Once our computing is moved to the cloud, any semblance of privacy you had will be gone because cloud providers have EULA's to hide behind when your privacy and or data security is compromised.
IANAL but it would seem to me that what's good for the goose...
If spamming is illegal in the UK and if the spammer from Illinois sent spam in the UK, then Spamhaus would be able to counter-sue them! Whatever international jurisdictional agreements that might exist would likely work both ways.
> Why does everyone act like Microsoft is not supposed to try to make money?
>Well, indeed. >And drug dealers are just trying to make some >money too, what's wrong with that ?
Add to that the fact that the products of drug dealers are more likely to perform as claimed than Microsofts products are.... and they even do that without a shrink wrap license:>.
Agreed... There's already a ton of support out there for anyone who casually hunts the web for Linux laptop support. Perhaps IBM is simply saying that they don't need to spend any more money on something that's already out there.
If they continue to design-in hardware that is already largely supported by most Linux distributions driver-wise, then it really doesn't make any financial sense to pour a lot of money into a fully-staffed Linux support group just for laptops.
Whats the difference? The VoIP Blaster still has to perform quite a bit of encapsulation for USB so there's really very little additional overhead to encapsulate it in UDP/IP instead.
While the underlying OS may be somewhat stable, the onus remains on the applications developers to maintain that stability. And if Microsoft keeps the source code proprietary and keeps large chunks of the API undocumented (or only available to a few "select" developers), then developers have a much more difficult time maintaining that stability.
Seems pretty counter-productive in the grand scheme...
The sad thing is that the search engines who are altering their search results for hire are tainting the very product they sell, thus diminishing the public's desire to use them at all.
I would disagree with you about the usefulness of a GUI to implement VPN's or firewalls.
First of all, a GUI interface, if it is well-designed, can provide every bit as much control over the underlying security behavior of a firewall as any command-line interface. Furthermore, a GUI allows an administrator to spend less time trying to deal with syntax, etc., and more time on building a ruleset that is secure.
Someone who has done the reading and understands how firewalls and VPN's work will appreciate a GUI because of this.
For those who don't fully understand how firewalls and VPN's work, a GUI at least provides a reasonable learning environment and early attempts at a ruleset will probably more secure anyhow.:)
Let me see if I understand you here: Andover and Red Hat are milking the resources of the open source community for their own commercial gain? The last I heard, no one is forced to use their resources.
Just compare the Andovers and the Red Hats with the way the major commercial software houses (like Micro$oft) do their business: by actually screwing their paying customers with buggy, non-secure products and then hiding behind a teflon-coated license agreement.
I know which ones would get my money, time and support...
Some things, like mandatory encryption backdoors, are clearly unacceptable, and need to be fought against with ferocity and determination; however, that doesn't mean that there can be no beneficial compromises.
Legislation proposed during the emotional aftermath of several disasters is pretty unlikely to provide sufficient opportunity for public input, much less ANY sort of beneficial compromise.
Yea, but a typical access point can only support about 30 people. Even a small jet is going to have more than that. What if everyone wants net access? You start colliding with other people and the access becomes worthless.
1. I would bet that the average number of passengers on a flight that want to have internet access will be less than 25%. 30 people is probably going to be worst case.
2. Anyone who is using excessive bandwidth can be made known since they know where you are sitting:).
Parents should be responsible for their kids, but when they aren't, it's better that the government raise them than nobody.
We should should NEVER allow government to go into business of rearing kids. This is especially when the government repeatedly demonstrates its own complete incompetence. Talk about a major boondoggle!
A better way to encourage parental participation of the rearing of their kids is to hit them in their pocketbook. Have them lose their kids' tax exemptions if their kids misbehave and get arrested.:)
How many people do you realistically expect to contribute fixes back to a project? One out of every thousand? One out of every ten thousand? One out of every ten? Certainly the ratio depends on the userbase. For instance, "users" of something like gtk (by which I mean the developers using the library) are probably more likely to submit bug fixes than users of StarOffice, for multiple reasons (fewer, more technically-inclined folk using the library, developers vs. Joe Sixpack, complexity of the project, so on).
This is a strawman argument since Microsoft depends on a large portion of their userbase (mostly paying customers) to debug their software. People who use open source don't have to pay for the privilege.
I'm not denying that it happens. I'm just saying that when most people use that argument, they're being very idealistic. They're applying lessons learned from the linux kernel (for example) to an office suite (for another example). I really doubt the effect would be any greater than that gained from beta programs (which Microsoft actively runs, with great feedback from the beta users).
There is definitely a market need for the timely application of bugfixes. Microsoft makes it very difficult for someone like Joe Sixpack to get fixes, since he has to pay a non-trivial amount over and above the original purchase prices to obtain support. With many open source products (GNOME for example) he needs only to get on an IRC channel to get support from the community of users and developers.
While Joe Sixpack might not be able to fix open source software himself, he is still quite interested in timely updates, and can actively participate in the process if he wants to.
Oh, and in most cases, the shrinkwrapped software you buy is not beta-quality code.
The last I checked, Windows NT 4.0 is now at Service Pack 6a. Granted, a few bugfixes might be expected with any software product, but it'been what... 6 years? I can definitely state that many corporate dollars have been expended in the ongoing effort to patch Microsoft's code,...and then working around the new bugs after doing so. What incentive does anyone have to stick with that model?
One very important reason people won't be in a hurry to flock to Microsoft's new subscription business model: Users will still inevitably get buggy software in the shrinkwrap, whether it's real or Virtual Shrinkwrap(tm).
Bottom line: users are still having to pay for the privilege of beta testing their stuff.
At least open source software affords users the chance to fix the bugs themselves and then contribute the fixes to the community of users
in a timely fashion. For that, I WOULD certainly be willing to pay a maintenance fee to the authors who contributed to the code.
Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I saw Linus' last remark as an attempt to place Mundie's EMPLOYER in the proper perspective. Remember Mundie is simply Bill's pawn. Linus' comment thus falls short of being an actual personal attack.
Speaking as a user of both environments, I disagree that KDE doesn't need polish. There are many untied loose ends in the version shipped with RH 7.1. Network browsing is one of them. The lack of documentation on many programs is another...
At the end of the day, MIPS and FLOPS and all the other so-called performance numbers are pretty much meaningless anyway, since no one factor governs the overall performance.
Seems to me that system performance should be be measured by real-world benchmarks that most people can relate to and that hold much more importance to the user, such as:
SBT - System Boot-up time, where the value is normalized modulo the time it takes to get coffee
GAFR - Graphics Accelerator Frame rate, perhaps using Q3 as the de-facto standard
and the related:
MTBF - mean time between frags
of course, we should also measure things like:
MTBR - Mean Time Between Reboots
MTBNR - Mean Time Between Network Redials
... but these are questionable since they can affected by outside influences unrelated to system performance:)
Slashdot Mirror
Once our computing is moved to the cloud, any semblance of privacy you had will be gone because cloud providers have EULA's to hide behind when your privacy and or data security is compromised.
Ghostery FTW.
If I cited wikipedia as my source for stating that copper's atomic number is 29, why is my source not credible?
You shouldn't need to cite that, it's common knowledge. It's in any elementary chemistry text book.
At least the ones outside of Texas...
IANAL but it would seem to me that what's good for the goose...
If spamming is illegal in the UK and if the spammer from Illinois sent spam in the UK, then Spamhaus
would be able to counter-sue them! Whatever international jurisdictional agreements that might
exist would likely work both ways.
And how much support do you get from Microsoft for your paid copy of XP Pro?
/* 3D benchmark utility */ /* pseudocode */
void main (argv,argc)
{
char argv[];
int argc;
gen_random_filename(argv[0]));
benchmark_suite();
}
> Why does everyone act like Microsoft is not supposed to try to make money?
:>.
>Well, indeed.
>And drug dealers are just trying to make some >money too, what's wrong with that ?
Add to that the fact that the products of drug
dealers are more likely to perform as claimed
than Microsofts products are.... and they even
do that without a shrink wrap license
Agreed... There's already a ton of support out there for anyone who casually hunts the web for Linux laptop support. Perhaps IBM is simply saying that they don't need to spend any more money on something that's already out there.
If they continue to design-in hardware that is already largely supported by most Linux distributions driver-wise, then it really doesn't make any financial sense to pour a lot of money into a fully-staffed Linux support group just for laptops.
Whats the difference? The VoIP Blaster still has to perform quite a bit of encapsulation for USB so there's really very little additional overhead to encapsulate it in UDP/IP instead.
Stupid Putz! Didn't you know that Large Corporations = Government? Or haven't you ever heard of Enron?
While the underlying OS may be somewhat stable, the onus remains on the applications developers to maintain that stability. And if Microsoft keeps the source code proprietary and keeps large chunks of the API undocumented (or only available to a few "select" developers), then developers have a much more difficult time maintaining that stability.
Seems pretty counter-productive in the grand scheme...
The sad thing is that the search engines who are altering their search results for hire are tainting the very product they sell, thus diminishing the public's desire to use them at all.
I would disagree with you about the usefulness of a GUI to implement VPN's or firewalls.
:)
First of all, a GUI interface, if it is well-designed, can provide every bit as much control over the underlying security behavior of a firewall as any command-line interface. Furthermore, a GUI allows an administrator to spend less time trying to deal with syntax, etc., and more time on building a ruleset that is secure.
Someone who has done the reading and understands how firewalls and VPN's work will appreciate a GUI because of this.
For those who don't fully understand how firewalls and VPN's work, a GUI at least provides a reasonable learning environment and early attempts at a ruleset will probably more secure anyhow.
Let me see if I understand you here: Andover and Red Hat are milking the resources of the open source community for their own commercial gain? The last I heard, no one is forced to use their resources.
Just compare the Andovers and the Red Hats with the way the major commercial software houses (like Micro$oft) do their business: by actually screwing their paying customers with buggy, non-secure products and then hiding behind a teflon-coated license agreement.
I know which ones would get my money, time and support...
Legislation proposed during the emotional aftermath of several disasters is pretty unlikely to provide sufficient opportunity for public input, much less ANY sort of beneficial compromise.
They passed the DMCA didn't they? That was just the first step
1. I would bet that the average number of passengers on a flight that want to have internet access will be less than 25%. 30 people is probably going to be worst case.
2. Anyone who is using excessive bandwidth can be made known since they know where you are sitting
We should should NEVER allow government to go into business of rearing kids. This is especially when the government repeatedly demonstrates its own complete incompetence. Talk about a major boondoggle!
A better way to encourage parental participation of the rearing of their kids is to hit them in their pocketbook. Have them lose their kids' tax exemptions if their kids misbehave and get arrested.
This is a strawman argument since Microsoft depends on a large portion of their userbase (mostly paying customers) to debug their software. People who use open source don't have to pay for the privilege.
There is definitely a market need for the timely application of bugfixes. Microsoft makes it very difficult for someone like Joe Sixpack to get fixes, since he has to pay a non-trivial amount over and above the original purchase prices to obtain support. With many open source products (GNOME for example) he needs only to get on an IRC channel to get support from the community of users and developers.
While Joe Sixpack might not be able to fix open source software himself, he is still quite interested in timely updates, and can actively participate in the process if he wants to.
The last I checked, Windows NT 4.0 is now at Service Pack 6a. Granted, a few bugfixes might be expected with any software product, but it'been what... 6 years? I can definitely state that many corporate dollars have been expended in the ongoing effort to patch Microsoft's code,
One very important reason people won't be in a hurry to flock to Microsoft's new subscription business model: Users will still inevitably get buggy software in the shrinkwrap, whether it's real or Virtual Shrinkwrap(tm).
Bottom line: users are still having to pay for the privilege of beta testing their stuff.
At least open source software affords users the chance to fix the bugs themselves and then contribute the fixes to the community of users
in a timely fashion. For that, I WOULD certainly be willing to pay a maintenance fee to the authors who contributed to the code.
Simple, :)
They hire from the FBI, where they built up all their experience at thorough investigation and truth-seeking
Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I saw Linus' last remark as an attempt to place Mundie's EMPLOYER in the proper perspective. Remember Mundie is simply Bill's pawn. Linus' comment thus falls short of being an actual personal attack.
Linus may not speak for you personally but his words do echo the sentiments of many of us "nerds".
Speaking as a user of both environments, I disagree that KDE doesn't need polish. There are many untied loose ends in the version shipped with RH 7.1. Network browsing is one of them. The lack of documentation on many programs is another...
--ben
At the end of the day, MIPS and FLOPS and all the other so-called performance numbers are pretty much meaningless anyway, since no one factor governs the overall performance.
:)
Seems to me that system performance should be be measured by real-world benchmarks that most people can relate to and that hold much more importance to the user, such as:
SBT - System Boot-up time, where the value is normalized modulo the time it takes to get coffee
GAFR - Graphics Accelerator Frame rate, perhaps using Q3 as the de-facto standard
and the related:
MTBF - mean time between frags
of course, we should also measure things like:
MTBR - Mean Time Between Reboots
MTBNR - Mean Time Between Network Redials
... but these are questionable since they can affected by outside influences unrelated to system performance