But they DO owe ideas to OS X. This wasn't meant to sound disparaging, just an example of borrowing good bits from other things.
This works both ways. If you're going to nitpick my statements then I reserve the right to nitpick yours. So make your statement "OS X has influenced other GUIs and borrowed from them also". Then I'm happy:-)
And you also need to know that I'm not, in any way, an eye candy person for GUIs. If some people like eye candy then good luck to them - but I find the default XP interface totally patronising and child-like and am happy working with the "Classic Explorer" view.
As for Linux, I've not touched KDE in years because (again) I don't like bloat. Generally I use Gnome and if I don't need all the useful desktop notification stuff in Gnome, then I go to XFCE.
As for Apple, I've never convinced myself that I have a reason to buy a Mac because I get all I need to get done in XP and Linux. But if people like them then, again, so be it.
With all respect, somebody who has got down to the level of installing RPMs at the BASH prompt has probably already started the steep learning curve that takes them away from being a newbie user - so therefore your own analogy is a total fallacy.
And can I suggest that before you respond to me any more, you Google "Kevin Mitnick" and "The Badir Brothers" so you can read up some articles on social engineering to become more informed in the subject?
As someone who works in security on telephony servers, I would be totally remiss in my job if I excluded any security vulnerability just because it's "too fucking complicated" to engineer - sure, some vulnerabilities are less risky than others but they are ALL risks.
Oh, and stop being so tetchy just because I DARE criticise Apple... Guess what? Microsoft fucks up occasionally, Red Hat and Ubuntu fuck up occasionally, so do Apple. So get used to it.
Um, I guess you're discounting rap from countries such as France, Portugal, Spain, Mexico, And even your precious motherland, the Ukraine.
And just how much guitar-based folk or rock music from those countries have you listened to? It works both ways.
It's not about the struggles of black life, it's about life's struggles in general.
Oh right. So there's a rap song that deals with my struggles of paying my taxes and trying to workout more down the gym, is there?
I really am not trying to trivialize black problems but, in all honesty, they're of no interest to me in much the same way of how I'm going to pay my mortgage is of no interest to them. I try and do my bits for charity, I don't consider black people anything other than my equal and can't remember the last time I thought about the colour of a person's skin in any work or social engagement where I've been involved with other people.
Furthermore, black rap artists pay MORE homage to their African roots by using musical styles based upon tribal music, which is something all people have in common, having all originated from tribal backgrounds.
Try listening to some of the music of Peter Gabriel some time - or maybe something by Paul Simon if you want African tribal influences. Or I can thoroughly recommend a Jamaican all-black band called Orange Sky who produced one amazingly good and innovative album that mixed reggae with hard rock. It's not JUST rap music that draws on "tribal influences".
Me:2 You:0.
Yeah, fine, whatever. You scored more points, therefore you must be more right than I am. And there was me thinking this was turning into an intelligent conversation rather than a competition.
Incidentally, here's some interesting questions for you:
If you consider me racist because I made the statement that "Rap is crap" then it can only be because you consider that I am attacking the cultural importance of rap music, rather than my simply just voicing my personal opinion of rap music.
So if rap music does have such cultural importance because it deals with black social issues, then why is black blues and soul music that also deals with social issues like black slavery and racism, from a music recording perspective, dates from somewhere around the 1920s to the present day, completely ignored by black rap artists as an influence? White musicians like Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Stevie Ray Vaughan and (the idiot) George Michael have worked alongside the likes of BB King, Albert King and Aretha Franklin. How many rap artists have done the same?
And if rap music is so culturally important, then how come rap musicians have themselves allowed rap music to be diluted into a fashion accessory? Because, particularly in the US, there are a lot of young, white, middle-class youths listening to rap music but those same youths, like me, cannot have any possible understanding of black social issues and can therefore only be listening to it because it's fashionable to do so.
Let's be under no illusions here. The rap movement probably DID start out as a way for a social underclass to speak out about its problems in precisely the same way that punk music did in the mid to late 70s. But as we all know, any social messages in punk music got diluted and lost because the poor, working class punk musicians suddenly became too fat and too rich to care anymore. Punk music became a promotion tool for punk fashion and Dr Marten's boots in the same way that rap has become a promotion tool for rap fashion and Nike.
80 years on and both black and white musicians are still playing the songs of Robert Johnson - if they're still playing those of Snoop Dogg in 2088, then maybe I'll consider eating my words then.
I'm not even a rap fan and I appear to know a lot more than you do about it.
Because from what I understand, rap deals with the frustrations of black people, tries to send messages out about using less guns, etc. Even at that level, and I'm no expert, it's conveying a social message - that makes it a form of folk music whether you agree or disagree.
you're ignorant to relegate it to black people
Erm, with all respect, any white person I've ever heard performing rap music (e.g. Eminem) appears to make every possible effort to emulate sounding like a black rapper. So how does that work then?
while insinuating that their view of the world is any less valid than yours.
Oh, don't talk crap! PLEASE! My view of black music is that rap artists pay LESS homage to their own BLUES & SOUL roots than thousands of white artists do worldwide. Go find an interview with guitarists like Eric Clapton & Jimmy Page and you will find that they quote their main influences as black blues guitarists like Buddy Guy, John Lee Hooker and most of the others I listed in the previous posting.
I don't slander them for being different.
Can I ask why you actually post on Slashdot? Because any post made by anyone will contain some kind of opinion, which, by your logic, is automatically slanderous.
So how does "I think rap music is crap" fall under the definition of "words falsely spoken that damage the reputation of another"? Pray tell, I'm all ears...
This is just further proof hat Open Source Software is most useful for little independent projects - not trying to win download records or writing secure software.
Hey! Guess what, Einstein! It's FREE! So if you've tried Open Source and don't like it, then it's really no great loss to you, is it?
I mean you show up at their website when all kinds of news outlets are running stories about firefox download day and the website doesn't even say that download day starts at 1 EST. What kind of amature shit is that?
Yes, they underestimated demand and probably have a little egg on their faces. But Firefox WORKS! And it's FREE! So what's your problem?
Oh, and it's spelt "amateur".
Then you finally download it and it's full of security holes. What the fuck?
No, it has A security hole. It will be fixed. Someone will find more holes. They will be fixed. So don't use it. Whatever the hell works for you.
I put more effort in to jacking off than these clowns put in to their "Record Download Day". What an embarassment.
Perhaps this explains your short-sightedness and/or blinkered vision. And your obvious frustration. Maybe keep it in your trousers for one day, see if you feel better then, eh?
Probably because I'm not of African or Jamaican descent, I can't relate to the content because it's folk music.
Being of Ukrainian descent, I can relate to Ukrainian folk music played on accordians and mandolins. I doubt many people of African or Jamaican descent would get that either. So does that make them racist?
I do get Jimi Hendrix, Albert King, BB King, Robert Johnson, Elmore James, Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin and quite a few other black artists who get my utmost admiration for being the root influence of British rock music from the likes of the Beatles and Led Zeppelin.
Plus it wasn't me that used the "N" word while cowering behind an AC posting.
Other than that, I have no need to justify anything else to you - so kindly bugger off.
Last year, I tried to buy an XPS 1710 from Dell at the price of £1400 but they wouldn't sell it with XP, only Vista. Despite reminding them that I am the customer, they refused to back down so I told them to stuff it.
In actual fact, it worked out really well because I found a seller on eBay who resold new Dells that were cancelled orders from their customers - I got a brand new XPS 1710 from him, precisely the same spec as I'd asked Dell for, with XP on it and for £999.
The point I'm getting to is that Dell is taking the "easy" way out by doing this - they're still buying Vista licenses which keeps Microsoft happy but giving customers who want XP the chance to have it. Presumably the additional $50 covers the cost of installing it and/or the additional XP license.
In actuality, they're gutless, just like other PC hardware vendors. The fact is that Microsoft needs PCs as much as PCs need Windows, then the same vendors should stand up to Microsoft's bullying tactics and demand that MS supplies them with XP to meet the customer demand - it is NOT up to Microsoft to dictate what PCs are installed with.
So, yes, what Dell is doing does meet customer demand but it's a gutless, cowardly tactic because they're afraid to stand up to MS.
I know the postings aren't yours but I really do find it very difficult to take any posting seriously where the author has not even attempted to use capitalisation or punctuation properly.
Sure, I automatically forgive the occasional mistake but when it's someone who has quite clearly never finished their English grammar class, why should I then take their political or socio-economic viewpoints seriously?
I always find it amusing that someone who steals samples from another song to put into his own song then gets some big black bloke to talk gibberish over it as loudly as possible, presumably to try to hide the fact that it's been stolen.
Yes, I fully accept that an exploit requiring physical access to a machine is a much lower security risk than one that can be carried out from a remote location.
But Apple have made exactly the same marketing mistakes that Microsoft did in selling their respective OSes as ones that can be used easily by people with no knowledge of computers - people still click on attachments they shouldn't, still give their passwords to phishing web sites and still don't install regular security updates and scan their PCs for virii.
And in the case of this specific exploit, I am sure that a number of newbie Apple users would happily tap in "osascript -e 'tell app "ARDAgent" to do shell script "whoami"'" into their computers purely because "Jim The Friendly Computer Support Engineer" told them to do it.
So let's not beat about the bush - ANY exploit that isn't fixed as quickly as possible is a problem because there's always at least one spotty teenager trying to become a HAX0R who is prepared to try his luck against some poor unwitting user.
Without knowing the Linux kernel you were running or the make of some of the hardware, or even the Linux distro you were using, it's difficult to say what the problem was.
But PCI wired Ethernet cards are not usually that much of a problem in Linux these days - yep, some USB and wireless stuff can be tricky to get working but because this was a server, I guess it's unlikely it had either of those.
The trick to getting any piece of hardware working under Linux is to make sure you have a modular kernel that can load a module when it detects a piece of hardware. When it loads the module, then look in the kernel messages (usually/var/log/messages) to see what happens when the module is loaded - most of the time, the kernel will be able to give it a device name and then you'll see that the second card has been picked up as "eth1" or whatever.
I don't deny it can be a daunting task for the inexperienced but it might have been that the distro you were using only ever tried to start the first network card that was detected while ignoring the second.
On a modern 2.6.x kernel, it's easy to see the kernel doing device detection - open up a shell window, type in "tail -1/var/log/messages" and then plug in something that can be hot-plugged, like a USB hard disk. You should see the disk given a device name and maybe even automatically mounted.
It's a useful trick to know if you're a newbie with Linux.
With all respect, you have entirely missed my point. I am fully aware of the "competition" that exists between Open and closed source and you are treating my post like it is an attack on closed source. Actually, it isn't because I use both Linux and Windows XP and definitely a handful of closed source apps on the latter.
However, as I said earlier, Windows and users of other OSes have benefitted greatly from Open Source and, quite rightly, applications like Firefox, The Gimp, OpenOffice, etc. etc. have been ported across all platforms. That's a good thing because it introduces open standards to a wider audience which in turn makes it less important what underlying OS you actually use - because when everything is running on open standards then any OS can talk to any other.
And, again, I repeat. Even though Stallman and his ilk gave birth to the idea of Open Source, it did not receive prominence in the public eye until Linux came along and drew the world's attention to what Open Source actually is - in turn, that drew more programmers into the whole Open Source movement with the result that just about anyone who uses a computer can benefit.
And finally, can we have less of the silly idea that Gnome and KDE owe anything to OS X - the fact is that modern GUIs share ideas with each other and I could equally argue that OS X stole ideas from the Commodore Amiga Workbench by virtue of the fact that it also used a mouse and you could click on an icon to start a program.
Unfortunately, many Apple users consider themselves a breed apart and refuse to accept that without the BSD core to OS X, Apple would have had a much more difficult time to get to a modern desktop environment - but, hey, that's the type of thing BSD and Open Source licensing are designed to do so what's the problem? Just recognise that a lot more people that JUST Linux users owe a debt to the Open Source movement.
So, by all means, be the fanboi and mod me down because you think I'm criticising OS X and can't deal with it.
How about you huge percentage of non-Linux users go back to your nice little world of closed operating systems and closed source applications by pretending that we're not here then? Oh, and give us Firefox back, by the way...
Had Linux not drawn a lot of the world's eyes towards Open Source (after all, who apart from a few of us geeks, had heard of Richard Stallman before we heard about Linus Torvalds?), I very much doubt you lot on Windows would be enjoying the benefits of some great open source software - not to mention the fact that Apple would never have even considered building a Mac OS on a BSD core.
Did you hear the one about the Microsoft coffee maker?
It makes tea then convinces you that you only ever wanted a tea.
Did you hear the one about the Apple coffee maker?
It does an amazing Mocha Frappucino with whipped cream, caramel sauce and a chocolate flake in the top but doesn't know how to make a plain black coffee.
Did you hear the one about the Linux coffee maker?
v0.1 made a good plain coffee but it took a while doing it, v1.0 makes good plain coffee but there's a patch that allows it to make better tea than the Microsoft coffee maker and v2.0 gives you a cup of plain coffee, a cup of whipped cream, a cup of caramel sauce, a chocolate flake in a wrapper and tells you to make the coffee how you want but for a much lower price than the Apple one.
Did you hear the one about the Vista coffee maker?
I have actually had a gutfull of the games companies anyhow - Stardock are the exception as they treat me like an adult.
But let me get some points across to the remainder of them:
1. I need more than just pretty graphics effects to get me to even consider upgrading my gaming PC for your game.
2. I am not paying £35 for a game that can be completed in 6 hours.
3. I am not stupid. An expansion to a £35 game that took me 6 hours to complete initially is really just the other half of the full game I should have got when I spend that kind of money.
4. These days, before I buy anything to do with entertaining myself, I read reviews and other people's opinions. I use adblockers, switch the TV over during adverts and don't look at them in magazines. So your hype and marketing won't work on me, I buy stuff because I know it's worth the money before I do it.
5. I am not paying for any game that does allow me to install, deinstall and reinstall as many times as I like. (Bioshock, what's that then?)
6. If your game has an option for network play, then I expect to be able to buy one copy of the game and invite some friends over for a LAN game or two without them having to bring over copies of the same game also. If you're providing the game server then, yes, it's reasonable to expect everyone who connects to it to have their own copy of the game.
Please remember that the reason I play a game is that it is fun. This means that I can pick out one of many of the games I've purchased over the past 20 years or so, maybe pick up a mod or some new maps for it on the Internet, play it and have some fun.
So just because you've bought out a new game, it does not mean I will stop having fun until I buy it.
And finally, just remember one thing. I am the guy with the money and if you want that money then you "dance for me, monkey boy!" Because I can just as easily go have some fun taking my £35 and buying a couple of DVDs, a few CDs, a board game or maybe a handful of books and just downloading a free game like Alien Arena or Nexuiz from the Internet.
Quite clearly, in your case, the game is not fit for purpose.
Therefore you should take it back to where you bought it from and demand a refund. And if they don't give you a refund, demand to see a manager and stand there until they take you seriously.
Probably not - but it's not very difficult to start learning to treat others with a bit more respect and consideration, rather than gloating when they've made a mistake.
As I said earlier, exercising a little humility and remembering that we all started by knowing nothing occasionally, can be a very sobering exercise.
There's one problem with your suggestion - by pirating a copy of the game (even if you have bought the original) just gives the games companies the justification they need to install even more DRM and treat you more like shit.
I really would love to see the human race get its act together just once in a while - wouldn't it be a fantastic thing if we could all agree just not to buy any games from anywhere for 24 hours until the PC games companies actually start treating its customers like adults, rather than criminals.
Just think of the emergency boardroom meeting that would be called in the halls of EA if not one person, for just one day, didn't buy a PC game.
The problem is that we've let capitalism and corporations get out of control - now far too many of us relent to peer pressure and colourful adverts, we don't exercise good judgement any more because for a lot of us, we've more disposable income than we ever had in the past and we don't appreciate money any more.
1. Make phone calls and store a few telephone numbers.
2. Last or day or two on battery power while making no more than 10 minutes of calls per day.
3. Fit in an average-sized pocket and be lockable so buttons don't get pressed while it's moving around in my pocket.
Apart from that, anything goes within reason.
It does not need to be a fashion accessory because I buy shit because I like, not because other people do.
And if someone judges me based on the old phone I'm carrying or the non-designer clothes I wear then so be it - in my view, they're probably far too fickle a person to be of any interest to me anyway.
I don't make it a point of wanting to know everyone else's business - in your scenario, if someone is doing a job then I give them the benefit of the doubt as being the best person to do that job. But if they tell me how they've done something, I'll commend them if it's a great idea and advise them if they've made a mistake - the same would be true if they didn't tell me but I came across something they'd done myself and it need to be corrected.
Likewise, if I don't understand what they're telling me then I'll ask them to explain it better so I do understand it, if what they're saying is interesting.
No, I'm no saint by any means - but life is too short to gloat over someone making a mistake.
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This works both ways. If you're going to nitpick my statements then I reserve the right to nitpick yours. So make your statement "OS X has influenced other GUIs and borrowed from them also". Then I'm happy :-)
And you also need to know that I'm not, in any way, an eye candy person for GUIs. If some people like eye candy then good luck to them - but I find the default XP interface totally patronising and child-like and am happy working with the "Classic Explorer" view.
As for Linux, I've not touched KDE in years because (again) I don't like bloat. Generally I use Gnome and if I don't need all the useful desktop notification stuff in Gnome, then I go to XFCE.
As for Apple, I've never convinced myself that I have a reason to buy a Mac because I get all I need to get done in XP and Linux. But if people like them then, again, so be it.
And can I suggest that before you respond to me any more, you Google "Kevin Mitnick" and "The Badir Brothers" so you can read up some articles on social engineering to become more informed in the subject?
As someone who works in security on telephony servers, I would be totally remiss in my job if I excluded any security vulnerability just because it's "too fucking complicated" to engineer - sure, some vulnerabilities are less risky than others but they are ALL risks.
Oh, and stop being so tetchy just because I DARE criticise Apple... Guess what? Microsoft fucks up occasionally, Red Hat and Ubuntu fuck up occasionally, so do Apple. So get used to it.
And just how much guitar-based folk or rock music from those countries have you listened to? It works both ways.
It's not about the struggles of black life, it's about life's struggles in general.
Oh right. So there's a rap song that deals with my struggles of paying my taxes and trying to workout more down the gym, is there?
I really am not trying to trivialize black problems but, in all honesty, they're of no interest to me in much the same way of how I'm going to pay my mortgage is of no interest to them. I try and do my bits for charity, I don't consider black people anything other than my equal and can't remember the last time I thought about the colour of a person's skin in any work or social engagement where I've been involved with other people.
Furthermore, black rap artists pay MORE homage to their African roots by using musical styles based upon tribal music, which is something all people have in common, having all originated from tribal backgrounds.
Try listening to some of the music of Peter Gabriel some time - or maybe something by Paul Simon if you want African tribal influences. Or I can thoroughly recommend a Jamaican all-black band called Orange Sky who produced one amazingly good and innovative album that mixed reggae with hard rock. It's not JUST rap music that draws on "tribal influences".
Me:2 You:0.
Yeah, fine, whatever. You scored more points, therefore you must be more right than I am. And there was me thinking this was turning into an intelligent conversation rather than a competition.
Let's leave it at that. Seeya.
You, on the other hand, can bog off.
If you consider me racist because I made the statement that "Rap is crap" then it can only be because you consider that I am attacking the cultural importance of rap music, rather than my simply just voicing my personal opinion of rap music.
So if rap music does have such cultural importance because it deals with black social issues, then why is black blues and soul music that also deals with social issues like black slavery and racism, from a music recording perspective, dates from somewhere around the 1920s to the present day, completely ignored by black rap artists as an influence? White musicians like Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Stevie Ray Vaughan and (the idiot) George Michael have worked alongside the likes of BB King, Albert King and Aretha Franklin. How many rap artists have done the same?
And if rap music is so culturally important, then how come rap musicians have themselves allowed rap music to be diluted into a fashion accessory? Because, particularly in the US, there are a lot of young, white, middle-class youths listening to rap music but those same youths, like me, cannot have any possible understanding of black social issues and can therefore only be listening to it because it's fashionable to do so.
Let's be under no illusions here. The rap movement probably DID start out as a way for a social underclass to speak out about its problems in precisely the same way that punk music did in the mid to late 70s. But as we all know, any social messages in punk music got diluted and lost because the poor, working class punk musicians suddenly became too fat and too rich to care anymore. Punk music became a promotion tool for punk fashion and Dr Marten's boots in the same way that rap has become a promotion tool for rap fashion and Nike.
80 years on and both black and white musicians are still playing the songs of Robert Johnson - if they're still playing those of Snoop Dogg in 2088, then maybe I'll consider eating my words then.
Because from what I understand, rap deals with the frustrations of black people, tries to send messages out about using less guns, etc. Even at that level, and I'm no expert, it's conveying a social message - that makes it a form of folk music whether you agree or disagree.
you're ignorant to relegate it to black people
Erm, with all respect, any white person I've ever heard performing rap music (e.g. Eminem) appears to make every possible effort to emulate sounding like a black rapper. So how does that work then?
while insinuating that their view of the world is any less valid than yours.
Oh, don't talk crap! PLEASE! My view of black music is that rap artists pay LESS homage to their own BLUES & SOUL roots than thousands of white artists do worldwide. Go find an interview with guitarists like Eric Clapton & Jimmy Page and you will find that they quote their main influences as black blues guitarists like Buddy Guy, John Lee Hooker and most of the others I listed in the previous posting.
I don't slander them for being different.
Can I ask why you actually post on Slashdot? Because any post made by anyone will contain some kind of opinion, which, by your logic, is automatically slanderous.
So how does "I think rap music is crap" fall under the definition of "words falsely spoken that damage the reputation of another"? Pray tell, I'm all ears...
Hey! Guess what, Einstein! It's FREE! So if you've tried Open Source and don't like it, then it's really no great loss to you, is it?
I mean you show up at their website when all kinds of news outlets are running stories about firefox download day and the website doesn't even say that download day starts at 1 EST. What kind of amature shit is that?
Yes, they underestimated demand and probably have a little egg on their faces. But Firefox WORKS! And it's FREE! So what's your problem?
Oh, and it's spelt "amateur".
Then you finally download it and it's full of security holes. What the fuck?
No, it has A security hole. It will be fixed. Someone will find more holes. They will be fixed. So don't use it. Whatever the hell works for you.
I put more effort in to jacking off than these clowns put in to their "Record Download Day". What an embarassment.
Perhaps this explains your short-sightedness and/or blinkered vision. And your obvious frustration. Maybe keep it in your trousers for one day, see if you feel better then, eh?
Probably because I'm not of African or Jamaican descent, I can't relate to the content because it's folk music.
Being of Ukrainian descent, I can relate to Ukrainian folk music played on accordians and mandolins. I doubt many people of African or Jamaican descent would get that either. So does that make them racist?
I do get Jimi Hendrix, Albert King, BB King, Robert Johnson, Elmore James, Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin and quite a few other black artists who get my utmost admiration for being the root influence of British rock music from the likes of the Beatles and Led Zeppelin.
Plus it wasn't me that used the "N" word while cowering behind an AC posting.
Other than that, I have no need to justify anything else to you - so kindly bugger off.
In actual fact, it worked out really well because I found a seller on eBay who resold new Dells that were cancelled orders from their customers - I got a brand new XPS 1710 from him, precisely the same spec as I'd asked Dell for, with XP on it and for £999.
The point I'm getting to is that Dell is taking the "easy" way out by doing this - they're still buying Vista licenses which keeps Microsoft happy but giving customers who want XP the chance to have it. Presumably the additional $50 covers the cost of installing it and/or the additional XP license.
In actuality, they're gutless, just like other PC hardware vendors. The fact is that Microsoft needs PCs as much as PCs need Windows, then the same vendors should stand up to Microsoft's bullying tactics and demand that MS supplies them with XP to meet the customer demand - it is NOT up to Microsoft to dictate what PCs are installed with.
So, yes, what Dell is doing does meet customer demand but it's a gutless, cowardly tactic because they're afraid to stand up to MS.
Sure, I automatically forgive the occasional mistake but when it's someone who has quite clearly never finished their English grammar class, why should I then take their political or socio-economic viewpoints seriously?
I always find it amusing that someone who steals samples from another song to put into his own song then gets some big black bloke to talk gibberish over it as loudly as possible, presumably to try to hide the fact that it's been stolen.
But Apple have made exactly the same marketing mistakes that Microsoft did in selling their respective OSes as ones that can be used easily by people with no knowledge of computers - people still click on attachments they shouldn't, still give their passwords to phishing web sites and still don't install regular security updates and scan their PCs for virii.
And in the case of this specific exploit, I am sure that a number of newbie Apple users would happily tap in "osascript -e 'tell app "ARDAgent" to do shell script "whoami"'" into their computers purely because "Jim The Friendly Computer Support Engineer" told them to do it.
So let's not beat about the bush - ANY exploit that isn't fixed as quickly as possible is a problem because there's always at least one spotty teenager trying to become a HAX0R who is prepared to try his luck against some poor unwitting user.
But PCI wired Ethernet cards are not usually that much of a problem in Linux these days - yep, some USB and wireless stuff can be tricky to get working but because this was a server, I guess it's unlikely it had either of those.
The trick to getting any piece of hardware working under Linux is to make sure you have a modular kernel that can load a module when it detects a piece of hardware. When it loads the module, then look in the kernel messages (usually /var/log/messages) to see what happens when the module is loaded - most of the time, the kernel will be able to give it a device name and then you'll see that the second card has been picked up as "eth1" or whatever.
I don't deny it can be a daunting task for the inexperienced but it might have been that the distro you were using only ever tried to start the first network card that was detected while ignoring the second.
On a modern 2.6.x kernel, it's easy to see the kernel doing device detection - open up a shell window, type in "tail -1 /var/log/messages" and then plug in something that can be hot-plugged, like a USB hard disk. You should see the disk given a device name and maybe even automatically mounted.
It's a useful trick to know if you're a newbie with Linux.
However, as I said earlier, Windows and users of other OSes have benefitted greatly from Open Source and, quite rightly, applications like Firefox, The Gimp, OpenOffice, etc. etc. have been ported across all platforms. That's a good thing because it introduces open standards to a wider audience which in turn makes it less important what underlying OS you actually use - because when everything is running on open standards then any OS can talk to any other.
And, again, I repeat. Even though Stallman and his ilk gave birth to the idea of Open Source, it did not receive prominence in the public eye until Linux came along and drew the world's attention to what Open Source actually is - in turn, that drew more programmers into the whole Open Source movement with the result that just about anyone who uses a computer can benefit.
And finally, can we have less of the silly idea that Gnome and KDE owe anything to OS X - the fact is that modern GUIs share ideas with each other and I could equally argue that OS X stole ideas from the Commodore Amiga Workbench by virtue of the fact that it also used a mouse and you could click on an icon to start a program.
Unfortunately, many Apple users consider themselves a breed apart and refuse to accept that without the BSD core to OS X, Apple would have had a much more difficult time to get to a modern desktop environment - but, hey, that's the type of thing BSD and Open Source licensing are designed to do so what's the problem? Just recognise that a lot more people that JUST Linux users owe a debt to the Open Source movement.
So, by all means, be the fanboi and mod me down because you think I'm criticising OS X and can't deal with it.
1. Humungously huge person who is so big they cannot possible obey the laws of motion and momentum - must be the USA.
2. Miserable looking person burning an English language book - must be France.
3. Happy looking tanned person laughing at miserable person in 2. - must be an Italian football fan.
Oh, and because someone will do it if I don't:
4. Person with bad teeth and lying drunk and comatose in the gutter - must be the UK.
How about you huge percentage of non-Linux users go back to your nice little world of closed operating systems and closed source applications by pretending that we're not here then? Oh, and give us Firefox back, by the way...
Had Linux not drawn a lot of the world's eyes towards Open Source (after all, who apart from a few of us geeks, had heard of Richard Stallman before we heard about Linus Torvalds?), I very much doubt you lot on Windows would be enjoying the benefits of some great open source software - not to mention the fact that Apple would never have even considered building a Mac OS on a BSD core.
Would you like some cheese with your whining about Wine?
It makes tea then convinces you that you only ever wanted a tea.
Did you hear the one about the Apple coffee maker?
It does an amazing Mocha Frappucino with whipped cream, caramel sauce and a chocolate flake in the top but doesn't know how to make a plain black coffee.
Did you hear the one about the Linux coffee maker?
v0.1 made a good plain coffee but it took a while doing it, v1.0 makes good plain coffee but there's a patch that allows it to make better tea than the Microsoft coffee maker and v2.0 gives you a cup of plain coffee, a cup of whipped cream, a cup of caramel sauce, a chocolate flake in a wrapper and tells you to make the coffee how you want but for a much lower price than the Apple one.
Did you hear the one about the Vista coffee maker?
Nope, neither did I but then who gives a shit.
But let me get some points across to the remainder of them:
1. I need more than just pretty graphics effects to get me to even consider upgrading my gaming PC for your game.
2. I am not paying £35 for a game that can be completed in 6 hours.
3. I am not stupid. An expansion to a £35 game that took me 6 hours to complete initially is really just the other half of the full game I should have got when I spend that kind of money.
4. These days, before I buy anything to do with entertaining myself, I read reviews and other people's opinions. I use adblockers, switch the TV over during adverts and don't look at them in magazines. So your hype and marketing won't work on me, I buy stuff because I know it's worth the money before I do it.
5. I am not paying for any game that does allow me to install, deinstall and reinstall as many times as I like. (Bioshock, what's that then?)
6. If your game has an option for network play, then I expect to be able to buy one copy of the game and invite some friends over for a LAN game or two without them having to bring over copies of the same game also. If you're providing the game server then, yes, it's reasonable to expect everyone who connects to it to have their own copy of the game.
Please remember that the reason I play a game is that it is fun. This means that I can pick out one of many of the games I've purchased over the past 20 years or so, maybe pick up a mod or some new maps for it on the Internet, play it and have some fun.
So just because you've bought out a new game, it does not mean I will stop having fun until I buy it.
And finally, just remember one thing. I am the guy with the money and if you want that money then you "dance for me, monkey boy!" Because I can just as easily go have some fun taking my £35 and buying a couple of DVDs, a few CDs, a board game or maybe a handful of books and just downloading a free game like Alien Arena or Nexuiz from the Internet.
Therefore you should take it back to where you bought it from and demand a refund. And if they don't give you a refund, demand to see a manager and stand there until they take you seriously.
Probably not - but it's not very difficult to start learning to treat others with a bit more respect and consideration, rather than gloating when they've made a mistake.
As I said earlier, exercising a little humility and remembering that we all started by knowing nothing occasionally, can be a very sobering exercise.
I really would love to see the human race get its act together just once in a while - wouldn't it be a fantastic thing if we could all agree just not to buy any games from anywhere for 24 hours until the PC games companies actually start treating its customers like adults, rather than criminals.
Just think of the emergency boardroom meeting that would be called in the halls of EA if not one person, for just one day, didn't buy a PC game.
The problem is that we've let capitalism and corporations get out of control - now far too many of us relent to peer pressure and colourful adverts, we don't exercise good judgement any more because for a lot of us, we've more disposable income than we ever had in the past and we don't appreciate money any more.
For me, a mobile phone needs to:
1. Make phone calls and store a few telephone numbers.
2. Last or day or two on battery power while making no more than 10 minutes of calls per day.
3. Fit in an average-sized pocket and be lockable so buttons don't get pressed while it's moving around in my pocket.
Apart from that, anything goes within reason.
It does not need to be a fashion accessory because I buy shit because I like, not because other people do.
And if someone judges me based on the old phone I'm carrying or the non-designer clothes I wear then so be it - in my view, they're probably far too fickle a person to be of any interest to me anyway.
Likewise, if I don't understand what they're telling me then I'll ask them to explain it better so I do understand it, if what they're saying is interesting.
No, I'm no saint by any means - but life is too short to gloat over someone making a mistake.
Maybe I'm missing something here but I don't see what that has to do with it.
So you tell the guy he's setting himself up for a fall, tell him why and he refuses to listen? Then tell his boss.
I was one of the ones who got my ass reamed over that mistake even though I had nothing to do with it.
My point exactly - had you behaved "my way", the problem would not have happened and you wouldn't have got the blame for it.