In real life, we have a balance between freedom and security. I don't want the criminals to be free to rape, pillage, and plunder. I also don't want overzealous cops zapping me with tasers because I "look suspicious".
Licence-wise, the GPL is the balance between too-free BSD and too-restrictive proprietary stuff.
Hell, you think that kernel exploit that got patched a week ago wouldn't already be making the rounds right now? Normal users wouldn't be upgrading their "kernel" like Linux geeks do. Look at how many people already don't run Automatic Updates under XP.
I believe "normal" users would use up2date, or whatever tool their distro provides. And IIRC from my limited RedHat experience, it's just as easy and automated as Windows Update. I'll admit you'd still have the people who wouldn't upgrade, but if they felt confident that the upgrade wouldn't bork their system (as Windows can do), they'd be better than the Windows crowd.
BSD is certainly freely exploitable! Anyone releasing their code under that license better realize that Microsoft (or any other big greedy corp) will just lift that code, add their own proprietary extensions, and out-compete you with your own code.
And no corporate OS will ever be free (beer). Not Windows, not Linux, not even BSD! They all require support, maintainance, etc.
Not neccesarily. If the SP2 upgrade breaks all or most of Joe Sixpacks stuff, then he'd probably give Linux a good hard look. But, more likely, most of Joe S's stuff will work fine with just a few programs borking. If those few programs are mission-critical, then he'll need replacements (OSS?), but if not, Joe might stick with Doze.
I actually liked the Win3.1 file manager better than the Win95/98 version. Win95 still had that too, but it was still 16-bit and didn't recognize long filenames. I ASSume that it's in XP too.
OTOH, Microsoft just about HAS to break some programs to get security halfway decent. There's no good solution, but I think MS is justified in breaking some compatability in this case.
The cops I've seen were mostly neutral. They didn't encourage the citizen to forceably protect him/herself, but they didn't discourage it either. I think the average cop DOES want to protect the public, but they can't be everywhere. It takes 15-60 minutes for the cops to arrive (IME), and a criminal can do a lot of damage in 15 minutes.
I bought milk a while ago. It went sour after the expiry date. Should I demand a refund from the supermarket because their product didn't exceed the specifications on its label?
No, you should demand a refund because they shouldn't have sold milk that expired a week before you bought it!
I've had good luck with swaret. It DID bork KDE once, but that was after some Slack-current changes, and that XFree/Xorg stuff. I'd say swaret is as reliable as Debian's apt-get, and more reliable than RedHat's RPM stuff.
I learned my lesson about "save often" early on. When I was still new at my job, I was coding like crazy, typing for hours, and suddenly the LAN connection went down! Naturally, I hadn't saved my work, and I didn't get much sympathy from my cow-orkers, just a "welcome to the club" comment. After that, I made sure to save often.
So what? VCR's are already obsolete. And by the time Junior grows up, the interface on a PC will have changed at least 5 times. Soon, your kid will be in the same boat as the other poster's granny!
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In real life, we have a balance between freedom and security. I don't want the criminals to be free to rape, pillage, and plunder. I also don't want overzealous cops zapping me with tasers because I "look suspicious".
Licence-wise, the GPL is the balance between too-free BSD and too-restrictive proprietary stuff.
I believe "normal" users would use up2date, or whatever tool their distro provides. And IIRC from my limited RedHat experience, it's just as easy and automated as Windows Update. I'll admit you'd still have the people who wouldn't upgrade, but if they felt confident that the upgrade wouldn't bork their system (as Windows can do), they'd be better than the Windows crowd.
BSD is certainly freely exploitable! Anyone releasing their code under that license better realize that Microsoft (or any other big greedy corp) will just lift that code, add their own proprietary extensions, and out-compete you with your own code.
And no corporate OS will ever be free (beer). Not Windows, not Linux, not even BSD! They all require support, maintainance, etc.
I agree that anyone who turns himself into a Borg ought to pay royalties to Microsoft.
But for the average home user, XP's predeccesor WAS Win98 (or maybe WinME). Maybe a few used some NT variant at work. For them XP IS a giant leap.
Not neccesarily. If the SP2 upgrade breaks all or most of Joe Sixpacks stuff, then he'd probably give Linux a good hard look. But, more likely, most of Joe S's stuff will work fine with just a few programs borking. If those few programs are mission-critical, then he'll need replacements (OSS?), but if not, Joe might stick with Doze.
I actually liked the Win3.1 file manager better than the Win95/98 version. Win95 still had that too, but it was still 16-bit and didn't recognize long filenames. I ASSume that it's in XP too.
OTOH, Microsoft just about HAS to break some programs to get security halfway decent. There's no good solution, but I think MS is justified in breaking some compatability in this case.
The cops I've seen were mostly neutral. They didn't encourage the citizen to forceably protect him/herself, but they didn't discourage it either. I think the average cop DOES want to protect the public, but they can't be everywhere. It takes 15-60 minutes for the cops to arrive (IME), and a criminal can do a lot of damage in 15 minutes.
If he was a real friend, he wouldn't have made me stand on my head a squeal like a monkey to get my gmail addy!
No, you should demand a refund because they shouldn't have sold milk that expired a week before you bought it!
Um, doesn't it breaks WITH those bits too?
What's a backup?
Not only does XP install with a single superuser account, but a lot of Windoze software won't run in a limited account.
But, with extension hiding, they don't see "Jennifer XXX cool.jpg.pif", they just see "Jennifer XXX cool.jpg". So they click on it and get pwned!
I've had good luck with swaret. It DID bork KDE once, but that was after some Slack-current changes, and that XFree/Xorg stuff. I'd say swaret is as reliable as Debian's apt-get, and more reliable than RedHat's RPM stuff.
I doubt the Debian's install is any better than it was 3 years ago. In fact, I think Debian is still on the same version that it was then.
I learned my lesson about "save often" early on. When I was still new at my job, I was coding like crazy, typing for hours, and suddenly the LAN connection went down! Naturally, I hadn't saved my work, and I didn't get much sympathy from my cow-orkers, just a "welcome to the club" comment. After that, I made sure to save often.
.10 my foot! IIRC .11 & .15 were "brown bag" releases. 2.4 wasn't really safe until .18.
Pretty often. This is /.
So what? VCR's are already obsolete. And by the time Junior grows up, the interface on a PC will have changed at least 5 times. Soon, your kid will be in the same boat as the other poster's granny!
To each his own. I dumped Yahoo when they dumped POP access. I see no reason to return. I may or may not try gmail.
I thought we DID!