Up until now, the most secure thing for win 98 users (for whatever reason they are still using it) has been to sit behind a router and use firefox.
We my wife still uses win98 at home, because the expensive XP replacement I bought her runs legacy dos games so slowly as to be un-usable. She is of course behind a linux firewall.
This is very bad news, since I spent some while convincing her to not use IE and to switch to firefox instead
Perhaps as interesting as this, is if you hang around on the kde-promo mailing list, there is talk of someone offering money for a "proof of concept" port of KOffice to Windows. (originally to have been KOffice 1.5 - but I think the KDE developers have persuaded the donor to shift to KOffice 2.0)
Given that I am not a programmer, this "benefit" of open source is virtually meaningless, and just sounds like marketing PR.
I think that is where you misunderstand the benefit. You personally may not be able to read the code and improve it, but (at least for the popular software) there are plenty of people who can, and do, improve it, and you still get the benefit. Whats more, non technical people can, and do, do other things like generate icons, write documentation etc etc.
Therefore, what you get is a rachet up like effect in the quality of the whole. It might start out running behind proprietary code, but very quickly it improves, and the ends up with better features and better quality. That is what has already happened with linux (the kernel) and server applications, and is almost there at the desktop level (in some ways it is better, in others worse), and (apart from a very few specific cases) is way behind on games.
Yeah but when the next Katrina comes along the power lines get knocked out, the RF interference stops, the hams work, usefulness restored, everyones happy right?
Wrong. There will be no hams left, because in normal times their equipment doesn't work so they will not have been able to keep it operational.
When I was 11 (in 1962) my Father started reading books on computers and what they could do. I did too and started teaching myself what computer languages were and I started writing small programs on paper. I could't of course run them.
In 1968 he got a Honeywell 516, a machine the size of 2 washing machines and a microwave (one washing machine box held the processor, the other the memory and the microwave on top held a paper tape reader and punch). There was a standalone teletype. He set out to prove you could automate a coal mine with it (he worked in the research department of the UK Coal Board). I went to his office in the school holidays and wrote programs for it.
Absolutely agree with you. I was in a UK online League for Grand Prix Legends from just after it was released in 1998 for several years. Racing online with other people was fabulous, and once people had worked out the format from the track files, people built simultations of race tracks from all over the world. The original NurburgRing was awesome. The fact that it was hard and the fact that you could race others around the world kept my interest.
I finally lost it from my hard drive about a year ago - although I still occassionally think about a re-install (if I can find all the patches:-))
My second favourite was SU-27 Flanker. Again, on-line league where you could have dog fights with other people. Graphics where poor (by comparison with its contemporaries) but because of a very realistic flight model (meaning to win at dogfights you had to understand and practice the real techniques used by jet fighters). I even won a small prize from the makers for completing a set course through some mountains, flying at under 100meters faster than anyone else.
The flaw in that argument is that in order for it to work, you have to have the car full all the time.
Its a lot harder to have 6 people available for every journey than it is 2. My guess the average for the SUV might be a little higher than the smaller car, but not 3 times higher.
At least during this weekend Kword was still dependent on an old pre ABI change version of kdelibs - so I am without a simple kde based wordprocessor and have been for more than a month.
I guess I could use others, but kde apps seems to have the best support for cups based printing.
I'm guessing most Linux developers would love to have a more polished interface, but they don't want to do it, because it's boring work. The fact of the matter is, proofreading dialog boxes and checking for consistent menu options and whatnot is not all that fun. Linux development happens mostly through hobbyists, and they're going to spend their free time doing what they enjoy.
I have heard that sort of assertion several times before, but I don't believe it is true. You only have to hang out on the kde-usability mailing lists (and I am sure the gnome equivalent) to realise that this subject really is important to some developers and they get their kicks by making a very usable desktop.
The monopoly given to content owners to determine what others can do with content is subject to some "fair-use" caveats.
Isn't it about time that we, the people who are paying for this content get our fair use rights looked after. Anyone putting DRM controls in place should have a legal obligation to ensure that if if a customer has paid for the right to have access to the content that they also get their fair use rights as well.
It seems to me that the sorts of controlling technologies that are being envisaged here do not safeguard those rights. Isn't it about time we pressurised our democratic representives to ensure that we don't lose them?
Debian has a serious problem right now, in that it can't manage to stabilise sarge enough to release it.
Whilst that is going on stuff that in normal times would get into unstable just isn't making it there. This I think is the root of most of the problems that are being raised here.
I predict that when (if:-) ) sarge ever gets released that the "up to dateness" of unstable will improve.
I think you miss the myriad of small little changes that happen. Just some of the examples you gave
Cars - performance/fuel consumption, the use of colour keyed plastic bumpers instead of chrome, windows glued in place instead of fasterned with rubber and chrome strip
Aircraft - Much bigger, with ability to fly further, automatic navigation (actually at a price that individuals can afford)
When you living amidst these small changes, you don't notice (think frog not jumping out of heating water before it boils him to death)
So, negative moderators of the parent post, please explain to me how Mexican students are served by being force-fed a marginally-used OS in favor of one that is used by almost everybody in the business world?
Firstly, using the emotive phrase force fed does rather obscure the real benefit here. That is that students that otherwise would have no experience to any computing can get a chance for the lowest possible cost to experience it. If they had used software that had to be paid for (ie Micrososft stuff) then less students would benefit.
Secondly, teaching diversity, and also providing an incentive for the students to ask "Why is this different to software I have seen else where?" will get them one step closer to enabling them to make up their own minds.
Thirdly, I think you imply falsely that it matters which operating system is learnt. I believe that exposure to any operating system and any set of applications enables students to use computers more effectively than before. Indeed, one of the benefits of using linux and the free applications that you can get to run on it, is that students can be given access to a much more diverse range of applications (and therefore user interfaces) that they could possibly afford with a proprietary solution.
So I think I have answered your original question. Do you agree?
What I reckon is needed is something akin to the memory management subsystem in a traditional OS - ie something that allocates SPU's to requesting tasks (possibibly on a priority basis) and puts the "stalled" tasks on backing store.
Without doing any sums, it may be that some tasks are sped up so much that the SPU can be multiplexed between lots of tasks per second, so that they are effectively shared by several tasks at the same time - much like the CPU is today.
The other thing to perhaps consider then is that the SPUs are very much like little "object" processors. and that something like KDE (which is of course full of objects, havng been programmed in C++) could be loaded into these SPUs (each one multiplexing several objects)
I've been reading about the Cell processor for a few weeks now, and there is never any discussion about the operating system architecture necessary to get this thing to perform.
As I see it, its a Power PC of OK quality with 8 subsidiary processors optimised for operating a relatively simple task on a relatively small amount of memory.
So - port Linux to it? But how?. Relatively easily, to make use of the main processor, but what sort of subsystem do you build so that the subsidiary processors get used to their full potential. Perhaps part of X could be configured to run on these processors - but that would be a very manual tweak to make use of the architecture. And with the best will in the world, these processors would then sit around unused for most of the time.
What you need is a more general concept, probably at the programming language level, in which algorithmns can be expressed in such a way that the operating system can detect that they can be loaded into these subsidiary processors to be executed.
But there doesn't seem to be anything about that in the news out there. Presumably Sony are going to do something for the PS/3 - what? and is it going to be general purpose, since much of the benefit from their purposes will be a super motion graphics processor for games.
Until we understand what the software infrastructure to make use of the architecture of this new chip will be, then I can't see how we can make predictions of its success in the more general processor market. Before then its just marketing hype.
Sure, but the parent to my post said you had to download and compile.
That confused me, because I knew I had used lame in both grip and kaudiocreator recently. I then discovered that I had the url in my sources.list because of mplayer, and that this must have been how I got a binary deb.
So it was just a comment that you don't have to compile your own, there is a.deb for it.
You are of course right and I should have done better, but in my defence, they are spelling not grammer mistakes, I was in a hurry because my wife was berating my to get on with re-decorating our lounge, and I hate trying to type in that little box that slashdot gives you to compose your post in:-)
What exactly is rewarding about "Business Process Outsourcing"
The simple answer, is its a sale to my company as opposed to a competitor. A more complex answer follows
Here on Slashdot, may people attack the music distribution business as being behind the times, and that downloading music is the new business model. The same phenomenon is happening here - a new business model is reducing costs.
If you are an employee in the music distribution business, this new business model is going to screw up your career unless you find out where in the new value chain you can now add value. The same is true in the IT business chain, and that is what I was describing. My IT career was being put at risk by this new business model, and therefore my role had to change.
Our company did make people redundant a couple of years ago when business was not going so well. In fact I got put on notice that I was at risk. The company had to change its approach, strategically building up its offshore capabilities and redeploying its onshore staff towards roles to service that new business model otherwise more people would have lost their jobs.
I think it depends on what sort of company you are with
I joined my current employer straight from university in 1972. At the time it was a small software development company, writing bespoke software for customers on a paid basis. They key to a long career in the same firm is to continue to re-invent yourself as the experience kicks in, and the industry changes, and to hope that the company continues to be a success and grows. For it is only the ability to take on more responsibility that allows the company to pay you more for the experience you have gained.
For the first 6 months I didn't really do any programming, more learning how the business worked (how to write proposals to customers! - when I started I didn't even know what a proposal was). Then I got an assignment at the space centre in Germany for a year, and when I came back I was seen as someone with a little experience. So then, not only did I program (I became the expert in RSX-11M on PDP 11s) but I was also expected to supervise others.
From there - right until the late 1980s, I combined technical work (not just programming, but as I got more experience I designed more and more complex systems) with project and eventually line management. The more senior I got, the less the technical work involved detail and the more it became strategic.
Some times this would combine with management responsibility for people (and profit) at other times I was setting technical policy for senior management (I was responsibly for getting networked PCs on to peoples desks in those early days of the PC).
At the beginning of the 1990s, the ability for our company to win projects in which you wrote a bespoke solution for a customer started to decline, and the new business was more about buying in products and configuring them to meet business requirements. So again, my career and my skill sets had to migrate. This time, it was more about understanding the business needs of the customer and being to select and propose the correct solution. So now my career became a combination of consultancy and pre-sales support. I still had to have a technical knowledge of what was possible, but it was now a long time since I had written serious amounts of software as a programmer, and the knowledge of how business operates and how IT can help it became more important.
And the type of business is changing again, and as it does so does my role. Business Process Outsourcing (possibly offshore) is where the real volume of business is now. My role therfore is to identify, on a worldwide basis, and in my specific business oriented field (IT necessary to allow competitive electricity and gas markets to work), where the market is spending money, and how our company can bring its experience to win business in the BPO area. I am then called upon to both present these issues to potential customers to help win business, but to also present in public forums (conferences, magazine articles etc) these ideas and why they are sound.
Each of these steps has been a step away from pure programming. Some steps have been scary (its very nerve racking having to present in public in front of a large audience), but ultimately the fact that you have met the challenge is very rewarding. And so today, I am far removed from the original career. But I am still with the same company, in the IT business, its just that I have changed with the times.
I have described my career, and I am not alone in the company of having people who have been around for a long time and continue to do (to a greater or lesser degree) technical (from an IT sense) sort of work (there are even more who have migrated into pure management). I don't think any of them do serious programming (although sometimes someone will write a small proof of concept or a quick demonstration for a customer), but somehow there careers have migrated to being the "liaison" between the business world and the technical world. I think all of them would say that its a rewarding type of role.
Absolutely spot on ...
on
Linux, Inc.
·
· Score: 1
... and coupled with the fact that X allows you to run transparently across a network, you have the flexibility of the local system for those users who really do need a "personal" PC, and you can run a server based solution for where you need more of a corporate standardised, upgradeable, lockdownable desktop.
Slashdot Mirror
See http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/DVB_USB
We my wife still uses win98 at home, because the expensive XP replacement I bought her runs legacy dos games so slowly as to be un-usable. She is of course behind a linux firewall.
This is very bad news, since I spent some while convincing her to not use IE and to switch to firefox instead
Perhaps as interesting as this, is if you hang around on the kde-promo mailing list, there is talk of someone offering money for a "proof of concept" port of KOffice to Windows. (originally to have been KOffice 1.5 - but I think the KDE developers have persuaded the donor to shift to KOffice 2.0)
I think that is where you misunderstand the benefit. You personally may not be able to read the code and improve it, but (at least for the popular software) there are plenty of people who can, and do, improve it, and you still get the benefit. Whats more, non technical people can, and do, do other things like generate icons, write documentation etc etc.
Therefore, what you get is a rachet up like effect in the quality of the whole. It might start out running behind proprietary code, but very quickly it improves, and the ends up with better features and better quality. That is what has already happened with linux (the kernel) and server applications, and is almost there at the desktop level (in some ways it is better, in others worse), and (apart from a very few specific cases) is way behind on games.
Wrong. There will be no hams left, because in normal times their equipment doesn't work so they will not have been able to keep it operational.
When I was 11 (in 1962) my Father started reading books on computers and what they could do. I did too and started teaching myself what computer languages were and I started writing small programs on paper. I could't of course run them.
In 1968 he got a Honeywell 516, a machine the size of 2 washing machines and a microwave (one washing machine box held the processor, the other the memory and the microwave on top held a paper tape reader and punch). There was a standalone teletype. He set out to prove you could automate a coal mine with it (he worked in the research department of the UK Coal Board). I went to his office in the school holidays and wrote programs for it.
Absolutely agree with you. I was in a UK online League for Grand Prix Legends from just after it was released in 1998 for several years. Racing online with other people was fabulous, and once people had worked out the format from the track files, people built simultations of race tracks from all over the world. The original NurburgRing was awesome. The fact that it was hard and the fact that you could race others around the world kept my interest.
I finally lost it from my hard drive about a year ago - although I still occassionally think about a re-install (if I can find all the patches:-))
My second favourite was SU-27 Flanker. Again, on-line league where you could have dog fights with other people. Graphics where poor (by comparison with its contemporaries) but because of a very realistic flight model (meaning to win at dogfights you had to understand and practice the real techniques used by jet fighters). I even won a small prize from the makers for completing a set course through some mountains, flying at under 100meters faster than anyone else.
The flaw in that argument is that in order for it to work, you have to have the car full all the time.
Its a lot harder to have 6 people available for every journey than it is 2. My guess the average for the SUV might be a little higher than the smaller car, but not 3 times higher.
At least during this weekend Kword was still dependent on an old pre ABI change version of kdelibs - so I am without a simple kde based wordprocessor and have been for more than a month.
I guess I could use others, but kde apps seems to have the best support for cups based printing.
I have heard that sort of assertion several times before, but I don't believe it is true. You only have to hang out on the kde-usability mailing lists (and I am sure the gnome equivalent) to realise that this subject really is important to some developers and they get their kicks by making a very usable desktop.
The monopoly given to content owners to determine what others can do with content is subject to some "fair-use" caveats.
Isn't it about time that we, the people who are paying for this content get our fair use rights looked after. Anyone putting DRM controls in place should have a legal obligation to ensure that if if a customer has paid for the right to have access to the content that they also get their fair use rights as well.
It seems to me that the sorts of controlling technologies that are being envisaged here do not safeguard those rights. Isn't it about time we pressurised our democratic representives to ensure that we don't lose them?
Debian has a serious problem right now, in that it can't manage to stabilise sarge enough to release it.
Whilst that is going on stuff that in normal times would get into unstable just isn't making it there. This I think is the root of most of the problems that are being raised here.
I predict that when (if:-) ) sarge ever gets released that the "up to dateness" of unstable will improve.
exactly, but I still don't have mod points to mark it as such:-(
Sorry no mod points, but been reading parents author in lkml.
I think you miss the myriad of small little changes that happen. Just some of the examples you gave
Cars - performance/fuel consumption, the use of colour keyed plastic bumpers instead of chrome, windows glued in place instead of fasterned with rubber and chrome strip
Aircraft - Much bigger, with ability to fly further, automatic navigation (actually at a price that individuals can afford)
When you living amidst these small changes, you don't notice (think frog not jumping out of heating water before it boils him to death)
So, negative moderators of the parent post, please explain to me how Mexican students are served by being force-fed a marginally-used OS in favor of one that is used by almost everybody in the business world?
So I think I have answered your original question. Do you agree?
What I reckon is needed is something akin to the memory management subsystem in a traditional OS - ie something that allocates SPU's to requesting tasks (possibibly on a priority basis) and puts the "stalled" tasks on backing store.
Without doing any sums, it may be that some tasks are sped up so much that the SPU can be multiplexed between lots of tasks per second, so that they are effectively shared by several tasks at the same time - much like the CPU is today.
The other thing to perhaps consider then is that the SPUs are very much like little "object" processors. and that something like KDE (which is of course full of objects, havng been programmed in C++) could be loaded into these SPUs (each one multiplexing several objects)
I've been reading about the Cell processor for a few weeks now, and there is never any discussion about the operating system architecture necessary to get this thing to perform.
As I see it, its a Power PC of OK quality with 8 subsidiary processors optimised for operating a relatively simple task on a relatively small amount of memory.
So - port Linux to it? But how?. Relatively easily, to make use of the main processor, but what sort of subsystem do you build so that the subsidiary processors get used to their full potential. Perhaps part of X could be configured to run on these processors - but that would be a very manual tweak to make use of the architecture. And with the best will in the world, these processors would then sit around unused for most of the time.
What you need is a more general concept, probably at the programming language level, in which algorithmns can be expressed in such a way that the operating system can detect that they can be loaded into these subsidiary processors to be executed.
But there doesn't seem to be anything about that in the news out there. Presumably Sony are going to do something for the PS/3 - what? and is it going to be general purpose, since much of the benefit from their purposes will be a super motion graphics processor for games.
Until we understand what the software infrastructure to make use of the architecture of this new chip will be, then I can't see how we can make predictions of its success in the more general processor market. Before then its just marketing hype.
Sure, but the parent to my post said you had to download and compile.
.deb for it.
That confused me, because I knew I had used lame in both grip and kaudiocreator recently. I then discovered that I had the url in my sources.list because of mplayer, and that this must have been how I got a binary deb.
So it was just a comment that you don't have to compile your own, there is a
Actually, there is binary .deb files for debian.
Put the following in your sources.list file.
deb ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat unstable main
(change unstable to the correct distribution)
grammar not grammer :-(
Just shows my point - I can't compose English in this little box
You are of course right and I should have done better, but in my defence, they are spelling not grammer mistakes, I was in a hurry because my wife was berating my to get on with re-decorating our lounge, and I hate trying to type in that little box that slashdot gives you to compose your post in :-)
The simple answer, is its a sale to my company as opposed to a competitor. A more complex answer follows
Here on Slashdot, may people attack the music distribution business as being behind the times, and that downloading music is the new business model. The same phenomenon is happening here - a new business model is reducing costs.
If you are an employee in the music distribution business, this new business model is going to screw up your career unless you find out where in the new value chain you can now add value. The same is true in the IT business chain, and that is what I was describing. My IT career was being put at risk by this new business model, and therefore my role had to change.
Our company did make people redundant a couple of years ago when business was not going so well. In fact I got put on notice that I was at risk. The company had to change its approach, strategically building up its offshore capabilities and redeploying its onshore staff towards roles to service that new business model otherwise more people would have lost their jobs.
I think it depends on what sort of company you are with
I joined my current employer straight from university in 1972. At the time it was a small software development company, writing bespoke software for customers on a paid basis. They key to a long career in the same firm is to continue to re-invent yourself as the experience kicks in, and the industry changes, and to hope that the company continues to be a success and grows. For it is only the ability to take on more responsibility that allows the company to pay you more for the experience you have gained.
For the first 6 months I didn't really do any programming, more learning how the business worked (how to write proposals to customers! - when I started I didn't even know what a proposal was). Then I got an assignment at the space centre in Germany for a year, and when I came back I was seen as someone with a little experience. So then, not only did I program (I became the expert in RSX-11M on PDP 11s) but I was also expected to supervise others.
From there - right until the late 1980s, I combined technical work (not just programming, but as I got more experience I designed more and more complex systems) with project and eventually line management. The more senior I got, the less the technical work involved detail and the more it became strategic.
Some times this would combine with management responsibility for people (and profit) at other times I was setting technical policy for senior management (I was responsibly for getting networked PCs on to peoples desks in those early days of the PC).
At the beginning of the 1990s, the ability for our company to win projects in which you wrote a bespoke solution for a customer started to decline, and the new business was more about buying in products and configuring them to meet business requirements. So again, my career and my skill sets had to migrate. This time, it was more about understanding the business needs of the customer and being to select and propose the correct solution. So now my career became a combination of consultancy and pre-sales support. I still had to have a technical knowledge of what was possible, but it was now a long time since I had written serious amounts of software as a programmer, and the knowledge of how business operates and how IT can help it became more important.
And the type of business is changing again, and as it does so does my role. Business Process Outsourcing (possibly offshore) is where the real volume of business is now. My role therfore is to identify, on a worldwide basis, and in my specific business oriented field (IT necessary to allow competitive electricity and gas markets to work), where the market is spending money, and how our company can bring its experience to win business in the BPO area. I am then called upon to both present these issues to potential customers to help win business, but to also present in public forums (conferences, magazine articles etc) these ideas and why they are sound.
Each of these steps has been a step away from pure programming. Some steps have been scary (its very nerve racking having to present in public in front of a large audience), but ultimately the fact that you have met the challenge is very rewarding. And so today, I am far removed from the original career. But I am still with the same company, in the IT business, its just that I have changed with the times.
I have described my career, and I am not alone in the company of having people who have been around for a long time and continue to do (to a greater or lesser degree) technical (from an IT sense) sort of work (there are even more who have migrated into pure management). I don't think any of them do serious programming (although sometimes someone will write a small proof of concept or a quick demonstration for a customer), but somehow there careers have migrated to being the "liaison" between the business world and the technical world. I think all of them would say that its a rewarding type of role.
... and coupled with the fact that X allows you to run transparently across a network, you have the flexibility of the local system for those users who really do need a "personal" PC, and you can run a server based solution for where you need more of a corporate standardised, upgradeable, lockdownable desktop.