How many of those distros, that was deemed "insecure out of the box", did actually create a passwordless useraccount for the world to abuse?
The fact is, a user needs to be logged AND have permission to execute files. A person, making such accounts for people he doesn't trust completely, will have a insecure system no matter what.
The only good thing about stories like this, are that we get some cheap chuckles from the horde of windows users showing their lack of clue. "Atleast windows doesn't have a insecurity in the kernel!"-style, silly rabbits:p
I don't care how 1337 you are: If you want to write software that users want, you can't rely on your *theories* of what users want.
You can be quite sure that a person(developer or otherwise) in charge of user experince of any GUI based app, has a pretty good idea of which of their theories/concepts that worked in practice and which didn't. And take steps accordingly.
There's a huge difference between this, and implementing what users want.
As an example, the spartial browsing. Not many of the computer-saavy users out there seemed to like it, and it quicky became everybody favorite object of bashing. But the funny thing, the two people I know that really like it are persons with out any real experince with computers (both are "seniors"). Ok then, it could seem the "theory" have some merits in the ease of use department. And also, the feature has been optional from the start. The reason that distros have it enable by default, is actually because they apperntly agree that its a good thing(eventhough powerusers hate it). Had there been a poll about "Should spartial die?", there would be no doubt of the outcome. But the gnome project is not about pleasing its power users, its about making a easy to use desktop enviroment. So what they've did, making it optional to use, is IMHO the best solution. If they've listened to their users, the would stray more from their own project goals that they would by using the current solution.
Which is bacially why the judgement of such things, should be in the hands of the developers and not the users.
Don't hold the opinions of your non-developer users in contempt. If you think otherwise, you have your head up your ass.
I'm curious, are you caplable of shades of grey or is it simply back and white in your world?
I've learned from experince, some(most) end-users are bacially *censored* and should'nt be taked too serious. But I do tend to listen to what other people have to say to me anyways, and if I think they make sence(in the greater context of things) I take them serious.
He doesn't have the sligtest clue about what he's writing about, seriusly he seems to think that the following:
A feature will be implemented if and only if there is a developer who wants to implement it, regardless of the number of votes it's received.
Mean that the developers will only make stuff which is very cool and elite. And talks of how linux isn't just for geeks anymore, well the gnome im using certaintly doesn't seem to be focused at geeks nor developers.
The fact he is missing, is clearly that the ideas that are coming from the gnome developers are idea they think will be "cool for a better user experince".
The GNOME team is a project composed of people with a interest in developing a easy to use DE for Linux, and they got a bunch of highly competent people in this area. I trust their judgement completely, and if one of these people don't think a feature is worth implementing or fit in to their grand plan you wont hear any complaining from me(since it probertly wasn't any good then). And it works, Windows and MacOSX are both developed internaly at microsoft and apple so according to the "logic" the author proposes(no user requested features == elite only software) they should be pure ASCII-art-driven geek paradises now.
Grow up mr. Author, the world doesn't stop because you get an idea.
Now this is class, not only are they the first company to release drivers this kind of product for linux, they way they are doing it is truely awesome.
Released under the GPL(this will probertly be included in the kernel pretty soon i guess?), V4L2 support and code samples.
I can hardly wait for gstreamer (and it's v4l2 source element) to get a bit more stable/functional, and stuff like gstsharp gets included in the mono stack. I imagine we'll start to see a hole bunch of neat video applications.
First let me get one thing straigth, I been a happy linux user for more than five years and I love it.
But reading a comments on a story like this, really make me question how seriously the average "+5 Interesting" slashdot comment should taken when the story is about anything remotely critical of "our" favorite OS.
You write about the great joys of the Hauppage WinTV series on Linux, and yes the bttv drivers are great. But the fact is, had you choosen just about any of the other hauppage series (or pretty much any other newer TV card) it wouldn't have been trivial at all. But luckily for you, you have choosen a card based on the only well supported chipset for that sort of thing.
Something you don't have to worry one bit about on windows.
Then there is the wifi drivers, the chipset drivers (for example, don't count on being able to use the new ATI Radeon XPRESS chipset anytime soon).
Try and listen to the interview with Nat Friedman that was linked here on slashdot earlier, he talks a good deal about driver support on Linux(mostly about why closed source drivers will be hard to avoid, but also mentions driver quality when talking about Xgl).
Driver support is getting pretty good, but saying its not a problem is simply closing your eyes and not facing the facts. It's not a HUGE problem, but you still need to give drivers thought when buying new hardware.
It has nothing to do with the courts -- Congress set the statutory damages at up to $150,000 per work infringed upon.
okay, but thats just a technicality isn't it? What I was commenting was that kind of claim, are insane. But let me rephrase anyways, your whole legal system seem insane to a European (not just because of this issue, its the whole "You served me to hot|cold|whatever coffe, I'll sue!" way of life that seems wierd to alot of us).
And anyway, while we've been forgetting the public interest here, I wouldn't praise Europe. You guys have traditionally far worse copyright laws than us, and have been pressuring the US to make ours worse.
Ok, could you then please give me one example of such redicilous claims being made against a civilian here in Europe?
And also, define worse? In certain EU contries it allowed to reverse engineer codecs if its for compatility issues, sweden has extremely relaxed laws regarding movie/music downloads (which allows a quite large torrent tracker to function eventhough they've caugth the eye of some really big fish) and generally it just seem a great deal more relaxed over here.
The US courts are becoming more and more a joke. I really can't imagine anywhere in Europe (certainly not in scandinavia where I live), where $150,000 claims for downloading a freaking movie wouldn't become a huge news issue (everybody, not just fileswappers/downloads/etc would go nuts since such claims basically would ruin most people's life. And thats not something that taken lightly over here).
The US courts should soon be renamed to something more fitting, like "The corporate torture device".
And you guys, the Americans are basically to blame. For generations you've voted to support this kind of behavior, shame on you!
What? the iPod Photo is a great idea :p
on
Apple Updates iPod
·
· Score: 1
>4Megapixels are not uncommon on consumer class digital camera's today. Say, for example, you have a Canon IXUS 40. If you take pictures in 2272*1704 with the least amount of compression available (aka. best quality the camera can offer) each picture takes ~2.67MB per picture. The 16MB Flashcard which is installed by default, will hold 6 of these pictures. The better the camera gets, the more relevant the size gets. It's not uncommon for hobby photographers to have semiprofessional gear. And these guy's tend to take a lot of pictures.
And since big flashram cards are still pretty pricy (~140$ for 1GB here), i think the iPod Photo makes perfect sence. For example, i could install 256MB Flashram in the camera, which will be enough for 96HQ pictures on the IXUS. And then, if I'm away from my computer for several days(like on a vaction, attending a expo or such) i could just backup to my iPod which gives me a nice platform to manage my pictures on, untill i get home. Plus, it's a iPod. So it will play music and look neat while I'm on that vacation or what ever.
I really hope that this will give QE some(much needed) competetion, but sadly I don't really see that happening. Apple simply have to much experince in this field, and to many experts working for them full time("Motion" is a great example of just how good their devs really are).
I hope I'm wrong, but considering how much "we" generally are behind the commercial in the graphics area I simply can't see why this will be any different. Ofcouse we will get there, but where will the others be when we arrive(I'm guessing something like matrix style brain interfaces;p)?
PS. I'm know virtually nothing(yet! i'm saving money for a up for a Mac) about coreimage and corevideo , but I thought it was under the impression it was a media framework alá GStreamer.
So why not just make a user for "pure-x11" and make metacity+gnome(or whatever) the default wm/de for that user. You could then log both users in at once, and have get a excuse for using that extremely cool looking user-switching between the two.
Seriously, what are they thinking? That silly Enterprise show getting canned is a good thing IMHO, since it was the worst star trek series I've seen yet.
Hopefully, now the Trek producers now will pull "The Sisko" out of that worm-hole he's stuck inside of, and get him back to his spacestation ASAP(same goes for o'brian and Worf).
I agree that a 'MiniPowerMac'-ish type product wouldn't be a bad idea:p
I don't see it coming though, it seems to me like they whish to build extremely sparse desktop models(e|i|mini) and then use USB/Firewire to expand it.
I'm not sure I agree that the people 'who only know as much about computers as they need to for work' really can be considered home users, in my experince these people don't turn on their machines very often after learning what it was they needed to know to feel secure with the application(s) needed for their jobs. But sure, these people won't have anyproblems using a preconfigured linux box at home. Since they won't care enough about anything to encounter any of the problems related to linux.
But in this day of age, these people aren't all that common as they have been. I can count(parents(51 and 53) and grandparents(late 60s yearly 70) included) the number of people i know fitting that description on one hand, and i dont even have to use all the fingers:p
The primary reason, is the digital photo/video revolution. Almost everybody owns a digtital camera today, and seem to get great kick from torturing their relatives with all sorts of photo-cds/invitations/cards/etc glued together in 3 steps wizards of various kind.
DV-Cams/Firewire/PC-editing is also getting more and more popular, and there are CHEAP solutions availible that will alow people to do simple editing without having to be a computer wiz.
I'm not saying linux doesn't stand a chance, I just have a hard seeing how it is supposed to compete with the commercial platforms. Take the gstreamer project as an example, its a wonderfull project and i whish them the best of luck. But come on, both Apple and Windows have featured this sort of thing for ages. And more importantly, it works without too much hassel.
Eventually Linux will get on par, i know. But sadly, 'eventually' seems to be a word spoken to often when debating the linux desktop. It seems to me, that people are forgetting the major issue here. The "competetion" are making progress waaaaay faster than the Linux projects are, I have a really though time imagining that Linux will ever really catch up.
I mean, it's all about demand. If more corporations start demaning "Linux ready" prebuilds, or maybe even boxes with linux pre-installed it will quickly become a non-issue.
With that said, I don't really see Linux becoming all that big on the desktop. Because most of the office users won't start using it at home, simply because 8/10 users plays with their computers in a very different way of what the more geeky types does. Me for example, I only use my computer to code, write rapports with latex, maple and to use the internet. Linux have offered me a perfect platform for doing this work, and have been my platform of choise for over 5 years.
But not alot of uses their computers only for development and rapport writing, most the users found in a regular office use their machines for multimedia stuff. And belive me, very very few of them will like applications like dvdauthor. And I don't blame them really, I'm personally getting a little tired of having to spend time learing to do stuff that are insanely trivial on other platforms. Like mastering a DVD or such, therefore I'm currently saving my money to get a OSX based computer(hopefully, I'll have a sparklin' G5 in about a months time). It's the closest thing to a perfect UNIX based desktop as far as i can tell.
I think the future will be Linux on the servers (to cut down the licences that really hurt, aka. the fileserver/exchange/etc) and OSX on the clients.
AFAIK there are more Mac desktops out there than there are Linux, also the Mac offers a nice development platform where the support departments doesn't have to worry about a fantasillion different OSX flavours. Despite this, the game developers doesn't seem very interested in porting to Mac. Why should they be interested in porting to Linux?
Personally, I don't think gaming will ever take off on the penguin platform. Or as a viable multimedia desktop platform for that matter.
This will most likely get me flamed into oblivion, but seriously try and look at the multimedia applications offered on Linux. For tasks like multimedia/DVD authoring, video editing/painting, 3D modelling/rendering we are light years behind OSX and Windows(heck, a Amiga 4000+A old toaster(and the video painting/editing/3danimation software bundled with it) + ScalaMM would offer possibilities way beyond what Linux has to offer).
The only "mulitmediaish" department where the penguin is on the ball is sound editing/production(even though, things like creating a DVD-A disc is still a huge problem(yea yea, patents patents. The users don't care)).
We got a unholy amount windows managers and text editors though:p
I'm feeling cynical about so much news of Linux stuff maybe happening. Starting. Beginning. Someone is working on X. We'll soon have Y
Well, if Y differs from X i think its great(a little innovation have never hurt anybody). But, in about 8/10 cases it doesn't. It's most often X with a different UI, adding to the already bloated package foundries of our distro's of choice.
Even some of the better distros at hardware detection like SuSE, Mandrake and Yellowdog have community forums filled with regulars who love using the OS, yet still don't have everything working. USB2 controllers only working at 1.0 speeds, ethernet not working, many with no sound and most without accelerated graphics.
Define regulars? I could understand your statement if you said that the PnP systems didn't detect everything automatically. But I have a hard time believing that things like Ethernet cards and USB2, if the hardware is supported by Linux, will cause any problems to a regular user. And a even harder time imagining the support-forum that wouldn't be able to assist with such trivial issues.
Also, it doesn't seem to me that people have that many problems with sound any more. I can't imagine any 2.6 distribution, which doesn't have compiled sound support as a module. So in a "worst case scenario" where sound isn't automatically installed you wouldn't even have to recompile your kernel(only the alsa driver). And about the hardware accelerated graphics, if you choose a graphics card from a vendor supporting Linux(like nvidia) then enabling both hardware acceleration is pretty easy(i got both 2D and 3D acceleration working with Xorg in a matter of minutes).
People in the entertainment industry are basically the personification's of greed, I assure you that cheaper actors wouldn't make a cheaper product for the consumer.
Take a movie like Clerks, this movie was made for less than $30000, still the DVD was just as pricey as the rest of them.
And lets not forget the blair witch, that silly movie made $248 Million dollars in theaters worldwide. And with a production budget of $35000 , that a pretty neat profit. Still, did the DVDs and Video's cost less? No, of course not(you can never have to many Bentleys mind you).
And don't even get me started on some of the television series, a complete collection of Voyager has a list price of ~$900. For a product which was already making a nice profit before hitting the DVD media.
Greed killed the cat, and hopefully it will kill Hollywood too. As long a products are getting priced the way that they are today, there will be pirating. No CSS, DRM or insert-name-of-latest-MPAA-holy-grail-here will change that.
They're not ARMED with a harpoon, it is used in place of a tractor beam to grab and reel in objects of interest. And that is done usually while the ship is at full stop.
Still, i find it unlikely that a civilization which has figured out how to: * Travel faster than light * Create forcefields powerfull enough to encapsulate/enprison persons and protect ships from incoming objects. * Can create artificial gravity
Doesn't have a better solution of tractoring something than to shoot a good' ol harpoon after it.
For that matter, why can you accept lasers/phasers on a faster than light vessel? How would they work? Could you only shoot to the sides and aft?
This is a completely different discussion, heck.. how plausible is it to go faster than light? This has nothing to do with my original comment though, what i just stated was I feelt a >>uber-tech C)
Enterprise NX-01 doesn't have a tractor beam, it has a harpoon! The low-tech scenario means the writers can't use bullshit physics to resolve a plot quite so often.
Correct me if Im wrong, but doesn't that ship flyv > the speed of light? Personally I find the idea of a a ship which flies way faster than the speed of light armed with a harpoon down right ludicrous..
Imagine a F-16 fighter that had to pop open and the pilot show throw stones, spears and stuff thorwards his enemies. It just wouldn't seem right would it?:D
Slashdot Mirror
being "secure by default".
:p
How many of those distros, that was deemed "insecure out of the box", did actually create a passwordless useraccount for the world to abuse?
The fact is, a user needs to be logged AND have permission to execute files. A person, making such accounts for people he doesn't trust completely, will have a insecure system no matter what.
The only good thing about stories like this, are that we get some cheap chuckles from the horde of windows users showing their lack of clue. "Atleast windows doesn't have a insecurity in the kernel!"-style, silly rabbits
Idiot.
You've hurt me feelings.
I don't care how 1337 you are: If you want to write software that users want, you can't rely on your *theories* of what users want.
You can be quite sure that a person(developer or otherwise) in charge of user experince of any GUI based app, has a pretty good idea of which of their theories/concepts that worked in practice and which didn't. And take steps accordingly.
There's a huge difference between this, and implementing what users want.
As an example, the spartial browsing. Not many of the computer-saavy users out there seemed to like it, and it quicky became everybody favorite object of bashing. But the funny thing, the two people I know that really like it are persons with out any real experince with computers (both are "seniors"). Ok then, it could seem the "theory" have some merits in the ease of use department. And also, the feature has been optional from the start. The reason that distros have it enable by default, is actually because they apperntly agree that its a good thing(eventhough powerusers hate it). Had there been a poll about "Should spartial die?", there would be no doubt of the outcome. But the gnome project is not about pleasing its power users, its about making a easy to use desktop enviroment. So what they've did, making it optional to use, is IMHO the best solution. If they've listened to their users, the would stray more from their own project goals that they would by using the current solution.
Which is bacially why the judgement of such things, should be in the hands of the developers and not the users.
Don't hold the opinions of your non-developer users in contempt. If you think otherwise, you have your head up your ass.
I'm curious, are you caplable of shades of grey or is it simply back and white in your world?
I've learned from experince, some(most) end-users are bacially *censored* and should'nt be taked too serious. But I do tend to listen to what other people have to say to me anyways, and if I think they make sence(in the greater context of things) I take them serious.
He doesn't have the sligtest clue about what he's writing about, seriusly he seems to think that the following:
A feature will be implemented if and only if there is a developer who wants to implement it, regardless of the number of votes it's received.
Mean that the developers will only make stuff which is very cool and elite. And talks of how linux isn't just for geeks anymore, well the gnome im using certaintly doesn't seem to be focused at geeks nor developers.
The fact he is missing, is clearly that the ideas that are coming from the gnome developers are idea they think will be "cool for a better user experince".
The GNOME team is a project composed of people with a interest in developing a easy to use DE for Linux, and they got a bunch of highly competent people in this area. I trust their judgement completely, and if one of these people don't think a feature is worth implementing or fit in to their grand plan you wont hear any complaining from me(since it probertly wasn't any good then). And it works, Windows and MacOSX are both developed internaly at microsoft and apple so according to the "logic" the author proposes(no user requested features == elite only software) they should be pure ASCII-art-driven geek paradises now.
Grow up mr. Author, the world doesn't stop because you get an idea.
http://www.plextor.be/products/px-tv402u.asp?choic e=ConvertX%20PVR%20PX-TV402U
Now this is class, not only are they the first company to release drivers this kind of product for linux, they way they are doing it is truely awesome.
Released under the GPL(this will probertly be included in the kernel pretty soon i guess?), V4L2 support and code samples.
I can hardly wait for gstreamer (and it's v4l2 source element) to get a bit more stable/functional, and stuff like gstsharp gets included in the mono stack. I imagine we'll start to see a hole bunch of neat video applications.
First let me get one thing straigth, I been a happy linux user for more than five years and I love it.
But reading a comments on a story like this, really make me question how seriously the average "+5 Interesting" slashdot comment should taken when the story is about anything remotely critical of "our" favorite OS.
You write about the great joys of the Hauppage WinTV series on Linux, and yes the bttv drivers are great. But the fact is, had you choosen just about any of the other hauppage series (or pretty much any other newer TV card) it wouldn't have been trivial at all. But luckily for you, you have choosen a card based on the only well supported chipset for that sort of thing.
Something you don't have to worry one bit about on windows.
Then there is the wifi drivers, the chipset drivers (for example, don't count on being able to use the new ATI Radeon XPRESS chipset anytime soon).
Try and listen to the interview with Nat Friedman that was linked here on slashdot earlier, he talks a good deal about driver support on Linux(mostly about why closed source drivers will be hard to avoid, but also mentions driver quality when talking about Xgl).
Driver support is getting pretty good, but saying its not a problem is simply closing your eyes and not facing the facts. It's not a HUGE problem, but you still need to give drivers thought when buying new hardware.
It has nothing to do with the courts -- Congress set the statutory damages at up to $150,000 per work infringed upon.
okay, but thats just a technicality isn't it? What I was commenting was that kind of claim, are insane. But let me rephrase anyways, your whole legal system seem insane to a European (not just because of this issue, its the whole "You served me to hot|cold|whatever coffe, I'll sue!" way of life that seems wierd to alot of us).
And anyway, while we've been forgetting the public interest here, I wouldn't praise Europe. You guys have traditionally far worse copyright laws than us, and have been pressuring the US to make ours worse.
Ok, could you then please give me one example of such redicilous claims being made against a civilian here in Europe?
And also, define worse? In certain EU contries it allowed to reverse engineer codecs if its for compatility issues, sweden has extremely relaxed laws regarding movie/music downloads (which allows a quite large torrent tracker to function eventhough they've caugth the eye of some really big fish) and generally it just seem a great deal more relaxed over here.
The US courts are becoming more and more a joke. I really can't imagine anywhere in Europe (certainly not in scandinavia where I live), where $150,000 claims for downloading a freaking movie wouldn't become a huge news issue (everybody, not just fileswappers/downloads/etc would go nuts since such claims basically would ruin most people's life. And thats not something that taken lightly over here).
The US courts should soon be renamed to something more fitting, like "The corporate torture device".
And you guys, the Americans are basically to blame. For generations you've voted to support this kind of behavior, shame on you!
>4Megapixels are not uncommon on consumer class digital camera's today. Say, for example, you have a Canon IXUS 40. If you take pictures in 2272*1704 with the least amount of compression available (aka. best quality the camera can offer) each picture takes ~2.67MB per picture. The 16MB Flashcard which is installed by default, will hold 6 of these pictures. The better the camera gets, the more relevant the size gets. It's not uncommon for hobby photographers to have semiprofessional gear. And these guy's tend to take a lot of pictures.
And since big flashram cards are still pretty pricy (~140$ for 1GB here), i think the iPod Photo makes perfect sence. For example, i could install 256MB Flashram in the camera, which will be enough for 96HQ pictures on the IXUS. And then, if I'm away from my computer for several days(like on a vaction, attending a expo or such) i could just backup to my iPod which gives me a nice platform to manage my pictures on, untill i get home. Plus, it's a iPod. So it will play music and look neat while I'm on that vacation or what ever.
But I think they would have big problems deploying it.
What ever happend to "Crazy"?
Sounds nice! Thanks for clearing that up for me :)
I really hope that this will give QE some(much needed) competetion, but sadly I don't really see that happening. Apple simply have to much experince in this field, and to many experts working for them full time("Motion" is a great example of just how good their devs really are).
;p)?
I hope I'm wrong, but considering how much "we" generally are behind the commercial in the graphics area I simply can't see why this will be any different. Ofcouse we will get there, but where will the others be when we arrive(I'm guessing something like matrix style brain interfaces
PS. I'm know virtually nothing(yet! i'm saving money for a up for a Mac) about coreimage and corevideo , but I thought it was under the impression it was a media framework alá GStreamer.
So why not just make a user for "pure-x11" and make metacity+gnome(or whatever) the default wm/de for that user. You could then log both users in at once, and have get a excuse for using that extremely cool looking user-switching between the two.
Seriously, what are they thinking? That silly Enterprise show getting canned is a good thing IMHO, since it was the worst star trek series I've seen yet.
Hopefully, now the Trek producers now will pull "The Sisko" out of that worm-hole he's stuck inside of, and get him back to his spacestation ASAP(same goes for o'brian and Worf).
I agree that a 'MiniPowerMac'-ish type product wouldn't be a bad idea :p
I don't see it coming though, it seems to me like they whish to build extremely sparse desktop models(e|i|mini) and then use USB/Firewire to expand it.
I'm not sure I agree that the people 'who only know as much about computers as they need to for work' really can be considered home users, in my experince these people don't turn on their machines very often after learning what it was they needed to know to feel secure with the application(s) needed for their jobs. But sure, these people won't have anyproblems using a preconfigured linux box at home. Since they won't care enough about anything to encounter any of the problems related to linux.
:p
But in this day of age, these people aren't all that common as they have been. I can count(parents(51 and 53) and grandparents(late 60s yearly 70) included) the number of people i know fitting that description on one hand, and i dont even have to use all the fingers
The primary reason, is the digital photo/video revolution. Almost everybody owns a digtital camera today, and seem to get great kick from torturing their relatives with all sorts of photo-cds/invitations/cards/etc glued together in 3 steps wizards of various kind.
DV-Cams/Firewire/PC-editing is also getting more and more popular, and there are CHEAP solutions availible that will alow people to do simple editing without having to be a computer wiz.
I'm not saying linux doesn't stand a chance, I just have a hard seeing how it is supposed to compete with the commercial platforms. Take the gstreamer project as an example, its a wonderfull project and i whish them the best of luck. But come on, both Apple and Windows have featured this sort of thing for ages. And more importantly, it works without too much hassel.
Eventually Linux will get on par, i know. But sadly, 'eventually' seems to be a word spoken to often when debating the linux desktop. It seems to me, that people are forgetting the major issue here. The "competetion" are making progress waaaaay faster than the Linux projects are, I have a really though time imagining that Linux will ever really catch up.
I mean, it's all about demand. If more corporations start demaning "Linux ready" prebuilds, or maybe even boxes with linux pre-installed it will quickly become a non-issue.
With that said, I don't really see Linux becoming all that big on the desktop. Because most of the office users won't start using it at home, simply because 8/10 users plays with their computers in a very different way of what the more geeky types does. Me for example, I only use my computer to code, write rapports with latex, maple and to use the internet. Linux have offered me a perfect platform for doing this work, and have been my platform of choise for over 5 years.
But not alot of uses their computers only for development and rapport writing, most the users found in a regular office use their machines for multimedia stuff. And belive me, very very few of them will like applications like dvdauthor. And I don't blame them really, I'm personally getting a little tired of having to spend time learing to do stuff that are insanely trivial on other platforms. Like mastering a DVD or such, therefore I'm currently saving my money to get a OSX based computer(hopefully, I'll have a sparklin' G5 in about a months time). It's the closest thing to a perfect UNIX based desktop as far as i can tell.
I think the future will be Linux on the servers (to cut down the licences that really hurt, aka. the fileserver/exchange/etc) and OSX on the clients.
AFAIK there are more Mac desktops out there than there are Linux, also the Mac offers a nice development platform where the support departments doesn't have to worry about a fantasillion different OSX flavours. Despite this, the game developers doesn't seem very interested in porting to Mac. Why should they be interested in porting to Linux?
:p
Personally, I don't think gaming will ever take off on the penguin platform. Or as a viable multimedia desktop platform for that matter.
This will most likely get me flamed into oblivion, but seriously try and look at the multimedia applications offered on Linux. For tasks like multimedia/DVD authoring, video editing/painting, 3D modelling/rendering we are light years behind OSX and Windows(heck, a Amiga 4000+A old toaster(and the video painting/editing/3danimation software bundled with it) + ScalaMM would offer possibilities way beyond what Linux has to offer).
The only "mulitmediaish" department where the penguin is on the ball is sound editing/production(even though, things like creating a DVD-A disc is still a huge problem(yea yea, patents patents. The users don't care)).
We got a unholy amount windows managers and text editors though
I'm feeling cynical about so much news of Linux stuff maybe happening. Starting. Beginning. Someone is working on X. We'll soon have Y
Well, if Y differs from X i think its great(a little innovation have never hurt anybody). But, in about 8/10 cases it doesn't. It's most often X with a different UI, adding to the already bloated package foundries of our distro's of choice.
Even some of the better distros at hardware detection like SuSE, Mandrake and Yellowdog have community forums filled with regulars who love using the OS, yet still don't have everything working. USB2 controllers only working at 1.0 speeds, ethernet not working, many with no sound and most without accelerated graphics.
Define regulars? I could understand your statement if you said that the PnP systems didn't detect everything automatically. But I have a hard time believing that things like Ethernet cards and USB2, if the hardware is supported by Linux, will cause any problems to a regular user. And a even harder time imagining the support-forum that wouldn't be able to assist with such trivial issues.
Also, it doesn't seem to me that people have that many problems with sound any more. I can't imagine any 2.6 distribution, which doesn't have compiled sound support as a module. So in a "worst case scenario" where sound isn't automatically installed you wouldn't even have to recompile your kernel(only the alsa driver). And about the hardware accelerated graphics, if you choose a graphics card from a vendor supporting Linux(like nvidia) then enabling both hardware acceleration is pretty easy(i got both 2D and 3D acceleration working with Xorg in a matter of minutes).
People in the entertainment industry are basically the personification's of greed, I assure you that cheaper actors wouldn't make a cheaper product for the consumer.
Take a movie like Clerks, this movie was made for less than $30000, still the DVD was just as pricey as the rest of them.
And lets not forget the blair witch, that silly movie made $248 Million dollars in theaters worldwide. And with a production budget of $35000 , that a pretty neat profit. Still, did the DVDs and Video's cost less? No, of course not(you can never have to many Bentleys mind you).
And don't even get me started on some of the television series, a complete collection of Voyager has a list price of ~$900. For a product which was already making a nice profit before hitting the DVD media.
Greed killed the cat, and hopefully it will kill Hollywood too. As long a products are getting priced the way that they are today, there will be pirating. No CSS, DRM or insert-name-of-latest-MPAA-holy-grail-here will change that.
They have experince with TV-tuners, why not include a quality TV-tuner with v4l2 drivers and a HQ TV-out.
:)
Then they might actually make some money on it
what i just stated was I feelt a >>uber-tech C) =
:)
what i just stated was that i felt a uber-tech civilization might be able to do better than a harpoon
They're not ARMED with a harpoon, it is used in place of a tractor beam to grab and reel in objects of interest. And that is done usually while the ship is at full stop.
Still, i find it unlikely that a civilization which has figured out how to:
* Travel faster than light
* Create forcefields powerfull enough to encapsulate/enprison persons and protect ships from incoming objects.
* Can create artificial gravity
Doesn't have a better solution of tractoring something than to shoot a good' ol harpoon after it.
For that matter, why can you accept lasers/phasers on a faster than light vessel? How would they work? Could you only shoot to the sides and aft?
This is a completely different discussion, heck.. how plausible is it to go faster than light? This has nothing to do with my original comment though, what i just stated was I feelt a >>uber-tech C)
Enterprise NX-01 doesn't have a tractor beam, it has a harpoon! The low-tech scenario means the writers can't use bullshit physics to resolve a plot quite so often.
:D
Correct me if Im wrong, but doesn't that ship flyv > the speed of light? Personally I find the idea of a a ship which flies way faster than the speed of light armed with a harpoon down right ludicrous..
Imagine a F-16 fighter that had to pop open and the pilot show throw stones, spears and stuff thorwards his enemies. It just wouldn't seem right would it?