Like it or not the Internet as we know it requires the sort of backbones it has that connect major networks at extremely high speeds. A wireless mesh might work out for basic email appliances in a large urban area (ie down town area), it would never be a viable option in slightly less populated areas. Not to mention the issues involved with sufficient levels of bandwidth that would be able to handle all of the users such a network would be available to.
I was thinking something similar... there is one issue that no one here has thrown out yet. Heat.
Lets say your company has a 4-way hub that can be plugged into the system of choice... imagine the cooling such a thing would require in order to keep from burning up in its enclosed plastic or (more likely) metal box.
Not to mention the noise... oh good god the noise. My dual core 3800+ at home is quite loud... I can only imagine what a few of those bad boys sitting on your desk would sound like under full load.
I suppose a good deal of issues could be eliminated if low power cpu's were to be used in such a manor... then you wont have as many issues drawing from the host PC (ie not necessarily having to have an external power supply).
"I don't think I should have been docked so heavily on my review this year... after all, Judge Spooner said it was ok for me to spend my time surfing and you don't want to argue with a judge do you? Best to just give me a 5/5 there... thanks."
It sounded like the opening volley of the second great Unix war, only this time instead of pitting proprietary Unix vendors and systems against each other... it is two open source ones.
It will be interesting to see what weapon the BSD crowd will retaliate with.
I currently live in an apartment where all of my utilities are part of my rent and do take advantage of that benefit in using a fair amount of power and water... thing is though I could use more, but I know that there is some... line that if crossed to frequently that the land lord will see fit to raise my rent.
It hasn't happened yet, but I still expect it one day that could happen so I avoid overly excessive use and getting noticed, the same thing most ISP users should be doing unless they have a SLA that spells out exactly how much bandwidth they get and how much of it they can use.
Do does that mean you don't own a DVD player or any DVD movies? Both of them have quite a bit of DRM built in.
Please don't say that DVD's are ok because the DRM has been bypassed because despite that, the DRM is still there, just in an earlier form of what these new players and disks will have.
They'll likely be moving to another copy protection system that l33t hax0rs bypass in minutes and that cause much frustration for countless legitimate users.
It's still a good sign though to see a publisher walking away from the evil that is Starforce.
A "wealth of codecs" is only really important when you are pirating your music from fellow people who cannot decide on a single standard and you don't want to have to be bothered to convert your booty before it goes to your player.
Of course... I doubt the grandparent would admit that he is such a person though. Instead he'd claim that he's downloading songs from non RIAA bands who give their music away (or sell it themselves) and they are the ones who are choosing strange codecs... which too is BS because those artists, wanting to be heard by as many people as possible tend to choose common codecs.
It's kind of saddening when OSS zealots like yourself do not understand the very licenses that are the foundation of what you hold so dear.
Once again class... you can link against LGPL libraries and are only required to make available the modified source of the LGPL library, not the apps/libraries of yours that are using it.
Now under the GPL (notice the missing first L) that is a different story and depending on the kind of linking involved then yes, if the external libs were GPL and they linked against them in a very specific way... then they would have to release the code of the libs/apps of theirs that use it.
Guess what? By your own admission they are using LGPL libs, and no doubt any GPL libs they are using are done in such a way to permit them from having to release their core source.
Please, sit down and read the GPL and LGPL licenses one more time... and maybe, read the FSF FAQ's on both which give a better idea of what you can and cannot do with GPL and LGPL software.
Nice idea... of course like many I suspect I'm skeptical.
Look at the Windows side... Direct3D is pretty useful and was intended to remove the need for developers to write for specific graphics cards.
What happened? For a time everything was fine until the two major players, in an effort to differentiate themselves from the other went off in slightly different directions ultimately resulting in vanilla DirectX and Direct3D being a lowest common denominator between the two sides, and still forcing developers on both sides to write specific code for major devices so as to be able to offer the best experience.
I foresee a similar issue here. A common platform that enables an app written for it to work fine under KDE or Gnome will work great, at first, but then developers will find a feature of one or the other which they need, or at least want to have optional, so will design in parallel paths of UI rendering and functionality, ultimately resulting in a common framework that is insufficient for many apps.
Sounds nice in theory... but what about those applications that legitimately require kernel hooks? You know... things like hardware and software drivers?
Which is worse? Allowing virtually anything to hook into the kernel (provided the running user has the rights) and potentially opening it up to rootkitting... or a user accidentally disabling all 3rd party kernel hooks which caused their anti-virus program's filter driver to stop working and not detect a more run of the mill virus causing them much pain and suffering?
The article refers to recovery without paving, not that the entire system is actually physically destroyed and must be replaced with a new physical pc.
It's not really surprising either, most IT groups face viruses from time to time and they tend to be of the sort that can be removed and mopped up afterwards and the PC is able to be patched (if it wasn't already) and it's anti-viral software updated (likely it wasn't before hand) and make sure that it remains up to date in future.
The threat of things like rootkits which are far far harder to detect and more so to remove without paving that is causing the problems.
Wait... we don't like Starforce... go get em Chris!!!
It is often a shame IMO when legal action is the only way to take care of issues such as the wonderful rootkits, spyware and drm on music and video game disks.
Yes I know this is Slashdot... however if you are going to make such a blanket assertion you should at least back it up.
Granted I am doing little more than criticizing right now, I am at least digging for some browser statistics from 95 to 2000, might I suggest you do the same?
You seem to be so anti-discrimination and yet... do not realize that discrimination is a perfectly normal and healthy part of business.
Think about it, by hiring you they are discriminating against every other candidate. By giving you a work task that you are best suited for, they are discriminating against everyone else who is not as suited for it.
Do you really think they should just hire any random joe of the street? Or should they do a bit if discrimination and determine who is best for the job.
Of course, the sort of discrimination you are talking about is the illegal sort, the common ones being race, religion, national origin, sex, etc... no where on there will you see long hair, nor would a case where your religion requires long hare go anywhere.
How many system builders like Dell do you know that do not brand the desktops that they sell? You know, shipping not only a tweaked version of the OS that shows their logo from time to time, but also includes various little applications for both hardware access (ie better configuration of a specific device), but also productivity and other 'neat' things.
The driver is relatively simple to make work for one distro and later port to other similar distros (granted differences do exist even at the kernel level between some that make such an easy port difficult and time consuming). The problem is making sure that it works across the board.
While Dell sells their own PC's, they do not make all of their own hardware and supplying driver source for many devices may not be possible, so it would fall to them to build and test drivers on specific (and popular) distros.
Given that they likely won't use DRM with their downloads (after all, a Linux distro doing DRM would be quickly abandoned by many of its users and be excommunicated by RMS)... that would seem to mean that the major labels would not allow their songs to be put on it, counting out the majority of popular music today.
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Good god no. No no no that would not be possible.
Like it or not the Internet as we know it requires the sort of backbones it has that connect major networks at extremely high speeds. A wireless mesh might work out for basic email appliances in a large urban area (ie down town area), it would never be a viable option in slightly less populated areas. Not to mention the issues involved with sufficient levels of bandwidth that would be able to handle all of the users such a network would be available to.
I was thinking something similar... there is one issue that no one here has thrown out yet. Heat.
Lets say your company has a 4-way hub that can be plugged into the system of choice... imagine the cooling such a thing would require in order to keep from burning up in its enclosed plastic or (more likely) metal box.
Not to mention the noise... oh good god the noise. My dual core 3800+ at home is quite loud... I can only imagine what a few of those bad boys sitting on your desk would sound like under full load.
I suppose a good deal of issues could be eliminated if low power cpu's were to be used in such a manor... then you wont have as many issues drawing from the host PC (ie not necessarily having to have an external power supply).
Good point... but do you really want to dedicate a large chunk of ram to a specific processor in such a manor?
Sure, with it there would be a possibility of cache coherency issues while without there would be a performance hit whenever something hit the bus...
I guess it'd depend on the cost of ram when building such a device... I'm guessing that a whopping 64-128 meg cache aught to be enough for sometime.
I can only imagine what that could do to us cheap bastards who have small clusters of older PC's sitting in a second bedroom or closet.
"Hum... I can't quite afford a whole new system or even a motherboard and two new procs... I'll just add a new one to the back of an existing one"
At last! The day of easily being upgrade to a multi-proc system may soon be at hand! (assuming they also have some sort of... external hub device).
"I don't think I should have been docked so heavily on my review this year... after all, Judge Spooner said it was ok for me to spend my time surfing and you don't want to argue with a judge do you? Best to just give me a 5/5 there... thanks."
It sounded like the opening volley of the second great Unix war, only this time instead of pitting proprietary Unix vendors and systems against each other... it is two open source ones.
It will be interesting to see what weapon the BSD crowd will retaliate with.
Does power corrupt or does power attract the corruptible?
Wonderful way to put it.
I currently live in an apartment where all of my utilities are part of my rent and do take advantage of that benefit in using a fair amount of power and water... thing is though I could use more, but I know that there is some... line that if crossed to frequently that the land lord will see fit to raise my rent.
It hasn't happened yet, but I still expect it one day that could happen so I avoid overly excessive use and getting noticed, the same thing most ISP users should be doing unless they have a SLA that spells out exactly how much bandwidth they get and how much of it they can use.
Do does that mean you don't own a DVD player or any DVD movies? Both of them have quite a bit of DRM built in.
Please don't say that DVD's are ok because the DRM has been bypassed because despite that, the DRM is still there, just in an earlier form of what these new players and disks will have.
They'll likely be moving to another copy protection system that l33t hax0rs bypass in minutes and that cause much frustration for countless legitimate users.
It's still a good sign though to see a publisher walking away from the evil that is Starforce.
A "wealth of codecs" is only really important when you are pirating your music from fellow people who cannot decide on a single standard and you don't want to have to be bothered to convert your booty before it goes to your player.
Of course... I doubt the grandparent would admit that he is such a person though. Instead he'd claim that he's downloading songs from non RIAA bands who give their music away (or sell it themselves) and they are the ones who are choosing strange codecs... which too is BS because those artists, wanting to be heard by as many people as possible tend to choose common codecs.
It's kind of saddening when OSS zealots like yourself do not understand the very licenses that are the foundation of what you hold so dear.
Once again class... you can link against LGPL libraries and are only required to make available the modified source of the LGPL library, not the apps/libraries of yours that are using it.
Now under the GPL (notice the missing first L) that is a different story and depending on the kind of linking involved then yes, if the external libs were GPL and they linked against them in a very specific way... then they would have to release the code of the libs/apps of theirs that use it.
Guess what? By your own admission they are using LGPL libs, and no doubt any GPL libs they are using are done in such a way to permit them from having to release their core source.
Please, sit down and read the GPL and LGPL licenses one more time... and maybe, read the FSF FAQ's on both which give a better idea of what you can and cannot do with GPL and LGPL software.
Nice idea... of course like many I suspect I'm skeptical.
Look at the Windows side... Direct3D is pretty useful and was intended to remove the need for developers to write for specific graphics cards.
What happened? For a time everything was fine until the two major players, in an effort to differentiate themselves from the other went off in slightly different directions ultimately resulting in vanilla DirectX and Direct3D being a lowest common denominator between the two sides, and still forcing developers on both sides to write specific code for major devices so as to be able to offer the best experience.
I foresee a similar issue here. A common platform that enables an app written for it to work fine under KDE or Gnome will work great, at first, but then developers will find a feature of one or the other which they need, or at least want to have optional, so will design in parallel paths of UI rendering and functionality, ultimately resulting in a common framework that is insufficient for many apps.
Sounds nice in theory... but what about those applications that legitimately require kernel hooks? You know... things like hardware and software drivers?
Which is worse? Allowing virtually anything to hook into the kernel (provided the running user has the rights) and potentially opening it up to rootkitting... or a user accidentally disabling all 3rd party kernel hooks which caused their anti-virus program's filter driver to stop working and not detect a more run of the mill virus causing them much pain and suffering?
The article refers to recovery without paving, not that the entire system is actually physically destroyed and must be replaced with a new physical pc.
It's not really surprising either, most IT groups face viruses from time to time and they tend to be of the sort that can be removed and mopped up afterwards and the PC is able to be patched (if it wasn't already) and it's anti-viral software updated (likely it wasn't before hand) and make sure that it remains up to date in future.
The threat of things like rootkits which are far far harder to detect and more so to remove without paving that is causing the problems.
Wait... we don't like Starforce... go get em Chris!!!
It is often a shame IMO when legal action is the only way to take care of issues such as the wonderful rootkits, spyware and drm on music and video game disks.
Yes I know this is Slashdot... however if you are going to make such a blanket assertion you should at least back it up.
Granted I am doing little more than criticizing right now, I am at least digging for some browser statistics from 95 to 2000, might I suggest you do the same?
You seem to be so anti-discrimination and yet... do not realize that discrimination is a perfectly normal and healthy part of business.
Think about it, by hiring you they are discriminating against every other candidate. By giving you a work task that you are best suited for, they are discriminating against everyone else who is not as suited for it.
Do you really think they should just hire any random joe of the street? Or should they do a bit if discrimination and determine who is best for the job.
Of course, the sort of discrimination you are talking about is the illegal sort, the common ones being race, religion, national origin, sex, etc... no where on there will you see long hair, nor would a case where your religion requires long hare go anywhere.
That Blizzard is saying that only hackers and cheaters use Linux? This could be interesting.
Mr Burns: "Smithers, my wallet is in my front pocket."
How many system builders like Dell do you know that do not brand the desktops that they sell? You know, shipping not only a tweaked version of the OS that shows their logo from time to time, but also includes various little applications for both hardware access (ie better configuration of a specific device), but also productivity and other 'neat' things.
The driver is relatively simple to make work for one distro and later port to other similar distros (granted differences do exist even at the kernel level between some that make such an easy port difficult and time consuming). The problem is making sure that it works across the board.
While Dell sells their own PC's, they do not make all of their own hardware and supplying driver source for many devices may not be possible, so it would fall to them to build and test drivers on specific (and popular) distros.
Certainly not an easy task.
The kernel isn't the problem; it's everything else that the Linux system is running that is.
So... the justification for doing it is that the other, evil side did it first?
I thought people gave up on the "but he hit me first" logic back in third grade... I guess I was wrong.
What ever happened to rising above the competition, rather than stooping to their level?
Last year on Channel 9 we had the pleasure of seeing a brief interview with Bill Gates and during it hinted at a $500 tablet.
See a clip of this comment and explanation here.
Given that they likely won't use DRM with their downloads (after all, a Linux distro doing DRM would be quickly abandoned by many of its users and be excommunicated by RMS)... that would seem to mean that the major labels would not allow their songs to be put on it, counting out the majority of popular music today.
Shame.