1. We need a "Default". Not necessarily a default Distro, but a set of standards that all distros can follow. Of course, other options will be allowed, even encouraged. Rationale: We need the "fragmentation" problem to be addressed, and I would suggest that a good start would to have a standard interface that is common across all of "Linux".
2. We need an easy way to manage a large group of computers. Large or small, businesses and schools want to make the configuration of their computers easy. Examples: Mass deploy Chrome. Setup a lab of computers to use a single printer. Setup logins with permissions and shared home folders. Rationale: These features are easy to configure on Windows and Mac OS X, but not so easy on Linux.
3. Easy Deployment. There needs to be a scriptable deployment that can mass install Linux onto multiple computers easily, including initial setup and joining of whatever management system is being used. While "image based" deployment can work, native installation deployment with configuration would be better. Rationale: If it is going to compete against Windows and Mac OS X, it has to be as easy to deploy.
I'm sure there are some projects that already fill some of these needs... but it's not there yet.
Fox (and friends) makes money on TV shows in two ways: You buy their channel on [insert TV provider here]. Otherwise, they make money from advertisers. If they have a show that has 1 million viewers, the ads that are played during and around that show are worth 1 million possible ad views. That's worth some money, and Fox (and friends) will extract the value of good programming in this manner from the advertisers.
So there is a reason why Fox (and friends) are not interested in you skipping their commercials. If the box automatically skips the commercials, the advertisers can claim that there were no ad-view from that viewer, effectively lowering the overall value of the ads on the show.
Let's say that Fox (and Friends) win. No big deal, we have to press a button to skip commercials, just like we have done for years.
Now let's say Dish wins. One or many of the following may occur: a) Fox (and friends) start to insert their advertisements directly into their shows. They already do this, in a limited fashion. Imagine much more invasive ads. b) Dish (and their competitors) starts to skip commercials on a ALL channels, all the time. (The current version only hops adds automatically the next day, you can't do that the day of.) This leads to... c) Advertisers reduce the amount of money they give to the channels. Because of the decreased revenue... d) Fox (and friends) start to charge more for upfront for their channels and/or... e) Fox (and friends) start making cheaper to produce content.
Is that what will happen? Maybe. Is that what we want? Maybe not.
--Pathway
-----
Disclaimer: I am a long-time customer of Dish Networks. I do not currently own the Hopper, but I have followed its' release. I am an advocate of IPTV, and I feel that Dish currently provides the best IPTV solution with their Sling purchase. I do not watch the TV show "Fox & Friends." The repetitive use of the term was intended as a joke. Laugh, it's funny. Especially since you have read this far.
I love the fact that "It's the best thing in the world!" right now... and you can't get in! I'm usually really late to these social things (i only got into Facebook a year ago), so maybe I'll get in early this time?
Forgive my ignorance on the subject matter, but why can't we fix this?
Is it because the infected machines have no anti-virus or anti-malware? Would a free AV program installed on the maxhine fix the problem on an individual machine?
Is it because it is too hard for most AV programs to detect a Bot?
Is it because there are too many older computers that don't have a supported AV solution?
Could a free AV check on the most popular homepages (google.com, yahoo.com, live.com, etc) inform users that they are potentially compromised? This would only check to see if an up to date AV program was installed, not a full AV check...
Is it something else all together? Do we even know?
You want a SIP phone. Have an iPhone 3GS or 4G? I'm sure there is a paid for app that will allow you to make SIP calls. Hopefully there will be one that is iOS4 compatible that allows you to receive calls, too. The free LinPhone app works well enough, but only while the app is open.
Have an Android phone? I think there are SIP clients for Android as well.
Don't have either, just want something that's a WIFI SIP phone? Check out VoipSupply.com. They have a WIFI phone section. I'd either go cheap with the QuickPhones GA-342 or spend a little more for the Hitachi IP3000.
You'll need a SIP VOIP service. Check out Voip-Info.
Of course, test before you commit to something! There are free "toll-free-only" sip providers, which will allow you to test to see if it really works.
When the Apple iPhone was released, Apple managed to get a carrier to provide internet access to it's users for a flat rate of $20 a month. As Apple/AT&T moved to 3G, that rate "upgraded" $30 a month. Admittedly, there were plenty of slashdotter's here who felt this was completely unfair at the time, but I'm sure many of them do enjoy the speed difference from EDGE to 3G... (I'm curious if there are any $20 Unlimited EDGE plan users still out there?)
Now, AT&T is looking at this model and realizing that they are backing themselves into a corner: Users are using more and more bandwidth for the same $30 a month. This is a natural occurrence in all uses of the Internet. Unlike a wired network, the Cell network can easily be over-saturated, and if they can't compensate for users who download huge chunks of data they will begin to falter on delivering reasonable data rates to the rest of their customers.
Metering is the answer. Is this the right price? We will have to wait and see. I for one just checked my "Cellular Network Data" usage, and I have downloaded 1.0 GB, uploaded 200 MB. Last Reset: Never. I've owned this iPhone for 6 months. So 2 GB a month doesn't sound unreasonable. In fact, I think most of my downloads come over WiFi. I bet most of yours do too.
but the simple fact is that the publishers have to develop completely separate games for the Wii because its CPU is not powerful.
When I think of Nintendo, I think of their tier 1 titles. That's not to say there aren't any good 3rd party titles, but Zelda, Mario, Metriod... These games are a driving force which the big-N uses to drive sales. And the strategy has worked for them for the past 25 years. Now, who is Nintendo marketing for? The answer is simple:
Everyone. Let me do a little hypothetical for you:
Think of your favorite game on an Xbox 360 or Playstation 3. Got that game in your head? Now, imagine you were playing that game at Thanksgiving time in front of your whole family, including your Grandma. 9 games out of 10, I'm thinking that at best your grandma will simply not understand, or at worst be offended.
Now do the same thing with the Wii. 9 times out of 10, it's a game you and everybody you know can at least appreciate, if not be interested in.
That, and the revolutionary easy to use controls (which are now being emulated), make the Wii a killer social platform focused on games and having fun. That's why it's been a big success.
And the idea that "The CPU is too slow" is the reason for the Wii not making yet-another-year-of-record-sales... That doesn't make sense. As we all know, Super Mario Brothers (the original one for the NES) is fun despite having ugly graphics. It's not how the game looks, it's how the game _plays_.
More important. If Google sold an appliance, much like the Google Search Appliance, that allowed you to run Google Docs from your own network... or anywhere on the internet, that's bringing the cloud to your business. I see things going that way.
Google already does something like this with Google gears, but I haven't tried it yet.
No, I did not RTFA... but about Cloud Computing and all the conserns that come with it:
First, let's define the Cloud. If you have your backups "In the Cloud", my understanding is that you have your data hosted by somebody other than you. You reach them over the internet. You're using the internet to access the services. Because you're receiving this service from an outside network, you're getting it from the "Cloud".
Traditionally, you would be doing this yourself, within your own network. This is defiantly not from the "Cloud".
But what if you were running a business with multiple offices? What if the services you want are only at HQ? If you allow access to these services over the internet, isn't this "In the Cloud" for branch offices? Isn't that just a self-hosted cloud?
Hopefully, for anything you wish to keep private, you encrypt your data.
The MACK Truck Rule (MTR for short) is a measuring stick which we use do determine if a solution is good for us. Basically, it's an objective measurement of the level of expertiese required to do something. Basically, the MTR has you ask yourself (Or your team) the following question:
If the person(s) responsible for a task was suddenly hit by a MACK(TM) truck, How much time would it take for somebody else, untrained, to complete that task if needed?
If that amount of time is unreasonable*, It doesn't follow the MTR. Notice the caveat for unreasonable; this is the subjective part. What' unreasonable for one may be reasonable for another. This needs to be decided for yourselves.
Documentation always helps difficult tasks pass the MTR. So can good support. I try to leave a readme in the place where the installer is for a difficult program. I'm now begining to use FreeMind to map out networks and servers. I have a good ticket system for all our repairs. Hopefully these things will make things easier the day I want to take a vacation.
I'd like to point out something I've observed over the years I've used my DVR: I watch the commercials.
I'll be watching my show, and I'll be using the 30-second skip feature to skip commercials during the show... but in the act of flipping through the commercials, If I see something that looks interesting to me, I'll actually go back and see what the commercial is about.
Reasons I skip commercials include: The commercial is annoying, I've seen it several times, or I am defiantly not the target audience.
I've also experienced where I am watching with somebody else, I skip a commercial, and the other party asks to go back to see it because they were interested in it.
I'm sure I'm not alone in this observation. So, I think all commercials get a fair showing in most cases with DVR.
Take the entire transcript and replace the following words:
Microsoft -> Chevorlet XP -> Malabu Vista -> Volt
So if the sentence "We are not going to upgrade to Microsoft Vista, because XP is running fine and we've heard that there are problems with Vista." read as "We are not going to update to Chevy Volts, because our Malibus are running fine and we've heard there are problems with the Volt."... Would it be fair for Chevy to complain?
OpenDNS - This is the easiest to configure. Setup your internet connection to use the OpenDNS servers, and then do some base filtering on the really bad stuff. Block specific domains if you want, and/or use the built in blacklists.
Squid - This is a proxy filter. It can do a lot of things, but mostly it is use by the next few things to do what you want:
DansGuardian - A truly excellent content filter, with weighted lists if you like. Want to allow "Brest Cancer" but not just "Brest"? It can do that. Very powerful, but also takes some work to do.
AdZapper - Does what it sounds like: It stops Advertisements. Truly a great way to trim the net of the waste.... and to do all these things, I recommend...
ClarkConnect. It's a linux based firewall which can do all this and a whole lot more. Free and Paid versions available. Others will suggest different programs, this is just the one I'm using.
I'm using the Windows 7 Beta right now, and previously I've been using Windows Vista.
Is it really that much better? Here are the points I can think of it being better than Vista:
* Faster on Less Hardware - They did make it work better on older slower hardware with less memory. * Less Annoying User Account Control - It doesn't freak out every time I want to run a program from the desktop. This should be included into Vista with a service pack, imho. * New Starbar - I like it. Good Job Microsoft. But is it worth the upgrade?
Other than these things... why would anybody upgrade?
Remember what's important: That the students learn. Every thing you do should prompt you to ask this one simple question:
How does this benefit the students learning?
Computers are great, but there is nothing that a computer alone can do to teach a child. It requires people to do the hard work of actually setting up the computers to be used as tools in the teaching of Math, Science, Reading, History, Music, Art... all the things that are completely doable without a computer.
Where computers can be the most beneficial is with composition, collaboration, and as a tool of learning. Remembering this, you should be able to find the best way to help your students.
Okay, I listened to parts of all three videos that were in the article. What we can get right off the bat is:
1. The MIDI instruments were horrible. I had better MIDI in the mid-90's Microsoft. Stop using the FM Synth! 2. The mood of the original music did not match the mood of the generated track.
and, what will probably get me the most "This is a Troll" marks...
3. The music was actually very good. Chord progressions went smoothly, and followed and harmonized with the vocal track extremely well. I'm not big on rap, and I've never heard the song by (The Notorious) B.I.G. It was very good, even with the funky 80's techno harmony. The exception was the Beatles "Sgt. Pepper". But I bet that if they could have somehow removed the reverberation from the vocal track that the computer had to deal with... I bet it would have done just as well as it did on the other two songs. As for the Police's "Roxanne", I never knew that Sting's singing sounded so Jamaican!
But, looking into the future: They prefect this technology... and nay singer can create a melody, and a full harmony and rhythm is created for them... I don't know if I should be impressed by the technology or scared of the crap that will come through the radio.
1) The game is on the shelf and has a CD Key. 2) The store clerk registers the CD key at the time of purchase, making it valid. (Much like a Gift Card) 3) The game won't install without a valid CD key, which it checks over the internet or with an over-the-phone verification (much like the current Windows activation).
Unless they have some much more elaborate plan, this is probably the method they're going to use... Now, what's wrong with this plan?
1) What happens 10 years down the line when the game is abandonware? Can I still install it, even though the Key can't verify, and the company doesn't exist anymore? 2) What if I want to play the game on my laptop? 3) What if the store clerk can't register the key? Networks fail, servers get busy, scanners misread, hard drives fail, and don't forget human error! 4) How will this stop pirates? A pirate will just crack the game anyways, create their own installer, or setup a program to report to the installer "Why yes, XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX is a valid key!"
Somehow I don't think this plan to prevent piracy will work.
But it is driving the price of well known and well used software down. And that's a good thing. Trust me.
Let say your company has a good product, such as an Exchange alternative that's very inexpensive... But now there are other great open source products out there that can do the same thing: Zimbra and Zarafa are 2 that come to mind. These two products start to eat into your company's market. Well, what are you going to do? I don't think you can sit back and ask "Are we doing it all wrong?" No. It's not the fault of open source developers to produce good code and give it away for free/cheap.
But what can a company do? Either your company needs to make your product better, (More features, less bugs, more speed, smaller footprint, etc) or move on to a new project.
Does that seem harsh? It shouldn't. If you're in a business which breeds competition (such as the software business) then you must compete for your market share. Otherwise, move on to something nobody else is doing, or at least something nobody else is doing well.
Sure, I would love to see an open source client for WoW. There's lot of good technology in the client which would benefit the open source community, even outside of the development of open source games.
But I'm not here to ask for an open source WoW client. I'm here to ask for a WoW client for Linux (and other Unicies), open source or not. Let me try to convince you...
From the comments made in this post, it appears that a Wow client already exists for linux. I suspected this for some time, as your team seems quite capable of handling multiple platforms with your code. The very quick transition from PPC Macs to Intel Macs was impressive. Knowing how developers seem to often like linux, I'm sure the work was done in these developer's spare time.
Now, if there is a client, and you decide to make it available to Linux, you will find that the community has two kinds of users: A) Foaming at the mouth ranting zealots and B) Well informed, opinionated and/or helpful users. Looking at the World of Warcraft forums, It's obvious that you are familiar with the former, and if you read Slashdot, I'm sure that you've experienced the latter. What's important to know about this group of users: We do not expect linux to be a "primary" platform for WoW. We know that your primary audience uses PCs, and a smaller percentage uses Macs. We, the linux users, are (for now, we hope) a tiny percentage of your prospective users. Knowing this, any of us who want to play WoW already either run the client from a Windows/Mac operating system, or use Wine/Codeweavers in order to play in our preferred environment.
Taking myself as an example: I was running Ubuntu 64-bit, and was happy to run WoW in Wine. but, unfortunetly, the performance hit I was experiancing (vs running it in windows) was so great that I felt that I needed to move to a supported platform. Now I'm running Vista. While I am happy with the performance of WoW in Vista, I miss my linux desktop. If WoW ran nativly on linux, I would have never made the (quite expensive, mind you) switch.
If Linux was provided a community supported client (no phone support, only one forum for linux issues) I'm sure that linux users around the world would rejoice.
It's completely up to you, the developer, to decide if you wish to support a platform. And often, these decisions are made based off of profitability. While I'm sure your customer base may grow some, I'm also sure that most linux users who want to play WoW already play it by other means. There would be a small percentage that would come from those who only would play if it was native, but that number is bound to be small. Instead, the reason to do this is for the good of the game, the support of the platform, and for the good will for open source.
Thank you for taking the time to read our responses. I hope to see you online.
Slashdot Mirror
How Linux wins the Desktop
1. We need a "Default". Not necessarily a default Distro, but a set of standards that all distros can follow. Of course, other options will be allowed, even encouraged. Rationale: We need the "fragmentation" problem to be addressed, and I would suggest that a good start would to have a standard interface that is common across all of "Linux".
2. We need an easy way to manage a large group of computers. Large or small, businesses and schools want to make the configuration of their computers easy. Examples: Mass deploy Chrome. Setup a lab of computers to use a single printer. Setup logins with permissions and shared home folders. Rationale: These features are easy to configure on Windows and Mac OS X, but not so easy on Linux.
3. Easy Deployment. There needs to be a scriptable deployment that can mass install Linux onto multiple computers easily, including initial setup and joining of whatever management system is being used. While "image based" deployment can work, native installation deployment with configuration would be better. Rationale: If it is going to compete against Windows and Mac OS X, it has to be as easy to deploy.
I'm sure there are some projects that already fill some of these needs... but it's not there yet.
Fox (and friends) makes money on TV shows in two ways: You buy their channel on [insert TV provider here]. Otherwise, they make money from advertisers. If they have a show that has 1 million viewers, the ads that are played during and around that show are worth 1 million possible ad views. That's worth some money, and Fox (and friends) will extract the value of good programming in this manner from the advertisers.
So there is a reason why Fox (and friends) are not interested in you skipping their commercials. If the box automatically skips the commercials, the advertisers can claim that there were no ad-view from that viewer, effectively lowering the overall value of the ads on the show.
Let's say that Fox (and Friends) win. No big deal, we have to press a button to skip commercials, just like we have done for years.
Now let's say Dish wins. One or many of the following may occur:
a) Fox (and friends) start to insert their advertisements directly into their shows. They already do this, in a limited fashion. Imagine much more invasive ads.
b) Dish (and their competitors) starts to skip commercials on a ALL channels, all the time. (The current version only hops adds automatically the next day, you can't do that the day of.) This leads to...
c) Advertisers reduce the amount of money they give to the channels. Because of the decreased revenue...
d) Fox (and friends) start to charge more for upfront for their channels and/or...
e) Fox (and friends) start making cheaper to produce content.
Is that what will happen? Maybe. Is that what we want? Maybe not.
--Pathway
-----
Disclaimer: I am a long-time customer of Dish Networks. I do not currently own the Hopper, but I have followed its' release. I am an advocate of IPTV, and I feel that Dish currently provides the best IPTV solution with their Sling purchase. I do not watch the TV show "Fox & Friends." The repetitive use of the term was intended as a joke. Laugh, it's funny. Especially since you have read this far.
I love the fact that "It's the best thing in the world!" right now... and you can't get in! I'm usually really late to these social things (i only got into Facebook a year ago), so maybe I'll get in early this time?
--Pathway
I'm sorry, but that's just Crazy!
Forgive my ignorance on the subject matter, but why can't we fix this?
Is it because the infected machines have no anti-virus or anti-malware? Would a free AV program installed on the maxhine fix the problem on an individual machine?
Is it because it is too hard for most AV programs to detect a Bot?
Is it because there are too many older computers that don't have a supported AV solution?
Could a free AV check on the most popular homepages (google.com, yahoo.com, live.com, etc) inform users that they are potentially compromised? This would only check to see if an up to date AV program was installed, not a full AV check...
Is it something else all together? Do we even know?
Thanks for helping me understand the problem.
--Pathway
Lies! I refuse to believe it!
Sm:)e.
Choose any two.
I would suggest Tor. (Good and Cheap.)
--Pathway
Have an Android phone? I think there are SIP clients for Android as well.
Don't have either, just want something that's a WIFI SIP phone? Check out VoipSupply.com. They have a WIFI phone section. I'd either go cheap with the QuickPhones GA-342 or spend a little more for the Hitachi IP3000.
You'll need a SIP VOIP service. Check out Voip-Info.
Of course, test before you commit to something! There are free "toll-free-only" sip providers, which will allow you to test to see if it really works.
--Pathway
When the Apple iPhone was released, Apple managed to get a carrier to provide internet access to it's users for a flat rate of $20 a month. As Apple/AT&T moved to 3G, that rate "upgraded" $30 a month. Admittedly, there were plenty of slashdotter's here who felt this was completely unfair at the time, but I'm sure many of them do enjoy the speed difference from EDGE to 3G... (I'm curious if there are any $20 Unlimited EDGE plan users still out there?)
Now, AT&T is looking at this model and realizing that they are backing themselves into a corner: Users are using more and more bandwidth for the same $30 a month. This is a natural occurrence in all uses of the Internet. Unlike a wired network, the Cell network can easily be over-saturated, and if they can't compensate for users who download huge chunks of data they will begin to falter on delivering reasonable data rates to the rest of their customers.
Metering is the answer. Is this the right price? We will have to wait and see. I for one just checked my "Cellular Network Data" usage, and I have downloaded 1.0 GB, uploaded 200 MB. Last Reset: Never. I've owned this iPhone for 6 months. So 2 GB a month doesn't sound unreasonable. In fact, I think most of my downloads come over WiFi. I bet most of yours do too.
--Pathway
but the simple fact is that the publishers have to develop completely separate games for the Wii because its CPU is not powerful.
When I think of Nintendo, I think of their tier 1 titles. That's not to say there aren't any good 3rd party titles, but Zelda, Mario, Metriod... These games are a driving force which the big-N uses to drive sales. And the strategy has worked for them for the past 25 years. Now, who is Nintendo marketing for? The answer is simple:
Everyone. Let me do a little hypothetical for you:
Think of your favorite game on an Xbox 360 or Playstation 3. Got that game in your head? Now, imagine you were playing that game at Thanksgiving time in front of your whole family, including your Grandma. 9 games out of 10, I'm thinking that at best your grandma will simply not understand, or at worst be offended.
Now do the same thing with the Wii. 9 times out of 10, it's a game you and everybody you know can at least appreciate, if not be interested in.
That, and the revolutionary easy to use controls (which are now being emulated), make the Wii a killer social platform focused on games and having fun. That's why it's been a big success.
And the idea that "The CPU is too slow" is the reason for the Wii not making yet-another-year-of-record-sales... That doesn't make sense. As we all know, Super Mario Brothers (the original one for the NES) is fun despite having ugly graphics. It's not how the game looks, it's how the game _plays_.
--Pathway
It might not be exactly what you're looking for, but check out http://whynot.net/ for idea exchange.
Less important: It appears that Google Docs does support SSL. See the Following: http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?answer=100181
More important. If Google sold an appliance, much like the Google Search Appliance, that allowed you to run Google Docs from your own network... or anywhere on the internet, that's bringing the cloud to your business. I see things going that way.
Google already does something like this with Google gears, but I haven't tried it yet.
--Pathway
No, I did not RTFA... but about Cloud Computing and all the conserns that come with it:
First, let's define the Cloud. If you have your backups "In the Cloud", my understanding is that you have your data hosted by somebody other than you. You reach them over the internet. You're using the internet to access the services. Because you're receiving this service from an outside network, you're getting it from the "Cloud".
Traditionally, you would be doing this yourself, within your own network. This is defiantly not from the "Cloud".
But what if you were running a business with multiple offices? What if the services you want are only at HQ? If you allow access to these services over the internet, isn't this "In the Cloud" for branch offices? Isn't that just a self-hosted cloud?
Hopefully, for anything you wish to keep private, you encrypt your data.
--Pathway
All I can say is...
Totally cool real life superhero origin story!
Okay, I'll stop geeking out now.
--Pathway
Ah, you're not following the MACK(TM) Truck Rule.
The MACK Truck Rule (MTR for short) is a measuring stick which we use do determine if a solution is good for us. Basically, it's an objective measurement of the level of expertiese required to do something. Basically, the MTR has you ask yourself (Or your team) the following question:
If the person(s) responsible for a task was suddenly hit by a MACK(TM) truck, How much time would it take for somebody else, untrained, to complete that task if needed?
If that amount of time is unreasonable*, It doesn't follow the MTR. Notice the caveat for unreasonable; this is the subjective part. What' unreasonable for one may be reasonable for another. This needs to be decided for yourselves.
Documentation always helps difficult tasks pass the MTR. So can good support. I try to leave a readme in the place where the installer is for a difficult program. I'm now begining to use FreeMind to map out networks and servers. I have a good ticket system for all our repairs. Hopefully these things will make things easier the day I want to take a vacation.
--Pathway
I'd like to point out something I've observed over the years I've used my DVR: I watch the commercials.
I'll be watching my show, and I'll be using the 30-second skip feature to skip commercials during the show... but in the act of flipping through the commercials, If I see something that looks interesting to me, I'll actually go back and see what the commercial is about.
Reasons I skip commercials include: The commercial is annoying, I've seen it several times, or I am defiantly not the target audience.
I've also experienced where I am watching with somebody else, I skip a commercial, and the other party asks to go back to see it because they were interested in it.
I'm sure I'm not alone in this observation. So, I think all commercials get a fair showing in most cases with DVR.
Take the entire transcript and replace the following words:
Microsoft -> Chevorlet
XP -> Malabu
Vista -> Volt
So if the sentence "We are not going to upgrade to Microsoft Vista, because XP is running fine and we've heard that there are problems with Vista." read as "We are not going to update to Chevy Volts, because our Malibus are running fine and we've heard there are problems with the Volt." ... Would it be fair for Chevy to complain?
I don't think so.
And, no, I did not RTFA.
--Pathway
OpenDNS - This is the easiest to configure. Setup your internet connection to use the OpenDNS servers, and then do some base filtering on the really bad stuff. Block specific domains if you want, and/or use the built in blacklists.
Squid - This is a proxy filter. It can do a lot of things, but mostly it is use by the next few things to do what you want:
DansGuardian - A truly excellent content filter, with weighted lists if you like. Want to allow "Brest Cancer" but not just "Brest"? It can do that. Very powerful, but also takes some work to do.
AdZapper - Does what it sounds like: It stops Advertisements. Truly a great way to trim the net of the waste. ... and to do all these things, I recommend ...
ClarkConnect. It's a linux based firewall which can do all this and a whole lot more. Free and Paid versions available. Others will suggest different programs, this is just the one I'm using.
I'm using the Windows 7 Beta right now, and previously I've been using Windows Vista.
Is it really that much better? Here are the points I can think of it being better than Vista:
* Faster on Less Hardware - They did make it work better on older slower hardware with less memory.
* Less Annoying User Account Control - It doesn't freak out every time I want to run a program from the desktop. This should be included into Vista with a service pack, imho.
* New Starbar - I like it. Good Job Microsoft. But is it worth the upgrade?
Other than these things... why would anybody upgrade?
Oh... yeah, that's right... Everybody says it's "So much better." Right.
--Pathway
Remember what's important: That the students learn. Every thing you do should prompt you to ask this one simple question:
How does this benefit the students learning?
Computers are great, but there is nothing that a computer alone can do to teach a child. It requires people to do the hard work of actually setting up the computers to be used as tools in the teaching of Math, Science, Reading, History, Music, Art... all the things that are completely doable without a computer.
Where computers can be the most beneficial is with composition, collaboration, and as a tool of learning. Remembering this, you should be able to find the best way to help your students.
--Pathway
This is great progress!
Okay, I listened to parts of all three videos that were in the article. What we can get right off the bat is:
1. The MIDI instruments were horrible. I had better MIDI in the mid-90's Microsoft. Stop using the FM Synth!
2. The mood of the original music did not match the mood of the generated track.
and, what will probably get me the most "This is a Troll" marks...
3. The music was actually very good. Chord progressions went smoothly, and followed and harmonized with the vocal track extremely well. I'm not big on rap, and I've never heard the song by (The Notorious) B.I.G. It was very good, even with the funky 80's techno harmony. The exception was the Beatles "Sgt. Pepper". But I bet that if they could have somehow removed the reverberation from the vocal track that the computer had to deal with... I bet it would have done just as well as it did on the other two songs. As for the Police's "Roxanne", I never knew that Sting's singing sounded so Jamaican!
But, looking into the future: They prefect this technology... and nay singer can create a melody, and a full harmony and rhythm is created for them... I don't know if I should be impressed by the technology or scared of the crap that will come through the radio.
--Pathway
I'm guessing this is how this idea works:
1) The game is on the shelf and has a CD Key.
2) The store clerk registers the CD key at the time of purchase, making it valid. (Much like a Gift Card)
3) The game won't install without a valid CD key, which it checks over the internet or with an over-the-phone verification (much like the current Windows activation).
Unless they have some much more elaborate plan, this is probably the method they're going to use... Now, what's wrong with this plan?
1) What happens 10 years down the line when the game is abandonware? Can I still install it, even though the Key can't verify, and the company doesn't exist anymore?
2) What if I want to play the game on my laptop?
3) What if the store clerk can't register the key? Networks fail, servers get busy, scanners misread, hard drives fail, and don't forget human error!
4) How will this stop pirates? A pirate will just crack the game anyways, create their own installer, or setup a program to report to the installer "Why yes, XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX is a valid key!"
Somehow I don't think this plan to prevent piracy will work.
--Pathway
No, Open Source software is not a race to zero.
But it is driving the price of well known and well used software down. And that's a good thing. Trust me.
Let say your company has a good product, such as an Exchange alternative that's very inexpensive... But now there are other great open source products out there that can do the same thing: Zimbra and Zarafa are 2 that come to mind. These two products start to eat into your company's market. Well, what are you going to do? I don't think you can sit back and ask "Are we doing it all wrong?" No. It's not the fault of open source developers to produce good code and give it away for free/cheap.
But what can a company do? Either your company needs to make your product better, (More features, less bugs, more speed, smaller footprint, etc) or move on to a new project.
Does that seem harsh? It shouldn't. If you're in a business which breeds competition (such as the software business) then you must compete for your market share. Otherwise, move on to something nobody else is doing, or at least something nobody else is doing well.
--Pathway
Dear Blizzard,
Sure, I would love to see an open source client for WoW. There's lot of good technology in the client which would benefit the open source community, even outside of the development of open source games.
But I'm not here to ask for an open source WoW client. I'm here to ask for a WoW client for Linux (and other Unicies), open source or not. Let me try to convince you...
From the comments made in this post, it appears that a Wow client already exists for linux. I suspected this for some time, as your team seems quite capable of handling multiple platforms with your code. The very quick transition from PPC Macs to Intel Macs was impressive. Knowing how developers seem to often like linux, I'm sure the work was done in these developer's spare time.
Now, if there is a client, and you decide to make it available to Linux, you will find that the community has two kinds of users: A) Foaming at the mouth ranting zealots and B) Well informed, opinionated and/or helpful users. Looking at the World of Warcraft forums, It's obvious that you are familiar with the former, and if you read Slashdot, I'm sure that you've experienced the latter. What's important to know about this group of users: We do not expect linux to be a "primary" platform for WoW. We know that your primary audience uses PCs, and a smaller percentage uses Macs. We, the linux users, are (for now, we hope) a tiny percentage of your prospective users. Knowing this, any of us who want to play WoW already either run the client from a Windows/Mac operating system, or use Wine/Codeweavers in order to play in our preferred environment.
Taking myself as an example: I was running Ubuntu 64-bit, and was happy to run WoW in Wine. but, unfortunetly, the performance hit I was experiancing (vs running it in windows) was so great that I felt that I needed to move to a supported platform. Now I'm running Vista. While I am happy with the performance of WoW in Vista, I miss my linux desktop. If WoW ran nativly on linux, I would have never made the (quite expensive, mind you) switch.
If Linux was provided a community supported client (no phone support, only one forum for linux issues) I'm sure that linux users around the world would rejoice.
It's completely up to you, the developer, to decide if you wish to support a platform. And often, these decisions are made based off of profitability. While I'm sure your customer base may grow some, I'm also sure that most linux users who want to play WoW already play it by other means. There would be a small percentage that would come from those who only would play if it was native, but that number is bound to be small. Instead, the reason to do this is for the good of the game, the support of the platform, and for the good will for open source.
Thank you for taking the time to read our responses. I hope to see you online.
--Pathway
Maybe I'm feeling pessimistic right now, but...
Like other great ideas which have come and gone, this is probably either
A) Too good to be true
or
B) Will never come to fruition due to corporate greed.