I think you have the right threats, but in tht wrong order.
Governments are a huge threat because they can get everything, and they have the resources to correlate the different databases (phone calls, web browsing, tax records, whatever) against each other.
Threats on the LAN do not bother me: if its private do it at home or buy a private netbook and a mobile connection.
1) and (largely) 2) are within my control, as are 5) and 6) (to an extent).
the typical scenario of playing catchup with Windows and OS X that the open-source desktops seem to usually do.
Have you used ANY of the following: 1) Compiz: way ahead of Mac of Windows. Lots of useless eye candy, but lots of useful stuff too 2) KDE 4: highly configurable, applets that can run in a panel or on the desktop, all apps can transparently open remote files of ssh, ftp, as well as tar and zip archives, CD ripping (and transcoding) through drag and drop in the file manager, embedded components so you can preview documents in the file manager. KDE 3 and Gnome have most of these, but I picked KDE 4 because that is what I use. 3) Fluxbox: tabbed windows 4) Metisse: a completely different approach to 3D desktops 5) Moblin: if that looks or works like Windows or Mac, you must be talking about a different Windows and Mac. 6) Enlightenment 16: sliding, overlapping desktops years ago - while Windows still does not have multiple desktops without an extension 7) Various tiling and keyboard driven window managers.
I live in a (tropical) seaside town and people several km inland have problems with sat corrosion - this stuff can stay in the air.
Bringing salt inland (e.g. for prawn farming) has already had a severe impact in some places.
Now, this is apparently going to all happen out at sea, but even so it could have an impact (on precipitation) and it could get carried further than we think (if volcanic ash can get from Iceland to Africa, how far can atomised salt go?),
It is for a small start-up, and all these companies are start-ups that have not raised huge amounts of funding - so their ROI could still be pretty good.
It is not a good idea to organise files in "piles" like a real desktop - the more rigid organisation of a filesystem makes it a lot easier to find things.
If they do not have an admin interface usable over WAN by default (and why would a consumer device need that?), they will not need updates.
This particular attack is hugely overblown. It only affects certain devices, and it can be removed by power cycling. Just tell people to turn off their router once a day.
Furthermore the story conflates two problems: compromised PCs as a problem for financials services, and a compromised router botnet.
The botnet is not a problem for financial services companies because they use SSL.
That works fine until : 1)Grandma discovers Youtube, spends all days watching it, and gets a huge bill. 2) Teenage grandson comes to visit and downloads a whole lot of torrents 3) Some cracks her wi-fi network (if it needs cracking - its probably open) and spends a month downloading 4) a virus on her PC send huge amounts of spam 5) profit! for the telco.
The problem is that a low usage connection will probably not be that much cheaper, unless (as my ISP does) the excess charges are very high (so they run it as a loss leader and make up for it with huge profits on the people who go over).
English also has a lot of secondary speakers, is spoken in many different countries, and has huge numbers of people learning it, and is spoken in more different countries than any other language, making it the most useful language for communicating internationally.
There is nothing preventing you from developing for Windows using a cross platform toolkit like QT and then just re-compiling for Mac, Linux, and whatever else your toolkit runs on.
There is also nothing preventing you from developing a Windows app and running it on Mac or Linux using Wine. There is nothing preventing a similar API for Mac compatibility, except that its not worth the effort. Apple it self supplies X-Windows for Mac, so you can run most *nix GUI apps.
A better analogy for this would be Apple or MS banning the use of all the above.
I recently read a long discussion of the "smelly" bit on history blog (lots of arguments in the comments section) and it looks like the notorious lack of washing in Europe was a fairly late development, possibly a result to the belief that smell would ward off the black death, and for most of the medieval period people did wash, and, unlike the Romans, used soap.
Filters do treat the internet different from other media.
Can the government order that distribution of a newspaper cease? Not in any democracy - they would need to go to court and prove that the newspaper breaks the law. A judge or jury would decide the case in public.
Filters allow the government to order distribution of websites to cease without having to prove in court that they broke the law - and usually with no judicial oversight, and in secret.
Britain slightly different as there it a self appointed bunch of do-gooders who decide what people are allowed to read.
Google for child abuse at other institutions: for example the London borough of Islington covered up child abuse of vulnerable children who were in government homes. often keeping children who complained of abuse in the case of the abuser. The result? The leader of the borough council went on to become "minister for children" and has suffered no damage to her political career.
At least bishops responsible for cover ups get made to resign.
The priests and and monks who devised the Gregorian calendar obviously new a lot of astronomy: adding leap years to correct the drift is very impressive without modern equipment.
Obviously it's an attempt to live down what their predecessors did to Galileo, but I welcome it.
Vatican support for astronomy pre-dates Gailleo. Read the history of the observatory. Even the article you linked to mentions "four centuries of steady support.
The persecution of Gallileo probably had more to do with his insulting the pope (who had previously encouraged his work). This is obviously a bad thing as well, but its a very different bad thing from the popular perception.
They probably chose FITS because 1) new versions are developed to be completely backward compatible 2) It can store meta-data such as calibration info which may be important to historians and archivists (e.g. has the colour of the document changed slightly since the last scan?) 3) It is flexible
Right. And by that, you mean that Slashdot said this other site said the Pope said. Did you ever consider looking at what he actually said, or are you just making another Regensburg lecture out of it?:)
This is Slashdot, and the topic is religion. Need I say more?
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Governments are blocking that kind of discussion. The web sites banned in Australia include a euthanasia site and a pro-life site.
I think you have the right threats, but in tht wrong order.
Governments are a huge threat because they can get everything, and they have the resources to correlate the different databases (phone calls, web browsing, tax records, whatever) against each other.
Threats on the LAN do not bother me: if its private do it at home or buy a private netbook and a mobile connection.
1) and (largely) 2) are within my control, as are 5) and 6) (to an extent).
Because it is inconceivable that anyone lives outside the US.
Even if the EULA is binding, breach of contract != theft.
Me too, on my "wide screen" (i.e. short screen) laptop, with KDE, and Tree Style Tabs is excellent.
The GP has definitely put me off trying Gnome again.
the typical scenario of playing catchup with Windows and OS X that the open-source desktops seem to usually do.
Have you used ANY of the following:
1) Compiz: way ahead of Mac of Windows. Lots of useless eye candy, but lots of useful stuff too
2) KDE 4: highly configurable, applets that can run in a panel or on the desktop, all apps can transparently open remote files of ssh, ftp, as well as tar and zip archives, CD ripping (and transcoding) through drag and drop in the file manager, embedded components so you can preview documents in the file manager. KDE 3 and Gnome have most of these, but I picked KDE 4 because that is what I use.
3) Fluxbox: tabbed windows
4) Metisse: a completely different approach to 3D desktops
5) Moblin: if that looks or works like Windows or Mac, you must be talking about a different Windows and Mac.
6) Enlightenment 16: sliding, overlapping desktops years ago - while Windows still does not have multiple desktops without an extension
7) Various tiling and keyboard driven window managers.
That was exactly my reaction.
I live in a (tropical) seaside town and people several km inland have problems with sat corrosion - this stuff can stay in the air.
Bringing salt inland (e.g. for prawn farming) has already had a severe impact in some places.
Now, this is apparently going to all happen out at sea, but even so it could have an impact (on precipitation) and it could get carried further than we think (if volcanic ash can get from Iceland to Africa, how far can atomised salt go?),
It is for a small start-up, and all these companies are start-ups that have not raised huge amounts of funding - so their ROI could still be pretty good.
Its potential for what exactly?
It looks like a more modern version of MS Bob.
It is not a good idea to organise files in "piles" like a real desktop - the more rigid organisation of a filesystem makes it a lot easier to find things.
If they do not have an admin interface usable over WAN by default (and why would a consumer device need that?), they will not need updates.
This particular attack is hugely overblown. It only affects certain devices, and it can be removed by power cycling. Just tell people to turn off their router once a day.
Furthermore the story conflates two problems: compromised PCs as a problem for financials services, and a compromised router botnet.
The botnet is not a problem for financial services companies because they use SSL.
News for nerds would be an article on ssh key management - that actually what I thought this would be when I saw the headline.
My suggestion is to lock most of the keys in a room, and take just the keys to the front door and that room with you.
I also keep a spare car key in my wallet. That has saved a lot of hassle a few times.
That works fine until :
1)Grandma discovers Youtube, spends all days watching it, and gets a huge bill.
2) Teenage grandson comes to visit and downloads a whole lot of torrents
3) Some cracks her wi-fi network (if it needs cracking - its probably open) and spends a month downloading
4) a virus on her PC send huge amounts of spam
5) profit! for the telco.
The problem is that a low usage connection will probably not be that much cheaper, unless (as my ISP does) the excess charges are very high (so they run it as a loss leader and make up for it with huge profits on the people who go over).
English also has a lot of secondary speakers, is spoken in many different countries, and has huge numbers of people learning it, and is spoken in more different countries than any other language, making it the most useful language for communicating internationally.
Some useful facts here
You are right about the invalidity of the fragmentation argument.
WICD and Network manager packages should conflict, so you should not be able to have both installed.
For a light desktop I use Mandriva with LXDE. I used to use Mint XFCE which is also quite nice.
There is nothing preventing you from developing for Windows using a cross platform toolkit like QT and then just re-compiling for Mac, Linux, and whatever else your toolkit runs on.
There is also nothing preventing you from developing a Windows app and running it on Mac or Linux using Wine. There is nothing preventing a similar API for Mac compatibility, except that its not worth the effort. Apple it self supplies X-Windows for Mac, so you can run most *nix GUI apps.
A better analogy for this would be Apple or MS banning the use of all the above.
I recently read a long discussion of the "smelly" bit on history blog (lots of arguments in the comments section) and it looks like the notorious lack of washing in Europe was a fairly late development, possibly a result to the belief that smell would ward off the black death, and for most of the medieval period people did wash, and, unlike the Romans, used soap.
You can test engines, motherboards and printers when you take delivery.
As far as aircraft engines go they are often specified by the customer.
You do not trust secrets to people by buying any of the above off them.
They also usually license designs rather than just ideas.
The architecture licences (to Intel and others) may be exceptions.
POP and IMAP typically run on port 80? Bit torrent? IM clients?
Filters do treat the internet different from other media.
Can the government order that distribution of a newspaper cease? Not in any democracy - they would need to go to court and prove that the newspaper breaks the law. A judge or jury would decide the case in public.
Filters allow the government to order distribution of websites to cease without having to prove in court that they broke the law - and usually with no judicial oversight, and in secret.
Britain slightly different as there it a self appointed bunch of do-gooders who decide what people are allowed to read.
Google for child abuse at other institutions: for example the London borough of Islington covered up child abuse of vulnerable children who were in government homes. often keeping children who complained of abuse in the case of the abuser. The result? The leader of the borough council went on to become "minister for children" and has suffered no damage to her political career.
At least bishops responsible for cover ups get made to resign.
The priests and and monks who devised the Gregorian calendar obviously new a lot of astronomy: adding leap years to correct the drift is very impressive without modern equipment.
Obviously it's an attempt to live down what their predecessors did to Galileo, but I welcome it.
Vatican support for astronomy pre-dates Gailleo. Read the history of the observatory. Even the article you linked to mentions "four centuries of steady support.
The persecution of Gallileo probably had more to do with his insulting the pope (who had previously encouraged his work). This is obviously a bad thing as well, but its a very different bad thing from the popular perception.
They probably chose FITS because
1) new versions are developed to be completely backward compatible
2) It can store meta-data such as calibration info which may be important to historians and archivists (e.g. has the colour of the document changed slightly since the last scan?)
3) It is flexible
Right. And by that, you mean that Slashdot said this other site said the Pope said. Did you ever consider looking at what he actually said, or are you just making another Regensburg lecture out of it? :)
This is Slashdot, and the topic is religion. Need I say more?
Its actually quite funny, the website actually has the title "secret archives", and offers to sell you scanned copies on CD.