For me it's just not having time to learn more. Once you know how to do something on Linux - make a connection, use an app, whatever - it's as easy as on Windows or easier. But getting there can take hours per task. For example, I'm trying to set aside a few hours,, or however long it may take, sometime to figure out how to make my Win2k and Red hat boxes share files (yes I'm a complete newbie). BUt this has been pushed back for several weekends now, and likewise with a million other things. *Meanwhile* I have to have a machine I can fully use for work and writing, etc. and that means continuing on Windows - with an increasing sense of being unwillingly stuck in the proprietary world.
Ask questions that will make the lecturer either reveal how evil it is, or make his evasions obvious. Possibilities:
1. If you turn it off - as MS claims they're going to allow - will the system then appear to apps, content & the network as "a Palladium PC with Palladium turned off" or as a non-Palladium PC? (Hint: it's the former.)
2. Will I still be able to flash my BIOS? *All* of it? replace it completely? (Assuming TCPA hardware, they're lying if they say 'yes'.)
3. Why would I want to buy this, if I'm not interested in Hollywood movies but do want complete control over my computer?
There is this fantastically common misconception that centralising your various digital identities will somehow decrease security. Not true!
The problem with centralizing one's data is that once it's broken into (see links below on MS's haphazard security) you've lost the whole lot, rather than just part of it. Your only argument against this is that keeping separate identities is a "major... hassle" which will induce you to make all your passwords the same. Well, if you make all your passwords the same, then you have poor security, but for the same reason - break one, break all. The smart alternative is to keep them separate and different and under your own control.
At least, this is true if you trust your own security. I don't even trust those browser utilities - I keep a paper list, not of passwords and logons, but of something that reminds me of each one but which would be meaningless to anyone else. This is easy and secure. I might also trust a compiled-by-me, open-source password manager..
And second, you're not even considering the privacy implications, which are the main reason many people dislike the whole Passport-type service idea. Maybe online merchants, etc. that I deal with are going to share info anyway, but if they have to figure out that one user on Amazon is the same as one at Altex, by comparing name, address and credit card number (you know that "privacy policies" are worthless, right?), then it will be a little harder for them, and hopefully more incomplete, if I'm not participating in something like Passport.
The only important question here, as far as I'm concerned, is whether, in the long run people are going to be able to opt out of this sort of thing. If Passport attains a certain "critical mass" then many merchants will no longer allow a non-Passport logon. And MS is probably already planning to tie Passport to Palladium.
Here at the U. of Texas the punch cards are relics, but we still use JCL every day. Yes, as someone said, it gives you something to debug once your program is working.
Seriously, we do batch programming here and set up JCL to control batch jobs (with a tool to automate generation, but debugging it is often manual). Also programs on the same mainframe for use via 3270 terminal emulators. Really!
Fortunately we're moving many of the administrative systems to the web now, but even the web scripts still run on the mainframe behind the script. Adabas and Natural.
Java is on the way, but is still about a year off.
This is a shrewd strategic move to head off any legal action based on MS projects undertaken since the events that led to the original suit - further integration of apps into the OS, subversion of standards, etc.. If MS is now perceived as making concessions (though they are at this point only token concessions) on the original (albeit now less relevant) issues, or its conservative friends in government can use this to depict MS that way, a meaningful remedy in the antitrust suit will be less likely, and so will additional actions.
In the recent controversy we learned that it's already in Firewire. So this decision is consistent with M$'s plan to integrate copy restriction mechanisms into Windows.
Slashdot Mirror
For me it's just not having time to learn more. Once you know how to do something on Linux - make a connection, use an app, whatever - it's as easy as on Windows or easier. But getting there can take hours per task. For example, I'm trying to set aside a few hours,, or however long it may take, sometime to figure out how to make my Win2k and Red hat boxes share files (yes I'm a complete newbie). BUt this has been pushed back for several weekends now, and likewise with a million other things. *Meanwhile* I have to have a machine I can fully use for work and writing, etc. and that means continuing on Windows - with an increasing sense of being unwillingly stuck in the proprietary world.
Ask questions that will make the lecturer either reveal how evil it is, or make his evasions obvious. Possibilities:
1. If you turn it off - as MS claims they're going to allow - will the system then appear to apps, content & the network as "a Palladium PC with Palladium turned off" or as a non-Palladium PC? (Hint: it's the former.)
2. Will I still be able to flash my BIOS? *All* of it? replace it completely? (Assuming TCPA hardware, they're lying if they say 'yes'.)
3. Why would I want to buy this, if I'm not interested in Hollywood movies but do want complete control over my computer?
There is this fantastically common misconception that centralising your various digital identities will somehow decrease security. Not true!
The problem with centralizing one's data is that once it's broken into (see links below on MS's haphazard security) you've lost the whole lot, rather than just part of it. Your only argument against this is that keeping separate identities is a "major ... hassle" which will induce you to make all your passwords the same. Well, if you make all your passwords the same, then you have poor security, but for the same reason - break one, break all. The smart alternative is to keep them separate and different and under your own control.
At least, this is true if you trust your own security. I don't even trust those browser utilities - I keep a paper list, not of passwords and logons, but of something that reminds me of each one but which would be meaningless to anyone else. This is easy and secure. I might also trust a compiled-by-me, open-source password manager..
And second, you're not even considering the privacy implications, which are the main reason many people dislike the whole Passport-type service idea. Maybe online merchants, etc. that I deal with are going to share info anyway, but if they have to figure out that one user on Amazon is the same as one at Altex, by comparing name, address and credit card number (you know that "privacy policies" are worthless, right?), then it will be a little harder for them, and hopefully more incomplete, if I'm not participating in something like Passport.
The only important question here, as far as I'm concerned, is whether, in the long run people are going to be able to opt out of this sort of thing. If Passport attains a certain "critical mass" then many merchants will no longer allow a non-Passport logon. And MS is probably already planning to tie Passport to Palladium.
Here at the U. of Texas the punch cards are relics, but we still use JCL every day. Yes, as someone said, it gives you something to debug once your program is working.
Seriously, we do batch programming here and set up JCL to control batch jobs (with a tool to automate generation, but debugging it is often manual). Also programs on the same mainframe for use via 3270 terminal emulators. Really!
Fortunately we're moving many of the administrative systems to the web now, but even the web scripts still run on the mainframe behind the script. Adabas and Natural.
Java is on the way, but is still about a year off.
This is a shrewd strategic move to head off any legal action based on MS projects undertaken since the events that led to the original suit - further integration of apps into the OS, subversion of standards, etc.. If MS is now perceived as making concessions (though they are at this point only token concessions) on the original (albeit now less relevant) issues, or its conservative friends in government can use this to depict MS that way, a meaningful remedy in the antitrust suit will be less likely, and so will additional actions.
In the recent controversy we learned that it's already in Firewire. So this decision is consistent with M$'s plan to integrate copy restriction mechanisms into Windows.