The big problem for me is available software, drivers, plugins, etc. For example, when my 2 1/2 year old son and I go to the Playhouse Disney website from Linux, some of the games don't work because they need shockwave director. Yea, I can get it by shelling out $25-$30 for crossover plugin (and I may in-fact do that), but the point is that it has to use the plug-in from windows.
Also, I'm really puzzled as to why Apple won't make Quicktime natively available for Linux. If it's working on OS X, how hard can it be to port over? Mplayer seems to do OK as far as that goes however.
Another thing are websites that don't recognize the plug-ins you do have and and won't let you by until they do (Ifilm and atomfilms for example).
Then there is availablity of critical software like AutoCAD, Quicken, Kiplinger TaxCut, etc. Again, not really the fault of Linux, just can't convince the "bean-counters" that a market exist.
What Linux distributions can do, however, is continue to make progress on useability. They've come a long way. At this point, as long as you can follow the README's and research the occasional discussion group on the internet, you shouldn't have too much trouble. Compared to Windows, however, that's a lot of work. You can't blame the end user for going with a better supported and easier to install OS. For him to give those up, you have to offer something compelling in return. For the server market, small research firms, etc. you can often do that. For the average user though, Linux still has a ways to go.
Has SCO actually initiated any court action as of yet? I mean, they've certainly made a lot of threats but have they actually done anything? I suspect that once this does happen, all of their "evidence" becomes discoverable and perhaps that is what is holding them up. Smells like bullshit to me.
This latest affair reminds me of a schoolyard fight were one person gets tired of listening to all the "I'm a badass" blustering and just gives him a quick jab in the nose followed up by, "now fight me or go the f@@k home!". Once again, SCO responds with more blustering....like I said, smells like bullshit to me.
Actually, I suspect they have no way of effectively filtering millions of people who have requested to be on the national do not call list and this is going to wind up costing them a lot of money to the tune of $11k per hit. It's probably more cost effective to fight this in court than try to set up this kind of a data base.
The law says they are supposed to have one but, in practice, I don't think they typically do. I know that I had to jump though quite a few legal hoops to get a couple of particularly persistant companies to finally stop. One of these companies (sorry, won't say who) actually called me personally to negotiate how long I would be willing to give them to remove my name from the lists of every telemaketing firm they were using at the time. My answer was zero since I already had documentation worth several thousand dollars in fines against them. They found a way to stop calling me though.
However, I'm willing to make the telemarketing industry a deal. The law currently requires that you identify yourself on request. Comply with that law, and we won't need this list. Stop blocking your caller ID and provide me with contact information when I ask for it. That way we both benefit. I can use the existing laws to seek legal remedy if you persist in calling me after I've notified you to stop and you don't have to waste your time calling someone who will never-ever-ever purchase anything from a telemarketer.
apparantly, they've decided that maybe this wasn't such a hot idea after all (or they decided it became public too soon). In any event, looks like game over.
Insurance is bought to protect yourself/family financially from the effects of a mishap/catastrophe (death, fire, auto-accident, etc.). How does that compare to this?
Fire insurance isn't about placing bets on where the next fire is going to occur, that *would* be morbid. Fire insurance is about making sure that you can pick up the pieces should a fire destroy your possesions. That is *not morbid*, that it just good sense.
I agree that options can be a lot like insurance, but I don't agree that this is the intent or function in this particular case.
This would an open market. Therefore, you get more than just legitimate experts, you get everybody who wants to participate. Given the rather transparant nature of this data-mining effort, there is a very real possibility that this data could be obfuscated or otherwise manipulated by a coordinated effort. Its always easier to destroy than to create and borking this data pool would be a destructive act.
I'm sure DARPA has experts by the boatload. Furthermore, there are more secure/reliable ways to gather this information in my opinion.
What, you mean like the dufus from a few years ago who attempted to get his rental car fee back for the van he used to bomb the World Trade Center with?
I am now offically embarassed by the actions of my country.
I wasn't totally behind Gulf War II as my opinion is that if it's UN sanctions, then it needs to be a UN call. OTOH, I am totally willing to acknowledge that there is probably a lot about this I don't know and, therefore, chose to try and keep an open mind.
This however, is basically a country-wide "office-pool" on tragedy. At absolute best, its a ham-handed attempt at data-mining the population and even that is ethically "iffy" in my opinion.
Have we really sunk that low? Damn, I can't even watch prime time TV anymore because lately its all "reality game shows" where people are encouraged to screw each other over for fun and profit. This move by DARPA makes all that look like episodes of "Father Knows Best".
Sorry for the rant, it's just my initial reaction to this article. Maybe there is something about this I'm not understanding....I sure the hell hope so.
First: I resolved to stop going out to fast food places for lunch and bring my own lunch instead.
Second: I took to putting my wallet and car keys in my lunch bag so I wouldn't forget to bring it with me when I'd head out the door in the mornings.
Third: I got myself a new bicycle along with a bike computer/heart rate monitor and a set of rollers (you can use a stationary trainer if you don't want to deal with the learning curve of the rollers). Whenever I could, I'd take a bike ride during my lunch break or, if the weather was bad, ride the rollers instead. When on the rollers, I'd wear the heart rate monitor and try to stay in a good "cardio training zone".
Fourth: Joined a bike club and did a few longer rides with them on occasion after work. Occasionally, I'd bike commute as well. However, I can get a more consistent workout by leaving my bike at the office.
STARTING WEIGHT: 196 lbs CURRENT WEIGHT: 176 lbs
Hope this helps,
Of course, if all you see are blobs then...
on
Inkblot Passwords
·
· Score: 1
your password is . . "bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb" . . This could be guessed by someone running their finger up and down thier lips.
What about anyone who downloaded MAME or one of it's equivalents? Could Nintendo/Sony/Sega/Atari/etc. assume it was intended for piracy and sue under the same grounds?
If that's true then it seems kind of ironic....
on
Slackware Turns 10
·
· Score: 1
Strange attitude coming from a group of people who appear to have adopted the Dobbshead as thier logo....probably just the slack thing...no matter, never really got that joke anyways....
Kind of impressed with it. I'm a big fan of Mozilla (I kinda *like* the swiss-army-knife approach). However, when setting up my son's account on my home computer, I found that Playhouse Disney works better on Konquerer. I've also used Opera and I like it, but Java apps seem to crash it a lot in my experience. Were it not for that, I think I'd prefer it to Mozilla.
BTW - my son is 2 1/2 years old. He calls my Debian installation "Penguin and Dragon" after the boot Logo and KDE splash screen. I actually installed Debian because I'd heard good things about the childrens program "gcompris". It has definately lived up to what I've heard about it.
The first ever complex program I wrote was, in fact, an attempt to make an intelligent poker player. It was written in BASIC for an IBM with an 8086 processor and about 7-feet long when printed out. It made ASCII representations of the cards and I had my own random number generator that used the time the program started as the "seed" value. It had an independent routine for "bluffing" and made it's more rational decisions based upon what I was to eventually learn was a pretty decent implementation of "fuzzy logic"....problem is, it played lousy poker...and I could never figure out why. At least it followed the rules though.
This is not a closed cycle, the sun is actually an energy source. Therefore, obtaining energy from it and converting it to useful work is quite possible. Not only that but momentum is given by m*V where the V is a velocity (i.e. a vector and direction matters). If the photon was reflected in the opposite direction, it underwent a significant change of momentum (unless there is some caveat in the physics of photons that I'm not aware of - and that may be possible).
A can remember a fairly simialar thread on Slashdot a few years ago. Back then there was a strong "GUI is for weenies" mentality and it was the Slackware fans that were the true hardcore Linux crowd (whatever happened to Slackware?). My position back then was that, "If you want Linux to compete with Windows on the desktop, then it has to be as easy to use as windows, if you don't want it to be within the abilities of the average user, then you will never compete with windows". Well, *that* commentary caused some backlash.
Linux (or GNU/Linux if you must), is a good system regardless of whether it competes with Windows on the desktop or not - it's certainly doing well in the server market. However, what I said back then is just as true today. For Linux to compete on the desktop, "average Joe user" must be able to pop in a CD and have the installation auto-detect everything he needs and generally "take him by his little pink hand" and walk him through everything he needs to do. The average user just wants it to work, he has neither the time nor the inclination to fiddle with it. He's not lazy, he's just not that "hard-core" about computers. Additionally, he needs Quicken (or an equivalent), he needs TurboTax (or an eq.), he needs AutoCad, he wants to play games (GameSpy for Linux?), etc.. If he can't get what he wants/needs, then he'll stay with Windows regardless of whether or not he feels Linux is a superior system.
Today, Linux enjoys a growing market share. It may well compete with or even replace Windows on the desktop and I hope it does. If it is desired to get there from here, then Linux must compete with Windows in it's own areana.
I've not gone on the website yet (/.'d) so maybe they have the answer. All the same, maybe someone here knows the answer.
If the vast overwhelming majority of telemarketers block their phone number, how do I report violations?
Right now, the FCC requires all businesses to identify themselves on request, but it's kind of hard to enforce when all they got to do is hang up the phone and you don't know where the call came from.
Perhaps it would be a good idea to require businesses to not block thier caller ID and make private call rejection a free service.
The point was to say that even a little complaceny is all it takes.
BTW - the host computer (where I got the e-mail from) *was* infected. That's the point, identifying the bug was the idea. Even so, prudence dictates that you treat all computers on the network as infected until you can prove that they are not.
I agree with your earlier post, but the question remains. Is the OS the interface between the person and the computer or the person's programs and the computer? If it's the former, then a broad interpretation of "OS" is appropriate (for example, Microsoft can say the IE is part of thier OS). If it's that latter, then those who support the kernel is the true core OS and everything else is just added programs have a point.
Ultimately, for us, it's all GNU anyway. Our support and development efforts don't change. It's fully understood that, for example, RedHat means Linux+a few GUI's+lot's of other useful things. It's easier to just say RedHat OS (or Debian, or whatever). There's nothing wrong with it as long as the terminology is understood.
Similarly, whether or not Microsoft can claim that IE is part of thier OS has no bearing on the fact that it's put their to hinder competitive products.
I stand by my earlier statement, it's just semantics. Spending time trying to draw this distinction is, in my opinion, just "picking the pepper out of the fly shit".
1) Had an e-mail from a ".mil" domain (forget the actual address)
2) Having recently mailed some questions to some government research agencies, I assumed this was a response to one of them, so, I opened the e-mail (I use Mozilla).
3) No message in the e-mail, just an attachment called "your_application.zip". This was a tad suspicious so I copied the file and scanned it with a corporate edition of Norton Anti-Virus last updated on June 18th.
4) Virus scan came up clean so I opened the file. After seeing that it was only a ".pif" file, I started to get concerned, tried to edit the file by right-clicking and the edit option didn't show. At this point, I'm pretty sure it's a virus.
5) Examined the header information from the e-mail and discoverd that it actually originated from another office computer and the "from" address was spoofed. Now, I'm all but certain it's a virus.
6) Went to the Symantec website and, sure enough, the virus information is there along with notification that the patch was only available since June 25th.
7) Downloaded their fix tool and checked all computers in our office for evidence of infection. Was able to clean them all.
So, even though I was relatively careful, I was still able to get infected. Primarily because:
a) The "From" address was an expected source.
b) I do occasionally get legitimate e-mails that are only an attachment with no text.
c) This particular virus was so new that my virus scanner was not sufficiently up to date.
He he.... Yea, bells and whistles do cost resources although, my 128M machine seems to be OK with it. Certainly boots up *a lot* faster than WinME;). Have you tried "man hdparam"? Might help with HD performance.
FVWM2 was kinda fun to tinker with and I think I can honestly say that doing so helped me grasp a lot of GUI concepts when I was teaching myself Python and tKinter a few years later.
As for HURD, I would agree, that would go on the "hobby computer". However, given that my oldest is 2 1/2, I hope they get it going sooner than that.
We're getting off the subject with this which is why I've "held my tounge" up till now. However, I think I'm going to comment on this anyways.
A few years ago, I was mucking around with Linux on my machine. Of course, I was a regular in the associated IRC chat rooms, and did a lot of internet searching to basically "learn how the dang thing worked". As my understanding grew, I started to contribute by helping newbies myself when I could (once walked someone through a kernel build over IRC). Anyway, back then, the pervading mode of thought was that Linux was the actual operating system and the everything else were merely extensions to it (X, FVWM, etc.). Just like with DOS was the actual operating system and Windows was just a program running on top of it.
Now, the paradigm appears to have shifted. The latest versions of Windows are no longer trying to eek out what they can out of the venerable DOS and, today, Linux is just a kernel and the whole package is the OS.
Fair enough, define it however you wish, but it really just boils down to semantics..doesn't it?
BTW -- When the HURD matures a little (a my kids get older so I have some free time), I'll probably muck around with it a little as well. Although, I did just do a hard drive install of Knoppix and I'm pretty darned impressed with KDE - quite an evolutionary change from FVWM2.
"The Free Software Foundation's lawyer, Professor Moglen, believes that SCO gave permission for the community's use of the code that they distributed under the GNU GPL and other free software licenses in their version of GNU/Linux."
This was my initial thought when the whole SCO nonsense came to light. If the sold a Linux distribution with a GPL license that included their code, isn't that the same as releasing their code under the GPL?
I initially thought it must be an over-simplification. However, in light of the above quote, maybe it is that simple. If I were sitting on the jury for that case, that's certainly how I would see it.
Slashdot Mirror
The big problem for me is available software, drivers, plugins, etc. For example, when my 2 1/2 year old son and I go to the Playhouse Disney website from Linux, some of the games don't work because they need shockwave director. Yea, I can get it by shelling out $25-$30 for crossover plugin (and I may in-fact do that), but the point is that it has to use the plug-in from windows.
Also, I'm really puzzled as to why Apple won't make Quicktime natively available for Linux. If it's working on OS X, how hard can it be to port over? Mplayer seems to do OK as far as that goes however.
Another thing are websites that don't recognize the plug-ins you do have and and won't let you by until they do (Ifilm and atomfilms for example).
Then there is availablity of critical software like AutoCAD, Quicken, Kiplinger TaxCut, etc. Again, not really the fault of Linux, just can't convince the "bean-counters" that a market exist.
What Linux distributions can do, however, is continue to make progress on useability. They've come a long way. At this point, as long as you can follow the README's and research the occasional discussion group on the internet, you shouldn't have too much trouble. Compared to Windows, however, that's a lot of work. You can't blame the end user for going with a better supported and easier to install OS. For him to give those up, you have to offer something compelling in return. For the server market, small research firms, etc. you can often do that. For the average user though, Linux still has a ways to go.
Wile E. Coyote could have actually caught the Road Runner with one of these things.
I think Forbes just wrote my new e-mail signature file......
Has SCO actually initiated any court action as of yet? I mean, they've certainly made a lot of threats but have they actually done anything? I suspect that once this does happen, all of their "evidence" becomes discoverable and perhaps that is what is holding them up. Smells like bullshit to me.
...like I said, smells like bullshit to me.
This latest affair reminds me of a schoolyard fight were one person gets tired of listening to all the "I'm a badass" blustering and just gives him a quick jab in the nose followed up by, "now fight me or go the f@@k home!". Once again, SCO responds with more blustering.
Actually, I suspect they have no way of effectively filtering millions of people who have requested to be on the national do not call list and this is going to wind up costing them a lot of money to the tune of $11k per hit. It's probably more cost effective to fight this in court than try to set up this kind of a data base.
The law says they are supposed to have one but, in practice, I don't think they typically do. I know that I had to jump though quite a few legal hoops to get a couple of particularly persistant companies to finally stop. One of these companies (sorry, won't say who) actually called me personally to negotiate how long I would be willing to give them to remove my name from the lists of every telemaketing firm they were using at the time. My answer was zero since I already had documentation worth several thousand dollars in fines against them. They found a way to stop calling me though.
However, I'm willing to make the telemarketing industry a deal. The law currently requires that you identify yourself on request. Comply with that law, and we won't need this list. Stop blocking your caller ID and provide me with contact information when I ask for it. That way we both benefit. I can use the existing laws to seek legal remedy if you persist in calling me after I've notified you to stop and you don't have to waste your time calling someone who will never-ever-ever purchase anything from a telemarketer.
apparantly, they've decided that maybe this wasn't such a hot idea after all (or they decided it became public too soon). In any event, looks like game over.
d =D 7SJ9EF00_story
http://start.earthlink.net/newsarticle?cat=6&ai
Insurance is bought to protect yourself/family financially from the effects of a mishap/catastrophe (death, fire, auto-accident, etc.). How does that compare to this?
Fire insurance isn't about placing bets on where the next fire is going to occur, that *would* be morbid. Fire insurance is about making sure that you can pick up the pieces should a fire destroy your possesions. That is *not morbid*, that it just good sense.
I agree that options can be a lot like insurance, but I don't agree that this is the intent or function in this particular case.
This would an open market. Therefore, you get more than just legitimate experts, you get everybody who wants to participate. Given the rather transparant nature of this data-mining effort, there is a very real possibility that this data could be obfuscated or otherwise manipulated by a coordinated effort. Its always easier to destroy than to create and borking this data pool would be a destructive act.
I'm sure DARPA has experts by the boatload. Furthermore, there are more secure/reliable ways to gather this information in my opinion.
What, you mean like the dufus from a few years ago who attempted to get his rental car fee back for the van he used to bomb the World Trade Center with?
I am now offically embarassed by the actions of my country.
I wasn't totally behind Gulf War II as my opinion is that if it's UN sanctions, then it needs to be a UN call. OTOH, I am totally willing to acknowledge that there is probably a lot about this I don't know and, therefore, chose to try and keep an open mind.
This however, is basically a country-wide "office-pool" on tragedy. At absolute best, its a ham-handed attempt at data-mining the population and even that is ethically "iffy" in my opinion.
Have we really sunk that low? Damn, I can't even watch prime time TV anymore because lately its all "reality game shows" where people are encouraged to screw each other over for fun and profit. This move by DARPA makes all that look like episodes of "Father Knows Best".
Sorry for the rant, it's just my initial reaction to this article. Maybe there is something about this I'm not understanding....I sure the hell hope so.
First: I resolved to stop going out to fast food places for lunch and bring my own lunch instead.
Second: I took to putting my wallet and car keys in my lunch bag so I wouldn't forget to bring it with me when I'd head out the door in the mornings.
Third: I got myself a new bicycle along with a bike computer/heart rate monitor and a set of rollers (you can use a stationary trainer if you don't want to deal with the learning curve of the rollers). Whenever I could, I'd take a bike ride during my lunch break or, if the weather was bad, ride the rollers instead. When on the rollers, I'd wear the heart rate monitor and try to stay in a good "cardio training zone".
Fourth: Joined a bike club and did a few longer rides with them on occasion after work. Occasionally, I'd bike commute as well. However, I can get a more consistent workout by leaving my bike at the office.
STARTING WEIGHT: 196 lbs
CURRENT WEIGHT: 176 lbs
Hope this helps,
your password is
.
. "bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb"
.
.
This could be guessed by someone running their finger up and down thier lips.
What about anyone who downloaded MAME or one of it's equivalents? Could Nintendo/Sony/Sega/Atari/etc. assume it was intended for piracy and sue under the same grounds?
Strange attitude coming from a group of people who appear to have adopted the Dobbshead as thier logo. ...probably just the slack thing...no matter, never really got that joke anyways....
Kind of impressed with it. I'm a big fan of Mozilla (I kinda *like* the swiss-army-knife approach). However, when setting up my son's account on my home computer, I found that Playhouse Disney works better on Konquerer. I've also used Opera and I like it, but Java apps seem to crash it a lot in my experience. Were it not for that, I think I'd prefer it to Mozilla.
BTW - my son is 2 1/2 years old. He calls my Debian installation "Penguin and Dragon" after the boot Logo and KDE splash screen. I actually installed Debian because I'd heard good things about the childrens program "gcompris". It has definately lived up to what I've heard about it.
The first ever complex program I wrote was, in fact, an attempt to make an intelligent poker player. It was written in BASIC for an IBM with an 8086 processor and about 7-feet long when printed out. It made ASCII representations of the cards and I had my own random number generator that used the time the program started as the "seed" value. It had an independent routine for "bluffing" and made it's more rational decisions based upon what I was to eventually learn was a pretty decent implementation of "fuzzy logic". ...problem is, it played lousy poker...and I could never figure out why. At least it followed the rules though.
This is not a closed cycle, the sun is actually an energy source. Therefore, obtaining energy from it and converting it to useful work is quite possible. Not only that but momentum is given by m*V where the V is a velocity (i.e. a vector and direction matters). If the photon was reflected in the opposite direction, it underwent a significant change of momentum (unless there is some caveat in the physics of photons that I'm not aware of - and that may be possible).
A can remember a fairly simialar thread on Slashdot a few years ago. Back then there was a strong "GUI is for weenies" mentality and it was the Slackware fans that were the true hardcore Linux crowd (whatever happened to Slackware?).
My position back then was that, "If you want Linux to compete with Windows on the desktop, then it has to be as easy to use as windows, if you don't want it to be within the abilities of the average user, then you will never compete with windows". Well, *that* commentary caused some backlash.
Linux (or GNU/Linux if you must), is a good system regardless of whether it competes with Windows on the desktop or not - it's certainly doing well in the server market. However, what I said back then is just as true today. For Linux to compete on the desktop, "average Joe user" must be able to pop in a CD and have the installation auto-detect everything he needs and generally "take him by his little pink hand" and walk him through everything he needs to do. The average user just wants it to work, he has neither the time nor the inclination to fiddle with it. He's not lazy, he's just not that "hard-core" about computers. Additionally, he needs Quicken (or an equivalent), he needs TurboTax (or an eq.), he needs AutoCad, he wants to play games (GameSpy for Linux?), etc.. If he can't get what he wants/needs, then he'll stay with Windows regardless of whether or not he feels Linux is a superior system.
Today, Linux enjoys a growing market share. It may well compete with or even replace Windows on the desktop and I hope it does. If it is desired to get there from here, then Linux must compete with Windows in it's own areana.
I've not gone on the website yet (/.'d) so maybe they have the answer. All the same, maybe someone here knows the answer.
If the vast overwhelming majority of telemarketers block their phone number, how do I report violations?
Right now, the FCC requires all businesses to identify themselves on request, but it's kind of hard to enforce when all they got to do is hang up the phone and you don't know where the call came from.
Perhaps it would be a good idea to require businesses to not block thier caller ID and make private call rejection a free service.
just my thoughts....
Flush out a couple of anonymous coward A-holes.
The point was to say that even a little complaceny is all it takes.
BTW - the host computer (where I got the e-mail from) *was* infected. That's the point, identifying the bug was the idea. Even so, prudence dictates that you treat all computers on the network as infected until you can prove that they are not.
I agree with your earlier post, but the question remains. Is the OS the interface between the person and the computer or the person's programs and the computer? If it's the former, then a broad interpretation of "OS" is appropriate (for example, Microsoft can say the IE is part of thier OS). If it's that latter, then those who support the kernel is the true core OS and everything else is just added programs have a point.
Ultimately, for us, it's all GNU anyway. Our support and development efforts don't change. It's fully understood that, for example, RedHat means Linux+a few GUI's+lot's of other useful things. It's easier to just say RedHat OS (or Debian, or whatever). There's nothing wrong with it as long as the terminology is understood.
Similarly, whether or not Microsoft can claim that IE is part of thier OS has no bearing on the fact that it's put their to hinder competitive products.
I stand by my earlier statement, it's just semantics. Spending time trying to draw this distinction is, in my opinion, just "picking the pepper out of the fly shit".
1) Had an e-mail from a ".mil" domain (forget the actual address)
2) Having recently mailed some questions to some government research agencies, I assumed this was a response to one of them, so, I opened the e-mail (I use Mozilla).
3) No message in the e-mail, just an attachment called "your_application.zip". This was a tad suspicious so I copied the file and scanned it with a corporate edition of Norton Anti-Virus last updated on June 18th.
4) Virus scan came up clean so I opened the file. After seeing that it was only a ".pif" file, I started to get concerned, tried to edit the file by right-clicking and the edit option didn't show. At this point, I'm pretty sure it's a virus.
5) Examined the header information from the e-mail and discoverd that it actually originated from another office computer and the "from" address was spoofed. Now, I'm all but certain it's a virus.
6) Went to the Symantec website and, sure enough, the virus information is there along with notification that the patch was only available since June 25th.
7) Downloaded their fix tool and checked all computers in our office for evidence of infection. Was able to clean them all.
So, even though I was relatively careful, I was still able to get infected. Primarily because:
a) The "From" address was an expected source.
b) I do occasionally get legitimate e-mails that are only an attachment with no text.
c) This particular virus was so new that my virus scanner was not sufficiently up to date.
FYI, I guess...
He he.... Yea, bells and whistles do cost resources although, my 128M machine seems to be OK with it. Certainly boots up *a lot* faster than WinME ;). Have you tried "man hdparam"? Might help with HD performance.
FVWM2 was kinda fun to tinker with and I think I can honestly say that doing so helped me grasp a lot of GUI concepts when I was teaching myself Python and tKinter a few years later.
As for HURD, I would agree, that would go on the "hobby computer". However, given that my oldest is 2 1/2, I hope they get it going sooner than that.
We're getting off the subject with this which is why I've "held my tounge" up till now. However, I think I'm going to comment on this anyways.
A few years ago, I was mucking around with Linux on my machine. Of course, I was a regular in the associated IRC chat rooms, and did a lot of internet searching to basically "learn how the dang thing worked". As my understanding grew, I started to contribute by helping newbies myself when I could (once walked someone through a kernel build over IRC). Anyway, back then, the pervading mode of thought was that Linux was the actual operating system and the everything else were merely extensions to it (X, FVWM, etc.). Just like with DOS was the actual operating system and Windows was just a program running on top of it.
Now, the paradigm appears to have shifted. The latest versions of Windows are no longer trying to eek out what they can out of the venerable DOS and, today, Linux is just a kernel and the whole package is the OS.
Fair enough, define it however you wish, but it really just boils down to semantics..doesn't it?
BTW -- When the HURD matures a little (a my kids get older so I have some free time), I'll probably muck around with it a little as well. Although, I did just do a hard drive install of Knoppix and I'm pretty darned impressed with KDE - quite an evolutionary change from FVWM2.
"The Free Software Foundation's lawyer, Professor Moglen, believes that SCO gave permission for the community's use of the code that they distributed under the GNU GPL and other free software licenses in their version of GNU/Linux."
This was my initial thought when the whole SCO nonsense came to light. If the sold a Linux distribution with a GPL license that included their code, isn't that the same as releasing their code under the GPL?
I initially thought it must be an over-simplification. However, in light of the above quote, maybe it is that simple. If I were sitting on the jury for that case, that's certainly how I would see it.