Comcast and other cable/internet providers generally have a monopoly on critical services that I can't avoid.
I think you may need to turn down the rhetoric a little bit. Cable TV/High-Speed Internet is not really a "critical service". We would all survive just fine without them.
Partially true. Cable TV is certainly not critical.
High speed internet is arguable, though. Sure, you can survive without it, but can you keep your job? That depends on where you work and what your job is. Maybe you could do it. I sure couldn't.
When the Linux world can't agree on a single standard for filesystem hierarchies (see the huge differences between Suse, Red Hat and its derivatives, Debian and its offspring, or the multitude of contradictions and alternatives in the documented "standard" at pathname.com), or whether or not to use standard Unix tools for controlling which services run at boot (google "chkconfig debian")...
There's no chance you'll ever settle on a single "one size fits all" distro, or even a single "web server" or a single "desktop" distro.
Until you can at least come up with a single credible standard for where to find things in the system, there will always be a need for a sane system like FreeBSD:)
Your best performance is likely to come by rolling your own. Off the shelf SOHO devices are built for convenience, not throughput.
Grab a PC (need not be anything top-of-the-line), a good server NIC, a decent hardware RAID card (you can usually get a good price on a Dell PERC SATA RAID on ebay), and a few SATA hard drives. Install something like FreeNAS or NexentaStor (or, if you want to go all the way, FreeBSD or Linux and Samba).
There are several languages out there that can work well as introductory languages. C probably isn't your best option, but any of Perl, Ruby, PHP or Python would do fine. Scheme or Lisp might be interesting, too, but I'd probably save those for a second or third language. The concepts they emphasize are important and well worth knowing, but probably not the first things to be learned.
More important than the choice of language is the analytical thought process of programming -- breaking down the thing you want done into small enough pieces that you can tell the computer, in some language, what steps to take to do the job.
Ah, exactly my point. You don't care because IT policy violations do not hold repercussions serious enough.
You might ACTUALLY care to not only read through the document, but adhere to the policy if your job was on the line.
Sorry, but from a business standpoint, your home is likely worth far less than the millions invested in Engineering and Design, or even data within sales contact lists and internal price lists. This is why it kills me when I find corporations do not hold violators accountable.
Ah, but you see, the employee can't be held accountable for those millions. The worst you can do is fire him.
Your home may be worth less in strict dollar amount, but it's your loss if you lose it.
There's a difference, though. With Vista's UAC, you have the option to turn it off (without replacing the OS entirely). Unless you feel like modifying the source and compiling your own Firefox, your only option to turn off this mis-feature is to replace the browser entirely.
When (not "if") people replace their browsers to get around the broken behavior in Firefox, do you really think they'll move to Safari? Oh, hell, no. OK, maybe a few will, but most of them are going right back to the IE abomination. Is that really the direction we want to push users?
when a person has several different email addresses, at several different domains, with real names, fantasy names, numbers and everything, along with a huge list of Mailinator addresses?
If a newbie picks Slackware or DSL or FreeBSD and figure out what to do or how to install programs, then yes, they should switch to a more mainstream and newbie-friendly distro.
I haven't tried installing anything on Slackware for several years now, so I have no idea of the current state of their package management. Last I heard, though, DSL was based on Debian and could be configured to use the same apt repositories. As for FreeBSD, you're unlikely to find a better package and dependency management system than portupgrade on any Linux system.
Speed cameras aren't just put up as a revenue earner, or to piss you off.
I can't speak for every speed camera that's ever been put up, of course, but a great many of them actually are put up strictly to generate revenue. The practice became so prevalent here, in fact, that the legislature finally banned speed cameras entirely -- with the full support of many law enforcement agencies.
Naturally, the answer is "HP 48G" (or GX, if you prefer). I have a TI 89 around here somewhere, too, but only because I haven't bothered to post it on eBay.
My next choices, in order, would be FreeBSD, SimplyMEPIS and KUbuntu. Your mileage will vary, however, and you'll get different responses from pretty much everyone you ask. My neighbor who's a math professor, for instance, prefers SuSE.
There are really only two reasons I dislike Microsoft: their shoddy products, and their shady business practices.
There's more than a little truth to the notion that if Microsoft wanted to produce a product that didn't suck, they'd make a vacuum cleaner. Their usability is poor, their default UI settings (especially the XP color scheme) are hideous, and let's not even get started on their anti-security record. There's a reason I haven't bought a Windows license for my own use since NT 4, and these days I don't even use Windows at work anymore.
On the practices side, the saying in the bad old days was "DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run", and the attitude underlying that adage is still alive and well in Redmond.
If you don't like OS X, why not install Linux on that machine? Then at least your configuration files will be where you expect them.
Wait, you expect configuration files to be in a consistent location on Linux!!??!! We laugh in your general direction. Certainly you have never tried more than one distribution.
If you're really looking for consistency and predictability in a filesystem hierarchy, use BSD.
When I first heard about this thing, my immediate thought was "it's gotta be that fuckhead from Alaska. Wait -- he couldn't possibly be that stupid, could he?... Yeah, he could." How was he not the first person they looked into?
Perhaps because there are others just as bad. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), to name one. (Yes, I am from Utah, and yes, I AM planning to vote for Hatch's opponent, Pete Ashdown, in November.)
Money has value only because people agree to arbitrarily assign a value to it, and they do this because they trust that other people will follow the same agreement. Absent the social agreement, money has no intrinsic value, just as counterfeit money has no value. Duplicating the money, however flawlessly, attempts to cheat by using something with no value (not part of the agreed money system) in place of something with (arbitrarily assigned) value. It's an attempt to defraud people who follow the social agreement that gives money its value in the first place.
Duplicating a document like a passport is also an attempt to defraud, based upon false use of the identity of the owner of the original.
Duplicating a car, were it possible, would create a new object with intrinsic value value, based upon its usefulness. No fraud is or needs to be involved. Likewise, duplicating a stream of bits, whether they represent music, software, or what-have-you, creates a new bit stream with the same intrinsic value as the original (whatever value that may have been).
I don't mean to start a flame war here, but none of these apps are worth dual-booting for. They're mostly apps to "fix" windows, and small utilities. There are awesome equivalents for OSX. So what's the point?
Actually, that is the point. Unless you're looking for PC games or specific, niche applications, or you need to do multi-platform testing, there really isn't any good reason to dual-boot. Your Mac can do everything else very well on its own.
However you are correct in saying that PGP is definitely the way to go -- it's a pity that it's still a PITA to set up; with the exception of HushMail, there isn't a way to start using it that's not fairly intimidating to new users. I've always been very disappointed that Apple hasn't ever bought Sente's GPGMail for the OS X "Mail" program and rolled it in offically, since it's the easiest thing I've come across (still not something I could have my mother start using though).
I set up PGP on OS X recently, and I don't recall that there's anything in there that's more "intimidating" than working on a Mac in general -- which is to say, it's drop dead simple. I can't speak to GnuPG or any of its related products on the Mac (although I do use them on FreeBSD), but if a user doesn't mind paying for commercial PGP, it's not at all difficult to set up and use.
This is Slashdot, so anecdotal evidence is admissible: Some 15 years ago, I was working as a state inspector on a project to place conduit and wiring for highway lights. One of the backhoe operators from the conduit contracting company related an incident where a local operator (from the same company, IIRC) had accidentally cut a high-traffic phone cable. The phone company fined the contractor $250,000 -- and the only reason it was so little was because they had called the service locating people, and the line was marked, and the markers were in the wrong place.
The worst part is, the contractor (more accurately, the contractor's insurance) did pay the fine, knowing that the alternative was a lawsuit that would cost significantly more. Even though the whole problem was caused by the telco's service location people marking the line incorrectly.
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There's a lot of truth to the saying, "Stone cold dead cuts recidivism by 100%".
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
"Protected fair use" applies to copyright, but AFAIK not to trademarks. The Canon logo is a trademark.
Partially true. Cable TV is certainly not critical.
High speed internet is arguable, though. Sure, you can survive without it, but can you keep your job? That depends on where you work and what your job is. Maybe you could do it. I sure couldn't.
When the Linux world can't agree on a single standard for filesystem hierarchies (see the huge differences between Suse, Red Hat and its derivatives, Debian and its offspring, or the multitude of contradictions and alternatives in the documented "standard" at pathname.com), or whether or not to use standard Unix tools for controlling which services run at boot (google "chkconfig debian")...
There's no chance you'll ever settle on a single "one size fits all" distro, or even a single "web server" or a single "desktop" distro.
Until you can at least come up with a single credible standard for where to find things in the system, there will always be a need for a sane system like FreeBSD :)
Why can't we just once mod a comment up past +5?
Certainly not. Everyone knows that "There's more than one wrong way to do it."
Your best performance is likely to come by rolling your own. Off the shelf SOHO devices are built for convenience, not throughput.
Grab a PC (need not be anything top-of-the-line), a good server NIC, a decent hardware RAID card (you can usually get a good price on a Dell PERC SATA RAID on ebay), and a few SATA hard drives. Install something like FreeNAS or NexentaStor (or, if you want to go all the way, FreeBSD or Linux and Samba).
There are several languages out there that can work well as introductory languages. C probably isn't your best option, but any of Perl, Ruby, PHP or Python would do fine. Scheme or Lisp might be interesting, too, but I'd probably save those for a second or third language. The concepts they emphasize are important and well worth knowing, but probably not the first things to be learned.
More important than the choice of language is the analytical thought process of programming -- breaking down the thing you want done into small enough pieces that you can tell the computer, in some language, what steps to take to do the job.
Ah, exactly my point. You don't care because IT policy violations do not hold repercussions serious enough. You might ACTUALLY care to not only read through the document, but adhere to the policy if your job was on the line. Sorry, but from a business standpoint, your home is likely worth far less than the millions invested in Engineering and Design, or even data within sales contact lists and internal price lists. This is why it kills me when I find corporations do not hold violators accountable.
Ah, but you see, the employee can't be held accountable for those millions. The worst you can do is fire him. Your home may be worth less in strict dollar amount, but it's your loss if you lose it.
My deal-breakers were almost identical, the only difference is that "No Mac version" came in even ahead of "Lac of NoScript and AdBlock plugins".
There's a difference, though. With Vista's UAC, you have the option to turn it off (without replacing the OS entirely). Unless you feel like modifying the source and compiling your own Firefox, your only option to turn off this mis-feature is to replace the browser entirely.
When (not "if") people replace their browsers to get around the broken behavior in Firefox, do you really think they'll move to Safari? Oh, hell, no. OK, maybe a few will, but most of them are going right back to the IE abomination. Is that really the direction we want to push users?
when a person has several different email addresses, at several different domains, with real names, fantasy names, numbers and everything, along with a huge list of Mailinator addresses?
It's unlikely that I'll ever buy a blu-ray player, because I have no desire at all to own a TV (HD or otherwise) to connect it to.
Now, if my next laptop comes with a blu-ray burner, that's different. That I'd buy, if for no other reason than data backup.
I haven't tried installing anything on Slackware for several years now, so I have no idea of the current state of their package management. Last I heard, though, DSL was based on Debian and could be configured to use the same apt repositories. As for FreeBSD, you're unlikely to find a better package and dependency management system than portupgrade on any Linux system.
Speed cameras aren't just put up as a revenue earner, or to piss you off.
I can't speak for every speed camera that's ever been put up, of course, but a great many of them actually are put up strictly to generate revenue. The practice became so prevalent here, in fact, that the legislature finally banned speed cameras entirely -- with the full support of many law enforcement agencies.
Naturally, the answer is "HP 48G" (or GX, if you prefer). I have a TI 89 around here somewhere, too, but only because I haven't bothered to post it on eBay.
First choice: Mac OS X, and install MacTeX.
My next choices, in order, would be FreeBSD, SimplyMEPIS and KUbuntu. Your mileage will vary, however, and you'll get different responses from pretty much everyone you ask. My neighbor who's a math professor, for instance, prefers SuSE.
There are really only two reasons I dislike Microsoft: their shoddy products, and their shady business practices.
There's more than a little truth to the notion that if Microsoft wanted to produce a product that didn't suck, they'd make a vacuum cleaner. Their usability is poor, their default UI settings (especially the XP color scheme) are hideous, and let's not even get started on their anti-security record. There's a reason I haven't bought a Windows license for my own use since NT 4, and these days I don't even use Windows at work anymore.
On the practices side, the saying in the bad old days was "DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run", and the attitude underlying that adage is still alive and well in Redmond.
If you don't like OS X, why not install Linux on that machine? Then at least your configuration files will be where you expect them.
Wait, you expect configuration files to be in a consistent location on Linux!!??!! We laugh in your general direction. Certainly you have never tried more than one distribution.
If you're really looking for consistency and predictability in a filesystem hierarchy, use BSD.
When I first heard about this thing, my immediate thought was "it's gotta be that fuckhead from Alaska. Wait -- he couldn't possibly be that stupid, could he? ... Yeah, he could." How was he not the first person they looked into?
Perhaps because there are others just as bad. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), to name one. (Yes, I am from Utah, and yes, I AM planning to vote for Hatch's opponent, Pete Ashdown, in November.)
That's a fairly silly comparison, really.
Money has value only because people agree to arbitrarily assign a value to it, and they do this because they trust that other people will follow the same agreement. Absent the social agreement, money has no intrinsic value, just as counterfeit money has no value. Duplicating the money, however flawlessly, attempts to cheat by using something with no value (not part of the agreed money system) in place of something with (arbitrarily assigned) value. It's an attempt to defraud people who follow the social agreement that gives money its value in the first place.
Duplicating a document like a passport is also an attempt to defraud, based upon false use of the identity of the owner of the original.
Duplicating a car, were it possible, would create a new object with intrinsic value value, based upon its usefulness. No fraud is or needs to be involved. Likewise, duplicating a stream of bits, whether they represent music, software, or what-have-you, creates a new bit stream with the same intrinsic value as the original (whatever value that may have been).
I don't mean to start a flame war here, but none of these apps are worth dual-booting for. They're mostly apps to "fix" windows, and small utilities. There are awesome equivalents for OSX. So what's the point?
Actually, that is the point. Unless you're looking for PC games or specific, niche applications, or you need to do multi-platform testing, there really isn't any good reason to dual-boot. Your Mac can do everything else very well on its own.
However you are correct in saying that PGP is definitely the way to go -- it's a pity that it's still a PITA to set up; with the exception of HushMail, there isn't a way to start using it that's not fairly intimidating to new users. I've always been very disappointed that Apple hasn't ever bought Sente's GPGMail for the OS X "Mail" program and rolled it in offically, since it's the easiest thing I've come across (still not something I could have my mother start using though).
I set up PGP on OS X recently, and I don't recall that there's anything in there that's more "intimidating" than working on a Mac in general -- which is to say, it's drop dead simple. I can't speak to GnuPG or any of its related products on the Mac (although I do use them on FreeBSD), but if a user doesn't mind paying for commercial PGP, it's not at all difficult to set up and use.
They already carry insurance for that.
This is Slashdot, so anecdotal evidence is admissible: Some 15 years ago, I was working as a state inspector on a project to place conduit and wiring for highway lights. One of the backhoe operators from the conduit contracting company related an incident where a local operator (from the same company, IIRC) had accidentally cut a high-traffic phone cable. The phone company fined the contractor $250,000 -- and the only reason it was so little was because they had called the service locating people, and the line was marked, and the markers were in the wrong place.
The worst part is, the contractor (more accurately, the contractor's insurance) did pay the fine, knowing that the alternative was a lawsuit that would cost significantly more. Even though the whole problem was caused by the telco's service location people marking the line incorrectly.