Keep in mind that these guys have no sense of how stupid they look. They think Monty Python's Dead Parrot is a true story, and that Mr. Bean would make a fine Minister in Her Majesty's government because they can SO relate to him.
Maybe the good Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe should be "encouraged" to volunteer his home as the test bed. And use lots of cameras - those Brits just love their security cameras, you know. "A camera on every corner." So, put them in the corner in the bedroom, the bathroom, the living room, the kitchen (so we can all watch them ruin a good piece of meat by boiling it to death and then some), the kids rooms, the garage, etc.
You know - practice what you preach or stop preaching.
You should have read further, because this is what I wrote:
I probably know more about computers than you. That doesn't make my arguments any more or less valid. What DOES make them valid is empirical evidence.
This was after your attempt at intellectual superiority:
Sure there is: Almost the entire world doesn't have a clue about computers or information security. I'm quite proud that they disagree with me in almost every aspect.
My point was simple - argument from perceived authority isn't valid - I want evidence. And the evidence shows that (1) The GPL has been in decline for years, being replaced by more friendly and permissive licenses that don't curtail freedom, and (2) the percentage of linux users has steadily declined from its peak.
And of course you read the whole thing. That link showing that linux is now less secure than windows must burn.
Ask anyone with a Playstation 4 if they like their FreeBSD-9 -based game console.
I'm in DDO (I've posted my address in discussion threads about people obsessing over their privacy and fear of doxxing to show that it's just stupid). However, your name is far from unique, so if you hadn't said "Montreal", I wouldn't know we are neighbors.
Doesn't change what I said, though - you don't have a right to ask third parties for information about me without my consent. I took the feds to task on this with both the 2001 and 2006 long form census, both of which demanded information that is none of their business. In the first case, they wanted my "ethnic" information. I don't think we should be classifying people that way, and refused. Lots of threats, I wrote them back and told them to take me to court. They didn't.
In 2006, they changed the question to my parents' "ethnic background". I told them to ask my parents - but be prepared for a loooong wait - the dead tend to be slow replying to mail, even when it's delivered to the dead letter office. More threats frem them, then "just don't fill that part in" - again, refused to complete and submit the form, again invited them to take me to court, nothing happened.
I've always maintained that the best way to end stupidity on the internet is to abandon anonymity, but people want to maintain the illusion that they're truly anonymous. Nobody is. However, whenever I put that out there, so many people go on about "their rights", as if privacy has ever existed in human society. So, I practice being as open about myself as possible (my sig and my journal are examples), and maybe eventually people will get a clue (doubtful, since there are too many entities profiting from pushing the "yes you can be anonymous, just not with us" agenda).
Still, there's a difference between absolute privacy and not sticking a web cam in the bathroom/bedroom/tv (oops - that last one is a b*tch).
I probably know more about computers than you. That doesn't make my arguments any more or less valid. What DOES make them valid is empirical evidence. As for information security linux is now less secure than windows
It's not a question of "coping with maintaining a linux box" - it's that nowadays, I'm not going to be bothered if I'm not getting paid to do it. There's just too much busywork.
After switching from Windows 9x to linux, I got used to the problems. However, after dumping linux and buying a Windows laptop last spring, I've been pleasantly surprised. Everything about the OS just works. And works. And works.
What doesn't work properly are Firefox and Chrome. Got FF to work properly again, but Chrome is dead. Oh well, don't need it, and now that IE supports adblock+, who cares? I now only use FF because of habit.
Before switching, I tried Adriane (Knoppix for the visually disabled). A total piece of crap that is only "friendly" if you're a masochist and like stuff most of which doesn't even work, and those parts that actually work are depressingly bad.
Sure, use linux (or freebsd) in the back - it's what I did - but after a couple of decades of doing it "the linux way" on the desktop, I'm not interested - it's crap in comparison, and probably always will be, since most of the corporate funding is devoted to back-end operations, and none of the "user-friendly" distros has enough market or a viable way of generating the money to really improve the product consistently over the long haul.
We've had far too many stories about people trying to make a quick buck with half-assed plans about "thinking of the children by teaching them to code." This is just another example, by someone whose 10 years as an Apple service tech gives them zero qualifications for instructing kids, and whose web sites put the lie to them being able to teach graphics design for $97 an hour.
This is slashdot, not facebook. People here will take you to task for being an idiot in public.
Your anecdote doesn't prove anything. Must really burn you that Apple adds more unix consumer users every year than all the linux consumer users worldwide, despite linux having almost a decade head start.
There's an advantage that both Microsoft and Apple have over linux - their users know what they're getting - a consistent user experience. Remember the KDE 3.5 to 4.0 shift, and how OpenSuse made 4.0 the default despite it being totally unusable? Or the Gnome 3 fiasco? Or Ubuntu Unity? Or gcc (either 2.95 or 2.96) not even able to do a "Hello world!" program because printf() was broken?
The simple fact is that if you want to sell your program repeatedly, you have to avoid the GPL. The whole "make money off support" game is BS in the consumer market - if it's that hard to use, they'll just buy elsewhere.
jMonkeyEngine will never be able to compete with their commercial competitors - I downloaded both jMonkeyEngine and Unity 5, and Unity 5 is, if anything, underpriced, and beats the pants off of jMonkeyEngine.
In the end it's about getting the job done - and in many areas, open source lags. Games, graphical tools (the GIMP will never be a photoshop replacement), whatever... money is the tool that makes better products, and GPL'd software is crippled in that respect because of the license.
EagleCAD is a blip. Static. Noise. And I was referring to the commercial license, which is still less than what I paid 20 years ago for a real compiler (not counting inflation). The business you're talking about could not survive on only it's linux revenue - though it could survive only on it's windows and osx revenue.
So please get real. Much of open source is slowly dying, and a large part of that is due to the restrictions of the GPL on "free" software. The BSD license has, every year, put more new unix operating systems on people's desktops and laptops than there are linux-only desktop and laptop users in the entire world.
Look around. Almost the entire world disagrees with you. Maybe there's a reason?
Free/open software works for some use cases. However, most people find that their time is worth something, and that commercial software does what they need done better. Why do you think so many linux fanatics still dual-boot?
Over the long term, the financial success of the open source model is simply not capable of providing the needed capital to compete as a stand-alone solution for the majority of users.
Okay, so I downloaded both jMonkeyEngine and Unity 5.
Unity 5 was interesting enough that I spent a couple of hours playing with it. There's a lot there, probably will be a bit overwhelming for a while, but definitely polished, inspires confidence, and the tutorials I looked at are up to snuff.
jMonkeyEngine? Looking through the documentation, it has some potential, but it's nowhere near as intuitive as Unity. The UI is disappointing.
Loki didn't have the original development and marketing costs of games like SimCity3000, so they could have made it on far less sales. I would have happily bought it (it actually came free on a Cover Disc), just like if Kylix had worked, I would have happily paid twice the price of the equivalent Delphi product.
Problem was, they were both wine-based crap, not native ports. The Kylix UI was so bad it was slower than Java.
First, when dell made a big thing of selling linux boxes, they were the same price as windows boxes. Why? Because of the higher support costs. It's why companies like WalMart got out of the linux market (remember their gPC?) - the returns were just too costly.
However, you had the option to refuse to activate Windows and get a refund. Why didn't you? Or you could have bought a box from a linux vendor (though you'd be paying more, since there are no economies of scale). Or you could have bought a Mac. if you wanted a real unix under the hood instead of linux (rememer - Linux Is Not UNix). My sisters Intel iMac is still working just fine - and it was discontinued in 2007. No support from anyone. It just works and works and works. I hate the UI, but that's me.
Printer support under linux is still a crapshoot. (Partially) supported under only RedHat 9 (warning - do not upgrade or switch distros or it won't work at all) is not supported. And yet all features (color laser w. scanner) still work like a charm under the latest Windows and had an updated driver this weekend.
But that doesn't take away from my original assertion - linux users are cheap. Not having to pay for licensed copies of software is a big selling point in both business and private use. And looking at jMonkeyWhatever, it absolutely sucks in comparison the the competition. Unless your time has less than zero worth, it's not a solution.
For web or database development and hosting, I'd stick with linux or freebsd - for pretty much everything else, the paid alternatives are much much better.
Looking a bit deeper, it runs on Windows and Mac as well. And since they started in 1988, you can be pretty sure that they weren't supporting linux then, since linux didn't even exist.
And yes, EagleCAD is cheap. I was paying more than that 20 years ago for a compiler.
If I didn't even know that you existed (and I still don't because I don't know who you are) how am I "controlling you?" Oh, wait, I'm not.
However, you fail to miss one point - I am a very transparent person. I like it that way. However, I also recognize that people who have nothing to do but pry into other people's lives are more of a nuisance than they're worth, and need to get a life of their own.
However, you cannot talk to people who know me in order to learn whatever you can. Since I don't live in the US, we actually have laws that don't even allow private investigators to do that.
My neighbors would say the same to you if you asked them questions about me that I would say to you if you asked me questions about them - "Who are you, why are you asking me and not them, and no, it's none of your business."
Reality bites - so bite me.Must suck to live in a place without criminal privacy laws.
Already have, and I'm not impressed. It has taken a long time to get to the point where a significant portion of the world has abandoned superstition - hopefully, the rest will eventually see that there is no such thing as a "God" or "Force" or whatever.
No, but considering that Apple has put an open source operating system (FreeBSD) on more desktops than linux ever will, maybe 5 - 10 years from now it'll be the year of the FreeBSD desktop:-) (and no, I have no plans of buying an Apple - I can't stand Darwin)
Don't forget that Android can fairly easily swap out linux for FreeBSD if and when. Linux isn't the winner - google is.
Also, because of the fragmentation and other issues (systemd, etc), people are taking another look at FreeBSD. Linux is just too much of a hassle. I'll probably stick it on a USB key sometime in the future to run on an older laptop, because linux is now just too much politics / hassle / whatever.
nor have been able to keep Linux up and running if she hadn't married a Unix sysadmin
And this is why there will can't have nice things from open source. Seriously, after wasting a few decades trying to get people to use linux, it's not worth it. Too darned fragmented, too many "home user" tools that are poor clones of the real thing, etc.
Also, linux users ARE cheap. Look at what happened to Loki Games - nothing has changed.
It's me who gets to define what I think is important about you, not you, so you should not have any control on the information I get about you. Controlling what I information I get about you is a form of manipulation. And I don't like to be manipulated.
What you think is important about me does not in any way confer upon you under any reality that you have any "control" over what information you can get about me. Don't like it - bite me.
Not that I have any big secrets... but if I did, it would be none of your business, and keeping them from you would not be manipulating you. If you think it is, you need to step into the real world for a bit.
Slashdot Mirror
There are luxury watches that are the most obnoxious affront to good taste. Most of them, really.
That's what you get for your $80 "Rollex" or your $40 "Onega" :-)
First bitches
No, those are the ones who are pre-ordering this junk.
My patented woolen head garments will defeat your evil surviellence technology Opteron ....
Don't forget to include the Head Transplant, for the fingerprints and DNA from shedding skin cells.
So you give it to the coppers and they arrest you for making and distributing kiddie porn.
Or you get out the Louisville slugger.
Your call.
Keep in mind that these guys have no sense of how stupid they look. They think Monty Python's Dead Parrot is a true story, and that Mr. Bean would make a fine Minister in Her Majesty's government because they can SO relate to him.
Put the camera in the middle of the screen.
Narrow-beam laser pointer FTW.
Maybe the good Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe should be "encouraged" to volunteer his home as the test bed. And use lots of cameras - those Brits just love their security cameras, you know. "A camera on every corner." So, put them in the corner in the bedroom, the bathroom, the living room, the kitchen (so we can all watch them ruin a good piece of meat by boiling it to death and then some), the kids rooms, the garage, etc.
You know - practice what you preach or stop preaching.
I probably know more about computers than you. That doesn't make my arguments any more or less valid. What DOES make them valid is empirical evidence.
This was after your attempt at intellectual superiority:
Sure there is: Almost the entire world doesn't have a clue about computers or information security. I'm quite proud that they disagree with me in almost every aspect.
My point was simple - argument from perceived authority isn't valid - I want evidence. And the evidence shows that (1) The GPL has been in decline for years, being replaced by more friendly and permissive licenses that don't curtail freedom, and (2) the percentage of linux users has steadily declined from its peak.
And of course you read the whole thing. That link showing that linux is now less secure than windows must burn.
Ask anyone with a Playstation 4 if they like their FreeBSD-9 -based game console.
I'm in DDO (I've posted my address in discussion threads about people obsessing over their privacy and fear of doxxing to show that it's just stupid). However, your name is far from unique, so if you hadn't said "Montreal", I wouldn't know we are neighbors.
Doesn't change what I said, though - you don't have a right to ask third parties for information about me without my consent. I took the feds to task on this with both the 2001 and 2006 long form census, both of which demanded information that is none of their business. In the first case, they wanted my "ethnic" information. I don't think we should be classifying people that way, and refused. Lots of threats, I wrote them back and told them to take me to court. They didn't.
In 2006, they changed the question to my parents' "ethnic background". I told them to ask my parents - but be prepared for a loooong wait - the dead tend to be slow replying to mail, even when it's delivered to the dead letter office. More threats frem them, then "just don't fill that part in" - again, refused to complete and submit the form, again invited them to take me to court, nothing happened.
I've always maintained that the best way to end stupidity on the internet is to abandon anonymity, but people want to maintain the illusion that they're truly anonymous. Nobody is. However, whenever I put that out there, so many people go on about "their rights", as if privacy has ever existed in human society. So, I practice being as open about myself as possible (my sig and my journal are examples), and maybe eventually people will get a clue (doubtful, since there are too many entities profiting from pushing the "yes you can be anonymous, just not with us" agenda).
Still, there's a difference between absolute privacy and not sticking a web cam in the bathroom/bedroom/tv (oops - that last one is a b*tch).
I probably know more about computers than you. That doesn't make my arguments any more or less valid. What DOES make them valid is empirical evidence. As for information security linux is now less secure than windows
It's not a question of "coping with maintaining a linux box" - it's that nowadays, I'm not going to be bothered if I'm not getting paid to do it. There's just too much busywork.
After switching from Windows 9x to linux, I got used to the problems. However, after dumping linux and buying a Windows laptop last spring, I've been pleasantly surprised. Everything about the OS just works. And works. And works.
What doesn't work properly are Firefox and Chrome. Got FF to work properly again, but Chrome is dead. Oh well, don't need it, and now that IE supports adblock+, who cares? I now only use FF because of habit.
Before switching, I tried Adriane (Knoppix for the visually disabled). A total piece of crap that is only "friendly" if you're a masochist and like stuff most of which doesn't even work, and those parts that actually work are depressingly bad.
Sure, use linux (or freebsd) in the back - it's what I did - but after a couple of decades of doing it "the linux way" on the desktop, I'm not interested - it's crap in comparison, and probably always will be, since most of the corporate funding is devoted to back-end operations, and none of the "user-friendly" distros has enough market or a viable way of generating the money to really improve the product consistently over the long haul.
You must be new here :-)
We've had far too many stories about people trying to make a quick buck with half-assed plans about "thinking of the children by teaching them to code." This is just another example, by someone whose 10 years as an Apple service tech gives them zero qualifications for instructing kids, and whose web sites put the lie to them being able to teach graphics design for $97 an hour.
This is slashdot, not facebook. People here will take you to task for being an idiot in public.
Your anecdote doesn't prove anything. Must really burn you that Apple adds more unix consumer users every year than all the linux consumer users worldwide, despite linux having almost a decade head start.
There's an advantage that both Microsoft and Apple have over linux - their users know what they're getting - a consistent user experience. Remember the KDE 3.5 to 4.0 shift, and how OpenSuse made 4.0 the default despite it being totally unusable? Or the Gnome 3 fiasco? Or Ubuntu Unity? Or gcc (either 2.95 or 2.96) not even able to do a "Hello world!" program because printf() was broken?
The simple fact is that if you want to sell your program repeatedly, you have to avoid the GPL. The whole "make money off support" game is BS in the consumer market - if it's that hard to use, they'll just buy elsewhere.
jMonkeyEngine will never be able to compete with their commercial competitors - I downloaded both jMonkeyEngine and Unity 5, and Unity 5 is, if anything, underpriced, and beats the pants off of jMonkeyEngine.
In the end it's about getting the job done - and in many areas, open source lags. Games, graphical tools (the GIMP will never be a photoshop replacement), whatever ... money is the tool that makes better products, and GPL'd software is crippled in that respect because of the license.
So please get real. Much of open source is slowly dying, and a large part of that is due to the restrictions of the GPL on "free" software. The BSD license has, every year, put more new unix operating systems on people's desktops and laptops than there are linux-only desktop and laptop users in the entire world.
Look around. Almost the entire world disagrees with you. Maybe there's a reason?
Free/open software works for some use cases. However, most people find that their time is worth something, and that commercial software does what they need done better. Why do you think so many linux fanatics still dual-boot?
Over the long term, the financial success of the open source model is simply not capable of providing the needed capital to compete as a stand-alone solution for the majority of users.
Okay, so I downloaded both jMonkeyEngine and Unity 5.
Unity 5 was interesting enough that I spent a couple of hours playing with it. There's a lot there, probably will be a bit overwhelming for a while, but definitely polished, inspires confidence, and the tutorials I looked at are up to snuff.
jMonkeyEngine? Looking through the documentation, it has some potential, but it's nowhere near as intuitive as Unity. The UI is disappointing.
Problem was, they were both wine-based crap, not native ports. The Kylix UI was so bad it was slower than Java.
First, when dell made a big thing of selling linux boxes, they were the same price as windows boxes. Why? Because of the higher support costs. It's why companies like WalMart got out of the linux market (remember their gPC?) - the returns were just too costly.
However, you had the option to refuse to activate Windows and get a refund. Why didn't you? Or you could have bought a box from a linux vendor (though you'd be paying more, since there are no economies of scale). Or you could have bought a Mac. if you wanted a real unix under the hood instead of linux (rememer - Linux Is Not UNix). My sisters Intel iMac is still working just fine - and it was discontinued in 2007. No support from anyone. It just works and works and works. I hate the UI, but that's me.
Printer support under linux is still a crapshoot. (Partially) supported under only RedHat 9 (warning - do not upgrade or switch distros or it won't work at all) is not supported. And yet all features (color laser w. scanner) still work like a charm under the latest Windows and had an updated driver this weekend.
But that doesn't take away from my original assertion - linux users are cheap. Not having to pay for licensed copies of software is a big selling point in both business and private use. And looking at jMonkeyWhatever, it absolutely sucks in comparison the the competition. Unless your time has less than zero worth, it's not a solution.
For web or database development and hosting, I'd stick with linux or freebsd - for pretty much everything else, the paid alternatives are much much better.
Looking a bit deeper, it runs on Windows and Mac as well. And since they started in 1988, you can be pretty sure that they weren't supporting linux then, since linux didn't even exist.
And yes, EagleCAD is cheap. I was paying more than that 20 years ago for a compiler.
However, you fail to miss one point - I am a very transparent person. I like it that way. However, I also recognize that people who have nothing to do but pry into other people's lives are more of a nuisance than they're worth, and need to get a life of their own.
However, you cannot talk to people who know me in order to learn whatever you can. Since I don't live in the US, we actually have laws that don't even allow private investigators to do that.
My neighbors would say the same to you if you asked them questions about me that I would say to you if you asked me questions about them - "Who are you, why are you asking me and not them, and no, it's none of your business."
Reality bites - so bite me.Must suck to live in a place without criminal privacy laws.
Two words - grow up :-)
Already have, and I'm not impressed. It has taken a long time to get to the point where a significant portion of the world has abandoned superstition - hopefully, the rest will eventually see that there is no such thing as a "God" or "Force" or whatever.
No, but considering that Apple has put an open source operating system (FreeBSD) on more desktops than linux ever will, maybe 5 - 10 years from now it'll be the year of the FreeBSD desktop :-) (and no, I have no plans of buying an Apple - I can't stand Darwin)
Also, because of the fragmentation and other issues (systemd, etc), people are taking another look at FreeBSD. Linux is just too much of a hassle. I'll probably stick it on a USB key sometime in the future to run on an older laptop, because linux is now just too much politics / hassle / whatever.
nor have been able to keep Linux up and running if she hadn't married a Unix sysadmin
And this is why there will can't have nice things from open source. Seriously, after wasting a few decades trying to get people to use linux, it's not worth it. Too darned fragmented, too many "home user" tools that are poor clones of the real thing, etc.
Also, linux users ARE cheap. Look at what happened to Loki Games - nothing has changed.
It's me who gets to define what I think is important about you, not you, so you should not have any control on the information I get about you. Controlling what I information I get about you is a form of manipulation. And I don't like to be manipulated.
What you think is important about me does not in any way confer upon you under any reality that you have any "control" over what information you can get about me. Don't like it - bite me.
Not that I have any big secrets ... but if I did, it would be none of your business, and keeping them from you would not be manipulating you. If you think it is, you need to step into the real world for a bit.