I thought easier to use and familiarity go hand and hand? You've touched on a really good point. A lot of the "Linux is so hard to use" discussion I see simply boils down to people unfamiliar with Linux. They're Windows power users who are put off by a system that doesn't behave as they would expect it to (that is - like Windows) and who forget Windows' own warts.
I used to be in the Windows power user camp. Linux appealed to me and I dove in head first. Now I'm so far out of practice with Windows that Linux is a snap and Windows is a PITA to deal with (much to my own chagrin). The experience has left me really understanding the value of simple familiarity.
I have a nagging suspicion that if "ease of use" was a real issue, Apple would still own the market. I never liked the Mac. But before I was introduced to Unix, I was forced to support Mac desktops (job requirement). And so, kicking and screaming, I managed some familiarity with them. And I had to admit... once I could get over the "this doesn't work like Windows - I feel dumb and uncomfortable not being able to do simple things" learning curve... I saw why people were such fierce fans. The Macs handled many issues with much more finesse than Windows. Clearly there was more to being a market leader.
Sure - Linux isn't a panacea; it has its own share of issues. But neither is Windows - and it's the market leader. But because Windows is a market leader, Linux (and other offerings) is going to have a rough time just because it is, in fact, different.
I'm not sure what you mean by incompatibility; you may want to go in depth. You can mount NTFS in Linux, lots of hardware works for Windows, I'm not sure where the incompatibility exists. I've been using Linux at home and in the workplace since the late '90s. It has gotten easier over the years. But there are still occasional gotchas involved. And more times than not, when I run in to a compatibility issue, its because the service I need is being provided by a Microsoft product.
On a side note - can you point to a mechanism that allows me to SAFELY mount and modify a NTFS partition under Linux? Without questionable re-used of Microsoft's libraries. Last time I checked, reading was about the only thing you wanted to do. If you wished to write to a NTFS partition, you took a risk - or wrapped libraries you snagged from a Windows install.
I'd copy and paste the Linux list from Distrowatch, but they only list top 100. If you want to play that game, you've really missed with Windows. You see - not only is there various Microsoft releases of windows, but there's various OEM releases of Windows. What about the Windows bundle that came with Compaq, HP, IBM, Gateway, and Dell systems (and their variations depending on the system model)? All those variations in available drivers, pre-packaged software, configurations... all very different than what you'll find in a plastic-armor box at your local Fry's.
It's the same with the 100+ Linux distributions. Some are pure vanity releases. Some are very niche compilations with very specific functionality requirements. Very few are completely different ways of approaching Linux. And even fewer have any application towards the question "which distro do I use for my desktop?"
yet you will notice that all the slashdoters assume he really has a virus and assume he really had threats made against him. Back in 1999 Slashdot, Userfriendly, and several other sites were complicit in an April Fools joke. If I remember right, they claimed that some large entity had threatened Userfriendly and friends with legal action to shut them down for some unclear reason. The whole thing lacked any real information - but it had lots of emotional slight-of-hand. Various parts of the community were outraged - to include many Slashdot posters. These same people were even more outraged when it was announced that they had all been had.
We'd all like to think we're beyond being so easily fooled. There are always examples that should prove as object lessons to the contrary.
Now we know the real reason there is less malware for the Macintosh. Huh. Microsoft offers cash bounties on malware writers. The Mac squad kills them. Seems you don't get anywhere writing a lot of checks.
It has validity, the argument that more is better does not necessarily hold true. If you look at the uptake numbers you will see large clusters around projects like: Red Hat, Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, Slackware, Gentoo, Red Flag and SuSE (and perhaps 1 or 2 others I forget now). The rest of the distributions leads a marginal existence unless they satisfy a very local need (Red Flag or one of those Indic-supporting ones). All you've pointed out is that the market will only allow for so many mainstream or popular distributions. I agree. Heck - I wasn't even aware that there was a listing of 359 separate distros. But the issue isn't how popular a distro can get. The issue is... does it matter?
Let's say we have a top-5 of mainstream Linux. Does the existence of another 350+ named distros do anything but fly under the radar of most of the IT Industry? Has anyone really held of adoption until that list gets shorter? Do we have IT Managers, OEMs, and software publishers wringing their hands while they check distrowatch for the latest listing?
Inversely, is the ability to develop a distro a strength? Should we all be using Slackware? Or maybe Debian... or RedHat? Should Ubuntu even exist? If it wasn't for the ability to spawn a new distro, we wouldn't have the choices that allows a market to choose (and each of those distros have brought something different to the market). That applies even more for those distros that meet very niche needs.
In the end, the question is whether the distro count is really a weakness or just being perceived as one by people used to a particular part of the IT market.
Apparently its growing so far that each year since 2001 has been the 'Year of desktop Linux.' You fail to consider that Linux could be growing in spite of there being so many distros... that maybe it would be gaining much much more traction if there was only one or two. Maybe you're right. Maybe "the year of desktop Linux" (whatever that means - I've been using Linux as my desktop OS since '98) might have hit earlier if there was only One True Distro. Maybe Linux's continuous growth despite naysayers and considerable opposition by Microsoft is due to there being so many distros. Who knows? At this point it would be all conjecture. There's nothing but gut feelings and truthiness behind the argument.
Just because an argument's ancient doesn't mean it's not still valid. Plus, after all, the number of distributions has been rising for a long time. Maybe the argument carries more weight now than it used to. You're assuming it ever had validity. It was an argument brought up years ago. Yet Linux use has increased since then and continues to grow. If this is really an issue, it must not be a very compelling one.
There's this notion of 're-claiming' the word for geeks instead of the 'bad guys' that's ahistorical and revisionist at best. The word 'hacker' has long been used by people who are interested in doing interesting things with technology. It has also long been used by people who want to cause harm or find gain by their technological skills. While you've got a really good point, I'd also add that there's another distinction in between the two. Some of the "doing interesting things with technology" often involved bypassing access controls. Part of that is simple understanding of a system to the point of being able to defeat it. Part of it is being able to do something you're not supposed to be able to do - very much part of the hacker ethos and what better way to exercise it than counter something specifically designed to stop you from doing what you're doing? All this has a history of practical application all the way back to the MIT days where some members of the Tech Model Railroad Club applied their locksmith knowledge to various obstructions to computer access.
What amount of hacking is done with malicious intent is somewhat debatable. There is certainly a rich lore of various practical jokes. But an outright intent towards destruction seems to be somewhat rare at first. It picks up when it becomes apparent that there is money to be made hacking for illicit gain. There's some indications of organized criminal interest early on... but the true "cyber punk" starts to gain traction somewhere in the mid-to-late 80s.
To each their own. I use OpenOffice extensively at work (and because of that at home). And nobody's the wiser. I seem to be able to do everything everyone else is doing with MS Office.
Granted - most of the documents and spreadsheets I work with just are not that complex. I'm sure there are people doing amazingly complicated things with MS Office. But in my experience (in a large enterprise) that's a rarity. Most everything is fairly simple but reasonably well layed out. And it seems OpenOffice handles what most people would need.
To be honest - I do have access to OpenOffice on my Linux desktop via VMWare. It's there if I need it (like all the other Windows-specific applications). But I just don't need it very often.
The thing is: a standard is just a piece of paper. There's no enforement body - that's the difference between the law and a standard. A good standard documents what the industry leaders have done, which creates strong financial motivation for others to follow that standard. Such standards are often ugly, but at least someone follows them. That's a great description of history. The only problem is that it's... well... history. It was true when the Industry followed product lines in a sort of monolithic product manner. But things have changed over the years. We're getting away from "this is how Vendor X does it" and moving towards "this is how Vendor X and Y will interoperate."
Standards are no longer arbitrary product descriptions. True (open) standards are commitments from vendors that purchasing their wares will lead one to an infrastructure that has a fighting chance to work with any other given components - assuming everyone is following the standard. Those who don't will quickly be outed and lose market share.
At least - that's the idea. There's still something of a transition going on. Those who profit from standards being arbitrary product descriptions are going to be resistant to this migration to true, open standards. And that seems to be what's going on here.
At least in closed source they have to build their own instead of being able to rip off the code or design. Yep - because locking away source code has stopped the likes of Microsoft so many times in the past. It's not like they're going to offer you sweet-heart deals awash in promises of fruitful partnerships for just a peek at the code, then go on their own. Nor do they have the clout to hire away your top talent... or even come up with their own talent. No-sir-ee. Not Microsoft. Or IBM. Or...
Take a look at how many billions per year the power elite make off complete lies and get back to me. Apparently your and my definitions of "good politics" differ greatly.
From my understanding, when you make a derivative work, that derivative is your copyright. But, you do not own the copyright to the original just because you used it. There are a lot of examples to work with. A large portion of Disney classics are prime examples - one of my favorites being 20000 Leagues Under the Sea. The story itself is in the public domain - the copyright has expired. But Disney's take on it is not. So while you can base your own work on the original 20K Leagues, you can not base it on any unique aspect of Disney's work. A further example is League of Extraordinary Gentlemen which is based on numerous SciFi and Horror classics - 20K Leagues being one of them.
Give the man a break. So much is the fault of Bush & Co. that if you don't know what you're talking about, you can guess it was them and be correct more often than not. That's exactly the kind of thing terrorists would do. After all... terrorists have done so many bad things that, if you don't know what's really going on, you can guess it was them and be correct more often than not.
Broken thinking makes good comedy - but not so good politics.
Information wants to be free. Cute. Sure - you can find some entities who will play nice and opt to release BSD code changes. Kudos to them. But that doesn't mean all (or even many) of them will. For example, we know Microsoft uses Open Source code in some products. Their SFU product uses both GPL and BSD code. You can download the GPL code they've used - not the BSD code. And again, shenanigans with phrases and links aside, that's the point. They've taken BSD code and made it "non-free".
"BSD and similar believe you can even make it non-free."
Someone stop me before I download non-free code! You might make a better point by linking to code that's been modified and used in proprietary software. But then - you probably can't. And that's the point.
In reality we can trust that power will be abused. Power both corrupts and attracts the corrupt. Two obvious ways to protect against this are to make it very difficult for individuals and groups to gain lots of power or to grant power to people who do not seek it. I agree to the principle that those who want power for its own sake shouldn't be allowed to have it. However, it isn't always easy to tell who has an interest in performing a duty versus those who are simply power-hungry. Nevermind that it's pretty hard to find someone to do a job who doesn't WANT to do the job.
This is why any system that grants authority must also have some checks to that authority.
In short, the issue with the PATRIOT Act isn't whether it's effective against terrorists. It's a matter of whether it has the right checks-and-balance to ensure that it is both effective as well as resistant to abuse. History is proving abuse is widespread.
Wrong tense! History has proven that if such abuse can happen it will happen. It dosn't matter if you look back tens, hundreds or thousands of years. Whilst the details might be different basic human behaviour hasn't substantially changed. No - it is the correct tense. This is the history of the situation. You mistake the observation for surprise. I am not advocating that this was the proper procedure. Instead, I am pointing out what the real issue with the Act is. I suggest reading the grandparent to my post and keeping my reply in perspective. It sounds like we actually agree.
Someone please respond to this post with a verifiable example of a terrorist action that was stopped by using provisions of the Patriot act. So far I have only seen it being used to lock up Americans doing stuff totally unrelated to terrorist activities and infringe on peoples privacy and liberty. I wouldn't hold your breath. Not because its not possible that the PATRIOT Act hasn't been used to do what it was sold to do but simply because anyone who's in the know isn't likely to publicly publish anything about it. Consider that this is all about Intelligence and much of the handling of that involves "need to know" practices. Even vague details about what was collected or how it was collected can betray far too much information.
I don't doubt someone, somewhere out there knows how the PATRIOT Act has been used to combat terrorism. But that misses the point. The real issue here is one of abuse or, at the very least, risk of abuse.
If we could trust that power wouldn't be abused, we wouldn't have to worry about civil rights. We could allow those entrusted with our welfare complete power, safe in the knowledge that their actions weren't being guided by personal gain or bias. We'd know that they carefully considered their actions before taking them. And we'd be safer for it.
The reality is that people are human - even those who are entrusted with the duty to safeguard us all. As such, they are prone to all the bias and temptations people are always confronted with. Our laws, complete with checks and balances, are there to not only safeguard the population but to give pause to those who are entrusted with authority and take action against those who abuse that authority (or prove to be otherwise unworthy).
In short, the issue with the PATRIOT Act isn't whether it's effective against terrorists. It's a matter of whether it has the right checks-and-balance to ensure that it is both effective as well as resistant to abuse. History is proving abuse is widespread. And critics already point out that much of the power involved in the Act already existed... we've just stripped away the checks that are designed to curtail abuse. Odd, that.
Slashdot Mirror
I used to be in the Windows power user camp. Linux appealed to me and I dove in head first. Now I'm so far out of practice with Windows that Linux is a snap and Windows is a PITA to deal with (much to my own chagrin). The experience has left me really understanding the value of simple familiarity.
I have a nagging suspicion that if "ease of use" was a real issue, Apple would still own the market. I never liked the Mac. But before I was introduced to Unix, I was forced to support Mac desktops (job requirement). And so, kicking and screaming, I managed some familiarity with them. And I had to admit... once I could get over the "this doesn't work like Windows - I feel dumb and uncomfortable not being able to do simple things" learning curve... I saw why people were such fierce fans. The Macs handled many issues with much more finesse than Windows. Clearly there was more to being a market leader.
Sure - Linux isn't a panacea; it has its own share of issues. But neither is Windows - and it's the market leader. But because Windows is a market leader, Linux (and other offerings) is going to have a rough time just because it is, in fact, different. I'm not sure what you mean by incompatibility; you may want to go in depth. You can mount NTFS in Linux, lots of hardware works for Windows, I'm not sure where the incompatibility exists. I've been using Linux at home and in the workplace since the late '90s. It has gotten easier over the years. But there are still occasional gotchas involved. And more times than not, when I run in to a compatibility issue, its because the service I need is being provided by a Microsoft product.
On a side note - can you point to a mechanism that allows me to SAFELY mount and modify a NTFS partition under Linux? Without questionable re-used of Microsoft's libraries. Last time I checked, reading was about the only thing you wanted to do. If you wished to write to a NTFS partition, you took a risk - or wrapped libraries you snagged from a Windows install.
It's the same with the 100+ Linux distributions. Some are pure vanity releases. Some are very niche compilations with very specific functionality requirements. Very few are completely different ways of approaching Linux. And even fewer have any application towards the question "which distro do I use for my desktop?"
Maybe they can just get this "Zune 2.0" out next month so we'll still have time to get something good released by Christmas.
Huh. There's a sucker born every minute. The Interenet hasn't changed human nature - just given the con men more tools.
Ummm... maybe it's a "Slashvertisement" for antivirus software? Subtle.
We'd all like to think we're beyond being so easily fooled. There are always examples that should prove as object lessons to the contrary.
Let's say we have a top-5 of mainstream Linux. Does the existence of another 350+ named distros do anything but fly under the radar of most of the IT Industry? Has anyone really held of adoption until that list gets shorter? Do we have IT Managers, OEMs, and software publishers wringing their hands while they check distrowatch for the latest listing?
Inversely, is the ability to develop a distro a strength? Should we all be using Slackware? Or maybe Debian... or RedHat? Should Ubuntu even exist? If it wasn't for the ability to spawn a new distro, we wouldn't have the choices that allows a market to choose (and each of those distros have brought something different to the market). That applies even more for those distros that meet very niche needs.
In the end, the question is whether the distro count is really a weakness or just being perceived as one by people used to a particular part of the IT market.
What amount of hacking is done with malicious intent is somewhat debatable. There is certainly a rich lore of various practical jokes. But an outright intent towards destruction seems to be somewhat rare at first. It picks up when it becomes apparent that there is money to be made hacking for illicit gain. There's some indications of organized criminal interest early on... but the true "cyber punk" starts to gain traction somewhere in the mid-to-late 80s.
To each their own. I use OpenOffice extensively at work (and because of that at home). And nobody's the wiser. I seem to be able to do everything everyone else is doing with MS Office.
Granted - most of the documents and spreadsheets I work with just are not that complex. I'm sure there are people doing amazingly complicated things with MS Office. But in my experience (in a large enterprise) that's a rarity. Most everything is fairly simple but reasonably well layed out. And it seems OpenOffice handles what most people would need.
To be honest - I do have access to OpenOffice on my Linux desktop via VMWare. It's there if I need it (like all the other Windows-specific applications). But I just don't need it very often.
Standards are no longer arbitrary product descriptions. True (open) standards are commitments from vendors that purchasing their wares will lead one to an infrastructure that has a fighting chance to work with any other given components - assuming everyone is following the standard. Those who don't will quickly be outed and lose market share.
At least - that's the idea. There's still something of a transition going on. Those who profit from standards being arbitrary product descriptions are going to be resistant to this migration to true, open standards. And that seems to be what's going on here.
Broken thinking makes good comedy - but not so good politics.
"And that's the point."
Information wants to be free. Cute. Sure - you can find some entities who will play nice and opt to release BSD code changes. Kudos to them. But that doesn't mean all (or even many) of them will. For example, we know Microsoft uses Open Source code in some products. Their SFU product uses both GPL and BSD code. You can download the GPL code they've used - not the BSD code. And again, shenanigans with phrases and links aside, that's the point. They've taken BSD code and made it "non-free".
Someone stop me before I download non-free code! You might make a better point by linking to code that's been modified and used in proprietary software. But then - you probably can't. And that's the point.
You misspelled abandoned as "free".
And on the plus side, the exploit is probably version-specific. ;)
Two obvious ways to protect against this are to make it very difficult for individuals and groups to gain lots of power or to grant power to people who do not seek it. I agree to the principle that those who want power for its own sake shouldn't be allowed to have it. However, it isn't always easy to tell who has an interest in performing a duty versus those who are simply power-hungry. Nevermind that it's pretty hard to find someone to do a job who doesn't WANT to do the job.
This is why any system that grants authority must also have some checks to that authority. In short, the issue with the PATRIOT Act isn't whether it's effective against terrorists. It's a matter of whether it has the right checks-and-balance to ensure that it is both effective as well as resistant to abuse. History is proving abuse is widespread.
Wrong tense! History has proven that if such abuse can happen it will happen. It dosn't matter if you look back tens, hundreds or thousands of years. Whilst the details might be different basic human behaviour hasn't substantially changed. No - it is the correct tense. This is the history of the situation. You mistake the observation for surprise. I am not advocating that this was the proper procedure. Instead, I am pointing out what the real issue with the Act is. I suggest reading the grandparent to my post and keeping my reply in perspective. It sounds like we actually agree.
I don't doubt someone, somewhere out there knows how the PATRIOT Act has been used to combat terrorism. But that misses the point. The real issue here is one of abuse or, at the very least, risk of abuse.
If we could trust that power wouldn't be abused, we wouldn't have to worry about civil rights. We could allow those entrusted with our welfare complete power, safe in the knowledge that their actions weren't being guided by personal gain or bias. We'd know that they carefully considered their actions before taking them. And we'd be safer for it.
The reality is that people are human - even those who are entrusted with the duty to safeguard us all. As such, they are prone to all the bias and temptations people are always confronted with. Our laws, complete with checks and balances, are there to not only safeguard the population but to give pause to those who are entrusted with authority and take action against those who abuse that authority (or prove to be otherwise unworthy).
In short, the issue with the PATRIOT Act isn't whether it's effective against terrorists. It's a matter of whether it has the right checks-and-balance to ensure that it is both effective as well as resistant to abuse. History is proving abuse is widespread. And critics already point out that much of the power involved in the Act already existed... we've just stripped away the checks that are designed to curtail abuse. Odd, that.