<? if (strpos($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], 'MSIE') !== false && strpos($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], 'Opera') === false) { ?> <br><br><b>Attention:</b> Although this method of browser identification isn't foolproof, you appear to be using Microsoft Internet Explorer. A number of security and other analysts (including the Internet Storm Center) have recommended that people stop using IE, since it not only has a very large number of security problems, but also does not comply with Web design standards, which means that it is a lot more difficult for Web designers to create Websites which everyone can view. <br> If you want a more secure alternative to Internet Explorer, which is just as easy to use, install <a href="http://www.getfirefox.com/" target="_blank" >Firefox</a>.<br><br><br><br><br><br> <? } ?>
>Actually this is universally considered to be a Bad >Thing, if you speak to anyone who writes, maintains, >hosts or supports Open Source or Free Software.
Gee...is that why there's a Windows version of Firefox?
>Why should we continue >to spoonfeed them when there >is no benefit coming back our way? >They aren't supporting our community, >they aren't supporting our >development, they aren't supporting >anything we do,
Fanaticism's fun, isn't it kids? I can really visualise the foam issuing forth from the mouth of this particular commenter. Of course, in their autonomic fanaticism, it never occurs to such enlightened thinkers as this one that perhaps when using OSS applications in Windows, it might cause at least some users to become curious about these apps' native OS. This also genuinely does happen...Newbies visit the Linux From Scratch IRC server all the time.
I actually can't think of a better way than something like Cygwin for gradually familiarising a windows user with a command line. It's the perfect wading pool scenario...they can get their feet wet to their hearts' content, but they can also run back to the percieved safety of Windows whenever they need to. Then, when the day comes when they feel they've learnt enough in that medium, they can begin to dual boot. Maybe they want to be able to web surf without security risks. Maybe they've grown sufficiently accustomed to bash in cygwin that they want to experiment with scripting/automation more thoroughly. Maybe they want a graphical user interface that is configurable from the ground up. Either way, they can keep XP for games or whatever else they want, while embracing Linux for those individual reasons...then when the day comes that Linux does run the games they want as well, (via cedega etc) if they're confident enough they can uninstall XP completely.
Migration is a very transitional process...it doesn't happen all at once...and it has to start somewhere. Getting Linux more widely accepted is going to be a very long term, large scale task...and attitudes like the one in the parent article are not going to help us get there.
Back when I was using Dead Rat's offerings, I hated Linux, too. I'm running Linux From Scratch these days, but you possibly wouldn't be interested in that. I would suggest trying Debian, though...it still has package management similar to what you'd be used to with RPM, but it also reputedly is more sane in other areas as well. Although I haven't used it, some people might also suggest Ubuntu as well, since that is based on Debian apparently, but people claim it is more user-friendly.
Dead Rat's primary claim to fame is offering the sort of support contracts which corporate lemmings insist on...but the reality is that their distributions suck compared to most. Get Debian, or, if you're feeling slightly more adventurous, Gentoo. Most of the problems you mention here are Dead Rat centric, I suspect.
>So what will Linux do that Windows can't already do? >Will it wash my car? Make a nice scrambled egg and >bacon? Still has a web browser. Still has an email >program. Still point and click.
It might not wash your car, but you *could* set up a home security/surveillance system with it if you got some cameras/sensors and wanted to. Also, there are a number of experimental robots in existence running Linux now, so if you were smart enough on the hardware end you very well possibly *could* build something that could wash a car...same for the egg and bacon. There's a HOWTO in existence for a Linux-powered coffee machine.
>Perhaps the decision makers of Linux should focus >on newer ways of doing things.
Not to be antagonistic, but before forming an opinion, you might want to do some actual research to base it on first. This is one of the most ignorant comments I've seen for a long time.
I used Xandros a while ago. While not the most recent version, even back then I was amazed at how quickly I was able to get a very functional KDE Linux system.
While I applaud the community's efforts to continue making Linux more user friendly, something we need to realise is that regardless of how much work we do, there are always going to be the "ready for the desktop" idiots churning out one article after another about how Linux isn't acceptable purely because it isn't 100% identical to Windows. Because of that, I think developers ought to stick to making improvements where they think they need to be made, rather than being dictated to by the "ready for the desktop" morons. These people are generally MS-only drones who can't think for themselves and are going to reject anything that isn't Windows on principle, so we shouldn't worry about trying to please them, because apart from anything else, we're simply never going to.
The main reason why I hate the phrase "ready for the desktop" so much is because it is completely subjective. Wtf is "the desktop", anywayz?
To me, that is the very simple solution to this particular problem. Microsoft owe probably more to Michael Dell for the entrenched nature of their monopoly than virtually anyone else. He should have been named an accessory in the US MS antitrust trial, IMHO.
I have never bought a bundled PC from Dell or any other company...always parts, which I have either assembled myself or paid for the labour involved to do so. Either way it's cheaper, generally more reliable in my observation, you can still get a warranty for the individual components, and the kind of monopoly-inducing pre-bundling mentioned here is avoided.
So it's really very simple...if you don't want to support Microsoft's monopoly, don't support the other people who helped create it; namely, Dell and the other major "package" OEMs.
Re:FreeBSD is free'er, MacOS X better for users
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>Funny, the BSD license is the best way to lose >control over what you create. Someone like Microsoft >can take all your "hard work", modify it slightly >and sell it back to you.
No...Microsoft can fork your hard work and sell it back to you. The BSD license also allows copyright...FreeBSD is copyrighted by the Berkeley CSRG and related peeps. Hence, Microsoft can make an "embraced and defecated on" fork of BSD licensed code as much as they like, but the base code tree and any trademarks you might have associated with it are still yours.
This is a misconception originally propogated (probably deliberately) by RMS himself, and faithfully regurgitated by his Red Army of unwashed GPL attack bots. Because of this, no matter how many times somebody tries to step on it, it still materialises.
Re:FreeBSD is GREAT but ports have problems
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Why FreeBSD
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· Score: 1
>It's so bad that we have to depend on big commercial >vendors to put together reliable Linux >configurations for us.
...needs to remember that tabletop AD&D was never mainstream to begin with. So with an MMORPG, you're basically trying to sell an extremely non-mainstream concept (RPG) to a mainstream (MMO) audience. Unless the definition of an RPG is changed somewhat for the mainstream audience, it isn't going to happen.
MUDs (AFAIK, anyway) were never truly popular outside the intellectual crowd either, just like tabletop AD&D. Part of this group represented the original people playing Ultima Online, from what I saw, and when you have this group *alone* playing an MMORPG, you'll generally get a positive, relatively peaceful (albeit eclectic) experience. The crowd that are known as PvP players, "griefers" or "power gamers" in MMORPGs are the same 14 year old adrenaline/testosterone crazed idiots who you find either playing Quake 2 or CounterStrike (or collaborating with other such types to write the next big Windows virus on IRC) the rest of the time, AKA a particularly undesirable segment of the broader FPS crowd. (This is also the exact stereotypical group which the media tried to blame for the Columbine massacre.)
These people are nothing remotely close to genuine roleplayers, and on close inspection, don't really intend to be. They log into a game like UO for four main reasons:-
a) To kill people/things in a new environment.
b) To deliberately upset and antagonise (true to their adolescent sociopath roots) genuine roleplayers. (who they view with contempt) 80%-90% of the PvP crowd fall into this category, despite their protests to the contrary.
c) To attempt to gratify their ego by climbing to the top of the char level heap, and thus prove how "leet" they supposedly are.
d) (Even more) to attempt to find some bug/exploit within the game mechanics in order to illegitimately climb to the top of the char level heap more quickly than would otherwise be possible, again for the same reason as c).
In an ideal world, the primary solution to this problem would be to keep the archetypical FPS gamer from ever migrating to an MMORPG, but tragically, such is not possible. I am not at all surprised to hear that MUDs are currently enjoying a rennaisance; the reason for this would be so that genuine roleplayers can do what they've desired to do all along, i.e., roleplay, without the interruption of the aforementioned morons. My guess is that for a while at least, MMORPG operators are eventually going to find that their playerbase consists primarily of very casual players who also engage in RMT, (real money trading of in-game items) and the aforementioned FPS immigrants. As such, I'm also guessing that most fantasy-oriented MMORPGs are also going to become extremely mundane, chaotic places centred primarily around killing mobs, gold farming, and RMT. Storytelling or people playing for more conventional reasons are probably both going to largely move back into the MUD environment.
What I think a lot of people don't realise is that the use of bullet time and bullet dodging was itself an implicit demonstration of philosophical questioning, which fit in well with the other thematic material in the Matrix films.
When Neo dodged bullets during the roof battle scene, although time radically slowed down from his perspective, from Trinity's point of view he was moving as quickly as the Agent had. This was intended to underline the subjectivity theme...that while manipulation of the Matrix's physics engine allowed an effect that was the same in one respect for both participant and observer/s, (successful dodging of bullets) it was markedly different otherwise. The reason why time *slowed* perceptually for the participant was to give the participant enough time to successfully dodge the bullets, while in order to rectify that so that the observer/s would see something relatively sane, the system then had to give the observer/s the image of the participant moving as rapidly as the bullets themselves.
This is only confusing when we think of the virtual environment as just that...an *environment.* However, it becomes much less confusing when we think of it in terms of simply being a set of *different* neurological signals being sent to the individual brain of each person. In order to maintain cohesion, the Matrix had to be flexible with regards to what each person was able to see. In other words, rather than a set of immutable laws, the physics engine would have had a fuzzy scale. (Viewed from this perspective, it becomes clear that the rebels didn't actually *break* the rules of the system as such...they simply learned how to occupy nonstandard positions on the physics engine's scales)
If we want to create a multiplayer, genuinely Matrix-like environment however, that is what we would have to do. The world itself could be server side, but for the resolution of certain events, (such as the dodging of bullets) you would need a scenario where the physics could be manipulated in a certain way from the perspective of the client invoking bullet time, and the server would have to figure out how to make said manipulations at least vaguely uniform with the rest of the environment. (In terms of dodging bullets, it probably makes more sense to cause everyone else to see the person moving at the same speed as the bullets, because if you were to make the bullets become as slow as the person, the server would then have to work out the range from the bt-invoking client at which they would begin to slow down, whereas from the perspective of the bt client itself, the bullets could start to slow from any range. Also, speeding up the person means only manipulating one coherent object - slowing the bullets means manipulating several, with the corresponding rise in computing power that such would require)
A large number of the characteristics of the physics engine within Unreal Tournament in particular are both expressed numerically and can be manipulated. One of the major things which would need to be worked out would be how each user could be given the ability to modify one of these characteristics (gravity would probably be the easiest place to start, although it could still be tricky, because it could involve dynamically changing the gravity attribute across multiple zones) relative purely to their own pawn, while still allowing the server to create a consistent environment. As I said, gravity would be the easiest one to start with...work out how each pawn could create its' own hi/low grav fields (part of Trinity's crane kick). The lightspeed barrier currently prevents this from working in terms of the time manipulation, but it'd be worth working out what we could for when zero-lag technology *does* arrive.
Although the level of computing power (not to mention the complexity of the programming logic) required to make this *truly* identical to the films would be utterly ludicrous, I'm inclined to believe that with a form of bandwidth using quantum teleportation, (zero lag, which you'd ne
I don't think I noticed a single statement in that entire three page article which was factual. Taylor is obviously utterly devoid of integrity or anything remotely resembling business ethics.
This is typical of Microsoft...or at least it was. I had hoped they'd grown out of the use of such tactics, but I suppose it is naive and futile to assume that this particular leopard is ever likely to genuinely change its' spots. Gates truly does provide the direction for this company...what we're seeing here is as much an example of his own ethics (or complete lack thereof) as it is Taylor's.
The company seems to be incapable of grasping the concept that continuing to use such gutter tactics is ultimately going to prove monumentally self-defeating.
I bought (and lost, sadly) copies of both SR2 and SR3 core rules. I thought the game rocked, but I knew of very few people who played it. I found myself thinking a while ago that a TV series based on it would have been particularly cool.
It has aged though...primarily because the geopolitical events which created the fictional scenario were supposed to have started in 1989/91...so it really was a game of the 80s.
Still, the magic system was awesome...the Matrix mechanics weren't so good, gameplay wise, and it was a bit limited from only using six-sided dice. To me the storyline cried out to be explored via other mediums, mainly because the game mechanics were a bit shaky in places. If it is done intelligently, this game could be really good.
This reminds me of how a friend told me that when Bob Kane died he was seen as a martyr, despite apparently dying of natural causes. There are some few people for whom I wish it was possible to suspend the normal rules regarding death...and Mr Doohan was one of those. From watching Trekkies and hearing a few other things I learned that it wasn't just on-screen where he managed to, as Jim Kirk put it, "make a difference."
My deepest condolences to any of his kin who may be reading...the hearts of a great many of us are with you.
>Have you studied the way that the human brain works >much? It seems that that we do not have boundless >capacity to deal with novelty
I am rather intimately acquainted with the lack of capacity for novelty present in at least some human brains; I have NVLD, a subset of autism similar in some respects (but not identical) to Asperger's Syndrome.
My point however is that human beings started off in caves (as one example) but eventually got to the point where we were capable of going to the Moon. The Moon represents a very different environment to what we are used to, and thus a considerable amount of adaptation and inventive thinking was required in order to work out how to send men there without killing them.
Human beings do, as you say, have a number of hardcoded instinctive behaviours which have developed over time; however, we have a few different characteristics which distinguish us from (at least most) other animals from what I have seen:-
1. We have the ability to perform complex manipulations of objects which are external to our own anatomy. Granted, that in itself is not entirely unique; it is the level of complexity which is. A cat might be able to figure out how to open a door; it would not however be able to invent or construct a gun. 2. We are able to exist in multiple environments. As an example of what I mean here, although dolphins are considered intelligent, they live in water only, and are unable to live out of the water. Human beings, although we primarily exist on land, have been able to learn to swim, and we can also exist underwater due to the previous point. 3. We have a limited degree of ability to anticipate/imagine conditions in environments alien to our own. This skill is part of what enabled us to go to the Moon, and if we go to Mars, it will be used again there.
If I saw an example of artificial intelligence which exhibited all three of the above characteristics, I might be inclined to consider it genuine. However, up until this point anyway, I have not.
Like an earlier comment said, it took millions of years for languages to appear among humans, and that doesn't even account for whether or not the process is genuinely random, or whether there was some kind of direction involved.
I personally believe that the term "artificial intelligence" (at least as it currently applies) is misleading...Outside of science fiction, there really isn't any such thing. Even in situations where somebody's been able to come up with a genetic algorithm that produced something interesting, the AI it produced was only able to operate within its' given environment; i.e., as an expert system. Take it out of the target environment however, and it would fall flat on its face just as surely as a desktop machine after coming to the end of a shell script. There's no adaptability there whatsoever.
Computers still don't have any real capacity for dealing with novelty...the best any GA I've ever heard of has been able to do is widen the category of knowledge that a given expert system can have, and make the boundaries of said category *look* more fuzzy and organic...but in reality, it's smoke and mirrors.
Occasionally I'll see applications which stimulate my interest...the creatures in Black and White were innovative, and the Sims 2 makes reasonably good use of numerical weighting, even if the pathfinding there still sucks to a degree.
Assuming it's possible for strong AI to exist at all, (and again, I have grave doubts) everything I've seen tells me it's still anywhere between 50-200 years away. Skynet or it's equivalent won't be showing up anytime soon.
>Windows has lots of problems - in design, >complexity, usability, security - that's why many >of us use alternatives - but _technologically_ it >is quite advanced in many areas and Linux and BSD >are still catching up.
More FUD of the "Eine Reich, Eine Volk, Eine Fuhrer!" variety.
I'd like to think I'm only going to have to explain this once (yeah, right) so here goes my attempt to explain a few things to the Windows using world.
1. Windows sucks. NT is probably the single most technologically inferior operating system to have ever seen the light of day. In terms of usability, on the surface it might seem great, but go even a few microns below the surface and it is revealed as an absolute dog. (Keep this point in mind, kids, cos it's a very important one)
2. Microsoft have taught the computer using world to think in a number of perverted, unnatural, and generally harmful ways. One of these ways is the insistence that one size has to fit all, i.e., the concept of a monoculture. There can't be more than one operating system in existence at any one time, goes the old saw. Unfortunately what Microsoft doesn't understand (aside from virtually everything else, that is) is that diversity is actually good for computer security, rather than bad for it. If different people run different operating systems, or even different versions of a similar or same operating system, it means that the anarchic 14 year olds wanting to break into said computers will have to work harder...because they will need to write versions of a given virus for a greater number of operating systems than just one. We could even hope that faced with that much effort, they won't bother.
3. Another one of these bad ways of thinking is the insistence that every GUI on the planet be identical to Windows'. You'll normally never hear me praising Apple (takes deep breath, wonders if he can really do this) but they also came up with some great ideas for user interface design, as well. The people currently designing KDE for Linux have even managed to come up with a few.
4. Yet another of Microsoft's evil ideas is the concept that programs should be designed monolithically. This actually follows on from the "Eine Reich, Eine Volk, Eine Fuhrer!" groupthink mentioned earlier. The Linux way of doing things on the other hand tends towards making various pieces which snap together, so that whoever works on a piece only has to worry about the bugs in said piece, rather than the entire program. Because the pieces are often fairly small, they're also usually a lot easier to understand than the sort of software Microsoft writes, and it's therefore easier to figure out how they work.
5. So from these few examples, we can see how Microsoft's ideology is bad. Therefore, I humbly beg you to kindly cease and desist authoring screeds about how Linux should supposedly be more like Microsoft's monstrosities...because it really shouldn't. Microsoft should be taking pages from Linux's book, not the other way around...for many different reasons.
I do think fascist behaviour is wrong...or at the very least, that it is likely to produce harmful effects.
I know, you're likely to turn around and call me a hypocrite for that...but put it this way. The GTA series genuinely are sociopathic, violent games...I don't think anybody would argue too much with that. The difference between myself and Hillary however is that I believe that each individual should have the right to decide for him or herself if they want to be exposed to such material. Hillary and others like her, on the other hand, believe that the State should decide what is appropriate for *everyone*...and the point is that she isn't necessarily any better able to make that decision for other people than said people are themselves.
I myself loved the Transformers as a child, (I was 10 years old in 1987, when the animated film came out) and I will admit that there was a time when I had the mentality that if hypothetically I was ever going to get a tatoo, it would have been an Autobot logo. (Thankfully, I've now grown out of that idea, and managed to avoid said tatoo before I did so)
However, there are a couple of reasons why I believe that the Transformers are now strongly anachronistic...Their story has not aged well, perhaps even less so than stories from further in the past.
The first reason is postmodernism. The Transformers was *very* morally dualistic. The Autobots were depicted as "good", the Decepticons as "bad", and there was generally no blurring of that line whatsoever. The dominant contemporary moral theory, on the other hand, is relativism, and under that philosophy the Transformers' storyline doesn't work terribly well...primarily because fundamental reasons weren't ever really given for the Decepticons being the way they were...they were depicted as being bad simply because they were bad, most of the time.
The second reason is that IMHO, Optimus Prime existed mainly as a volksgeist/icon (similar to Superman) of the more positive characteristics of the collective American psyche, pre 9/11. Given that said positive characteristics largely no longer exist, (or are at least percieved as no longer existing by most of the rest of the world) any depiction of Prime post 9/11 is not only inappropriate, but could come across as tragic...since what he stood for has gone.
The third reason is that the voice actors of some of the characters (Starscream in particular) are either dead or would be at a point of fairly advanced age by now. I saw at least one attempt at getting another voice actor to replace Starscream's, and IMHO it really didn't work.
The fourth reason is that unlike perhaps some people, I greatly enjoyed the original animated film...and the Transformers in general, and there is a desire there I think to avoid seeing that desecrated in the name of pure commercialism...which I think is likely to happen.
>Code run by a user can delete everything on the >machine that users can write to - which usually >means everything important.
If by that you mean a user's data, (like email, etc) then yes, I see what you're saying...however in my mind that is grounds for a more vigilant approach rather than less. One idea that that has just given me is to make a seperate account for doing something which has userdata associated with it. (like email) Thus, even if a user's account becomes compromised, it could be entirely possible to still have an additional line of defense (another account) protecting the user's email. Granted, this approach isn't normally used, but if a completely different password was used for the email account, I think it would work well.
It'd take some doing, but to me it makes a lot more sense to create a lot of accounts with different functions, partitioned off, rather than assuming that if someone compromises the user account they have universal access anyway. Of course, for a lazy user I understand this makes more work...but I think people need to ask themselves whether their data is genuinely important to them.
>If the user account is exploited by a trojan or >whatever, isn't that almost as bad as rooting >the whole box?
Not if the person who set up the system knows what they are doing. For starters, daemons/servers of whatever kind are meant to be run via a passworded dummy/non-root user, and only have access to the server's own directory. Thus, even if that user was to be compromised, the cracker wouldn't have access to the entire system, or even shell access for that matter. But that however also means that if a cracker doesn't have su access and if the MTA they would use for sending spam can only be run by its own user, the cracker can't run the program. Yes, the application executable itself needs to be suid root in order to bind the port it listens on, but if you wanted to avoid the possibility of a root vulnerability from that and were sufficiently cluey, you could probably also use sudo to allow the dummy user to bind that application to the port, but not have that level of access for anything else.
It goes without saying that files are not globally set o+w, and they don't necessarily all have to be globally readable, either.
Also, (and most critically) a virus designed to delete files, if run by a non-root user, will only trash files specifically owned by that user. It will not delete all of the files on a system. With root access however, that same virus could completely wipe the operating system.
Running purely as root is NOT a good idea. The single machine might be single-user, but it exists within a multi-user world.
No, I haven't RTFA, and I don't need to. The claim that Windows and Linux are equal with regards to security doesn't even deserve laughter. A person only needs to use Windows XP online for a few hours, and then compare it with virtually any other Linux distribution available in order to see how this claim is a complete lie.
It's a testament to the complete amorality of many analytical companies that they would even attempt to make a claim like this. Vnunet are obviously completely devoid of any kind of professional integrity, and as such, their analysis can only be considered utterly worthless. Unfortunately however, vnunet are not the only company willing to make such claims. These companies believe that they need to rely on Microsoft's monopoly for their livelihood, and so are willing to go to truly amazing lengths to try to maintain the perception that Microsoft are still on top, despite enormous evidence to the contrary.
Attention Boomers. I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but despite the amount you might wish it to be the contrary, the 1950s are well and truly over. Deal with it. Yes, the world is a lot more secular, and a lot less racist, and yes, the gays and wiccans have ascended from the sewers and are now legally able to walk among the rest of us. On the other side of the sexual hypocrisy-related fence, a man (or woman) can now actually be caught and criminally charged for molesting their children. Horrifying concepts, I know...but if I've learned to acclimatise to it, so can you. Postmodernism and moral relativism have inherited the earth, and like it or not, there ain't no going back.
That of course is the crux of what this is about...people in Hillary's generational bracket having delusional recollections of the era of their own childhood, and wish to attempt to force said delusions upon the rest of the world. With the dawn of each new day I seem to read yet another report of an attempt at fascist control by some beurecratic 50+ year old suffering from the effects of advanced neurological decomposition. I've said it before, and I'll say it again...Hillary and the rest of her geriatric, sexually deprived ilk need to be in nursing homes...NOT in the halls of government.
The main problem here is that specfiles (dunno what they're called for.debs, cos I haven't made those) specify bogus dependencies. An example which really bugs me is that I noticed once while using apt that CUPS is listed as a mandatory dep for open office, and it *isn't*. I don't have a printer myself...so I hardly need printer software, do I? Because of that though, a lot of packages force people to download a heap of false dependencies which they do not genuinely need in many cases.
If dpkg/rpm had support for optional deps a la Gentoo, that would go a long way toward improving them. I get annoyed by Debian users claiming apt is the holy grail...because it quite simply ain't, and by claiming that it is, they create a misconception that the package management problem has been genuinely solved...when in a lot of ways it hasn't been.
We bring you yet another valiant exploit on the part of America's demoniac Attorney General, as part of the Bush administration's continuing war on peace, happiness, and anything else worth preserving in the world.
At a recent interview, Speedy's mood was triumphant.
"As our beloved Leader has often said, we are unflagging in our commitment to extend death, misery, and tyranny to every corner of the globe.
Wherever happiness exists, wherever human beings may have been under the illusion that they may be safe, wherever justice may have existed in the past, we will travel, and we will unleash our fury upon the most innocent.
The President has vowed that he will not rest until all that was previously good in the world has been erradicated, until the environment, human self-determination, and the cause of anyone to feel or seek joy have all been completely destroyed. The prisons will swell with the innocent and the unjustly accused, rivers the world over will run red with blood, and all lands anywhere in the world other than our own will be made desolate, while we enrich ourselves and ensure that our immediate loved ones alone will have any sense of safety.
We will sweep aside all opposition in our path until we have fulfilled this mission.
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>Actually this is universally considered to be a Bad >Thing, if you speak to anyone who writes, maintains,
>hosts or supports Open Source or Free Software.
Gee...is that why there's a Windows version of Firefox?
>Why should we continue
>to spoonfeed them when there
>is no benefit coming back our way?
>They aren't supporting our community,
>they aren't supporting our
>development, they aren't supporting
>anything we do,
Fanaticism's fun, isn't it kids? I can really visualise the foam issuing forth from the mouth of this particular commenter. Of course, in their autonomic fanaticism, it never occurs to such enlightened thinkers as this one that perhaps when using OSS applications in Windows, it might cause at least some users to become curious about these apps' native OS. This also genuinely does happen...Newbies visit the Linux From Scratch IRC server all the time.
I actually can't think of a better way than something like Cygwin for gradually familiarising a windows user with a command line. It's the perfect wading pool scenario...they can get their feet wet to their hearts' content, but they can also run back to the percieved safety of Windows whenever they need to. Then, when the day comes when they feel they've learnt enough in that medium, they can begin to dual boot. Maybe they want to be able to web surf without security risks. Maybe they've grown sufficiently accustomed to bash in cygwin that they want to experiment with scripting/automation more thoroughly. Maybe they want a graphical user interface that is configurable from the ground up. Either way, they can keep XP for games or whatever else they want, while embracing Linux for those individual reasons...then when the day comes that Linux does run the games they want as well, (via cedega etc)
if they're confident enough they can uninstall XP completely.
Migration is a very transitional process...it doesn't happen all at once...and it has to start somewhere. Getting Linux more widely accepted is going to be a very long term, large scale task...and attitudes like the one in the parent article are not going to help us get there.
>This is Fedora Core 4
Back when I was using Dead Rat's offerings, I hated Linux, too. I'm running Linux From Scratch these days, but you possibly wouldn't be interested in that. I would suggest trying Debian, though...it still has package management similar to what you'd be used to with RPM, but it also reputedly is more sane in other areas as well. Although I haven't used it, some people might also suggest Ubuntu as well, since that is based on Debian apparently, but people claim it is more user-friendly.
Dead Rat's primary claim to fame is offering the sort of support contracts which corporate lemmings insist on...but the reality is that their distributions suck compared to most. Get Debian, or, if you're feeling slightly more adventurous, Gentoo. Most of the problems you mention here are Dead Rat centric, I suspect.
>So what will Linux do that Windows can't already do?
>Will it wash my car? Make a nice scrambled egg and
>bacon? Still has a web browser. Still has an email
>program. Still point and click.
It might not wash your car, but you *could* set up a home security/surveillance system with it if you got some cameras/sensors and wanted to. Also, there are a number of experimental robots in existence running Linux now, so if you were smart enough on the hardware end you very well possibly *could* build something that could wash a car...same for the egg and bacon. There's a HOWTO in existence for a Linux-powered coffee machine.
>Perhaps the decision makers of Linux should focus
>on newer ways of doing things.
You mean like this, this, this, or maybe this?
>So where is the free folks? Only a matter of time
>before licensing fees are added.
Been here recently?
Not to be antagonistic, but before forming an opinion, you might want to do some actual research to base it on first. This is one of the most ignorant comments I've seen for a long time.
I used Xandros a while ago. While not the most recent version, even back then I was amazed at how quickly I was able to get a very functional KDE Linux system.
While I applaud the community's efforts to continue making Linux more user friendly, something we need to realise is that regardless of how much work we do, there are always going to be the "ready for the desktop" idiots churning out one article after another about how Linux isn't acceptable purely because it isn't 100% identical to Windows. Because of that, I think developers ought to stick to making improvements where they think they need to be made, rather than being dictated to by the "ready for the desktop" morons. These people are generally MS-only drones who can't think for themselves and are going to reject anything that isn't Windows on principle, so we shouldn't worry about trying to please them, because apart from anything else, we're simply never going to.
The main reason why I hate the phrase "ready for the desktop" so much is because it is completely subjective. Wtf is "the desktop", anywayz?
To me, that is the very simple solution to this particular problem. Microsoft owe probably more to Michael Dell for the entrenched nature of their monopoly than virtually anyone else. He should have been named an accessory in the US MS antitrust trial, IMHO.
I have never bought a bundled PC from Dell or any other company...always parts, which I have either assembled myself or paid for the labour involved to do so. Either way it's cheaper, generally more reliable in my observation, you can still get a warranty for the individual components, and the kind of monopoly-inducing pre-bundling mentioned here is avoided.
So it's really very simple...if you don't want to support Microsoft's monopoly, don't support the other people who helped create it; namely, Dell and the other major "package" OEMs.
>Funny, the BSD license is the best way to lose
>control over what you create. Someone like Microsoft
>can take all your "hard work", modify it slightly
>and sell it back to you.
No...Microsoft can fork your hard work and sell it back to you. The BSD license also allows copyright...FreeBSD is copyrighted by the Berkeley CSRG and related peeps. Hence, Microsoft can make an "embraced and defecated on" fork of BSD licensed code as much as they like, but the base code tree and any trademarks you might have associated with it are still yours.
This is a misconception originally propogated (probably deliberately) by RMS himself, and faithfully regurgitated by his Red Army of unwashed GPL attack bots. Because of this, no matter how many times somebody tries to step on it, it still materialises.
>It's so bad that we have to depend on big commercial
>vendors to put together reliable Linux
>configurations for us.
No, you don't have to.
...needs to remember that tabletop AD&D was never mainstream to begin with. So with an MMORPG, you're basically trying to sell an extremely non-mainstream concept (RPG) to a mainstream (MMO) audience. Unless the definition of an RPG is changed somewhat for the mainstream audience, it isn't going to happen.
MUDs (AFAIK, anyway) were never truly popular outside the intellectual crowd either, just like tabletop AD&D. Part of this group represented the original people playing Ultima Online, from what I saw, and when you have this group *alone* playing an MMORPG, you'll generally get a positive, relatively peaceful (albeit eclectic) experience. The crowd that are known as PvP players, "griefers" or "power gamers" in MMORPGs are the same 14 year old adrenaline/testosterone crazed idiots who you find either playing Quake 2 or CounterStrike (or collaborating with other such types to write the next big Windows virus on IRC) the rest of the time, AKA a particularly undesirable segment of the broader FPS crowd. (This is also the exact stereotypical group which the media tried to blame for the Columbine massacre.)
These people are nothing remotely close to genuine roleplayers, and on close inspection, don't really intend to be. They log into a game like UO for four main reasons:-
a) To kill people/things in a new environment.
b) To deliberately upset and antagonise (true to their adolescent sociopath roots) genuine roleplayers. (who they view with contempt) 80%-90% of the PvP crowd fall into this category, despite their protests to the contrary.
c) To attempt to gratify their ego by climbing to the top of the char level heap, and thus prove how "leet" they supposedly are.
d) (Even more) to attempt to find some bug/exploit within the game mechanics in order to illegitimately climb to the top of the char level heap more quickly than would otherwise be possible, again for the same reason as c).
In an ideal world, the primary solution to this problem would be to keep the archetypical FPS gamer from ever migrating to an MMORPG, but tragically, such is not possible. I am not at all surprised to hear that MUDs are currently enjoying a rennaisance; the reason for this would be so that genuine roleplayers can do what they've desired to do all along, i.e., roleplay, without the interruption of the aforementioned morons. My guess is that for a while at least, MMORPG operators are eventually going to find that their playerbase consists primarily of very casual players who also engage in RMT, (real money trading of in-game items) and the aforementioned FPS immigrants. As such, I'm also guessing that most fantasy-oriented MMORPGs are also going to become extremely mundane, chaotic places centred primarily around killing mobs, gold farming, and RMT. Storytelling or people playing for more conventional reasons are probably both going to largely move back into the MUD environment.
What I think a lot of people don't realise is that the use of bullet time and bullet dodging was itself an implicit demonstration of philosophical questioning, which fit in well with the other thematic material in the Matrix films.
When Neo dodged bullets during the roof battle scene, although time radically slowed down from his perspective, from Trinity's point of view he was moving as quickly as the Agent had. This was intended to underline the subjectivity theme...that while manipulation of the Matrix's physics engine allowed an effect that was the same in one respect for both participant and observer/s, (successful dodging of bullets) it was markedly different otherwise. The reason why time *slowed* perceptually for the participant was to give the participant enough time to successfully dodge the bullets, while in order to rectify that so that the observer/s would see something relatively sane, the system then had to give the observer/s the image of the participant moving as rapidly as the bullets themselves.
This is only confusing when we think of the virtual environment as just that...an *environment.* However, it becomes much less confusing when we think of it in terms of simply being a set of *different* neurological signals being sent to the individual brain of each person. In order to maintain cohesion, the Matrix had to be flexible with regards to what each person was able to see. In other words, rather than a set of immutable laws, the physics engine would have had a fuzzy scale. (Viewed from this perspective, it becomes clear that the rebels didn't actually *break* the rules of the system as such...they simply learned how to occupy nonstandard positions on the physics engine's scales)
If we want to create a multiplayer, genuinely Matrix-like environment however, that is what we would have to do. The world itself could be server side, but for the resolution of certain events, (such as the dodging of bullets) you would need a scenario where the physics could be manipulated in a certain way from the perspective of the client invoking bullet time, and the server would have to figure out how to make said manipulations at least vaguely uniform with the rest of the environment. (In terms of dodging bullets, it probably makes more sense to cause everyone else to see the person moving at the same speed as the bullets, because if you were to make the bullets become as slow as the person, the server would then have to work out the range from the bt-invoking client at which they would begin to slow down, whereas from the perspective of the bt client itself, the bullets could start to slow from any range. Also, speeding up the person means only manipulating one coherent object - slowing the bullets means manipulating several, with the corresponding rise in computing power that such would require)
A large number of the characteristics of the physics engine within Unreal Tournament in particular are both expressed numerically and can be manipulated. One of the major things which would need to be worked out would be how each user could be given the ability to modify one of these characteristics (gravity would probably be the easiest place to start, although it could still be tricky, because it could involve dynamically changing the gravity attribute across multiple zones) relative purely to their own pawn, while still allowing the server to create a consistent environment. As I said, gravity would be the easiest one to start with...work out how each pawn could create its' own hi/low grav fields (part of Trinity's crane kick). The lightspeed barrier currently prevents this from working in terms of the time manipulation, but it'd be worth working out what we could for when zero-lag technology *does* arrive.
Although the level of computing power (not to mention the complexity of the programming logic) required to make this *truly* identical to the films would be utterly ludicrous, I'm inclined to believe that with a form of bandwidth using quantum teleportation, (zero lag, which you'd ne
I don't think I noticed a single statement in that entire three page article which was factual. Taylor is obviously utterly devoid of integrity or anything remotely resembling business ethics.
This is typical of Microsoft...or at least it was. I had hoped they'd grown out of the use of such tactics, but I suppose it is naive and futile to assume that this particular leopard is ever likely to genuinely change its' spots. Gates truly does provide the direction for this company...what we're seeing here is as much an example of his own ethics (or complete lack thereof) as it is Taylor's.
The company seems to be incapable of grasping the concept that continuing to use such gutter tactics is ultimately going to prove monumentally self-defeating.
I bought (and lost, sadly) copies of both SR2 and SR3 core rules. I thought the game rocked, but I knew of very few people who played it. I found myself thinking a while ago that a TV series based on it would have been particularly cool.
It has aged though...primarily because the geopolitical events which created the fictional scenario were supposed to have started in 1989/91...so it really was a game of the 80s.
Still, the magic system was awesome...the Matrix mechanics weren't so good, gameplay wise, and it was a bit limited from only using six-sided dice. To me the storyline cried out to be explored via other mediums, mainly because the game mechanics were a bit shaky in places.
If it is done intelligently, this game could be really good.
This reminds me of how a friend told me that when Bob Kane died he was seen as a martyr, despite apparently dying of natural causes. There are some few people for whom I wish it was possible to suspend the normal rules regarding death...and Mr Doohan was one of those. From watching Trekkies and hearing a few other things I learned that it wasn't just on-screen where he managed to, as Jim Kirk put it, "make a difference."
My deepest condolences to any of his kin who may be reading...the hearts of a great many of us are with you.
>Have you studied the way that the human brain works
>much? It seems that that we do not have boundless
>capacity to deal with novelty
I am rather intimately acquainted with the lack of capacity for novelty present in at least some human brains; I have NVLD, a subset of autism similar in some respects (but not identical) to Asperger's Syndrome.
My point however is that human beings started off in caves (as one example) but eventually got to the point where we were capable of going to the Moon. The Moon represents a very different environment to what we are used to, and thus a considerable amount of adaptation and inventive thinking was required in order to work out how to send men there without killing them.
Human beings do, as you say, have a number of hardcoded instinctive behaviours which have developed over time; however, we have a few different characteristics which distinguish us from (at least most) other animals from what I have seen:-
1. We have the ability to perform complex manipulations of objects which are external to our own anatomy. Granted, that in itself is not entirely unique; it is the level of complexity which is. A cat might be able to figure out how to open a door; it would not however be able to invent or construct a gun.
2. We are able to exist in multiple environments. As an example of what I mean here, although dolphins are considered intelligent, they live in water only, and are unable to live out of the water. Human beings, although we primarily exist on land, have been able to learn to swim, and we can also exist underwater due to the previous point.
3. We have a limited degree of ability to anticipate/imagine conditions in environments alien to our own. This skill is part of what enabled us to go to the Moon, and if we go to Mars, it will be used again there.
If I saw an example of artificial intelligence which exhibited all three of the above characteristics, I might be inclined to consider it genuine. However, up until this point anyway, I have not.
Like an earlier comment said, it took millions of years for languages to appear among humans, and that doesn't even account for whether or not the process is genuinely random, or whether there was some kind of direction involved.
I personally believe that the term "artificial intelligence" (at least as it currently applies) is misleading...Outside of science fiction, there really isn't any such thing. Even in situations where somebody's been able to come up with a genetic algorithm that produced something interesting, the AI it produced was only able to operate within its' given environment; i.e., as an expert system. Take it out of the target environment however, and it would fall flat on its face just as surely as a desktop machine after coming to the end of a shell script. There's no adaptability there whatsoever.
Computers still don't have any real capacity for dealing with novelty...the best any GA I've ever heard of has been able to do is widen the category of knowledge that a given expert system can have, and make the boundaries of said category *look* more fuzzy and organic...but in reality, it's smoke and mirrors.
Occasionally I'll see applications which stimulate my interest...the creatures in Black and White were innovative, and the Sims 2 makes reasonably good use of numerical weighting, even if the pathfinding there still sucks to a degree.
Assuming it's possible for strong AI to exist at all, (and again, I have grave doubts) everything I've seen tells me it's still anywhere between 50-200 years away. Skynet or it's equivalent won't be showing up anytime soon.
>Windows has lots of problems - in design, >complexity, usability, security - that's why many >of us use alternatives - but _technologically_ it >is quite advanced in many areas and Linux and BSD >are still catching up.
Interesting...Can you elaborate?
More FUD of the "Eine Reich, Eine Volk, Eine Fuhrer!" variety.
I'd like to think I'm only going to have to explain this once (yeah, right) so here goes my attempt to explain a few things to the Windows using world.
1. Windows sucks. NT is probably the single most technologically inferior operating system to have ever seen the light of day. In terms of usability, on the surface it might seem great, but go even a few microns below the surface and it is revealed as an absolute dog. (Keep this point in mind, kids, cos it's a very important one)
2. Microsoft have taught the computer using world to think in a number of perverted, unnatural, and generally harmful ways. One of these ways is the insistence that one size has to fit all, i.e., the concept of a monoculture. There can't be more than one operating system in existence at any one time, goes the old saw. Unfortunately what Microsoft doesn't understand (aside from virtually everything else, that is) is that diversity is actually good for computer security, rather than bad for it. If different people run different operating systems, or even different versions of a similar or same operating system, it means that the anarchic 14 year olds wanting to break into said computers will have to work harder...because they will need to write versions of a given virus for a greater number of operating systems than just one. We could even hope that faced with that much effort, they won't bother.
3. Another one of these bad ways of thinking is the insistence that every GUI on the planet be identical to Windows'. You'll normally never hear me praising Apple (takes deep breath, wonders if he can really do this) but they also came up with some great ideas for user interface design, as well. The people currently designing KDE for Linux have even managed to come up with a few.
4. Yet another of Microsoft's evil ideas is the concept that programs should be designed monolithically. This actually follows on from the "Eine Reich, Eine Volk, Eine Fuhrer!" groupthink mentioned earlier. The Linux way of doing things on the other hand tends towards making various pieces which snap together, so that whoever works on a piece only has to worry about the bugs in said piece, rather than the entire program. Because the pieces are often fairly small, they're also usually a lot easier to understand than the sort of software Microsoft writes, and it's therefore easier to figure out how they work.
5. So from these few examples, we can see how Microsoft's ideology is bad. Therefore, I humbly beg you to kindly cease and desist authoring screeds about how Linux should supposedly be more like Microsoft's monstrosities...because it really shouldn't. Microsoft should be taking pages from Linux's book, not the other way around...for many different reasons.
I do think fascist behaviour is wrong...or at the very least, that it is likely to produce harmful effects.
I know, you're likely to turn around and call me a hypocrite for that...but put it this way. The GTA series genuinely are sociopathic, violent games...I don't think anybody would argue too much with that. The difference between myself and Hillary however is that I believe that each individual should have the right to decide for him or herself if they want to be exposed to such material. Hillary and others like her, on the other hand, believe that the State should decide what is appropriate for *everyone*...and the point is that she isn't necessarily any better able to make that decision for other people than said people are themselves.
I myself loved the Transformers as a child, (I was 10 years old in 1987, when the animated film came out) and I will admit that there was a time when I had the mentality that if hypothetically I was ever going to get a tatoo, it would have been an Autobot logo. (Thankfully, I've now grown out of that idea, and managed to avoid said tatoo before I did so)
However, there are a couple of reasons why I believe that the Transformers are now strongly anachronistic...Their story has not aged well, perhaps even less so than stories from further in the past.
The first reason is postmodernism. The Transformers was *very* morally dualistic. The Autobots were depicted as "good", the Decepticons as "bad", and there was generally no blurring of that line whatsoever. The dominant contemporary moral theory, on the other hand, is relativism, and under that philosophy the Transformers' storyline doesn't work terribly well...primarily because fundamental reasons weren't ever really given for the Decepticons being the way they were...they were depicted as being bad simply because they were bad, most of the time.
The second reason is that IMHO, Optimus Prime existed mainly as a volksgeist/icon (similar to Superman) of the more positive characteristics of the collective American psyche, pre 9/11. Given that said positive characteristics largely no longer exist, (or are at least percieved as no longer existing by most of the rest of the world) any depiction of Prime post 9/11 is not only inappropriate, but could come across as tragic...since what he stood for has gone.
The third reason is that the voice actors of some of the characters (Starscream in particular) are either dead or would be at a point of fairly advanced age by now. I saw at least one attempt at getting another voice actor to replace Starscream's, and IMHO it really didn't work.
The fourth reason is that unlike perhaps some people, I greatly enjoyed the original animated film...and the Transformers in general, and there is a desire there I think to avoid seeing that desecrated in the name of pure commercialism...which I think is likely to happen.
>You're misunderstanding (perhaps deliberately).
>Code run by a user can delete everything on the
>machine that users can write to - which usually
>means everything important.
If by that you mean a user's data, (like email, etc) then yes, I see what you're saying...however in my mind that is grounds for a more vigilant approach rather than less. One idea that that has just given me is to make a seperate account for doing something which has userdata associated with it. (like email) Thus, even if a user's account becomes compromised, it could be entirely possible to still have an additional line of defense (another account) protecting the user's email. Granted, this approach isn't normally used, but if a completely different password was used for the email account, I think it would work well.
It'd take some doing, but to me it makes a lot more sense to create a lot of accounts with different functions, partitioned off, rather than assuming that if someone compromises the user account they have universal access anyway. Of course, for a lazy user I understand this makes more work...but I think people need to ask themselves whether their data is genuinely important to them.
>If the user account is exploited by a trojan or
>whatever, isn't that almost as bad as rooting
>the whole box?
Not if the person who set up the system knows what they are doing. For starters, daemons/servers of whatever kind are meant to be run via a passworded dummy/non-root user, and only have access to the server's own directory. Thus, even if that user was to be compromised, the cracker wouldn't have access to the entire system, or even shell access for that matter. But that however also means that if a cracker doesn't have su access and if the MTA they would use for sending spam can only be run by its own user, the cracker can't run the program. Yes, the application executable itself needs to be suid root in order to bind the port it listens on, but if you wanted to avoid the possibility of a root vulnerability from that and were sufficiently cluey, you could probably also use sudo to allow the dummy user to bind that application to the port, but not have that level of access for anything else.
It goes without saying that files are not globally set o+w, and they don't necessarily all have to be globally readable, either.
Also, (and most critically) a virus designed to delete files, if run by a non-root user, will only trash files specifically owned by that user. It will not delete all of the files on a system. With root access however, that same virus could completely wipe the operating system.
Running purely as root is NOT a good idea. The single machine might be single-user, but it exists within a multi-user world.
No, I haven't RTFA, and I don't need to. The claim that Windows and Linux are equal with regards to security doesn't even deserve laughter. A person only needs to use Windows XP online for a few hours, and then compare it with virtually any other Linux distribution available in order to see how this claim is a complete lie.
It's a testament to the complete amorality of many analytical companies that they would even attempt to make a claim like this. Vnunet are obviously completely devoid of any kind of professional integrity, and as such, their analysis can only be considered utterly worthless. Unfortunately however, vnunet are not the only company willing to make such claims. These companies believe that they need to rely on Microsoft's monopoly for their livelihood, and so are willing to go to truly amazing lengths to try to maintain the perception that Microsoft are still on top, despite enormous evidence to the contrary.
Attention Boomers. I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but despite the amount you might wish it to be the contrary, the 1950s are well and truly over. Deal with it. Yes, the world is a lot more secular, and a lot less racist, and yes, the gays and wiccans have ascended from the sewers and are now legally able to walk among the rest of us. On the other side of the sexual hypocrisy-related fence, a man (or woman) can now actually be caught and criminally charged for molesting their children. Horrifying concepts, I know...but if I've learned to acclimatise to it, so can you. Postmodernism and moral relativism have inherited the earth, and like it or not, there ain't no going back.
That of course is the crux of what this is about...people in Hillary's generational bracket having delusional recollections of the era of their own childhood, and wish to attempt to force said delusions upon the rest of the world. With the dawn of each new day I seem to read yet another report of an attempt at fascist control by some beurecratic 50+ year old suffering from the effects of advanced neurological decomposition. I've said it before, and I'll say it again...Hillary and the rest of her geriatric, sexually deprived ilk need to be in nursing homes...NOT in the halls of government.
The main problem here is that specfiles (dunno what they're called for .debs, cos I haven't made those) specify bogus dependencies. An example which really bugs me is that I noticed once while using apt that CUPS is listed as a mandatory dep for open office, and it *isn't*. I don't have a printer myself...so I hardly need printer software, do I? Because of that though, a lot of packages force people to download a heap of false dependencies which they do not genuinely need in many cases.
If dpkg/rpm had support for optional deps a la Gentoo, that would go a long way toward improving them. I get annoyed by Debian users claiming apt is the holy grail...because it quite simply ain't, and by claiming that it is, they create a misconception that the package management problem has been genuinely solved...when in a lot of ways it hasn't been.
We bring you yet another valiant exploit on the part of America's demoniac Attorney General, as part of the Bush administration's continuing war on peace, happiness, and anything else worth preserving in the world.
At a recent interview, Speedy's mood was triumphant.
"As our beloved Leader has often said, we are unflagging in our commitment to extend death, misery, and tyranny to every corner of the globe.
Wherever happiness exists, wherever human beings may have been under the illusion that they may be safe, wherever justice may have existed in the past, we will travel, and we will unleash our fury upon the most innocent.
The President has vowed that he will not rest until all that was previously good in the world has been erradicated, until the environment, human self-determination, and the cause of anyone to feel or seek joy have all been completely destroyed. The prisons will swell with the innocent and the unjustly accused, rivers the world over will run red with blood, and all lands anywhere in the world other than our own will be made desolate, while we enrich ourselves and ensure that our immediate loved ones alone will have any sense of safety.
We will sweep aside all opposition in our path until we have fulfilled this mission.
Onward!"