You're completely wrong and here's why. Pick up any magazine off the rack that has a fan-art or letters section. Find the address to give submissions to. Nearby I guarantee there will be fine print. The fine print will say approximately this. Any and all letters sent to this address become property of "insert magazine name here". "magzine" reserves the right to edit, reuse, publish, etc. etc. We wont return anything you send to us.
If you have a copyright on something say a song. I could play that song any way I want. I could play it on the radio. I could play it on a CD. I could print a thousand vinyl albums. But if somebody else distributes my copyrighted song without my permission they have infringed. If I own a song I can e-mail that mp3 to everyone in the world. But if just one of those people gives that mp3 to someone else. Someone who doesn't have e-mail say. They have infringed on my copyright.
Silly I know, but that's the way the law is. Of course, the law isn't very just or intelligent and needs changing. But that's the way it is.
Just most isn't. A good example is something like CDex. It's a small open source free software project that is relatively mainstream. The reason it is so successful is because it serves a useful function, is for windows, is easy to use and easy to install. It is also one of, if not the, best CD audio ripping program there is.
The reason that OSS isn't mainstream is because most of it is for linux, most of it is hard to use, and most of it is hard to install. Most of these have to do with the nature of being for linux.
Stuff like Mozilla, gAIM, CDex, etc. can become mainstream. But Open Source programmers make things for themselves, and generally don't have the public in mind. Companies that make commercial software have a primary concern of profit. They will only profit if their software can actually be used by lots of people. OSS programmers don't have this as their primary concern. When they do their software will become mainstream.
Used, but not as a PDA. I know a bunch of people with PDAs, and they use them. They just don't use them as PDAs. Some use them to take notes in class. Some use them as a calculator or gaming device. Very few people I know actually use them as a phone book/scheduler. PDAs from my perspective are usually used as cheap portable PCs with less power and less features. They are often used for what the tablet PC is designed for, but they cost far less.
One day I will have one small device that is a PC/Phone/Wirelessly Networked/MP3 playing/Calculator/Gaming Device/Pager/Digital Camera. Then I will need no more.
I'm in the same boat as you. PIII 450 TNT2. I bought it the day the TNT2 came out. I was screaming back then. It's been awhile. Time to upgrade for DOOM III. It's a good thing that MOO III doesn't require more than what I got! The GameCube it kind of holding me over too. Thank you Id software for releasing yet another game that will probably be a "must have" and costs $1550. 1500 for a screamin' new PC (that will last until your next game 3 years from now) and 50 for a CD key.
A good UI should first of all be fast. Everything should be responsive and quick. If I click to launch an application I expect the application to appear instantly. If I maximize a window it should maximize instantly. So on and so forth.
The UI should also be full of every possible feature, and each of these features should be completely optional and customizeable. Transparency, animations, skins, icons, menus, buttons, bars, decorations, colors, everything should be customizeable to my taste.
The UI should also be uniform. Even though everything is customizeable everything should look the same as everythign else. All applications should have the same style of window. All dialog boxes should be relatively uniform. Mac does a very good job of this.
This is all assuming a GUI. Since the best UI is the perfectly customizeable one IMHO, a CLI has to be an option. The underlying OS in no way should require the user to see the CLI if they don't desire to see it. However it should be an included and optional feature. There should also be an audio interface, and a touch interface, so blind/deaf people can use it.
It's not possible or realistic, it's idealistic. A 100% complete feature set with complete customizeability.
IF indeed those are real screenshots, and that is indeed a real leak of the "new windows" then I have the following to say about it.
Even if under the hood it is just as stable and powerful as win2k/XP, and even if it is faster or better with new file systems and other new features. Win2k does everything I need. And it doesn't have DRM or a crappy UI like the one pictured there.
Disregarding all the other factors in the linux vs. windows battle I must say the even though win2k's UI is pretty good, I dislike XPs UI greatly. And that even though linux might have 100 to choose from I like KDE, and at least I know that if I put in the time and effort I could make it look and work however I wanted. In Windows that option just isn't there.
You wont see me upgrading windows until they add a real UI, custom UI, or new games just don't run on 2k anymore.
Wow, you are like the first success story of the Dr. Repair series yet. I personally damage a CD-ROM once that I hadn't had a backup of. I proceeded to purchase one of the Dr. Series of repair machines. It sucked, it didn't repair the disc and it was a cheap piece of plastic/waste of money. I ended up returning it. A quick google for the device shows tons more horror stories about the device than success stories. I'm surprised that you haven't had trouble with it. Care to tell everyone the secret to making it not suck?
For a minute I was worried that google searching wouldn't be safe anymore because there was a real threat of something erasing my hard drive. Then I realized, hey, it's an IE security hole, I can still run Moz in Win and wait until a fix.
I go to a university that requires me to have 4 co-ops before I graduate. A Co-op is a paid internship in which I work for 10 weeks, 40 hours a week in my field of study. Since I am a CS major I must get a job writing code, developing software, etc. or it wont count towards graduation. It is incredibly difficult to find such a job. I plan to spend the break I have right know contacting as many companies as possible so that I will be sure to get a co-op in the spring. I really need the money.
If you would like to hire a computer science major to work for you check my resume.
yeah, I totally agree with this guy. Just post a rebuttal in the forum. At the worst the "perpetrator" will continue to harass you, and that just makes it easier to identify them.
Also, seriously, how damaging are posts in a forum on the internet? I mean there are entire websites devoted to hating certain companies. Anti-Microsoft websites are a prime example. I don't see any real damage they have done, if any. Being obviously a smaller business with only 1 small forum having 1 small post in it I don't think it's actually going to hurt your friend. And if there are no real damages there is no way you can sue, and no reason to either.
We could probably help you more if you weren't keeping your friend anonymous, but that same anonymity which protects your friend is the same that prevents you from knowing the "culprit".
Contrary to linux belief you aren't crashign because you are using XP. You are crashing because your kids are playing old games. The solution is to get a cheap old computer for like 50 bucks at a garage sale put 98se on it and have your kids play the games on that. Then your XP machine will hardly crash at all.
Your kids will probably hate you for switchign to linux. For all my trying (dont' make fun of me) www.cartoonnetwork.com is completely incompatible with any non-windows OS. You simply can't play cartoon orbit ctoons or gtoons without windows. I even tried a wine/mozilla combo that lied to the website and pretended to be IE. No dice.
Another solution is to get your kids a console gaming system. A new one. They will spend so much time playing that that they will use the pc less and less for those games that crash it and more and more for flash/web based stuff, messenging, and paper writing.
Linux is not your answer. It would be nice if it was, but it isn't.
3 years ago when I bought my computer I got 4 sattelites and a subwoofer to go with my SBLive! sound card for 80 bucks. To this day the only parts of my 3 year old computer that still kick ass are my drives and my sound. My friend recently got a new computer and he liked my sound system a lot so he got this to go with his SBLive. From listening to it myself I can safely say that it is absolutely an awesome sound system at an incredible price. If you set up your configure your audio software properly and have a decent sound card these can be just as good as a low-end home theatre system, if not better.
these guys have some skills. I know it's probably just because I don't know how, but I can't even get X to work with cygwin, or anyting other than solitaire to work in wine. This reminds me of the time when I sshed to one machine, then telneted back to the machine I was on, and kept on telneting and sshing to as many machines as I could to see what would happen. Th results weren't as exciting but it was still fun.
I can see this topic is going to go crazy, it already has, but I gotta say my piece, even if nobody is going to read it in the giant pile of crud.
I run Win2k and Mandrake (the newest one).
Primarily though I use win2k, and here is why. It is stable, it is easy, it works perfectly with all my hardware, it has features like windows file sharing, all the advanced features of my hardware are fully supported (I have a logitech cordless keyboard with a bunch of extra buttons on it that don't work in other OS's, Winamp makes mp3s sound good and I listen to lots of mp3s, the sound driver in windows makes things sound better, windows has working non-beta software for IM, video playing, VNC, etc..
There are more reasons, but they are small reasons, though numerous. Note I use no other MS software other than Win2k, VS.NET, and IE. I have mozilla in windows, but I only use it when I'm browsing pop-up ad laden sites since it is slow and a memory whore (though not as much as it used to be). IE is fast, that's the only reason I use it really. As for VS.NET, it makes making windows software easy, quick, and powerful (with C#) and it was free from my school. I would never pay for a compiler.
I DO run Mandrake in a dual boot. I use it to develop software. I am a CS major in college. The CS machines run Solaris. In a *nix environment with X-forwarding, shells, and compilers for java, C, C++, etc. it is much easier to write code. Especially with all the nice text editors in linux. When I'm writing code though mp3s sound like ass since linux has no idea how to make my sound card work right (it does work though), and it can't play games for crap, I need my Half-Life mods man. And its basically HARD to use linux. Even harder to change something. When the day comes where linux does everything windows does without me having to open a shell or edit a text based config file I may go all the way.
As far as I'm concerned neither OS is technically superior. Linux is superior in it's free as in speechness, but from a purely technical standpoint win2k and mandrake are equally stable and fast, from my experience any way. Sometimes X messes up in linux, and sometimes windows gets funky. Those are due more to my crappy computer than the os's actually. But the only time I ever have to reboot really is to switch os's. Anyone who tells you that win2k crashes left and right is a lying sack of crap. They didn't set it up properly. They are probably one of those linux guys who only knows how to do things the hardware and can't figure out how to change settings through a GUI designed for someone with a 5th grade mentality.
To sum it up, win2k is stable and fast, it does everything I want without extra effort, and there is software to suit all my needs. Linux does almost all of that, but to do everything windows does is either too much effort from me, or not currently possible. Linux is a good environment to code in windows is a good environment for everything but.
PS: Mac OSX looks really cool. I really like their portable stuff, especially the ipod. As for beOS it appears to be technically superior to all the other OS's I've seen, but again it doesn't have enough software nor does it do everythign windows does or support all my hardware fully.
The operating system I want doesn't exist yet. Read my journal for more on that.
I remember way back when AOL's child protection worked like this, kind of. I don't know how it works now, but what happened is they had a list of keywords and websites that were kid safe and those and only those websites could be visited. This caused trouble you know, if the website for your school wasn't listed, or www.hasbro.com or something like that. So in making a list of kid safe websites you will always leave a site out, which kind of sucks. If it was made mandatory for all pr0n sites to go under.xxx or.sex I think it would be much better. First of all it would be very easy to prevent access by kids. Second it would be easier for pervs to find porn, making porn sites more money. And there wont be a chance of a kid not being able to go to a kid's site.
about you know how shocking it is that revealing your e-mail address in a chat room will get you spammed. But I think the poster already kinda did that./me ponders getting a job at the FTC telling them all sorts of things they don't know. Like how signing guest books with your real e-mail address will get you spammed, using AOL will get you spammed, using hotmail....
It's not easy to have a device shared between two computers. Especially if it's firewire. What happens is two independent machines are trying to control the same piece of hardware. Of course both of them will think that the drive is messed up. If you really want to share a drive between machines, and they are close enough for firewire, then you might as well use the tried and true method. First install the drive in one machine, then connect both machines together and transfer data over the network. If you really need it to be faster than that try gigabit ethernet.
Check out colleges and see what they use. I go to RIT http://www.rit.edu we have SIS that students use to get all their info about schedules, grades, etc. And it also allows all the faculty to grade us. Just about every university has some sort of electronic SIS nowadays. Try e-mailing a few IT departments and ask them what they use.
It may not save your life to think positive. But if you are skulking and depressed your final days wont be pleasant ones. Everyone, cancer or not, should do thinks that make them happy and think positively all the time. Your lifetime is limited, even if you are very healthy. Make the most of it and don't waste time by being depressed.
the world almanac? Oh no, a book? made of paper? what's that? Just because it isn't in digital form doesn't mean it's not out there. Try the public library sometime.
Of course it should be open source. The upside is obvious, everyone knows how the voting system works and we are sure it is legitimate. The downside is also obvious, since we know how it works we can break the system. However, if the voting system is on a closed network how is anyone going to hack into it? I hear all these people talking about things like people hacking into the hoover damn. If the hoover damn isn't connected to the internet, then in order to hack it you have to break into the building. Then it's no longer a matter of computer security but a matter of physical security, and making sure nobody pulls an inside job. The voting system is the same way. Open source to verfiy it is legitimate and large federal men to prevent hackers from walking into the building where the database is kept.
It depends on what you are using it for. I mean if you are doing 3d modeling of a house, then AutoCAD is probably your best bet. If you are doing a model of an internal combustion engine, mechanical desktop is a good choice. If you are making characters for say a video game, character studio or 3d studio max (the newest version) is excellent. It's also good for making short scenes and animating things. Bryce, while it's interface is really crummy is amazing at texturing and terrain. If you want to draw a giant landscape bryce is where it's at. Maya is a very high quality all around awesome program. It's what they teach the film + animation majors at my school. I don't have much experience with some of the other tools available, but they all have their uses. Pretty much depending on what type of project you are looking to do, what level of detail you are trying to achieve, whether you need to animate or not, and your personal preferences all determine which which one will be best for you.
Slashdot Mirror
You're completely wrong and here's why. Pick up any magazine off the rack that has a fan-art or letters section. Find the address to give submissions to. Nearby I guarantee there will be fine print. The fine print will say approximately this. Any and all letters sent to this address become property of "insert magazine name here". "magzine" reserves the right to edit, reuse, publish, etc. etc. We wont return anything you send to us.
If you have a copyright on something say a song. I could play that song any way I want. I could play it on the radio. I could play it on a CD. I could print a thousand vinyl albums. But if somebody else distributes my copyrighted song without my permission they have infringed. If I own a song I can e-mail that mp3 to everyone in the world. But if just one of those people gives that mp3 to someone else. Someone who doesn't have e-mail say. They have infringed on my copyright.
Silly I know, but that's the way the law is. Of course, the law isn't very just or intelligent and needs changing. But that's the way it is.
yeah, this probably is the worst topic ever. Try a local comic book shop lately?
Just most isn't. A good example is something like CDex. It's a small open source free software project that is relatively mainstream. The reason it is so successful is because it serves a useful function, is for windows, is easy to use and easy to install. It is also one of, if not the, best CD audio ripping program there is.
The reason that OSS isn't mainstream is because most of it is for linux, most of it is hard to use, and most of it is hard to install. Most of these have to do with the nature of being for linux.
Stuff like Mozilla, gAIM, CDex, etc. can become mainstream. But Open Source programmers make things for themselves, and generally don't have the public in mind. Companies that make commercial software have a primary concern of profit. They will only profit if their software can actually be used by lots of people. OSS programmers don't have this as their primary concern. When they do their software will become mainstream.
Used, but not as a PDA. I know a bunch of people with PDAs, and they use them. They just don't use them as PDAs. Some use them to take notes in class. Some use them as a calculator or gaming device. Very few people I know actually use them as a phone book/scheduler. PDAs from my perspective are usually used as cheap portable PCs with less power and less features. They are often used for what the tablet PC is designed for, but they cost far less.
One day I will have one small device that is a PC/Phone/Wirelessly Networked/MP3 playing/Calculator/Gaming Device/Pager/Digital Camera. Then I will need no more.
I'm in the same boat as you. PIII 450 TNT2. I bought it the day the TNT2 came out. I was screaming back then. It's been awhile. Time to upgrade for DOOM III. It's a good thing that MOO III doesn't require more than what I got! The GameCube it kind of holding me over too. Thank you Id software for releasing yet another game that will probably be a "must have" and costs $1550. 1500 for a screamin' new PC (that will last until your next game 3 years from now) and 50 for a CD key.
A good UI should first of all be fast. Everything should be responsive and quick. If I click to launch an application I expect the application to appear instantly. If I maximize a window it should maximize instantly. So on and so forth.
The UI should also be full of every possible feature, and each of these features should be completely optional and customizeable. Transparency, animations, skins, icons, menus, buttons, bars, decorations, colors, everything should be customizeable to my taste.
The UI should also be uniform. Even though everything is customizeable everything should look the same as everythign else. All applications should have the same style of window. All dialog boxes should be relatively uniform. Mac does a very good job of this.
This is all assuming a GUI. Since the best UI is the perfectly customizeable one IMHO, a CLI has to be an option. The underlying OS in no way should require the user to see the CLI if they don't desire to see it. However it should be an included and optional feature. There should also be an audio interface, and a touch interface, so blind/deaf people can use it.
It's not possible or realistic, it's idealistic. A 100% complete feature set with complete customizeability.
IF indeed those are real screenshots, and that is indeed a real leak of the "new windows" then I have the following to say about it.
Even if under the hood it is just as stable and powerful as win2k/XP, and even if it is faster or better with new file systems and other new features. Win2k does everything I need. And it doesn't have DRM or a crappy UI like the one pictured there.
Disregarding all the other factors in the linux vs. windows battle I must say the even though win2k's UI is pretty good, I dislike XPs UI greatly. And that even though linux might have 100 to choose from I like KDE, and at least I know that if I put in the time and effort I could make it look and work however I wanted. In Windows that option just isn't there.
You wont see me upgrading windows until they add a real UI, custom UI, or new games just don't run on 2k anymore.
Wow, you are like the first success story of the Dr. Repair series yet. I personally damage a CD-ROM once that I hadn't had a backup of. I proceeded to purchase one of the Dr. Series of repair machines. It sucked, it didn't repair the disc and it was a cheap piece of plastic/waste of money. I ended up returning it. A quick google for the device shows tons more horror stories about the device than success stories.
I'm surprised that you haven't had trouble with it. Care to tell everyone the secret to making it not suck?
For a minute I was worried that google searching wouldn't be safe anymore because there was a real threat of something erasing my hard drive. Then I realized, hey, it's an IE security hole, I can still run Moz in Win and wait until a fix.
I go to a university that requires me to have 4 co-ops before I graduate. A Co-op is a paid internship in which I work for 10 weeks, 40 hours a week in my field of study. Since I am a CS major I must get a job writing code, developing software, etc. or it wont count towards graduation. It is incredibly difficult to find such a job. I plan to spend the break I have right know contacting as many companies as possible so that I will be sure to get a co-op in the spring. I really need the money.
If you would like to hire a computer science major to work for you check my resume.
yeah, I totally agree with this guy. Just post a rebuttal in the forum. At the worst the "perpetrator" will continue to harass you, and that just makes it easier to identify them.
Also, seriously, how damaging are posts in a forum on the internet? I mean there are entire websites devoted to hating certain companies. Anti-Microsoft websites are a prime example. I don't see any real damage they have done, if any. Being obviously a smaller business with only 1 small forum having 1 small post in it I don't think it's actually going to hurt your friend. And if there are no real damages there is no way you can sue, and no reason to either.
We could probably help you more if you weren't keeping your friend anonymous, but that same anonymity which protects your friend is the same that prevents you from knowing the "culprit".
Sticks and stones... Sticks and stones...
Contrary to linux belief you aren't crashign because you are using XP. You are crashing because your kids are playing old games. The solution is to get a cheap old computer for like 50 bucks at a garage sale put 98se on it and have your kids play the games on that. Then your XP machine will hardly crash at all.
Your kids will probably hate you for switchign to linux. For all my trying (dont' make fun of me) www.cartoonnetwork.com is completely incompatible with any non-windows OS. You simply can't play cartoon orbit ctoons or gtoons without windows. I even tried a wine/mozilla combo that lied to the website and pretended to be IE. No dice.
Another solution is to get your kids a console gaming system. A new one. They will spend so much time playing that that they will use the pc less and less for those games that crash it and more and more for flash/web based stuff, messenging, and paper writing.
Linux is not your answer. It would be nice if it was, but it isn't.
3 years ago when I bought my computer I got 4 sattelites and a subwoofer to go with my SBLive! sound card for 80 bucks. To this day the only parts of my 3 year old computer that still kick ass are my drives and my sound. My friend recently got a new computer and he liked my sound system a lot so he got this to go with his SBLive. From listening to it myself I can safely say that it is absolutely an awesome sound system at an incredible price. If you set up your configure your audio software properly and have a decent sound card these can be just as good as a low-end home theatre system, if not better.
these guys have some skills. I know it's probably just because I don't know how, but I can't even get X to work with cygwin, or anyting other than solitaire to work in wine.
This reminds me of the time when I sshed to one machine, then telneted back to the machine I was on, and kept on telneting and sshing to as many machines as I could to see what would happen. Th results weren't as exciting but it was still fun.
I can see this topic is going to go crazy, it already has, but I gotta say my piece, even if nobody is going to read it in the giant pile of crud.
I run Win2k and Mandrake (the newest one).
Primarily though I use win2k, and here is why. It is stable, it is easy, it works perfectly with all my hardware, it has features like windows file sharing, all the advanced features of my hardware are fully supported (I have a logitech cordless keyboard with a bunch of extra buttons on it that don't work in other OS's, Winamp makes mp3s sound good and I listen to lots of mp3s, the sound driver in windows makes things sound better, windows has working non-beta software for IM, video playing, VNC, etc..
There are more reasons, but they are small reasons, though numerous. Note I use no other MS software other than Win2k, VS.NET, and IE. I have mozilla in windows, but I only use it when I'm browsing pop-up ad laden sites since it is slow and a memory whore (though not as much as it used to be). IE is fast, that's the only reason I use it really. As for VS.NET, it makes making windows software easy, quick, and powerful (with C#) and it was free from my school. I would never pay for a compiler.
I DO run Mandrake in a dual boot. I use it to develop software. I am a CS major in college. The CS machines run Solaris. In a *nix environment with X-forwarding, shells, and compilers for java, C, C++, etc. it is much easier to write code. Especially with all the nice text editors in linux. When I'm writing code though mp3s sound like ass since linux has no idea how to make my sound card work right (it does work though), and it can't play games for crap, I need my Half-Life mods man. And its basically HARD to use linux. Even harder to change something. When the day comes where linux does everything windows does without me having to open a shell or edit a text based config file I may go all the way.
As far as I'm concerned neither OS is technically superior. Linux is superior in it's free as in speechness, but from a purely technical standpoint win2k and mandrake are equally stable and fast, from my experience any way. Sometimes X messes up in linux, and sometimes windows gets funky. Those are due more to my crappy computer than the os's actually. But the only time I ever have to reboot really is to switch os's. Anyone who tells you that win2k crashes left and right is a lying sack of crap. They didn't set it up properly. They are probably one of those linux guys who only knows how to do things the hardware and can't figure out how to change settings through a GUI designed for someone with a 5th grade mentality.
To sum it up, win2k is stable and fast, it does everything I want without extra effort, and there is software to suit all my needs. Linux does almost all of that, but to do everything windows does is either too much effort from me, or not currently possible. Linux is a good environment to code in windows is a good environment for everything but.
PS: Mac OSX looks really cool. I really like their portable stuff, especially the ipod. As for beOS it appears to be technically superior to all the other OS's I've seen, but again it doesn't have enough software nor does it do everythign windows does or support all my hardware fully.
The operating system I want doesn't exist yet. Read my journal for more on that.
I remember way back when AOL's child protection worked like this, kind of. I don't know how it works now, but what happened is they had a list of keywords and websites that were kid safe and those and only those websites could be visited. This caused trouble you know, if the website for your school wasn't listed, or www.hasbro.com or something like that. So in making a list of kid safe websites you will always leave a site out, which kind of sucks. .xxx or .sex I think it would be much better. First of all it would be very easy to prevent access by kids. Second it would be easier for pervs to find porn, making porn sites more money. And there wont be a chance of a kid not being able to go to a kid's site.
If it was made mandatory for all pr0n sites to go under
about you know how shocking it is that revealing your e-mail address in a chat room will get you spammed. But I think the poster already kinda did that. /me ponders getting a job at the FTC telling them all sorts of things they don't know. Like how signing guest books with your real e-mail address will get you spammed, using AOL will get you spammed, using hotmail....
It's not easy to have a device shared between two computers. Especially if it's firewire. What happens is two independent machines are trying to control the same piece of hardware. Of course both of them will think that the drive is messed up.
If you really want to share a drive between machines, and they are close enough for firewire, then you might as well use the tried and true method. First install the drive in one machine, then connect both machines together and transfer data over the network. If you really need it to be faster than that try gigabit ethernet.
Check out colleges and see what they use. I go to RIT http://www.rit.edu we have SIS that students use to get all their info about schedules, grades, etc. And it also allows all the faculty to grade us. Just about every university has some sort of electronic SIS nowadays. Try e-mailing a few IT departments and ask them what they use.
It may not save your life to think positive. But if you are skulking and depressed your final days wont be pleasant ones. Everyone, cancer or not, should do thinks that make them happy and think positively all the time. Your lifetime is limited, even if you are very healthy. Make the most of it and don't waste time by being depressed.
the world almanac? Oh no, a book? made of paper? what's that? Just because it isn't in digital form doesn't mean it's not out there. Try the public library sometime.
Of course it should be open source. The upside is obvious, everyone knows how the voting system works and we are sure it is legitimate.
The downside is also obvious, since we know how it works we can break the system. However, if the voting system is on a closed network how is anyone going to hack into it? I hear all these people talking about things like people hacking into the hoover damn. If the hoover damn isn't connected to the internet, then in order to hack it you have to break into the building. Then it's no longer a matter of computer security but a matter of physical security, and making sure nobody pulls an inside job. The voting system is the same way. Open source to verfiy it is legitimate and large federal men to prevent hackers from walking into the building where the database is kept.
It depends on what you are using it for. I mean if you are doing 3d modeling of a house, then AutoCAD is probably your best bet. If you are doing a model of an internal combustion engine, mechanical desktop is a good choice. If you are making characters for say a video game, character studio or 3d studio max (the newest version) is excellent. It's also good for making short scenes and animating things. Bryce, while it's interface is really crummy is amazing at texturing and terrain. If you want to draw a giant landscape bryce is where it's at. Maya is a very high quality all around awesome program. It's what they teach the film + animation majors at my school.
I don't have much experience with some of the other tools available, but they all have their uses. Pretty much depending on what type of project you are looking to do, what level of detail you are trying to achieve, whether you need to animate or not, and your personal preferences all determine which which one will be best for you.
or is that picture obviously photoshopped?
quicken works in wine.