Hmm, that worries me. Can you tell me whether it's regular WPA, or WPA2 that's affected? Also should I be worried about malicious insiders hacking my network with this exploit?
In my experience, the most popular email system out there is Yahoo! Mail, and the web interface doesn't do any encryption except for the logging in process.
Frankly though, email should generally be considered insecure anyway. It's usually transmitted, somewhere along the chain, in plain-text, and you only have (limited) control over your own connection, not the connection of the party you're communicating with. The pseudo-elitists posting here claiming that they're OK because, unlike the great unwashed, they use HTTPS when they connect to their web mail, are fooling themselves.
HD DVD was an open format available to anyone who wanted to implement it. As far as content went, it was the more open of the two - you didn't need, for example, to license AACS to press a disc.
HD DVD's failure had nothing to do with licensing, it was a straightforward case in which Hollywood picked the winner. Hollywood, as a whole, didn't like the fact HD DVD didn't require access controls (making it harder to trace pirates), and lacked snake-oil solutions like BD+. Added to the fact Sony is a studio, Blu-ray had the studio support.
What we're seeing here is kinda like Mac vs PC, circa 1998. The PC was the open architecture, manufacturers providing a wide choice of different configurations, all running a powerful operating system that was available to anyone who wanted it, with the manufacturers choosing to differentiate themselves by pre-installing their own software. Meanwhile, the Mac was the closed architecture box with the clearly inferior operating system, but with the manufacturer taking great pains to ensure the user's initial experience was as clean as possible.
Fast forward to today: Android is open. As with Windows in 1998, Google is making no attempt to control what's done with it (well, actually Microsoft exerted *more* control in 1998 - I mean, Google is allowing, for example, Motorola and AT&T to remove all of the Google components from the version of Android running on the Flip, and replace them with AT&T-branded Yahoo equivalents. As with the Windows example, Android is the superior, open, system, and any manufacturer can get it, and install it on a variety of different configurations of hardware. Meanwhile, Apple has the inferior operating system, but is exerting heavy control on the system. Users have less choices in terms of hardware, they have even less choices when it comes to what they can do with the system, but, and it's a big but, Apple's control extends, just as with the Mac in 1998, to ensuring that the user's initial experience is as clean as possible.
BTW, unlike Windows, where an application may be spread out in the file system and in terms of entries in the registry, it's relatively simple to remove an Android app if you have root access to the box (ok, that's the tricky bit) - everything's generally in a single file called something like/system/app/ApplicationName.apk.
This is not to say that's how it should be. But it does make it easier to foresee a future where, if Google gets pissed in the same way Microsoft eventually did about pre-installed crapware, Google's fix could be pretty simple.
The words of a man who walks in with a predetermined opinion and never tries the actual product. Speed is a bullet point, but not a reason in itself to switch. Yes, there are a *number* of reasons to at least try out XFCE.
You have no idea who I am or what I've done. My words are of someone who tried it, and found that, staggeringly, my 1999 era laptop (Thinkpad 600), upgraded to the max, was barely capable of running Xubuntu at a comfortable speed, and who found Xubuntu lacking in all the areas it needed to be, while retaining the only parts of GNOME I genuinely thought sucked.
I'm the kind of person who hates throwing out computers. In theory, Xubuntu is made for me, at least, it's advertised as being a real GNU/Linux distribution for lower spec PCs. That is, it's supposed to provide a functional environment on lower spec PCs. But as I said above, the window of "lower spec" it's for is surprisingly small. Less than 192M of RAM? You might as well forget it. More than 256M? Well, you might find real Ubuntu works on it without any problems. Poor CPU and graphics card? Chances are it'll be slow as ass whichever Ubuntu variant you install.
I had a 384M 600MHz VIA C3 in the living room for a while running full Ubuntu. It never "needed" Xubuntu. I take a machine that's only slightly less powerful, my 600, and it can't comfortably run Xubuntu - it's there, you can start a Terminal window and do some work in the shell if you want, but otherwise...
Who's Xubuntu for? For the people who have between 192M and 256M of RAM? And those people are going to be happy running something that kinda sorta looks like GNOME, but actually is less functional?
It is amazing how many gconf options for gnome are broken nowadays. Can't turn off the desktop because nautilus will be forever restarted to the detriment of your CPU. You set sloppy focus and to only raise the windows when you click, then windows will never come forward even when you click them in the gnome panel. You remove the notification area, and that bug means that you have no access at all to some windows when they are minimized. It's a buggy mess.
GNOME "just works" for the most part. Yes, if you try to hack the UI to work differently, some features will stop working. That's normal. You'd be hard pressed to find an operating system where that isn't the case. And while GNOME may make "Focus follows mouse" difficult, to suggest Xubuntu lets you do those things is clearly wrong. I tried replacing Xubuntu's abysmal non-spacial file manager, Thunar, with alternatives. The only way to do this was essentially to delete the link pointing to it from/usr/bin. and have it point at an alternative. Interestingly, despite Thunar being touted as (and justified as) low memory, the machine was just as responsive when I pointed it at Nautilus! And no, the change isn't clean, it took a lot of hacking to get that to work, and of course Nautilus opens my home directory upon boot.
Does Xfde via Xubuntu do focus-follows-mouse better than GNOME under Ubuntu? I didn't get that far, and I wouldn't have even if I'd installed it on my T60, or even that aforementioned VIA C3. You see, the issue wasn't just that this supposedly lightweight environment wasn't, it was that I was stuck with a desktop less functional, in many ways, than my Amiga system from a decade and a half ago. My Amiga had all the features that Xfde has, from half-assed media players from the Winamp "era", to the basic word processors (and a pretty good DTP package) and spreadsheets and stuff that did exactly what I needed albeit no more. But the Amiga managed to achieve all of this efficiently, which meant that the applications were responsive and the environment was usable. The UI wasn't a stripped down version of GNOME2 designed by people who didn't know why GNOME was the way it was, it was a well thought out environment that employed multiple desktops, spacial representations an
Just a Pentium II? Really? The last I looked, operating systems need a whole computer to be installed on, not just a CPU. You know, with memory, disk space, etc.;) And before you get annoyed and say "I meant a COMPUTER with a Pentium II", that's kinda the point - you're not giving me any useful information there by just quoting the CPU it has. It's like saying "O'RLY! I installed Xubunu on a PC with an IDE DISK DRIVE!! YOU SUCK! HAHAH"
I have a Thinkpad with a PII (a 600). and because the maximum amount of RAM I can fit on its motherboard is 168M (I'm not kidding, yes, I know that's a stupid amount of RAM and doesn't make any sense at all. But, honestly, that's the amount of RAM is has. If you don't believe me, go Google around, you'll find that 600s have some kind of weird memory configuration. Hell, it's not even supposed to have that amount officially, it just works anyway) and:
(a) The installation crawled. I mean CRAWLED. It took seconds for the machine to respond to any buttons. The mouse jerked around. And forget about trying to use it as a live disk, it wouldn't do it.
(b) The resulting install is only passably usable. It uses almost as much hard disk space as a full Ubuntu (thus using up most of the 4G drive)
(c) The operating system itself is horrible. It's like all the worst features of GNOME have been retained, and you suddenly miss all the good stuff when it's not there any more, you know, things like Rhythmbox.
It was an interesting project, but if I ever actually need to make the 600 into a usable machine, I'll probably go and install Slackware like God intended. Or even that Gentoo crap. Hell, I bet GNOME under Gentoo would work better than Xubuntu.
I've used Mac OS X (Jaguar) on a 128M PowerPC G3. It was... more usable. Honest. And it had the added benefit of being a full operating system. With iTunes and Quicktime, and iMovie, and, and... well, you get the idea. It swapped a lot, but it was managable. Xubuntu gave me nothing, and took its time to do it.
The recommended installation environment for Xubuntu involves 192M of RAM. The minimum installation environment for Ubuntu needs 256M. That's a pretty small window.
These figures don't necessarily show that users with certain calling patterns will suffer drops more than others, very few people will have "exactly" "slightly less than one call per 100" dropped. Therefore, for many users you'll never see a call dropped, and for a sizable minority, you'll see call drops rise from, say, 10% to 20%. If the call drop rate doubles, obviously those who live in areas with great reception who make calls at times of low network usage (Code Division Multiple Access has a somewhat unpleasant characteristic called "breathing" where congestion physically shrinks the coverage area of each cell, and if you're making a 3G call, you're using Code Division Multiple Access) will not notice anything. Heavier users, who use the phone at peak times, and who aren't fortunate enough to be near a tower, are going to find a doubling intolerable.
The figure is probably accurate for call drops caused by the change in antenna design, but are two causes of call drops, and the antenna one is the one everyone's focused on. Essentially there's an issue with the proximity sensor that's causing people to brush against the hang-up button just because the phone is held up to their faces. The AT&T figures aren't going to measure that - the network will see an explicit hang-up message from the handset and not measure it as a dropped call. The good news is this one, supposedly, can be fixed in software.
I thought Jobs hit quite a few duff notes yesterday, both with criticisms of their competitors ("But Mom! They're doing it too!") and the suggestion it wasn't a real problem with some fairly bad manipulation of the statistics ("Who cares? I only hit him a little bit...") I'll be glad when that stupid RDF thing disappears, and Apple has to make great stuff again.
A USB cable is a specialist tool when it comes to mobiles, most users have never, and probably will never, connected their phone to their computer. This concept is alien to most users.
There are two problems with this. First of all, we're talking about Touchscreenphones, and I'd suggest to you that ca clear majority of users have, actually, connected their Touchscreenphone to their computer. The first generation iPhones actually needed to be hooked up to the computer to be "activated" because of the moronic non-standard SIM lock they were using, and most iPhone users use tools like iTunes to manage their MP3 libraries. Virtually all Touchscreenphones make a big deal about their ability to play music, something that requires copying the music to them. It's safe to say the vast majority of users aren't using Bluetooth for this.
The second is we're talking about an instance in which a device will be rendered unusable if, and only if, it has undergone a procedure that involves plugging it into a computer using a USB cable.
If a device can be rendered usable again using the exact same equipment that was used to render it unusable, and that actually came in the box with it, then I'd say those who are saying the popular definition of "Brick" doesn't apply here. This isn't a case where your Motorola RAZR is rendered unusable if you tap the "Star" button three times, it's a case where your Droid X is rendered unusable if you plug it into a computer, and attempt to load the "wrong" operating system. If this is bricking, then attempting to install Mac OS X onto a Dell by coping a partition over from a Mac is "bricking" a Dell.
None of the above should be taken as justifying Motorola's decision to require signed operating systems. Just that I think the term "Bricking" doesn't apply here. I think Motorola's actions certainly go against the spirit of openness that Android is supposed to be about, and they certainly violate the "If you sell it to someone, it's their's" rule that we condemn Apple for, even if these moves aren't as extreme as Apple's.
The first phones I owned with an external antenna had it such that you would pull it out when you were using the phone, and slide it back in when you put the phone in your pocket. Well, with the exception of my Nokia 9000, where you'd fold it over for some reason.
This was followed by a series of phones with "stub" antennas, antennas that were inside a wide piece of plastic sticking out of the top of the phone that protruded slightly less than an inch. Funnily enough, these are the phones I recall having the best reception.
I think external antennas are a great idea, and they shouldn't be discarded on aesthetic grounds.
We focus on Apple when Apple's phones don't work because Apple and its fans pretend that their devices are near perfect, "just works", items when they're clearly not.
Android has never been promoted as a "perfect" user experience. It's Windows 1.0 to iPhone's MacOS System 4 - slightly unreliable, butt-ugly, and with glaring UI issues, yet faster, infinitely more powerful, and more open than the latter.
When "openness" issues come up with Android, like yesterday's (turns out to be bogus) story about the Droid X's bootloader, people do indeed start screaming just as loudly as when iOS has a major functionality issue. And they get angry. And it all gets ugly. Blame the stereotypical smug Apple owners;-)
Count yourself lucky. I had Sprint PCS service from 1999-2002. There were certain times of day where you'd get cut off for just walking past a tree.
But yeah, for the most part the networks are more reliable these days. It's been a very long time since I got cut off for any reason other than a serious network glitch, or being on the inside of a large building with large amounts of metal in an area that already has a weak signal (like, alas, my local supermarket.)
It's much more than that. Socialism is an economic system where the amount of production is dictated by the community.
No, it's not. If it were then Robert Owen wouldn't be considered the father of socialism, and Trade Unions (which have nothing to do with "the amount of production") and Cooperatives (which do not define the community of resource users, only the community that creates those resources) wouldn't be socialist movements.
The attempts to dog socialism with specific implementation details are largely a combination of European governments attempting to make particular systems popular by associating them with a popular movement, and American politicians and concerns attempting to make particular systems unpopular by associating them with an unpopular movement. It's as fair to say that Socialism is about "the amount of production is dictated by the community" as it is to suggest that Christianity is "about" dragging homosexuals behind pick-up trucks or conversely "about" funding orphanages so orphans don't starve.
One can argue that an economic system where the amount of production is dictated by a community is a socialist system but the converse is not true: something doesn't have to involve production being controlled by the community that benefits from it to be socialist.
Socialism is a moral movement, not an economic system. There are socialist governments, economic systems, and so on, just as there are Christian governments and Muslim economies (we don't think of any economy as being "Christian" per-se, but that's largely because nobody's been successful in justifying one.) Universal Healthcare really is an example of people coming together for the common good. It's socialist.
Are you under the impression that social programs can't be socialist?
Socialism is the principle that people can work together for the common good rather than competing with one another. People organizing, through the government, to ensure they all have access to quality healthcare is certainly an example of that. Universal Healthcare has, historically, was a concept created and promoted by the socialism movement.
Universal Healthcare is not about the profit motive. It's not about people competing with one another for resources, and shareholders making a buck. It's about people working together for something that's good. It's the very definition of socialist. And that's not a bad thing.
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Reply to: Re:Will be a hard pill to swallow...
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Re:Will be a hard pill to swallow... (Score:2)
by pnewhook (788591) writes: Alter Relationship on 2010-07-15 23:29 (#32922822)
Universal heath care is a good thing but it is not socialist. Its a social program - completely different.
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Re:Will be a hard pill to swallow... (Score:?)
by squiggleslash (241428) writes: on 2010-07-16 8:21 Homepage Journal
Are you under the impression that social programs can't be socialist?
Socialism is the principle that people can work together for the common good rather than competing with one another. People organizing, through the government, to ensure they all have access to quality healthcare is certainly an example of that. Universal Healthcare has, historically, was a concept created and promoted by the socialism movement.
Universal Healthcare is not about the profit motive. It's not about people competing with one another for resources, and shareholders making a buck. It's about people working together for something that's good. It's the very definition of socialist.
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Are you under the impression that social programs can't be socialist?
Socialism is the principle that people can work together for the common good rather than competing with one another. People organizing, through the government, to ensure they all have access to quality healthcare is certainly an example of that. Universal Healthcare has, historically, was a concept created and promoted by the socialism movement.
Universal Healthcare is not about the profit motive. It's not about people competing with one another for resources, and shareholders making a buck. It's about people working together for something that's good. It's the very definition of socialist.
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Socialist is where the means to production are owned by the government and capitalist is where the capital is owned by private industry
No, it isn't. Socialism is where people cooperate to work together for the common good.
Two branches of socialism (arguably the most successful) are the Trade Union movement, and the Cooperative Movement. The "Father of Socialism" is generally considered to be Robert Owen, who reorganized his mills as communes. None of these concepts have anything to do with means of production being owned by the government.
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I can only think of two counter-arguments to this:
The counter argument is that you're not making one. I said that despite iOS's use of open source components, iOS is notoriously closed. You said, to paraphrase, "iOS includes some open source components, look, see, Apple lets you download the code. Therefore it is not notoriously closed."
Now, repeating what the guy just said and saying "So n-uh! That means you're wrong" isn't a winning argument. Especially when you're wrong. Which you are.
iOS is notoriously closed, despite having open source components. It's fairly easy to prove, just run it against some obvious tests:
Test 1
While many manufacturers make phones running Android, Symbian, and FWIW J2ME/MIDP, only one makes a phone running iOS, who happens to be the developer of the operating system. Why is this?
It's because iOS sucks and nobody wants it
It's because iOS has strict hardware requirements and only Apple can afford to make phones with it
It's because market research has shown that people will only buy phones with iOS if they have a big fat Apple logo on them
It's because it's a closed, proprietary, operating system and thus isn't available to anyone outside of Apple
Test 2
My employer wants me to write an application that will connect all of our employees to the Asterisk VoIP system, so our employees will be on the office phone network whether in the office or off site. Can I make this application available for the iPhone?
Yes, of course!
No, because the iPhone doesn't have a native TCP/IP stack.
No, because the iPhone is simply too slow to perform the compression needed to maintain a VoIP phone call
No, because Apple has banned distribution of these applications, and the only way to bypass this is through unauthorized, and quite possibly, illegal hacks
Test 3
A politician has made a particularly stupid comment about paying for healthcare by bartering for services. I want to write an app that ridicules the politician by letting users take photographs of objects and have the box tell you how many cancer treatments you can get in exchange. Can I release this for the iPhone?
Absolutely! And it's free speech damn it.
No, the iPhone doesn't have a camera
No, the iPhone doesn't have the processing power for such an application.
There's no way to know. Technically it violates Apple's rule against apps ridiculing public figures, but Apple has overturned rulings based upon that rule in the past when the outcry has been sufficiently large.
Test 4
I want to write an application for my phone, but while I'm happy to use the native APIs, I'd like the code itself to be written in Java, because that's the programming language I'm most comfortable with. I'm quite happy to use something like GCJ to compile it to native machine code before release. Can I develop such an app for the iPhone?
Why yes! Why wouldn't you be able to?
No, Oracle hates iPhones. And Oracle hates Java too. They've banned Java from ever going near a phone.
No, the ARM based CPU of the iPhone is simply incapable of running Java applications. Even Java programs that have been converted into ARM machine code
No, Apple has banned developers from using anything other than Objective C, Objective C++, and C++, for installable apps.
Test 5
I'm not really a programmer but sometimes I want to put together tools for my own personal use, like I did on my old Macintosh with Hypercard. Can I do that on my iPhone?
Yes, just download the iPhoneCard tool from the App Store
No, nobody has developed a Hypercard like tool for the iPhone.
No, the original developers of Hypercard have a patent on it, and nobody's been able to lice
I can only think of two counter-arguments to this:
The counter argument is that you're not making one. I said that despite iOS's use of open source components, iOS is notoriously closed. You said, to paraphrase, "iOS includes some open source components, look, see, Apple lets you download the code. Therefore it is not notoriously closed."
Now, repeating what the guy just said and saying "So n-uh! That means you're wrong" isn't a winning argument. Especially when you're wrong. Which you are.
iOS is notoriously closed, despite having open source components. It's fairly easy to prove, just run it against some obvious tests:
Test 1
While many manufacturers make phones running Android, Symbian, and FWIW J2ME/MIDP, only one makes a phone running iOS, who happens to be the developer of the operating system. Why is this?
It's because iOS sucks and nobody wants it
It's because iOS has strict hardware requirements and only Apple can afford to make phones with it
It's because market research has shown that people will only buy phones with iOS if they have a big fat Apple logo on them
It's because it's a closed, proprietary, operating system and thus isn't available to anyone outside of Apple
Test 2
My employer wants me to write an application that will connect all of our employees to the Asterisk VoIP system, so our employees will be on the office phone network whether in the office or off site. Can I make this application available for the iPhone?
Yes, of course!
No, because the iPhone doesn't have a native TCP/IP stack.
No, because the iPhone is simply too slow to perform the compression needed to maintain a VoIP phone call
No, because Apple has banned distribution of these applications, and the only way to bypass this is through unauthorized, and quite possibly, illegal hacks
Test 3
A politician has made a particularly stupid comment about paying for healthcare by bartering for services. I want to write an app that ridicules the politician by letting users take photographs of objects and have the box tell you how many cancer treatments you can get in exchange. Can I release this for the iPhone?
Absolutely! And it's free speech damn it.
No, the iPhone doesn't have a camera
No, the iPhone doesn't have the processing power for such an application.
There's no way to know. Technically it violates Apple's rule against apps ridiculing public figures, but Apple has overturned rulings based upon that rule in the past when the outcry has been sufficiently large.
Test 4
I want to write an application for my phone, but while I'm happy to use the native APIs, I'd like the code itself to be written in Java, because that's the programming language I'm most comfortable with. I'm quite happy to use something like GCJ to compile it to native machine code before release. Can I develop such an app for the iPhone?
Why yes! Why wouldn't you be able to?
No, Oracle hates iPhones. And Oracle hates Java too. They've banned Java from ever going near a phone.
No, the ARM based CPU of the iPhone is simply incapable of running Java applications. Even Java programs that have been converted into ARM machine code
No, Apple has banned developers from using anything other than Objective C, Objective C++, and C++, for installable apps.
Test 5
I'm not really a programmer but sometimes I want to put together tools for my own personal use, like I did on my old Macintosh with Hypercard. Can I do that on my iPhone?
Yes, just download the iPhoneCard tool from the App Store
No, nobody has developed a Hypercard like tool for the iPhone.
No, the original developers of Hypercard have a patent on it, and nobody's been able to license the rights to produce anything remotely similar.
Are you telling me you are actually DEFENDING this?!?
Not in the English version, no. Although I'm told that aliens from the planet Todhsals, who speak a language that sounds exactly like English, but in fact applies different meanings to every word, have interpreted it that way due to that unfortunate English/Todhsalsian "sounding alike but meaning totally different things" thing. For example, where I wrote:
Well, it's more of a Motorola issue than an Android issue. Just because an operating system is open doesn't mean the corporation that installed it isn't going to be a jackass.
They interpret it as "My chickens are jellied mine leader catscan Motorola nuts, and I tore up my bus pass my Android I did."
And
At least you can load and run your own programs onto the Droid X, even if you can't update the operating system to your own version.
Apparently translates to: "Zounds! Coffee grounds Droid X is good wookie vodka, my underpants are off."
No, the GGP was adding useless information. Actually, I'm not even sure he did that, he basically restated my statement about Mach, FreeBSD, GNU and KDE in slightly different terms.
Kind of like you really. You're claiming that I didn't realize he meant "In rebuttle" to when my objection to his idiotic comment was that it wasn't a rebuttle. Note my complaint, which you even quote (yet appear not to understand): "Normally that means you're contradicting the comment you're responding to, but in this case it seems that you're adding useless information that doesn't add to the topic or in any way invalidate the point you're responding to."
The GGP was adding nothing of value. He began his comment with "Except", restated using different language my comment about much of iOS being made up of FOSS software, and didn't establish anything of interest. He appears, at the end, to think restating the comments he's replying to means he's come up with a brilliant argument demonstrating convincingly that iOS is not notoriously closed, but he makes no statements in support of that.
That wasn't a rebuttal, it was just dumb. As are you.
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This is why you should store all of your movies in a lossless format somewhere and then just re-encode them for yout portable devices ;-)
I hit CTRL-C when this was running and now I have complete access to the computer!
Hmm, that worries me. Can you tell me whether it's regular WPA, or WPA2 that's affected? Also should I be worried about malicious insiders hacking my network with this exploit?
In my experience, the most popular email system out there is Yahoo! Mail, and the web interface doesn't do any encryption except for the logging in process.
Frankly though, email should generally be considered insecure anyway. It's usually transmitted, somewhere along the chain, in plain-text, and you only have (limited) control over your own connection, not the connection of the party you're communicating with. The pseudo-elitists posting here claiming that they're OK because, unlike the great unwashed, they use HTTPS when they connect to their web mail, are fooling themselves.
HD DVD was an open format available to anyone who wanted to implement it. As far as content went, it was the more open of the two - you didn't need, for example, to license AACS to press a disc.
HD DVD's failure had nothing to do with licensing, it was a straightforward case in which Hollywood picked the winner. Hollywood, as a whole, didn't like the fact HD DVD didn't require access controls (making it harder to trace pirates), and lacked snake-oil solutions like BD+. Added to the fact Sony is a studio, Blu-ray had the studio support.
Well it is and it isn't.
What we're seeing here is kinda like Mac vs PC, circa 1998. The PC was the open architecture, manufacturers providing a wide choice of different configurations, all running a powerful operating system that was available to anyone who wanted it, with the manufacturers choosing to differentiate themselves by pre-installing their own software. Meanwhile, the Mac was the closed architecture box with the clearly inferior operating system, but with the manufacturer taking great pains to ensure the user's initial experience was as clean as possible.
Fast forward to today: Android is open. As with Windows in 1998, Google is making no attempt to control what's done with it (well, actually Microsoft exerted *more* control in 1998 - I mean, Google is allowing, for example, Motorola and AT&T to remove all of the Google components from the version of Android running on the Flip, and replace them with AT&T-branded Yahoo equivalents. As with the Windows example, Android is the superior, open, system, and any manufacturer can get it, and install it on a variety of different configurations of hardware. Meanwhile, Apple has the inferior operating system, but is exerting heavy control on the system. Users have less choices in terms of hardware, they have even less choices when it comes to what they can do with the system, but, and it's a big but, Apple's control extends, just as with the Mac in 1998, to ensuring that the user's initial experience is as clean as possible.
BTW, unlike Windows, where an application may be spread out in the file system and in terms of entries in the registry, it's relatively simple to remove an Android app if you have root access to the box (ok, that's the tricky bit) - everything's generally in a single file called something like /system/app/ApplicationName.apk.
This is not to say that's how it should be. But it does make it easier to foresee a future where, if Google gets pissed in the same way Microsoft eventually did about pre-installed crapware, Google's fix could be pretty simple.
You have no idea who I am or what I've done. My words are of someone who tried it, and found that, staggeringly, my 1999 era laptop (Thinkpad 600), upgraded to the max, was barely capable of running Xubuntu at a comfortable speed, and who found Xubuntu lacking in all the areas it needed to be, while retaining the only parts of GNOME I genuinely thought sucked.
I'm the kind of person who hates throwing out computers. In theory, Xubuntu is made for me, at least, it's advertised as being a real GNU/Linux distribution for lower spec PCs. That is, it's supposed to provide a functional environment on lower spec PCs. But as I said above, the window of "lower spec" it's for is surprisingly small. Less than 192M of RAM? You might as well forget it. More than 256M? Well, you might find real Ubuntu works on it without any problems. Poor CPU and graphics card? Chances are it'll be slow as ass whichever Ubuntu variant you install.
I had a 384M 600MHz VIA C3 in the living room for a while running full Ubuntu. It never "needed" Xubuntu. I take a machine that's only slightly less powerful, my 600, and it can't comfortably run Xubuntu - it's there, you can start a Terminal window and do some work in the shell if you want, but otherwise...
Who's Xubuntu for? For the people who have between 192M and 256M of RAM? And those people are going to be happy running something that kinda sorta looks like GNOME, but actually is less functional?
GNOME "just works" for the most part. Yes, if you try to hack the UI to work differently, some features will stop working. That's normal. You'd be hard pressed to find an operating system where that isn't the case. And while GNOME may make "Focus follows mouse" difficult, to suggest Xubuntu lets you do those things is clearly wrong. I tried replacing Xubuntu's abysmal non-spacial file manager, Thunar, with alternatives. The only way to do this was essentially to delete the link pointing to it from /usr/bin. and have it point at an alternative. Interestingly, despite Thunar being touted as (and justified as) low memory, the machine was just as responsive when I pointed it at Nautilus! And no, the change isn't clean, it took a lot of hacking to get that to work, and of course Nautilus opens my home directory upon boot.
Does Xfde via Xubuntu do focus-follows-mouse better than GNOME under Ubuntu? I didn't get that far, and I wouldn't have even if I'd installed it on my T60, or even that aforementioned VIA C3. You see, the issue wasn't just that this supposedly lightweight environment wasn't, it was that I was stuck with a desktop less functional, in many ways, than my Amiga system from a decade and a half ago. My Amiga had all the features that Xfde has, from half-assed media players from the Winamp "era", to the basic word processors (and a pretty good DTP package) and spreadsheets and stuff that did exactly what I needed albeit no more. But the Amiga managed to achieve all of this efficiently, which meant that the applications were responsive and the environment was usable. The UI wasn't a stripped down version of GNOME2 designed by people who didn't know why GNOME was the way it was, it was a well thought out environment that employed multiple desktops, spacial representations an
Just a Pentium II? Really? The last I looked, operating systems need a whole computer to be installed on, not just a CPU. You know, with memory, disk space, etc. ;) And before you get annoyed and say "I meant a COMPUTER with a Pentium II", that's kinda the point - you're not giving me any useful information there by just quoting the CPU it has. It's like saying "O'RLY! I installed Xubunu on a PC with an IDE DISK DRIVE!! YOU SUCK! HAHAH"
I have a Thinkpad with a PII (a 600). and because the maximum amount of RAM I can fit on its motherboard is 168M (I'm not kidding, yes, I know that's a stupid amount of RAM and doesn't make any sense at all. But, honestly, that's the amount of RAM is has. If you don't believe me, go Google around, you'll find that 600s have some kind of weird memory configuration. Hell, it's not even supposed to have that amount officially, it just works anyway) and:
(a) The installation crawled. I mean CRAWLED. It took seconds for the machine to respond to any buttons. The mouse jerked around. And forget about trying to use it as a live disk, it wouldn't do it.
(b) The resulting install is only passably usable. It uses almost as much hard disk space as a full Ubuntu (thus using up most of the 4G drive)
(c) The operating system itself is horrible. It's like all the worst features of GNOME have been retained, and you suddenly miss all the good stuff when it's not there any more, you know, things like Rhythmbox.
It was an interesting project, but if I ever actually need to make the 600 into a usable machine, I'll probably go and install Slackware like God intended. Or even that Gentoo crap. Hell, I bet GNOME under Gentoo would work better than Xubuntu.
I've used Mac OS X (Jaguar) on a 128M PowerPC G3. It was... more usable. Honest. And it had the added benefit of being a full operating system. With iTunes and Quicktime, and iMovie, and, and... well, you get the idea. It swapped a lot, but it was managable. Xubuntu gave me nothing, and took its time to do it.
The recommended installation environment for Xubuntu involves 192M of RAM. The minimum installation environment for Ubuntu needs 256M. That's a pretty small window.
It's worth adding:
I thought Jobs hit quite a few duff notes yesterday, both with criticisms of their competitors ("But Mom! They're doing it too!") and the suggestion it wasn't a real problem with some fairly bad manipulation of the statistics ("Who cares? I only hit him a little bit...") I'll be glad when that stupid RDF thing disappears, and Apple has to make great stuff again.
There are two problems with this. First of all, we're talking about Touchscreenphones, and I'd suggest to you that ca clear majority of users have, actually, connected their Touchscreenphone to their computer. The first generation iPhones actually needed to be hooked up to the computer to be "activated" because of the moronic non-standard SIM lock they were using, and most iPhone users use tools like iTunes to manage their MP3 libraries. Virtually all Touchscreenphones make a big deal about their ability to play music, something that requires copying the music to them. It's safe to say the vast majority of users aren't using Bluetooth for this.
The second is we're talking about an instance in which a device will be rendered unusable if, and only if, it has undergone a procedure that involves plugging it into a computer using a USB cable.
If a device can be rendered usable again using the exact same equipment that was used to render it unusable, and that actually came in the box with it, then I'd say those who are saying the popular definition of "Brick" doesn't apply here. This isn't a case where your Motorola RAZR is rendered unusable if you tap the "Star" button three times, it's a case where your Droid X is rendered unusable if you plug it into a computer, and attempt to load the "wrong" operating system. If this is bricking, then attempting to install Mac OS X onto a Dell by coping a partition over from a Mac is "bricking" a Dell.
None of the above should be taken as justifying Motorola's decision to require signed operating systems. Just that I think the term "Bricking" doesn't apply here. I think Motorola's actions certainly go against the spirit of openness that Android is supposed to be about, and they certainly violate the "If you sell it to someone, it's their's" rule that we condemn Apple for, even if these moves aren't as extreme as Apple's.
Ah, Xubuntu, for all the PCs out there that have approximately 30% less system resources than those required by regular Ubuntu.
I think that means, in practice, it runs great on any PC made between June 16th 2001, and April 20th 2002.
Honestly, what the hell is the point of Xubuntu?
The first phones I owned with an external antenna had it such that you would pull it out when you were using the phone, and slide it back in when you put the phone in your pocket. Well, with the exception of my Nokia 9000, where you'd fold it over for some reason.
This was followed by a series of phones with "stub" antennas, antennas that were inside a wide piece of plastic sticking out of the top of the phone that protruded slightly less than an inch. Funnily enough, these are the phones I recall having the best reception.
I think external antennas are a great idea, and they shouldn't be discarded on aesthetic grounds.
We focus on Apple when Apple's phones don't work because Apple and its fans pretend that their devices are near perfect, "just works", items when they're clearly not.
Android has never been promoted as a "perfect" user experience. It's Windows 1.0 to iPhone's MacOS System 4 - slightly unreliable, butt-ugly, and with glaring UI issues, yet faster, infinitely more powerful, and more open than the latter.
When "openness" issues come up with Android, like yesterday's (turns out to be bogus) story about the Droid X's bootloader, people do indeed start screaming just as loudly as when iOS has a major functionality issue. And they get angry. And it all gets ugly. Blame the stereotypical smug Apple owners ;-)
Count yourself lucky. I had Sprint PCS service from 1999-2002. There were certain times of day where you'd get cut off for just walking past a tree.
But yeah, for the most part the networks are more reliable these days. It's been a very long time since I got cut off for any reason other than a serious network glitch, or being on the inside of a large building with large amounts of metal in an area that already has a weak signal (like, alas, my local supermarket.)
They're offering a full refund. Next!
No, it's not. If it were then Robert Owen wouldn't be considered the father of socialism, and Trade Unions (which have nothing to do with "the amount of production") and Cooperatives (which do not define the community of resource users, only the community that creates those resources) wouldn't be socialist movements.
The attempts to dog socialism with specific implementation details are largely a combination of European governments attempting to make particular systems popular by associating them with a popular movement, and American politicians and concerns attempting to make particular systems unpopular by associating them with an unpopular movement. It's as fair to say that Socialism is about "the amount of production is dictated by the community" as it is to suggest that Christianity is "about" dragging homosexuals behind pick-up trucks or conversely "about" funding orphanages so orphans don't starve.
One can argue that an economic system where the amount of production is dictated by a community is a socialist system but the converse is not true: something doesn't have to involve production being controlled by the community that benefits from it to be socialist.
Socialism is a moral movement, not an economic system. There are socialist governments, economic systems, and so on, just as there are Christian governments and Muslim economies (we don't think of any economy as being "Christian" per-se, but that's largely because nobody's been successful in justifying one.) Universal Healthcare really is an example of people coming together for the common good. It's socialist.
Are you under the impression that social programs can't be socialist?
Socialism is the principle that people can work together for the common good rather than competing with one another. People organizing, through the government, to ensure they all have access to quality healthcare is certainly an example of that. Universal Healthcare has, historically, was a concept created and promoted by the socialism movement.
Universal Healthcare is not about the profit motive. It's not about people competing with one another for resources, and shareholders making a buck. It's about people working together for something that's good. It's the very definition of socialist. And that's not a bad thing.
Slow Down Cowboy! Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment. It's been 4 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment Chances are, you're behind a firewall or proxy, or clicked the Back button to accidentally reuse a form. Please try again. If the problem persists, and all other options have been tried, contact the site administrator. Reply to: Re:Will be a hard pill to swallow... * Re:Will be a hard pill to swallow... (Score:2) by pnewhook (788591) writes: Alter Relationship on 2010-07-15 23:29 (#32922822) Universal heath care is a good thing but it is not socialist. Its a social program - completely different. Reply to This Post Comment Preview Comment * Re:Will be a hard pill to swallow... (Score:?) by squiggleslash (241428) writes: on 2010-07-16 8:21 Homepage Journal Are you under the impression that social programs can't be socialist? Socialism is the principle that people can work together for the common good rather than competing with one another. People organizing, through the government, to ensure they all have access to quality healthcare is certainly an example of that. Universal Healthcare has, historically, was a concept created and promoted by the socialism movement. Universal Healthcare is not about the profit motive. It's not about people competing with one another for resources, and shareholders making a buck. It's about people working together for something that's good. It's the very definition of socialist. -- My moved journal [livejournal.com] Edit Comment Name squiggleslash [ Log Out ] URL http://squiggleslash.livejournal.com/ Subject Comment
Are you under the impression that social programs can't be socialist?
Socialism is the principle that people can work together for the common good rather than competing with one another. People organizing, through the government, to ensure they all have access to quality healthcare is certainly an example of that. Universal Healthcare has, historically, was a concept created and promoted by the socialism movement.
Universal Healthcare is not about the profit motive. It's not about people competing with one another for resources, and shareholders making a buck. It's about people working together for something that's good. It's the very definition of socialist. Use the Preview Button! Check those URLs! No Karma Bonus No Subscriber Bonus Post Anonymously Allowed HTML
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No, it isn't. Socialism is where people cooperate to work together for the common good.
Two branches of socialism (arguably the most successful) are the Trade Union movement, and the Cooperative Movement. The "Father of Socialism" is generally considered to be Robert Owen, who reorganized his mills as communes. None of these concepts have anything to do with means of production being owned by the government.
The counter argument is that you're not making one. I said that despite iOS's use of open source components, iOS is notoriously closed. You said, to paraphrase, "iOS includes some open source components, look, see, Apple lets you download the code. Therefore it is not notoriously closed."
Now, repeating what the guy just said and saying "So n-uh! That means you're wrong" isn't a winning argument. Especially when you're wrong. Which you are.
iOS is notoriously closed, despite having open source components. It's fairly easy to prove, just run it against some obvious tests:
Test 1
While many manufacturers make phones running Android, Symbian, and FWIW J2ME/MIDP, only one makes a phone running iOS, who happens to be the developer of the operating system. Why is this?
Test 2
My employer wants me to write an application that will connect all of our employees to the Asterisk VoIP system, so our employees will be on the office phone network whether in the office or off site. Can I make this application available for the iPhone?
Test 3
A politician has made a particularly stupid comment about paying for healthcare by bartering for services. I want to write an app that ridicules the politician by letting users take photographs of objects and have the box tell you how many cancer treatments you can get in exchange. Can I release this for the iPhone?
Test 4
I want to write an application for my phone, but while I'm happy to use the native APIs, I'd like the code itself to be written in Java, because that's the programming language I'm most comfortable with. I'm quite happy to use something like GCJ to compile it to native machine code before release. Can I develop such an app for the iPhone?
Test 5
I'm not really a programmer but sometimes I want to put together tools for my own personal use, like I did on my old Macintosh with Hypercard. Can I do that on my iPhone?
The counter argument is that you're not making one. I said that despite iOS's use of open source components, iOS is notoriously closed. You said, to paraphrase, "iOS includes some open source components, look, see, Apple lets you download the code. Therefore it is not notoriously closed."
Now, repeating what the guy just said and saying "So n-uh! That means you're wrong" isn't a winning argument. Especially when you're wrong. Which you are.
iOS is notoriously closed, despite having open source components. It's fairly easy to prove, just run it against some obvious tests:
Test 1
While many manufacturers make phones running Android, Symbian, and FWIW J2ME/MIDP, only one makes a phone running iOS, who happens to be the developer of the operating system. Why is this?
Test 2
My employer wants me to write an application that will connect all of our employees to the Asterisk VoIP system, so our employees will be on the office phone network whether in the office or off site. Can I make this application available for the iPhone?
Test 3
A politician has made a particularly stupid comment about paying for healthcare by bartering for services. I want to write an app that ridicules the politician by letting users take photographs of objects and have the box tell you how many cancer treatments you can get in exchange. Can I release this for the iPhone?
I want to write an application for my phone, but while I'm happy to use the native APIs, I'd like the code itself to be written in Java, because that's the programming language I'm most comfortable with. I'm quite happy to use something like GCJ to compile it to native machine code before release. Can I develop such an app for the iPhone?
Test 5
I'm not really a programmer but sometimes I want to put together tools for my own personal use, like I did on my old Macintosh with Hypercard. Can I do that on my iPhone?
mrsquid-1 was already taken, so the GP had to register mrsquid0.
Normally I don't care about silly political statements, but that's too much.
Universal Health Care is socialist. And it's a good thing. Get over it. Just because something's socialist doesn't make it bad!
Not in the English version, no. Although I'm told that aliens from the planet Todhsals, who speak a language that sounds exactly like English, but in fact applies different meanings to every word, have interpreted it that way due to that unfortunate English/Todhsalsian "sounding alike but meaning totally different things" thing. For example, where I wrote:
Well, it's more of a Motorola issue than an Android issue. Just because an operating system is open doesn't mean the corporation that installed it isn't going to be a jackass.
They interpret it as "My chickens are jellied mine leader catscan Motorola nuts, and I tore up my bus pass my Android I did."
And
At least you can load and run your own programs onto the Droid X, even if you can't update the operating system to your own version.
Apparently translates to: "Zounds! Coffee grounds Droid X is good wookie vodka, my underpants are off."
I'm guessing you're from that planet?
You're right, I misread his point (although now I understand it I'm even more annoyed by it because it doesn't have any relevance to anything!)
I suck!
No, the GGP was adding useless information. Actually, I'm not even sure he did that, he basically restated my statement about Mach, FreeBSD, GNU and KDE in slightly different terms.
Kind of like you really. You're claiming that I didn't realize he meant "In rebuttle" to when my objection to his idiotic comment was that it wasn't a rebuttle. Note my complaint, which you even quote (yet appear not to understand): "Normally that means you're contradicting the comment you're responding to, but in this case it seems that you're adding useless information that doesn't add to the topic or in any way invalidate the point you're responding to."
The GGP was adding nothing of value. He began his comment with "Except", restated using different language my comment about much of iOS being made up of FOSS software, and didn't establish anything of interest. He appears, at the end, to think restating the comments he's replying to means he's come up with a brilliant argument demonstrating convincingly that iOS is not notoriously closed, but he makes no statements in support of that.
That wasn't a rebuttal, it was just dumb. As are you.