Again: This is not a law of nature. It is, perhaps, accepted practice in many circles, but there is nothing that says It Must Be So.
If they don't, then they will eventually lose their readership.
The publishers of the "National Enquirer" would no doubt disagree with you.
I value my time, and will eventually stop reading SlashDot in favor of other venues if this continues.
Again: This is not something Rob (the guy who runs Slashdot) cares too much about. It is an idle threat; it provides no force.
If you want to influence major decision makers...
I think I begin to see your error. Namely, the assumption that Rob & Co want to influence major decision makers. They don't. They want to have fun. As the tagline says, this is "News for Nerds". It isn't "News for Major Decision Makers". Those two sets may intersect, but they are not mutually inclusive.
Don't get me wrong -- you're welcome here, or as welcome as any of us are. But you have to accept Slashdot for what it is. If you're not willing to do that, you're right -- this is the wrong site for you, and you should go elsewhere.
I've submitted a number of relevent articles over the past year or so. They dealt with real issues and questions about technology. This morning I start up my browser and see an article which is asking how to spell a word???????
Yup, that's right. Welcome to Slashdot.
Slashdot is run by a few guys looking to have fun. (They have also become moderately wealthy because Andover.net apparently considered Slashdot to be of great value, but due to their contractually guaranteed editorial independence, that is another matter entirely.) They do not run it to keep you happy, nor do they present or intend it to be an unbiased, objective, or even useful news source.
Please take note of the word "Submit" in the "Submit Story" link. Submit. "To commit to the consideration or judgment of another", according to my dictionary. The emphasis is mine. First, "consideration". When you submit a story, it is explicitly NOT guaranteed to be posted. Second, "by another". Not you. Them. The Slashdot editors will post what they darn well please, and if you don't like, that's just too bad.
... or you will eventually start to lose that portion of your readership which may be influential and have real decision-making powers.
Somehow, I suspect this is somewhere far below "refrigerator mold" on Rob's list of things to worry about.
In short: The submission queue is NOT your personal ego enhancement tool. If you don't like that, leave. And don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
You recently used the word "email" in a post on the Slash Dot Web Site. This message is legal notification that our client, Microsoft Corporation, owns the trademark, copyright, and patent on the word "email", and you are in violation of their Intellectual Property rights.
Normally, we would send you a cease and desist letter, or simply send Rocky and Guido out to your house to make some, ahem, personal rearrangements. However, Microsoft Corporation has been kind enough to allow you full license to use "email", provided you use the new name: Microsoft(TM)(R)(C) ActiveMail(TM)(R)(C).
We thank you for your expected cooperation in this matter.
Mr. Phat Bastad,
Junior Partner,
Dewy, Cheatum, and Howe, Attorneys at Law.
Why, this is outrageous! It infingines on my Constitutional Rights as an American! I won't stand for it! I'm going to call my Congressman! I'm going to call the ACLU! I'm going to call...
*blink*
... hey, Eric, is that a new Quake III mod you've got there?
The Linux kernel has never been self-booting on Alpha.
The Linux kernel has been self-booting on the Alpha since just about day one. You can write a raw kernel image to a disk and boot it from the system firmware, just like you can on the i386 architecture. However, few people do, because this is very limiting (again, just like on the i386 architecture). You can only have one kernel image per disk partition, you have to pre-allocate raw disk space for it, and you cannot pass parameters.
(For those who are curious, look in $KERNEL_SOURCE/arch/alpha/boot/, especially main.c function start_kernel.)
Your argument overlooked a BIG factor - a store is a "public accomodation" and its business license requires the owner to make certain compromises.
Of which the US Constitution says precisely zip.
Can your city, county, state, or federal legislature enact laws granting us additional rights? Even rights protecting us from each other? Sure they can. In fact, that is their primary purpose. But the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights have nothing to do with it.
But a restaurant owner *can't* refuse to allow a guest to dine in his restaurant... on the basis of... race, ethnic origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation, etc.
Of which, I might point out, "wearing a backpack" is noticeably absent. As it is from the Constituion.
The exact list varies with local laws.
Hell, you even agree with me. Local laws. Maybe my town has a law saying that I cannot discriminate who gets access to my store based on choice of footware. In that case, I cannot kick someone out because they are wearing sandals. But this is a local ordinance, and has nothing to do with the protections against unreasonable search and seizure in the Fourth Amendment.
stores that ask to see your bags or hold them etc are attempting what amounts to illegal search and seizure
*sigh* When are people going to learn? The Bill of Rights and similar documents restrict what the government can do, not private entities like people and corporations. Ever notice how the Bill of Rights uses the phrase "Congress shall make no law" a lot? That's right, it prevents Congress from passing laws. It does not say one damn thing about what I'm allowed to do to you.
If I'm a store owner, I can make it a condition that, in order to enter my store -- which is my own property -- you have to submit yourself to search. You are in no way obligated to submit yourself to said search, but I am also in no way obligated to serve you. It's my store; I can tell you to get out if I want.
(Now, you could make the case that, since you never signed a contract, I cannot hold you to the agreement, but you would have to bring it before a court of law claiming damages or something. Hardly worth the effort. Just go to another store.)
The BX chipset gives you 2 CPU support 'for free' -- we'll see if the AMD chipset does the same, or if you need to buy a special SMP chipset.
Seems unlikely. The electrical interface that AMD uses (which is the same one DEC's Alpha uses) is not, in fact, a bus architecture, but rather a port. Each CPU has dedicated lines to the a "hub" chip. So you would need significantly more silicon to make a dual-processor chipset, as compared to a single-processor chipset. It seems generally agreed that this design is superior to the Intel bus design (it scales to 1000s of processors, compared to Intel's eight), but it does make thing a bit trickier on the low-end.
SMP Systems have a huge margin advantage over single CPU systems.
Very true. Why do SMP systems cost so much more? Because the people using them are willing to pay so much more.
With SMP you can start using the magic words "server" and "workstation" which translates into higher profits for the resellers.
"Server". There, I just used the magic word on a single-processor system!;-)
Indeed, I think I do have some problems. However, the system runs happily (at 100% CPU usage) for days on end, but has never stayed alive for more than about 4 hours with a Netscape running.
Hmmmm.
I'd make sure you were using the latest version of XFree considered most stable for your card. Right now, for some cards, 4.1 is more stable, for others, 3.3.6 is the one to go with. (Being in the middle of a major transition is making things a little confusing in the world of X11 on Linux right now.)
You might want to try adjusting some settings in XF86Config for your video card, if it supports them. Some chipsets have advanced features which are not always 100% stable.
And, are you sure it is really a total system lockup? I have seen Netscape get sufficiently hosed up that the X console becomes unresponsive. However, I was still able to SSH into the box, kill off a few programs, and get my X session back. In few cases, I've had to kill the X server itself, but I've never had a full system lock using a production release of XFree.
(I have had lock-ups using beta, alpha, and development versions of certain drivers, but you kind of expect that.)
I can't disable JavaScript without going into such a paranoid mode that I can't even download anything...
1. Go to Tools -> Internet Options
2. Select the "Security" tab
3. Select the "Internet" zone
4. Click "Custom"
5. Scroll down to "Active Scripting"
6. Set it to disabled
7. Close out of all dialogs, saving changes.
Netscape crashes my machine sooo hard (in Windows and Linux) that only the power switch can bring the machine back to life...
Dude, if a browser can lock up your Linux box that hard, you must have some serious system-level issues going on.
So, you know very little about Linux, yet you have no problem pointing out all the things it does wrong.
Word of advice: Don't complain about things you do not understand. You don't see me complaining about implementation details of BeOS. Why? Cause I've never used the thing.
Can you please explain WHY attributes break portability?
Because they're not portable. They don't work on other systems. Anything that depends on them will not be portable to other systems. Thus, attributes aren't portable.
Is that clear enough, or do I need to draw you a picture?
You complain constantly about all of the "Linux zealots" who ignore problems in their favorite OS, yet you seem to be the biggest perpetrator of that particular vice.
...ID3 information is injected into attributes...
Gee, like how it is already embedded in the MP3 itself? Next you'll be saying attributes can also store the title of an HTML document. What progress!
Innovation should not be held captive to those who cannot innovate.
This is true, but does it apply? Are BeOS attributes really trying to improve things, or are they trying to pull that favorite industry tactic of locking us into a single vendor? (I actually suspect the former, but I have to consider the possibility.)
The case can be made that application-level attributes do not belong in the system, but in application-level libraries. By keeping such information in the files themselves, they are easily transfered to other systems, and do not require system-level support. Meanwhile, you can still provide a standard API to get at the information with an application-library. Thus, you get the best of both worlds.
And I couldn't care less what *YOU* think is an outmoded model. The minute you can get an economist or somebody with knowledge of the industry to tell me propriatory is dead, then I'll listen. (Emphasis mine.)
No you wouldn't. Slashdot has had countless stories about such things, but you continue your tired crusade every chance you get. Meanwhile, you will happily ignore yet another legitimate complaint about your favorite OS: That anyone using it is locked into a single-vendor solution.
I usually don't reply to AC posts, but this was just too good to pass up...
Windows95 had a minor version of this failing, in that, at the login screen, you could do a ctrl-alt-esc, select "run" and run "explorer", and get in without providing a credential to the OS.
Um, you could also just hit that "Cancel" button on the logon dialog and skip right past it...
What makes Linux bloated isn't the kernel (which weighs in just under 2 million lines, about 500,000 more lines than BeOS)...
Lines of code isn't a terribly accurate measurement of code bloat. Perhaps those 1.5 million "extra" lines in Linux go to support things BeOS does not. Drivers. Platforms. Features. Stability. Security. Whatever. Maybe they're documentation. Maybe they're copyright notices. But then, we really don't know, do we? We can't know, because BeOS holds us hostage with its source code.
... but all the crap around it (XFree, Mozilla, GNOME, KDE, and the dozens of libraries)
The nice thing about Linux is that nobody is forcing you to run all that "crap", as you so eloquently put it. If you want a stripped-down, bare-bones system with nothing but X11 and a single app, you can do that. Don't need the GUI? You can toss that, too. If you have the horsepower and the desire, you can also run GNOME with Enlightenment and every silly graphics effect you can think of turned on, plus sixteen different versions of Mozilla at once. Your choice.
That is one of the things that makes Linux so popular: Choice. We like having the ability to make decisions about we use. We like being able to choose the software that best fits our needs. We do not like companies that tell us they know better then we do, and no, we can't make changes and we can't see the source.
Linux isn't growing at all in the consumer desktop market.
Source?
Think hard about Linux. Who decides if you run GNOME or KDE? Not *YOU* but the programmers who write the programs you need to run.
This is sorely flawed reasoning at best, and absolutely bogus flamebait more likely.
First of all, if we except your rather flawed reasoning, then anyone who runs programs they didn't write are slaves. That includes you and your favorite OS.
But again, your reasoning is flawed. I can run KDE programs and GNOME programs and old Xt programs and even terminal programs, all at the same time. I need to have all the libraries a program requires installed, yes, but go ahead and show me a program that will run without a library it needs.
Better still, since most of this stuff is Open Source, we can take the program and re-write it to use the desktop environment of our choice. We can even change the desktop environment if we need to.
With BeOS, on the other hand, you're locked in, and cannot change it. Sounds like you're the real slave to me.
Of this I have no doubt. DES will be around for a long time, simply because it is so common, and common things are slow to become replaced.
But Triple DES is probably considered the most secure algorithm currently available...
This isn't saying much. In many government circles, you either use 3DES or... DES.
(again, because it has stood up to extreme pressure to "crack it)
As you noted, the problems with 3DES are more with the unwieldiness of it then with the security properties of the algorithm itself.
3DES is basically a hack to work around the limitations of a crummy algorithm by running it through the process multiple times. This makes it an expensive algorithm to implement. Cycles spent running DES multiple times would be better spent on a more secure algorithm.
It is like saying your '57 Cadillac still runs fine. Even if it does, a newer car will be much easier to deal with and much cheaper to operate.
Does grandma have to even know she has a windows/system directory? Will joe ever need to even See a DOS prompt?
No, and that's exactly my point. They don't know or care about such things, so why should they know or care about them in Linux, either?
Of the few things Windows has going for it is the fact that you can do pretty much anything that would come up in normal use without actually having to know anything about how the system works.
Linux is pretty much at that point now, if you're running the latest-and-greatest and it has been properly setup.
Yes, Linux requires proper setup. So does Windows. The thing that really makes Windows "easy" is that it comes pre-loaded on the HP Pavilions at Wal-Mart.
Most of the time you can't simply pop in a cd or double click an icon and have a program install on the first try with obvious icons and easy to understand instructions for its features...
The support is there. Most of the time, it doesn't work because it's a Windows disc you just bought. Duh. Software companies tend to focus on the product that has 95% of the market.
Slashdot Mirror
Personally, I'd recommend beta-testing IE 6, since IE not only has won the browser wars, it's clearly a better browser - and will remain so.
Was I the only one double-checking the calendar to see if today wasn't somehow April 1st?
A pro-Microsoft comment from a Slashdot editor?
I'd better sell my stock.
Any editorial staff has that responsibility.
Again: This is not a law of nature. It is, perhaps, accepted practice in many circles, but there is nothing that says It Must Be So.
If they don't, then they will eventually lose their readership.
The publishers of the "National Enquirer" would no doubt disagree with you.
I value my time, and will eventually stop reading SlashDot in favor of other venues if this continues.
Again: This is not something Rob (the guy who runs Slashdot) cares too much about. It is an idle threat; it provides no force.
If you want to influence major decision makers...
I think I begin to see your error. Namely, the assumption that Rob & Co want to influence major decision makers. They don't. They want to have fun. As the tagline says, this is "News for Nerds". It isn't "News for Major Decision Makers". Those two sets may intersect, but they are not mutually inclusive.
Don't get me wrong -- you're welcome here, or as welcome as any of us are. But you have to accept Slashdot for what it is. If you're not willing to do that, you're right -- this is the wrong site for you, and you should go elsewhere.
Cheers,
The editorial staff has the responsibility to maintain consistancy ...
And where, pray tell, is this written?
I've submitted a number of relevent articles over the past year or so. They dealt with real issues and questions about technology. This morning I start up my browser and see an article which is asking how to spell a word???????
... or you will eventually start to lose that portion of your readership which may be influential and have real decision-making powers.
Yup, that's right. Welcome to Slashdot.
Slashdot is run by a few guys looking to have fun. (They have also become moderately wealthy because Andover.net apparently considered Slashdot to be of great value, but due to their contractually guaranteed editorial independence, that is another matter entirely.) They do not run it to keep you happy, nor do they present or intend it to be an unbiased, objective, or even useful news source.
Please take note of the word "Submit" in the "Submit Story" link. Submit. "To commit to the consideration or judgment of another", according to my dictionary. The emphasis is mine. First, "consideration". When you submit a story, it is explicitly NOT guaranteed to be posted. Second, "by another". Not you. Them. The Slashdot editors will post what they darn well please, and if you don't like, that's just too bad.
Somehow, I suspect this is somewhere far below "refrigerator mold" on Rob's list of things to worry about.
In short: The submission queue is NOT your personal ego enhancement tool. If you don't like that, leave. And don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
Dear Mr. Coward,
You recently used the word "email" in a post on the Slash Dot Web Site. This message is legal notification that our client, Microsoft Corporation, owns the trademark, copyright, and patent on the word "email", and you are in violation of their Intellectual Property rights.
Normally, we would send you a cease and desist letter, or simply send Rocky and Guido out to your house to make some, ahem, personal rearrangements. However, Microsoft Corporation has been kind enough to allow you full license to use "email", provided you use the new name: Microsoft(TM)(R)(C) ActiveMail(TM)(R)(C).
We thank you for your expected cooperation in this matter.
Mr. Phat Bastad,
Junior Partner,
Dewy, Cheatum, and Howe, Attorneys at Law.
Why, this is outrageous! It infingines on my Constitutional Rights as an American! I won't stand for it! I'm going to call my Congressman! I'm going to call the ACLU! I'm going to call ...
*blink*
... hey, Eric, is that a new Quake III mod you've got there?
The Linux kernel has never been self-booting on Alpha.
The Linux kernel has been self-booting on the Alpha since just about day one. You can write a raw kernel image to a disk and boot it from the system firmware, just like you can on the i386 architecture. However, few people do, because this is very limiting (again, just like on the i386 architecture). You can only have one kernel image per disk partition, you have to pre-allocate raw disk space for it, and you cannot pass parameters.
(For those who are curious, look in $KERNEL_SOURCE/arch/alpha/boot/, especially main.c function start_kernel.)
Wouldn't this be more of a 'Forced Feedback Driver for X' thing than a kernel support in 2.6 thing?
;-)
I noticed that too. I couldn't help but think, "Yah, but what I really want is support in GCC!".
Your argument overlooked a BIG factor - a store is a "public accomodation" and its business license requires the owner to make certain compromises.
... on the basis of ... race, ethnic origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation, etc.
Of which the US Constitution says precisely zip.
Can your city, county, state, or federal legislature enact laws granting us additional rights? Even rights protecting us from each other? Sure they can. In fact, that is their primary purpose. But the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights have nothing to do with it.
But a restaurant owner *can't* refuse to allow a guest to dine in his restaurant
Of which, I might point out, "wearing a backpack" is noticeably absent. As it is from the Constituion.
The exact list varies with local laws.
Hell, you even agree with me. Local laws. Maybe my town has a law saying that I cannot discriminate who gets access to my store based on choice of footware. In that case, I cannot kick someone out because they are wearing sandals. But this is a local ordinance, and has nothing to do with the protections against unreasonable search and seizure in the Fourth Amendment.
stores that ask to see your bags or hold them etc are attempting what amounts to illegal search and seizure
*sigh* When are people going to learn? The Bill of Rights and similar documents restrict what the government can do, not private entities like people and corporations. Ever notice how the Bill of Rights uses the phrase "Congress shall make no law" a lot? That's right, it prevents Congress from passing laws. It does not say one damn thing about what I'm allowed to do to you.
If I'm a store owner, I can make it a condition that, in order to enter my store -- which is my own property -- you have to submit yourself to search. You are in no way obligated to submit yourself to said search, but I am also in no way obligated to serve you. It's my store; I can tell you to get out if I want.
(Now, you could make the case that, since you never signed a contract, I cannot hold you to the agreement, but you would have to bring it before a court of law claiming damages or something. Hardly worth the effort. Just go to another store.)
The BX chipset gives you 2 CPU support 'for free' -- we'll see if the AMD chipset does the same, or if you need to buy a special SMP chipset.
;-)
Seems unlikely. The electrical interface that AMD uses (which is the same one DEC's Alpha uses) is not, in fact, a bus architecture, but rather a port. Each CPU has dedicated lines to the a "hub" chip. So you would need significantly more silicon to make a dual-processor chipset, as compared to a single-processor chipset. It seems generally agreed that this design is superior to the Intel bus design (it scales to 1000s of processors, compared to Intel's eight), but it does make thing a bit trickier on the low-end.
SMP Systems have a huge margin advantage over single CPU systems.
Very true. Why do SMP systems cost so much more? Because the people using them are willing to pay so much more.
With SMP you can start using the magic words "server" and "workstation" which translates into higher profits for the resellers.
"Server". There, I just used the magic word on a single-processor system!
... since I haven't seen a bad Slackware release yet.
You obviously never used the Slackware '96 release. Among other things, when I tried to install it:
- It kept trying to write the boot loader to the CD-ROM drive
- It tried to eject the hard drive at the end of the install
- It didn't create the "/dev/console" device
All in all, I wasn't overly impressed.
Indeed, I think I do have some problems. However, the system runs happily (at 100% CPU usage) for days on end, but has never stayed alive for more than about 4 hours with a Netscape running.
Hmmmm.
I'd make sure you were using the latest version of XFree considered most stable for your card. Right now, for some cards, 4.1 is more stable, for others, 3.3.6 is the one to go with. (Being in the middle of a major transition is making things a little confusing in the world of X11 on Linux right now.)
You might want to try adjusting some settings in XF86Config for your video card, if it supports them. Some chipsets have advanced features which are not always 100% stable.
And, are you sure it is really a total system lockup? I have seen Netscape get sufficiently hosed up that the X console becomes unresponsive. However, I was still able to SSH into the box, kill off a few programs, and get my X session back. In few cases, I've had to kill the X server itself, but I've never had a full system lock using a production release of XFree.
(I have had lock-ups using beta, alpha, and development versions of certain drivers, but you kind of expect that.)
I can't disable JavaScript without going into such a paranoid mode that I can't even download anything...
1. Go to Tools -> Internet Options
2. Select the "Security" tab
3. Select the "Internet" zone
4. Click "Custom"
5. Scroll down to "Active Scripting"
6. Set it to disabled
7. Close out of all dialogs, saving changes.
Netscape crashes my machine sooo hard (in Windows and Linux) that only the power switch can bring the machine back to life...
Dude, if a browser can lock up your Linux box that hard, you must have some serious system-level issues going on.
I said nothing about BeOS, just the filesystem.
... BeOS VM and disk cache ...
... my BeOS machine ...
Oh really? To wit:
Obligatory BeOS plug
Not only are you a troll, you're not even a good troll.
I don't even know what a superblock IS.
...ID3 information is injected into attributes...
So, you know very little about Linux, yet you have no problem pointing out all the things it does wrong.
Word of advice: Don't complain about things you do not understand. You don't see me complaining about implementation details of BeOS. Why? Cause I've never used the thing.
Can you please explain WHY attributes break portability?
Because they're not portable. They don't work on other systems. Anything that depends on them will not be portable to other systems. Thus, attributes aren't portable.
Is that clear enough, or do I need to draw you a picture?
You complain constantly about all of the "Linux zealots" who ignore problems in their favorite OS, yet you seem to be the biggest perpetrator of that particular vice.
Gee, like how it is already embedded in the MP3 itself? Next you'll be saying attributes can also store the title of an HTML document. What progress!
Innovation should not be held captive to those who cannot innovate.
This is true, but does it apply? Are BeOS attributes really trying to improve things, or are they trying to pull that favorite industry tactic of locking us into a single vendor? (I actually suspect the former, but I have to consider the possibility.)
The case can be made that application-level attributes do not belong in the system, but in application-level libraries. By keeping such information in the files themselves, they are easily transfered to other systems, and do not require system-level support. Meanwhile, you can still provide a standard API to get at the information with an application-library. Thus, you get the best of both worlds.
And I couldn't care less what *YOU* think is an outmoded model. The minute you can get an economist or somebody with knowledge of the industry to tell me propriatory is dead, then I'll listen. (Emphasis mine.)
No you wouldn't. Slashdot has had countless stories about such things, but you continue your tired crusade every chance you get. Meanwhile, you will happily ignore yet another legitimate complaint about your favorite OS: That anyone using it is locked into a single-vendor solution.
I usually don't reply to AC posts, but this was just too good to pass up...
Windows95 had a minor version of this failing, in that, at the login screen, you could do a ctrl-alt-esc, select "run" and run "explorer", and get in without providing a credential to the OS.
Um, you could also just hit that "Cancel" button on the logon dialog and skip right past it...
What makes Linux bloated isn't the kernel (which weighs in just under 2 million lines, about 500,000 more lines than BeOS)...
... but all the crap around it (XFree, Mozilla, GNOME, KDE, and the dozens of libraries)
Lines of code isn't a terribly accurate measurement of code bloat. Perhaps those 1.5 million "extra" lines in Linux go to support things BeOS does not. Drivers. Platforms. Features. Stability. Security. Whatever. Maybe they're documentation. Maybe they're copyright notices. But then, we really don't know, do we? We can't know, because BeOS holds us hostage with its source code.
The nice thing about Linux is that nobody is forcing you to run all that "crap", as you so eloquently put it. If you want a stripped-down, bare-bones system with nothing but X11 and a single app, you can do that. Don't need the GUI? You can toss that, too. If you have the horsepower and the desire, you can also run GNOME with Enlightenment and every silly graphics effect you can think of turned on, plus sixteen different versions of Mozilla at once. Your choice.
That is one of the things that makes Linux so popular: Choice. We like having the ability to make decisions about we use. We like being able to choose the software that best fits our needs. We do not like companies that tell us they know better then we do, and no, we can't make changes and we can't see the source.
Linux isn't growing at all in the consumer desktop market.
Source?
Think hard about Linux. Who decides if you run GNOME or KDE? Not *YOU* but the programmers who write the programs you need to run.
This is sorely flawed reasoning at best, and absolutely bogus flamebait more likely.
First of all, if we except your rather flawed reasoning, then anyone who runs programs they didn't write are slaves. That includes you and your favorite OS.
But again, your reasoning is flawed. I can run KDE programs and GNOME programs and old Xt programs and even terminal programs, all at the same time. I need to have all the libraries a program requires installed, yes, but go ahead and show me a program that will run without a library it needs.
Better still, since most of this stuff is Open Source, we can take the program and re-write it to use the desktop environment of our choice. We can even change the desktop environment if we need to.
With BeOS, on the other hand, you're locked in, and cannot change it. Sounds like you're the real slave to me.
This isn't true. At least as of the 2.2.16 kernel, the 2GB limit still exists. (I know for sure, since I just tried it.)
The on-disk filesystem structures of ext2 can handle files much bigger then that.
The kernel code can handle relitive seeks anywhere within the file. I'm not sure about glibc.
You run into problems with absolote seeks in programs which cannot handle a 64-bit type for the seek. This includes glibc in some cases.
Triple DES will be around for a (long) while.
Of this I have no doubt. DES will be around for a long time, simply because it is so common, and common things are slow to become replaced.
But Triple DES is probably considered the most secure algorithm currently available...
This isn't saying much. In many government circles, you either use 3DES or... DES.
(again, because it has stood up to extreme pressure to "crack it)
As you noted, the problems with 3DES are more with the unwieldiness of it then with the security properties of the algorithm itself.
3DES is basically a hack to work around the limitations of a crummy algorithm by running it through the process multiple times. This makes it an expensive algorithm to implement. Cycles spent running DES multiple times would be better spent on a more secure algorithm.
It is like saying your '57 Cadillac still runs fine. Even if it does, a newer car will be much easier to deal with and much cheaper to operate.
Does grandma have to even know she has a windows/system directory? Will joe ever need to even See a DOS prompt?
... but there's really no point in arguing it.
No, and that's exactly my point. They don't know or care about such things, so why should they know or care about them in Linux, either?
Of the few things Windows has going for it is the fact that you can do pretty much anything that would come up in normal use without actually having to know anything about how the system works.
Linux is pretty much at that point now, if you're running the latest-and-greatest and it has been properly setup.
Yes, Linux requires proper setup. So does Windows. The thing that really makes Windows "easy" is that it comes pre-loaded on the HP Pavilions at Wal-Mart.
Most of the time you can't simply pop in a cd or double click an icon and have a program install on the first try with obvious icons and easy to understand instructions for its features...
The support is there. Most of the time, it doesn't work because it's a Windows disc you just bought. Duh. Software companies tend to focus on the product that has 95% of the market.
Then why are you arguing it?
host -a -l slashdot.org
Wow, cool! Check out http://warez.slashdot.org for cool warez downloads!
Wow. This guy's writing style bears a remarkable resemblance to a well-known columnist in PC Magazine.
;-)
Any action now is more about the power of government as an exercise.
One: Perhaps the on-going anti-trust issue has helped prevent Microsoft from squashing these latest competitive threats?
Two: You are tried based on your past crimes, not the current situation.