I generally agree with your statements, except for two areas of American Society which gives me the screaming willies.
The first, and most apparent to anyone conscious today, it the potential use, mis-use, and outright abuse that something like this will have under the honarable practice of Marketing. Ever seen Minority Report? The scenes where they tracked advertisements based on the people looking at them freaked me out.
With GPS, as with the recently announced plans for radio signal tracking, they can start gathering demographics on people who are driving past a give billboard and modify the advertisement content to match your assigned pidgeon hole.
Now, even more of the ads you see are directed to you based on someone elses assumptions. Kind of like have a 1x1 pixel following you everywhere you go.
I just realized how fundamentally fucked up this really is. Because all of my advertisement exposure is focused on narrow beam that's all about me, or an assumption thereof, I will be severely restricted on seeing anything that isn't "all about me".
What this leads to is a complete unfamiliarity with anything that isn't about me. This results in an increased Social Intolerance that everyone claims to be so precious to our Melting Pot Society. Hand it to Marketing to practically endorse segregation, but not limited to a Skin-Color level of segregation.
The second aspect of this that is scarey but not as tangible is the rampant abuse we are already forcing upon anyone The Administration wants to label as a Terrorist, Enemy of the State, or Enemy Combatant. Once labeled, you may never get out from under it. I'm pretty certain that this is how McCarthyism got started in the 1950's.
While this may sound far fetched, dramatic, and theatrical, you should probably ask yourself the question, "What exists in our Government which is going to effectively prevent this from happening??
It does not fall under wire tapping statues. In order for it to fall under those statutes the Enforcement Agency must touch or otherwise come into physical contact with your property/premisis. Since they can do this my Cellular protocol communications, they don't need to do more than touch the cellular carriers towers. And that's not yours so you will NEVER know about it.
After all, they can look at your home using an Infra Red Camera and thereby penetrate your property. That's about as grey as it gets. But this one doesn't touch your property -- you have broadcast messages coming out from your cellular phone.
Java is not my first choice in languages to support in a database language. PL would have at least been more adaptable.
Unfortunately with the Enterprise Popularity of Java, thanks to a strong Marketing Campaign by Sun Microsystems, MySQL is following the Corporate line of supporting Java regardless. This is a fine example of what may be a mis-direction of the MySQL developers being pushed into a Support the Corporate Enterprise stuff rather then doing good code on a good platform.
Aren't these the same guys that were so successful in Waco, TX; Ruby Ridge, and don't forget their best success in history -- prohibition!!!
So, when are we actually going to get around to boycotting all radio and music sales in America?
There is no way in hell any of this will ever change until there is a concerted effort to make a point to them. Not buying music will not work.
Sure the music industry took a dump almost to the day they shut down napster. But they blamed it on illegal music sharing, not a fact of the music buyers just lost their single best means of identifying what they want to buy. Why? Because no body told them in clear terms.
If you want to get through to RIAA/MPAA then it's going to be a matter of boycott, boycott, boycott. Make it political, make it public, make it noticable, make it known.
Personally, I do not intend on purchasing a HDTV simply because that media will no longer allow me to record television shows.
I have been so overwhelmed with commercials that it's easier for me to learn how to not watch TV and not listen to the Radio than to put up with the constant babble.
I suggest we all give it a try, but do it all at once under a concerted boycotting effort.
Well... steal is such a harsh word, I prefer something different. But I'll get to that later on.
Why P2P music and more?
When I was in my upper teen and college years I had a great interest in music. I had a very wide range of music interests that covered several types of classical music, rock, jazz, country (a little), and a whole variety of music forms that didn't even have a name yet. I think now they're lumped into the New-Age acid jazz something or other...
But I would learn about this music by cruising halls in the dorms listening to what other people where playing and checking out music collections of friends of mine.
And stuff I liked I could buy at the local store for anywhere from $2 to $10 in circa 1985.
Fast forward 18 years.
I don't live in a dorm anymore so it's hard to hear other peoples stereos. But I do listen to the radio. Have you? Do you know what's on the radio? Considering it's all owned by one company, ClearChannel the selection is limited to approximately four groups: Classic Rock, Rock - which is really just Pop, Country - which is a bastardization of Rock, and Rap. Flame on if you want, but make sure you've been listening to music for >30 years first.
Now for every station that is in one of these catagories, there are a list of songs (heard of Top 40?) that are played on a regular basis. This frequency is such that by the time I get home on Tuesday I know the lyrics of all the songs that came out on Monday.
Kind of limited on my selections of music that are available through public means of acquisitiion. Meaning, in order to seek music legally, I am limited to very narrow vectors of music.
So, I go to the music stores to seek my wide range of music. Guess what I find there? The same shit that I heard on the way over and now it's running better than $20 a pop. I actually tried to just buy a CD based on a precious small sample I heard once. It lasted about 3 hours before I threw it out. CD music is too expensive to purchase on the basis of, "Maybe this will be good to listen to". Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a better way of doing it.
So, where does that leave us?
The amount of available music today, using public media means of delivery are severely limited to a few narrow vectors.
Of the music that is played, it is played ad nauseum.
Of the music that exists and is not played on public media systems, it is not available by any other means
Music that is sold in stores is a reflection of that same music that is played on the radio.
Conclusion: If you want to explore the world of music, publicly available radio stations and music stores will not provide you with anything better than cattle food. If you want to find more variety, the only place you might find it is in P2P music community. To date, there is no better medium through which to experience a variety of music and find what you really like.
For my tastes, P2P is a great place to borrow music to learn what I like. Then I can make a more targeted attempt to get the music via the internet rather than getting it through the likes of Best Buy (which won't ever happen because they have no selection).
Unfortunately, all this RIAA activity is simply causing me to try new things like:
Drive to work without the chatter of the radio all the time
Live with a much smaller, and better selected group of CD's.
Basically, learn to get by without as much music in my daily life. It's becoming a background noise like Television is to many.
Did you have to fight for getting Linux onto your desktop or was there the cost motivation to push it along?
My impression is that any beaurocratic organization would be loathe to consider anything but Microsoft on the grounds that selecting Microsoft is safe. Examples of this would be trying to use Linux in large companies.
Should I shred all my old games and realize that they will never play?
I probably never will finish Myst or SimCity.
But personally, my vote is for Windows 95b. The b is very important. That was a distribution that actually worked. If they kept the USB add-ons available I might still have on of my machines running it.
I wonder how Windows 95b would run on a 3GHz CPU with 1GB RAM?
A common misconception seems to be that this is indended to be a real mail server or a kind of spam-detection or content filter. It is NOT. spamhole is intended to be a FAKE open relay, and it should never have anything at all to do with legitimate email services. It's akin to a honeypot.
No... you reread the article. I've lost my port 25, which is what I said in the first place.
Additionally, I get hundreds of relay attempts against my box every day and I'm not an open relay. All this will do is provide a certain number of them to get through if you configure it that way. If spammers have time to make 200 SMTP connections against me every day as it is, then they'll be overjoyed to find that they can actually send spam, even if it's only 2. It's more than they get with me today and I don't see them stopping anytime soon. It's all done with bots so who cares?
I see two potential problems with this approach, one more insipid than the other.
Albeit minor, I've now lost my IP port 25 mail server. This is a big problem if I only have one IP address. I would still like to have a mail server, thank you.
Spamhole only works as long as it's population is much less than the population of potential open relays. Spam hole will send ~2 emails free to allow some meathead spammer to verify the relay works. After two, or when rate exceeds some value, you/dev/null the traffic. Now you have a really popular tricksy and you have 50,000 spamholes on the internet. This will delivery 50,000 X 2 free test emails. Why not just use that free 100,000 emails to deliver spam instead.
Haven't you only succeeded in sponsoring a low volume spam relay that not only delivers spam, but at such a low per-boxen rate that no one will ever be the wiser for it.
I see that even on your homepage you mention that a few spam emails might get delivered, but you are acting as a relay for a few spam emails times 50,000. You will eventually get blacklisted via OpenRelay RBL's.
I think if you sit down for a day and just watch your email logs, you will find that a lot of spammers don't bother to test a connection for open relay status. They just test by pushing as much email through it that they can as quickly as possible. Daily I have hundreds of attempting mail relay deliveries.
Because software solutions are too late. The culprit is already at your machine
And hardware solutions have two problems that I've personally seen happen.
If they are found to have a security flaw in them, the company will not make the effort to reveal to the community the need for a security upgrade in every case.
I can install smoothwall/ip-cop for free on a machine I can pick up for free. It comes with the capability of supporting a DMZ/LAN configuration (3 NICs). This costs big $$$ in hardware
There are very distinct advantages to this approach. BTW they also have squid, which hardware devices can't provide.
A severe latent bug in a widely used configuration tool would cause problems installing that software.
If Anaconda, for some reason, puked on some strange feature, then it would affect both RedHat and Debian installations. Now, if it was even more ubuiquitous it might put a halt to the installation process on SuSE and Gentoo as well
They purchase their computer with the software pre-installed. If anything goes wrong with the system, they have to find someone else who can install it for them. That's only required if they forgot their ghost CD.
If Linux came shipped on the computers from Dell, Compaq, et al, then I think a lot of people would start thinking that Linux was easier to install then Windows. I'm pretty sure that something like Libranet today might be considered a ghost CD equivelant.
Just a suggestion, but the next time you can't identify the hardware, flip to another console window (Alt+Ctrl+F2) and type "lspci -vv" and you will have all the information about hardware detection you could want.
And the best part is, you don't have to remove the cover!
But it does not allow for configuration options at time of installation.
You can't use knoppix to install:
RAID
LVM
Any partitions beyond swap and everything-else
I don't like KDE!!! Don't force it on me.
Leave Knoppix where it is, it does a very nice job. But don't make Debian == Knoppix. That will make Debian == Stupid for those who have more advanced requirements for their system.
We like the entry-barrier because it keeps the really stupid fuck-heads out of our world.
Remember how fucked up the news-lists got after AOL unleashed their millions of fucking idiots and retarding asswipes on the world?
They took a perfectly good thing and totally fucked it up beyond all practical usage by making it easy for idiots to get on
You need to think of things in Darwinian Evolutionary terms. People who are too stupid to think for themselves need to stay where they are and not bother those of us who are busy thinking for ourselves. After all, we aren't all descended from Hair Dressers, Phone Hygenists, and Marketing types are we?
But seriously, not that I've blown all my karma points, Linux is getting much easier for people to install. Have you actually tried using Knoppix or installing Libranet?
I hand out a copy of either one whenever anyone mentions any interest in the stuff. I just hand them a Knoppix CD and tell them to check it out. It won't do anything to what's on their hard drive, but it will give them an idea of what is available
Most at least try it. Some like it. Others come back for more.
It depends on the distribution you select and the requirements you have as a user.
You must first recognize that there is a trade-off between the two concepts of Simple to Use and Highly Configurable. I believe that the two are to a large extent, mutually exclusive of each other.
If you want Simple to Use then you can grab something like Knoppix or Libranet and have a Linux installation up and running in a few minutes without no idea what you actually did. However, you will not be able to customize the installation to include a mail server that can do something like:
SMTP + SASL_Authentication over TLS
Amavisd+spamassassin+clamav
LDAP+Kerberos/SSH user authentication
IMAP+SSL and IMAP-SSL(localhost) support
as an example.
If you want to do that, then you have a lot more work to do that a simple newbie and for that matter, most simple newbies don't know what the fuck I just said, unless the heard it in a trade magazine.
I can do all of this stuff using Debian with out much difficulty. Technically I can't even do what I posted in SuSE without going into custom builds on most everything. So even there, they (SuSE) has hit the barrier between Simple to Use and Highly Configurable
Arguably, Microsoft will probably come up with a configuration utility that does all of these things with the click of a button. But there will be at least two problems with their implimentation:
It won't work quite the way you would like it to, so you'll have to compromise.
Their security history has been less than stellar.
Other than that, Microsoft is probably the Leader of the Pack when it comes to Simple to Use. They do it very well and they have their millions of users out there with their installation of XP.
IMHO I think that the Computer User community is divided into approximately three camps:
Casual User
This is the guy who doesn't even know what a hard drive his, he thinks it's rush hour. He has no interest in learning about anything to do with computers but nonetheless is saddled with the requirement that he use email and web browsers as a part of whatever life he chooses to lead.
Super User or Interested User
These are the guys who ask questions about what their computer does, how does it work, can I do this? They will inevitably take up some kind of semi serious coding, even if it's HTML + Javascript. They might even get into C/C++, Perl, Python, dot-net. But they begin to approach the type of user who understands 99% of the questions asked when installing a linus distribution of circa 1995
God Mode User
These are the anointed dudes who can code you into a corner from their PDA. They can come up with shell tricks that hurt your brain and melt your eyeballs. These are the guys who really know their shit and consider installation of Linux-from-Scratch something of a Saturday Night Special
Assuming that my presentation of three types of users isn't completely out of line, then you have to recognize that GodMode Users and Casual Users will probably never be satisfied on the same system. At least not now.
It is entirely possible that these users can converge onto one distribution, but that remains to be seen. If I had to pick one today, I would say it's Debian. Because Knoppix, Libranet, and Lindows are all based on Debian, Debian is the best candidate we have today for meeting the needs of all three of these user-types.
And this is why Perens said we should all back Debian. Because right now, the foundation that is Debian is being used to satisfy the requirements of more types of users in the world than any other distribution out there, bar none. You can argue about exceptions, but the final score will be Debian.
Debian is working on a new installation process for their sarge release. This new debian-installer is greatly improved over the previous methods. I have been playing with it as a net-install and found it to work extremely well.
Installation time, not counting file downloads which don't require my intervention anyways, is on the order of 20 minutes or less
I don't know that Anaconda can bring much of anything to the installation process. When installing debian-installer I found I was asked fewer questions and have a faster set up then I did with SuSE 8.2.
One very important point to make abundantly clear about the debian-installer is that it is not responsible for the configuration of your X-Window environment. This is something that may confuse newbies who are not used to the concept of a non-GUI operating system. All the distro's offer it (non-GUI), but many are assuming a GUI interface is preferred.
Keeping this in mind, the debian-installer does what it is intended to do very well. And it's cross platform too!
Personally, I don't think it's a generally good thing to have more distribution models tied into to only one installation engine. There are advantages with this, but there are always disadvantages to a homogeneous environment.
This isn't an orwellian society move. I think it's actually rather reasonable when you consider everything that they have here.
These GPS requirement apply to independent contractors and not to State Empoloyees.
GPS tracking will only be required while the contractor is actively working on a contracted obligation.
There is a mis-statement in the story that operating GPS telephones is going to be complicated and dangerous. If the phones are configured correctly then can provide GPS data on a Pull basis and not a Push. That is, the base operators can obtain your GPS without your intervention. This is what the GPS-911 feature is all about.
It's reasonable that the Employer have some means of validating that the work they are paying for is indeed getting performed. Is there a more cost effective means that you can think of?
I've lived in a variety of areas where they have contractors for snow removal. In general it's not a very good arrangement in terms of getting the work done. And there is more than enough opportunity for the contractor to give the snow job to the State, City, County that is paying for it.
Then they should be selling a basic installation CD that does everything off the Net and hand out a huge list of who sells RedHat based books.
But they have a greater objective here that you missed.
They are putting their efforts into the conversion and acquisition of the Server Space. Once that is more generally stabilized, then the clients will be easy to bring in and are not a huge money maker for the software sales.
But it all makes money on SUPPORT and that is where they are going. But if you can't bring in a great Server system, the clients won't get very far.
The are not selling to you, they are trying to sell to Big Companies: General Motors, Exxon, US gov -- these people will make them money. Not you.
Why not go one step further and take it past the turing machine answers of, "please enter in the number/word in this image and hit reply"?
Simple set of rules for email and web forms that works like this:
Email comes in and is not from a whitelisted envelope address -- reject it (permanent failure) with a URL in the rejection notice that is returned to the sender
Sender, if they give a rip, goes to the URL and applies for access. Nothing automated, they have to post a reason for contact like: user-list, sex toys, referral...
You personally review and approve/reject each address
results are fired back to the sender
But you'll have a gazillion emails to consider every single day!!!
No you won't. Most of the envelope addresses are repeats, even with mailing lists. Very quickly, you won't have to do much more than just black list.
But you only have to Black List those who actually bother to respond to you and give you an intelligent reply. And you are in charge of who is approved for contact in the future.
Slashdot Mirror
I generally agree with your statements, except for two areas of American Society which gives me the screaming willies.
The first, and most apparent to anyone conscious today, it the potential use, mis-use, and outright abuse that something like this will have under the honarable practice of Marketing. Ever seen Minority Report? The scenes where they tracked advertisements based on the people looking at them freaked me out.
With GPS, as with the recently announced plans for radio signal tracking, they can start gathering demographics on people who are driving past a give billboard and modify the advertisement content to match your assigned pidgeon hole.
Now, even more of the ads you see are directed to you based on someone elses assumptions. Kind of like have a 1x1 pixel following you everywhere you go.
I just realized how fundamentally fucked up this really is. Because all of my advertisement exposure is focused on narrow beam that's all about me, or an assumption thereof, I will be severely restricted on seeing anything that isn't "all about me".
What this leads to is a complete unfamiliarity with anything that isn't about me. This results in an increased Social Intolerance that everyone claims to be so precious to our Melting Pot Society. Hand it to Marketing to practically endorse segregation, but not limited to a Skin-Color level of segregation.
The second aspect of this that is scarey but not as tangible is the rampant abuse we are already forcing upon anyone The Administration wants to label as a Terrorist, Enemy of the State, or Enemy Combatant. Once labeled, you may never get out from under it. I'm pretty certain that this is how McCarthyism got started in the 1950's.
While this may sound far fetched, dramatic, and theatrical, you should probably ask yourself the question, "What exists in our Government which is going to effectively prevent this from happening??
It does not fall under wire tapping statues. In order for it to fall under those statutes the Enforcement Agency must touch or otherwise come into physical contact with your property/premisis. Since they can do this my Cellular protocol communications, they don't need to do more than touch the cellular carriers towers. And that's not yours so you will NEVER know about it.
After all, they can look at your home using an Infra Red Camera and thereby penetrate your property. That's about as grey as it gets. But this one doesn't touch your property -- you have broadcast messages coming out from your cellular phone.
Java is not my first choice in languages to support in a database language. PL would have at least been more adaptable.
Unfortunately with the Enterprise Popularity of Java, thanks to a strong Marketing Campaign by Sun Microsystems, MySQL is following the Corporate line of supporting Java regardless. This is a fine example of what may be a mis-direction of the MySQL developers being pushed into a Support the Corporate Enterprise stuff rather then doing good code on a good platform.
Myth TV
It's better.
So you're they guy I get to blame when it rains on my parade!
Let's start a national push to not purchase any music or movies (tickets, CD, rentals) for the month of July, 2004.
Aren't these the same guys that were so successful in Waco, TX; Ruby Ridge, and don't forget their best success in history -- prohibition!!!
So, when are we actually going to get around to boycotting all radio and music sales in America?
There is no way in hell any of this will ever change until there is a concerted effort to make a point to them. Not buying music will not work.
Sure the music industry took a dump almost to the day they shut down napster. But they blamed it on illegal music sharing, not a fact of the music buyers just lost their single best means of identifying what they want to buy. Why? Because no body told them in clear terms.
If you want to get through to RIAA/MPAA then it's going to be a matter of boycott, boycott, boycott. Make it political, make it public, make it noticable, make it known.
Personally, I do not intend on purchasing a HDTV simply because that media will no longer allow me to record television shows.
I have been so overwhelmed with commercials that it's easier for me to learn how to not watch TV and not listen to the Radio than to put up with the constant babble.
I suggest we all give it a try, but do it all at once under a concerted boycotting effort.
Well... steal is such a harsh word, I prefer something different. But I'll get to that later on.
Why P2P music and more?
When I was in my upper teen and college years I had a great interest in music. I had a very wide range of music interests that covered several types of classical music, rock, jazz, country (a little), and a whole variety of music forms that didn't even have a name yet. I think now they're lumped into the New-Age acid jazz something or other...
But I would learn about this music by cruising halls in the dorms listening to what other people where playing and checking out music collections of friends of mine.
And stuff I liked I could buy at the local store for anywhere from $2 to $10 in circa 1985.
Fast forward 18 years.
I don't live in a dorm anymore so it's hard to hear other peoples stereos. But I do listen to the radio. Have you? Do you know what's on the radio? Considering it's all owned by one company, ClearChannel the selection is limited to approximately four groups: Classic Rock, Rock - which is really just Pop, Country - which is a bastardization of Rock, and Rap. Flame on if you want, but make sure you've been listening to music for >30 years first.
Now for every station that is in one of these catagories, there are a list of songs (heard of Top 40?) that are played on a regular basis. This frequency is such that by the time I get home on Tuesday I know the lyrics of all the songs that came out on Monday.
Kind of limited on my selections of music that are available through public means of acquisitiion. Meaning, in order to seek music legally, I am limited to very narrow vectors of music.
So, I go to the music stores to seek my wide range of music. Guess what I find there? The same shit that I heard on the way over and now it's running better than $20 a pop. I actually tried to just buy a CD based on a precious small sample I heard once. It lasted about 3 hours before I threw it out. CD music is too expensive to purchase on the basis of, "Maybe this will be good to listen to". Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a better way of doing it.
So, where does that leave us?
Conclusion: If you want to explore the world of music, publicly available radio stations and music stores will not provide you with anything better than cattle food. If you want to find more variety, the only place you might find it is in P2P music community. To date, there is no better medium through which to experience a variety of music and find what you really like.
For my tastes, P2P is a great place to borrow music to learn what I like. Then I can make a more targeted attempt to get the music via the internet rather than getting it through the likes of Best Buy (which won't ever happen because they have no selection).
Unfortunately, all this RIAA activity is simply causing me to try new things like:
Did you have to fight for getting Linux onto your desktop or was there the cost motivation to push it along?
My impression is that any beaurocratic organization would be loathe to consider anything but Microsoft on the grounds that selecting Microsoft is safe. Examples of this would be trying to use Linux in large companies.
I'm not sure how I should react to this.
But personally, my vote is for Windows 95b. The b is very important. That was a distribution that actually worked. If they kept the USB add-ons available I might still have on of my machines running it.
I wonder how Windows 95b would run on a 3GHz CPU with 1GB RAM?
No... you reread the article. I've lost my port 25, which is what I said in the first place.
Additionally, I get hundreds of relay attempts against my box every day and I'm not an open relay. All this will do is provide a certain number of them to get through if you configure it that way. If spammers have time to make 200 SMTP connections against me every day as it is, then they'll be overjoyed to find that they can actually send spam, even if it's only 2. It's more than they get with me today and I don't see them stopping anytime soon. It's all done with bots so who cares?
I see two potential problems with this approach, one more insipid than the other.
Haven't you only succeeded in sponsoring a low volume spam relay that not only delivers spam, but at such a low per-boxen rate that no one will ever be the wiser for it.
I see that even on your homepage you mention that a few spam emails might get delivered, but you are acting as a relay for a few spam emails times 50,000. You will eventually get blacklisted via OpenRelay RBL's.
I think if you sit down for a day and just watch your email logs, you will find that a lot of spammers don't bother to test a connection for open relay status. They just test by pushing as much email through it that they can as quickly as possible. Daily I have hundreds of attempting mail relay deliveries.
Since when? Today you don't get Windows with your computer, you get a OEM Ghost image of the hard drive.
They are not the same.
Because software solutions are too late. The culprit is already at your machine
And hardware solutions have two problems that I've personally seen happen.
There are very distinct advantages to this approach. BTW they also have squid, which hardware devices can't provide.
A bug.
A severe latent bug in a widely used configuration tool would cause problems installing that software.
If Anaconda, for some reason, puked on some strange feature, then it would affect both RedHat and Debian installations. Now, if it was even more ubuiquitous it might put a halt to the installation process on SuSE and Gentoo as well
Do you understand my point?
Do you really believe the $JoeAverageWindowsUser has ever installed Windows?
When the guy says, "Dude, yer gettin a Dell" he means it's already preinstalled and configured for that machine.
Most $JoeAverageWindowsUsers don't have any experience with installation of an Operating System.
Most Windows users never install Windows.
They purchase their computer with the software pre-installed. If anything goes wrong with the system, they have to find someone else who can install it for them. That's only required if they forgot their ghost CD.
If Linux came shipped on the computers from Dell, Compaq, et al, then I think a lot of people would start thinking that Linux was easier to install then Windows. I'm pretty sure that something like Libranet today might be considered a ghost CD equivelant.
Just a suggestion, but the next time you can't identify the hardware, flip to another console window (Alt+Ctrl+F2) and type "lspci -vv" and you will have all the information about hardware detection you could want.
And the best part is, you don't have to remove the cover!
Hell No!
I like Knoppix and all, and it's kind of cool.
But it does not allow for configuration options at time of installation.
You can't use knoppix to install:
Leave Knoppix where it is, it does a very nice job. But don't make Debian == Knoppix. That will make Debian == Stupid for those who have more advanced requirements for their system.
We like the entry-barrier because it keeps the really stupid fuck-heads out of our world.
Remember how fucked up the news-lists got after AOL unleashed their millions of fucking idiots and retarding asswipes on the world?
They took a perfectly good thing and totally fucked it up beyond all practical usage by making it easy for idiots to get on
You need to think of things in Darwinian Evolutionary terms. People who are too stupid to think for themselves need to stay where they are and not bother those of us who are busy thinking for ourselves. After all, we aren't all descended from Hair Dressers, Phone Hygenists, and Marketing types are we?
But seriously, not that I've blown all my karma points, Linux is getting much easier for people to install. Have you actually tried using Knoppix or installing Libranet?
I hand out a copy of either one whenever anyone mentions any interest in the stuff. I just hand them a Knoppix CD and tell them to check it out. It won't do anything to what's on their hard drive, but it will give them an idea of what is available
Most at least try it. Some like it. Others come back for more.
I don't think installing Linux is Elitist
It depends on the distribution you select and the requirements you have as a user.
You must first recognize that there is a trade-off between the two concepts of Simple to Use and Highly Configurable. I believe that the two are to a large extent, mutually exclusive of each other.
If you want Simple to Use then you can grab something like Knoppix or Libranet and have a Linux installation up and running in a few minutes without no idea what you actually did. However, you will not be able to customize the installation to include a mail server that can do something like:
- SMTP + SASL_Authentication over TLS
- Amavisd+spamassassin+clamav
- LDAP+Kerberos/SSH user authentication
- IMAP+SSL and IMAP-SSL(localhost) support
as an example.If you want to do that, then you have a lot more work to do that a simple newbie and for that matter, most simple newbies don't know what the fuck I just said, unless the heard it in a trade magazine.
I can do all of this stuff using Debian with out much difficulty. Technically I can't even do what I posted in SuSE without going into custom builds on most everything. So even there, they (SuSE) has hit the barrier between Simple to Use and Highly Configurable
Arguably, Microsoft will probably come up with a configuration utility that does all of these things with the click of a button. But there will be at least two problems with their implimentation:
- It won't work quite the way you would like it to, so you'll have to compromise.
- Their security history has been less than stellar.
Other than that, Microsoft is probably the Leader of the Pack when it comes to Simple to Use. They do it very well and they have their millions of users out there with their installation of XP.IMHO I think that the Computer User community is divided into approximately three camps:
Casual User
Super User or Interested User
God Mode User
Assuming that my presentation of three types of users isn't completely out of line, then you have to recognize that GodMode Users and Casual Users will probably never be satisfied on the same system. At least not now.
It is entirely possible that these users can converge onto one distribution, but that remains to be seen. If I had to pick one today, I would say it's Debian. Because Knoppix, Libranet, and Lindows are all based on Debian, Debian is the best candidate we have today for meeting the needs of all three of these user-types.
And this is why Perens said we should all back Debian. Because right now, the foundation that is Debian is being used to satisfy the requirements of more types of users in the world than any other distribution out there, bar none. You can argue about exceptions, but the final score will be Debian.
Debian is working on a new installation process for their sarge release. This new debian-installer is greatly improved over the previous methods. I have been playing with it as a net-install and found it to work extremely well.
Installation time, not counting file downloads which don't require my intervention anyways, is on the order of 20 minutes or less
I don't know that Anaconda can bring much of anything to the installation process. When installing debian-installer I found I was asked fewer questions and have a faster set up then I did with SuSE 8.2.
One very important point to make abundantly clear about the debian-installer is that it is not responsible for the configuration of your X-Window environment. This is something that may confuse newbies who are not used to the concept of a non-GUI operating system. All the distro's offer it (non-GUI), but many are assuming a GUI interface is preferred.
Keeping this in mind, the debian-installer does what it is intended to do very well. And it's cross platform too!
Personally, I don't think it's a generally good thing to have more distribution models tied into to only one installation engine. There are advantages with this, but there are always disadvantages to a homogeneous environment.
This isn't an orwellian society move. I think it's actually rather reasonable when you consider everything that they have here.
I've lived in a variety of areas where they have contractors for snow removal. In general it's not a very good arrangement in terms of getting the work done. And there is more than enough opportunity for the contractor to give the snow job to the State, City, County that is paying for it.
Then they should be selling a basic installation CD that does everything off the Net and hand out a huge list of who sells RedHat based books.
But they have a greater objective here that you missed.
They are putting their efforts into the conversion and acquisition of the Server Space. Once that is more generally stabilized, then the clients will be easy to bring in and are not a huge money maker for the software sales.
But it all makes money on SUPPORT and that is where they are going. But if you can't bring in a great Server system, the clients won't get very far.
The are not selling to you, they are trying to sell to Big Companies: General Motors, Exxon, US gov -- these people will make them money. Not you.
Why not go one step further and take it past the turing machine answers of, "please enter in the number/word in this image and hit reply"?
Simple set of rules for email and web forms that works like this:
But you'll have a gazillion emails to consider every single day!!!
No you won't. Most of the envelope addresses are repeats, even with mailing lists. Very quickly, you won't have to do much more than just black list.
But you only have to Black List those who actually bother to respond to you and give you an intelligent reply. And you are in charge of who is approved for contact in the future.
What's wrong with this plan?