Like it or not, handheld technology is converging. People want diaries, address books, phones and music but don't want pockets full of gadgets. Hell, half the cell phones you can buy in NZ now do PDA functions and music.
Any tech company can knock off an ogg player or PDA, but to design a cell phone you need an established telecomm network. This puts cell phone companies well above pda and ogg player manufacturers in the race for creating a multi-purpose handheld.
The frequent argument against convergence is that you can't upgrade/replace separate components without replacing the entire unit, but with phone/pda/players now under $150 there's not much argument there. When you get tired of your old unit, buy the next model up, pop in your 2GB SD card and you're away.
How many programs are run just to launch X/KDE/Gnome? And don't forget libraries(dll's if you're from the windows camp), they're just as executable as the programs. How many libraries does your browser call? Libjpg, libpng, libssl to name but a few. I was being kind by only listing the programs before, there's over 4000 of those on a typical linux box.
How many daemons do you have running in the background?
Cron jobs?
Sure, you can permanently add each one to the whitelist as it is confirmed, but that's still a hell of a lot of setting up.
Unless of course you want to automatically add all locally installed programs/libraries to the whitelist, defeating the purpose of the whitelist in the first place.
Compare that to the legitimate 30 or so apps that I've installed on my machine, and you can see it's rather dumb to try to track 75,000 pieces of Badness when even a simpleton could track 30 pieces of Goodness.
Okay Mr Whitelist Everything, let's ensure that every time I want to run a program on my computer I'm prompted to confirm that's what I want to do. Let's start by actually counting the number of programs I will have to do this for:
$ ls -1/bin/sbin/usr/bin/usr/sbin/usr/X11R6/bin//usr/local/bin |wc -l
ALERT: Attempting to run un-registered program/bin/ls. Are you sure (y/n)y ALERT: Attempting to run un-registered program usr/bin/wc. Are you sure (y/n)y
5187
Looks like I've got my work cut out for this week.
I'm sure the question on everyone's mind is, "Does it come with two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, all on a sesame seed bun?" If so, BRING IT ON! I'm hungry! =)
Which brings about he corrolary, The only good Mac is a Big Mac.
Fortunately the random noise isn't re-seeded at each reload.
Therefore:
1. Load page 2. Save As Pic1 3. Wait... 4. Reload page 5. Save As Pic2 6. Load Pic2 into the GIMP 7. Load Pic1 into the GIMP 8. copy Pic1 to clipboard 9. Paste onto Pic2, keep as a layer 10.Select "subtract" as the Layer Mode et voila, there's your picture.
I like OOo and use it on several different Linux boxes, but have run into problems of this nature. Often a document created on my Fedora box looks NOTICEABLY DIFFERENT when loaded on my Debian box. Often the line spacing has changed, or a font has been incorrectly substituted somewhere.
Try fixing a 200-page thesis with sporadic errors like that and you soon get sick of it. And that's using OOo's internal SXC/SXW/SXD formats, not the MS kludges.
I would include MathType, but the OOo formula editor is so far ahead of both the MS equation editor and MathType that it's not funny. It just doesn't always import MathType content 100% accurately.
In fact I suspect 90% of OpenOffice's shortcomings involve importing MS Office documents.
He did so, but without first removing disk 1. After getting three disks 2 and a half disks in, he called tech support.
I'm always skeptical when I hear this one. Why would he put in Disk 3 without being prompted to do so? The installer would be unlikely to get past the second disk, with two jammed in the drive.
.. except that software is not made up of scarce resources, so basic economics doesn't apply unless prohibitive licensing schemes enforce artificial scarcity.
While showing a slide show of Google's hardware evolution, which began humbly with an odds-and-ends collection of "spare computers that were lying around Stanford" (hobbled together, literally, with pieces of Lego and duct tape) and ended with a present-day photo of Google's current server room (darkened to the point of being indistinguishable, for competitive reasons), DiBona said Google has used Linux all the way.
Forget software licensing, I just want to see the slide with their server room!
Slashdot Mirror
And that my friends, is why the iPod is doomed.
Like it or not, handheld technology is converging. People want diaries, address books, phones and music but don't want pockets full of gadgets. Hell, half the cell phones you can buy in NZ now do PDA functions and music.
Any tech company can knock off an ogg player or PDA, but to design a cell phone you need an established telecomm network. This puts cell phone companies well above pda and ogg player manufacturers in the race for creating a multi-purpose handheld.
The frequent argument against convergence is that you can't upgrade/replace separate components without replacing the entire unit, but with phone/pda/players now under $150 there's not much argument there. When you get tired of your old unit, buy the next model up, pop in your 2GB SD card and you're away.
How many programs are run just to launch X/KDE/Gnome? And don't forget libraries(dll's if you're from the windows camp), they're just as executable as the programs. How many libraries does your browser call? Libjpg, libpng, libssl to name but a few. I was being kind by only listing the programs before, there's over 4000 of those on a typical linux box.
How many daemons do you have running in the background?
Cron jobs?
Sure, you can permanently add each one to the whitelist as it is confirmed, but that's still a hell of a lot of setting up.
Unless of course you want to automatically add all locally installed programs/libraries to the whitelist, defeating the purpose of the whitelist in the first place.
Which would of course render the whole idea of whitelisting useless :)
Compare that to the legitimate 30 or so apps that I've installed on my machine, and you can see it's rather dumb to try to track 75,000 pieces of Badness when even a simpleton could track 30 pieces of Goodness.
/bin /sbin /usr/bin /usr/sbin /usr/X11R6/bin/ /usr/local/bin |wc -l
/bin/ls.
Okay Mr Whitelist Everything, let's ensure that every time I want to run a program on my computer I'm prompted to confirm that's what I want to do. Let's start by actually counting the number of programs I will have to do this for:
$ ls -1
ALERT: Attempting to run un-registered program
Are you sure (y/n)y
ALERT: Attempting to run un-registered program usr/bin/wc.
Are you sure (y/n)y
5187
Looks like I've got my work cut out for this week.
I'm sure the question on everyone's mind is, "Does it come with two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, all on a sesame seed bun?" If so, BRING IT ON! I'm hungry! =)
Which brings about he corrolary,
The only good Mac is a Big Mac.
You do realise that from that one could just as easily conceive the idea of a world without women?
No pun intended.
When shopping at Dell
always, and I mean always, remember to never actually buy your computer there.
No, it would be shameful for someone in the USA to be unable to express such a position.
sooo... you're saying you support oppression of opinions that are against opressing people?
When does it stop?
Fortunately the random noise isn't re-seeded at each reload.
:)
Therefore:
1. Load page
2. Save As Pic1
3. Wait...
4. Reload page
5. Save As Pic2
6. Load Pic2 into the GIMP
7. Load Pic1 into the GIMP
8. copy Pic1 to clipboard
9. Paste onto Pic2, keep as a layer
10.Select "subtract" as the Layer Mode
et voila, there's your picture.
Repeat steps 3-10 to see your picture take shape.
Has anyone else figured out what it is yet?
You know, the GP might not be a MS troll.
I like OOo and use it on several different Linux boxes, but have run into problems of this nature. Often a document created on my Fedora box looks NOTICEABLY DIFFERENT when loaded on my Debian box. Often the line spacing has changed, or a font has been incorrectly substituted somewhere.
Try fixing a 200-page thesis with sporadic errors like that and you soon get sick of it. And that's using OOo's internal SXC/SXW/SXD formats, not the MS kludges.
EndNote.
I would include MathType, but the OOo formula editor is so far ahead of both the MS equation editor and MathType that it's not funny. It just doesn't always import MathType content 100% accurately.
In fact I suspect 90% of OpenOffice's shortcomings involve importing MS Office documents.
He did so, but without first removing disk 1. After getting three disks 2 and a half disks in, he called tech support.
I'm always skeptical when I hear this one. Why would he put in Disk 3 without being prompted to do so? The installer would be unlikely to get past the second disk, with two jammed in the drive.
.. except that software is not made up of scarce resources, so basic economics doesn't apply unless prohibitive licensing schemes enforce artificial scarcity.
You can't make cars Free.
...but I'm about as hopeful as I am for the success of Cold Fusio.
Yeah, I know what you mean.
Their debut album was terrible.
It's funny, laugh.
if you gave him half a chance.
I don't know, but I've got some Windows 2000 oscilloscopes here that I can show you...
Oh, and no way of patching them, either.
So is Carmack using some OpenGL driver on the XBox360, or has he finally been bought out by the Direct3D crowd?
If the latter, then we've lost one of the last true cross-platform 3D game developers.
Imperial Officer: The rebels seem to have evaded us, Lord Vader.
Vader: Do they still have the stolen Death Star plans?
Imperial Officer: Well technically they're not stolen as much as infringed upo- *ack* *gag* *choke*
I believe he's married to Alice.
Dia runs just fine under Linux.
What if all the candidates are going to vote for such laws?
Where is the voters power then?
While showing a slide show of Google's hardware evolution, which began humbly with an odds-and-ends collection of "spare computers that were lying around Stanford" (hobbled together, literally, with pieces of Lego and duct tape) and ended with a present-day photo of Google's current server room (darkened to the point of being indistinguishable, for competitive reasons), DiBona said Google has used Linux all the way.
Forget software licensing, I just want to see the slide with their server room!
Any links?
Don't worry they're just getting the dupe out of the way by putting it IN THE ARTICLE.
Healthcare.
Now there's a euphamism if ever I heard one.
Agreed.
The iPod is the most overhyped mass-marketing since, well, perhaps Tamagochi. Especially when there are much better alternatives.
"Podcasting" is just the latest "buy an iPod and you can do this too" marketing drivel.