i think that the other countries are discovering that there is a learning curve. i remember reading that china, india, brazil, etc were planning this and that. we (america) did a serveral missions that just put someone in space or in orbit before we went to the moon. if i remember correctly we sent animals up before that. it seems that a lot of people are trying to run before they learned to walk or even crawl.
I don't understand your post at all. What they are trying to do is to put satellites in orbit. It's not like they were trying to send people to Mars.
Hrm. Seems to me you patch the OS after you install all the apps, so the second way makes sense.
WHY, for God's sake? Why should it make any difference whether an application is installed first or not? What if he hadn't yet bought this application?
This is exactly what I've been thinking and trying to say for years! I have three sisters and my mother:
Eldest sister (academic). No real training with computers, but loves them and all PDA-style gadgets too. Used to run OS/2 before IBM dropped it. Loves to try to work out how to do things. Loves the internet. Loves to try new software. Verdict: would be a DISASTER with Linux
Middle sister (marketing). No real training with computers except stats packages and spreadsheets. Loves playing games on her PC. Loves messing about with the internet. Will download lots of demos to try them out. Verdict: would be a DISASTER with Linux.
Youngest sister (teacher). No real training with computers. Hates computers. Does word-processing and occasionally presentations I think. Occasionally changes her desktop wallpaper. Does not have the internet at home (!). Could not care less about the internet. Would never dream of installing new software. Verdict: Would be just fine with Linux. Probably wouldn't really notice the difference.
Mother (retired). No real training with computers. Absolutely clueless about all aspects of computing. Loves the internet because it allows her to keep in touch with her extended family overseas. Occasionally word-processes letters and church programmes. Never installs new software. Has no clue what that would mean. Verdict: Would be just fine with Linux, although she's seems happy with Windows 95 (I'm pretty sure she doesn't know what Windows 95 is, however).
Me (academic). Studied and worked with computers for more than 25 years. I would never use Windows if I didn't have to!
The funny thing is that the people who couldn't care less and the people who love computers are now the ideal market for Linux. It's the people who have enough confidence to try to do things they don't know how to do who would struggle!
I was reading your post with some interest until I got to this:
(4) The usual braying "Hurh hurh, Windoze users are dummies!" linux zealots. Preferring to bask in their self proscribed superiority, rather than work to change the philosophy (*) that led to the worm's creation (it takes a philosophy to justify any sociopathic behavior).
Windows has a serious security problem, and "inux zealots" must share the blame? Why? Your supposed "explanation" seems to suggest that linux zealots are responsible for the worm. Why do you think that? Why do you think that because I (to pick a random linux zealot) advocate the use of Linux, my doing that justifies or supports sociopathic behaviour by some other person?
Fine with me, so long as you're ready to help my grandparents (and parents, and uncles, and..) install and setup Linux!
Why? Did your relatives install and setup Windows themselves?
If you're one of the people that uses Linux as an excuse to not help people with Windows, guess what, you *don't* want normal people moving to Linux! You will suddenly be the tech support go-to guy again. Except this time you'll have to explain how to setup IPTables. Good luck!
Nice straw man argument. But I do provide support for some Windows users. And I'd love to provide Linux support instead of Windows support to them! As for setting up IPTables, what the fuck are you talking about. I know what they are, but I've no idea how to set them up. I just told SuSE to switch on its firewall and block everything coming in.
This bug doesn't change the fact that Linux isn't ready for our grandparents.
I'm afraid that's a week of Community Service for you, buster! How can you possibly conclude that Windows is appropriate for your grandparents after this unbelievable shambles? Would they be able to fix this if you were on holiday?
Personally, I think MS ought to have Windows Update turned on by default and set to auto-download and auto-install all patches.
I think that's difficult to do, because so many people have dialup rather han broadband internet access. However, I do believe that switching on the firewall by default could be a help.
I suppose it's too much to point out that this worm exploits a vulnerability that's already been patched by Microsoft, so that only lazy or incompetent admins are going to get hit by it.
I think you mean lazy and incompetent admins, plus thousands upon thousands of home users who have no idea what a patch is, or what a firewall is, or what ports are in this context. It appears that you'd want nearly all home users of Windows XP to be "stoned, burned, crucified, sterilized and beheaded". That seems a bit extreme to me.
The reason I am gloating (I can't speak for other slashdotters) is that I'm sick of reading that Linux is not ready for the desktop because it's too difficult to use. I'm looking forward to the many many accounts of normal Windows users who are able to successfully patch their systems in the sixty seconds they have before it shuts itself down again.
I compared the rate of attempted attack on August 12 with the rate of attempted attack on August 11. For completeness, I could have reported this:
05th August 0 06th August 208 07th August 76 08th August 122 09th August 287 10th August 281 11th August 643 12th August 738 (current figure)
The reason I didn't report the figures for before August 11th was that I couldn't be sure how much time I had spent in Windows on those days. Yesterday and today I have used Linux exclusively, so I can expect the logs to be complete.
A few minutes ago (about 14:45 my time), I tried this: grep "DPT=13[5-9]" messages | grep -c "Aug 12" 643
Then I tried this: grep "DPT=13[5-9]" messages | grep -c "Aug 11" 643
So it took less than 15 hours to reach yesterday's 24-hour total. Doesn't look too good. I suspect that fixing this will prove to be way beyond the abilities of a huge proportion of home users of Windows. Anyone who says that "Linux isn't ready for your Grandma" or whatever, should be forced to do community service for a week fixing this crap.
Re:American spellings, definitions taking over?
on
Flavor vs. Flavour
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· Score: 1
These days English billion is equal to American billion, I think. I guess that dictionaries may have both definitions, but most people who every use the term think 10^9 rather than 10^12.
Did you know that SMB is merely an implementation of the CIFS standard?
MS's implementation cannot be, because if it was, the SAMBA team wouldn't have to reverse-engineer it.
Nonetheless the doc format issue is a bigger straw man yet than anything I said, as the doc format has been fully reverse-engineered and is well implemented by OO.o.
Not it has not. If it had, OO.o would be able to correctly open 100% of MS Word documents; it can't. As for the "technical braindamages", I was using that to illustrate that it's not something really clever that MS has worked on for years and which would give a serious advantage to its competitors if it was revealed. It's not like they made an investment in finding the best way to do it.
I think the common point here is that the open source community hasn't even tried to address these issues, so calling them examples of unfair competition by Microsoft is at best a hypothesis. There hasn't been anything for them to compete against.
The common point is that you don't know what you're talking about. The SMB issue has been addressed by SAMBA. The.doc issue has been addressed by lots of organizations OO.o and whoever owns/owned WordPerfect, to name but two. The crtical thing here is that in the PC industry, interoperability is everything. You don't need to be better at something to win. You only need to have the dominant share at one point in time, and be willing to use that to squeeze out all competition. This was the essence of the IE issue in the court case that Microsoft lost; they destroyed Netscape by bundling their browser with their OS which enjoyed a monopoly position. You really have to get your head out of the sand here; Microsoft does not have great products. They have a monopoly which they use to make other products look inferior.
So, in effect, what you're saying is that Microsoft's practices are hurting open source software, and so the open source community is entitled to affirmative action^W^Whelp from the government to succeed. Well, I'm sorry, but I think that's a bullshit position.
Actually, yours is a bullshit (aka strawman) argument. MS's practices are hurting the customer. The customer is entitled to protection from an abusive monopolist.
I'm not sure in what way open source software is on an unequal ground when competing in the marketplace. It's possible to develop open source software for Windows (witness Mozilla and OpenOffice); it's possible to get Microsoft to agree to participate in specification processes (witness HTML and their efforts to standardize C# via ECMA). And it's not the fact that it's open source that hurts adoption of OSS on Windows platforms (witness Apache on Windows). When OSS is the logical choice, people choose it, just like people choose independent vendors as well (like Sun).
This is unbelievable. Even MS shills can see that Microsoft wouldn't have a prayer on the business desktop without their secret protocols:.doc, SMB (or whatever it's called now) and Outlook-Exchange interaction. There is nothing technically clever about (eg) Microsoft's.doc format. Apparently it is a slightly modified memory dump. Its entire purpose is to require customers to frequently update their copy of Word. This is not fair to consumers.
If they were not intending to use their monopoly position to "de-commoditize protocols & applications", this would not matter, but they are attempting to do that, as the first Halloween document showed.
Why on Earth should microsoft have to do this? I just can think of no explanation why they should be FORCED to give away their code and secrets. If the EU forces this through, it's going to be the deathknell of traditional commercial software in Europe--...
It depends on the code. If they mean the code which writes out.doc files, I agree with them, as would anyone who likes competition. There is nothing technically clever or innovative about using secret file formats to sustain a monopoly.
... will every other company who has a dominant App have to open the code or be given the boot from Europe?
I hope so, if they are an abusive monopoly. I don't mean a monopoly which has got there through hard work and innovation and fair competition. I mean a monopoly which has used illegal practices to maintain its position. Hardly any companies fall into this category. Those that do should be forced to compete properly.
So, how do I cheaply, safely, and non-annoyingly store electrical energy (in some form) and how do I get it back to being usable electrical power later?
Errr... I was aware of the history of Bond escapes!! I had in mind Auric Goldfinger:
Goldfinger: "Choose your next witticism carefully, Mr Bond. It may be your last" Bond: "D'you expect me to talk?" Goldfinger: "No, Mr Bond. I expect you to die!"
Does anyone else think that this is eventually going to end up as an imaginative way of killing James Bond? The villain will incarcerate Bond in the salt-melting room, give him a long, detailed lecture about his plans for world domination, make a sub-Bond witticism and then go away, explaining that Bond has until sunrise to live. Of course Bond will escape (using some sand-powered laser which Q has fortunately given to him) and the fat guy, sans cat we hope, will end up taking a bath in molten sand. Or is it just me who thinks like this?
From my perspective, it looks like you are the one playing the victim. I think that the installation of new hardware and software is not part of what we mean by "Linux on the desktop". Most people in offices never install new hardware. Most people in offices are not permitted to install new software on their PCs (or, to be more precise, would be prevented from doing so if there were a way to do that). So why do you focus on those issues?
To me, "Linux on the desktop" means the day-to-day experience of using the system. As a long-term linux user, my day-to-day experience of using Linux is far better than my time using Windows. This is understandable, given that I'm far more familiar with Linux. I suspect that if I find using Windows awkward, the fact that other people find using Linux awkward is more to do with familiarity than with Linux not being ready for the desktop.
These are installation issues. They are not something the average user would/could do in a work environment. Remember, the average user doesn't install software (or at least doesn't have permission to do so). S/he doesn't use a sound card at work. S/he doesn't use 3D graphics at work. They use probably 2 or three applications all the time. Once IT management wake up to the idea that with a Linux desktop J Random User could never install anything new on their box, there will be a huge shift towards Linux. A huge proportion of Windows tech support is occasioned because of: (a)Non-approved software being installed. (b)Worms which are transferred by executing attachments on emails.
This isn't a very meaningful comparison, because you're focusing on installation problems. Try to imagine a world where Linux is installed before you get your PC. That's more like the world of the business desktop where Linux is heading.
Having said that, my Suse 8.2 distro recognizes everything in my box, and I've got more software than I know what to do with. There always seems to be an alternative if I can't get what I want. I've recently had to do a lot of work in Windows, and day after day I find it a major struggle. This is because I've been using Linux at home since 1996 and I don't do very much in Windows. Believe me, Linux on the desktop is more a matter of your current experience. If you're not used to Windows' particular way of doing things, you wouldn't find Linux difficult. But you might if you were required to install it for yourself.
Gates is deliberately attempting to misinform the general public here. Reverse engineering of software and protocols is perfectly legal, but he uses the term "cloning" to make this legal activity sound like the illegal activity of copying. Then he uses the misleading term, intellectual property to hide what he is talking about. So he's trying to hint that reverse-engineering falls into the same category as copyright infringement.
Still, Moglen believes that, "If SCO really wishes to enforce these claimed copyright rights. I would suggest that they sue a Linux distributor. If the FSF distributed Linux, I would welcome such a lawsuit." And, speaking for himself and not the FSF, "I have renewed my offer to assist free software developers who may feel the need for legal assistance" because of SCO's recent actions.
I would strongly recommend reading the whole of the article I have linked. Moglen's stuff starts with the heading "Legally Speaking". It is very informative and quite reassuring.
Are you in North America by any chance? The thing about "sounding like garbage" is not a concern in the UK where I live. In the cities at least, phones tend to have very good reception.
As for the PDA functionality, it's a logical next step, because virtually EVERYONE carries a mobile phone. If manufacturers want to sell us a PDA, it's going to have to have phone functionality otherwise we'll have to carry two gadgets.
Having said all that, my friend got one of these e606s and he's not been overwhelmingly impressed by it. "Early adopter syndrome", I keep telling him. "Yeah, but it was free", he tells me back.
I think the point here is to allow two gamecubes that are remote from each other to play existing networked games together. So instead of only being able to play WarBlaster III with your friend if you go over to his house, you could set it up so that you could play from your own homes.
Slashdot Mirror
You're probably aware that Coronation Street is a Granada TV production, and as such won't be available.
I don't understand your post at all. What they are trying to do is to put satellites in orbit. It's not like they were trying to send people to Mars.
WHY, for God's sake? Why should it make any difference whether an application is installed first or not? What if he hadn't yet bought this application?
RCU stands for Remote Copy Update. I have no idea what that is. I'm pretty sure I don't need it for my Athlon 1200MHz CPU :-)
The funny thing is that the people who couldn't care less and the people who love computers are now the ideal market for Linux. It's the people who have enough confidence to try to do things they don't know how to do who would struggle!
Windows has a serious security problem, and "inux zealots" must share the blame? Why? Your supposed "explanation" seems to suggest that linux zealots are responsible for the worm. Why do you think that? Why do you think that because I (to pick a random linux zealot) advocate the use of Linux, my doing that justifies or supports sociopathic behaviour by some other person?
Why? Did your relatives install and setup Windows themselves?
Nice straw man argument. But I do provide support for some Windows users. And I'd love to provide Linux support instead of Windows support to them! As for setting up IPTables, what the fuck are you talking about. I know what they are, but I've no idea how to set them up. I just told SuSE to switch on its firewall and block everything coming in.
I'm afraid that's a week of Community Service for you, buster! How can you possibly conclude that Windows is appropriate for your grandparents after this unbelievable shambles? Would they be able to fix this if you were on holiday?
I think that's difficult to do, because so many people have dialup rather han broadband internet access. However, I do believe that switching on the firewall by default could be a help.
I think you mean lazy and incompetent admins, plus thousands upon thousands of home users who have no idea what a patch is, or what a firewall is, or what ports are in this context. It appears that you'd want nearly all home users of Windows XP to be "stoned, burned, crucified, sterilized and beheaded". That seems a bit extreme to me.
The reason I am gloating (I can't speak for other slashdotters) is that I'm sick of reading that Linux is not ready for the desktop because it's too difficult to use. I'm looking forward to the many many accounts of normal Windows users who are able to successfully patch their systems in the sixty seconds they have before it shuts itself down again.
I compared the rate of attempted attack on August 12 with the rate of attempted attack on August 11. For completeness, I could have reported this:
05th August 0
06th August 208
07th August 76
08th August 122
09th August 287
10th August 281
11th August 643
12th August 738 (current figure)
The reason I didn't report the figures for before August 11th was that I couldn't be sure how much time I had spent in Windows on those days. Yesterday and today I have used Linux exclusively, so I can expect the logs to be complete.
A few minutes ago (about 14:45 my time), I tried this:
grep "DPT=13[5-9]" messages | grep -c "Aug 12"
643
Then I tried this:
grep "DPT=13[5-9]" messages | grep -c "Aug 11"
643
So it took less than 15 hours to reach yesterday's 24-hour total. Doesn't look too good. I suspect that fixing this will prove to be way beyond the abilities of a huge proportion of home users of Windows. Anyone who says that "Linux isn't ready for your Grandma" or whatever, should be forced to do community service for a week fixing this crap.
These days English billion is equal to American billion, I think. I guess that dictionaries may have both definitions, but most people who every use the term think 10^9 rather than 10^12.
MS's implementation cannot be, because if it was, the SAMBA team wouldn't have to reverse-engineer it.
Not it has not. If it had, OO.o would be able to correctly open 100% of MS Word documents; it can't. As for the "technical braindamages", I was using that to illustrate that it's not something really clever that MS has worked on for years and which would give a serious advantage to its competitors if it was revealed. It's not like they made an investment in finding the best way to do it.
The common point is that you don't know what you're talking about. The SMB issue has been addressed by SAMBA. The
Actually, yours is a bullshit (aka strawman) argument. MS's practices are hurting the customer. The customer is entitled to protection from an abusive monopolist.
This is unbelievable. Even MS shills can see that Microsoft wouldn't have a prayer on the business desktop without their secret protocols:
If they were not intending to use their monopoly position to "de-commoditize protocols & applications", this would not matter, but they are attempting to do that, as the first Halloween document showed.
It depends on the code. If they mean the code which writes out
I hope so, if they are an abusive monopoly. I don't mean a monopoly which has got there through hard work and innovation and fair competition. I mean a monopoly which has used illegal practices to maintain its position. Hardly any companies fall into this category. Those that do should be forced to compete properly.
You could try reading the article!!
Errr... I was aware of the history of Bond escapes!! I had in mind Auric Goldfinger:
Goldfinger: "Choose your next witticism carefully, Mr Bond. It may be your last"
Bond: "D'you expect me to talk?"
Goldfinger: "No, Mr Bond. I expect you to die!"
Does anyone else think that this is eventually going to end up as an imaginative way of killing James Bond? The villain will incarcerate Bond in the salt-melting room, give him a long, detailed lecture about his plans for world domination, make a sub-Bond witticism and then go away, explaining that Bond has until sunrise to live. Of course Bond will escape (using some sand-powered laser which Q has fortunately given to him) and the fat guy, sans cat we hope, will end up taking a bath in molten sand. Or is it just me who thinks like this?
From my perspective, it looks like you are the one playing the victim. I think that the installation of new hardware and software is not part of what we mean by "Linux on the desktop". Most people in offices never install new hardware. Most people in offices are not permitted to install new software on their PCs (or, to be more precise, would be prevented from doing so if there were a way to do that). So why do you focus on those issues?
To me, "Linux on the desktop" means the day-to-day experience of using the system. As a long-term linux user, my day-to-day experience of using Linux is far better than my time using Windows. This is understandable, given that I'm far more familiar with Linux. I suspect that if I find using Windows awkward, the fact that other people find using Linux awkward is more to do with familiarity than with Linux not being ready for the desktop.
These are installation issues. They are not something the average user would/could do in a work environment. Remember, the average user doesn't install software (or at least doesn't have permission to do so). S/he doesn't use a sound card at work. S/he doesn't use 3D graphics at work. They use probably 2 or three applications all the time. Once IT management wake up to the idea that with a Linux desktop J Random User could never install anything new on their box, there will be a huge shift towards Linux. A huge proportion of Windows tech support is occasioned because of: (a)Non-approved software being installed. (b)Worms which are transferred by executing attachments on emails.
This isn't a very meaningful comparison, because you're focusing on installation problems. Try to imagine a world where Linux is installed before you get your PC. That's more like the world of the business desktop where Linux is heading.
Having said that, my Suse 8.2 distro recognizes everything in my box, and I've got more software than I know what to do with. There always seems to be an alternative if I can't get what I want. I've recently had to do a lot of work in Windows, and day after day I find it a major struggle. This is because I've been using Linux at home since 1996 and I don't do very much in Windows. Believe me, Linux on the desktop is more a matter of your current experience. If you're not used to Windows' particular way of doing things, you wouldn't find Linux difficult. But you might if you were required to install it for yourself.
Gates is deliberately attempting to misinform the general public here. Reverse engineering of software and protocols is perfectly legal, but he uses the term "cloning" to make this legal activity sound like the illegal activity of copying. Then he uses the misleading term, intellectual property to hide what he is talking about. So he's trying to hint that reverse-engineering falls into the same category as copyright infringement.
Amongst many gems there is this,
I would strongly recommend reading the whole of the article I have linked. Moglen's stuff starts with the heading "Legally Speaking". It is very informative and quite reassuring.
Are you in North America by any chance? The thing about "sounding like garbage" is not a concern in the UK where I live. In the cities at least, phones tend to have very good reception.
As for the PDA functionality, it's a logical next step, because virtually EVERYONE carries a mobile phone. If manufacturers want to sell us a PDA, it's going to have to have phone functionality otherwise we'll have to carry two gadgets.
Having said all that, my friend got one of these e606s and he's not been overwhelmingly impressed by it. "Early adopter syndrome", I keep telling him. "Yeah, but it was free", he tells me back.
I think the point here is to allow two gamecubes that are remote from each other to play existing networked games together. So instead of only being able to play WarBlaster III with your friend if you go over to his house, you could set it up so that you could play from your own homes.