Most off-the-shelf distros? Let's see - the most popular distros are available as a free download. I don't think I've seen a Linux distro on a shop shelf in years. However, Windows XP is often on shop shelves for $150 and up. If we want to get into off the shelf equivalents, I'll remind you that most Linux distros contain everything to get a usable computer straight off the bat. If you want to do the same with Microsoft software, you've still got to buy Office (at least $300 more) not to mention the time taken to go and obtain and install it. If you add up the propretary Microsoft equivalents with what comes with a typical Linux distro, you're getting close to $1000 on software, none of which is available as a free download (and indeed, none of it at all is available as a download, meaning you have to go to a shop to buy it or wait for UPS to deliver it). You can download all the popular Linux distros for free. Even on my crappy internet connection, Ubuntu got here in far less time than it'd take a courier to deliver Windows + MSOffice + MS SQL Server.
Linux is free Windows XP Pro is at least $250 retail.
Of course I expect Windows XP to be MUCH MUCH better than Linux. But it's not, and the Win32 API is something I've always found to be extremely disorganized and feeling like it was written by several teams - none of whom communicated with each other. At least the Linux people communicate with each other, and there is some order imposed (by Linus). This is why Windows is such a let down. It's not significantly better than a free product despite its high cost. In fact, many would argue it is worse than its free competitors.
The thing is...unlike Microsoft, who are all about "destroying" other companies, companies like Google aren't all about "destroying" Microsoft - they are about making the best product they can. Microsoft has a very poisonous culture all about "squashing", "destroying", "cutting off the air supply" which (fortunately) most of their competitors don't have.
It's not Microsoft that's the multi-headed hydra. I think you'll find that's open source, and why it cannot be destroyed by Microsoft despite their best efforts to do so.
The record companies receiving my money is a privilege they have - not a right. The moment they make music that I can't play on my chosen CD playing device (whether that be a car stereo, a non-Windows computer or my old CD player that may not understand non-RedBook CDs) they lose the privilege of receiving my money. The moment they put music for download that I cannot trivially remove the DRM from is the moment that I stop buying music from them online.
I still buy regular CDs and music from iTMS because the former I can play on all my machines, and the latter I can trivially remove the DRM with JHymn. I buy unencrypted MP3s from places like Magnatune for the same reasons. I'm happy to buy DVDs because the DRM is trivially removed and I can put the movie I bought on my server so I can play it on whatever device is most convenient. The moment I can no longer do this is the moment I stop buying DVDs.
If in 20 years time, I cannot get music/video I can play on any of my chosen devices, so be it - I won't buy music or movies. I don't need them - I can do other activities instead such as read a website, go to the pub with my friends (and see a local live band), or go on a bike ride. I can happily get by without entertainment on plastic disks. The record companies must understand that mine and many others music purchases are discretionary spending they do NOT have a right to have - instead they have the privilege of having. A privilege that can be easily revoked.
CentOS (and I suspect RHEL) uses GPG signing for getting updates and installing new packages from their repositories, so at least for CentOS - they are already using GPG signing. The first CentOS install I did was with 4, so I don't know how long they've been using GPG signatures.
You know a company is no longer the sharp place it used to be when it starts the indeterminable reorganizations. It looks like Microsoft has now started what all mature companies do - they've lost their way, so they do random reorganizations every few years to try and find the passion and spark of their heyday.
Trouble is, random reorganizations are about as effective for doing this to write your software:
while true do gcc -o windowsvista/dev/urandom if [ -f windowsvista ] then
echo "something got built"
exit fi done
On human nature - you have it the wrong way around. Money doesn't make people greedy - people are greedy to start with (it's a survival instinct) and money is just a means to satisfy greed.
Good job the rest of the world already standardized on DAB for digital radio years before it was on the recording company's radar - it's now too late for them to cripple non-US radio.
Additionally - Active Directory et al. isn't as easy as people would lead you to believe ("It's Windows! It has a GUI! Therefore it's easy!")
We just had Active Directory rolled out here. Our performance problems were so bad we had to hire Microsoft consultants to try and figure it out - and these people from the company that makes the product took over a month to actually come up with a solution that ran only half as quickly as our old Novell system. Admittedly, it's a much bigger system than 100 users (and I'm glad I have absolutely nothing to do with it, it's a nightmare) but Microsoft Active Directory and Windows aren't some sort of ease of use silver bullet. In fact after seeing what trauma they went through, it's not actually any easier than a "cobbled together" OpenLDAP/Samba installation and a great deal more expensive.
Microsoft already have got stupid patents on some of the features of Visual Basic (one involving the NOT operator IIRC) - search the archives, it's been covered by Slashdot already.
C# _is_ Microsoft proprietary IP. It is covered by some of Microsoft's patents. It's every bit as proprietary as Visual Basic - it's just merely better documented.
If Microsoft's way of doing things is a failed way of doing things, I think I might like a taste of failure, especially if my failure is spectacular enough to fill my bank with $50bn!
The Microsoft version will doubtless be patent encumbered and therefore unimplementable in anything other than MSIE running on Windows. That's why everyone's so down on it.
In supporting computing, you have to make sure the computing environment is going to work for a company. This means the IT department DOES need to implement some kind of control - allowing everyone to download and install anything they like is NOT supporting computing, it'll end up destroying productivity (through the machines getting pwned). To effectively support business computing needs, you also have to inject some realism into the sometimes bizarre requests of staff. Yes - you *must* accomodate them in furthering the business through their computing assets - but that is NOT done by just letting anything go.
I found a book on the mezzanine level just outside our server room the other day.
"Businessman's Guide to Microcomputers" - by Deloitte Haskins + Sells (an accountancy firm). This book was printed in 1984. First edition 1982. It says this at the end in the section "Common first-time buyer pitfalls":
"We've got a lot of problems, but we're getting a computer" This buyer is asking for trouble...there is a new "old adage": "Don't computerise a mess...clean it up first". It is important to understand that a computer can't help you to do things you don't understand, and it won't make decisions for you. All it does is process a lot of information very quickly...exactly as it is told to do it. To be of any real use, a computer requires a disciplined approach and an organized mind.
This lesson from 21 years ago *still hasn't been learned* in many quarters (even some IT departments don't appear to understand this). Allow users of the corporate network do whatever they want with liberal abandon, and...well...the entire business pays the consequences later.
Re:How can you vouche for the security of this?
on
Flash, Meet Sparkle
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Software does not double in power every 18 months. Hardware is no longer doubling in power every 18 months either - clock speed hasn't been increasing, and the rate of integration is not increasing like it once was. Also, computers are remaining useful for longer - and Microsoft will have to deal with this. In 1995, a new PC was so vastly more useful than a PC made in 1990 in every respect. However, today, a 700MHz P3 made in 1999 is still a very useful computer for the typical things most users do (surf the web, write letters, email - that kind of thing).
Microsoft are going to have to get used to the fact that people will start routinely keeping computers as long as they do cars - for ten years or more. So are the hardware manufacturers, for that matter. Even though I personally like having the latest, fastest new hardware - normally upgrading every 2 years, this time around, I feel absolutely no need to upgrade and probably won't for at least the next couple of years.
Re:How can you vouche for the security of this?
on
Flash, Meet Sparkle
·
· Score: 1
Seems like I've been really really lucky ever since I've been running it then. I've certainly been getting the security fixes.
Re:How can you vouche for the security of this?
on
Flash, Meet Sparkle
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
There will never be the "year for Linux on the desktop", any more than there was a "year for Linux on the server".
I remember using LexisNexis (legitimately) years ago.
However, it always seems to be featuring in these juvenile hacks - we've had Adrian Lamo (Lame-o more like) and now this guy (and probably many others too). It seems that LexisNexis seriously need to rethink their security from the frequency they suffer high profile hacks.
When the Mac was storming ahead in the 1980s, if the PC had faded into obscurity, there were many other architectures that could have quite easily become what the PC eventually did. Capable computers like the Acorn Archimedes running RiscOS, the Amiga, Atari - any one of those could have easily burgeoned had the IBM PC failed.
Of course, all that time they wasted writing elaborate encryption and copy protection schemes was trivially defeated by a double tape deck, or in the case where you had to enter some code (or use the ghastly LensLok) to get into the game, there was this piece of hardware (Multiface?) where you'd just press a button and it'd dump the contents of memory to tape or disk. Load the created file, and the game would start from wherever you hit the button.
Instead of wasting time on things that'd be cracked within a week, they could have spent the time actually making a better game.
(The only game I hacked was Jet Set Willy, and that was unbelievably trivial - it just did a JP 0 if you got the code wrong three times. Change that JP to go to the entry point of the game, and well, it would start when you got the code wrong 3 times. BTW: I legally had a copy of JSW, it's just that awful 'Padlock systems' colour card bugged the hell out of me).
What do you have? A Pentium-60? My almost 3 year old PC (which runs Linux) handles video and sound simultaneously just fine. Handles video, sound and a game simultaneously just fine also. I'm using Xine for most video/sound (mainly because Xine plays my iTunes AAC music library out of the box). My Linux system isn't anything special - Fedora Core 2 with the stock kernel.
Slashdot Mirror
Most off-the-shelf distros? Let's see - the most popular distros are available as a free download. I don't think I've seen a Linux distro on a shop shelf in years. However, Windows XP is often on shop shelves for $150 and up. If we want to get into off the shelf equivalents, I'll remind you that most Linux distros contain everything to get a usable computer straight off the bat. If you want to do the same with Microsoft software, you've still got to buy Office (at least $300 more) not to mention the time taken to go and obtain and install it. If you add up the propretary Microsoft equivalents with what comes with a typical Linux distro, you're getting close to $1000 on software, none of which is available as a free download (and indeed, none of it at all is available as a download, meaning you have to go to a shop to buy it or wait for UPS to deliver it). You can download all the popular Linux distros for free. Even on my crappy internet connection, Ubuntu got here in far less time than it'd take a courier to deliver Windows + MSOffice + MS SQL Server.
Linux is free
Windows XP Pro is at least $250 retail.
Of course I expect Windows XP to be MUCH MUCH better than Linux. But it's not, and the Win32 API is something I've always found to be extremely disorganized and feeling like it was written by several teams - none of whom communicated with each other. At least the Linux people communicate with each other, and there is some order imposed (by Linus). This is why Windows is such a let down. It's not significantly better than a free product despite its high cost. In fact, many would argue it is worse than its free competitors.
The thing is...unlike Microsoft, who are all about "destroying" other companies, companies like Google aren't all about "destroying" Microsoft - they are about making the best product they can. Microsoft has a very poisonous culture all about "squashing", "destroying", "cutting off the air supply" which (fortunately) most of their competitors don't have.
It's not Microsoft that's the multi-headed hydra. I think you'll find that's open source, and why it cannot be destroyed by Microsoft despite their best efforts to do so.
No, they have it the wrong way around.
The record companies receiving my money is a privilege they have - not a right.
The moment they make music that I can't play on my chosen CD playing device (whether that be a car stereo, a non-Windows computer or my old CD player that may not understand non-RedBook CDs) they lose the privilege of receiving my money.
The moment they put music for download that I cannot trivially remove the DRM from is the moment that I stop buying music from them online.
I still buy regular CDs and music from iTMS because the former I can play on all my machines, and the latter I can trivially remove the DRM with JHymn. I buy unencrypted MP3s from places like Magnatune for the same reasons. I'm happy to buy DVDs because the DRM is trivially removed and I can put the movie I bought on my server so I can play it on whatever device is most convenient. The moment I can no longer do this is the moment I stop buying DVDs.
If in 20 years time, I cannot get music/video I can play on any of my chosen devices, so be it - I won't buy music or movies. I don't need them - I can do other activities instead such as read a website, go to the pub with my friends (and see a local live band), or go on a bike ride. I can happily get by without entertainment on plastic disks. The record companies must understand that mine and many others music purchases are discretionary spending they do NOT have a right to have - instead they have the privilege of having. A privilege that can be easily revoked.
CentOS (and I suspect RHEL) uses GPG signing for getting updates and installing new packages from their repositories, so at least for CentOS - they are already using GPG signing. The first CentOS install I did was with 4, so I don't know how long they've been using GPG signatures.
What were their parents thinking giving the guy the name "Ezra Rasmussen"? That name is a hell of a mouthful to say...
Gack. All this talk of "user experience". The user doesn't _want_ an experience, they just want to get their job done.
You know a company is no longer the sharp place it used to be when it starts the indeterminable reorganizations. It looks like Microsoft has now started what all mature companies do - they've lost their way, so they do random reorganizations every few years to try and find the passion and spark of their heyday.
/dev/urandom
Trouble is, random reorganizations are about as effective for doing this to write your software:
while true
do
gcc -o windowsvista
if [ -f windowsvista ]
then
echo "something got built"
exit
fi
done
On human nature - you have it the wrong way around. Money doesn't make people greedy - people are greedy to start with (it's a survival instinct) and money is just a means to satisfy greed.
Good job the rest of the world already standardized on DAB for digital radio years before it was on the recording company's radar - it's now too late for them to cripple non-US radio.
Additionally - Active Directory et al. isn't as easy as people would lead you to believe ("It's Windows! It has a GUI! Therefore it's easy!")
We just had Active Directory rolled out here. Our performance problems were so bad we had to hire Microsoft consultants to try and figure it out - and these people from the company that makes the product took over a month to actually come up with a solution that ran only half as quickly as our old Novell system. Admittedly, it's a much bigger system than 100 users (and I'm glad I have absolutely nothing to do with it, it's a nightmare) but Microsoft Active Directory and Windows aren't some sort of ease of use silver bullet. In fact after seeing what trauma they went through, it's not actually any easier than a "cobbled together" OpenLDAP/Samba installation and a great deal more expensive.
Microsoft already have got stupid patents on some of the features of Visual Basic (one involving the NOT operator IIRC) - search the archives, it's been covered by Slashdot already.
C# _is_ Microsoft proprietary IP. It is covered by some of Microsoft's patents. It's every bit as proprietary as Visual Basic - it's just merely better documented.
If Microsoft's way of doing things is a failed way of doing things, I think I might like a taste of failure, especially if my failure is spectacular enough to fill my bank with $50bn!
The Microsoft version will doubtless be patent encumbered and therefore unimplementable in anything other than MSIE running on Windows. That's why everyone's so down on it.
Slashdot never became a tabloid; it has always been a tabloid.
I found a book on the mezzanine level just outside our server room the other day.
"Businessman's Guide to Microcomputers" - by Deloitte Haskins + Sells (an accountancy firm). This book was printed in 1984. First edition 1982. It says this at the end in the section "Common first-time buyer pitfalls":
This lesson from 21 years ago *still hasn't been learned* in many quarters (even some IT departments don't appear to understand this). Allow users of the corporate network do whatever they want with liberal abandon, and...well...the entire business pays the consequences later.
Software does not double in power every 18 months. Hardware is no longer doubling in power every 18 months either - clock speed hasn't been increasing, and the rate of integration is not increasing like it once was. Also, computers are remaining useful for longer - and Microsoft will have to deal with this. In 1995, a new PC was so vastly more useful than a PC made in 1990 in every respect. However, today, a 700MHz P3 made in 1999 is still a very useful computer for the typical things most users do (surf the web, write letters, email - that kind of thing).
Microsoft are going to have to get used to the fact that people will start routinely keeping computers as long as they do cars - for ten years or more. So are the hardware manufacturers, for that matter. Even though I personally like having the latest, fastest new hardware - normally upgrading every 2 years, this time around, I feel absolutely no need to upgrade and probably won't for at least the next couple of years.
Seems like I've been really really lucky ever since I've been running it then. I've certainly been getting the security fixes.
There will never be the "year for Linux on the desktop", any more than there was a "year for Linux on the server".
I remember using LexisNexis (legitimately) years ago.
However, it always seems to be featuring in these juvenile hacks - we've had Adrian Lamo (Lame-o more like) and now this guy (and probably many others too). It seems that LexisNexis seriously need to rethink their security from the frequency they suffer high profile hacks.
No, I don't think it needed Microsoft or the PC.
When the Mac was storming ahead in the 1980s, if the PC had faded into obscurity, there were many other architectures that could have quite easily become what the PC eventually did. Capable computers like the Acorn Archimedes running RiscOS, the Amiga, Atari - any one of those could have easily burgeoned had the IBM PC failed.
Don't forget GNUstep!
I'm working on probably the only 3D GNUstep game (which was ported from Mac OSX to GNUstep).
Of course, all that time they wasted writing elaborate encryption and copy protection schemes was trivially defeated by a double tape deck, or in the case where you had to enter some code (or use the ghastly LensLok) to get into the game, there was this piece of hardware (Multiface?) where you'd just press a button and it'd dump the contents of memory to tape or disk. Load the created file, and the game would start from wherever you hit the button.
Instead of wasting time on things that'd be cracked within a week, they could have spent the time actually making a better game.
(The only game I hacked was Jet Set Willy, and that was unbelievably trivial - it just did a JP 0 if you got the code wrong three times. Change that JP to go to the entry point of the game, and well, it would start when you got the code wrong 3 times. BTW: I legally had a copy of JSW, it's just that awful 'Padlock systems' colour card bugged the hell out of me).
What do you have? A Pentium-60? My almost 3 year old PC (which runs Linux) handles video and sound simultaneously just fine. Handles video, sound and a game simultaneously just fine also. I'm using Xine for most video/sound (mainly because Xine plays my iTunes AAC music library out of the box). My Linux system isn't anything special - Fedora Core 2 with the stock kernel.