Vista has actually become usable for me over the last few months. I got a free evaluation copy a few days before the release, and it started out rather poorly. Sleep mode kinda worked, with the mouse, or networking, etc not coming back after it went to sleep. I got random reboots until ATI finally released a driver that didn't crash my whole system.
Now it's pretty smooth sailing.
With that said, I'm still considering just going to Ubuntu. Vista is OK I guess, but there's nothing in it that's terribly compelling. I like the look and feel of it, but I prefer all the software available a click away with Ubuntu. (I'm no newcomer to Linux, the Vista box is my last Windows machine). Whenever the next Ubuntu version comes out I'll try it out on the workstation and see if sleep mode actually works. Then just run vmware for the one or two remaining Windows apps I can't live without.
So a news anchor has hacked Fark in an attempt to possibly steal source code for their own social networking site? This apparently isn't your average local anchor.
That was my first thought as well. Then I realized that even an idiot can hire someone from say "rentacoder" to write them a trojan, then email it off to the victim.
That doesn't mean the guy is guilty of course. Only that lack of knowledge or technical expertise doesn't clear him.
The real problem is that there is still a difference.
The more I think about this idea, the more I disagree with it. I think it's a great thing that there's a separation between "presentation" formats, and formats intended to be edited. Why? Because presentation formats should always be the same, always be readable by an older version of software, etc. Editing formats have different needs, like adding new features like layers, links to other documents, etc.
Look at the photoshop format (psd I think) vs jpg for instance. jpg is a format intended to be published, where psd is a flexible format for a designer to do whatever they please with the photo (seperate layers, all that jazz).
In short, editing formats need to evolve and be extremely flexible (and thus incompatible), presentation formats need to stay the same (to a large degree). That doesn't mean you can't edit a publishing format of course.. people edit jpgs all the time. It's just not the design goal of the format.
The real problem is that there is still a difference. You should be able to edit documents with ease.
Honestly, why? I don't care about editing documents, and honestly it's not really something with a great need. If you _want_ to edit a PDF, you obviously can. The difference is really only in the availability of the software (not many people create PDF editors). Word Perfect did not have this problem and was the defacto standard before MicroSquish got them
That was a different world where there was less cries for open standards, and the formats were really more about creating paper printouts (and selling word processing software) than it was an electronic document format. Was the wordperfect "standard" open and published? I'm not really convinced it was any better in those respects.
The REAL document format, PDF has millions of documents on the web.
Do I really care what format people pass around documents they intend to edit, as long as they publish them in what's become the standard format for end-users, i.e. pdf?
The problem, as I see it is people are using ODF/.doc/Microsoft-whatever to often for documents that are really supposed to be just electronically published documents. I.e, not intended to be editied (though obviously you can with the right software).
Technology progresses quickly, but humans aren't quite as fast, it seems:-(
No, people just don't really care about the original meaning of words, nor should they. Do you get bent out of shape every time someone talking about "dialing" a telephone, even though 99% of telephones no longer have a dial? There's hundreds of examples like this where the original etymology of the word was forgotten and the words takes on a modified meaning of the original. That's just how language works.
And I'm sure thats the only thing the astronauts were worried about as well... the precious shuttle. If the only thing mission control was worried about was "the precious shuttle", then they would have just sent them out right away to fix the gouge.
Spacewalks are potentially dangerous. Micro-meteorites could tear right through a spacesuit and instantly kill an astronaut. They aren't taken lightly and are always judged whether the benefits justify the risks. In this case, they didn't.
This is particularly irritating for those of us that are allergic to triclosan. It's in all soap and all deoderent these days.
Happily, it's in non of these products: [product placement snipped]
This may sound reasonable to many at first glance, but it strikes me the same as hearing someone say, "Hydrogenated vegetable oil is in all food you buy, but it isn't in [insert name of favourite snack food]".
My reaction is always, "No, it's not. Hydrogenated vegetable oil is in most processed food and food products that comes from some manufacturer and marketed in an attractive box to those walking down the food aisles in your local supermarket, but it definitely is not in the sandwich I'm eating,
How is this a good analogy? With the exception of Tyler Durden, I've never heard of people making their own soap in modern times. 99.999% of people in the US buy soap at the store, and a large percentage of that soap has tricolosan in it. People obviously DO cook their own food. So, forget the product-A vs. product-B recommendations. If you buy the "real" stuff, there's no need to bother with anything that involves spending your life reading labels.
How is this not a "product a vs product B" recommendation, except you're just not explicitly saying what product B is?
and did away with the aging x86 instruction set and came up with something new.
They did, at least with the FP (floating point) instructions. FP instructions were based on this awful stack architecture, and it's gone away with all the SSE and 64 bit extensions.
The x86 instruction set has evolved greatly over time, and will continue to evolve. Why replace it entirely from scratch? Who's to say that an entirely new instruction set won't have a whole new host of problems?
Re:Round 1 over; Now for round 2
on
SCO Loses
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· Score: 1
Several of our potential customers refused to buy Linux systems and specifically mentioned the lawsuit as the reason.
Maybe. What we don't know is if this was actually true, or it was just an excuse.
The other thing we don't know is if the lawsuit actually helped Linux, since it showed some people that Linux was viewed as a viable enough competitor to sue over.
Anyway, the point is that it's hard to really say anything about how this lawsuit effected Linux without hard data and not just anecdotal reports.
But won't prove much about whether it was operating correctly at the time of the alleged offence.
Nothing can prove that. Prove any equipment that takes evidence was working properly at the time. It's physically impossible.
Your other objections are really more about the breathalyzer hardware, not the software. I'd expect the variability due to temperature is something that's well tested.
Anyway, I think you've taken this whole thing to far to high a standard. A hell of a lot higher standard than any other evidence is subject to. It's reasonable doubt, not NO doubt.
The toxylizer that was used to mark him needs to be confiscated and reverse-engineered to see if the code running on it, is effectively produced by the source code in question
Nonsense. You could take your argument to the next level and say there's something different about the hardware in the machine. Black-box testing of this thing should prove that it works (and ultimately is a better test than looking at source code).
I can't believe this thing is all that complicated as far as inputs go (like a guy blowing in a tube). To prove it works you'd only need to test it against a series of knowns. That'll easily prove it's not a "random number generator".
This case is just about someone with a chunk of money that's trying to get out of drunk driving. While I think it's a good thing that you can get the source code to something that's effectively testifying against you, I think this case is hardly anything approaching a miscarriage of justice.
A laser pointer is small and can be used from a distance.
A sling shot is small and can be used from a distance as well. If well aimed, you could blind someone. Distance weapons aren't new.
I'm sure you'll bring up some small flaw in how this is DIFFERENT than a slingshot. Obviously. Just try to understand that the class of "dangerous stuff someone could use to harm someone else, without fear of being caught" is quite old and we've managed to deal with it so far. This isn't any different.
And what about people who intentionally point it at somebody's eyes? No reason to be nervous about that?
What about people who intentionally point blowtorches at somebody's eyes? I honestly don't understand why this laser is somehow in some special category of dangerous stuff.
This has the potential for causing serious bodily harm, including but not limited to permanent blindness!
So does a blowtorch. A gun has the potential to kill you. It's pretty obvious that a laser that can light a match is seriously dangerous if miss-used. I'm not sure what you're getting at here.
You consider a complex question of whether you want to break unknown pieces of software, or have better performance at install time to be "user friendly"? I've used Linux for 13 years, and I can't even really answer that question. How the hell am I supposed to know which software (like mutt) uses atime, and which doesn't? And then, when that critical piece of software doesn't work, how am I supposed to trace it back to that decision I made a year or two ago?
Asking this kind of question that has the potential to break software is foolish at best.
Seriously. Many have recommended mounting filesystems with the "noatime" parameter if you don't need to know atime for many years now,
Except for the fact that there are programs that rely on atime, so distributions don't want to set the default mount option on a filesystems to noatime.
For the vast majority of users who aren't interested in screwing around with their filesystem (and don't even know what a filesystem IS), that means that they'll suffer this performance penalty. That's why this middle ground option is attractive.
Try to remember that Linux is used by countless people that have no interest, or no ability to tweak their operating system.
Employers can screw themselves if they expect to know by blood pressure, cholesterol, BMI, and any other medical history or details about me. As far as I'm concerned that's a private matter with my doctor. If your employer suddenly decided I had to submit to these kinds of tests, that's a damn good sign they have no respect for you.
Except this isn't a public gathering. It's a private event which you need to buy tickets for. No ticket, no entry. I imagine this incident will result in some kind of agreement for all attendees to have any taping or recording of the conference to be approved by the conference organizers. I'm sure people will whine about that, but it's in everyones best interest to do so.
I also doubt that the proper engineering was done - and I suspect that this was not due to lack of recommendations, but more likely due to "fiscally conservative" minded legislature that was ultimately only penny-wise.
The bridge was inspected in 2005 and 2006, so there was quite a lot of inspection of the bridge occouring. If they had reason to believe the bridge was going to collapse, it would have been shut down right away. The major bridges across the country are inspected every 2 years.
Anyway, it's waay to early to start ruling anything in or out as to what went wrong. My point isn't to say "it can't be politics in play", but to try to put some balance into a situation where we know very little about what caused the failure.
I do agree in general though that not enough funding is being put into the countries infra-structure. Whether that's a direct cause of this bridge collapse I don't know.
This smacks of criminal negligence - complete catastrophic failure in 4 seconds could not have been an undetectable condition.
You have way to much confidence in science and technology. I think it's certainly possible that the inspections done didn't detect the problem with the bridge. Science isn't perfect, and there's always assumptions and things no one knows.
I'm talking about the internet not being a web-browser. The content you're talking about is poor quality short clips, intended to supplement a web page. The content I'm talking about is a well produced high quality television broadcast that'll compete with cable and satellite producers, but also have the nearly infinite amount of choices. Right now if you want to distribute content like the cable stations produce, you need a ton of money to buy time on a satellite. An internet TV revolution would eliminate that need and open up an entirely different means of content distribution.
I'm talking about the internet taking over the television and going into the family room, not the computer room. That's starting to happen a little with consoles, but nowhere to the degree I'm referring to.
I guess when I'm talking video, I'm not talking about a low-quality, 2 minute clip shot by a 13 year old, replicating the mentos+coke video. Youtube is an interesting experiment, but at least it's current incarnation is little more than a fad.
I'm actually talking about a high quality video feed produced by professionals that would play on my IP-TV capable television.
Right now that doesn't exist, and the closest we come to that is people downloading TV shows with bittorent (who are the afformentioned techno-nerds).
If my mother can download her web page in 3 seconds instead of 5, I am not sure she really cares.
High bandwidth isn't for loading a web page faster, it's for something that actually uses high-bandwidth like streaming video.
Also, with a high-bandwidth video connection and IP-multicasting, you could have practical internet TV stations with a million listeners.
The internet is a hell of a lot more than just a series of websites, but without the truly fast connections most people will never get to see that. To a large degree I feel like the basic functionality of the internet hasn't changed since 1995 or so when browsers became commonplace. Sure, websites have gotten MUCH better and actually provide content, but for the most part the content is still relatively low bandwidth text, and still pictures. (we all know there's people that download video, but it's about at the level that trading pictures/text was before HTTP was invented, mostly for techno-nerds).
Slashdot Mirror
Vista has actually become usable for me over the last few months. I got a free evaluation copy a few days before the release, and it started out rather poorly. Sleep mode kinda worked, with the mouse, or networking, etc not coming back after it went to sleep. I got random reboots until ATI finally released a driver that didn't crash my whole system.
Now it's pretty smooth sailing.
With that said, I'm still considering just going to Ubuntu. Vista is OK I guess, but there's nothing in it that's terribly compelling. I like the look and feel of it, but I prefer all the software available a click away with Ubuntu. (I'm no newcomer to Linux, the Vista box is my last Windows machine). Whenever the next Ubuntu version comes out I'll try it out on the workstation and see if sleep mode actually works. Then just run vmware for the one or two remaining Windows apps I can't live without.
So a news anchor has hacked Fark in an attempt to possibly steal source code for their own social networking site?
This apparently isn't your average local anchor.
That was my first thought as well. Then I realized that even an idiot can hire someone from say "rentacoder" to write them a trojan, then email it off to the victim.
That doesn't mean the guy is guilty of course. Only that lack of knowledge or technical expertise doesn't clear him.
The real problem is that there is still a difference.
The more I think about this idea, the more I disagree with it. I think it's a great thing that there's a separation between "presentation" formats, and formats intended to be edited. Why? Because presentation formats should always be the same, always be readable by an older version of software, etc. Editing formats have different needs, like adding new features like layers, links to other documents, etc.
Look at the photoshop format (psd I think) vs jpg for instance. jpg is a format intended to be published, where psd is a flexible format for a designer to do whatever they please with the photo (seperate layers, all that jazz).
In short, editing formats need to evolve and be extremely flexible (and thus incompatible), presentation formats need to stay the same (to a large degree). That doesn't mean you can't edit a publishing format of course.. people edit jpgs all the time. It's just not the design goal of the format.
The real problem is that there is still a difference. You should be able to edit documents with ease.
Honestly, why? I don't care about editing documents, and honestly it's not really something with a great need. If you _want_ to edit a PDF, you obviously can. The difference is really only in the availability of the software (not many people create PDF editors).
Word Perfect did not have this problem and was the defacto standard before MicroSquish got them
That was a different world where there was less cries for open standards, and the formats were really more about creating paper printouts (and selling word processing software) than it was an electronic document format. Was the wordperfect "standard" open and published? I'm not really convinced it was any better in those respects.
The REAL document format, PDF has millions of documents on the web.
Do I really care what format people pass around documents they intend to edit, as long as they publish them in what's become the standard format for end-users, i.e. pdf?
The problem, as I see it is people are using ODF/.doc/Microsoft-whatever to often for documents that are really supposed to be just electronically published documents. I.e, not intended to be editied (though obviously you can with the right software).
Technology progresses quickly, but humans aren't quite as fast, it seems
No, people just don't really care about the original meaning of words, nor should they. Do you get bent out of shape every time someone talking about "dialing" a telephone, even though 99% of telephones no longer have a dial? There's hundreds of examples like this where the original etymology of the word was forgotten and the words takes on a modified meaning of the original. That's just how language works.
And I'm sure thats the only thing the astronauts were worried about as well... the precious shuttle.
If the only thing mission control was worried about was "the precious shuttle", then they would have just sent them out right away to fix the gouge.
Spacewalks are potentially dangerous. Micro-meteorites could tear right through a spacesuit and instantly kill an astronaut. They aren't taken lightly and are always judged whether the benefits justify the risks. In this case, they didn't.
This may sound reasonable to many at first glance, but it strikes me the same as hearing someone say, "Hydrogenated vegetable oil is in all food you buy, but it isn't in [insert name of favourite snack food]".
My reaction is always, "No, it's not. Hydrogenated vegetable oil is in most processed food and food products that comes from some manufacturer and marketed in an attractive box to those walking down the food aisles in your local supermarket, but it definitely is not in the sandwich I'm eating,
How is this a good analogy? With the exception of Tyler Durden, I've never heard of people making their own soap in modern times. 99.999% of people in the US buy soap at the store, and a large percentage of that soap has tricolosan in it. People obviously DO cook their own food.
So, forget the product-A vs. product-B recommendations. If you buy the "real" stuff, there's no need to bother with anything that involves spending your life reading labels.
How is this not a "product a vs product B" recommendation, except you're just not explicitly saying what product B is?
and did away with the aging x86 instruction set and came up with something new.
They did, at least with the FP (floating point) instructions. FP instructions were based on this awful stack architecture, and it's gone away with all the SSE and 64 bit extensions.
The x86 instruction set has evolved greatly over time, and will continue to evolve. Why replace it entirely from scratch? Who's to say that an entirely new instruction set won't have a whole new host of problems?
Several of our potential customers refused to buy Linux systems and specifically mentioned the lawsuit as the reason.
Maybe. What we don't know is if this was actually true, or it was just an excuse.
The other thing we don't know is if the lawsuit actually helped Linux, since it showed some people that Linux was viewed as a viable enough competitor to sue over.
Anyway, the point is that it's hard to really say anything about how this lawsuit effected Linux without hard data and not just anecdotal reports.
That's my point, the "advantage" the article talks about is that you can use the storage with Google's own products.
The article was written by a journalist for Forbes. It also says nowhere that this is the only way to use the storage.
But won't prove much about whether it was operating correctly at the time of the alleged offence.
Nothing can prove that. Prove any equipment that takes evidence was working properly at the time. It's physically impossible.
Your other objections are really more about the breathalyzer hardware, not the software. I'd expect the variability due to temperature is something that's well tested.
Anyway, I think you've taken this whole thing to far to high a standard. A hell of a lot higher standard than any other evidence is subject to. It's reasonable doubt, not NO doubt.
The toxylizer that was used to mark him needs to be confiscated and reverse-engineered to see if the code running on it, is effectively produced by the source code in question
Nonsense. You could take your argument to the next level and say there's something different about the hardware in the machine. Black-box testing of this thing should prove that it works (and ultimately is a better test than looking at source code).
I can't believe this thing is all that complicated as far as inputs go (like a guy blowing in a tube). To prove it works you'd only need to test it against a series of knowns. That'll easily prove it's not a "random number generator".
This case is just about someone with a chunk of money that's trying to get out of drunk driving. While I think it's a good thing that you can get the source code to something that's effectively testifying against you, I think this case is hardly anything approaching a miscarriage of justice.
A laser pointer is small and can be used from a distance.
A sling shot is small and can be used from a distance as well. If well aimed, you could blind someone. Distance weapons aren't new.
I'm sure you'll bring up some small flaw in how this is DIFFERENT than a slingshot. Obviously. Just try to understand that the class of "dangerous stuff someone could use to harm someone else, without fear of being caught" is quite old and we've managed to deal with it so far. This isn't any different.
And what about people who intentionally point it at somebody's eyes? No reason to be nervous about that?
What about people who intentionally point blowtorches at somebody's eyes? I honestly don't understand why this laser is somehow in some special category of dangerous stuff.
This has the potential for causing serious bodily harm, including but not limited to permanent blindness!
So does a blowtorch. A gun has the potential to kill you. It's pretty obvious that a laser that can light a match is seriously dangerous if miss-used. I'm not sure what you're getting at here.
Or the more user-friendly distros
You consider a complex question of whether you want to break unknown pieces of software, or have better performance at install time to be "user friendly"? I've used Linux for 13 years, and I can't even really answer that question. How the hell am I supposed to know which software (like mutt) uses atime, and which doesn't? And then, when that critical piece of software doesn't work, how am I supposed to trace it back to that decision I made a year or two ago?
Asking this kind of question that has the potential to break software is foolish at best.
Seriously. Many have recommended mounting filesystems with the "noatime" parameter if you don't need to know atime for many years now,
Except for the fact that there are programs that rely on atime, so distributions don't want to set the default mount option on a filesystems to noatime.
For the vast majority of users who aren't interested in screwing around with their filesystem (and don't even know what a filesystem IS), that means that they'll suffer this performance penalty. That's why this middle ground option is attractive.
Try to remember that Linux is used by countless people that have no interest, or no ability to tweak their operating system.
Employers can screw themselves if they expect to know by blood pressure, cholesterol, BMI, and any other medical history or details about me. As far as I'm concerned that's a private matter with my doctor. If your employer suddenly decided I had to submit to these kinds of tests, that's a damn good sign they have no respect for you.
A public gathering (even on private property)
Except this isn't a public gathering. It's a private event which you need to buy tickets for. No ticket, no entry. I imagine this incident will result in some kind of agreement for all attendees to have any taping or recording of the conference to be approved by the conference organizers. I'm sure people will whine about that, but it's in everyones best interest to do so.
I also doubt that the proper engineering was done - and I suspect that this was not due to lack of recommendations, but more likely due to "fiscally conservative" minded legislature that was ultimately only penny-wise.
The bridge was inspected in 2005 and 2006, so there was quite a lot of inspection of the bridge occouring. If they had reason to believe the bridge was going to collapse, it would have been shut down right away. The major bridges across the country are inspected every 2 years.
Anyway, it's waay to early to start ruling anything in or out as to what went wrong. My point isn't to say "it can't be politics in play", but to try to put some balance into a situation where we know very little about what caused the failure.
I do agree in general though that not enough funding is being put into the countries infra-structure. Whether that's a direct cause of this bridge collapse I don't know.
This smacks of criminal negligence - complete catastrophic failure in 4 seconds could not have been an undetectable condition.
You have way to much confidence in science and technology. I think it's certainly possible that the inspections done didn't detect the problem with the bridge. Science isn't perfect, and there's always assumptions and things no one knows.
What the hell are you talking about?
I'm talking about the internet not being a web-browser. The content you're talking about is poor quality short clips, intended to supplement a web page. The content I'm talking about is a well produced high quality television broadcast that'll compete with cable and satellite producers, but also have the nearly infinite amount of choices. Right now if you want to distribute content like the cable stations produce, you need a ton of money to buy time on a satellite. An internet TV revolution would eliminate that need and open up an entirely different means of content distribution.
I'm talking about the internet taking over the television and going into the family room, not the computer room. That's starting to happen a little with consoles, but nowhere to the degree I'm referring to.
I guess when I'm talking video, I'm not talking about a low-quality, 2 minute clip shot by a 13 year old, replicating the mentos+coke video. Youtube is an interesting experiment, but at least it's current incarnation is little more than a fad.
I'm actually talking about a high quality video feed produced by professionals that would play on my IP-TV capable television.
Right now that doesn't exist, and the closest we come to that is people downloading TV shows with bittorent (who are the afformentioned techno-nerds).
If my mother can download her web page in 3 seconds instead of 5, I am not sure she really cares.
High bandwidth isn't for loading a web page faster, it's for something that actually uses high-bandwidth like streaming video.
Also, with a high-bandwidth video connection and IP-multicasting, you could have practical internet TV stations with a million listeners.
The internet is a hell of a lot more than just a series of websites, but without the truly fast connections most people will never get to see that. To a large degree I feel like the basic functionality of the internet hasn't changed since 1995 or so when browsers became commonplace. Sure, websites have gotten MUCH better and actually provide content, but for the most part the content is still relatively low bandwidth text, and still pictures. (we all know there's people that download video, but it's about at the level that trading pictures/text was before HTTP was invented, mostly for techno-nerds).