Quite frankly, with the current volumes of spam it is impractical to try and run a mailserver for more than a few thousand users without some form of blocklist or having extremely deep pockets. The problem with SpamAssasin is that it actually increases the load on ones mail servers - a variety of checks have to be run on every single mail. By contrast, using a blocklist means that spam can be rejected before the DATA stage, reducing the load on the server, and the bandwidth consumed by spam.
I'd rather just say "no CC/BCC lists above 30 people" and make it a part of the spec. A maximum bandwidth usage amplification of 30:1 means that if network usage *really is* that expensive, the spammer gets screwed an acceptable percentage of that amount (or ISP who is letting spammers send gigs and gigs of email).
That takes care of bandwidth concerns on the server side.
The question then is the cost of "human time" of skimming through it, which affects the *client*, not the mail server operator. I claim that client-side filtering is currently the best way (as opposed to server-side blocklists or filters) to handle this -- it lets people set their *own threshold* on what they want to see and use whatever filters they like best. I happen to be partial to SpamAssassin, but folks can use whatever is best for them.
Also, *advisory* server-side filtering may be a useful service for ISPs to provide, where emails are tagged with "POTENTIALLY-SPAM" or similar, instead of just dropped. Then, if the client desires, he can filter in whatever manner he so prefers.
Frankly, in the end, we're going to wind up with whitelisting anyway, though. Other approaches just leave things open to attack. My only concern is that the whitelisting return an appropriate "can't send" response, rather than something hacked up that just bounces the mail.
Spamassassin has Baysian filtering, in addition to the extensive ruleset it uses.
It can also optionally "autolearn", where decisions about what is spam based on existing knowledge can be used to provide automatic learning input for the Baysian system for future emails.
Ahh, I see. Everyone in the world must jump through the painful, non-functioning hoops of whitelisting, just because you don't want the minor inconvenience of relaying.
No. If IP lists really were an effective solution to spam, then you wouldn't hear a peep out of me.
However, IP listing is an extremely poor solution to the problem. It takes an approach that is simply not tenable in the security world -- attempting to secure *everyone else's system* rather than your own (you have a list of evil servers, and then trust all the non-evil servers to allow in mail), and then letting the system break if any of these trusted systems are successfully used by spammers. *That* is my problem with it. IP lists cannot possibly be a workable long-term solution to spam. The sort of people that promote IP listing are either fanatical antispam folks to the point of ignoring reason or have no security experience. In the meantime, they destroy the peer-to-peer nature of the Internet and produce network headaches for people to deal with.
Lists of IPs for "antispam" purposes, drive me bananas. I normally run an MTA on my machine, and don't see any reason to relay mail (slower notification of problems, have to remember to change the relay whenever moving from network to network, etc), and there are groups like the DUL that just block swaths of IPs from sending email.
I hate getting spam too, but not as much as I get screwed over by stupid antispam "fixes".
I'm all for antispammers and spammers beating each other up. They both suck.
This whole thing is just a massive upheaval over the fact that Free Email Everywhere Just Doesn't Work. It's whitelists sooner or later, anyway.
I would like to note that this does *not* merely affect the kernel, as the earlier poster (inadvertently) claimed. This affects the entire GNU/Linux distribution, including FSF-owned libraries such as glibc (thereby invoking the we-go-after-people-who-steal-software-we-own policy of the FSF...FWIW with IBM already in the game). As I am a contributor to a number of software packages that are commonly distributed with Linux, I would be interested if anyone could post/link to a list of their software packages. I believe that SCO may be infringing on my own copyrights.
Okay, fine. Tell me what's wrong with the suggestion.
There are automated tools that provide subsets of such a service.
There are (extremely expensive) services that provide such services by physically sending people out to locations to perform essentially the same task each time.
Where is the bad assumption?
Flying cars require technological sophistication, require a *market* and a set of recognizable benefits other than novelty, and have significant social barriers (look how dangerous people are with normal old ground-crawling cars and imagine them flying wherever they want).
I'm willing to recognize problems with such a proposal, but you'll have to air your objection for me to do so.
Don't know. But this is the problem : such a program is not obvious.
Oh. Looks like I had the name wrong. There's some general-media plugin that handles all sorts of media types and hands them off to helper apps. Well, here, this'll do the same thing here.
I never use it, because I *hate* animation on web pages. The first thing I do when using a browser on any OS is disable animated GIFs, Flash, movies, everything possible.
Rosegarden Just one ? And how can this reach Reason's level ?
I don't know whether it does -- I'm not a musician. It has some snazzy screenshots with music notes and whatnot, and it seems to be popular with creative types on Linux. If you want more music software packages, try PlanetCCRMA.
No, once again I am afraid the tools you mention are not even close to IB's level.
I'm not a spreadsheet nut (a lot of spreadsheet stuff is easier to do with a regular programming language if you code a lot, IMHO). However, it does everything I've ever needed to do with Excel (which, to be fair, isn't a lot). There might well be major missing functionality that I wouldn't know about.
This one looks seriously good.
I've only used Illustrator briefly, but I remember it having a lot more palettes than Sodipodi, and fancy (not on the level of 2d CAD, but not bad) alignment functionality, and a lot of basic vector graphics functionality that Sodipodi doesn't have (like text-on-a-path). Ironically enough, the app here that you were most positive about is the one that I feel has the most glaring lacks between its closed source cousin (though it's still quite young compared to cousins like the GIMP...reminds me of the GIMP at around version 1).:-)
I would point out that Linux distros tend to make it pretty easy (well, automatic) to do the things that used to be a royal pain in the ass just a couple of years ago (get a GUI up, set up a printer, set up a webserver). If you want to poke at the guts of things and tweak things, you still can, but you're not generally required to understand everything before setting it up, as you once did.
But, hell. I like people using OS X. It breaks the Microsoft monopoly, and I think that if people once again have to compete on quality, the whole computer world will get significantly better. It supports POSIX apps, so encourages development of apps that run on both systems and greater portability, instead of things tied to Win32 (or.NET or whatever). It is at least *somewhat* open, something that would have been inconceivable for Apple a few years ago.
Printing, clipboarding, decent-quality video drivers, fonts, app consistency - these are all still major issues that impact the further deployment of Linux on the desktop.
? I would have agreed with you two years ago, but the Qt screwup WRT clipboarding is fixed. Printing support is excellent (RH even includes a little "click-to-setup-printer" icon). Video drivers...well, I'm not sure what the state of modern Nvidia and ATI cards are, but I own a Matrox G450, and support is excellent. Fonts used to be a problem, but Bitstream donated a set of very nice fonts to the Linux world. UI consistency isn't perfect (RH tries), but then again, the Mac classic holy grail of OS-wide UI consistency died an unpleasant death when OS X came out.
If I ever buy a laptop, there is no doubt in my mind that it will be a Mac running OS X.
I know a lot of people like this -- three Linux people that run Linux on the workstation, Linux on the server, but love their Powerbook.
Me, I'd take a Lifebook with Linux, but that's just me.
Most Linux folks are hackers to some degree. They like poking away at stuff and getting it to work, and some of the challenge is seeing how cheaply everything can be done.
You can get an entirely legal nice server/graphics editing setup/rendering box running on hardware being thrown out without paying for any drivers or apps and essentially drop nothing.
Windows is about Microsoft sticking it to you (just on strength of the monopoly), and then some vague competition.
Apple sells systems that you pay a heavy premium on for a preconfigured environment.
It is usually possible to tell there's something wrong with a post when someone starts ranting and raving about GIMP. Yep, it's free, and no, it's no patch on Photoshop. In fact, GraphicConverter is in many ways better than GIMP.
It entirely depends on what you're doing with it. It's true that it's not a replacement -- GIMP is designed for output intended for computer display, and makes a very poor publishing tool. For example, I'd like to see you do this with Photoshop.
How about, say, Final Cut Pro? Hmm, I feel like a game of Diablo. Oh, what's that? You can only run it in emulation?
The point is, it comes down to quality, not quantity. Professionals use professional tools, not some I'm-a-CS-graduate-and-know-how-to-program-stuff.
Both you and the original poster are full of it (on opposite sides of the fence). The Mac has a number of content creation programs and games that Linux does not, and the 13k packages claim is pretty irrelevant. The "professional tools" claim you're making is also ridiculous. I'm a professional software developer. I am *far* better served by Linux than Mac OS X. A publishing professional would probably be *far* better served by Windows or Mac OS X than Linux. The Mac OS is hardly "more professional" than Linux.
1. It has the honour of being the first OS to do this, I suppose?
No, but the Mac OS is designed around a binary distribution mechanism. Linux is designed around a source distribution mechanism. If the FSF decides to change glibc so that all the functions now have a tiz_taz_ prefix and take an extra parameter, *then* Linux folks would be ticked off.
2. Can't make omelette without cracking a few eggs etc. GCC 3.3 broke shit. Get over it.
GCC 3.3 broke the C++ ABI. Aside from the fact that essentially nobody tries to package Linux binaries across distributions (or releases of distributions) because the library set available differs, much less the ABI, C++ is a tiny minority on Linux, nothing like it is on Windows. The main place C++ is used is in the Qt/KDE project. Outside of that, C is by far the dominant language. Besides all this, Linux runs on a ton of platforms (unlike OS X), and you can't package a binary that runs on ARM, PowerPC, and x86.
Yeah, and with every point release adds more features than Linux gets in a full digit release.
I'm going to assume that you mean "time" rather than "major point releases", since either one could do a major point release each day, and still be producing more goodies, though less per release. If you're talking about the kernel, ridiculous. If you're talking about a distro, I'm very, very, very doubtful. A Linux distro has *far* more developers working on software in it than a Mac OS CD does.
It's also the reason so many people continually pine for OS X on Intel. The hardware's kinda cool, but the software kicks hind tit.
Bullshit. Apple is a hardware company. They make their money with hardware. Their hardware is competitive with the best of the best out there. Their software (*currently*, not back in the golden days) is decidedly not competitive.
"Down hill". Hmm, I can think of all the/. editors, John Carmack, Tim O'Reilly, that cool Indian dude with the number 3 supercomputer in the world, the ars technica editors... guess what? they all think you're wrong!
The stability of the OS has improved since OS 8. I think the UI has taken a hit -- and this has traditionally been Apple's biggest selling point.
Linux certainly has it's place in areas where organisations can develop a full system, but where you want to go out and buy something and have it all work, intuitively, and stable-y, and without spyware, and without MS groping your HD, you go buy a mac. Simple.
While there's something to what you say, when was the last time you were using Linux? I remember installing Red Hat 5.2 on a computer, and remember installing Red Hat 9 on a computer, and the difference is...quite significant.:-)
Inconsistent sets of widget sets, reminicent of MS Office/IE widgets -- think the brushed metal/Aqua widget sets. The screen-space-eating dock (that moves when you roll the mouse pointer over it -- shame on Apple for violating their beautiful classic HIG). Titlebar buttons that can be distinguished only by color (disadvantaging the colorblind user and specifically violating classic HIG rules) containing functionality symbols that are only visible when the cursor is over them (violating HIG rules stating that the user should be free to move the cursor wherever he likes without modifying state). The oversized pictures that eat screen space. The loss of the intuitive and simple Apple menu.
Sure, there are a lot of visual effects. OS X looks like Enlightenment 1.0 will, if rasterman ever makes it. But, you know what? I never liked Enlightenment much. It was good for showing off your purty interface, but not nearly as nice to use as more spartan WMs like sawfish.
I admit I'm kind of curious what "hard things [are made] easier" on Linux that aren't also made easier under MacOS X? What impossible things are made possible that aren't that way under MacOS X?
The default environment on most Linux boxes is more in line with the traditional UNIX environment. You spend most of your time in an interface that's essentially a programming environment.
MacOS has a CLI, but you don't get as many CLI tools (out of box -- fink and Cygwin help on MacOS and Windows). Software on Linux/BSD generally isn't too worried about having users specify device names, makes sure to use text-based config files, and doesn't require you to use a GUI.
Just read the Constitution (either the Canadian or American). Neither one provides for "privacy rights" for companies, just for individuals.
I'm not familiar with the Canadian constitution, but the American one does not grant privacy rights.
For an on-topic example (since we're talking about someone being fired in the original article), normally, a company has to give notice and/or have due cause to terminate employment. You as an individual can just up and quit any time, without being required to provide a reason.
In general, this is not true. Besides which, employment contracts frequently state explicitly that either member can terminate the relationship at will -- my own, for example, says this.
Re:Give whatever you feel they deserve.
on
Christmas Bonuses?
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Just don't give them gifts that are directly related to their daily work - it'll seem cheap (ie, never give your wife a vacuum cleaner as a 'gift', under pain of death)
I'm dubious. Suppose she normally does all the vacuuming and you give her one of those robotic vacuum things (well, maybe in a couple of years when they're smarter). I mean, hell, if *I* was vacuuming, I'd *damn* well appreciate having a significant amount of labor removed from my life.
I hate to say it, but you're more than a little rattling off US-based media output, which carries a very heavy US slant.
Yes, after the severe PR issues in the original Gulf War where the US deliberately wiped out as much civilian infrastructure as possible, they were much more careful in the last round of bombing.
The mainstream Iraqis are on our side.
No. The mainstream Iraqis don't necessarily want a harsh dictator running things, but neither do they want to be occupied by the same country that's been blockading them, restricting their air service, and bombing them for years. It's not an either/or proposition.
Heck, one of them married an American soldier.
You *definitely* go for the whole American media thing, don't you?
The *only* poll (loudly trumpeted) that I've seen that vaguely supported the US was one put out by the occupational authority (and how would *you* vote if soldiers from an occupying nation showed up at your door and asked you to fill out a form about them, eh?) that claimed that a majority of residents of Baghdad felt that they were better off after Saddam's overthrow than before. Sure as hell doesn't mean that they want continuing occupation.
Now, foreign Saddam-loving terrorists have come in and keep blowing up Iraq's infrastructure while the United States is trying to fix it... at its own expense, paid with American blood and money.
American blood tends to be armed and behind guarded barriers. Remember that the first set of obstacles into the occupational authority's compound is through a checkpoint manned by hired unarmed Iraqis -- ironically enough, the US uses human shields just as much as Saddam did.
As for American money, Iraqi oil was supposed to be taken and used to pay for reconstruction, giving the US control of a lucrative nation with little cost. As it happened, massive damage to national infrastructure caused by a combination of a decade of war and blocked trade (by the US), in addition to imperfect management by the Hussein regime, has meant that oil won't begin to cover the costs for years to come.
The US occupation in Iraq was not the freedom-bringing thing that many American citizens think it is, bringing glorious democracy to the Iraqi people. The occupational authority does not allow the basic rights that the American people enjoy, such as that of free press. Arabic media that criticized the occupational authority was banned from operating. US soldiers enforce curfews with assault weapons.
To be fair, this is not all a particularly US trait. Invading and occupying an unwilling country and then blitzing your own citizens with happy propaganda about it has happened for many, many, many years, with other countries taking the US's role (think of Nazi Germany, for instance). Brutal treatment of the people of that country is not unheard of, either. And sabotage (not terrorism -- terrorism is defined as controlling civilians through terror, which if anything the US is doing more than Iraqi car bombers) of the occupying country's military installations and attacks on collaborators is not unusual either (again, see World War II).
Hell, I remember going back and watching WWII propaganda material (on both sides -- the US and England certainly had as much bogus material as Germany did) and wondering how amazingly gullible people had to be to buy into it back then. Well...now I'm seeing it in action, and it still amazes me.
Although, frankly, it might be kind of neat to harness nationalistic feelings and allow folks to play as either side, internationally, in games like these. And wargames aren't the only possibility -- I expect multiplayer international soccer games might do well.
Damn, we need a couple of expensive headsets where I work, but Claria (the headset company, not the spyware company) doesn't have the ability to do online ordering. I'd have happily recommended purchasing from Claria.
I can't believe that open-source isn't addressing this issue
It has. I run Linux quite happily, and have never run into the slightest set of problems with things like Gator. There just isn't any spyware. (There is, incidently, a piece of software called "chkrootkit", which is about the only thing currently needed. Well, unless you count "spamassassin", though I'm not sure you were thinking of spam originally. Those two pieces of software nicely pick up the vaguely unpleasant things that people might send my way.).
It hasn't been addressed on Windows because most OSS authors don't *like* Windows.
Currently, there are a couple vendors that provide "remote, automated guru service". Symantec and a few antivirus vendors look for malware using a series of tests devised and constantly updated by experts, and then applied to many, many computers.
Ad-Aware searches for spyware and adware.
Windows Update searches for updates to Microsoft software.
There are websites that will scan your computer for basic remote security holes.
The problem is that there is a growing number of components that do automated guru tasks, because there isn't enough gurus, enough time, or enough money to take a guru out to each house or even work each machine remotely. People don't need to know about each field, as a result, but *do* need to be aware that such software is necessary in each field and run it/buy it/whatnot. What's needed is some (probably commercial and relatively inexpensive) comprehensive "Complete Computer Maintenance Service". It'd do automated virus checking (might do a partnership with Symantec to use their engine), look for spyware/adware, provide updates from *all* software vendors, warn about security issues with your current setup, look for common misconfigurations, warn about discontinued software that you're still using, provide simple flowchart based troubleshooting and possibly fix-it wizards (Outlook doesn't work), etc. The big benefit is that currently almost all home machines are unadministered, and this could be done quite cheaply, because it scales. Hell, OEMs could bundle service like this.
The important thing is that each machine must *never* require actual individual attention from a human being, or else costs shoot up (though perhaps optional commercial phone support could provided as a separate service). The base service should be on the order of $10/month at most. It'd keep IT costs down and keep small businesses and home systems much more maintained than they are now.
My suggestions here were somewhat Windows-centric, mostly because most current Linux folks *need* someone else administering their box, but that will probably change as well.
This is also something that "Joe Sixpack" publications like PC World could easily review ("service foo caught more problems on our ten test machines that service bar did").
Finally, a corporate version of this service could also be sold to even places that can afford in-house IT staff (one that pops up its reports on a centralized control machine in an IT center). That makes a *good* first pass for IT personnel (so they don't blow time on ordinary tasks), helps keep up on problems with specific software that no single IT guy can possibly keep up on, and makes the service money.
Slashdot Mirror
Quite frankly, with the current volumes of spam it is impractical to try and run a mailserver for more than a few thousand users without some form of blocklist or having extremely deep pockets. The problem with SpamAssasin is that it actually increases the load on ones mail servers - a variety of checks have to be run on every single mail. By contrast, using a blocklist means that spam can be rejected before the DATA stage, reducing the load on the server, and the bandwidth consumed by spam.
I'd rather just say "no CC/BCC lists above 30 people" and make it a part of the spec. A maximum bandwidth usage amplification of 30:1 means that if network usage *really is* that expensive, the spammer gets screwed an acceptable percentage of that amount (or ISP who is letting spammers send gigs and gigs of email).
That takes care of bandwidth concerns on the server side.
The question then is the cost of "human time" of skimming through it, which affects the *client*, not the mail server operator. I claim that client-side filtering is currently the best way (as opposed to server-side blocklists or filters) to handle this -- it lets people set their *own threshold* on what they want to see and use whatever filters they like best. I happen to be partial to SpamAssassin, but folks can use whatever is best for them.
Also, *advisory* server-side filtering may be a useful service for ISPs to provide, where emails are tagged with "POTENTIALLY-SPAM" or similar, instead of just dropped. Then, if the client desires, he can filter in whatever manner he so prefers.
Frankly, in the end, we're going to wind up with whitelisting anyway, though. Other approaches just leave things open to attack. My only concern is that the whitelisting return an appropriate "can't send" response, rather than something hacked up that just bounces the mail.
Spamassassin has Baysian filtering, in addition to the extensive ruleset it uses.
It can also optionally "autolearn", where decisions about what is spam based on existing knowledge can be used to provide automatic learning input for the Baysian system for future emails.
Ahh, I see. Everyone in the world must jump through the painful, non-functioning hoops of whitelisting, just because you don't want the minor inconvenience of relaying.
No. If IP lists really were an effective solution to spam, then you wouldn't hear a peep out of me.
However, IP listing is an extremely poor solution to the problem. It takes an approach that is simply not tenable in the security world -- attempting to secure *everyone else's system* rather than your own (you have a list of evil servers, and then trust all the non-evil servers to allow in mail), and then letting the system break if any of these trusted systems are successfully used by spammers. *That* is my problem with it. IP lists cannot possibly be a workable long-term solution to spam. The sort of people that promote IP listing are either fanatical antispam folks to the point of ignoring reason or have no security experience. In the meantime, they destroy the peer-to-peer nature of the Internet and produce network headaches for people to deal with.
*That* is why I dislike IP lists.
Except, of course, that part of SpamAssassin's checks are to use the 'antispam registries' you are complaining about.
:-)
Sure...but I don't use those.
Filters, yes. Spamassassin, yes. Antispam registries (think SPEWS), no.
Lists of IPs for "antispam" purposes, drive me bananas. I normally run an MTA on my machine, and don't see any reason to relay mail (slower notification of problems, have to remember to change the relay whenever moving from network to network, etc), and there are groups like the DUL that just block swaths of IPs from sending email.
I hate getting spam too, but not as much as I get screwed over by stupid antispam "fixes".
I'm all for antispammers and spammers beating each other up. They both suck.
This whole thing is just a massive upheaval over the fact that Free Email Everywhere Just Doesn't Work. It's whitelists sooner or later, anyway.
I would like to note that this does *not* merely affect the kernel, as the earlier poster (inadvertently) claimed. This affects the entire GNU/Linux distribution, including FSF-owned libraries such as glibc (thereby invoking the we-go-after-people-who-steal-software-we-own policy of the FSF...FWIW with IBM already in the game). As I am a contributor to a number of software packages that are commonly distributed with Linux, I would be interested if anyone could post/link to a list of their software packages. I believe that SCO may be infringing on my own copyrights.
That's a legitimate concern, but there's little barrier to entry (other than the fact that it may be hard to compete with so much *stuff*).
McAfee can easily partner with another major IT services provider that wants to do something like this.
I can't see people being easily locked in to something like this, though I could be wrong.
Okay, fine. Tell me what's wrong with the suggestion.
There are automated tools that provide subsets of such a service.
There are (extremely expensive) services that provide such services by physically sending people out to locations to perform essentially the same task each time.
Where is the bad assumption?
Flying cars require technological sophistication, require a *market* and a set of recognizable benefits other than novelty, and have significant social barriers (look how dangerous people are with normal old ground-crawling cars and imagine them flying wherever they want).
I'm willing to recognize problems with such a proposal, but you'll have to air your objection for me to do so.
Don't know.
:-)
But this is the problem : such a program is not obvious.
Oh. Looks like I had the name wrong. There's some general-media plugin that handles all sorts of media types and hands them off to helper apps. Well, here, this'll do the same thing here.
I never use it, because I *hate* animation on web pages. The first thing I do when using a browser on any OS is disable animated GIFs, Flash, movies, everything possible.
Rosegarden
Just one ?
And how can this reach Reason's level ?
I don't know whether it does -- I'm not a musician. It has some snazzy screenshots with music notes and whatnot, and it seems to be popular with creative types on Linux. If you want more music software packages, try PlanetCCRMA.
No, once again I am afraid the tools you mention are not even close to IB's level.
What are you missing?
Last time I checked, it didn't have a solver ?
Good news -- they've since added one.
I'm not a spreadsheet nut (a lot of spreadsheet stuff is easier to do with a regular programming language if you code a lot, IMHO). However, it does everything I've ever needed to do with Excel (which, to be fair, isn't a lot). There might well be major missing functionality that I wouldn't know about.
This one looks seriously good.
I've only used Illustrator briefly, but I remember it having a lot more palettes than Sodipodi, and fancy (not on the level of 2d CAD, but not bad) alignment functionality, and a lot of basic vector graphics functionality that Sodipodi doesn't have (like text-on-a-path). Ironically enough, the app here that you were most positive about is the one that I feel has the most glaring lacks between its closed source cousin (though it's still quite young compared to cousins like the GIMP...reminds me of the GIMP at around version 1).
Uh...unless you have a benchmark designed to do nothing but let an 800 MHz G4 beat a 1.5 Ghz P4, it's not going to happen.
Of course, the question then is whether you *need* the CPU power (of course, the counter is "with CPU-hungry OS X, you do").
[shrug] sounds good to me.
.NET or whatever). It is at least *somewhat* open, something that would have been inconceivable for Apple a few years ago.
I would point out that Linux distros tend to make it pretty easy (well, automatic) to do the things that used to be a royal pain in the ass just a couple of years ago (get a GUI up, set up a printer, set up a webserver). If you want to poke at the guts of things and tweak things, you still can, but you're not generally required to understand everything before setting it up, as you once did.
But, hell. I like people using OS X. It breaks the Microsoft monopoly, and I think that if people once again have to compete on quality, the whole computer world will get significantly better. It supports POSIX apps, so encourages development of apps that run on both systems and greater portability, instead of things tied to Win32 (or
Printing, clipboarding, decent-quality video drivers, fonts, app consistency - these are all still major issues that impact the further deployment of Linux on the desktop.
? I would have agreed with you two years ago, but the Qt screwup WRT clipboarding is fixed. Printing support is excellent (RH even includes a little "click-to-setup-printer" icon). Video drivers...well, I'm not sure what the state of modern Nvidia and ATI cards are, but I own a Matrox G450, and support is excellent. Fonts used to be a problem, but Bitstream donated a set of very nice fonts to the Linux world. UI consistency isn't perfect (RH tries), but then again, the Mac classic holy grail of OS-wide UI consistency died an unpleasant death when OS X came out.
If I ever buy a laptop, there is no doubt in my mind that it will be a Mac running OS X.
I know a lot of people like this -- three Linux people that run Linux on the workstation, Linux on the server, but love their Powerbook.
Me, I'd take a Lifebook with Linux, but that's just me.
Some people like tinkering with their cars or computers all the time. I'd rather move on and tinker with something else instead.
This sounded good at first, but then I considered that you're sitting, posting to a tech forum instead of enjoying your "free time".
Same when it comes to money.
Most Linux folks are hackers to some degree. They like poking away at stuff and getting it to work, and some of the challenge is seeing how cheaply everything can be done.
You can get an entirely legal nice server/graphics editing setup/rendering box running on hardware being thrown out without paying for any drivers or apps and essentially drop nothing.
Windows is about Microsoft sticking it to you (just on strength of the monopoly), and then some vague competition.
Apple sells systems that you pay a heavy premium on for a preconfigured environment.
It is usually possible to tell there's something wrong with a post when someone starts ranting and raving about GIMP. Yep, it's free, and no, it's no patch on Photoshop. In fact, GraphicConverter is in many ways better than GIMP.
/. editors, John Carmack, Tim O'Reilly, that cool Indian dude with the number 3 supercomputer in the world, the ars technica editors... guess what? they all think you're wrong!
:-)
It entirely depends on what you're doing with it. It's true that it's not a replacement -- GIMP is designed for output intended for computer display, and makes a very poor publishing tool. For example, I'd like to see you do this with Photoshop.
How about, say, Final Cut Pro? Hmm, I feel like a game of Diablo. Oh, what's that? You can only run it in emulation?
The point is, it comes down to quality, not quantity. Professionals use professional tools, not some I'm-a-CS-graduate-and-know-how-to-program-stuff.
Both you and the original poster are full of it (on opposite sides of the fence). The Mac has a number of content creation programs and games that Linux does not, and the 13k packages claim is pretty irrelevant. The "professional tools" claim you're making is also ridiculous. I'm a professional software developer. I am *far* better served by Linux than Mac OS X. A publishing professional would probably be *far* better served by Windows or Mac OS X than Linux. The Mac OS is hardly "more professional" than Linux.
1. It has the honour of being the first OS to do this, I suppose?
No, but the Mac OS is designed around a binary distribution mechanism. Linux is designed around a source distribution mechanism. If the FSF decides to change glibc so that all the functions now have a tiz_taz_ prefix and take an extra parameter, *then* Linux folks would be ticked off.
2. Can't make omelette without cracking a few eggs etc. GCC 3.3 broke shit. Get over it.
GCC 3.3 broke the C++ ABI. Aside from the fact that essentially nobody tries to package Linux binaries across distributions (or releases of distributions) because the library set available differs, much less the ABI, C++ is a tiny minority on Linux, nothing like it is on Windows. The main place C++ is used is in the Qt/KDE project. Outside of that, C is by far the dominant language. Besides all this, Linux runs on a ton of platforms (unlike OS X), and you can't package a binary that runs on ARM, PowerPC, and x86.
Yeah, and with every point release adds more features than Linux gets in a full digit release.
I'm going to assume that you mean "time" rather than "major point releases", since either one could do a major point release each day, and still be producing more goodies, though less per release. If you're talking about the kernel, ridiculous. If you're talking about a distro, I'm very, very, very doubtful. A Linux distro has *far* more developers working on software in it than a Mac OS CD does.
It's also the reason so many people continually pine for OS X on Intel. The hardware's kinda cool, but the software kicks hind tit.
Bullshit. Apple is a hardware company. They make their money with hardware. Their hardware is competitive with the best of the best out there. Their software (*currently*, not back in the golden days) is decidedly not competitive.
"Down hill". Hmm, I can think of all the
The stability of the OS has improved since OS 8. I think the UI has taken a hit -- and this has traditionally been Apple's biggest selling point.
Linux certainly has it's place in areas where organisations can develop a full system, but where you want to go out and buy something and have it all work, intuitively, and stable-y, and without spyware, and without MS groping your HD, you go buy a mac. Simple.
While there's something to what you say, when was the last time you were using Linux? I remember installing Red Hat 5.2 on a computer, and remember installing Red Hat 9 on a computer, and the difference is...quite significant.
* Inline view any of the online-available movie trailers in my browser
mplugger
* User quality music software (Reason, Logic...)
Rosegarden
* Use Interface Builder
Dunno what IB is, but sounds like a RAD UI dev tool. Glade, any number of Java tools, whatever the KDE tool is that does this.
* Standby/Resume an easy way
I have a desktop, so no idea what the parallel is. I do have my keyboard power key set up to lock my machine and turn off my computer lamp, FWIW.
* Use Excel, thus discover that Microsoft API may suck but what they develop for the Mac is quality stuff
gnumeric
* Use Illustrator, Flash MX...
Sodipodi. Not fully comparable yet.
* Not losing time configuring my computer No need to : it definitely pleases me the way it goes
Outa luck, unless you like the default setup, which I assume you don't.
* Use my smartmedia/pcmcia adapter without going through 20 kernel/pcmcia-cs modules recompilations (it stopped being recognized around linux2.2.18)
No idea. I have a desktop.
Other issues vs OS 9:
Inconsistent sets of widget sets, reminicent of MS Office/IE widgets -- think the brushed metal/Aqua widget sets. The screen-space-eating dock (that moves when you roll the mouse pointer over it -- shame on Apple for violating their beautiful classic HIG). Titlebar buttons that can be distinguished only by color (disadvantaging the colorblind user and specifically violating classic HIG rules) containing functionality symbols that are only visible when the cursor is over them (violating HIG rules stating that the user should be free to move the cursor wherever he likes without modifying state). The oversized pictures that eat screen space. The loss of the intuitive and simple Apple menu.
Sure, there are a lot of visual effects. OS X looks like Enlightenment 1.0 will, if rasterman ever makes it. But, you know what? I never liked Enlightenment much. It was good for showing off your purty interface, but not nearly as nice to use as more spartan WMs like sawfish.
I admit I'm kind of curious what "hard things [are made] easier" on Linux that aren't also made easier under MacOS X? What impossible things are made possible that aren't that way under MacOS X?
The default environment on most Linux boxes is more in line with the traditional UNIX environment. You spend most of your time in an interface that's essentially a programming environment.
MacOS has a CLI, but you don't get as many CLI tools (out of box -- fink and Cygwin help on MacOS and Windows). Software on Linux/BSD generally isn't too worried about having users specify device names, makes sure to use text-based config files, and doesn't require you to use a GUI.
Just read the Constitution (either the Canadian or American). Neither one provides for "privacy rights" for companies, just for individuals.
I'm not familiar with the Canadian constitution, but the American one does not grant privacy rights.
For an on-topic example (since we're talking about someone being fired in the original article), normally, a company has to give notice and/or have due cause to terminate employment. You as an individual can just up and quit any time, without being required to provide a reason.
In general, this is not true. Besides which, employment contracts frequently state explicitly that either member can terminate the relationship at will -- my own, for example, says this.
Just don't give them gifts that are directly related to their daily work - it'll seem cheap (ie, never give your wife a vacuum cleaner as a 'gift', under pain of death)
I'm dubious. Suppose she normally does all the vacuuming and you give her one of those robotic vacuum things (well, maybe in a couple of years when they're smarter). I mean, hell, if *I* was vacuuming, I'd *damn* well appreciate having a significant amount of labor removed from my life.
Disclaimer: IANAMM (I Am Not A Married Man)
I hate to say it, but you're more than a little rattling off US-based media output, which carries a very heavy US slant.
Yes, after the severe PR issues in the original Gulf War where the US deliberately wiped out as much civilian infrastructure as possible, they were much more careful in the last round of bombing.
The mainstream Iraqis are on our side.
No. The mainstream Iraqis don't necessarily want a harsh dictator running things, but neither do they want to be occupied by the same country that's been blockading them, restricting their air service, and bombing them for years. It's not an either/or proposition.
Heck, one of them married an American soldier.
You *definitely* go for the whole American media thing, don't you?
The *only* poll (loudly trumpeted) that I've seen that vaguely supported the US was one put out by the occupational authority (and how would *you* vote if soldiers from an occupying nation showed up at your door and asked you to fill out a form about them, eh?) that claimed that a majority of residents of Baghdad felt that they were better off after Saddam's overthrow than before. Sure as hell doesn't mean that they want continuing occupation.
Now, foreign Saddam-loving terrorists have come in and keep blowing up Iraq's infrastructure while the United States is trying to fix it... at its own expense, paid with American blood and money.
American blood tends to be armed and behind guarded barriers. Remember that the first set of obstacles into the occupational authority's compound is through a checkpoint manned by hired unarmed Iraqis -- ironically enough, the US uses human shields just as much as Saddam did.
As for American money, Iraqi oil was supposed to be taken and used to pay for reconstruction, giving the US control of a lucrative nation with little cost. As it happened, massive damage to national infrastructure caused by a combination of a decade of war and blocked trade (by the US), in addition to imperfect management by the Hussein regime, has meant that oil won't begin to cover the costs for years to come.
The US occupation in Iraq was not the freedom-bringing thing that many American citizens think it is, bringing glorious democracy to the Iraqi people. The occupational authority does not allow the basic rights that the American people enjoy, such as that of free press. Arabic media that criticized the occupational authority was banned from operating. US soldiers enforce curfews with assault weapons.
To be fair, this is not all a particularly US trait. Invading and occupying an unwilling country and then blitzing your own citizens with happy propaganda about it has happened for many, many, many years, with other countries taking the US's role (think of Nazi Germany, for instance). Brutal treatment of the people of that country is not unheard of, either. And sabotage (not terrorism -- terrorism is defined as controlling civilians through terror, which if anything the US is doing more than Iraqi car bombers) of the occupying country's military installations and attacks on collaborators is not unusual either (again, see World War II).
Hell, I remember going back and watching WWII propaganda material (on both sides -- the US and England certainly had as much bogus material as Germany did) and wondering how amazingly gullible people had to be to buy into it back then. Well...now I'm seeing it in action, and it still amazes me.
Although, frankly, it might be kind of neat to harness nationalistic feelings and allow folks to play as either side, internationally, in games like these. And wargames aren't the only possibility -- I expect multiplayer international soccer games might do well.
Damn, we need a couple of expensive headsets where I work, but Claria (the headset company, not the spyware company) doesn't have the ability to do online ordering. I'd have happily recommended purchasing from Claria.
I can't believe that open-source isn't addressing this issue
It has. I run Linux quite happily, and have never run into the slightest set of problems with things like Gator. There just isn't any spyware. (There is, incidently, a piece of software called "chkrootkit", which is about the only thing currently needed. Well, unless you count "spamassassin", though I'm not sure you were thinking of spam originally. Those two pieces of software nicely pick up the vaguely unpleasant things that people might send my way.).
It hasn't been addressed on Windows because most OSS authors don't *like* Windows.
Currently, there are a couple vendors that provide "remote, automated guru service". Symantec and a few antivirus vendors look for malware using a series of tests devised and constantly updated by experts, and then applied to many, many computers.
Ad-Aware searches for spyware and adware.
Windows Update searches for updates to Microsoft software.
There are websites that will scan your computer for basic remote security holes.
The problem is that there is a growing number of components that do automated guru tasks, because there isn't enough gurus, enough time, or enough money to take a guru out to each house or even work each machine remotely. People don't need to know about each field, as a result, but *do* need to be aware that such software is necessary in each field and run it/buy it/whatnot. What's needed is some (probably commercial and relatively inexpensive) comprehensive "Complete Computer Maintenance Service". It'd do automated virus checking (might do a partnership with Symantec to use their engine), look for spyware/adware, provide updates from *all* software vendors, warn about security issues with your current setup, look for common misconfigurations, warn about discontinued software that you're still using, provide simple flowchart based troubleshooting and possibly fix-it wizards (Outlook doesn't work), etc. The big benefit is that currently almost all home machines are unadministered, and this could be done quite cheaply, because it scales. Hell, OEMs could bundle service like this.
The important thing is that each machine must *never* require actual individual attention from a human being, or else costs shoot up (though perhaps optional commercial phone support could provided as a separate service). The base service should be on the order of $10/month at most. It'd keep IT costs down and keep small businesses and home systems much more maintained than they are now.
My suggestions here were somewhat Windows-centric, mostly because most current Linux folks *need* someone else administering their box, but that will probably change as well.
This is also something that "Joe Sixpack" publications like PC World could easily review ("service foo caught more problems on our ten test machines that service bar did").
Finally, a corporate version of this service could also be sold to even places that can afford in-house IT staff (one that pops up its reports on a centralized control machine in an IT center). That makes a *good* first pass for IT personnel (so they don't blow time on ordinary tasks), helps keep up on problems with specific software that no single IT guy can possibly keep up on, and makes the service money.