History is littered with scientists aghast over how there inventions were used to destroy others. Nobel's dynamite is one example. One of the early airplane evangelists hanged himself after seeing the destruction it caused in war.
What is the answer? There is no answer. Anything can be used as a weapon. That paperweight on your desk: weapon. That water cooler in your office: did you see that commercial where it was a fighting robot?
People should be concerned with why their inventions are being commissioned, especially if they're being hired to design/implement weapons. But they should be far less concerned if they develop something with a significant peaceful use that also gets used by the military. Their word processors, their long underwear and even their music players will end up being used by soldiers at some point.
One more example that is near and dear to lots of us is file sharing. Should the inventors of file sharing be held responsible for its unlawful use? The answer to me is clearly they should not. Gnutella in particular was invented for lawful uses. If we don't thing these people should be responsible for the misuse of their product, why would we think free software makers should feel responsible if their software is misused by the military?
Most pro and semi-pro digital cameras use CF. The primary reason for this is the very large amount of storage they can get in CF form factor, especially with a microdrive.
The media you mentioned is strictly for the common folk (not meant as a slure: all my cameras use SD:-)
iPod killer? Why does everyone want an iPod killer? Any rock or baseball bat will do. What I want is a kick-ass MP3 that does basically what an iPod does and only costs a hundred bucks. That's gonna get my attention. No iPod beating necessary.
So, a year later, after many of the modem users had already switched to broadband, 60% of what was left were still perfectly satisfied. Sounds to me like that's actually a shrinking number of users that are satisfied with dial-up, not a constant number.
I didn't mean to imply that I think XP is hard to install if you have pretty standard equipment. But it doesn't compare with put-the-disk-in-and-wait that you get with Knoppix. and when you add in the product activation (you did do product activation didn't you?) then it's still more complex than the 3-4 clicks necessary to install Red Hat.
If you count the fact that patching the system is far more critical than with Red Hat, and is possibly not even a factor with Knoppix, then the situation leans even farther to the Linux camp.
XP is not hard, but Linux doesn't exactly need to "catch up to Windows".
Is anyone else paying attention to the fact that India and China are actually making progress moving from third-world contries to first-world contries? If we think we're just going to keep haveing all the cool jobs while they sit around and make Star Wars figures for us then we are sadly mistaken. We _will_ eventually have to share our good fortune with the rest of the world and it looks like that sharing is going to start...... now.
Let me just point out this simple fact: There will never be a killer app for linux. Any application that is on any merit that runs on Linux will also be available on Solaris, *BSD, and Windows.
Terrific. Seriously. Office being available on Mac didn't hurt Windows at all. I think open source projects on Windows are the best Linux evangelism there is.
It's like language. Learning English took me years, but it's amazingly easy for me now. If you want to put me in a Spanish class it's going to be hard for me, even though the average Spaniard has no trouble with it at all.
Do you know what you need to do to make Spanish easy for me? Move me to Spain. I'll pick it up because I need to pick it up. If you put Linux in a users environment and they don't have another choice, they will learn it.
Aint it the truth. XP is "the easiest OS to install(TM)" only because it comes pre-installed on >90% of all PCs. Linux would be "just as easy(TM)" if it came preinstalled.
You guys are barking up the wrong tree with making installs easy. The easiest OS I've ever personally installed was Knopix and the second easies was Red Hat. XP and Win Server 2003 both required much more effort. What you all need to be focusing on is the user experience after the install. My short list:
1. Adding hardware can be amazingly easy or a massive pain in the ass. There needs to be a third choice. When there are no preinstalled, autodecting drivers for a piece of hardware, the OS needs to do a better job of helping the user resolve the situation.
2. Drag and drop. Yeah, they're getting better at this, but it has a way to go. If you're used to doing it, it's hard to go back.
3. Context sensitive help/rollover help/question-mark help: If you develop on an open source project that has a GUI, why don't you give some really good help to people where they need it? They will love you for it. Even geeks don't know what all that stuff is that you want them to click on.
Parent is correct. SCO spews FUD about GPL not being court-worthy. A court has just respected the GPL. Does SCO have any examples of the GPL being ruled against in court?
I don't get it. Not only is the removable media more expensive but they give you the privelage of buying the "drive" for $400. Didn't they say the removable media has read/write heads built in? What exactly are you paying for?
Well heck, if all they want to do is give me traffic conditions why don't they use the existing special equipment. To paraphrase the Blues Brothers Movie:
"At best, clusters are a loose collection of unmanaged, individual, microprocessor-based computers."
I'm sure Paul Terry is nothing more han a loose collection fo unmanaged, individual human cells too. But I'm sure, with hard work and love, he can become a _real_ boy! Lets all have a hug.
They don't even really need to know anything that great. They just have to be willing to send 6 people up there without anything close to the amount of scientific discovery beforehand that everyone else is counting on paying for.
All they need is:
big-ass rocket decent size living area lots of food (garden) a doctor as part of the crew a crew that accepts the (very substantial) risk a return craft
If they don't test things overly much then they shouldn't have too much of a problem getting that for $3.5 Billion.
No one else is willing to risk 6 lives that recklessly, hence they pay a lot more.
Not trying to be a smartass here, but I gotta ask: You'd take a phyical machine on your internal network and load a vitual machine and put it out on the DMZ and not worry one lick about it? I like VMWare plenty, but when it comes to security, I'd have to assume your host box would have to be secure first. If you have a mix of uses, I'd be pretty surprised if you felt comfortable unless all uses were secure.
I have good luck with a mixture of Virtual PC for Macs and VMWare for Linux.
These are great, but having multiple systems comes in handy. It's always nice to know that that thing you're going to blow up will only affect one machine and your really important stuff is gonna keep hummin' along on the side.
For the stuff I really don't know enough about yet, I like to have a seperate box to play.
I have a tiny little table/desk beside my racks to hold the kyboard/mouse/monitor. I use an under-the-table type keyboard tray. The whole thing is about 30" wide and is a lot more comfortable to work at than standing at a rack. Plus, Racks have a tendency to fill up really quickly once you get 'em so you leave that little bit of extra space open for the good stuff.
BrynM: The RIAA would like it if they could prove that online distribution "doesn't work"...
ebbomega:...as such the users will have zero qualms with moving to cheaper more effective means. Namely: P2P.
It's pretty obvious: P2P proves that online distribution does work. All the record companies could prove is that they're not smart enough to make it work for them.
My Jr. College Macroeconomics proffesor told me a story back in the day. He notice that they upped the price on the crappy hotdogs they were selling in the cafeteria. He asked one of the Cafeteria workers why they had done that, since it didn't look like they were selling too many of them. She said to him, "you must not know much about economics. Since we don't sell very many we have to raise the price to make more money on the ones we sell." He was dumbfounded.
I'm sure he would be just as dumbfounded by this story.
How hard will it be for Chinese nationals to poison each of the major linux applications + the kernel?
And no one would dare do that at a closed source vendor. How on earth could it be possible for, say, a Chinese or Russian person to get a job a Microsoft or Cisco working on an operating system? It would never happen.
How right you are, our closed source software is completely safe!
Come on. These guys have a valid point. When you rely on high-quality closed source vendors like Cisco at least you guarentee you won't have back doors built into your system.
So they are acting as a proxy for the pigopolists. That is at least as bad, if not worse than being a pigopolist in the first place -- aiding and abetting the enemy as it were.
You couldn't tell that from the fact that they sell the "pigopolist's" music openly?
If you don't like the RIAA, the RIAA'a family and anyone who owes the RIAA money then that's your business (and I don't blame you), but don't act like you this is some "big, new surprise" that apple has contracts with these people and they try to follow the requirements of the contracts.
But what if you actually want to copy that video? How long do you wait while hundreds of megs or gigs of data transfer? Do you want to wait less time? Gigabit is great and you'll waist _a lot_ less time waiting for your file transfers.
Lets face it, faster is better. If I could copy a whole DVD in a minute, I'd still prefer the solution the let me copy it in a second.
If you regularly copy videos for editing, gigabit is great. Many homes do this. We do this. With the price so resonable, I can't see why anyone who does video work wouldn't get gigabit.
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History is littered with scientists aghast over how there inventions were used to destroy others. Nobel's dynamite is one example. One of the early airplane evangelists hanged himself after seeing the destruction it caused in war.
What is the answer? There is no answer. Anything can be used as a weapon. That paperweight on your desk: weapon. That water cooler in your office: did you see that commercial where it was a fighting robot?
People should be concerned with why their inventions are being commissioned, especially if they're being hired to design/implement weapons. But they should be far less concerned if they develop something with a significant peaceful use that also gets used by the military. Their word processors, their long underwear and even their music players will end up being used by soldiers at some point.
One more example that is near and dear to lots of us is file sharing. Should the inventors of file sharing be held responsible for its unlawful use? The answer to me is clearly they should not. Gnutella in particular was invented for lawful uses. If we don't thing these people should be responsible for the misuse of their product, why would we think free software makers should feel responsible if their software is misused by the military?
TW
Most pro and semi-pro digital cameras use CF. The primary reason for this is the very large amount of storage they can get in CF form factor, especially with a microdrive.
:-)
The media you mentioned is strictly for the common folk (not meant as a slure: all my cameras use SD
TW
iPod killer? Why does everyone want an iPod killer? Any rock or baseball bat will do. What I want is a kick-ass MP3 that does basically what an iPod does and only costs a hundred bucks. That's gonna get my attention. No iPod beating necessary.
Four Words:
Rio Karma not reviewed
So, a year later, after many of the modem users had already switched to broadband, 60% of what was left were still perfectly satisfied. Sounds to me like that's actually a shrinking number of users that are satisfied with dial-up, not a constant number.
TW
I didn't mean to imply that I think XP is hard to install if you have pretty standard equipment. But it doesn't compare with put-the-disk-in-and-wait that you get with Knoppix. and when you add in the product activation (you did do product activation didn't you?) then it's still more complex than the 3-4 clicks necessary to install Red Hat.
If you count the fact that patching the system is far more critical than with Red Hat, and is possibly not even a factor with Knoppix, then the situation leans even farther to the Linux camp.
XP is not hard, but Linux doesn't exactly need to "catch up to Windows".
TW
Not surprised at all.
Is anyone else paying attention to the fact that India and China are actually making progress moving from third-world contries to first-world contries? If we think we're just going to keep haveing all the cool jobs while they sit around and make Star Wars figures for us then we are sadly mistaken. We _will_ eventually have to share our good fortune with the rest of the world and it looks like that sharing is going to start...... now.
Let me just point out this simple fact: There will never be a killer app for linux.
Any application that is on any merit that runs on Linux will also be available on Solaris, *BSD, and Windows.
Terrific. Seriously. Office being available on Mac didn't hurt Windows at all. I think open source projects on Windows are the best Linux evangelism there is.
TW
You are dead-on.
It's like language. Learning English took me years, but it's amazingly easy for me now. If you want to put me in a Spanish class it's going to be hard for me, even though the average Spaniard has no trouble with it at all.
Do you know what you need to do to make Spanish easy for me? Move me to Spain. I'll pick it up because I need to pick it up. If you put Linux in a users environment and they don't have another choice, they will learn it.
TW
Aint it the truth. XP is "the easiest OS to install(TM)" only because it comes pre-installed on >90% of all PCs. Linux would be "just as easy(TM)" if it came preinstalled.
You guys are barking up the wrong tree with making installs easy. The easiest OS I've ever personally installed was Knopix and the second easies was Red Hat. XP and Win Server 2003 both required much more effort. What you all need to be focusing on is the user experience after the install. My short list:
1. Adding hardware can be amazingly easy or a massive pain in the ass. There needs to be a third choice. When there are no preinstalled, autodecting drivers for a piece of hardware, the OS needs to do a better job of helping the user resolve the situation.
2. Drag and drop. Yeah, they're getting better at this, but it has a way to go. If you're used to doing it, it's hard to go back.
3. Context sensitive help/rollover help/question-mark help: If you develop on an open source project that has a GUI, why don't you give some really good help to people where they need it? They will love you for it. Even geeks don't know what all that stuff is that you want them to click on.
TW
So how about a computer with large HD and "Jukebox" software that lets you burn the free software on demand, but no other software?
TW
Parent is correct. SCO spews FUD about GPL not being court-worthy. A court has just respected the GPL. Does SCO have any examples of the GPL being ruled against in court?
TW
"Why buy it from Iomega for more?"
I don't get it. Not only is the removable media more expensive but they give you the privelage of buying the "drive" for $400. Didn't they say the removable media has read/write heads built in? What exactly are you paying for?
TW
Well heck, if all they want to do is give me traffic conditions why don't they use the existing special equipment. To paraphrase the Blues Brothers Movie:
"We have both kinds, FM _and_ AM!"
TW
"At best, clusters are a loose collection of unmanaged, individual, microprocessor-based computers."
I'm sure Paul Terry is nothing more han a loose collection fo unmanaged, individual human cells too. But I'm sure, with hard work and love, he can become a _real_ boy! Lets all have a hug.
They don't even really need to know anything that great. They just have to be willing to send 6 people up there without anything close to the amount of scientific discovery beforehand that everyone else is counting on paying for.
All they need is:
big-ass rocket
decent size living area
lots of food (garden)
a doctor as part of the crew
a crew that accepts the (very substantial) risk
a return craft
If they don't test things overly much then they shouldn't have too much of a problem getting that for $3.5 Billion.
No one else is willing to risk 6 lives that recklessly, hence they pay a lot more.
TW
Not trying to be a smartass here, but I gotta ask: You'd take a phyical machine on your internal network and load a vitual machine and put it out on the DMZ and not worry one lick about it? I like VMWare plenty, but when it comes to security, I'd have to assume your host box would have to be secure first. If you have a mix of uses, I'd be pretty surprised if you felt comfortable unless all uses were secure.
TW
I have good luck with a mixture of Virtual PC for Macs and VMWare for Linux.
These are great, but having multiple systems comes in handy. It's always nice to know that that thing you're going to blow up will only affect one machine and your really important stuff is gonna keep hummin' along on the side.
For the stuff I really don't know enough about yet, I like to have a seperate box to play.
TW
I have a tiny little table/desk beside my racks to hold the kyboard/mouse/monitor. I use an under-the-table type keyboard tray. The whole thing is about 30" wide and is a lot more comfortable to work at than standing at a rack. Plus, Racks have a tendency to fill up really quickly once you get 'em so you leave that little bit of extra space open for the good stuff.
TW
BrynM: The RIAA would like it if they could prove that online distribution "doesn't work" ...
...as such the users will have zero qualms with moving to cheaper more effective means. Namely: P2P.
ebbomega:
It's pretty obvious: P2P proves that online distribution does work. All the record companies could prove is that they're not smart enough to make it work for them.
My Jr. College Macroeconomics proffesor told me a story back in the day. He notice that they upped the price on the crappy hotdogs they were selling in the cafeteria. He asked one of the Cafeteria workers why they had done that, since it didn't look like they were selling too many of them. She said to him, "you must not know much about economics. Since we don't sell very many we have to raise the price to make more money on the ones we sell." He was dumbfounded.
I'm sure he would be just as dumbfounded by this story.
TW
How hard will it be for Chinese nationals to poison each of the major linux applications + the kernel?
And no one would dare do that at a closed source vendor. How on earth could it be possible for, say, a Chinese or Russian person to get a job a Microsoft or Cisco working on an operating system? It would never happen.
How right you are, our closed source software is completely safe!
Come on. These guys have a valid point. When you rely on high-quality closed source vendors like Cisco at least you guarentee you won't have back doors built into your system.
Oh. Wait. Nevermind.
So they are acting as a proxy for the pigopolists. That is at least as bad, if not worse than being a pigopolist in the first place -- aiding and abetting the enemy as it were.
You couldn't tell that from the fact that they sell the "pigopolist's" music openly?
If you don't like the RIAA, the RIAA'a family and anyone who owes the RIAA money then that's your business (and I don't blame you), but don't act like you this is some "big, new surprise" that apple has contracts with these people and they try to follow the requirements of the contracts.
TW
But what if you actually want to copy that video? How long do you wait while hundreds of megs or gigs of data transfer? Do you want to wait less time? Gigabit is great and you'll waist _a lot_ less time waiting for your file transfers.
Lets face it, faster is better. If I could copy a whole DVD in a minute, I'd still prefer the solution the let me copy it in a second.
TW
If you regularly copy videos for editing, gigabit is great. Many homes do this. We do this. With the price so resonable, I can't see why anyone who does video work wouldn't get gigabit.
TW