You can easily put the menus at the top of the screen with KDE.
The last time I tried doing this (months ago), I found that the menubar stops one pixel short of the top of the screen. I would be very happy to hear that this problem has been fixed since then.
It's funny that you cite Gnome, KDE, Mozilla, and GIMP as indicators of a brighter future for Open Source UIs. The fact is, each and every one of these programs suffers from the same mistakes as Windows:
Menubars are not placed at the top of the screen, making them harder to hit (remember, a menubar in the middle of the screen has finite dimensions, whereas a menubar at the top of the screen has infinite depth).
The taskbar on the bottom of the screen has buttons that do not extend all the way to the edge of the screen, again denying them of a potential infinite depth and making them harder to hit.
In many window managers, nondestructive buttons such as Maximize are placed right next to destructive buttons such as Close, increasing the chances that the user will accidentally destroy a window.
To proceed from a menu to a submenu, it is necessary to manuever the mouse rightward with surgical precision through a single menu line in order to get to the submenu without accidentally tripping an adjacent menu item. Compare this design with the classic Macintosh menus, which provide a triangular "forgiveness zone" to make it easy to get to the submenu without closing it before you get there.
I could go on but I think you get the idea. The point, which was well made in the original article, is that programmers are not typical end-users and these kinds of user interface issues do not even occur to them.
I hate the classic MacOS because it lacks memory protection and real multitasking, but of all the user interfaces in existence, classic MacOS stands out as the one UI that gets things right.
There is no danger that the UDP will be abused in the manner that you suggest.
I think you need to give the USENET mob more credit than you do. The UDP has never been used to censor content. You have not presented one shred of evidence suggesting that the UDP will ever be misused to censor content. Indeed, the history of the UDP suggests that it has always, and will always, be invoked only against problems concerning volume of posts (spam), and not problems concerning content of posts (censorship).
The people running the show behind the UDP are well aware of the difference between spam-filtering and censorship. They certainly know more about the difference than you do. Spam-fighters reject posts based on volume, while censors reject posts based on content.
I can definitely see individual news server admins performing content-based censorship (the admins here at Harvard are first-rate at that), but I find it inconceivable that a content-based UDP would ever find net-wide support.
Would DeCSS exists if the DVD companies had been able to use strong encryption?
Even if the algorithms used in CSS were perfect in every way, it would never have worked.
I was going to have a go at explaining why but it turns out Bruce Schneier has already written a wonderful explanation, so I'll just quote him.
... even if [the encryption scheme] were all perfect, the scheme could never work.
The flaw is in the security model. The software player eventually gets the decryption key, decrypts the DVD, and displays it on the screen. That decrypted DVD data is on the computer. It has to be; there's no other way to display it on the screen. No matter how good the encryption scheme is, the DVD data is available in plaintext to anyone who can write a computer program to take it.
And so is the decryption key. The computer has to decrypt the DVD. The decryption key has to be in the computer. So the decryption key is available, in the clear, to anyone who knows where to look.
Export restrictions are not designed to prevent you and me from getting good crypto. They're not even designed to prevent criminals from getting good crypto. If you really think this way then you're just buying the govt propoganda. The fact is, the government is lying about their motives.
The goal of export restrictions is to prevent ignorant law abiding citizens from getting good cryptography. Let's face it, the NSA isn't stupid. They know they can't spy on criminals(*), who can get good cryptography software regardless of the law. They know they can't spy on geeks, who also know how to get good cryptography. By process of elimination, the only people left who can be affected by crypto restrictions are law abiding non-geeks.
Why does the government want to keep crypto away from the unwashed masses? My guess is that if Microsoft can make encrypted communications (say, IPsec) the default in Windows, the government would have nothing left to spy on. Your guess is as good as mine. But the important point is that you shouldn't be deceived as to the intended target of the crypto restrictions. No matter how much the FBI screams about terrorist threats, the real target is the average law-abiding American.
(*) I am assuming the NSA can't break good cryptography. If they actually can break good cryptography, then they probably don't really care about crypto restrictions except insofar as the restrictions deceive outsiders about the NSA's cracking ability. But you can drive yourself in circles this way.
it's easy to install a program... I don't need to hunt for an obscure library file, i don't need to decode version numbers of updates
Judging from what you've said it looks like you've never been through DLL Hell.
There may be a lot of things that are easy in Windows but software installation management is definitely not one of them. Jaded Windows users may be impressed by one-click self-extracting installs and Install-Shield uninstalls, but that's only because they've never seen a real package manager like RPM or dpkg in action.
I will concede that software installation in Windows is easy if you can show me in Windows how to:
List the files that Word97 installed on the system,
Tell me which programs require ctl3d32.dll or any other particular dll,
Show me what programs on my system will break if I upgrade to Office2000.
These are all utterly fundamental chores for a system administrator. You cannot argue that Windows software management is easy until the day comes when Windows can do these tasks just like RPM and dpkg can today.
Instant Messaging in its current form was designed by companies like AOL and Mirabilis for business purposes. While this corporate backing has made Instant Messaging popular, we must remember that corporations serve their own interests, not their users' interests. Just because AIM and ICQ are popular doesn't mean that they're the Right Thing from the user point of view.
The current Instant Messaging model suffers from several glaring problems stemming mostly from the reliance on centrally controlled messaging servers (that double as ad servers). Major issues with the current IM model include:
Reliability: Does the whole world want to count on one company's servers to stay up 24/7?
Security: What if someone breaks into the server that has your passwords? What if (hypothetically of course) an employee of AOL doesn't like you?
Privacy: Isn't it a warm feeling knowing that all your text goes through some other company's messaging servers?
Authentication: How the hell do you know who's on the other end of the line?
In light of these concerns it astounds me that bosses in some companies use ICQ to talk to their employees on the job. ICQ may be a fun toy but do you really want to bet your company's next product (or for that matter your company) on it?
In order to achieve IM nirvana the best route is always to take the least broken existing solution and try to fix it. In this case the least broken solution is not AIM or ICQ. I nominate Unix talk and IRC as candidates for the least broken existing solution.
Either of the old Unix standbys offers decentralized communication independent of any master company. A decentralized protocol right away eliminates the reliability issue, and at least gives you a fighting chance to address security, privacy, and authentication. While security is never easy on the plaintext internet, many of the same techniques that are used to secure telnet (e.g. ssh, IPsec) apply equally well to messaging as long as the protocol is decentralized.
As for graphical interfaces, WinTalk and mIRC already deliver the required windowing interface to these protocols. Buddy lists can be implemented by
Packaging a finger daemon with the chat client, so that people can use finger to see who's logged on,
Packaging a finger client with the chat client, so people can see which friends of theirs are logged on,
Anyone have any idea how to fix the problem of dynamic IPs?
It's not a perfect solution and there are still points that need to be worked out but I feel that the old Unix programs provide a much more solid foundation for achieving a 90% useful solution than the new breed of corporation-serving adware Instant Messaging programs.
Compaq and IBM make products that are admirably suited for a great many customers. Certainly the vast majority of customers would be better off shopping at Compaq or IBM. But there is a small niche of customers that want control over their own development and support options, and Compaq and IBM have nothing to offer this market niche at any price.
In traditional enterprise computing the vendor is your sole option for support because only your vendor has rights to the source code for the system software. Linux is different because you have the source code, and you have more support options (including appealing to the internet public at large for help). I'm sure you've been told this several times but maybe you haven't thought it through yet. Again, not everyone needs this level of control, but for those who want it it sure sucks that the traditional vendors won't offer it at any price!
Maybe one day Compaq or IBM will form a division that specializes in Linux. Until they do, the customers that need control over their support options will continue to find VA Linux computers among their only choices.
I never said anything to justify the price of LNUX. I think the stock price is insane.
I do not believe Dell, IBM, HP, SGI, or Sun would ever find it "worth it" (to use your own words) to pursue Linux as seriously as VA. They're too used to earning their profits by controlling the customer and all of his (her?) support options. Linux is anti-control.
VA Linux computers may be of interest to only a small group of people, but the interest level within that group is compelling indeed.
The problem with Dell, IBM, HP, and Compaq is that they cut corners to save costs. VA boxes are extraordinarily high quality Linux machines, and people will pay money for that.
Put a Dell workstation and a VA workstation side by side, and yes the VA workstation will cost more. But for that price you get ECC RAM, SCSI tuned for Linux, a CD drive that rips audio properly, a sharper monitor (even if you decide to go with the 17 inch monitor against the Dell 21 inch), and a motherboard that won't break every year. (I'm speaking from personal experience here. Your mileage may vary.)
Maybe in the future things will change, but right now companies like Dell only pay lip service to Linux without actually committing to it. Dell picks hardware to run on Windows and slaps Linux on a few of their machines. VA picks hardware to run on Linux. I doubt that Dell will ever see enough Linux volume to justify the same level of commitment to Linux as VA.
Clearly if you don't have money you don't have a choice, but if you do have money and you want an x86, you can't go wrong with a VA Linux machine.
While I don't want to go as far as Abigail here, I find no truth in your comment that "If Linux is ever going to succeed as a desktop OS then it's going to need games."
What do you mean by "games?" Do you mean the free games that come with every redhat CD? If you count those as games, then Linux already has games, and your point is moot.
If, however, by "games" you mean "proprietary retail boxed games," then I do not agree with you that these games are necessary for success. Remember that Linux does not need enormous popularity to succeed. Other platforms such as Mac, OS/2, or BeOS need to be popular to succeed, since the pace of advancement on these platforms is dictated by the company that sells the software, and the resources of that company are constrained by product sales. Linux, on the other hand, can thrive as long as there are interested users. Any interested user has the freedom to improve the source code.
Certainly there is no doubt that a lack of boxed retail games will hurt Linux's popularity. It might even hurt Linux's chances of succeeding. But it will not, as you claim, doom Linux's chances of succeeding. Even without games, the pool of interested users coupled with the open source nature of the code is enough to ensure Linux's continued progress for a long, long time.
Copying does not automatically imply a copyright violation. Most legal experts agree that copying CDs that you own for your own personal listening convenience is legal under fair use even without permission from the copyright owner. For example, if I take my favorite songs from 10 of my CDs and burn them all onto one CD so that I can carry around one CD instead of 10, that's perfectly legal.
The recording industry would like us to believe (falsely) that any form of copying is illegal. Their entire encryption efforts are based around this false assumption. Rob is entirely right to say that ripping should be technologically allowed. Please don't perpetuate the myth that copying without permission is automatically illegal.
Mouse could still be slower in the big picture
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Maybe it takes less time to select text with the mouse, but were the users in Tog's study actually doing a productive task, or just being timed by a stopwatch?
Just because NT beats Linux in one specific benchmark does not mean that NT beats Linux in performing the tasks that most people want. This is especially true when the benchmark measures useless performance statistics on a completely unrealistic task.
The same is true for productivity studies. Productivity is measured by a calender, not by a stopwatch. Even if the mouse selection is 1 second faster, what if reaching for the mouse interrupts the person's train of thought by 2 seconds? You can time hand movement, but how do you measure the thoughts inside someone's head? The stopwatch seemingly shows that the first is faster, but play the task out over days and the calender tells the real story.
It may well be that the mouse is faster anyway, but a stopwatch study is not convincing evidence.
I think you're missing the point. It is perfectly possible for me to make MP3s of audio for which I own the copyright. Under this situation everything I do with the audio is totally legal.
Even if a piece of audio is copyrighted by someone else, there do exist situations where copying the audio without permission is allowed under fair use. I won't venture to give any examples, but surely you must admit it is possible.
Libraries have for decades posted notices on their copy machines stating that the users of the copy machines are responsible for checking all copyright aspects of their copying. Book publishers do not try to sue libraries for being an accessory to copyright infringement. The recording industry needs to grow up and do the same.
Again, we must concede that on unrealistically high loads, in an unrealistic test scenario, a professionally tuned very-high-end PC with 4 CPU will outperform an older Linux kernel.
Of course, what is left unstated by both your concession and the Mindcraft tests is that there exist alternate configurations (e.g., a server farm) that will outperform either system in the Mindcraft tests, at much less cost.
Many people reading the Mindcraft results don't realize this fact, and thus don't realize exactly why the test is unrealistic.
When you are faced with two opposite abuses of government money, and the second wastes 2-3 orders of magnitude more money than the first, you should by all rights be more concerned about the second abuse than the first.
How you can show merely equal opposition in the face of orders of magnitude of difference is beyond me.
If you are concerned about your government wasting money funding free software, I suggest you turn your attention to proprietary software first. The amount of money government spends buying proprietary software is orders of magnitude greater than the amount of money government spends funding free software.
You may have a legitimate complaint that the government is funding free software against your will. But supporters of free software are being forced to fund proprietary software against their will. You can't complain about the first abuse and ignore the second much greater abuse.
A password manager such as gpasman can keep track of all your passwords for you. I find it much easier to remember one long master password than a lot of different passwords.
Some people might get paranoid at the thought of all their passwords being contained in one file. Gpasman at least uses a publicly known algorithm to encrypt the data, instead of just using a secret formula like most of the Windows programs do.
Your post seeks to attack my reasoning, yet it only reinforces the double standard.
If you read the article again you'll find that the problems in the Toshiba notebooks were caused by a faulty third-party microcontroller. If Toshiba can be forced to pay $2 billion for a faulty NEC microcontroller, why is Microsoft somehow exempt from problems caused by faulty third party OEM drivers?
I am not supporting additional litigation. I agree that the lawsuit against Toshiba and NEC is undeserved. However, I am taking the opportunity to point out that if we must live in such a litigious society, Microsoft should be in at least as much hot water as Toshiba.
If Microsoft didn't know before that their software was buggy, they certainly know now. Why have they not issued updates to address the continuing prevalence of blue screens on Windows machines?
Refusal to fix a problem in your shipping product after you are notified of it is just as bad as (and in fact equivalent to) shipping a product that you know is defective.
On the hardware side, if you read the article you'll find that a ton of companies who used the defective NEC chipset are being sued. The article says that even though NEC fixed their microcode when they discovered the problem, they are still being sued for unknowingly shipping a defective product before it was corrected.
Your post only serves to highlight the staggering double standard faced by hardware and software companies. A software company is not even required to fix bugs after being informed of them, while a hardware company can be sued even if they corrected a bug as soon as they found it.
The most disturbing aspect of this settlement is the double standard that it exposes between hardware and software vendors.
Buggy Microsoft software has certainly caused more loss of productivity in this nation than defective Toshiba floppy drives. Yet Microsoft is allowed to hide behind their EULA (which disclaims all warranties), while Toshiba is docked a billion dollars. Hardware companies have to offer a warranty to stay competitive. Why don't we demand the same from software companies?
The fact that Microsoft can get away with no warranty on its software is smoking-gun proof that consumers have no choice in the software market. With no warranty, Microsoft has no incentive to fix bugs in its software. It's about time that we realize the damage that buggy Microsoft software has caused, hold them accountable for their defective software, break up their monopoly, and give the consumers choice in the marketplace.
You claim that the process of recording any audio track counts as a dub. Well, you are free to use any definition you want in your own life, but your definition does not agree with Webster's 10th Edition:
4. dub vt or dubbed; or dub.bing [by shortening & alter. fr. double] 1: to provide a motion-picture film with a new sound track and esp. dialogue in a different language
Whenever I use the word "dub" I am going by the dictionary definition and not your definition. I find this course entirely reasonable.
Anyway, definitions are a minor point. If you want to use "dub" to refer to any audio recording process, then fine. I'll just pick a word such as "overdubbing" to stand for the replacement of an original audio track with a new one. Obviously my previous post used the word "dub" in this sense of "overdubbing". Using this custom terminology of yours, no anime fan is against dubbing, but many are against overdubbing.
I should never have said that the images fit the voices exactly. Obviously accuracy is limited by the resolution of video frames, which is about 1/30 of a second (and usually even less, because animators usually draw one image every 2-3 frames). However, my point still stands. Fitting images to voices yields much more natural results than fitting voices to video. There are far fewer inconsistencies that way, and the viewing experience is much more transparent. I don't even know why I'm wasting breath defending the audio-first approach. The fact that every single animated film is made with audio-first is evidence enough of its merits.
I never at any point said that I like words running over the artwork. I prefer no dubbing and no subtitles. But if I am forced to choose between dubbing and subtitles, I'll take the subtitles any day.
P.S. I find your implication that kids are the primary market for animated films a bit incongruous, since kids are not at all the primary market for the animation that we are discussing.
I don't know where you get the idea that people who prefer to view a movie in the original language expect others to view them as superior. Only in the US do people consider you smart if you know multiple languages. In other parts of the world, especially Europe and Asia, it is very common for kids to grow up speaking more than one language. For example, every child in school learns English, and that together with their native language is already two languages.
Surely you must admit that people who know the language should prefer to see the film in the original language, rather than English.
Your comment that every animated film is dubbed is completely false. You must be under the impression that the images are drawn first and then the voices are recorded. In fact, an animated film is made in the opposite order. First the audio is recorded, and then the images are drawn, frame by frame, to fit the voices exactly. Fitting drawn images to a prerecorded audio track gives much more satisfying results than trying to fit a new audio track to an existing video. That is one reason why some people genuinely prefer to view animated films with the original sound track.
Finally, as has already been remarked above, Japanese voice actors do voice acting for a profession, while American movie stars are not accustomed to the role. In Japan the actors spend a lifetime honing their skills at voice acting. In America voice acting is treated as an afterthought. It should come as no surprise that the Japanese actors deliver much more pleasing performances.
If you want to run an SSL server for non-commercial purposes, you can compile mod_ssl linked against rsaref. The rsaref package is not free software--it is licensed for non-commercial use only and has a couple other restrictions. This route is the cheapest way to set up a non-commercial SSL site in the US.
If your site is a commercial site in the US, then there is no way around it--you must license the RSA algorithm from RSA (unless you want to challenge the RSA patent in court!). If you call up RSA they will give you a price quote in the thousands (I tried this once). A far cheaper way to get an RSA license is to buy RedHat Secure Web Server (now repackaged as RedHat Linux Professional).
IANAL, but I have read the "Advanced Cryptography License" that comes with Secure Web Server and I believe that the license does in fact allow you to legally run an implementation RSA using any SSL server software you want on your site. That means you can buy Secure Web Server and then legally run mod_ssl on your web site. That's what I would do if I were in your position, since mod_ssl is a quality free software product.
You claim that illegal copying of software hurts the employees of microsoft. Even if this statement is true, it does not immediately follow that illegal copying of software is morally bad.
Let me illustrate with an example. Suppose you are living in pre-Civil-War US, where slavery is legal. Illegally helping someone else's slaves escape does in fact hurt the plantation owner. Does this fact alone mean that it is bad to illegally help slaves escape? No. Nearly everyone nowadays agrees that the law was wrong, and that slavery should never be allowed. Even if it does help some people (plantation owners), it hurts other people more (slaves).
You may have a different opinion, but I am completely convinced that current copyright law in the US hurts consumers more than it helps producers, and as such is a bad law that ought to be changed for the better.
Slashdot Mirror
The last time I tried doing this (months ago), I found that the menubar stops one pixel short of the top of the screen. I would be very happy to hear that this problem has been fixed since then.
- Menubars are not placed at the top of the screen, making them harder to hit (remember, a menubar in the middle of the screen has finite dimensions, whereas a menubar at the top of the screen has infinite depth).
- The taskbar on the bottom of the screen has buttons that do not extend all the way to the edge of the screen, again denying them of a potential infinite depth and making them harder to hit.
- In many window managers, nondestructive buttons such as Maximize are placed right next to destructive buttons such as Close, increasing the chances that the user will accidentally destroy a window.
- To proceed from a menu to a submenu, it is necessary to manuever the mouse rightward with surgical precision through a single menu line in order to get to the submenu without accidentally tripping an adjacent menu item. Compare this design with the classic Macintosh menus, which provide a triangular "forgiveness zone" to make it easy to get to the submenu without closing it before you get there.
I could go on but I think you get the idea. The point, which was well made in the original article, is that programmers are not typical end-users and these kinds of user interface issues do not even occur to them.I hate the classic MacOS because it lacks memory protection and real multitasking, but of all the user interfaces in existence, classic MacOS stands out as the one UI that gets things right.
I think you need to give the USENET mob more credit than you do. The UDP has never been used to censor content. You have not presented one shred of evidence suggesting that the UDP will ever be misused to censor content. Indeed, the history of the UDP suggests that it has always, and will always, be invoked only against problems concerning volume of posts (spam), and not problems concerning content of posts (censorship).
The people running the show behind the UDP are well aware of the difference between spam-filtering and censorship. They certainly know more about the difference than you do. Spam-fighters reject posts based on volume, while censors reject posts based on content.
I can definitely see individual news server admins performing content-based censorship (the admins here at Harvard are first-rate at that), but I find it inconceivable that a content-based UDP would ever find net-wide support.
Even if the algorithms used in CSS were perfect in every way, it would never have worked.
I was going to have a go at explaining why but it turns out Bruce Schneier has already written a wonderful explanation, so I'll just quote him.
The goal of export restrictions is to prevent ignorant law abiding citizens from getting good cryptography. Let's face it, the NSA isn't stupid. They know they can't spy on criminals(*), who can get good cryptography software regardless of the law. They know they can't spy on geeks, who also know how to get good cryptography. By process of elimination, the only people left who can be affected by crypto restrictions are law abiding non-geeks.
Why does the government want to keep crypto away from the unwashed masses? My guess is that if Microsoft can make encrypted communications (say, IPsec) the default in Windows, the government would have nothing left to spy on. Your guess is as good as mine. But the important point is that you shouldn't be deceived as to the intended target of the crypto restrictions. No matter how much the FBI screams about terrorist threats, the real target is the average law-abiding American.
(*) I am assuming the NSA can't break good cryptography. If they actually can break good cryptography, then they probably don't really care about crypto restrictions except insofar as the restrictions deceive outsiders about the NSA's cracking ability. But you can drive yourself in circles this way.
Judging from what you've said it looks like you've never been through DLL Hell.
There may be a lot of things that are easy in Windows but software installation management is definitely not one of them. Jaded Windows users may be impressed by one-click self-extracting installs and Install-Shield uninstalls, but that's only because they've never seen a real package manager like RPM or dpkg in action.
I will concede that software installation in Windows is easy if you can show me in Windows how to:
- List the files that Word97 installed on the system,
- Tell me which programs require ctl3d32.dll or any other particular dll,
- Show me what programs on my system will break if I upgrade to Office2000.
These are all utterly fundamental chores for a system administrator. You cannot argue that Windows software management is easy until the day comes when Windows can do these tasks just like RPM and dpkg can today.The current Instant Messaging model suffers from several glaring problems stemming mostly from the reliance on centrally controlled messaging servers (that double as ad servers). Major issues with the current IM model include:
- Reliability: Does the whole world want to count on one company's servers to stay up 24/7?
- Security: What if someone breaks into the server that has your passwords? What if (hypothetically of course) an employee of AOL doesn't like you?
- Privacy: Isn't it a warm feeling knowing that all your text goes through some other company's messaging servers?
- Authentication: How the hell do you know who's on the other end of the line?
In light of these concerns it astounds me that bosses in some companies use ICQ to talk to their employees on the job. ICQ may be a fun toy but do you really want to bet your company's next product (or for that matter your company) on it?In order to achieve IM nirvana the best route is always to take the least broken existing solution and try to fix it. In this case the least broken solution is not AIM or ICQ. I nominate Unix talk and IRC as candidates for the least broken existing solution.
Either of the old Unix standbys offers decentralized communication independent of any master company. A decentralized protocol right away eliminates the reliability issue, and at least gives you a fighting chance to address security, privacy, and authentication. While security is never easy on the plaintext internet, many of the same techniques that are used to secure telnet (e.g. ssh, IPsec) apply equally well to messaging as long as the protocol is decentralized.
As for graphical interfaces, WinTalk and mIRC already deliver the required windowing interface to these protocols. Buddy lists can be implemented by
- Packaging a finger daemon with the chat client, so that people can use finger to see who's logged on,
- Packaging a finger client with the chat client, so people can see which friends of theirs are logged on,
- Anyone have any idea how to fix the problem of dynamic IPs?
It's not a perfect solution and there are still points that need to be worked out but I feel that the old Unix programs provide a much more solid foundation for achieving a 90% useful solution than the new breed of corporation-serving adware Instant Messaging programs.In traditional enterprise computing the vendor is your sole option for support because only your vendor has rights to the source code for the system software. Linux is different because you have the source code, and you have more support options (including appealing to the internet public at large for help). I'm sure you've been told this several times but maybe you haven't thought it through yet. Again, not everyone needs this level of control, but for those who want it it sure sucks that the traditional vendors won't offer it at any price!
Maybe one day Compaq or IBM will form a division that specializes in Linux. Until they do, the customers that need control over their support options will continue to find VA Linux computers among their only choices.
I do not believe Dell, IBM, HP, SGI, or Sun would ever find it "worth it" (to use your own words) to pursue Linux as seriously as VA. They're too used to earning their profits by controlling the customer and all of his (her?) support options. Linux is anti-control.
VA Linux computers may be of interest to only a small group of people, but the interest level within that group is compelling indeed.
Put a Dell workstation and a VA workstation side by side, and yes the VA workstation will cost more. But for that price you get ECC RAM, SCSI tuned for Linux, a CD drive that rips audio properly, a sharper monitor (even if you decide to go with the 17 inch monitor against the Dell 21 inch), and a motherboard that won't break every year. (I'm speaking from personal experience here. Your mileage may vary.)
Maybe in the future things will change, but right now companies like Dell only pay lip service to Linux without actually committing to it. Dell picks hardware to run on Windows and slaps Linux on a few of their machines. VA picks hardware to run on Linux. I doubt that Dell will ever see enough Linux volume to justify the same level of commitment to Linux as VA.
Clearly if you don't have money you don't have a choice, but if you do have money and you want an x86, you can't go wrong with a VA Linux machine.
What do you mean by "games?" Do you mean the free games that come with every redhat CD? If you count those as games, then Linux already has games, and your point is moot.
If, however, by "games" you mean "proprietary retail boxed games," then I do not agree with you that these games are necessary for success. Remember that Linux does not need enormous popularity to succeed. Other platforms such as Mac, OS/2, or BeOS need to be popular to succeed, since the pace of advancement on these platforms is dictated by the company that sells the software, and the resources of that company are constrained by product sales. Linux, on the other hand, can thrive as long as there are interested users. Any interested user has the freedom to improve the source code.
Certainly there is no doubt that a lack of boxed retail games will hurt Linux's popularity. It might even hurt Linux's chances of succeeding. But it will not, as you claim, doom Linux's chances of succeeding. Even without games, the pool of interested users coupled with the open source nature of the code is enough to ensure Linux's continued progress for a long, long time.
The recording industry would like us to believe (falsely) that any form of copying is illegal. Their entire encryption efforts are based around this false assumption. Rob is entirely right to say that ripping should be technologically allowed. Please don't perpetuate the myth that copying without permission is automatically illegal.
Just because NT beats Linux in one specific benchmark does not mean that NT beats Linux in performing the tasks that most people want. This is especially true when the benchmark measures useless performance statistics on a completely unrealistic task.
The same is true for productivity studies. Productivity is measured by a calender, not by a stopwatch. Even if the mouse selection is 1 second faster, what if reaching for the mouse interrupts the person's train of thought by 2 seconds? You can time hand movement, but how do you measure the thoughts inside someone's head? The stopwatch seemingly shows that the first is faster, but play the task out over days and the calender tells the real story.
It may well be that the mouse is faster anyway, but a stopwatch study is not convincing evidence.
Even if a piece of audio is copyrighted by someone else, there do exist situations where copying the audio without permission is allowed under fair use. I won't venture to give any examples, but surely you must admit it is possible.
Libraries have for decades posted notices on their copy machines stating that the users of the copy machines are responsible for checking all copyright aspects of their copying. Book publishers do not try to sue libraries for being an accessory to copyright infringement. The recording industry needs to grow up and do the same.
Of course, what is left unstated by both your concession and the Mindcraft tests is that there exist alternate configurations (e.g., a server farm) that will outperform either system in the Mindcraft tests, at much less cost.
Many people reading the Mindcraft results don't realize this fact, and thus don't realize exactly why the test is unrealistic.
How you can show merely equal opposition in the face of orders of magnitude of difference is beyond me.
You may have a legitimate complaint that the government is funding free software against your will. But supporters of free software are being forced to fund proprietary software against their will. You can't complain about the first abuse and ignore the second much greater abuse.
Some people might get paranoid at the thought of all their passwords being contained in one file. Gpasman at least uses a publicly known algorithm to encrypt the data, instead of just using a secret formula like most of the Windows programs do.
If you read the article again you'll find that the problems in the Toshiba notebooks were caused by a faulty third-party microcontroller. If Toshiba can be forced to pay $2 billion for a faulty NEC microcontroller, why is Microsoft somehow exempt from problems caused by faulty third party OEM drivers?
I am not supporting additional litigation. I agree that the lawsuit against Toshiba and NEC is undeserved. However, I am taking the opportunity to point out that if we must live in such a litigious society, Microsoft should be in at least as much hot water as Toshiba.
Refusal to fix a problem in your shipping product after you are notified of it is just as bad as (and in fact equivalent to) shipping a product that you know is defective.
On the hardware side, if you read the article you'll find that a ton of companies who used the defective NEC chipset are being sued. The article says that even though NEC fixed their microcode when they discovered the problem, they are still being sued for unknowingly shipping a defective product before it was corrected.
Your post only serves to highlight the staggering double standard faced by hardware and software companies. A software company is not even required to fix bugs after being informed of them, while a hardware company can be sued even if they corrected a bug as soon as they found it.
Buggy Microsoft software has certainly caused more loss of productivity in this nation than defective Toshiba floppy drives. Yet Microsoft is allowed to hide behind their EULA (which disclaims all warranties), while Toshiba is docked a billion dollars. Hardware companies have to offer a warranty to stay competitive. Why don't we demand the same from software companies?
The fact that Microsoft can get away with no warranty on its software is smoking-gun proof that consumers have no choice in the software market. With no warranty, Microsoft has no incentive to fix bugs in its software. It's about time that we realize the damage that buggy Microsoft software has caused, hold them accountable for their defective software, break up their monopoly, and give the consumers choice in the marketplace.
4. dub vt or dubbed; or dub.bing [by shortening & alter. fr. double] 1: to provide a motion-picture film with a new sound track and esp. dialogue in a different language
Whenever I use the word "dub" I am going by the dictionary definition and not your definition. I find this course entirely reasonable.
Anyway, definitions are a minor point. If you want to use "dub" to refer to any audio recording process, then fine. I'll just pick a word such as "overdubbing" to stand for the replacement of an original audio track with a new one. Obviously my previous post used the word "dub" in this sense of "overdubbing". Using this custom terminology of yours, no anime fan is against dubbing, but many are against overdubbing.
I should never have said that the images fit the voices exactly. Obviously accuracy is limited by the resolution of video frames, which is about 1/30 of a second (and usually even less, because animators usually draw one image every 2-3 frames). However, my point still stands. Fitting images to voices yields much more natural results than fitting voices to video. There are far fewer inconsistencies that way, and the viewing experience is much more transparent. I don't even know why I'm wasting breath defending the audio-first approach. The fact that every single animated film is made with audio-first is evidence enough of its merits.
I never at any point said that I like words running over the artwork. I prefer no dubbing and no subtitles. But if I am forced to choose between dubbing and subtitles, I'll take the subtitles any day.
P.S. I find your implication that kids are the primary market for animated films a bit incongruous, since kids are not at all the primary market for the animation that we are discussing.
Surely you must admit that people who know the language should prefer to see the film in the original language, rather than English.
Your comment that every animated film is dubbed is completely false. You must be under the impression that the images are drawn first and then the voices are recorded. In fact, an animated film is made in the opposite order. First the audio is recorded, and then the images are drawn, frame by frame, to fit the voices exactly. Fitting drawn images to a prerecorded audio track gives much more satisfying results than trying to fit a new audio track to an existing video. That is one reason why some people genuinely prefer to view animated films with the original sound track.
Finally, as has already been remarked above, Japanese voice actors do voice acting for a profession, while American movie stars are not accustomed to the role. In Japan the actors spend a lifetime honing their skills at voice acting. In America voice acting is treated as an afterthought. It should come as no surprise that the Japanese actors deliver much more pleasing performances.
If your site is a commercial site in the US, then there is no way around it--you must license the RSA algorithm from RSA (unless you want to challenge the RSA patent in court!). If you call up RSA they will give you a price quote in the thousands (I tried this once). A far cheaper way to get an RSA license is to buy RedHat Secure Web Server (now repackaged as RedHat Linux Professional).
IANAL, but I have read the "Advanced Cryptography License" that comes with Secure Web Server and I believe that the license does in fact allow you to legally run an implementation RSA using any SSL server software you want on your site. That means you can buy Secure Web Server and then legally run mod_ssl on your web site. That's what I would do if I were in your position, since mod_ssl is a quality free software product.
Let me illustrate with an example. Suppose you are living in pre-Civil-War US, where slavery is legal. Illegally helping someone else's slaves escape does in fact hurt the plantation owner. Does this fact alone mean that it is bad to illegally help slaves escape? No. Nearly everyone nowadays agrees that the law was wrong, and that slavery should never be allowed. Even if it does help some people (plantation owners), it hurts other people more (slaves).
You may have a different opinion, but I am completely convinced that current copyright law in the US hurts consumers more than it helps producers, and as such is a bad law that ought to be changed for the better.