No. What got us into this mess is being a lackey for the freaking UN. They send us all over the world do handle their so-called peace-keeping missions. But do the people who live on those countries whose national sovereignty gets violated hate the UN for it? No, they hate the US for it. Who do they attack? The UN? No, the US. Because without the US, the UN is nothing. It's just a gathering of pathetic countries with no real power.
However, I do agree that attacking them is not the way to stop terroist attacks. While my natural inclination is to say bomb them into the dark ages that's not the best way to stop this. It would've been much better if we'd been smart and minded our own business BEFORE this happened, but now that it's happened lets not fail to learn our lesson.
All they want is for us to leave them the hell alone. So pull our troops home. Tell the UN to go to hell and start mindinging our own business.
Do this, and they won't bother us anymore. Yes we are big. And yes we have great military stregnth. But they aren't going to meet us on a field of open battle. They will hide, move disperse and reform. And they will continue to successfully execute attacks of this nature.
I think the Linux user community has a ways to go and should learn to be more inclusive of non-Linux users
Let me get this straight...You want a group of people who are gathered together because they share a common interest (linux) to be more inclusive of people who don't share that interest?
Why not go find a windows users group instead? Which, btw, I highly doubt would be very "inclusive" with linux users.
Governments do not automatically screw parties, as long as people are interested in some oversight.
If by this you mean that governments do not screw you as long as you are vigilant I agree. Unfortunately, history bears out that people are complacent creatures, who tend toward an attitude of personal peace and affluence. Or, as long as it doesn't directly affect me, who cares.
The thing is, corporations should not have lobbying power, especially because if they do, their power easily trumps that of individuals.
Remember that the benefits of a free market depend on consumers having freedom to choose. Allowing corporations to have the political power to influence legislation that can effectively protect their business models and markets pretty much eliminates this.
Agreed. The point is, if the government had no power to manipulate the market then the corporations would gain no benefit from lobbying it. Corporations lobby the government because they have to. First, for self preservation, so they don't get regulated out of business. Second, because that's the way our government has setup the market. If you want to be successfull, you've got to throw money at the government. Instead of letting the market decide. If the government wielded no power over the market then the corporations would be forced to return to competing with other companies in providing valuable services and products.
The RIAA is the perfect example. Because the govt chooses to be involved in the market, once they became irrelevant in their current form they just lobbied congress to cement their current form into law rather than evolve. How wonderfull it would be if the government weren't allowed to do this! Then we wouldn't have ANY of the issues we have today surrounding the DMCA and the RIAA/MPAA/etc.
While I think the PS/2 is pretty awesome and will certainly be purchasing one at some point, I will be making a point of purchasing a GameCube as well. Nintendo has made a very smart decision in choosing not to try and do everything. They've chosen the path that has made unix tools so great. They are going to do one thing and do it well. That's produce an entertainment console and great games, instead of pretty much making a PC and selling it as a computer. They are focusing on what they know and I applaud that.
Of course corporations influence legislation. They have to. If they don't, the govt will screw them everytime. Same as you and me. If the government didn't constantly overstep it's bounds and try to regulate the market then corporations wouldn't have a reason/need to spend so much money in the government.
It makes no sense to say we should punish corporations for spending money in govt when they are only trying to do the same thing we are (take this story for example) and that's keep themselves from getting screwed over by an overzelous bunch of legislatures who don't have a clue.
That said, using terms like "lunatic left" hardly helps rational discussion.
I think that one of the things that have gotten us to the point of bloated, unstable software is a LACK of regulation and recourse against some of the larger Software companies.
While I realize Michael was likely being sarcastic, I'll make a point on your response anyway. Lack of regulation is what made linux possible. Do you think Linux would be here if it had to comply with Government Regulations? Had to file X paperwork to be distributeable? Regulation, once it starts, tends to only get bigger. Do you want the government specifying what interface you use? What features your OS can and can't support? Hey, that's a great idea. Then those with big pockets (that would be MS, not the free/open software movement) can buy out senators to make regulations that pretty much legislate MS's monopoly! What a GRAND idea.
Lack of regulation didn't create the MS we have today. Consumers created it. They got what they asked for, they just didn't realize all the effect it would have. They wanted computers to be easier to use. They wanted everything to be the same to make thigns easier. They didn't want to think. So, they got windows. ANd they got windows everywhere. But they lost freedom, they lost stability, they lost compitition, etc. Luckily, the market was and is still unregulated, so the Free/Open software movement thrives and those of us who want that can still have it.
Why keep people re-implement the wheel all over again and again and... ? Why not use a existing Widget Lib and _extend_ it? Look at QT, look at GNOME!
Why do we keep making new engines? Why don't we still use steam engines? Because concepts can be improved upon. I doubt very much that trolltech or the GTK development group would've been real interested in letting the E guys rewrite their widget libraries to take advantage of evas (and thus hardware acceleration/etc). And that's assuming they would even WANT to rewrite it.
On the subject of Yet Another Linux Desktop: well, I'm excited to try it out, but I'm starting to get annoyed by it too. I've spent the last year and a bit flip-flopping back and forth between Gnome and KDE because neither has all the fetures that I want; I feel like I'm being offered a compromise, not a choice. I'm not entirely sure a third option is going to help things unless it REALLY kicks ass. Time will tell.
Perhaps this was not your intent, but you make it sound like enlightenment is a newcomer to the field. This is not the case. E has been around for a long time. I've been using it since 0.13 which was..uh.. I'm terrible with dates, but I think it was around 5 years ago? Maybe someone can help with that. And I followed E for awhile before that.
E is not trying to be a comprimise, or another option to those two. Enlightenment is what the people using it want it to be. Generally speaking. If it isn't what you want, and no-one else is providing what you want, you really have two choices. Get involved in a project that's close and try to contribute. See if you can get int hte changes to make it what you do want (by contributing code, not by whining and complaining. That that I think you necessarily would, but you aren't the only one that'll read this.) Or, alternatively, starting your own project.
Just don't call E YALD. It's not. It's been around since before Gnome, Before KDE, before sawfish, most of the current windowmangers. And it's always been ahead of the curve on features, configurability, and functionality. And of course, last but certainly not least, beauty.
Why invest so much effort in building flashy GUI's ? I still use FVWM.
Because some of us/like/ having a gorgeous desktop. Some of us like being able to tweak everything about our systems, including our shell or gui environments.
Having the perfect Desktop is not The One And Only Solution (TM) for getting people to use Linux.
Despite the comment in the article posting here, this is not one of E17's goals. It is not about getting people to use linux. It is about raster scratching an itch. In this case, it just happens to be an itch shared by a lot of other people. Which is, of course, the hallmark of successfull OSS projects.
OS/2 had a more advanced GUI than Windows, still people used Windows. Why ? Because having a great GUI doesn't automagically solve the "problem".
I dunno why people keep bringing up an OS/2 v windows comparison. I fail to see it as relevant. perhaps someone can explain this tendancy?
I believe KDE2 has reached a good level of what a GUI for new users should be like.
And? Who cares? E is not trying to be a great new gui for new users.
I think we should invest more time in making PnP and stuff like that better now.
Huh? You act like there are limited resources available for working on linux issues. This is just silly. I mean, it's like saying "Hrm. I think the body and iterior design of this car is great, but the engine performance needs some work. Lets get those interior guys working on that."
Hrm. I think we need updated/slightly modified good samaritan laws to cover this sort of thing. This is even worse than situations GS laws were meant to cover. Currents are if you cause damage accidentally trying to help. He didn't even do that. It's like rescuing a man from drowning and having him sue you for doing so.
To quote John Stossel: Give me a break.
Its noticeably slowing down my speeds on my home internet connection. Something needs to be done in a hurry, and blocking port 80 is a fast solution that works.
Ah yes, personal peace and affluence. It's causing you grief so who cares about what everyone else wants. It's ok to screw them as long as it doesn't negatively affect you? Perhaps an unfair characterization, I don't know you after all, but that's the kind of attitude that's prevelant in our culture today and is usually indicated by comments of this nature.
Instead of blaming the broadband providers, why don't you blame the real culprit in this situation: Windows. Get angry at Microsoft; if it weren't for their lousy code and lousy security this problem would not have been possible in the first place.
Hrm. Everyone has problems eventually. While MS certainly puts out poor quality software, and there is room to be upset with them about that, in this case the patch was out in plenty of time to avoid this mess. The real culprits here are the NT admins. I understand their reticience to apply a patch from MS before it's absolutely necessary, and so MS gains even more culpability from it's habit of introducing more bugs while fixing others. But once the code red worm came out all of those servers should've been patched same day. No excuses.
The little editorial comment that they can "simply block infected machines" is, quite frankly, garbage.
Not really. Well, it might be a pain to try and keep up with infected machines, but a regular cron job scanning the network and automatically updating your access lists isn't that hard. But more realistically you'd scan your network for vulnerable machines instead and then block those as well, instead of closing the barn door after the horses are already out.
Like driving, telephone service is a priviledge and not a right.
Hrm. Partly correct. We do have a right to freedom of movement. Really, the only time you need to get a drivers license, or register your car, or whatever, is if you are doing it for commercial purposes. As a citizen you cannot be required to do those things. Unfortunately, they don't tell you that, and by getting those things you forfeit those rights. And of course, the hassle you'd get from the police all the time makes it very unappealing as well.
We may have our liberal factions, but we are capitalist society driven by those rules.
No. Capitalism is a Marxist creation. What we are/supposed/ to have is a Free Market. Unfortunately, we don't have that either. Part of it is still there, but because the government regulates the market it doesn't work like it should.
And herein lies the main point of issue with the argument that we shouldn't complain, but rather should just take our business elsewhere if we don't like the TOS. That's a wonderfull thought, and is exactly right, if you have a free market. But we don't. Instead, thanks to government involvement there really aren't many other choices for the consumer. If it wasn't for the government, just the desire for this type of service would have spawned a business to provide for it.
A great example of this is the original surge of ISPs, even the continuing existance of smaller ISPs. Because of the nature of the dialup business pretty much anyone could go out and start up a company to provide that sort of access. So consumers had lots of choice. This brought about unlimited access, and cheaper prices. It forced ISPs to provide quality service to their customers (no busy signals/etc) or else really cheap prices depending on your target market. Competition, it's a wonderfull thing. But here, I have three choices for broadband. Cable, provided only by AT&T @home, DSL, provided (in the end) only by SWBell, or an expensive line (T1+). Unless you count ISDN, which I don't really think meants the term "broadband". Without competition, and thus the power to take your money somewhere else there is no way to affect your service. All you are left with is complaining.
The really sad thing is that complaining eventually tends to devolve into "there oughta be a law" comments. More regulation is not the answer to this problem. Less regulation and more competition is.
What we need is another access method that's similar to dialup, though hopefully not dependant on the phone company, which was the one big problem with that part of the internet's growth. An access method that does not require a limited resource controlled by a single company.
The only thing I know of is wireless/satellite. That's the one I'm waiting for. We have a company here locally that is making a strong go of providing (flash warning) wireless broadband internet access and I'm excited about it. It's not available where I am yet, but it's close. As this type of technology becomes more viable, not only will there be a way for the average business to get involved in the market to provide competition just in the wireless sphere of broadband, but the whole concept of the wireless providers will provide competition for the other broadband providers (DSL/Cable). I think we'll start seeing some major changes at that point.
Stating that, you might ask if DSL and Cable don't count as competition. I'd say they do. However, there are only 2 companies selling the actual connection. And they do compete with each other, which is why it's affordable. But, that's the only real compitition going on. Because both sides tend to slack on the service side, and both disallow servers generally there's no real competition in that sphere. A third single company doing wireless wouldn't be much better unless that company was out to specifically do those things. The point is that currently (afaik) wireless providers arent regulated like phone/cable. Anyone who can put up the money to start the business can start providing wireless broadband access. So we'll have real choice.
I agree. I too do not mind this so much. The upstream bandwidth is shared and in short supply. This is pretty much a necessary move for @Home. As long as they open them back up when the threat is gone I'm alright with that. I think they are going above and beyond by calling those who are vulnerable and helping them patch their servers. I don't run a webserver myself, but I don't want to see this become a trend.
That said, if they know the people who are infected/vulnerable (which the link in the article claims) then I wish they'd use that data to feed their access lists instead of just blocking port 80 for everyone. To be honest, if it was me, I'd use that data to feed an access list that entirely blocked infected/vulnerable customers. Then you wouldn't even have to call them, they'd call you. Then your support people can check their name against the list of blocked-for-code-red users and explain the situation, remove them from the list when it's patched, and they are back on. It gets the customer motivated to take care of it at the same time.
Re:Servers were never allowed out on cable
on
Broadband Crackdown
·
· Score: 1
But frankly, you guys failed. If everyone had just patched their servers regularly, and knew the least bit about their computer, and wtf it was doing, then this would never have been a problem, and we wouldn't have to do such rediculous measures such as this. Yes, i think this is a rediculous measure, but so is leaving your computer unpatched for any decent amount of time. So please, stop deflecting the blame when really you yourselves (or your friends who don't patch) are at fault.
Hrm. You're painting with an awfully wide brush there don't you think? The people who care about this stuff (by and large) are not the same people who run IIS servers. Particularly insecure/vulnerable IIS servers.
Read his comment again. His reference to technical savvy was their ability to recognize what the software was doing, not what the implications were, and even more than that their ability to disable that software.
amoung the typical news goons I thought this story was very impressive. I generally don't agree with much that comes out of salon, but this
article was obviously thoroughly investigated and I felt it was very well written.
I submitted a similar story, though with a slightly different point. Anarchy Online was mentioned here on slashdot some time back. Mainly because they had a planned linux version as well. This is why I signed up to beta-test. I was one of those who received their key this last week and I was rather thrilled by the chance to check it out and assist them.
Unfortunately, I went to their site to download it and there was no real indication of a split between platforms and the file was in zip format. I poked around the FAQ's some and discovered that the linux platform was now tenatively planned, would not be out until at least after the windows release, and would be dependant on the results from the windows release. (I'm not sure in what way, the FAQ doesn't say.)
I dropped a line through their contact form informing them that I was disappointed by this turn of events, and that I was sorry but I would be unable to beta-test their software as none of my boxes run windows. That in fact the whole reason I was interested was their linux support, and indicated my willingness to assist with beta-testing when they needed it for their linux version.
If you are one who is actually interested in playing this game on linux, I would recommend you express your interest. I can only assume they do not believe there is sufficient interest. And they may be right about that. For this reason, please write them only if you are actually interested in the game. Over-inflated market estimates will not help the situation at all. It will only sour them and other gaming companies when it comes to market and they don't come anywhere near their projections.
At least for me, the cd key came in email. Not snail mail. Which would be a fairly crucial difference here. I'm sure you wouldn't want a cd image coming through your mail server.;-)
Have to disagree with you there. I'm very much in favor of people using encrypted email, believe me. But this is entirely the wrong attitude. Mozilla is working for other changes. Compliance with standards is a big deal. And if they are going to implement PGP, great. But they should implement it/right/. If they screw it up, and it ends up being a usability problem, people will just disable it and many will likely never bother turning it back on. This will not accomplish anything.
If it's so important to you to have encrypted email, then get a mail client that supports it. It's not like there's a shortage of them. Some are even good at it.
No flames please. I'm not saying it's a good
one or that I even agree with it, just that I
think you all are missing it.
The point is that the interface to the two are
the same. Roxio originally licensed the code
to develop the interface, and they are still
using that (or at least that's the assumption)
But now they are using it to access someone else
that doesn't charge and are refusing to pay the
fees.
So, roxio got what they wanted, and left. They
get to keep the code/etc but don't have to pay
anymore. It really is about the code, and not about the choice of databases, or the content of those databases. (Not that I don't think what Gracenote did was bad, but that is not what this is about.)
This, I think, is the beef Gracenote has. But, imo, that's what you get for going with a stupid licensing model. They should suck it up and deal with it.
Whoops. Forgot to address one of your points there. I could accept it informing the user what it depends on. But it's the users responsibility to select it. But I'd want it somewhere like help or in the summary text, not in a popup. When I'm flying through a kernel config I do not want to deal with a hundred popup windows.
And yes, if you blow it, the compile fails and you fix it. Easy.
I disagree. How often do you "make config" instead of "make menuconfig"/"make xconfig" ? I don't use "make config" anymore. Well, being for "softies" is exactly the critique that was done to projects for menu/graphical tools.
Yeah, but that's a dumb argument imo. Just having a graphical or semigraphical interface doesn't make it "for softies". I specifically use that term in regards to software that protects the user from him/herself to their detriment.
Either way (or any other way for that matter), if you don't like it, tell the man why (on lkml, not/.) AND suggest how to make it better.
Because I know it won't make any difference. Nothing I could say would ever make a whit of difference in this project. Eric wants to dumb down the interface, and he's going to do it. Linus, for whatever reason, has gone a long with it.
So why bother posting at all?
I guess I do it for the few of us who still care. And at least partially I do it so that I don't get swept along with the tide.
Frankly, I don't think there should be any mode but IKnowWhatI'm Doing. If you don't know what you are doing you shouldn't be compiling the kernel. It isn't that hard to learn to know what you are doing.
It will probably come as a surprise but I actually agree with you. I kind of shot it off not actually expecting to see it posted. Just an extension of Murphy's law I guess. If I spend time composing a good post, it gets rejected out of hand. If I throw up a blurb and don't bother to reread it gets accepted. -roll-
Why post it if I thought it was going to get rejected? Who knows. I was tired and more than a little irritated and wrote it in that state. Never a good idea. I posted when I didn't like it because it's a pretty critical part of the kernel, and thus it is news that people should hear about.
A few more extensive notes:
a) Greying out options is a bad thing imo because it makes it more difficult to see the kernel as a whole. When a new kernel is released I go through the release notes and look at the new options in the config tool. Greying them out unless an option they depend on/etc is clicked will make this more difficult at best.
I think this, coupled with the other "features" to make it easier to use do not make things better, but rather set us a ways down the path to user friendliness at the expense of flexibility and power. I use linux because I like the fact that I can do what I want even if the people who wrote it didn't anticipate my using it in that fashion. If I want to compile feature (a) into my kernel which requires feature (b) I don't want it to automatically select and unselect feature b for me. I may not/want/ feature b. Plus, I have yet to see this even implemented so it works in a sane fashion. The install tools for most every major distribution (except slackware, and I think debian) are a perfect example of this (in the package selection stages)
softies was not a personal attack. I think those are the people who will most appreciate this tool, and from what Eric said it's pretty much who it's aimed at. People who want a few clicks to build everything and not have to see the internals and not have to really know what they are doing and to have the tool protect them from themselves. (Sound familiar at all)
I wasn't pointlessly bashing the tool. I was giving my evaluation of it. I think it sucks. I can't believe this is something that the serious linux users wants today. And if it is, then it is very sad indeed. I just don't agree with Eric's whole premise for doing this. (That being that he realized the kernel is too hard to compile) That's just baloney. I have yet to meet someone who thought the linux kernel was hard to compile. I used to respect Eric. Probably mostly because he provided a nice check for some of the more outrageous views Stallman and his crew carry. But lately I've lost most of that respect. And not just from this.
And my comment on python had nothing to do with starting a language war. I am not a language bigot. I'm not even an os bigot. I just wish we'd stop adding so many freaking dependencies to everything. I and others I know have taken a lot of time to scrape out the stuff we don't use from our linux installs. Most notably things like Python and Info. Not that python doesn't have it's good points, but I never write in it, and so I have no use for it, so i don't want it on my box. There was really no good reason for redoing it in Python afaik other than that he wanted to. (He said it was because it was it was compileable, but so is C and so is perl so that's bogus. And the way he mentioned it seemed more like an afterthought in response to complaints about having to have another tool installed than anything)
Alan Cox was quoted as saying it wasn't a big deal since you only had to have it on the build box, but I doubt that many of us have enough boxes laying around to have one for building packages for all the others, so this is hardly a valid point. (No offense Alan.;-)
I'm out of time. (Darn.) Hope this is more informative and well reasoned than the post was.;-)
Slashdot Mirror
However, I do agree that attacking them is not the way to stop terroist attacks. While my natural inclination is to say bomb them into the dark ages that's not the best way to stop this. It would've been much better if we'd been smart and minded our own business BEFORE this happened, but now that it's happened lets not fail to learn our lesson.
All they want is for us to leave them the hell alone. So pull our troops home. Tell the UN to go to hell and start mindinging our own business.
Do this, and they won't bother us anymore. Yes we are big. And yes we have great military stregnth. But they aren't going to meet us on a field of open battle. They will hide, move disperse and reform. And they will continue to successfully execute attacks of this nature.
Let me get this straight...You want a group of people who are gathered together because they share a common interest (linux) to be more inclusive of people who don't share that interest?
Why not go find a windows users group instead? Which, btw, I highly doubt would be very "inclusive" with linux users.
If by this you mean that governments do not screw you as long as you are vigilant I agree. Unfortunately, history bears out that people are complacent creatures, who tend toward an attitude of personal peace and affluence. Or, as long as it doesn't directly affect me, who cares.
The thing is, corporations should not have lobbying power, especially because if they do, their power easily trumps that of individuals.
Remember that the benefits of a free market depend on consumers having freedom to choose. Allowing corporations to have the political power to influence legislation that can effectively protect their business models and markets pretty much eliminates this.
Agreed. The point is, if the government had no power to manipulate the market then the corporations would gain no benefit from lobbying it. Corporations lobby the government because they have to. First, for self preservation, so they don't get regulated out of business. Second, because that's the way our government has setup the market. If you want to be successfull, you've got to throw money at the government. Instead of letting the market decide. If the government wielded no power over the market then the corporations would be forced to return to competing with other companies in providing valuable services and products.
The RIAA is the perfect example. Because the govt chooses to be involved in the market, once they became irrelevant in their current form they just lobbied congress to cement their current form into law rather than evolve. How wonderfull it would be if the government weren't allowed to do this! Then we wouldn't have ANY of the issues we have today surrounding the DMCA and the RIAA/MPAA/etc.
While I think the PS/2 is pretty awesome and will certainly be purchasing one at some point, I will be making a point of purchasing a GameCube as well. Nintendo has made a very smart decision in choosing not to try and do everything. They've chosen the path that has made unix tools so great. They are going to do one thing and do it well. That's produce an entertainment console and great games, instead of pretty much making a PC and selling it as a computer. They are focusing on what they know and I applaud that.
It makes no sense to say we should punish corporations for spending money in govt when they are only trying to do the same thing we are (take this story for example) and that's keep themselves from getting screwed over by an overzelous bunch of legislatures who don't have a clue.
That said, using terms like "lunatic left" hardly helps rational discussion.
While I realize Michael was likely being sarcastic, I'll make a point on your response anyway. Lack of regulation is what made linux possible. Do you think Linux would be here if it had to comply with Government Regulations? Had to file X paperwork to be distributeable? Regulation, once it starts, tends to only get bigger. Do you want the government specifying what interface you use? What features your OS can and can't support? Hey, that's a great idea. Then those with big pockets (that would be MS, not the free/open software movement) can buy out senators to make regulations that pretty much legislate MS's monopoly! What a GRAND idea.
Lack of regulation didn't create the MS we have today. Consumers created it. They got what they asked for, they just didn't realize all the effect it would have. They wanted computers to be easier to use. They wanted everything to be the same to make thigns easier. They didn't want to think. So, they got windows. ANd they got windows everywhere. But they lost freedom, they lost stability, they lost compitition, etc. Luckily, the market was and is still unregulated, so the Free/Open software movement thrives and those of us who want that can still have it.
Why do we keep making new engines? Why don't we still use steam engines? Because concepts can be improved upon. I doubt very much that trolltech or the GTK development group would've been real interested in letting the E guys rewrite their widget libraries to take advantage of evas (and thus hardware acceleration/etc). And that's assuming they would even WANT to rewrite it.
Perhaps this was not your intent, but you make it sound like enlightenment is a newcomer to the field. This is not the case. E has been around for a long time. I've been using it since 0.13 which was..uh.. I'm terrible with dates, but I think it was around 5 years ago? Maybe someone can help with that. And I followed E for awhile before that.
E is not trying to be a comprimise, or another option to those two. Enlightenment is what the people using it want it to be. Generally speaking. If it isn't what you want, and no-one else is providing what you want, you really have two choices. Get involved in a project that's close and try to contribute. See if you can get int hte changes to make it what you do want (by contributing code, not by whining and complaining. That that I think you necessarily would, but you aren't the only one that'll read this.) Or, alternatively, starting your own project.
Just don't call E YALD. It's not. It's been around since before Gnome, Before KDE, before sawfish, most of the current windowmangers. And it's always been ahead of the curve on features, configurability, and functionality. And of course, last but certainly not least, beauty.
Because some of us /like/ having a gorgeous desktop. Some of us like being able to tweak everything about our systems, including our shell or gui environments.
Having the perfect Desktop is not The One And Only Solution (TM) for getting people to use Linux.Despite the comment in the article posting here, this is not one of E17's goals. It is not about getting people to use linux. It is about raster scratching an itch. In this case, it just happens to be an itch shared by a lot of other people. Which is, of course, the hallmark of successfull OSS projects.
OS/2 had a more advanced GUI than Windows, still people used Windows. Why ? Because having a great GUI doesn't automagically solve the "problem".I dunno why people keep bringing up an OS/2 v windows comparison. I fail to see it as relevant. perhaps someone can explain this tendancy?
I believe KDE2 has reached a good level of what a GUI for new users should be like.And? Who cares? E is not trying to be a great new gui for new users.
I think we should invest more time in making PnP and stuff like that better now.Huh? You act like there are limited resources available for working on linux issues. This is just silly. I mean, it's like saying "Hrm. I think the body and iterior design of this car is great, but the engine performance needs some work. Lets get those interior guys working on that."
Hrm. I think we need updated/slightly modified good samaritan laws to cover this sort of thing. This is even worse than situations GS laws were meant to cover. Currents are if you cause damage accidentally trying to help. He didn't even do that. It's like rescuing a man from drowning and having him sue you for doing so. To quote John Stossel: Give me a break.
Its noticeably slowing down my speeds on my home internet connection. Something needs to be done in a hurry, and blocking port 80 is a fast solution that works.
Ah yes, personal peace and affluence. It's causing you grief so who cares about what everyone else wants. It's ok to screw them as long as it doesn't negatively affect you? Perhaps an unfair characterization, I don't know you after all, but that's the kind of attitude that's prevelant in our culture today and is usually indicated by comments of this nature.
Instead of blaming the broadband providers, why don't you blame the real culprit in this situation: Windows. Get angry at Microsoft; if it weren't for their lousy code and lousy security this problem would not have been possible in the first place.
Hrm. Everyone has problems eventually. While MS certainly puts out poor quality software, and there is room to be upset with them about that, in this case the patch was out in plenty of time to avoid this mess. The real culprits here are the NT admins. I understand their reticience to apply a patch from MS before it's absolutely necessary, and so MS gains even more culpability from it's habit of introducing more bugs while fixing others. But once the code red worm came out all of those servers should've been patched same day. No excuses.
Not really. Well, it might be a pain to try and keep up with infected machines, but a regular cron job scanning the network and automatically updating your access lists isn't that hard. But more realistically you'd scan your network for vulnerable machines instead and then block those as well, instead of closing the barn door after the horses are already out.
Hrm. Partly correct. We do have a right to freedom of movement. Really, the only time you need to get a drivers license, or register your car, or whatever, is if you are doing it for commercial purposes. As a citizen you cannot be required to do those things. Unfortunately, they don't tell you that, and by getting those things you forfeit those rights. And of course, the hassle you'd get from the police all the time makes it very unappealing as well.
We may have our liberal factions, but we are capitalist society driven by those rules.
No. Capitalism is a Marxist creation. What we are /supposed/ to have is a Free Market. Unfortunately, we don't have that either. Part of it is still there, but because the government regulates the market it doesn't work like it should.
And herein lies the main point of issue with the argument that we shouldn't complain, but rather should just take our business elsewhere if we don't like the TOS. That's a wonderfull thought, and is exactly right, if you have a free market. But we don't. Instead, thanks to government involvement there really aren't many other choices for the consumer. If it wasn't for the government, just the desire for this type of service would have spawned a business to provide for it.
A great example of this is the original surge of ISPs, even the continuing existance of smaller ISPs. Because of the nature of the dialup business pretty much anyone could go out and start up a company to provide that sort of access. So consumers had lots of choice. This brought about unlimited access, and cheaper prices. It forced ISPs to provide quality service to their customers (no busy signals/etc) or else really cheap prices depending on your target market. Competition, it's a wonderfull thing. But here, I have three choices for broadband. Cable, provided only by AT&T @home, DSL, provided (in the end) only by SWBell, or an expensive line (T1+). Unless you count ISDN, which I don't really think meants the term "broadband". Without competition, and thus the power to take your money somewhere else there is no way to affect your service. All you are left with is complaining.
The really sad thing is that complaining eventually tends to devolve into "there oughta be a law" comments. More regulation is not the answer to this problem. Less regulation and more competition is.
What we need is another access method that's similar to dialup, though hopefully not dependant on the phone company, which was the one big problem with that part of the internet's growth. An access method that does not require a limited resource controlled by a single company.
The only thing I know of is wireless/satellite. That's the one I'm waiting for. We have a company here locally that is making a strong go of providing (flash warning) wireless broadband internet access and I'm excited about it. It's not available where I am yet, but it's close. As this type of technology becomes more viable, not only will there be a way for the average business to get involved in the market to provide competition just in the wireless sphere of broadband, but the whole concept of the wireless providers will provide competition for the other broadband providers (DSL/Cable). I think we'll start seeing some major changes at that point.
Stating that, you might ask if DSL and Cable don't count as competition. I'd say they do. However, there are only 2 companies selling the actual connection. And they do compete with each other, which is why it's affordable. But, that's the only real compitition going on. Because both sides tend to slack on the service side, and both disallow servers generally there's no real competition in that sphere. A third single company doing wireless wouldn't be much better unless that company was out to specifically do those things. The point is that currently (afaik) wireless providers arent regulated like phone/cable. Anyone who can put up the money to start the business can start providing wireless broadband access. So we'll have real choice.
That said, if they know the people who are infected/vulnerable (which the link in the article claims) then I wish they'd use that data to feed their access lists instead of just blocking port 80 for everyone. To be honest, if it was me, I'd use that data to feed an access list that entirely blocked infected/vulnerable customers. Then you wouldn't even have to call them, they'd call you. Then your support people can check their name against the list of blocked-for-code-red users and explain the situation, remove them from the list when it's patched, and they are back on. It gets the customer motivated to take care of it at the same time.
Hrm. You're painting with an awfully wide brush there don't you think? The people who care about this stuff (by and large) are not the same people who run IIS servers. Particularly insecure/vulnerable IIS servers.
(Assuming there is another kind.)
Read his comment again. His reference to technical savvy was their ability to recognize what the software was doing, not what the implications were, and even more than that their ability to disable that software.
amoung the typical news goons I thought this story was very impressive. I generally don't agree with much that comes out of salon, but this article was obviously thoroughly investigated and I felt it was very well written.
Unfortunately, I went to their site to download it and there was no real indication of a split between platforms and the file was in zip format. I poked around the FAQ's some and discovered that the linux platform was now tenatively planned, would not be out until at least after the windows release, and would be dependant on the results from the windows release. (I'm not sure in what way, the FAQ doesn't say.)
I dropped a line through their contact form informing them that I was disappointed by this turn of events, and that I was sorry but I would be unable to beta-test their software as none of my boxes run windows. That in fact the whole reason I was interested was their linux support, and indicated my willingness to assist with beta-testing when they needed it for their linux version.
If you are one who is actually interested in playing this game on linux, I would recommend you express your interest. I can only assume they do not believe there is sufficient interest. And they may be right about that. For this reason, please write them only if you are actually interested in the game. Over-inflated market estimates will not help the situation at all. It will only sour them and other gaming companies when it comes to market and they don't come anywhere near their projections.
At least for me, the cd key came in email. Not snail mail. Which would be a fairly crucial difference here. I'm sure you wouldn't want a cd image coming through your mail server. ;-)
If it's so important to you to have encrypted email, then get a mail client that supports it. It's not like there's a shortage of them. Some are even good at it.
So, roxio got what they wanted, and left. They get to keep the code/etc but don't have to pay anymore. It really is about the code, and not about the choice of databases, or the content of those databases. (Not that I don't think what Gracenote did was bad, but that is not what this is about.)
This, I think, is the beef Gracenote has. But, imo, that's what you get for going with a stupid licensing model. They should suck it up and deal with it.
Whoops. Forgot to address one of your points there. I could accept it informing the user what it depends on. But it's the users responsibility to select it. But I'd want it somewhere like help or in the summary text, not in a popup. When I'm flying through a kernel config I do not want to deal with a hundred popup windows.
And yes, if you blow it, the compile fails and you fix it. Easy.
I disagree. How often do you "make config" instead of "make menuconfig"/"make xconfig" ? I don't use "make config" anymore. Well, being for "softies" is exactly the critique that was done to projects for menu/graphical tools.
Yeah, but that's a dumb argument imo. Just having a graphical or semigraphical interface doesn't make it "for softies". I specifically use that term in regards to software that protects the user from him/herself to their detriment.
Either way (or any other way for that matter), if you don't like it, tell the man why (on lkml, not /.) AND suggest how to make it better.
Because I know it won't make any difference. Nothing I could say would ever make a whit of difference in this project. Eric wants to dumb down the interface, and he's going to do it. Linus, for whatever reason, has gone a long with it.
So why bother posting at all?
I guess I do it for the few of us who still care. And at least partially I do it so that I don't get swept along with the tide.
Frankly, I don't think there should be any mode but IKnowWhatI'm Doing. If you don't know what you are doing you shouldn't be compiling the kernel. It isn't that hard to learn to know what you are doing.
It will probably come as a surprise but I actually agree with you. I kind of shot it off not actually expecting to see it posted. Just an extension of Murphy's law I guess. If I spend time composing a good post, it gets rejected out of hand. If I throw up a blurb and don't bother to reread it gets accepted. -roll-
/want/ feature b. Plus, I have yet to see this even implemented so it works in a sane fashion. The install tools for most every major distribution (except slackware, and I think debian) are a perfect example of this (in the package selection stages)
;-)
;-)
Why post it if I thought it was going to get rejected? Who knows. I was tired and more than a little irritated and wrote it in that state. Never a good idea. I posted when I didn't like it because it's a pretty critical part of the kernel, and thus it is news that people should hear about.
A few more extensive notes:
a) Greying out options is a bad thing imo because it makes it more difficult to see the kernel as a whole. When a new kernel is released I go through the release notes and look at the new options in the config tool. Greying them out unless an option they depend on/etc is clicked will make this more difficult at best.
I think this, coupled with the other "features" to make it easier to use do not make things better, but rather set us a ways down the path to user friendliness at the expense of flexibility and power. I use linux because I like the fact that I can do what I want even if the people who wrote it didn't anticipate my using it in that fashion. If I want to compile feature (a) into my kernel which requires feature (b) I don't want it to automatically select and unselect feature b for me. I may not
softies was not a personal attack. I think those are the people who will most appreciate this tool, and from what Eric said it's pretty much who it's aimed at. People who want a few clicks to build everything and not have to see the internals and not have to really know what they are doing and to have the tool protect them from themselves. (Sound familiar at all)
I wasn't pointlessly bashing the tool. I was giving my evaluation of it. I think it sucks. I can't believe this is something that the serious linux users wants today. And if it is, then it is very sad indeed. I just don't agree with Eric's whole premise for doing this. (That being that he realized the kernel is too hard to compile) That's just baloney. I have yet to meet someone who thought the linux kernel was hard to compile. I used to respect Eric. Probably mostly because he provided a nice check for some of the more outrageous views Stallman and his crew carry. But lately I've lost most of that respect. And not just from this.
And my comment on python had nothing to do with starting a language war. I am not a language bigot. I'm not even an os bigot. I just wish we'd stop adding so many freaking dependencies to everything. I and others I know have taken a lot of time to scrape out the stuff we don't use from our linux installs. Most notably things like Python and Info. Not that python doesn't have it's good points, but I never write in it, and so I have no use for it, so i don't want it on my box. There was really no good reason for redoing it in Python afaik other than that he wanted to. (He said it was because it was it was compileable, but so is C and so is perl so that's bogus. And the way he mentioned it seemed more like an afterthought in response to complaints about having to have another tool installed than anything)
Alan Cox was quoted as saying it wasn't a big deal since you only had to have it on the build box, but I doubt that many of us have enough boxes laying around to have one for building packages for all the others, so this is hardly a valid point. (No offense Alan.
I'm out of time. (Darn.) Hope this is more informative and well reasoned than the post was.