It's pretty obvious that enabling high speeds for customers is pretty cheap once the initial cost (drawing the fiber to the house holds) has been covered and the traffic is mostly within the local ISP's network.
In my country some ISPs cover the initial fiber investment either by community tax "dollars" or by tying up consumers to the specific ISP for a few year (e.g. 3 years) after the fiber is in place. These 100 MBit pipes we have are for within the ISP network. Outside the network the speed cap is at 10 MBit and so the ISP has put instruments in place to be able to make money.
Having 100 MBit constrained mostly to the ISP network might not be such a bad thing, especially since the ISP usually has direct fiber connections to major traffic hubs (such as central caches and large file dumps for the most popular sites). Also big files (such as apt or rpm or ISO repositories) are often plentiful witin the network and even the P2P community has a lot of peers within the network as well. So all in all, most stuff is available at a high speed.
If one goes outside the local ISP network and the country, the speeds almost never reaches even 10MBit. Right now, the average speed to the US is something around 3-4 MBit (and doubling every 1.5 years it seems).
As more and more get fiber, the ISPs will hopefully come up with more reasonable peering fees, allowing more traffic to flow between the networks at low cost.
Point is that today high speed internet access can be profitable for ISPs while at the same time providing good service per $ to consumers. Unfortunately it seems that only startups will be able to get the fiber initiative rolling in countries having a history of major telco or cable domination (as was our situation and the US at present).
The only need one has regarding multiuser on their workstation is to be able to run as root and non-root and perhaps experiment in a sandbox. Windows supports all of this, thus I see that argument as void.
Command-line driven? Well cygwin works great on windows for "bash scripting". Also most of the popular scripting languages are available as well (perl,ruby,python...).
A machine doesn't need to be command driven to be remotely administrated (though it often eases things). Take VNC for example. To direct counter your argument, there are several SSH implementations for Windows which means you can do pretty much anything you can in Unix.
So.. I stand fast by my previous argument, if a user knows a platform other than Linux, there is really no need or urge driving them to switch.
Agreed. However computers are everyday items today, not like it was 15-20 years ago when people started carefully started getting to know IBM Personal Computers (Enterprise folks who got the company to fork out huge sums to get important employees the ability to work from home) and Apple Macintosh (For magazine people and book authors). Most people today have already joined one camp or the other and have spent years learning these operating systems and associated applications.
Linux hasn't that luxury (at least not in the western world) of having a lot of completely "blue" people starting using it. "Linux" was never about converting people from other operating systems for the sake of it either. It has always been a geek-toy kind of like AIX Solaris and the like, a geek toy in the regard that it was created by geeks to be run and administrated by geeks (sys-admins included;-).
Linux fills an important niche, doing the stuff that 99% of the employed workforce never sees. Kind of like the AS/400. Keeps running *other stuff* with minimal administration.
I don't know how it is in academia today, but when I went to school, some geeks in training (CS-students) in my school got to know it because it was the only option one had if one didn't want to sit in the lab spending all-nighters doing scheme and C exercises etc.
A Professor of geekology (CS) mentioned this thing called Linux, essentially a precompiled kernel and a few binary libraries and utilities which one could install on the home PC. Unfortunately only 2 students managed to get it working before the semester ended, but it was a lot of fun in a geeky sense.
As I watch Distros today, some seem to have split personalities, trying to ape MS Windows, though still failing in several aspects after ### attempts. Partly because they try to please both geeks and non-geeks and the geeks developing the distros unfortunately don't know how to do the former.
Linux is about mucking around and moulding your system to your exact needs because A) you can and B) you get a kick out of it and in some extreme cases you benefit from it professionally (if you have a geek job as a sysadmin for ex.). These are not the driving forces of the majority though, which should be respected.
I see some valid points in the grand parent post and also think that Khasim put it rather well.
Classic formulation: if you're not interested in adopting the Unix mindset (text-based text processing, pipes, small well-defined tools, a de-emphasis on graphical user interfaces, non-data-processing devices, etc.) then why choose a Unix operating system?
This argument is complete BS. from a business point of view. No one I know chose to work with Linux because primarily because it's "Unix like". They chose it because of the apps that run on it and how well those apps work on that kernel (sometimes also couples with reduced license fees).
The OS is pretty much irrelevant for anyone except a select few sys-admins. What people like mom&dad, the PHBs, the secretaries, various enterprise developers etc. are after are applications. All the categories listed previously want to do stuff, specific tasks, not muck around with the OS as that has nothing to do with their tasks.
Mom&Dad wants to surf the "Net" and send email. PHBs wants to read up on new buzzwords and marketing reports from Gartner et al and secretaries wants to spam all the people the PHBs manage, as well as typing up some word processing documents or extract a report from SAP. The developers wants to finish their next J2EE application in time so they won't be sacked and can get on another project.
Ok, there were a lot of stereotyping there, but in essence it's a pretty accurate picture. Whatever gets the job done and done in a sufficient manner is enough for these people. Since Windows is the de facto standard and 99.9% of all these people know Windows and has been working with it for years they see no reason to switch.
The most difficult thing to change is peoples' habits, which reflects on whether a start-up becomes a dud or the next "Google" (presenting something good with a low enough transition cost which Joe Average can justify).
To return to your statement "If you don't like the way Unix does things, don't use it", that falls pretty flat as well if you consider OSX. It's Unix-like at it's core (Darwin), but I doubt many of the Mac customers buy a Mac because it *runs Unix*. I'd venture a guess that Aqua, the brand, the attention to usability details and the apps running on OSX has more to do with it.
1. IIRC, the Unix violation issue comes from the fact that SCO claimed to have terminated IBM's license to distribute it's Unix version (AIX) and since IBM did not cease distribution, they are claimed to have violated the Unix copyright. IANAL, but perhaps the discussion could then move on to the circumstances which led up to the claimed termination of IBM's rights to distribute AIX.
3. As to my knowledge, IBM has not distributed Linux externally. Even internally they use distributions from Novell and Redhat primarily. IBM's software runs on certain Linux systems, but that is not the same as saying IBM distributes Linux.
PS. Note that I wrote Novell instead of Suse since it's time we start getting used to Suse being just a brand / trademark of Novell. Pretty much the same as there being no companies named Lotus, Tivoli or Rational, just IBM.
Why not use lighter material? Sure, it will add some cost, but hey, "environment friendly" stuff cost more as it is and if the added cost isn't too rediculous it might just fly.
A few years ago, I had a Porsche 928S4 which was all in aluminium. The reduced weight was however offset by the huge engine and other re-inforced racing parts. However, that got me thinking why not use material kind of what was used on that one in order to make an appealing exterior while keeping wight down?
Looks weigh in as 1/2 of the reason for me picking a specific car. On the up-side, BMW (my current favorite) mentioned it their magazine last year that they'd have a hydro-electric model out this year or the next. The main problem for them wasn't switching their cars over to electric propulsion, but the infrastructure surrounding such a switch. To solve this they said they'd entered an agreement with a major fuel company, allowing them to put charging stations at a lot of petrol stations.
BMW in my view is a lot like Porsche, the car innovators of our time. Both companies sell their cars on looks and technical marvel with slogans like "a driver's car" and I seriously doubt BMW would put out a model having the dog-ugly looks which other makers seem to believe the customers crave for. It just seems to go against their philosophy.
I agree. Not being a native English speaker however, I do tend to use English *when it makes sense*. As I work for an "international company" I *do* communicate in English to anyone not from my country, even though I speak and write other languages (like German and French), because I have more experience using English and speak it rather fluently which makes conversation easier (when you don't have to actively think about grammatical issues or try finding the exact wording). English is a simple language and easy to learn if your own language has roots in the Germanic language with influences from Latin.
However, there are languages with other roots and for people grown up using such a language, English might prove a bit more challenging.
Even though English is rather easy to learn and most people in my country speak it rather well, it is by no means a replacement for our native one. The following two points I believe are the primary reasons:
1) The native language is the first one taught and everything in our society is communicated using that. It is also the single language which can be used to easily communicate with anyone across the borders of generations. 2) Our own language is more "fine grained", meaning we have more distinct words which results in less ambiguity (like one word for "free" as in beer and another for free as in freedom). Using English would be a step back in this regard.
There are a lot of other reasons for not adapting English for everyday use and those reasons might very well vary from one individual to another. In my work domain (the "tech-industry") I have noticed a peculiar one though. A lot of people in my field tend to view a person using a mix of our language and English (inserting English words like email or line of business into a native sentence) as being less cultivated. If there is a native word or phrase for an English equivalent, then not using the native one is often interpreted as a sign of the person lacking knowledge or being lazy. We have a language academy which is responsible for adding new words to the language as new things are invented. Only when there is no native word for something which can be expressed in another language is it seen as being OK to borrow a term or word for expressing a thought.
Given that background for a society which can easily learn English, it's clear that English will not be replacing a lot of native languages any time soon. Looking at countries whose citizen speak languages having other roots, like Finnish, Hungarian, Japanese or Arabic, it's pretty clear that the likelihood for those countries switching to English exclusively is even less likely.
So.. tools which help bridge the language barriers seem like a perfect thing in a time where data travels globally at the speed of light and seem to be the only feasible solution applicable to every person on the planet, provided these tools can be made pervasive and natural to use (unobtrusive, not like the one used by the cop in one of the opening scenes of the 1993 movie Fortress).
If you mean keeping some kind of version control scheme going, use RCS, CVS or any other Version Control System. Just using a DB is not the right thing to do in most cases like that.
If you o.t.o.h. meant structurally storing data, then you have Posgresql or Mysql, which both have nice GUIs much like what MS Access provides.
DBA's are mostly needed to "optimally configure" your database, but if your're talking of things which would be suitable for MS Access, then using a DBA is way overkill.
Eg. Never having worked with mysql took me about 2 hours to get it going and using it. MS access took me far longer as it was not entirely conforming to open standards (i.e. SQL), meaning I had to read a lot of stuff to work out each quirk.
In my experience, the easiest DB's to get going and maintain have been Mysql and IBM's DB2. Even Oracle DB I could set up using a graphical click-through, but maintaining it was a nightmare.
If I would start a company today, I'd go with MySQL or Postgresql for DB, CVS/RCS or Subversion for version control. OpenOffice or StarOffice for office suite, apache for webserver, samba for fileserver and Ximian for collaboration (ie. kind of Excange / Notes). That ought to be the majority of what tools a typical company needs to support it.
The RING signal.
on
Cell-Phone Wars
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Personally, I don't have much of a problem with people talking on cell-phones in environments where others keep conversations going, provided they're not one of these types who thinks that the further away they are from the person they're talking to, the louder they have to screem at the phone.
What really buggs me are all those ring signals. Those are very abnormal sounds which are hard for the brain to filter out. If there was some kind of spec. which stated that each phone should broadcast a kind of "IsItOkToTriggerARIIIIIING()" query and wait half a second or so for a veto response before sounding off that annoying sound from the device, it'd go a long way at mitigating what I believe bug most people.
Having worked in so called "Open Landscape" offices for about 5 years now, I've pretty much learned to "tune out" all conversation noise when I need to think. However, artificial noise such as the classic RIIIING or all the personalized ring tunes are still piercing my conciousness and that's really what's bugging me.
If I could just veto those sounds, which might get the cellphone to use vibrate or similar, I'd pretty much be statisfied.
However, just "randomly" jamming anyones call is just rude imo. I like the freedom cellphones provide me, allowing me for example to pick up the kids on time while still being able to attend that "important" conference call the boss has been nagging about all week. (and is always scheduled to impossible hours, due to the timezone difference of our american colleagues, who pretty much arriving to their offices when we are about to leave ours').
A) no one needs a "feature" like this. Save to Disk and then run if neccesary.
First off, I don't like other people telling me what feature I need or don't need. Second, I find it very conventient being able to d-click attachments, be it zip, jar, pdf, doc or anything else from withing my e-mail app. I get a bunch of mail with attachments daily from colleagues / managers / partners / internal labs etc. and I use my email app as a storage for about 3/4 of the attachments I receive. The reasons are three-fold. One, I don't have to create directory structures and file stuff in folders on my disk. Two, using the e-mail app's built in database with automatic indexing makes finding stuff as simple as using google. Three, the attachments are located together with the e-mail body and header which means they are context-wise correctly located. Together the email and the attachments are often more valuable than each one by itself.
B) icons are designed to be clicked. as desktop users, we're trained to click on things. it's how we interact with our computer.
Exactly (though you probably mean't something else than what my reasoning will lead to), as my e-mail app displays the attachments with both their desktop icons as well as their filenames and extensions, It's visually the same as clicking on a desktop icon.
I really don't understand how preventing people from running a virus/trojan from their e-mail app is any more secure than forcing the user to first detach the virus/trojan, save it to a folder or desktop and then run it from the folder/desktop? If the user initiates the attachment's "default behavior" from their email app, then obviosly, they're intent on "launching" it and event if they're forced to detach the payload the consequence will be the same.
Exactly, One of the best plugins to Firebird (and one of the strongest arguments which made me convert to that bird) is the plugin you no doubt refer to, the "Flash click to view" plugin by Ted Mielczarek.
It blocks all those annoying Flash banners distracting your reading while still allowing you to see them if you really would be so inclined, by left clicking the place-holder of the flash area. Agreed, some crappy sites still use Flash as a part of their navigation system (a moronic idea as such, but..) so you're still able to use these sites.
Another must-have plugin is the Adblock (which IIRC is nowadays bundled with Firebird). These two plugins alone makes the web so much nicer to navigate.
However great the Gecko browsers might be, it's still to early to completely uninstall IE, as some sites are still too messed up that they only work with Internet Explorer. So at times, the Gecko browsers still can't be used to browse certain (broken) sites...
You assume that the *people not in region 1* are not having a multi region player? Isn't this a rather reversed reasoning, in that the people who hava the most to gain (having access to both the hollywood movies at the same time as the US customers coupled with having early access to their domestic movies) would not be using multi-region players?
As a matter of fact, I live in the northern part of europe and I'd say about 7-8 out of 10 players sold today are multi-region out of the box. Even my parents got one when they went looking for a player last winter. They went to the largest audio/video retail chain in the country and the sales people actually dissuaded them from getting a region-2 player (they only held two models of crippled players still in stock) and were pursuaded into buying a Pioneer 444 multi-region instead.
I'd say, when even mom&pops are getting multi-region players without even knowing a thing about what it is, then region coding is indeed a dead horse.
Of bigger interest is the abolishment of differentiated release dates. Now, we all hope that Peter Jackson's amazing success with the LOTR trilogy and it's simultanous premiere dates around the world will make Hollywood wake up and realize that delaying movies are also a pretty f*cking stupid idea.
The general rule over here is that if a movie delays more than a month or so between the US and european release, then a lot of people won't go see it at the cinema. Instead they will get it from a colleague at work, who "napstered" a DVD screener or even a DVD retail rip off the net (and often transcoded it back to a DVDR so that moms&pops can see it on their DVD-thingy under the TV). If the release on the other hand is delayed no more than a month, then most people will cash up and see it at the cinema, as the cinema really is the prefered environment in which movies should be enjoyed.
Could you please list the components you used for assembling this unit (like fans, cpu and speed, gpu etc)?
Half a year ago, I shelled out about a grand for a so called "Hush unit" from the German company Hush Technologies.. Frankly, I'd thought it'd be more hushish than it actually was. I'm not saying that I'd sounding like a 3-year-old IBM PC (kind of like a DC-3 starting it's engine), but it isn't exactly silent either. In fact, it generates enough noise to make me unable to sleep, having the unit in my bedroom. It's the HD (Seagate B.) that's making the sound and the sound isn't dampened enough, as it's surrounded by a steel chassis and as you know, steel isn't the best of materials reducing noise. Also, the unit seems to draw an immense amount of power first when turned on and with the shitty PSU not being able to provide enough juice, some units always fail to initialize correctly (like the network 'adapter').
So, I'm looking for a new unit to replace this POS with one which fills the following criteria:
Is completely inaudible from a distance of one meter
Has a MoBo which can be fitted with a HD with more than 120GB of storage and has integrated sound (preferably 5.1 surround).
Can be fitted with ordinary CPUs (Intel/AMD)
Has at least one PCI expansion slot
Has a PSU with enough watts to power the above and some more (as a safety margin).
For me, silence is worth a lot and I've paid thus far an incredible premium to reduce it on my machines. And by silence, I don't mean a low hum, but no perceptible sound at all.
Please, if you or anyone else know of a system which fill these criteria, I'd be very grateful to read about it.
I disagree. I purchase HW for various chores (like PVR, transcoding machines, distributed computing etc.) for use at home and each time I get a new box I have to spend hours getting everything up and running (using Gentoo) and configured as I want that specific box.
Having an installer which reduces the number of steps and configures stuff which the computer should know better than I (what HW I'm using and what firmware etc. are on it) is something I see as A Good Thing. This means that even "experienced people" can benefit from good installers (ever wonder why Linus is/was running RH and not Slackware?).
Regarding Debians' current installer, well it's simple if you know the answers to all the questions asked, not if you don't. (then again, that's true for most installers isn't it?) Compared to Gentoo, the Debian installation process is much quicker at the expense of "tweakability". I personally think the big difference between Debians installation process and RedHat's for example, is that you have to enter fdisk/disk druid and that it's curses based. You also have the option to specify what additional modules you want (the hard thing for new users is to know if they need those extra modules). Other than that I don't see a big difference between RH and Deb.
As for new users... Asking as few questions as possible regarding stuff the computer should be able to figure out is a huge help. I still recall the first time I tried to install X, having to know the H&V Frequencies of my monitor, each refresh rate, what ramdac my gfx card had, what resolutions were supported etc. etc. etc. (infinitum it felt like). Not even going to mention configuring a slim kernel for the first time (what modules.. aha, I have an IDE CD burner, then I should obviously know I need scsi support!)..
Needless to say, stuff like the RH/Mandrake installers or better yet, the knoppix one are a great help for newbies.
PS. for those people stuck in Windows land, not because they don't want to try out Linux, but because of "being intimidated" by all the seemingly pre-req knowledge one needs to even get a distro off the ground, I'd advise start looking at Knoppix. This distribution has a "live cd" which has the ability to boot up a complete "Linux system" from a CDROM, without installing anything on the HD. It configures everything automatically so you'll just boot it up and you have an "MS-Windows clone" (I'm going to get bashed for this comment I'm sure) in front of you when it's up. It's a nice way to get the possibility to "touch Linux-land".
Do note however, that IBM wants to take SCO to court. Purchasing Novell would (if the rumour is true and Novell actually holds the rights needed) put IBM in the clear and as such the case would probably be dismissed. The result most likely being that SCO would start pestering someone else, possibly someone with a lesser legal team. IBM is after what most slashdot readers are, a squishing sound as the bug is squashed into goo.
Also as has been pointed out, IBM has struck alliance with both Suse and Redhat and are having customers using both distros. Alienating Redhat means causing problems for some of IBMs existing users as well as affecting future deals, at the moment, not a good idea. Shoving down some cash into Novells pockets, helping ensure the company stays above water is the wiser alternative and is what I believe IBM will settle with considering the current state of things.
Judging by past experience of IBM roll-outs, if the decision is anchored all the way up (which this decision seem to be), IBM'll basically tell the tel-cos to either accept their new requirements or "take a hike". Eventhough there will apparently be a revenue loss to the companies currently having IBM as a customer, there are still enough other tel-cos eager to get "whatever money they can get", even if it'll be just a percentage of IBMs current spending on telephony.
It isn't just the fixed lines where IBM is putting preassure, most every IBMer has a cel-subscription as well, and in the past IBM has not been afraid to switch provider if they can save a buck. It's all about value/cost for IBM.
Agreed, IBM isn't as the average company, meaning it has the means to create most of the tech it needs internally (using it's own employees and partnerships with other companies, like cisco et. al.). Also worth noting is that in this particular case, it's probably not just the savings alone which resulted in the decision to switch. Consider that IBM is a company producing a lot of middleware and their experience will most certainly be reflected in additional modules to existing offerings (for example the WebSphere family), or completely new ones. It's also a good sales pitch when the customer asks for previous references as IBM will be able to say "we eat and breathe the stuff we're preaching".
The Matrix, the first movie in the trilogy was a clever piece of work. Lots of philosophical undertones and it introduced a lot of new stuff we hadn't seen in movies before (read cool effects and well choreographed wushu scenes). The second one was mediocre; the same effects, only in larger amounts, but had a few additions (new characters and some interesting dialogue). Reloaded, we could accept as it was just transportation between the first and the third movie.
Now to the third movie, the finale. The movie had very long scenes, which stretched on and on where they should have been cut to about half their length (someone was apparently sleeping at the editing table). It wasn't just that the scenes were long, they also didn't help propel the plot forward. Some scenes should also have been cut entirely, like the train station scene, or 90% of the zion scenes, as neither did anything for the plot.
When the audience starts laughing at scenes where the director intends tension, relief or the audience to be impressed, then something is very wrong with the movie.
What bugged me the most was that there was NOTHING new in this movie at all. No new central characters, no revelations or explanations of any kind to any thing or concept revealed in the previous movies. In short, this movie was a huge let down, not even capable of wearing the coat of a fast paced, somber action movie.
I'll conclude with a "to-the-point" summary of the entire movie (which also happened to be the most common word uttered in the cinema when the end credits started rolling by): CRAP!
PS. There was actually one actor who, when the opportunity for acting appeared, performed above average (as opposed to the rest of the cast): Hugo Weaving as Agent Smith. Unfortunately 5 minutes of >>acting<< is a bit expensive given the ticket price at $12.
All mentioning of encryption in the parent post had the implied notion of open source encryption technologies, as a security scheme which can not be validated by anyone who so chooses is not to be considered trusted and should be avoided at all cost. What good is a lock to your safe if there are duplicate keys floating around or built in vulnerabilities (which can not be revealed without the blue prints of it's design)?
This paves the way for some serious contemplation.
Consider an earlier article published last week, where Sweden was about to enforce draconian IP laws and rights to enforce them. Those laws would lead to their police (and probably other obscure agencies) starting to patrol(1) a lot of Internet services such as p2p networks for example. How would this be received by other nations as there is not simple way of distinguishing a user's nationality from some IP address? Let's face it, going down the current path, the US isn't going to be the only country doing massive interception and analysis of communication on the Internet and when the politicians wake up and smell the coffee, this kind of mess will have spiraled far out of their control.
Ponder this. Does anyone imagine a government capable of intercepting and filtering most communication to be standing on some kind of high moral and ethical ground where a reasoning like "The correct thing for us to do is to only police our own waters for domestic criminal activity" is going be the current agenda?
No friggin way is my assessment.
This is paving the way for a situation where espionage(2) is the trade of the day. In a few years when most states have caught up with any current technological forerunners there are, in my view, going to be only two choices. Either you encrypt all traffic(3), allowing you some kind of domestic protection, or you will have no protection at all.
The future in my view looks rather bleak if certain politicians and their fellow lobbyists are going to have their way. As I see it, the first ones to realize this problem has been the same type of people making the technological measures allowing such potential abuse, tech-savy folks such as some members of this blog. Mr. and Mrs. Clueless will be the first ones lined up against the wall as they will be caught off guard, unaware of how technology works and how it can be abused and thus unable to protect themselves from the private agendas of those with monetary and political power.
As a final Note. Most know that the last 9 in 99.999% availability figure is extremely expensive to obtain. Likewise, getting the last 9 when it comes to making people law-abiding(4) is going to be infinitely more expensive both from a monetary cost and most importantly, the cost of lost freedom... As many of us know, the only information system totally secure is a system without external interfaces. The only secure(5) or safe society is a society without a mind of it's own, without free thought.
Which society do you wish the future to hold?
1. Meaning intercepting and scanning. 2. Of foreign power, corporate and any entity which the people with the means might be interested in for one reason or another. 3. Since modules in a computer system co-exist and make use of each other more and more for various tasks, it's getting harder and harder to know what component is transmitting what information and thus the only way to feel some kind of security is to only allow encrypted traffic. 4. Be it a valid law supported by the majority of the citizen or not. 5. Also known as "safe" or "convenient" in some corporate lingo.
Perhaps it's simply due to the hour being late, but I fail to see what possible benefit the general public would get from having the spammers having access to the workings of a scheme designed to prevent the latter from conducting their business. In my eyes, it's not likely the spammers will be committing fixes to the cvs tree, fixing any possible hole allowing them to get around the scheme.
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It's pretty obvious that enabling high speeds for customers is pretty cheap once the initial cost (drawing the fiber to the house holds) has been covered and the traffic is mostly within the local ISP's network.
In my country some ISPs cover the initial fiber investment either by community tax "dollars" or by tying up consumers to the specific ISP for a few year (e.g. 3 years) after the fiber is in place. These 100 MBit pipes we have are for within the ISP network. Outside the network the speed cap is at 10 MBit and so the ISP has put instruments in place to be able to make money.
Having 100 MBit constrained mostly to the ISP network might not be such a bad thing, especially since the ISP usually has direct fiber connections to major traffic hubs (such as central caches and large file dumps for the most popular sites). Also big files (such as apt or rpm or ISO repositories) are often plentiful witin the network and even the P2P community has a lot of peers within the network as well. So all in all, most stuff is available at a high speed.
If one goes outside the local ISP network and the country, the speeds almost never reaches even 10MBit. Right now, the average speed to the US is something around 3-4 MBit (and doubling every 1.5 years it seems).
As more and more get fiber, the ISPs will hopefully come up with more reasonable peering fees, allowing more traffic to flow between the networks at low cost.
Point is that today high speed internet access can be profitable for ISPs while at the same time providing good service per $ to consumers. Unfortunately it seems that only startups will be able to get the fiber initiative rolling in countries having a history of major telco or cable domination (as was our situation and the US at present).
The only need one has regarding multiuser on their workstation is to be able to run as root and non-root and perhaps experiment in a sandbox. Windows supports all of this, thus I see that argument as void.
...).
.. I stand fast by my previous argument, if a user knows a platform other than Linux, there is really no need or urge driving them to switch.
Command-line driven? Well cygwin works great on windows for "bash scripting". Also most of the popular scripting languages are available as well (perl,ruby,python
A machine doesn't need to be command driven to be remotely administrated (though it often eases things). Take VNC for example.
To direct counter your argument, there are several SSH implementations for Windows which means you can do pretty much anything you can in Unix.
So
I meant the latter, typo. They don't know what the average Joe wants or how to best accomodate those needs.
Agreed.
;-).
However computers are everyday items today, not like it was 15-20 years ago when people started carefully started getting to know IBM Personal Computers (Enterprise folks who got the company to fork out huge sums to get important employees the ability to work from home) and Apple Macintosh (For magazine people and book authors).
Most people today have already joined one camp or the other and have spent years learning these operating systems and associated applications.
Linux hasn't that luxury (at least not in the western world) of having a lot of completely "blue" people starting using it. "Linux" was never about converting people from other operating systems for the sake of it either. It has always been a geek-toy kind of like AIX Solaris and the like, a geek toy in the regard that it was created by geeks to be run and administrated by geeks (sys-admins included
Linux fills an important niche, doing the stuff that 99% of the employed workforce never sees. Kind of like the AS/400. Keeps running *other stuff* with minimal administration.
I don't know how it is in academia today, but when I went to school, some geeks in training (CS-students) in my school got to know it because it was the only option one had if one didn't want to sit in the lab spending all-nighters doing scheme and C exercises etc.
A Professor of geekology (CS) mentioned this thing called Linux, essentially a precompiled kernel and a few binary libraries and utilities which one could install on the home PC. Unfortunately only 2 students managed to get it working before the semester ended, but it was a lot of fun in a geeky sense.
As I watch Distros today, some seem to have split personalities, trying to ape MS Windows, though still failing in several aspects after ### attempts. Partly because they try to please both geeks and non-geeks and the geeks developing the distros unfortunately don't know how to do the former.
Linux is about mucking around and moulding your system to your exact needs because A) you can and B) you get a kick out of it and in some extreme cases you benefit from it professionally (if you have a geek job as a sysadmin for ex.). These are not the driving forces of the majority though, which should be respected.
This argument is complete BS. from a business point of view. No one I know chose to work with Linux because primarily because it's "Unix like". They chose it because of the apps that run on it and how well those apps work on that kernel (sometimes also couples with reduced license fees).
The OS is pretty much irrelevant for anyone except a select few sys-admins. What people like mom&dad, the PHBs, the secretaries, various enterprise developers etc. are after are applications. All the categories listed previously want to do stuff, specific tasks, not muck around with the OS as that has nothing to do with their tasks.
Mom&Dad wants to surf the "Net" and send email. PHBs wants to read up on new buzzwords and marketing reports from Gartner et al and secretaries wants to spam all the people the PHBs manage, as well as typing up some word processing documents or extract a report from SAP. The developers wants to finish their next J2EE application in time so they won't be sacked and can get on another project.
Ok, there were a lot of stereotyping there, but in essence it's a pretty accurate picture. Whatever gets the job done and done in a sufficient manner is enough for these people. Since Windows is the de facto standard and 99.9% of all these people know Windows and has been working with it for years they see no reason to switch.
The most difficult thing to change is peoples' habits, which reflects on whether a start-up becomes a dud or the next "Google" (presenting something good with a low enough transition cost which Joe Average can justify).
To return to your statement "If you don't like the way Unix does things, don't use it", that falls pretty flat as well if you consider OSX.
It's Unix-like at it's core (Darwin), but I doubt many of the Mac customers buy a Mac because it *runs Unix*. I'd venture a guess that Aqua, the brand, the attention to usability details and the apps running on OSX has more to do with it.
Just two comments to your notes.
1. IIRC, the Unix violation issue comes from the fact that SCO claimed to have terminated IBM's license to distribute it's Unix version (AIX) and since IBM did not cease distribution, they are claimed to have violated the Unix copyright. IANAL, but perhaps the discussion could then move on to the circumstances which led up to the claimed termination of IBM's rights to distribute AIX.
3. As to my knowledge, IBM has not distributed Linux externally. Even internally they use distributions from Novell and Redhat primarily. IBM's software runs on certain Linux systems, but that is not the same as saying IBM distributes Linux.
PS. Note that I wrote Novell instead of Suse since it's time we start getting used to Suse being just a brand / trademark of Novell. Pretty much the same as there being no companies named Lotus, Tivoli or Rational, just IBM.
Why not use lighter material?
Sure, it will add some cost, but hey, "environment friendly" stuff cost more as it is and if the added cost isn't too rediculous it might just fly.
A few years ago, I had a Porsche 928S4 which was all in aluminium. The reduced weight was however offset by the huge engine and other re-inforced racing parts. However, that got me thinking why not use material kind of what was used on that one in order to make an appealing exterior while keeping wight down?
Looks weigh in as 1/2 of the reason for me picking a specific car. On the up-side, BMW (my current favorite) mentioned it their magazine last year that they'd have a hydro-electric model out this year or the next. The main problem for them wasn't switching their cars over to electric propulsion, but the infrastructure surrounding such a switch. To solve this they said they'd entered an agreement with a major fuel company, allowing them to put charging stations at a lot of petrol stations.
BMW in my view is a lot like Porsche, the car innovators of our time. Both companies sell their cars on looks and technical marvel with slogans like "a driver's car" and I seriously doubt BMW would put out a model having the dog-ugly looks which other makers seem to believe the customers crave for. It just seems to go against their philosophy.
I agree.
Not being a native English speaker however, I do tend to use English *when it makes sense*.
As I work for an "international company" I *do* communicate in English to anyone not from my country, even though I speak and write other languages (like German and French), because I have more experience using English and speak it rather fluently which makes conversation easier (when you don't have to actively think about grammatical issues or try finding the exact wording). English is a simple language and easy to learn if your own language has roots in the Germanic language with influences from Latin.
However, there are languages with other roots and for people grown up using such a language, English might prove a bit more challenging.
Even though English is rather easy to learn and most people in my country speak it rather well, it is by no means a replacement for our native one. The following two points I believe are the primary reasons:
1) The native language is the first one taught and everything in our society is communicated using that. It is also the single language which can be used to easily communicate with anyone across the borders of generations.
2) Our own language is more "fine grained", meaning we have more distinct words which results in less ambiguity (like one word for "free" as in beer and another for free as in freedom). Using English would be a step back in this regard.
There are a lot of other reasons for not adapting English for everyday use and those reasons might very well vary from one individual to another. In my work domain (the "tech-industry") I have noticed a peculiar one though. A lot of people in my field tend to view a person using a mix of our language and English (inserting English words like email or line of business into a native sentence) as being less cultivated. If there is a native word or phrase for an English equivalent, then not using the native one is often interpreted as a sign of the person lacking knowledge or being lazy.
We have a language academy which is responsible for adding new words to the language as new things are invented. Only when there is no native word for something which can be expressed in another language is it seen as being OK to borrow a term or word for expressing a thought.
Given that background for a society which can easily learn English, it's clear that English will not be replacing a lot of native languages any time soon. Looking at countries whose citizen speak languages having other roots, like Finnish, Hungarian, Japanese or Arabic, it's pretty clear that the likelihood for those countries switching to English exclusively is even less likely.
So.. tools which help bridge the language barriers seem like a perfect thing in a time where data travels globally at the speed of light and seem to be the only feasible solution applicable to every person on the planet, provided these tools can be made pervasive and natural to use (unobtrusive, not like the one used by the cop in one of the opening scenes of the 1993 movie Fortress).
It's a WINE solution, nothing else.
IBM is using their know-how of MS office to make it work better (at all?) in WINE.
What do you mean by tracking information?
If you mean keeping some kind of version control scheme going, use RCS, CVS or any other Version Control System. Just using a DB is not the right thing to do in most cases like that.
If you o.t.o.h. meant structurally storing data, then you have Posgresql or Mysql, which both have nice GUIs much like what MS Access provides.
DBA's are mostly needed to "optimally configure" your database, but if your're talking of things which would be suitable for MS Access, then using a DBA is way overkill.
Eg. Never having worked with mysql took me about 2 hours to get it going and using it. MS access took me far longer as it was not entirely conforming to open standards (i.e. SQL), meaning I had to read a lot of stuff to work out each quirk.
In my experience, the easiest DB's to get going and maintain have been Mysql and IBM's DB2. Even Oracle DB I could set up using a graphical click-through, but maintaining it was a nightmare.
If I would start a company today, I'd go with MySQL or Postgresql for DB, CVS/RCS or Subversion for version control. OpenOffice or StarOffice for office suite, apache for webserver, samba for fileserver and Ximian for collaboration (ie. kind of Excange / Notes).
That ought to be the majority of what tools a typical company needs to support it.
Personally, I don't have much of a problem with people talking on cell-phones in environments where others keep conversations going, provided they're not one of these types who thinks that the further away they are from the person they're talking to, the louder they have to screem at the phone.
What really buggs me are all those ring signals. Those are very abnormal sounds which are hard for the brain to filter out. If there was some kind of spec. which stated that each phone should broadcast a kind of "IsItOkToTriggerARIIIIIING()" query and wait half a second or so for a veto response before sounding off that annoying sound from the device, it'd go a long way at mitigating what I believe bug most people.
Having worked in so called "Open Landscape" offices for about 5 years now, I've pretty much learned to "tune out" all conversation noise when I need to think. However, artificial noise such as the classic RIIIING or all the personalized ring tunes are still piercing my conciousness and that's really what's bugging me.
If I could just veto those sounds, which might get the cellphone to use vibrate or similar, I'd pretty much be statisfied.
However, just "randomly" jamming anyones call is just rude imo. I like the freedom cellphones provide me, allowing me for example to pick up the kids on time while still being able to attend that "important" conference call the boss has been nagging about all week. (and is always scheduled to impossible hours, due to the timezone difference of our american colleagues, who pretty much arriving to their offices when we are about to leave ours').
$ strings win2k/private/security/msv_sspi/core|grep 'PWD='v _sspi
PWD=/usr/ms/win2k_sp1/private/security/ms
Or to save you about one second of your life, a clickable link.t ml
http://www.mainsoft.com/corporate/exec_profiles.h
(at the bottom)r ofiles.ht ml
http://www.mainsoft.com/corporate/exec_p
C, I agree with, but not A and B.
A) no one needs a "feature" like this. Save to Disk and then run if neccesary.
First off, I don't like other people telling me what feature I need or don't need. Second, I find it very conventient being able to d-click attachments, be it zip, jar, pdf, doc or anything else from withing my e-mail app.
I get a bunch of mail with attachments daily from colleagues / managers / partners / internal labs etc. and I use my email app as a storage for about 3/4 of the attachments I receive. The reasons are three-fold. One, I don't have to create directory structures and file stuff in folders on my disk. Two, using the e-mail app's built in database with automatic indexing makes finding stuff as simple as using google. Three, the attachments are located together with the e-mail body and header which means they are context-wise correctly located. Together the email and the attachments are often more valuable than each one by itself.
B) icons are designed to be clicked. as desktop users, we're trained to click on things. it's how we interact with our computer.
Exactly (though you probably mean't something else than what my reasoning will lead to), as my e-mail app displays the attachments with both their desktop icons as well as their filenames and extensions, It's visually the same as clicking on a desktop icon.
I really don't understand how preventing people from running a virus/trojan from their e-mail app is any more secure than forcing the user to first detach the virus/trojan, save it to a folder or desktop and then run it from the folder/desktop?
If the user initiates the attachment's "default behavior" from their email app, then obviosly, they're intent on "launching" it and event if they're forced to detach the payload the consequence will be the same.
Exactly, One of the best plugins to Firebird (and one of the strongest arguments which made me convert to that bird) is the plugin you no doubt refer to, the "Flash click to view" plugin by Ted Mielczarek.
It blocks all those annoying Flash banners distracting your reading while still allowing you to see them if you really would be so inclined, by left clicking the place-holder of the flash area.
Agreed, some crappy sites still use Flash as a part of their navigation system (a moronic idea as such, but..) so you're still able to use these sites.
Another must-have plugin is the Adblock (which IIRC is nowadays bundled with Firebird). These two plugins alone makes the web so much nicer to navigate.
However great the Gecko browsers might be, it's still to early to completely uninstall IE, as some sites are still too messed up that they only work with Internet Explorer. So at times, the Gecko browsers still can't be used to browse certain (broken) sites...
You assume that the *people not in region 1* are not having a multi region player?
Isn't this a rather reversed reasoning, in that the people who hava the most to gain (having access to both the hollywood movies at the same time as the US customers coupled with having early access to their domestic movies) would not be using multi-region players?
As a matter of fact, I live in the northern part of europe and I'd say about 7-8 out of 10 players sold today are multi-region out of the box. Even my parents got one when they went looking for a player last winter. They went to the largest audio/video retail chain in the country and the sales people actually dissuaded them from getting a region-2 player (they only held two models of crippled players still in stock) and were pursuaded into buying a Pioneer 444 multi-region instead.
I'd say, when even mom&pops are getting multi-region players without even knowing a thing about what it is, then region coding is indeed a dead horse.
Of bigger interest is the abolishment of differentiated release dates. Now, we all hope that Peter Jackson's amazing success with the LOTR trilogy and it's simultanous premiere dates around the world will make Hollywood wake up and realize that delaying movies are also a pretty f*cking stupid idea.
The general rule over here is that if a movie delays more than a month or so between the US and european release, then a lot of people won't go see it at the cinema. Instead they will get it from a colleague at work, who "napstered" a DVD screener or even a DVD retail rip off the net (and often transcoded it back to a DVDR so that moms&pops can see it on their DVD-thingy under the TV). If the release on the other hand is delayed no more than a month, then most people will cash up and see it at the cinema, as the cinema really is the prefered environment in which movies should be enjoyed.
Half a year ago, I shelled out about a grand for a so called "Hush unit" from the German company Hush Technologies.. Frankly, I'd thought it'd be more hushish than it actually was.
I'm not saying that I'd sounding like a 3-year-old IBM PC (kind of like a DC-3 starting it's engine), but it isn't exactly silent either. In fact, it generates enough noise to make me unable to sleep, having the unit in my bedroom. It's the HD (Seagate B.) that's making the sound and the sound isn't dampened enough, as it's surrounded by a steel chassis and as you know, steel isn't the best of materials reducing noise.
Also, the unit seems to draw an immense amount of power first when turned on and with the shitty PSU not being able to provide enough juice, some units always fail to initialize correctly (like the network 'adapter').
So, I'm looking for a new unit to replace this POS with one which fills the following criteria:
For me, silence is worth a lot and I've paid thus far an incredible premium to reduce it on my machines. And by silence, I don't mean a low hum, but no perceptible sound at all.
Please, if you or anyone else know of a system which fill these criteria, I'd be very grateful to read about it.
I disagree.
I purchase HW for various chores (like PVR, transcoding machines, distributed computing etc.) for use at home and each time I get a new box I have to spend hours getting everything up and running (using Gentoo) and configured as I want that specific box.
Having an installer which reduces the number of steps and configures stuff which the computer should know better than I (what HW I'm using and what firmware etc. are on it) is something I see as A Good Thing. This means that even "experienced people" can benefit from good installers (ever wonder why Linus is/was running RH and not Slackware?).
Regarding Debians' current installer, well it's simple if you know the answers to all the questions asked, not if you don't. (then again, that's true for most installers isn't it?) Compared to Gentoo, the Debian installation process is much quicker at the expense of "tweakability". I personally think the big difference between Debians installation process and RedHat's for example, is that you have to enter fdisk/disk druid and that it's curses based. You also have the option to specify what additional modules you want (the hard thing for new users is to know if they need those extra modules). Other than that I don't see a big difference between RH and Deb.
As for new users... Asking as few questions as possible regarding stuff the computer should be able to figure out is a huge help. I still recall the first time I tried to install X, having to know the H&V Frequencies of my monitor, each refresh rate, what ramdac my gfx card had, what resolutions were supported etc. etc. etc. (infinitum it felt like). Not even going to mention configuring a slim kernel for the first time (what modules.. aha, I have an IDE CD burner, then I should obviously know I need scsi support!)..
Needless to say, stuff like the RH/Mandrake installers or better yet, the knoppix one are a great help for newbies.
PS. for those people stuck in Windows land, not because they don't want to try out Linux, but because of "being intimidated" by all the seemingly pre-req knowledge one needs to even get a distro off the ground, I'd advise start looking at Knoppix. This distribution has a "live cd" which has the ability to boot up a complete "Linux system" from a CDROM, without installing anything on the HD. It configures everything automatically so you'll just boot it up and you have an "MS-Windows clone" (I'm going to get bashed for this comment I'm sure) in front of you when it's up. It's a nice way to get the possibility to "touch Linux-land".
Do note however, that IBM wants to take SCO to court. Purchasing Novell would (if the rumour is true and Novell actually holds the rights needed) put IBM in the clear and as such the case would probably be dismissed. The result most likely being that SCO would start pestering someone else, possibly someone with a lesser legal team. IBM is after what most slashdot readers are, a squishing sound as the bug is squashed into goo.
Also as has been pointed out, IBM has struck alliance with both Suse and Redhat and are having customers using both distros. Alienating Redhat means causing problems for some of IBMs existing users as well as affecting future deals, at the moment, not a good idea. Shoving down some cash into Novells pockets, helping ensure the company stays above water is the wiser alternative and is what I believe IBM will settle with considering the current state of things.
Judging by past experience of IBM roll-outs, if the decision is anchored all the way up (which this decision seem to be), IBM'll basically tell the tel-cos to either accept their new requirements or "take a hike". Eventhough there will apparently be a revenue loss to the companies currently having IBM as a customer, there are still enough other tel-cos eager to get "whatever money they can get", even if it'll be just a percentage of IBMs current spending on telephony.
It isn't just the fixed lines where IBM is putting preassure, most every IBMer has a cel-subscription as well, and in the past IBM has not been afraid to switch provider if they can save a buck. It's all about value/cost for IBM.
Agreed, IBM isn't as the average company, meaning it has the means to create most of the tech it needs internally (using it's own employees and partnerships with other companies, like cisco et. al.). Also worth noting is that in this particular case, it's probably not just the savings alone which resulted in the decision to switch. Consider that IBM is a company producing a lot of middleware and their experience will most certainly be reflected in additional modules to existing offerings (for example the WebSphere family), or completely new ones. It's also a good sales pitch when the customer asks for previous references as IBM will be able to say "we eat and breathe the stuff we're preaching".
The Matrix, the first movie in the trilogy was a clever piece of work. Lots of philosophical undertones and it introduced a lot of new stuff we hadn't seen in movies before (read cool effects and well choreographed wushu scenes). The second one was mediocre; the same effects, only in larger amounts, but had a few additions (new characters and some interesting dialogue). Reloaded, we could accept as it was just transportation between the first and the third movie.
Now to the third movie, the finale.
The movie had very long scenes, which stretched on and on where they should have been cut to about half their length (someone was apparently sleeping at the editing table). It wasn't just that the scenes were long, they also didn't help propel the plot forward. Some scenes should also have been cut entirely, like the train station scene, or 90% of the zion scenes, as neither did anything for the plot.
When the audience starts laughing at scenes where the director intends tension, relief or the audience to be impressed, then something is very wrong with the movie.
What bugged me the most was that there was NOTHING new in this movie at all. No new central characters, no revelations or explanations of any kind to any thing or concept revealed in the previous movies. In short, this movie was a huge let down, not even capable of wearing the coat of a fast paced, somber action movie.
I'll conclude with a "to-the-point" summary of the entire movie (which also happened to be the most common word uttered in the cinema when the end credits started rolling by): CRAP!
PS. There was actually one actor who, when the opportunity for acting appeared, performed above average (as opposed to the rest of the cast): Hugo Weaving as Agent Smith. Unfortunately 5 minutes of >>acting<< is a bit expensive given the ticket price at $12.
All mentioning of encryption in the parent post had the implied notion of open source encryption technologies, as a security scheme which can not be validated by anyone who so chooses is not to be considered trusted and should be avoided at all cost. What good is a lock to your safe if there are duplicate keys floating around or built in vulnerabilities (which can not be revealed without the blue prints of it's design)?
This paves the way for some serious contemplation.
Consider an earlier article published last week, where Sweden was about to enforce draconian IP laws and rights to enforce them. Those laws would lead to their police (and probably other obscure agencies) starting to patrol(1) a lot of Internet services such as p2p networks for example. How would this be received by other nations as there is not simple way of distinguishing a user's nationality from some IP address?
Let's face it, going down the current path, the US isn't going to be the only country doing massive interception and analysis of communication on the Internet and when the politicians wake up and smell the coffee, this kind of mess will have spiraled far out of their control.
Ponder this. Does anyone imagine a government capable of intercepting and filtering most communication to be standing on some kind of high moral and ethical ground where a reasoning like "The correct thing for us to do is to only police our own waters for domestic criminal activity" is going be the current agenda?
No friggin way is my assessment.
This is paving the way for a situation where espionage(2) is the trade of the day. In a few years when most states have caught up with any current technological forerunners there are, in my view, going to be only two choices. Either you encrypt all traffic(3), allowing you some kind of domestic protection, or you will have no protection at all.
The future in my view looks rather bleak if certain politicians and their fellow lobbyists are going to have their way. As I see it, the first ones to realize this problem has been the same type of people making the technological measures allowing such potential abuse, tech-savy folks such as some members of this blog. Mr. and Mrs. Clueless will be the first ones lined up against the wall as they will be caught off guard, unaware of how technology works and how it can be abused and thus unable to protect themselves from the private agendas of those with monetary and political power.
As a final Note. Most know that the last 9 in 99.999% availability figure is extremely expensive to obtain. Likewise, getting the last 9 when it comes to making people law-abiding(4) is going to be infinitely more expensive both from a monetary cost and most importantly, the cost of lost freedom...
As many of us know, the only information system totally secure is a system without external interfaces. The only secure(5) or safe society is a society without a mind of it's own, without free thought.
Which society do you wish the future to hold?
1. Meaning intercepting and scanning.
2. Of foreign power, corporate and any entity which the people with the means might be interested in for one reason or another.
3. Since modules in a computer system co-exist and make use of each other more and more for various tasks, it's getting harder and harder to know what component is transmitting what information and thus the only way to feel some kind of security is to only allow encrypted traffic.
4. Be it a valid law supported by the majority of the citizen or not.
5. Also known as "safe" or "convenient" in some corporate lingo.
Perhaps it's simply due to the hour being late, but I fail to see what possible benefit the general public would get from having the spammers having access to the workings of a scheme designed to prevent the latter from conducting their business.
In my eyes, it's not likely the spammers will be committing fixes to the cvs tree, fixing any possible hole allowing them to get around the scheme.
Just my â0.02