And just how is the new user supposed to know what background processes are unnecessary? This is a problem with all OSes, not just Linux. I could probably point at daemons running on my Linux, MacOS X, and Windows XP machines which I don't know if they are relevant or necessary.
Entirely correct on all your points. The solution is either for new users to start RTFMing (Bwaahahaha!), or for someone to start selling an "information toaster" that's even easier to use than a Mac, and cheaper than a cheap PC.
Sadly, every time this has been tried, the market has decided that the device's capabilities have been too limited (cf. "Good, Fast, Cheap" - the manufacturers went for "good" and "cheap", but got to market 12-24 months too late for the specifications they were offering) and stuck with harder-to-use PCs of various flavours (be they Windows, Linux, BSD, or MacOS).
You're changing your criteria (probably because you want to define away their success). You said "Fast," "Good," and making money. They are doing all three. QED.
My challenge wasn't that doing "Fast" and "Good" couldn't make money, just that it's hard, especially if you're not an established player already (Apple are).
I have great respect for Apple and for their products. I'm glad they're still around. Heck, if I needed a new laptop, I'd certainly be considering a Mac.
However, it's plain to anyone that they aren't making as much money as Microsoft or Dell, despite the excellent products they sell - demonstrating what I was saying about how the current mass market has selected against their approach. I hope that in time more people recognise that, for non-technical users (at least) Macs are probably more cost-effective in the long run than Windows on a Dell PC.
However, that doesn't change the fact that the mass market seems to have selected against them, despite the fact that a) they're not much more expensive these days (as long as you don't attach a high price to the lack of source code for the full OS - i.e. the source for Darwin isn't sufficient) and b) even if they are, you'll probably win in time saved anyway.
1) Is your X server using an accelerated driver, or the framebuffer device, or even the generic vesa driver?
2) If you are using an accelerated driver, which one? Some provide more acceleration than others.
3) Are you using anti-aliased font rendering? If so, did you check to see whether your driver supports hardware acceleration of the RENDER extension?
4) Did your friend disable unnecessary background processes, or did he just do a "full" install so he didn't miss out on any goodies.
Finally, users don't want fast machines that do nothing, they want machines that perform some useful task. For years, the calls were for "usable desktop applications", tools such as xpaint, xfig, midnight commander and Lyx + latex being judged as being "unsuitable". Well, now we've got the kind of fully-featured applications that were being called for, but in order to create them _in reasonable amounts of time_, and with a reasonably high level of reliability, reusable component architectures (e.g. GTK, DCOP, Qt, etc) need to be used.
As the motto goes - "Good, fast, cheap - pick any two" (where "good" in this case means "efficient", "fast" means "available now rather than in 10 years time" and "cheap" still means low cost). The mass market appears to have decided that it likes "Cheap" and "Fast" - just like with PC hardware, in fact.
If you think there's a market for "Good" and "Fast", go right ahead and try to make some money doing it.
RH 6.x got a bad rap as it came out at a time when the Internet had become noticeably more hostile, installed a bunch of services that had remote root exploits discovered after the CDs were pressed, and didn't configure the Linux's IP filter (even crudely) out of the box.
RH7 and up make some attempt to configure the firewall, and more recent versions leave more services disabled until the admin starts them. I'd say you'd actively have to do work to make a modern RH distro insecure these days. That doesn't reduce the need to install errata, mind, but it buys you enough time such that you can probably download and install those errata without getting 0wn3d in the meantime.
From what Microsoft say, Longhorn (or is it Blackcomb?) will have very much the same 'secure by default' state after install. About time too.
Once is sufficient if all you care about is someone connecting the hard disc up to a machine and attempting to recover confidential information via the standard IDE/SCSI protocol and bus.
But if you're concerned about someone ripping the drive open and using electron microscopy to work out the alignment of the molecules (and from that, the data they store), then theory (and experiments?) shows that the multiple-pattern-wipe technique is sufficient to guarantee data is destroyed.
For most data, therefore, one all-zeros wipe is probably sufficient and will take the least time. But for some users and some data, more wipes will be appropriate.
Peter Gutmann's paper is a good place to start for more detail.
Sadly, just like with software, the Vehicle Inspectorate doesn't have the power to force a manufacturer to execute a recall for a given model of vehicle. They can only present the manufacturer with their findings and suggest a course of action.
In particular, purchase the heaviest, most stable tripod you can afford
Yeah, and have it sit at home, unused, because it's too heavy to lug around on the off-chance you'll need it.
That's not to say there isn't value in a heavy, good quality tripod, but the advice I've read which makes more sense to me is to buy a cheap, light one that you'll CARRY WITH YOU and USE at first, then a heavier, quality model later for less spontaneous shoots later.
I quite like John Garrett's "Guide to Photography" - ISBN 9-780751-348699. It's aimed at film photography, but IMHO, there's enough similarity between a film camera and a good digital camera (i.e. one with manual and semi-automatic modes) that I find it useful. About the only film photography things that are less applicable to digital are aperture settings (digital generally only goes to about f/8.0 or so) and slower "film speed" (digital commonly only goes to ISO400, maybe 800 or 1600 - film goes higher, and can be "pushed" for artistic effect).
The other book I'm relying on at the moment is the full user manual (I have an Olympus C-750, which ships with a basic printed manual, but the full manual is supplied as a PDF on the Windows software CD).
There's a big difference between being (relatively) weakly radioactive, and having a few tons of waste dissolved in it.
I'm not a geologist, so I've no idea whether the waste would stay in a blob encased in many feet of lava, dilute throughout the entire magma, or dilute enough to spread it around but not enough to make lava non-hazardous (from a radioactivity point of view, at least!)
I can well see that there would be legitimate concerns, though. I even wonder if there's been any significant research into the behaviour of magma and lava in these respects.
I'm not a great fan of how Greenpeace, Michael Moore and others operate at times - even though I am typically in agreement with the causes they adopt - it's really dumb PR and I feel their underlying stories are usually strong enough to stand on their own without any gloss or spin or whatever. But then, maybe I only think that way because I'm already (at least vaguely) aware of the issues - perhaps they do need to overstate the case in order to get through to 'the man on the street'.
Moving on, I imagine the 'worst case scenario' of having radioactive material thrown back up by volcanos would be if the material melted and mixed in with the lava, resulting in radioactive lava (and ash, eventually) - albeit more dilute, but still more concentrated than is typical naturally.
Finally, according to my original links, Green groups are in favour of long-term above ground storage. If/when the Green party wins some ground in the UK government, I'll be trying to convince them from within that modern nuclear reactors with energy production as their primary role (as opposed to the production of weapons-grade material) should be considered fairly against the other options, and in conjunction with a general push for more efficient use of energy (overall, not just on a per-process basis).
You will forgive my skepticism as fusion has been "almost there" for the last thirty years. "In ten years" has been spoken so many times, you'd think ten years last forever.
Your skepticism is entirely forgiven. However, I'm optimistic that fusion really isn't necessarily that far off, because the alternative would be that humanity is truly screwed and/or fission is the best we'll ever manage and we'll end up with ever-increasing stockpiles of waste.
Incidentally, like you, I'm essentially a pro-nuclear Green. Or, at the very least, an 'open-minded about nuclear until we've got accurate full-lifetime costs for all the alternatives' Green. Fission isn't ideal, but I feel it's the least-bad option for us right now, if we plan to still be around as a species in a couple of hundred years.
The part where it says a one ton wieght burrows 50m into the sand with nary a trace sounds perfect to me. That ought to slow down the breakdown of the container. By the time it leaks you would have had thousands of years of cooling off, then it would still be covered in sand.
You've highlighted the main problem yourself, I think - "ought to", "nary a trace", "still be covered in sand". And to that, you can add "and upto 7.5 miles below sea level" - in other works, if "ought to" turns out to be "doesn't" and radiation starts affecting sea life and water supplies (e.g. via something like the Gulf Stream), then it's a hell of a lot of work to sort the problem out.
As a scientist though, I'd welcome any non-hazardous research that gave more information either way.
And the use of IFR/AFR and other modern designs can do so without mining another once of uranium for some time by processing existing weapons and waste.
Some good introductory stuff on the storage and disposal of nuclear waste at the Science Museum. It explains why most of the more radical solutions suggested by slashdotters aren't, actually very useful. Dumping in sea trenches is discussed here onwards.
The leading proposals are above-ground storage (perhaps surprisingly, favoured by Green groups as it allows for easiest monitoring, though the politicians fret about terrorist attacks), dumping in stable rock (a la Yucca Mountain), or storing in stable rock as previously, but maintaining monitoring until everyone's confident it's OK (Green groups worry that these will be too easy to convert to unmonitored dumps once established).
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Re:The Netherlands Connection is the key
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More From Tanenbaum
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What do you think the animals and humans are fed on? Crops grown using fertilizers and pesticides derived from petrochemicals, and applied using machines powered by petrol, diesel, etc. Oh, and other animals (see above).
Yes, oil from agrowaste works for now, and is currently economic, but it won't eliminate the challenges that are caused by falling oil reserves. The only way out is to consume less and to start devoting energy and ingenuity towards renewable energy and fusion research.
But I fear that we've already left it too late for any serious actions to be politically acceptable to the masses.
Me: Hi, I'd like to report a fault with one or more of your modems; about 50% of the time, when I try to connect, I hear a gawdawful noise as the modems attempt to train. The times I called and got this were...,
Demon Helpdesk: Upgrade your modem drivers!
Me: I have a hardware modem, it has no drivers. And besides, I'm using Linux. Oh, and it does the same thing if I just use a terminal emulator.
Demon: We don't support Linux!
Me: Linux isn't the problem. It's been working fine in this configuration for about 4 years now. The fault is in something at your end.
Demon: Upgrade the firmware!
Me: a) The firmware is the most recent available, b) the firmware was last flashed about 18 months, when V.90 was finalised and has been working perfectly until today.
Demon: Upgrade your drivers!
Me: Oh, FFS. [click].
...on there being factory farming. Factory farming only works if you have ready availability of cheap energy (i.e. oil) and oil-derived feeds, fertilizers and pesticides.
AFAIK, RH/Fedora plan to use HAL which communicates using D-BUS to extend the plug-n-play functionality already provided by Kudzu. Leveraging these projects will probably aid acceptance of DoD.
We also don't understand why quantum mechanics rules apply at very small scales, but very different rules apply at larger scales. (A photon can seem to go through two slits at once, but you won't get a baseball to do that trick, or even a really tiny speck of dust.)
The explanation my A Level physics teacher gave was that QM does apply to larger objects, but the probabilities become more clustered as the size increases. Thus, there is a (tiny) chance that if I walk through a door, I'll diffract, just like a photon. Fortunately, the probability is so unlikely that such that such an event has never been recorded in human history.
I can't vouch for its usefulness or accuracy, never having used it, but it sounds as though your organisation has the requirements that Skybox is designed for.
As far as I can see, it scans your network for the versions of software in use on each host to create a model, then performs simulated scans on that model.
I'm skeptical, but it might be worth looking into.
I have actually considered a.com type company to do exactly that : OnGoogle. Sort of like OnStar it would be on quickdial on your cell phone - one second later one of our trained professionals would be your invisible link between you and the world of knowledge.
Slashdot Mirror
Entirely correct on all your points. The solution is either for new users to start RTFMing (Bwaahahaha!), or for someone to start selling an "information toaster" that's even easier to use than a Mac, and cheaper than a cheap PC.
Sadly, every time this has been tried, the market has decided that the device's capabilities have been too limited (cf. "Good, Fast, Cheap" - the manufacturers went for "good" and "cheap", but got to market 12-24 months too late for the specifications they were offering) and stuck with harder-to-use PCs of various flavours (be they Windows, Linux, BSD, or MacOS).
--
My challenge wasn't that doing "Fast" and "Good" couldn't make money, just that it's hard, especially if you're not an established player already (Apple are).
I have great respect for Apple and for their products. I'm glad they're still around. Heck, if I needed a new laptop, I'd certainly be considering a Mac.
However, it's plain to anyone that they aren't making as much money as Microsoft or Dell, despite the excellent products they sell - demonstrating what I was saying about how the current mass market has selected against their approach. I hope that in time more people recognise that, for non-technical users (at least) Macs are probably more cost-effective in the long run than Windows on a Dell PC.
--
However, that doesn't change the fact that the mass market seems to have selected against them, despite the fact that a) they're not much more expensive these days (as long as you don't attach a high price to the lack of source code for the full OS - i.e. the source for Darwin isn't sufficient) and b) even if they are, you'll probably win in time saved anyway.
--
1) Is your X server using an accelerated driver, or the framebuffer device, or even the generic vesa driver?
2) If you are using an accelerated driver, which one? Some provide more acceleration than others.
3) Are you using anti-aliased font rendering? If so, did you check to see whether your driver supports hardware acceleration of the RENDER extension?
4) Did your friend disable unnecessary background processes, or did he just do a "full" install so he didn't miss out on any goodies.
Finally, users don't want fast machines that do nothing, they want machines that perform some useful task. For years, the calls were for "usable desktop applications", tools such as xpaint, xfig, midnight commander and Lyx + latex being judged as being "unsuitable". Well, now we've got the kind of fully-featured applications that were being called for, but in order to create them _in reasonable amounts of time_, and with a reasonably high level of reliability, reusable component architectures (e.g. GTK, DCOP, Qt, etc) need to be used.
As the motto goes - "Good, fast, cheap - pick any two" (where "good" in this case means "efficient", "fast" means "available now rather than in 10 years time" and "cheap" still means low cost). The mass market appears to have decided that it likes "Cheap" and "Fast" - just like with PC hardware, in fact.
If you think there's a market for "Good" and "Fast", go right ahead and try to make some money doing it.
--
RH7 and up make some attempt to configure the firewall, and more recent versions leave more services disabled until the admin starts them. I'd say you'd actively have to do work to make a modern RH distro insecure these days. That doesn't reduce the need to install errata, mind, but it buys you enough time such that you can probably download and install those errata without getting 0wn3d in the meantime.
From what Microsoft say, Longhorn (or is it Blackcomb?) will have very much the same 'secure by default' state after install. About time too.
--
But if you're concerned about someone ripping the drive open and using electron microscopy to work out the alignment of the molecules (and from that, the data they store), then theory (and experiments?) shows that the multiple-pattern-wipe technique is sufficient to guarantee data is destroyed.
For most data, therefore, one all-zeros wipe is probably sufficient and will take the least time. But for some users and some data, more wipes will be appropriate.
Peter Gutmann's paper is a good place to start for more detail.
--
--
Yeah, and have it sit at home, unused, because it's too heavy to lug around on the off-chance you'll need it.
That's not to say there isn't value in a heavy, good quality tripod, but the advice I've read which makes more sense to me is to buy a cheap, light one that you'll CARRY WITH YOU and USE at first, then a heavier, quality model later for less spontaneous shoots later.
--
The other book I'm relying on at the moment is the full user manual (I have an Olympus C-750, which ships with a basic printed manual, but the full manual is supplied as a PDF on the Windows software CD).
--
I'm not a geologist, so I've no idea whether the waste would stay in a blob encased in many feet of lava, dilute throughout the entire magma, or dilute enough to spread it around but not enough to make lava non-hazardous (from a radioactivity point of view, at least!)
I can well see that there would be legitimate concerns, though. I even wonder if there's been any significant research into the behaviour of magma and lava in these respects.
Oh, and incidentally, it would appear that normal lava is no more radioactive than normal rocks.
--
Moving on, I imagine the 'worst case scenario' of having radioactive material thrown back up by volcanos would be if the material melted and mixed in with the lava, resulting in radioactive lava (and ash, eventually) - albeit more dilute, but still more concentrated than is typical naturally.
Finally, according to my original links, Green groups are in favour of long-term above ground storage. If/when the Green party wins some ground in the UK government, I'll be trying to convince them from within that modern nuclear reactors with energy production as their primary role (as opposed to the production of weapons-grade material) should be considered fairly against the other options, and in conjunction with a general push for more efficient use of energy (overall, not just on a per-process basis).
--
Your skepticism is entirely forgiven. However, I'm optimistic that fusion really isn't necessarily that far off, because the alternative would be that humanity is truly screwed and/or fission is the best we'll ever manage and we'll end up with ever-increasing stockpiles of waste.
Incidentally, like you, I'm essentially a pro-nuclear Green. Or, at the very least, an 'open-minded about nuclear until we've got accurate full-lifetime costs for all the alternatives' Green. Fission isn't ideal, but I feel it's the least-bad option for us right now, if we plan to still be around as a species in a couple of hundred years.
--
You've highlighted the main problem yourself, I think - "ought to", "nary a trace", "still be covered in sand". And to that, you can add "and upto 7.5 miles below sea level" - in other works, if "ought to" turns out to be "doesn't" and radiation starts affecting sea life and water supplies (e.g. via something like the Gulf Stream), then it's a hell of a lot of work to sort the problem out.
As a scientist though, I'd welcome any non-hazardous research that gave more information either way.
--
Swords into ploughshares, eh? I really hope so.
--
Yet. ITER is touted as being the final research fusion reactor before production fusion reactors can be built.
--
The leading proposals are above-ground storage (perhaps surprisingly, favoured by Green groups as it allows for easiest monitoring, though the politicians fret about terrorist attacks), dumping in stable rock (a la Yucca Mountain), or storing in stable rock as previously, but maintaining monitoring until everyone's confident it's OK (Green groups worry that these will be too easy to convert to unmonitored dumps once established).
--
--
Yes, oil from agrowaste works for now, and is currently economic, but it won't eliminate the challenges that are caused by falling oil reserves. The only way out is to consume less and to start devoting energy and ingenuity towards renewable energy and fusion research.
But I fear that we've already left it too late for any serious actions to be politically acceptable to the masses.
--
Demon Helpdesk: Upgrade your modem drivers!
Me: I have a hardware modem, it has no drivers. And besides, I'm using Linux. Oh, and it does the same thing if I just use a terminal emulator.
Demon: We don't support Linux!
Me: Linux isn't the problem. It's been working fine in this configuration for about 4 years now. The fault is in something at your end.
Demon: Upgrade the firmware!
Me: a) The firmware is the most recent available, b) the firmware was last flashed about 18 months, when V.90 was finalised and has been working perfectly until today.
Demon: Upgrade your drivers!
Me: Oh, FFS. [click].
--
--
--
The explanation my A Level physics teacher gave was that QM does apply to larger objects, but the probabilities become more clustered as the size increases. Thus, there is a (tiny) chance that if I walk through a door, I'll diffract, just like a photon. Fortunately, the probability is so unlikely that such that such an event has never been recorded in human history.
--
As far as I can see, it scans your network for the versions of software in use on each host to create a model, then performs simulated scans on that model.
I'm skeptical, but it might be worth looking into.
No, it's not Free (or even gratis).
--
You want http://wap.google.com/ and a WAP-enabled phone.
There's also http://labs1.google.com/gvs.html (Google Voice Search).
--
Of course, that didn't stop people from spinning it as "Linux isn't ready for (any) desktop".
--