc, and they each get an equal timeslice. So sharing with a low speed mode keyboard will take out alot of your bandwidth. This problem will get much worse with USB 2.0 as it supports all the earlier modes.
Firewire has this problem too for 2.0, but the timeslice is much smaller (to provide smaller packet sizes given its proportionately higher speed rating)
Michael
All of my good articles never get posted
/. editors.
Yes, I know the feeling too.
I just don't understand why some story I submit gets rejected, then an identical type submission makes it.
There is no consistency to
Michael
p.s. In case you think that I'm an idiot for not being able to configure IPv6 on Linux -- I'll tell you that I was kernel contributer in the pre-1.0 kernels.
I know your pain. I was never up to being a kernel contributor, but I wrote a fair bit of code from assembly level (multiple CPU types) upwards.
I still can't get SAMBA to talk with a windows NT share. Its reassuring to know I'm not the only stupid one around.
Michael
Although they formalized a counter-example to an already special case, which precludes generalization of the concept, that does not mean other specific cases do not apply.
Of course, mostly the DRM people are interested in making things sufficiently hard to do, not impossible.
They are driven by profit, not purity of outcome, so if a scheme costs more to run than it delivers, it will not be used.
Likewise, tweaking a DRM system to maximise returns involves evaluating the cost of the DRM system itself, and the hassle it gives to legitimate customeers. Just having a 100% success rate means nothing if you only have 2 customers left.
Michael
It's not like there's a tech available to make cheap enough displays that can be run for weeks with small battery only.
Oh dear, It would seem that my Palm is a figment of my imagination.
Michael
Any port like that would be a major one.
They are going to have to support a vast number of devices and hardware that just don't happen on the mac.
Plus the fun of trying to provide a dual boot situation - given the average user as well as the tendancy for MS installers to trounce over anything in their way. Just doing a non destructive repartitioning would be interesting.
And as for reading the filesystem that are already there (people will want their data, right?) - well at the least it would compromise security (The new OS would probably not respect account privledges as you would be root) and at the worst would stand a real chance of corrupting the existing system.
Overall, as a clean install, it might be a goer (I'd be interested), but how many people are in that market?
Michael
Whoever moderated the parent as "interesting" is a fucking moron.
/. to fix these sorts of strange moderations.
And I see you got modded down for making a fair comment. No way would I have called your comment "flamebait".
Anyway, If you feel strongly about it reading this, go a metamoderate now. Someone will get the above moderations pop up in front of them if enough people metamoderate (even one quick look each).
Just my 2c worth - at least there is a system here on
Michael
There are countries where it is legal make, sell and buy pirated software, but it is still illegal for me to import it to the UK and use it here.
So if I am a european citizen and I have a laptop with microsoft products on it, I can't use it in the US?
And conversely, if I have a US laptop, might it be illegal to use it in certain ways in Europe because it affects the EULA (although this is probably less of an issue)?
When you get your computer in the US or the EU, you don't get a disclaimer saying that it can't be used in another country - surely a common issue for any laptop sale?
Michael
I don't know what the laws in your country are, but here in EU, EULAs can be totally ignored. I don't actually sign them, and clicking a button (or whatever the program asks me to do) doesn't count as a valid contract.
So if I buy my software in the EU where the EULA doesn't count, can I use it in the US where they do? If you didn't buy it in the US, and didn't agree to the EULA, at what point did you break a US law?
Michael
I don't think having many repeaters ...
I think that for gamers 802.11b (or even 802.16 or whatever it is called) makes more sense - no aiming, no major configuration issues. Lots of repeaters if you want to spread over > 100 metres. Sure, anyone can tap in easily - isn't that the point?
Using lasers just complicates things and creates a whole lot more ways for the system to fail than radio frequency spectrum.
For gamers and more generally interactive communications a low ping is more important than huge bandwidth.
Probably the latency will be bad for gamers, but then again are you really suggesting that gamers will want some city wide network for gaming? If they are logging on to some sort of centralised server (ie., where you don't know who you are playing with) wouldn't hitting the internet directly make more sense? Fast connection through high speed routers with a wide audience to find a suitable opponent for a fragfest.
If its a LAN party type thing, then as per above - 802.11b or similar.
If you really need point to point communications, you can still use this sort of technology with a satellite dish and point the signal with similar line of sight accuracy. I know of line of sight RF communications in the 2.4 GHz band over kilometeres.
Nope. You can't. Welcome to the Post-DMCA world of mega-corporations and huge amounts of lobbying money.
Of course, the DMCA is US law. If that was an Australian post, its still pretty much legal to mod your PS.
In fact, if the ACCC wins this one, then we could set up mod chip making factories in Australia without fear of prosecution.
Michael
AIDS is disappearing, smallpox is dead, anthrax is nothing to worry about, ebola - isolated, bubonic plague - gone, etc.
Actually alot of these diseases are evolving very rapidly. As in resistance to antibiotics and antivirals is a very new phenomena in terms of human pathogens.
Either we will have to develop new technologies to deal with this, or evolve our immune system to deal with this. Or start dying from infections in our twenties again, like the good old days.
Michael
I will believe it when i stop patching it.
Believe it. Be afraid.
We have seen microsoft do this before - complete turn arounds. I think we are seeing one right now.
I still remember (in fact own) a copy of IE version 1.0. Which you had to pay money for. Before they realised that to dominate the internet (which they do, at least as far as browsing goes) they had to give away browsers because they had left it too late.
It only took them 3 years to pretty much turn around the market, and now its pretty much locked down. (Yes I know - I'm using Opera to write this too, but really, IE owns the market in market share).
I don't believe that they will be able to fix their software overnight. Bill never plans for tomorrow, he plans for where they will be in 5 years.
If that means that he has to buy a *nix and get someone to write a compatibility layer and it takes 5 years, do you think that will stop him?
Because, if he does get security under control, its a whole new market for him.
Be afraid. The result will be closed source (unless he really cant find a closed source way to do it - in which case he will go open), and it will be secure, and it won't happen in 2002. But it will happen. (It may even be a better thing for the average user - but if you were that you wouldn't be reading this now?)
MIchael
That said, it'd be a damn cool thing if we had it, and if a team ever succeeds in constructing one, I'll personally buy a beer for every member of the project.
Thats a generous offer. Considering it takes 100 people to make a good game these days (esp if you count the game testers).
I would imagine that this sort of project would involve 1000+ people (probably a gross underestimate). At least you could probably by the beer at wholsale prices!
Michael
Linux has finally thrown that dagger at the heart of microsoft - Bloatware and Eye Candy.
You are aiming for the same end user as M$ here - this will surely strike fear into the evil empire.
;)
Michael
Its essential that we move to this level of secondary storage, or there is a real danger that tertiary storage systems (such as tape, DVD) may actually be able to keep up!
Seriously , the big problem here is not having the data online, but figuring how to recover it if you lose it.
Not that RAID is a bad thing, but I have seen RAID systems go down - I lost a day's work (not archived by myself) when my web hosting company's raid system failed completely. (They were most apologetic and offered some compensation, but the data was very gone for all their customers - I believe they bought new RAID systems from another vendor immediately thereafter).
My 2c worth.
Michael
I thought it would show Jar-Jar's progress towards enlightenment and progression to a Jedi Knight himself. Similar to that which we saw with Luke Skywalker starting as a simple farm hand ....
I can see it now, by episode 3 a master in his own right, wielding a light sabre and slicing those from the dark side into pieces (To the cutting victory cries such as "yousa going to be twosa")
Michael
C:\\Program Files\\..." in their routines
I guess that is why I don't install my OS in the C:/ drive. I think that you would have to be mad to ignore the OS calls as that drive might not even exist (under NT/2K/XP).
I don't do this to screw up spyware, just to have separate partitions for data and programs.
Michael.
Its actually alot faster to use button combinations rather than a roller wheel. You don't need alot of buttons to do that, either.
Or, if you want a good but portable keyboard, use a one handed one:
http://www.halfkeyboard.com/
Either of these concepts would work much better in a PDA than a roller wheel - where you have multiple rolls then a press for each character. Unlike every other alternative (graffiti, keyboard, half keyboard) this one takes multiple actions per character, and you would have to look at the screen to know which character you were at because its state dependent.
My 2 cents worth
Mobile phones are also banned because they had big problems in taking out a network if used in the air - especially the old analouge ones. They broadcast at full power all the time. With line of sight to most towers in a metropolitan area, they would take out a channel in every base station.
If everyone rang as the plane was over the metro area ("hi honey, im coming in to land now, see you for dinner") then you can take out an entire cities mobile phone capability.
actually the primary reason is due to concerns about EMR interfering with the aircraft systems.
I still worry about this one. Really, they ought to shield their electronics better. It shouldn't be that easy to wreck the navigation stuff on a plane. Otherwise what is to stop a terrorist on a hilltop from aiming a parabolic dish at the tarmac? This is a critical concern now. Why board a plane to down it if you could do it with almost total safety from a distance?
Michael
Messing with aircraft [anything] is a big no-no
I keep on thinking that you really shouldn't be able to mess with airplanes that easily. I mean, if a gameboy can bring down a 747, why don't they make the things a little more secure. Well, thats why they tell us to turn our electronic equipment off during a flight, isn't it? Although how you turn off your digital watch is beyond me.
Anyway, I don't think that you would get access to the plane itself, just the airport computer systems. Which should be locked down fairly well I would presume, as most employees would have to have limited access only to the bits of the system that they were entitled to use, even if you could get onto the network itself.
In fact, in a site as big as an airport, you would have to assume that the network was compromised from the start - after all, anyone could find a spare network port even before wireless. You couldn't provide security on the basis of physical network access limitations.
Just because we have 802.11b doesn't really change alot in terms of security.
My 2c worth.
Michael