A study comes out saying Windows is better than Linux? Question the results
Having read TFA, the "study" consisted of counting security flaws for RH and Windows, and comparing how long it took to issue patches -- from the date of the vulnerability being announced. This is really shallow; we've seen lots of such studies and laughed at them. I note the spin put on this is "One of them, a Linux fan, runs an open-source server at home..." which makes it look like a Linux zealot has been hacked in his own home, while the happy Windows guy is unscathed. In fact, it was all hypothetical, there were no trials of real servers (none mentioned anyway), just "potential" vulnerabilities in default setups.
Nice thought, but the Google cache DOESN'T INCLUDE IMAGES. If you see any, they're from the original site, so (for an article like this, where the picture is vital) you'd save time just waiting for the original page to load. (This rant provoked by the idiots modding it "informative", no disrespect meant to the well-intentioned OP.)
Mirrordot however does usually get both the images and text; if the page isn't brand new, try the Wayback Machine.
With software, though, I could buy it, copy it, and return it, so I have my money AND the product.
If I wanted a copy, it'd be a lot less hassle to just download an ISO from any one of a dozen sources, or buy it on a street corner from my friendly warez vendor for $2.
Allowing the return of copyable goods just doesn't make business sense.
It makes business sense not to pay your staff, to lie in advertising, not to worry about pollution, etc... doesn't make it legal, let alone moral.
I think it's a fairly accurate example. While this will surely be debated on Slashdot, Bill Gates is one of the main reasons why people have personal computers. Ask the general population about computers, and they'll mention MS-DOS or Windows. Look at the proliferation of Windows on the desktop. For Joe User, Bill Gates personifies computing.
You have 2 arguments there: 1st is whether Gates is, in fact, the "main reason" we have PCS on our desks. I submit this is not at all true. The main reason is cheap hardware; for which Intel, and Motorola, etc are responsible. IBM next, for creating a hardware standard. There were a myriad of companies that could have supplied equivalent software. As for what Joe User thinks, well, probably he does think Bill invented the Internet, the mouse, the keyboard, word processing, etc.
Perhaps this will put the "Gore claims to invent the Internet" comments to bed forever, at least on Slashdot.
The average poster can't differentiate between "lose" and "loose".
Al Gore NEVER claimed to have "invented the Internet"
Bill Gates NEVER said "640 k is enough for anyone"
Rick NEVER said "Play it again, Sam"
Holmes NEVER said "Elementary, my dear Watson"...
think this was a show that debuted just over a decade after Blade Runner, during Star Trek The Next Generation's run. I think these are pretty high bars.
Blade Runner is a movie; I thought we were talking about TV. And TNG, well, if you think that was better, or even comparable to B5; we really don't have much in common. You have to turn off all critical faculties to enjoy TNG, and not think at all about how stupid and self-contradictory most of the plots were, and if you try to analyse the "science", your brain would explode.
And it seems to be B5 really prompted the later Treks as well as some of the other science fiction productions to start to really over-emphasize the action components of their storytelling.
B5 was a leader in using CGI on series TV, which allowed reasonably cheap effects on TV budgets. That was coming regardless. Anyway, there was rarely more than a few minutes of this per episode and it was never gratuitous eye candy.
Suddenly DS9 was all about amassing fleets and tedious politics leading up to large scale combat that may or may not ultimately occur. This is what I mean by lowering the bar.
So B5 was to blame because DS9 tried to imitate B5, and couldn't pull it off?
Honestly I feel that babylon 5 really lowered the bar for sci-fi.
Really, you are the only person I've ever heard express that opinion.
I know a lot of people liked it but I think it was a step backwards; an emphasis on ships and energy cannons more than the themes and purpose.
I'm having a hard time believing you ever saw the show. The whole point was "themes and purpose".
I think the more cerebral approach to sci-fi the better, it's supposed to be about ideas and human nature.
And again, I see this completely the opposite. Babylon 5's weaknesses as SF were mostly due to it being about "human nature" rather than pushing the envelope of sci-fi (as distinct from literary SF) -- eg far too many almost-human aliens. But compared to any TV Sci-fi, it was more cerebral -- meaning that Straczynsky rarely made stories that were just soap opera/WWII/Lord of the Rings "IN SPACE", but went to a great effort to make his universe consistent.
(besides there were a lot of hammy performances)
Sometimes OTT, but I think everyone enjoyed Londo and G'Kar's perfomrances.
I don't mean to start a flame war, but I think if science finction's credibility were a car, Babylon 5 put a nasty dent in it's fender.
Okay; if B5 was crap, what was good? Since you said it "lowered the bar", that imples what went before was better. Possibly some anthology shows, but they were almost all earth bound, it's hard to justify the investment in sets, costume, CGI, etc for a one-shot.
In my personal experience, most usenet programs (especially OE) were fine for getting me registered in groups and posting, but I'll be damned if I'm going to retread everything to find one little post I made
OE is the worst possible newsreader. Real newsreaders have filters, scoring etc to make such things easy. And what do you mean by "registered"? Usenet groups don't require registration (though most servers do, if you're not using your ISP's).
Since usenet constitutes a source for binaries, I'm sure the **AA's are dancing in celebration. If you can't go after the source of usenet, then go after the access of usenet.
R T F A. news.individual.net was always a text-only service. Almost everyone who wants usenet binaries has been using pay services for years. The binaries are safe; people pay for porn and MP3s, it's the text groups that are suffering, first from spam, second from idiots posting with Outlook who ignore conventions, third from ISPs who provide spotty service; fourth from motherfuckers who use the Hipcrime tools to create huge amounts of nonsense posts to swamp groups they don't like; finally from Google with their groups interface which gets worse every time they revamp it (eg: allowing replies to ANY post, no matter it's 10 years old).
you have the proportions of fissionable Uranium to inert Uranium backwards.
No I didn't. And neither isotope is inert, the U235 (the "impurity" as I wrote, 0.7% after I looked up the figure) is fissile, the 238 isn't, but with the addition of a neutron becomes Pu239, which is even more so.
nuclear reactors can and are made perfectly safe.
"Can", possibly, but "are", demonstrably not. Anyway my point was not that nuclear power is impossibly dangerous, but that nuclear waste is a whole lot more dangerous than the uranium ore it started out as, in contradiction to the naive (or trollish) post I replied to.
To head it off at the pass: Nuclear power: it came from the ground, we're extracting energy from it, and we put it back in the ground. Fundamentally, that's the same as oil. Except, with oil we put the excess into the air we breathe. Now which is better?
Point 2, that oil may be even more polluting, worth considering.
Point 1, bullshit. U238 with some U235 impurity is mined; 238 has a half life of 4.5 billion years; so it's not terribly radioactive, though not healthy either, mainly from the radon it breaks down to (as accumulates in cellars in some locations with granite containing some uranium). After fission we have a whole lot of short half-life, very active, highly poisonous isotopes. The activity goes down rapidly, but some, like plutonium has a half-life of about 250,000 years, so it will be a problem forever, in human terms. Not to mention the huge amount of low-level waste, from contaminated building materials, etc. Nuclear waste may be manageable, but it's not a trivial problem
Note that it wasn't the poster who got the distinction between trademark and copyright wrong - it was the "editor"
Well, they can't spell, punctuate, check links (note both Hemos' links are identical, and after reading the interview there I failed to see any relevance), notice dupes (even on the same page), they fall for hoaxes (the tsunami fish) or bogus stories (the prophetic random numbers).... basically anything in the conventional meaning of the word "editor" is beyond them. Fuck knows why they insist on being so hands on when they obviously don't give a shit about the quality of the stories, just what might stir up some controversy to pump the impressions up.
If you look at the two links Hemos made in his editorial comments, they're both to the same interview on Slashdot, and there is no mention of copyright or trademarks in the entire fucking article. So, WTF?
From the support perspective, it makes sense. A person using CentOS might call Red Hat for support if they see Red Hat CentOS.
Very many people have OEM versions of MS Windows; and support is not given directly by MS (unless you wish to pay a la carte) but Dell, HP, etc. Anyway, I don't think it was called "Red Hat CentOS". From Distrowatch's description (which I think is usually supplied by the distro itself:
CentOS as a group is a community of open source contributors and users. Typical CentOS users are organisations and individuals that do not need strong commercial support in order to achieve successful operation. CentOS is 100% compatible rebuild of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux, in full compliance with Red Hat's redistribution requirements. CentOS is for people who need an enterprise class operating system stability without the cost of certification and support.
This seems very clear to me.
Also the lawyers seem to be going way over the top. For instance they say "Moreover, our client does not allow others to provide links to our client's web site without permission. Your use of the RED HAT marks while linking to redhat.com suggests that Red Hat somehow sponsors or endorses your company which is false and misleading." -- complete bullshit, I think would be any rational person's view of this.
..not dell, not compaq... why should anyone sell pcs with a OS where u need to after-install such things as the media player? MS knows that no one will do that.
The points are:
the "reduced media" XP will be cheaper (by mandate of EU)
if you don't want WMP preinstlled, you can buy XP without, and pocket the difference, then go home and download the media player of your choice, or leave it out
OEMs will be free to include alternative media players. Back before MS made IE compulsory, it was common to buy an "Internet ready PC" with Windows 3.1 + Netscape + Eudora + etc... preinstalled.
Advantages to users: save money; choice; and vendors cannnot assume everyone has WMP and so will need to supply media in more open formats; DRM hopefully has a spanner thrown in it.
The only people who are put off my the presence of WiMP in windows, probably aren't likey to be buying windows in any form. If it were cheaper, than you might have something.
I believe that it IS supposed to be cheaper, according to the EU. The point being that OEMs can then choose to bundle an alternative player, and pay for it, and still come out with a product the same or lower price than the the "with WMP" version. Or give a price break for those who don't want one at all, or who choose to install it themselves. It's not just anti-MS feeling, but also the recently exposed vulnerability of WMP in allowing files to send you to random websites and load you up with whatever viruses are going.
Cable/Satelite provider with Video on Demand Cost for hbo/showtime/max/starz plus 200 other channels ~$100/month watch 10/20/100 movies a month - $100 buy 10/20/100 DVD's a month - $200/$400/$2000
Apples and oranges I think. There are no more than a dozen movies I'd choose to watch more than 4 times in my life; hardly any TV shows I'd watch more than twice. But there are many music albums I'll listen to several times a year, every year.
This will fail completely in the same way that Circuit City's Divx fiasco failed. People have proven time and time again that they don't want their media to expire. When they buy something, they want to OWN it, not just rent it until MegaMediaCorp decides they want it back.
It'll fail because they're marketing it as a right to listen for a period of time; which makes people immediately think: "I want to keep it forever"; especially as that's what they could do with the original, real, Napster.
Consider this is being brought to you by the same cartel that killed of most forms of Internet broadcasting -- that worked as "radio via IP", people don't expect to keep radio tracks.
All they have to do is just make it so that if you stop paying the subscription you still keep the songs.
How many weeks, or days, after thay start this will a crack for the DRM be released that lets you do just that? Worst case, the analog hole will always let you do it via speaker output->line in.
Why not implement a type of self-censorship by the memebers of the sort that Slashdot uses? There certainly is enough hatemongering going on here, and Slashdot is far from perfect, but it seems to be evolving towards something that sort of works. Thoughts?
Because there is one Slashdot community; but thousands of Orkuts. You choose which to belong to. So for instance, what kind of people would you find in the "All niggers/faggots/Arabs/Catholics/etc. must die" group? Not a normal cross-section of society who might moderate the views expressed.
Actually, I don't see there is a need to censor these groups at all. They exist, the views expressed are repugnant; but they are not broadcast and are accessible only to the invited members of that group. Obviously law enforcement can infiltrate them to see if they're planning anythng in the real world.
(there is no good solution for porting Eudora mailboxes and address books)
In the (old) version I use (3) Eudora uses standard mbox files. I've transferred these from Mac, PC, and Unix (pine) with no problems. (Perhaps ther was one non-standard header line, "From ??? date" that Eudora made.) The address book is a simply organised text file. So unless this has changed drastically, I don't know why you have a problem.
Little differences become big ones when an outside client or editor is the one that is complaining about them.
That doesn't sound like a problem for switching a large organisation (which is the putative subject); if you're a small group or contractor you have to be more accommodating.
plus anyone who wants to send documents outside an organization that's switched.
This has been gone over many times; Star/OO can write MS format files, acceptably for most; or RTF works even better, or HTML, or PDF. Not to mention plain ASCII text; good enough for 90% of correspondence. Actually, just pasting into an email (rather than an attachment, that often could easily have been done as plain text) and sending usually works well, let the mail clients make it compatible. The only feature I need in MSWord is its tracking of edits when I'm working on a large document with someone. As soon as that's sorted though I convert to a more stable format. But that's also off the original subject of a large company "switching".
Slashdot Mirror
Having read TFA, the "study" consisted of counting security flaws for RH and Windows, and comparing how long it took to issue patches -- from the date of the vulnerability being announced. This is really shallow; we've seen lots of such studies and laughed at them. I note the spin put on this is "One of them, a Linux fan, runs an open-source server at home..." which makes it look like a Linux zealot has been hacked in his own home, while the happy Windows guy is unscathed. In fact, it was all hypothetical, there were no trials of real servers (none mentioned anyway), just "potential" vulnerabilities in default setups.
Nice thought, but the Google cache DOESN'T INCLUDE IMAGES. If you see any, they're from the original site, so (for an article like this, where the picture is vital) you'd save time just waiting for the original page to load. (This rant provoked by the idiots modding it "informative", no disrespect meant to the well-intentioned OP.)
Mirrordot however does usually get both the images and text; if the page isn't brand new, try the Wayback Machine.
If I wanted a copy, it'd be a lot less hassle to just download an ISO from any one of a dozen sources, or buy it on a street corner from my friendly warez vendor for $2.
Allowing the return of copyable goods just doesn't make business sense.
It makes business sense not to pay your staff, to lie in advertising, not to worry about pollution, etc... doesn't make it legal, let alone moral.
You have 2 arguments there: 1st is whether Gates is, in fact, the "main reason" we have PCS on our desks. I submit this is not at all true. The main reason is cheap hardware; for which Intel, and Motorola, etc are responsible. IBM next, for creating a hardware standard. There were a myriad of companies that could have supplied equivalent software. As for what Joe User thinks, well, probably he does think Bill invented the Internet, the mouse, the keyboard, word processing, etc.
The average poster can't differentiate between "lose" and "loose".
Al Gore NEVER claimed to have "invented the Internet"
Bill Gates NEVER said "640 k is enough for anyone"
Rick NEVER said "Play it again, Sam"
Holmes NEVER said "Elementary, my dear Watson"...
Blade Runner is a movie; I thought we were talking about TV. And TNG, well, if you think that was better, or even comparable to B5; we really don't have much in common. You have to turn off all critical faculties to enjoy TNG, and not think at all about how stupid and self-contradictory most of the plots were, and if you try to analyse the "science", your brain would explode.
And it seems to be B5 really prompted the later Treks as well as some of the other science fiction productions to start to really over-emphasize the action components of their storytelling.
B5 was a leader in using CGI on series TV, which allowed reasonably cheap effects on TV budgets. That was coming regardless. Anyway, there was rarely more than a few minutes of this per episode and it was never gratuitous eye candy.
Suddenly DS9 was all about amassing fleets and tedious politics leading up to large scale combat that may or may not ultimately occur. This is what I mean by lowering the bar.
So B5 was to blame because DS9 tried to imitate B5, and couldn't pull it off?
Really, you are the only person I've ever heard express that opinion.
I know a lot of people liked it but I think it was a step backwards; an emphasis on ships and energy cannons more than the themes and purpose.
I'm having a hard time believing you ever saw the show. The whole point was "themes and purpose".
I think the more cerebral approach to sci-fi the better, it's supposed to be about ideas and human nature.
And again, I see this completely the opposite. Babylon 5's weaknesses as SF were mostly due to it being about "human nature" rather than pushing the envelope of sci-fi (as distinct from literary SF) -- eg far too many almost-human aliens. But compared to any TV Sci-fi, it was more cerebral -- meaning that Straczynsky rarely made stories that were just soap opera/WWII/Lord of the Rings "IN SPACE", but went to a great effort to make his universe consistent.
(besides there were a lot of hammy performances)
Sometimes OTT, but I think everyone enjoyed Londo and G'Kar's perfomrances.
I don't mean to start a flame war, but I think if science finction's credibility were a car, Babylon 5 put a nasty dent in it's fender.
Okay; if B5 was crap, what was good? Since you said it "lowered the bar", that imples what went before was better. Possibly some anthology shows, but they were almost all earth bound, it's hard to justify the investment in sets, costume, CGI, etc for a one-shot.
Hmm. 110 episodes in one week, about 83 hours.
OE is the worst possible newsreader. Real newsreaders have filters, scoring etc to make such things easy. And what do you mean by "registered"? Usenet groups don't require registration (though most servers do, if you're not using your ISP's).
R T F A. news.individual.net was always a text-only service. Almost everyone who wants usenet binaries has been using pay services for years. The binaries are safe; people pay for porn and MP3s, it's the text groups that are suffering, first from spam, second from idiots posting with Outlook who ignore conventions, third from ISPs who provide spotty service; fourth from motherfuckers who use the Hipcrime tools to create huge amounts of nonsense posts to swamp groups they don't like; finally from Google with their groups interface which gets worse every time they revamp it (eg: allowing replies to ANY post, no matter it's 10 years old).
No I didn't. And neither isotope is inert, the U235 (the "impurity" as I wrote, 0.7% after I looked up the figure) is fissile, the 238 isn't, but with the addition of a neutron becomes Pu239, which is even more so.
nuclear reactors can and are made perfectly safe.
"Can", possibly, but "are", demonstrably not. Anyway my point was not that nuclear power is impossibly dangerous, but that nuclear waste is a whole lot more dangerous than the uranium ore it started out as, in contradiction to the naive (or trollish) post I replied to.
Point 2, that oil may be even more polluting, worth considering.
Point 1, bullshit. U238 with some U235 impurity is mined; 238 has a half life of 4.5 billion years; so it's not terribly radioactive, though not healthy either, mainly from the radon it breaks down to (as accumulates in cellars in some locations with granite containing some uranium). After fission we have a whole lot of short half-life, very active, highly poisonous isotopes. The activity goes down rapidly, but some, like plutonium has a half-life of about 250,000 years, so it will be a problem forever, in human terms. Not to mention the huge amount of low-level waste, from contaminated building materials, etc. Nuclear waste may be manageable, but it's not a trivial problem
What about hobbits, or men, for that matter?
Perhaps you could ask them to explain what their "no linking to Red Hat website" demand is about then. That makes them look like idiots &/or thugs.
Well, they can't spell, punctuate, check links (note both Hemos' links are identical, and after reading the interview there I failed to see any relevance), notice dupes (even on the same page), they fall for hoaxes (the tsunami fish) or bogus stories (the prophetic random numbers) .... basically anything in the conventional meaning of the word "editor" is beyond them. Fuck knows why they insist on being so hands on when they obviously don't give a shit about the quality of the stories, just what might stir up some controversy to pump the impressions up.
If you look at the two links Hemos made in his editorial comments, they're both to the same interview on Slashdot, and there is no mention of copyright or trademarks in the entire fucking article. So, WTF?
Very many people have OEM versions of MS Windows; and support is not given directly by MS (unless you wish to pay a la carte) but Dell, HP, etc. Anyway, I don't think it was called "Red Hat CentOS". From Distrowatch's description (which I think is usually supplied by the distro itself:
This seems very clear to me.Also the lawyers seem to be going way over the top. For instance they say "Moreover, our client does not allow others to provide links to our client's web site without permission. Your use of the RED HAT marks while linking to redhat.com suggests that Red Hat somehow sponsors or endorses your company which is false and misleading." -- complete bullshit, I think would be any rational person's view of this.
Surely slighty observant readers have noticed that most posters have no clue and mix up the concepts indiscriminately.
The points are:
- the "reduced media" XP will be cheaper (by mandate of EU)
- if you don't want WMP preinstlled, you can buy XP without, and pocket the difference, then go home and download the media player of your choice, or leave it out
- OEMs will be free to include alternative media players. Back before MS made IE compulsory, it was common to buy an "Internet ready PC" with Windows 3.1 + Netscape + Eudora + etc... preinstalled.
Advantages to users: save money; choice; and vendors cannnot assume everyone has WMP and so will need to supply media in more open formats; DRM hopefully has a spanner thrown in it.I believe that it IS supposed to be cheaper, according to the EU. The point being that OEMs can then choose to bundle an alternative player, and pay for it, and still come out with a product the same or lower price than the the "with WMP" version. Or give a price break for those who don't want one at all, or who choose to install it themselves. It's not just anti-MS feeling, but also the recently exposed vulnerability of WMP in allowing files to send you to random websites and load you up with whatever viruses are going.
Cable/Satelite provider with Video on Demand
Cost for hbo/showtime/max/starz plus 200 other channels ~$100/month
watch 10/20/100 movies a month - $100
buy 10/20/100 DVD's a month - $200/$400/$2000
Apples and oranges I think. There are no more than a dozen movies I'd choose to watch more than 4 times in my life; hardly any TV shows I'd watch more than twice. But there are many music albums I'll listen to several times a year, every year.
It'll fail because they're marketing it as a right to listen for a period of time; which makes people immediately think: "I want to keep it forever"; especially as that's what they could do with the original, real, Napster.
Consider this is being brought to you by the same cartel that killed of most forms of Internet broadcasting -- that worked as "radio via IP", people don't expect to keep radio tracks.
How many weeks, or days, after thay start this will a crack for the DRM be released that lets you do just that? Worst case, the analog hole will always let you do it via speaker output->line in.
Because there is one Slashdot community; but thousands of Orkuts. You choose which to belong to. So for instance, what kind of people would you find in the "All niggers/faggots/Arabs/Catholics/etc. must die" group? Not a normal cross-section of society who might moderate the views expressed.
Actually, I don't see there is a need to censor these groups at all. They exist, the views expressed are repugnant; but they are not broadcast and are accessible only to the invited members of that group. Obviously law enforcement can infiltrate them to see if they're planning anythng in the real world.
In the (old) version I use (3) Eudora uses standard mbox files. I've transferred these from Mac, PC, and Unix (pine) with no problems. (Perhaps ther was one non-standard header line, "From ??? date" that Eudora made.) The address book is a simply organised text file. So unless this has changed drastically, I don't know why you have a problem.
Little differences become big ones when an outside client or editor is the one that is complaining about them.
That doesn't sound like a problem for switching a large organisation (which is the putative subject); if you're a small group or contractor you have to be more accommodating.
plus anyone who wants to send documents outside an organization that's switched.
This has been gone over many times; Star/OO can write MS format files, acceptably for most; or RTF works even better, or HTML, or PDF. Not to mention plain ASCII text; good enough for 90% of correspondence. Actually, just pasting into an email (rather than an attachment, that often could easily have been done as plain text) and sending usually works well, let the mail clients make it compatible. The only feature I need in MSWord is its tracking of edits when I'm working on a large document with someone. As soon as that's sorted though I convert to a more stable format. But that's also off the original subject of a large company "switching".