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User: Bert64

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  1. Re:Real OSS = Darwin In Action on Top Ten Open Source Innovators · · Score: 1

    So what we need to do, is take these intentionally broken source code releases, fix them up and produce ready to go packages for other people to use. Complete with good documentation, and easy to install packages for common distributions.
    Mozilla used to be a huge pain in the ass to build you know.

  2. Re:Time to put your money where your mouth is on Puretracks Music Store Drops DRM · · Score: 1

    And what if the music you want to listen to is not available from them in this form?
    I will be investigating puretracks, and if they are selling songs i want to listen to in an unencumbered format i will buy from them.

  3. Re:Instant messenger? on Google Apps Premier Edition Launches · · Score: 1

    This is why the unix machines at university, oh, 20 years ago now? had write, and talk installed.
    Talk is cool because you can see the characters as they are typed, you can see just how badly some people type as they make typos and then try to correct them!

  4. Re:If features were exact I would still take MS on Google Apps Premier Edition Launches · · Score: 1

    No, if you use an MS solution then Microsoft are the gatekeeper, while you are the caretaker.
    Microsoft can revoke your license to use the software, and then your data becomes inaccessible because it's locked in to their proprietary formats.
    Not saying that google is any better in this regard, but it's still something to watch out for.
    However, if google were to provide this service as an appliance you could run on site, and which stores the data in an open format all these problems would go away.

  5. Re:obvious flaw? on Google Apps Premier Edition Launches · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I would use this, if google offered me the facility to install these apps on a server under my control.
    In a large office with hundreds of users, having all that traffic heading out through the wan interface would be prohibitive, it would be much easier to only have the few off-site workers traffic heading in through the wan interface instead.

  6. Their biggest problem.... on Vista Security — Too Little Too Late · · Score: 1

    Is cruft piled on top of cruft... So much of windows was written with no thought for security, since it was never meant to be networked nor multiuser. Not just the flawed code, but many of the basic ideas are flawed, so even if rewritten, it will still be flawed or incompatible.
    Windows is hugely complicated, far more so than any other OS out there, this huge complexity plus the maze of legacy interfaces results in an unmaintainable and unsecureable mess.
    The fact that "server" versions of windows are essentially desktop versions with extra stuff bolted on top, instead of the other way round doesn't help either.
    Microsoft have often tried to increase the complexity of windows and make it as proprietary as possible on purpose, to make it difficult for competitors to produce compatible clones (as happened with dos), this decision is now a huge cause of problems.
    Note that unix is a lot older, but the basic design is more flexible, modular and less flawed, as well as being widely understood and documened.

    Microsoft need to do as apple did, and ditch their crufty old spaghetti codebase, and start again fresh.with a codebase designed with the modern world in mind, and temporarily implement their old environment under a virtualization environment which is only used for running legacy apps. Doing this has worked well for apple, OSX has gained them significant numbers of new users, is much cleaner and capable than OS9 ever was, and they have been able to ditch the backwards compatibility mode in recent versions.

  7. And why not? on Microsoft Blasts IBM Over XML Standards · · Score: 2, Informative

    When ODF was being standardised, there was no existing standard, nor was there anything else competing to be standardised, there was no justification microsoft could have used to claim it should be rejected.

    Now on the other hand, ODF is already standardised, having a new incompatible standard will simply fragment the industry, which is precisely what standards seek to prevent. What microsoft should do, and what ISO should tell them to do, is either use the existing standard, or go through the proper channels to propose updates to it.

    Any deficiencies microsoft believe ODF to have, are entirely their own fault... microsoft have long been a member of OASIS, and were more than welcome to contribute to the original drafting of ODF, they made the decision not to in the hope that it would never get anywhere and be forgotten about.

  8. Re:DRM is not piracy prevention. on Music Execs Think DRM Slows the Marketplace · · Score: 2, Informative

    itunes lets you burn to CD, but i don't think any other forms of drm allow you to do this...

  9. Re:People Were Right! on Vista Not Playing Nice With FPS Games · · Score: 1

    No it isn't...
    They have enough market share, that they don't need to care.

    They dont care how difficult it is to write drivers for, manufacturers will have to write drivers for it or noone will buy their hardware.
    They dont care if the API is similar to an existing one for the same reason.
    And they dont have to give manufacturers enough time, manufacturers will be forced to hurry up and write drivers, or lose sales.

    The hardware companies need microsoft, microsoft knows this and can therefore treat them however they like. It would take all the hardware companies, competitors with each other, working together against microsoft to make any difference, and this won't happen. The hardware companies are screwed, and have to do what microsoft says or go out of business. I wonder how it feels to know your business is entirely at the whim of one company.

    This is why a single company, especially one like microsoft, with too much power is an incredibly bad thing for everyone else.

  10. Re:Apple And IBM Should Make A Deal on IBM Launching an Open Desktop Solution · · Score: 1

    Adobe are working on apps for intel macs, i have the beta of photoshop CS3 on my macbook, and it even has the SSE optimized modules from the windows version to replace the altivec ones the mac version had before...
    Also, SSE3 can be the default on Mac/Intel because every intel based mac sold had support for SSE3.

  11. Re:Why use something the creators barly use? on IBM Launching an Open Desktop Solution · · Score: 1

    And managed solutions like this are aimed at the majority of office workers, who need very little control of their systems and a very limited subset of applications for them.
    At any technology company, IBM being no exception, there will be a lot of highly skilled technical employees who have diverse requirements and the knowledge required to manage these systems themselves, a one-size-fits-all solution is totally inappropriate when you have skilled technical employees who need to develop code or such.

  12. Re:I think MS could survive the death of Windows.. on IBM Launching an Open Desktop Solution · · Score: 1

    Actually, they can't exactly port it *to* apple, since some of the office apps at least were originally written for apple. They can, and have, ported from apple to windows.

  13. Re:how open are... on IBM Launching an Open Desktop Solution · · Score: 1

    There's nothing wrong with closed implementations that comply with open standards, this is the whole point of having standards. If the standard is useful enough, and there's demand, then someone will create an open implementation of it.
    So long as your never _FORCED_ to use a particular closed implementation.

  14. Re:the authors seem very confused ... on Solaris Telnet 0-day vulnerability · · Score: 1

    Not using telnet is a valid fix...
    Telnet is a security risk, even if this bug were fixed. Telnet is still considered a risk on other systems which don't have this vulnerability.

  15. Re:OpenSolaris as a development model on Solaris Telnet 0-day vulnerability · · Score: 1

    I'm sure people have known about it for quite a time...
    Being open won't have helped in this case, people found an almost identical issue in AIX 3, which is closed. I wonder how many enterprising script kiddies went trying to exploit the AIX vulnerability, and accidentally got into a Solaris machine.

  16. Re:Telnet? on Solaris Telnet 0-day vulnerability · · Score: 1

    Even such ridiculous services as chargen, echo and discard are turned on by default still.

  17. Re:Of course they wouldn't use Firefox or Safari on Walmart Rejects Firefox and Safari · · Score: 1

    The site www.tescopoly.org is an interesting read about tesco.
    I don't fill up at tesco, their gas might be slightly cheaper but my performance and fuel economy suffer noticeably when running on tesco fuel such that it isn't actually cheaper.

    And this effect you talk of, is no different from how microsoft behaves. Any market where a single player (or cartel of large players) has too much of the market, the consumers will suffer and usually without realising it.

  18. Re:IE View and IE Tab on Walmart Rejects Firefox and Safari · · Score: 1

    The only windows system i have access to, has had IE ripped out and rendered inaccessible for security reasons.
    Are you advocating that everyone should use windows? Do you have any idea what would happen to the market if what little competition remains was eliminated?
    If you think some of the things microsoft does now are bad (drm, self disabling software etc) just think what would happen if they had zero fear of losing sales?

  19. Re:The old alliance parter program on Walmart Rejects Firefox and Safari · · Score: 1

    Falling back to IE is the absoloute worst thing people can do. That will vindicate the decisions of whoever made these sites, and they will continue making more such sites. Leaving those of us who use non windows systems out in the cold. You may not choose to use anything but windows, but the choice being available benefits everyone, and yet more sites tied to a particular browser seek to squeeze away our freedom to choose our computing platform of choice.

  20. Re:Dumb newb question on Walmart Rejects Firefox and Safari · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That's no solution.
    OSX is not broken, the site is. And any site that tries to force you to use a particular browser does not deserve your business.

  21. Re:Here's a question for you.... on Why Does Skype Read the BIOS? · · Score: 1

    OSX has a much cleaner and simpler design than XP, which allows for more flexibility and less complexity.

    Asterisk is just as difficult to use as any comparablly powerfull system. I imagine the skype backend servers are even worse in terms of complexity, you just don't get to run those yourself.

  22. Re:This meme irritates me. on Warner Rejects Jobs' DRM Position · · Score: 1

    Because Beethoven is not producing any more works, everyone who wants a Beethoven CD already has one. There was an initial spate of buying CDs because people who already had vinyl wanted a CD copy, now that everyone who wants it has it, so you'l get a much smaller number of sales, people who lost their copy, or who need it for a particular purpose etc.

  23. Re:"Super" = lots of features? on Linux To Power Super Router · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Well, running on a PC-based architecture will never be able to compete with high end routing devices, regardless of software.
    Perhaps a multi socket opteron system with network interfaces connected via hypertransport, but not much short of that. The way PCI buses are designed makes them very poor for routing large amounts of data around. There's no way that any current system could outperform a catalyst 6500 at the same price point.

  24. Re:Capacity drop? on Google Opens Gmail To All · · Score: 1

    The best part of gtalk, is that you can interoperate with other jabber servers.
    I have my own server, under my total control, on which a few friends have accounts... But i can still communicate with gtalk users through the same account. Those who choose to let their chats go through google are free to do so, but those who want privacy can use a server they totally control.
    Plus it lets you have your own identity, when with google any cool names have already gone, and you end up with something like joe3213213@gmail.com

  25. Re:Capacity drop? on Google Opens Gmail To All · · Score: 1

    I fully understand that, which is why i run my own mail server.
    But i can still communicate with gmail users, both through email and through google talk (jabber)...
    For those who can't or won't run their own servers, google is about the best free mail provider out there right now. In order to communicate with people using any of the competing messaging services, i am forced into signing up for an account with them.