but I seriously doubt that this is a "review" per-se... It sounds more like a marketing hype for 1.0, which the last time I checked, is roughly a point release away (a new point release of Firefox goes gold at about once every 4 months).
I did my own mini review of 0.9, however, in contrast with the linked article, I find that there's not much (if any at all) changes in the preferences settings that warrant a point release.
Hopefully, there will be some tweaks and toys added to 0.9 before it goes gold.
Some responsibilities should NEVER be given to ANY corporations at all. Verisign nearly wreck the whole internet for us.
If you thought domain squatters buying mispelled domains and setting popup pages on it was bad... the days of typing lkwdlgkhlhkgwq.com and GETTING Sitefinder was much worse!
How many government trials with political backing don't get implemented?
I would say quite a few, if it was proven massively unpopular, especially when the government is democratically elected.
If they push on with it despite massive protests and so on... chances are they will not get re-elected, and the winning party is almost surely campaigning primarily for the axing of said unpopular program.
I too, can't say if the program will get axed... and if it's based on sincere fact finding and R&D, that the govt says that it will iron out those issues, it's hard to foresee a massive backlash on it.
And like I said earlier, if most people are pissed enough about these issues, it'll be political suicide for him, or his party, to continue shoving this down the Brits' throats.
This sort of things happen all the time when you're using a new technology. Nothing just works as expected the first time round, and it's precisely because of such issues that people innovate.
And, IIRC, the UK is just doing a trial run of this biometric ID card thingy, and the purpose of such trial runs are to catch "gotchas" like this.
I'm not going to rant on the "privacy issues"... heck, my country uses an ID card system as well, and as far as I'm concerned, it eases a lot of trivial processes (loan applications, etc. etc.) and in case something happens to me, at least people will know who I am.
I agree with what you said, which is, in essence... it's not the platform, but the skills required to operate the platform properly.
Heck, I find configuring Apache to be far more easier than IIS (ok, so mod_rewrite and a handful of other obscure modules don't count;))... and I'm an MCSE (and starting to see the point why the more knowledgable techies look down on those four letters).
I also agree that MS has made the proper approach in "cornering" the students, but as far as it goes in Asia (at least), MS did not use this approach... some may argue that it's unnecessary (due to the piracy rate, etc. etc.), but academically Linux (and the BSDs to a lesser degree) are getting more and more exposure.
Seriously, how can it not be? It's not just a base OS, but a complete development platform (agreed that this depends on installation options selected, etc. etc.). Forget about being free, more importantly, it comes without any legal baggages that most universities (and students) would like to avoid by opting for proprietry stuff (not just MS here, but also Sun Solaris or IBM's AIX for example).
I mean, seriously... in high-end enterprises traditionally powered by mainframes and other big iron computers, it's just waiting to be overrun by Linux.
Sure, it can also be the *BSDs, but there's no denying that Linux is where the growth is much, much more rapid.
Within the space of a few years, Linux already has feasible clustering technologies and tremendous kernel-level improvements (as can be seen in the 2.6 series).
Those who can't see "the Linux advantage" in this area are just blind, or choosing to see it as a competitor to their traditional solutions, and not as a potentially profitable and cost-effective tool that it really is.
Amazingly, the site offers files in any format and encoding you choose and rips it on the fly. Notifications by email follow when the songs are ready for download. Sounds a little to good to be true:)
Why does it sound too good to be true? There's no such technology? They can't possibly have all the CD titles that you're interested in?
This could have been done at least three years ago. The USian companies missed out not because of technological factors, but their stupid laws and of course, the paranoid state of mind of the RIAA.
This could have been "the" way to listen to music in this age and time... but noooo, somehow you MUST stick DRM in the files and whatnot. When will the relevant bodies realize that the more you restrict the consumers, the more they will look for an easier (and not necessarily legal) alternative.
Slackware is _not_ a souce based distro. It uses it's own packages (commonly referred to as slackpacks) which are actually plain tarballs (.tgz). It even pre-dates RPMs (possibly even debs, but don't take my word on that... I'm no Linux historian).
If you are a manager of a fund heavily invested in MS, or an individual investor, when does this news begin to worry you.
If it's not my money, then I'd take the least painful solution as long as it's within budget, be it Microsoft or Open Source. So in a sense, it shouldn't worry you, at least too much.
At least now we'll have viable competition, and IMHO this is almost always a Good Thing(TM).
OK, I get the point... My post was referring to using WMP as a standalone player not an embedded media MIME file handler for IE.
But I still stand on the "most people" statement. Audio player? Many still swear that WinAmp is the be all and end all audio player. Video player? That DivX player is not half bad.
And another thing, you mentioned that WMP works fine... I do agree that to a minimal extent, it does... it plays MPEGs, MP3s and some other common media files as well as MS propietry formats.
But you also mentioned that you'll need the appropriate codecs for some formats. And many of the companies that own these formats will supply not only a codec but a default player as well (Real, DivX comes to mind)... and "most people" will just accept the default settings for these applications, which also plays all the standard media files.
And I'm not referring most people as "Slashdot geeks who knows what they're doing"... I'm referring to common people that you liaise with on a daily basis at your workplace or school.
First of all, MS can't be saying that it's WMP that's making Windows superior? You've got to be kidding me. Most people don't even use that app for their multimedia needs.
But anyway, I'm not against them shipping a more inferior product... this might be the beginning of the opportunity that alternative OSs have been waiting for.
If AMD is 100% owned by you and only produces processors for you, then I too would like to know why! But that's not the case now is it? In the real world, if you can come up with the goods, then we sure as hell would find ways to use it to its full potential.
I've used all three OS you've mentioned in your post... I too am license-neutral, I just couldn't give a damn how you choose to license it, I just want to use it as is...
For the sake of the argument, I'm going to demonstrate what I think of the Security to Simplicity ratio of the 3 OSs.
Windows Secure ========0= Simple Linux Secure =====0==== Simple BSD Secure =0======== Simple
So there you have it... Let's say I have only a handful of MCSE monkeys to deploy and some bucks to spare, then I'd go with Windows, regardless of how I feel about the OS personally.
If I have a bunch of Unix has-beens, then I might as well stick with what they know most, and that would be BSDs.
If I had a bunch of RHCE monkeys, then of course I would be better off with Linux solutions.
It's the same technology-wise. How do you measure technology? I mean if you're talking about architecture-specific optimizations then the open source solutions should be better than Windows because at least we can decide on that... and BTW, what processor is Windows XP optimized for anyway?
And did you even google for your so-called articles of proof? If you did you can actually see that there's no concise answer, like I said it all depends... Only you can be the judge of what technology works for you... no matter how advanced it's pimped out to be. In fact, that is the best way in which to evaluate these OSs, because published findings can be biased in the direction of money, zealotry, or other agendas.
Actually all this is just a play on numbers and percentages... Truth be told, it doesn't really matter for the home users or those not operating a web server.
BTW, are you (article submitter) really that fickle? Then I'll try to find some articles stating that x% of Windows users are now migrating to GNU/Hurd... I'll sure as hell would like to see you jump that ship!
If I remember correctly, after installing redhat 9 the other day, 2 hrs of d/ling for patchs commenced to update all the packages on it.
You don't need to update everything on your box. Actually in the first place you shouldn't install apps/services you don't actually need. This is something which I can't do in Windows... eg. IE and Outlook.
Another thing I dislike about "updates" in Windows is the description of the flaw/problem that a particular patch/service pack/update is supposed to fix. If I'm going to run a binary to perform something to my OS, I should damn well be inform what this thing fixes... not some marketing talk on making my Windows Experience more secure.
How much worse? Let's see... after installing SP1 on XP, I can now (seemingly) remove IE and Outlook. But wtf... reading more closely I see that all it does is actually just removing the shortcuts to these two apps. The executables are still there! Run Windows Update and hmmm... some patches for IE and Outlook... but I don't even use them!
Yes, the actual OS itself isnt to blame in this circumstance but don't these tools come stock with most *nix distros?
OK, if you insist on playing the blame game... OK, sure, blame the toolmakers/app-writers... but in the case of Windows, aren't the toolmakers Microsoft as well? So what's wrong with blaming Microsoft? They are responsible for it too... and thus should take all the blame.
Slashdot Mirror
but I seriously doubt that this is a "review" per-se... It sounds more like a marketing hype for 1.0, which the last time I checked, is roughly a point release away (a new point release of Firefox goes gold at about once every 4 months).
I did my own mini review of 0.9, however, in contrast with the linked article, I find that there's not much (if any at all) changes in the preferences settings that warrant a point release.
Hopefully, there will be some tweaks and toys added to 0.9 before it goes gold.
Some responsibilities should NEVER be given to ANY corporations at all. Verisign nearly wreck the whole internet for us.
If you thought domain squatters buying mispelled domains and setting popup pages on it was bad... the days of typing lkwdlgkhlhkgwq.com and GETTING Sitefinder was much worse!
Thank God it was quite shortlived though.
I would say quite a few, if it was proven massively unpopular, especially when the government is democratically elected.
If they push on with it despite massive protests and so on... chances are they will not get re-elected, and the winning party is almost surely campaigning primarily for the axing of said unpopular program.
I too, can't say if the program will get axed... and if it's based on sincere fact finding and R&D, that the govt says that it will iron out those issues, it's hard to foresee a massive backlash on it.
And like I said earlier, if most people are pissed enough about these issues, it'll be political suicide for him, or his party, to continue shoving this down the Brits' throats.
This sort of things happen all the time when you're using a new technology. Nothing just works as expected the first time round, and it's precisely because of such issues that people innovate.
And, IIRC, the UK is just doing a trial run of this biometric ID card thingy, and the purpose of such trial runs are to catch "gotchas" like this.
I'm not going to rant on the "privacy issues"... heck, my country uses an ID card system as well, and as far as I'm concerned, it eases a lot of trivial processes (loan applications, etc. etc.) and in case something happens to me, at least people will know who I am.
I agree with what you said, which is, in essence... it's not the platform, but the skills required to operate the platform properly.
;))... and I'm an MCSE (and starting to see the point why the more knowledgable techies look down on those four letters).
Heck, I find configuring Apache to be far more easier than IIS (ok, so mod_rewrite and a handful of other obscure modules don't count
I also agree that MS has made the proper approach in "cornering" the students, but as far as it goes in Asia (at least), MS did not use this approach... some may argue that it's unnecessary (due to the piracy rate, etc. etc.), but academically Linux (and the BSDs to a lesser degree) are getting more and more exposure.
Seriously, how can it not be? It's not just a base OS, but a complete development platform (agreed that this depends on installation options selected, etc. etc.). Forget about being free, more importantly, it comes without any legal baggages that most universities (and students) would like to avoid by opting for proprietry stuff (not just MS here, but also Sun Solaris or IBM's AIX for example).
If it was yet another "corporate desktop Linux" bullpaganda, I wouldn't have bothered clicking on the article link...
But FINALLY, it's an article about where Linux should be the OS of choice, and not where the desktop zealots think it should be.
You did RTFA before posting now, did you?
I mean, seriously... in high-end enterprises traditionally powered by mainframes and other big iron computers, it's just waiting to be overrun by Linux.
Sure, it can also be the *BSDs, but there's no denying that Linux is where the growth is much, much more rapid.
Within the space of a few years, Linux already has feasible clustering technologies and tremendous kernel-level improvements (as can be seen in the 2.6 series).
Those who can't see "the Linux advantage" in this area are just blind, or choosing to see it as a competitor to their traditional solutions, and not as a potentially profitable and cost-effective tool that it really is.
Why does it sound too good to be true? There's no such technology? They can't possibly have all the CD titles that you're interested in?
This could have been done at least three years ago. The USian companies missed out not because of technological factors, but their stupid laws and of course, the paranoid state of mind of the RIAA.
This could have been "the" way to listen to music in this age and time... but noooo, somehow you MUST stick DRM in the files and whatnot. When will the relevant bodies realize that the more you restrict the consumers, the more they will look for an easier (and not necessarily legal) alternative.
for an "outsourced American IT jobs" category so I can fucking filter it out!
Anyway, boohoohoo to you. Welcome to Capitalism 101... proper companies will cut costs and sell more. That's the way it works, IT industry or not.
BTW... go Indians! Do unto the White Men as they did to your ancestors on the Indian's rightful land!
You do Sitting Bull proud.
It'll now be much more easier to find candidates for the next Bumfights vid.
And the marketing slogan for it is...
"Inside Intel!"
continously looping each OS within each other yet?
:)
ie. Run coLinux inside Windows and then running bosch (or at least wine) running Windows... and repeat the process.
It'd be nice to see whether the end result is a kernel panic or a BSOD
It's confirmed... MS will never ever get any serious court orders in the US.
The email quota prooves it all... and "normal" users get what, 3, 5MBs?
Slight misconception in your post.
Slackware is _not_ a souce based distro. It uses it's own packages (commonly referred to as slackpacks) which are actually plain tarballs (.tgz). It even pre-dates RPMs (possibly even debs, but don't take my word on that... I'm no Linux historian).
If you want to play the typical stereotype... please at least get it right.
:)
It's the Japanese who has problems pronouncing L's... and the Chinese have problems pronouncing R's.
The Westerners on the other hand, can pronounce almost anything, but will never ever get facts right
I can only recommend e107 for a powerful yet user-friendly non-enterprise CMS solution.
It also has a Coppermine gallery plugin which works very well.
At least now we'll have viable competition, and IMHO this is almost always a Good Thing(TM).
How the f*** should I know... did I say I'm European?
OK, I get the point... My post was referring to using WMP as a standalone player not an embedded media MIME file handler for IE.
But I still stand on the "most people" statement. Audio player? Many still swear that WinAmp is the be all and end all audio player. Video player? That DivX player is not half bad.
And another thing, you mentioned that WMP works fine... I do agree that to a minimal extent, it does... it plays MPEGs, MP3s and some other common media files as well as MS propietry formats.
But you also mentioned that you'll need the appropriate codecs for some formats. And many of the companies that own these formats will supply not only a codec but a default player as well (Real, DivX comes to mind)... and "most people" will just accept the default settings for these applications, which also plays all the standard media files.
And I'm not referring most people as "Slashdot geeks who knows what they're doing"... I'm referring to common people that you liaise with on a daily basis at your workplace or school.
First of all, MS can't be saying that it's WMP that's making Windows superior? You've got to be kidding me. Most people don't even use that app for their multimedia needs.
But anyway, I'm not against them shipping a more inferior product... this might be the beginning of the opportunity that alternative OSs have been waiting for.
First Europe... then the world!
If AMD is 100% owned by you and only produces processors for you, then I too would like to know why! But that's not the case now is it? In the real world, if you can come up with the goods, then we sure as hell would find ways to use it to its full potential.
I've used all three OS you've mentioned in your post... I too am license-neutral, I just couldn't give a damn how you choose to license it, I just want to use it as is...
For the sake of the argument, I'm going to demonstrate what I think of the Security to Simplicity ratio of the 3 OSs.
Windows Secure ========0= Simple
Linux Secure =====0==== Simple
BSD Secure =0======== Simple
So there you have it... Let's say I have only a handful of MCSE monkeys to deploy and some bucks to spare, then I'd go with Windows, regardless of how I feel about the OS personally.
If I have a bunch of Unix has-beens, then I might as well stick with what they know most, and that would be BSDs.
If I had a bunch of RHCE monkeys, then of course I would be better off with Linux solutions.
It's the same technology-wise. How do you measure technology? I mean if you're talking about architecture-specific optimizations then the open source solutions should be better than Windows because at least we can decide on that... and BTW, what processor is Windows XP optimized for anyway?
And did you even google for your so-called articles of proof? If you did you can actually see that there's no concise answer, like I said it all depends... Only you can be the judge of what technology works for you... no matter how advanced it's pimped out to be. In fact, that is the best way in which to evaluate these OSs, because published findings can be biased in the direction of money, zealotry, or other agendas.
Non of them is totally inferior or superior to each other in the sense of the word. Just like 99% of things in life, it all depends.
Actually all this is just a play on numbers and percentages... Truth be told, it doesn't really matter for the home users or those not operating a web server.
BTW, are you (article submitter) really that fickle? Then I'll try to find some articles stating that x% of Windows users are now migrating to GNU/Hurd... I'll sure as hell would like to see you jump that ship!
You don't need to update everything on your box. Actually in the first place you shouldn't install apps/services you don't actually need. This is something which I can't do in Windows... eg. IE and Outlook.
Another thing I dislike about "updates" in Windows is the description of the flaw/problem that a particular patch/service pack/update is supposed to fix. If I'm going to run a binary to perform something to my OS, I should damn well be inform what this thing fixes... not some marketing talk on making my Windows Experience more secure.
How much worse? Let's see... after installing SP1 on XP, I can now (seemingly) remove IE and Outlook. But wtf... reading more closely I see that all it does is actually just removing the shortcuts to these two apps. The executables are still there! Run Windows Update and hmmm... some patches for IE and Outlook... but I don't even use them!
OK, if you insist on playing the blame game... OK, sure, blame the toolmakers/app-writers... but in the case of Windows, aren't the toolmakers Microsoft as well? So what's wrong with blaming Microsoft? They are responsible for it too... and thus should take all the blame.