It's really interesting following the DeCSS discussions on/. I'm wondering where we stand here in New Zealand. I know the US govt has in the past tried to impose its will on small countries like NZ. I haven't bought a DVD drive yet but when I do I'm going to use DeCSS. BTW we non-Americans have had strong encryption for years in spite of your silly laws. It just means buying German or Australian software instead of American software - bwahaha!
All that script proves is what http-server/OS is reported in the banner. I'm sure I'm not the only one to think of spoofing the banner to report a different platform from what's actually used. After all, the only people who need to know what platform serves up my web pages are those who want to crack my site. I don't even know why headers give out such info. Security through obscurity may be dumb on its own, but added to other measures it adds one more stumbling block to would-be crackers. I've strayed off topic though - rambling aborted.
Here in New Zealand (way down south) I belong to a very helpful LUG. I've never heard them say "back in the day", "rtfm", "rtfht" (read the how-to), or anything rude or arrogant. Someone asks a question to the local mailing list, and others say "have you tried this..." or "I once solved that by...". I've asked real dumb questions and received really helpful answers. Are NZers just different or have I struck it lucky with this bunch of people?
Mac is hardware. Linux is software. Linux running on a G4 is getting the best of both. Dual boot with MacOS let you do all the things that Mac is famous for and run all the OSS *nix s/ware too.
Anon writes However, things like driver updates are (usually) just a double-click (and reboot) under Windows. This is an area Linux needs to improve in. More automation of tricky tasks, meaning standardising on ways to do things. The much-reviled Windows registry is actually a great idea. I quite like the rpm database. If all drivers came as rpms with an install script that set everything up it would make installing a matter of clicking on Driver.rpm which opens kpackage. Click on install and when the script runs you might need to enter the root password into the su-wrapper dialog box. The only difference here between win and lin is the password thing (and who would want an unauthorised user installing a driver?)
In most case linux would not even require a reboot. This example assumes kpackage or something similar is installed and set-up as the default app for the.rpm extension. On most distros it is. I don't know about.deb but I guess it would be similar. The advantage of the rpm database is when it comes to un-installing - no deleting of "DLL"s that other progs need.
Shalom Mr Anonymous Coward. I've installed Windows, OS/2, Linux (several distros).
BTW : Has anyone else noticed how these white supremicists are starting to look just a bit inbred.
raunchola says:
You're basing your claim that "Linux is ready for the desktop!" on the experience of one person? I'm sorry, but you're jumping to conclusions. If you wanted it to be a bit more effective, why not let your friend install Red Hat on there himself? Why not see if the average person can get past a Linux installation?
Would you also expect someone buying a new windows machine to install win themselves.
The whole point of this experiment is to compare pre-installed Linux with pre-installed windows. That said, I've seen a RedHat CD that came with a $NZ10 computer magazine install with minimal fuss and recognize everything. The GUI looked just like any other point-and-click OS so who would even know or care if the GUI runs on top of Linux or DOS (as windows does).
This has got to be the old tried and tested vapour-ware technique. If MS can string it out long enough it will put people off buying other office suites for linux while waiting for MS.
It worked with killing OS/2 while everyone waited and waited for Win95.
Problem (for MS) is that StarOffice is a free download and it reads MS file formats, so there's nothing to gain by waiting for MS Office for *nix.
ThierryD asks "who owns a language? The people who speak it, or the people who also master its finer details?"
Answer: neither - languages are public domain (and open source - if you're a linguist with a psychology background - which I'm not).
English is just a corrupted form of dutch anyway.
Back to topic: The vocab of most prog langs is english but the syntax is contrived for the purpose of expressing algorithms. I could re-write gcc and glibc and simply replace the names of primatives and library functions without altering the "language" itself. The only reason english names are used for primatives and function names is that english is so widely spoken. There are more Danes, Arabs and Germans that speak english than there are Anglo-saxons who speak Danish, Arabic or German.
I thought X was the standard and that the desktop (kde, gnome, whatever) just pretty it up a bit.
Same app, diffent desktop environment, different look and feel.
Then again, I may be a bit behind.
Yep. Hear hear. I use KDE, not Linux. Linux is buried underneath somewhere where I don't need to think about it. I don't care what lurks behind KDE, it could be BSD, Solaris or any other *nix. As long as it works. It just happened to be cheaper than M$-Windoze. As long as clicking on that StarOffice icon brings up my most used app I'm happy.
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It's really interesting following the DeCSS discussions on /. I'm wondering where we stand here in New Zealand. I know the US govt has in the past tried to impose its will on small countries like NZ. I haven't bought a DVD drive yet but when I do I'm going to use DeCSS. BTW we non-Americans have had strong encryption for years in spite of your silly laws. It just means buying German or Australian software instead of American software - bwahaha!
All that script proves is what http-server/OS is reported in the banner. I'm sure I'm not the only one to think of spoofing the banner to report a different platform from what's actually used. After all, the only people who need to know what platform serves up my web pages are those who want to crack my site. I don't even know why headers give out such info. Security through obscurity may be dumb on its own, but added to other measures it adds one more stumbling block to would-be crackers. I've strayed off topic though - rambling aborted.
Here in New Zealand (way down south) I belong to a very helpful LUG. I've never heard them say "back in the day", "rtfm", "rtfht" (read the how-to), or anything rude or arrogant. Someone asks a question to the local mailing list, and others say "have you tried this ..." or "I once solved that by ...". I've asked real dumb questions and received really helpful answers. Are NZers just different or have I struck it lucky with this bunch of people?
Mac is hardware. Linux is software. Linux running on a G4 is getting the best of both. Dual boot with MacOS let you do all the things that Mac is famous for and run all the OSS *nix s/ware too.
Anon writes However, things like driver updates are (usually) just a double-click (and reboot) under Windows. This is an area Linux needs to improve in. More automation of tricky tasks, meaning standardising on ways to do things. The much-reviled Windows registry is actually a great idea. I quite like the rpm database. If all drivers came as rpms with an install script that set everything up it would make installing a matter of clicking on Driver.rpm which opens kpackage. Click on install and when the script runs you might need to enter the root password into the su-wrapper dialog box. The only difference here between win and lin is the password thing (and who would want an unauthorised user installing a driver?) In most case linux would not even require a reboot. This example assumes kpackage or something similar is installed and set-up as the default app for the .rpm extension. On most distros it is. I don't know about .deb but I guess it would be similar. The advantage of the rpm database is when it comes to un-installing - no deleting of "DLL"s that other progs need.
Shalom Mr Anonymous Coward. I've installed Windows, OS/2, Linux (several distros). BTW : Has anyone else noticed how these white supremicists are starting to look just a bit inbred.
raunchola says: You're basing your claim that "Linux is ready for the desktop!" on the experience of one person? I'm sorry, but you're jumping to conclusions. If you wanted it to be a bit more effective, why not let your friend install Red Hat on there himself? Why not see if the average person can get past a Linux installation? Would you also expect someone buying a new windows machine to install win themselves. The whole point of this experiment is to compare pre-installed Linux with pre-installed windows. That said, I've seen a RedHat CD that came with a $NZ10 computer magazine install with minimal fuss and recognize everything. The GUI looked just like any other point-and-click OS so who would even know or care if the GUI runs on top of Linux or DOS (as windows does).
This has got to be the old tried and tested vapour-ware technique. If MS can string it out long enough it will put people off buying other office suites for linux while waiting for MS. It worked with killing OS/2 while everyone waited and waited for Win95. Problem (for MS) is that StarOffice is a free download and it reads MS file formats, so there's nothing to gain by waiting for MS Office for *nix.
ThierryD asks "who owns a language? The people who speak it, or the people who also master its finer details?" Answer: neither - languages are public domain (and open source - if you're a linguist with a psychology background - which I'm not). English is just a corrupted form of dutch anyway. Back to topic: The vocab of most prog langs is english but the syntax is contrived for the purpose of expressing algorithms. I could re-write gcc and glibc and simply replace the names of primatives and library functions without altering the "language" itself. The only reason english names are used for primatives and function names is that english is so widely spoken. There are more Danes, Arabs and Germans that speak english than there are Anglo-saxons who speak Danish, Arabic or German.
I thought X was the standard and that the desktop (kde, gnome, whatever) just pretty it up a bit. Same app, diffent desktop environment, different look and feel. Then again, I may be a bit behind.
Yep. Hear hear. I use KDE, not Linux. Linux is buried underneath somewhere where I don't need to think about it. I don't care what lurks behind KDE, it could be BSD, Solaris or any other *nix. As long as it works. It just happened to be cheaper than M$-Windoze. As long as clicking on that StarOffice icon brings up my most used app I'm happy.