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User: Bert64

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  1. Re:Isn't that three-letter acronym taken? on CDE — Making Linux Portability Easy · · Score: 1

    Should yes, but thanks to microsoft the rest of the world now feels its acceptable to install software manually, bundled with its own copies of libs, and many people actually *want* to use and distribute software in this way...
    Granted this is mostly because they don't know any better, but user education is a very slow process when you have a huge marketing machine uneducating them. It's like the henry ford quote, if he'd asked his customers what they wanted they would have asked for a faster horse because the horse was what they were familiar with.

  2. Re:Yeah right. on Why Unlocked Phones Don't Work In the US · · Score: 1

    The annoying one is blackberry handsets, which will refuse to charge unless you have drivers for them installed on the host... This precludes me from charging a blackberry handset from most of the spare USB ports i have floating around my house (nas device, wireless ap, satellite receiver etc) which work very well for charging other types of usb powered devices.

  3. Re:Yeah right. on Why Unlocked Phones Don't Work In the US · · Score: 1

    Did you have to pay anything up front for the phone?
    If not, your paying 360 over the course of those 18 months for the phone, but you also lack flexibility over those 18 months so if your usage patterns suddenly change you might be stuck.

  4. Re:As often as is convenient for the user. on How Often Should You Change Your Password? · · Score: 1

    The problem is that the user often has no idea how a given application will be storing their password...
    It's not uncommon for webapps to store passwords in plain text for instance...
    Quite often you get weak hashing, for instance a single round of MD5 with no salt, or passwords stored using reversible algorithms...

    Then you have the windows hashing scheme, where you can authenticate using the hash without needing to crack it at all.

    With online apps, sometimes you can tell they're storing the passwords in plaintext or reversible forms because the password recovery option will actually send you your original password, something which would not be possible with a sensible one way hashing algorithm.

    People also reuse passwords in multiple places, so it's all well and good one site storing your pass using salted SHA512, but if you use the same pass on a site which stores it in plaintext your still very much at risk.

  5. Re:End users hate the registry? on Should Being Competitive With Windows Matter For Linux? · · Score: 1

    Someone mishearing or not reading whats on the screen is a failure in communication... Chances are if they have trouble understanding they will have just as much trouble if you try to explain a gui to them.

  6. Re:Huh? on Research Inches Toward Processor-Specific Malware · · Score: 1

    And as the post pointed out, you can forget about performance-to-price and are PPC servers available from anyone other than IBM?
    It is extremely rare that i see an AIX box these days, and those few companies who do have them usually have many more x86 systems.

  7. Re:Uh, okay. on Toy Robots Can Guard Your Home · · Score: 1

    Or the thieves might think the robot is valuable and steal that too...

  8. Re:Just because they have branded it on Telstra Violating the GPL? · · Score: 1

    In the case of LG, LG are clearly providing the necessary infrastructure to comply with the GPL on behalf of the reseller.
    If they failed to do that, you would be well within your rights to contact the reseller.

  9. Re:Just because they have branded it on Telstra Violating the GPL? · · Score: 1

    Telstra are required to pass on the code to their customers...
    Their suppliers are required to pass on the code to Telstra...

    As an end user, your contract is with Telstra not directly with the OEM.
    Telstra may not be intentionally violating the GPL, they may be the victims of wilful violation by the OEMs, or they may be negligent of their requirements in order to distribute the GPL based code.
    Either way Telstra are currently committing copyright infringement and need to rectify the situation for their customers. It is up to them to bring their own case against the OEM should they need to.

    Think of another example, a supermarket who distributes poisoned food.. The customers will complain to the supermarket, even if ultimately it was the fault of one of their suppliers. The supermarket should still have ensured the products they were selling were fit for human consumption.

  10. Re:Just because they have branded it on Telstra Violating the GPL? · · Score: 1

    The GPL restricts some freedoms with the primary goal of ensuring that other freedoms it considers more important are not taken away...

    Society (ie common law) does the exact same thing, it restricts your freedom to commit murder for instance so that other peoples freedom to live cannot be taken away. I doubt there are many places in the world where it is legal to go and kill anyone you want.

    By that same token, the GPL restricts your freedom to create a proprietary fork to ensure that other people can have the same freedoms you got. Under BSD, you can create closed source versions thus depriving people of the freedoms you were originally granted when you received the BSD source initially.

  11. Re:End users hate the registry? on Should Being Competitive With Windows Matter For Linux? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A GUI is like public transport

    Anyone can use it, and it will take you to the most common of destinations during normal hours with the minimum of fuss and hassle. On the other hand, you might be forced to take a slow inefficient route, might have to travel at specific times, might have to wait around for the next train/bus and some places just aren’t reachable using public transport at all.

    A CLI is like a car

    A car will take you anywhere you want to go and at any time, but you have to know how to drive and you have to navigate the route yourself.

    Having scripts which are an extension of the same CLI you use for general system management is a huge plus, if your typing the same commands on a day to day basis then writing scripts becomes extremely simple (at the most basic level you can just copy+paste a series of commands you use), far easier than having to use a dedicated scripting language that doesn't relate to anything else.

    Most things can be accomplished on a modern unix system without using the CLI, however there are very important reasons why people providing assistance recommend the CLI...
    If you're providing support via a website, having commands which can be cut+pasted is much easier than trying to explain a gui (following an explanation takes longer than pasting a command, and descriptions of gui elements are open to interpretation and may even be visible if the user has a different theme).
    Similarly, support over the phone is FAR easier via the CLI, assuming the person your talking to can read and write all they need to do is type what you tell them, and read back the response to you.

    This doesn't mean that there isn't a gui based alternative to perform the same operation, its just that the (usually technically competent) people providing assistance to others realise that the cli is the best method of getting the job done.

  12. Re:End users hate the registry? on Should Being Competitive With Windows Matter For Linux? · · Score: 1

    Incidentally, on unix systems i make heavy use of revision control for my configuration files (simply check them in to cvs), how do you do that with registry keys?

  13. Re:End users hate the registry? on Should Being Competitive With Windows Matter For Linux? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If your going to send someone a registry file, you could equivalently send them a shell script for OSX or Linux. On the other hand, its not always possible to send someone files (eg your providing support over the phone and the user cant get online)...

    As for documentation, unix configuration files typically have examples and documentation within the files themselves... The registry offers no such equivalent, quite often having some documentation right there is extremely useful and saves you a lot of time... Quite often when trying to fix something you may not be able to access the internet, so online documentation isn't terribly useful.

    The registry doesn't facilitate controlling thousands of boxes centrally, there is no reason that text based configuration files could not be deployed in a similar.

    I could teach my 15 year old to run an AD server inside of a month.

    This is the biggest problem, it may be very simple to manage an AD server in a basic fashion, but the end result is usually horrendously insecure. I have conducted thousands of pentests, and without exception whenever we have tested an active directory domain we have managed to get domain admin privileges (starting with just an ethernet port). You don't want people with only a month worth of experience running your network, you want people with years of experience and a high skill level otherwise you're going to have constant problems.

    You have an abundance of choice.

    If only that were true, MS has worked very hard to ensure that there are various things locking people in to windows... There are plenty of people for whom choice doesn't exist. My biggest problem with microsoft is that they try to force you to use their products in this way. If we truly had choice, like we do in virtually all other markets, we would all be far better off.

  14. Re:End users hate the registry? on Should Being Competitive With Windows Matter For Linux? · · Score: 1

    Implementing settings like that requires support within the application in question, in which case there is no reason for that program to not have inbuilt options to allow a global config file in /etc to override any user specific settings.

    The problem with this however, is that the program runs in the user's context, and therefore they have the ability to modify it at will... Even if you can't modify its configs, you can modify the program to make it read configs from somewhere else. This is an amusing trick to do on windows boxes where things like the command prompt is disabled, load up cmd.exe in a debugger and change the registry key it looks for to declare it disabled, or just execute your own modified binary.

  15. Re:Use a service which doesn't block you... on How Hulu, NBC, and Other Sites Block Google TV · · Score: -1, Troll

    Netflix is not available here, yet another case of trying to cling to obsolete distribution models... Regional distributors made sense with physical goods, but they don't make sense for the internet. The pirate bay is not inherently racist (yes intentional regional discrimination is effectively racism), and doesn't care where its users reside.

    I don't have netflix clients in any of my devices, and don't particularly want a proprietary client encumbered by DRM. My satellite receiver is perfectly capable of streaming content over smb, ftp, http, nfs or loading it from usb devices.

  16. Use a service which doesn't block you... on How Hulu, NBC, and Other Sites Block Google TV · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The more onerous restrictions legitimate services impose, the more people will be drawn towards services that don't impose such restrictions, like thepiratebay.

  17. Re:Good. on Oracle To Monetize Java VM · · Score: 1

    And now that hardware has finally caught up with the bloat of java, people are moving to things like ruby which are even slower...

  18. Re:Am I the only one who is confused... on Despite FTC Settlement, Intel Can Ship Oak Trail Without PCIe · · Score: 1

    Try doing some benchmarks on a pure Linux system compiled with GCC...
    GCC has no reason to bias any individual processor maker.

  19. Re:According to Wikipedia... on Massive DDoS Cuts Myanmar Off From Net · · Score: 1

    Burma was the name given to the country when the british invaded it, i dont think the government currently there really wants to be reminded of that.

  20. Re:Intrusive ads.. on Fighting Ad Blockers With Captcha Ads · · Score: 1

    Sometimes you can't cancel it without either closing the entire page, or manually killing the flash plugin process...

  21. Re:dual display over the network must needs lots o on With the Jack PC, the Computer's In the Wall! · · Score: 1

    Over a 100mb lan it should be fine, even better over gigabit.

  22. Re:Save? on IE9 May Not Be Enough To Save IE · · Score: 1

    True about the javascript performance, although they could have simply contributed to the javascript engine in firefox or webkit. The trouble with javascript performance (and browser innovation in general) is that all the other browsers were several times faster than ie, but most websites are designed for the lowest common denominator so all the advanced features and javascript performance simply go to waste.

  23. Re:Single Source vs. Open Source vs.... Microsoft? on Google Sues US Gov't For Only Considering Microsoft · · Score: 1

    If Microsoft were to cease existing tomorrow, you couldn't legally install windows on new hardware (violation of the license agreement even if there might not be anyone around to enforce it), and newer versions might make that even more difficult because the activation servers they need to talk to would also have ceased to exist.

    I can see the logic in not using macs, but i can also see the same logic being applied against using windows. Sure windows can run on relatively open hardware, but it is a far cry from linux in that regard and having multi source hardware running single source software somewhat defeats the point.

    With linux, you have multiple commercial sources (redhat, novell, ubuntu, oracle etc) combined with non commercial sources (debian, gentoo, centos etc etc etc) that aside from being available from multiple suppliers, also comes with source code and redistribution rights and so significantly reducing the reliance on any of those suppliers anyway.

    Also, linux runs on a much wider range of hardware, not just x86 and its compatibles but also entirely different architectures like arm, sparc and powerpc.

    There is also the argument that OSX is considerably more open than windows (in terms of network protocols and file formats rather than hardware support), so that although their platform is single source it would be considerably less painful to migrate away from it...

    For anything important, i wouldn't use either mac or windows because of the single source issue.

  24. Re:Yes, the Dept. of Interior is corrupt on Google Sues US Gov't For Only Considering Microsoft · · Score: 1

    It's easiest to spend money when it isn't yours...
    In government, although the money is technically yours (ie you pay taxes), its not directly yours to do with as you please... And neither does it belong to your bosses. In a private company you are directly accountable to the people who do own the money so they are somewhat less inclined to waste it.

  25. Re:Isn't that illegal? on Google Sues US Gov't For Only Considering Microsoft · · Score: 1

    Does vmware not let you join other types of processors to a cluster, assuming that your virtual machines are only exposed to the common subset of processor functionality present across the cluster? I operate a KVM cluster which certainly allows this.