This is all very interesting but... do we really need another way to spy on people? One would wonder how the hell our ancestors managed to survive without living in a surveillance society.
Your ancestors never knew what it was like to live outside a surveillance society.
They might be Irish and Catholic, Russian and Jewish, Baptist and Negro - but the densely packed urban neighborhoods they inhabited were small towns writ large.
The small town knows you by sight from the day you are born. It can recite every breath of scandal that has touched your family for the last five generations.
There is one school, one church, one doctor, a general store, a post office....
a saloon, and a gin mill....
The saloon crowd more or less respectable and well-behaved. The gin mill - the road house just out of town - known to one and all for its drunkenness and danger.
1. Apple's computer unit sales have increased more than any other PC manufacturer in the past few years. 2. Apple's margins on their computers is the highest in the industry 3. Apple's profit on computer sales is very high
Apple makes the Apple computer. No one else.
The Apple PC has always been an up-market, high-margin product.
The rest of the world competes for their share of the Windows market - which is still 90% of the PC market - and there are a lot of players here.
5. Apple's been in the smart phone business 3 years and has managed to sweep a segment into majority play
The more rural the area, the fewer route choices, and thusly the less importance a GPS due to the lack of choice.
The daily commute from A to B is easy.
Finding your brother-in-law's cabin by the lake - which is maybe forty-five miles off the main drag - assuming you don't miss the turn-off just past the burned-out barn - is hard.
Even in the event that the "less than 400K subscribers" loophole doesn't manage to give people enough freedom, there's always the various darknets.
I have wondered now and again how the ever-paranoid geek builds a network of trust that he can trust.
He trusts A because B trusts A. He trusts B because C trusts B. He trusts C because D trusts C... He doesn't know how big the network really is. He doesn't know how many nodes or super-nodes have been compromised.
The argument is over how severely he should be punished, given that he 1) didn't cause any damage, 2) wasn't acting out of malice, and 3) was at least accomplish what he did in large part due to the incompetence of those who are, in theory, supposed to be competent in protecting themselves from such attacks.
Imagine that a hacker makes his way into your system.
How much money and how many man-hours will it take to investigate and repair the breach?
Having to download and install each program individually is nowhere near "as easily accessible" as using Ubuntu's software repositories to automatically do the same thing.
It is easier than migrating to a new OS. Root canal.
Ubuntu's repositories are not really automatic.
Simply accessing the repository requires entering a password.
Searching the repository can be tedious and uninformative. Many - many apps - are not supported by Canonical. No automatic upgrades.
There will be another hurdle or two to jump before the app you choose is installed and accessible.
Because all those are very different time periods, and what was true in one of them is not necessarily still true in the others.
The point is that you cannot say that there has been no clearly visible - commercially viable - alternative to Microsoft - when Apple has been in the PC market for thirty years.
There are 4 million miles of public road in the US.
If you submit an error in the mapping system it has to be confirmed - your complaint simply can't be taken at face value - otherwise you will have cranks, hackers and hoaxers transforming the mapping system into Carmageddon.
I'm a pretty tech savvy user and even I had trouble with Linux when I converted one of my machines over to Ubuntu a while back (I finally just gave up)
"You, too, can download Ubuntu Desktop Edition and run it alongside your current Windows system."
The installer appeared to hang on a hard drive error. Opening a dialog box that could not be closed or canceled.
After killing the process in task manager, I searched the Ubuntu site for an answer. No help there.
On to Google where I spend the better part of an hour tracking down a solution. It seems that the installer treats every card slot and USB device on your system as a hard drive ---scanning and rescanning each port for what seems all eternity.
The work-around is to click "cancel" until you regain control.
60 clicks later I first saw daylight.
20 clicks later I could reboot into Ubuntu.
But the whole business left me in a sour and unforgiving mood.
The windows taskbar lacks discoverabilty, because practically everything is jammed into one menu (the start menu), or indecipherable little icons (system tray)
I take it you haven't tried Win 7.
Hover over a small system tray icon and I see a label. Hover over a large system tray icon and I see - in miniature - every open instance of an app.
When I open the Start menu what I see is "Search programs and files."
Instant access to pretty much everything.
There are large - labeled - icons for my most frequently used programs and folders. If I hover over Google Chrome what I see is are lists of my most frequently visited sites and recently closed sites.
If you don't change your mind we'll stop providing you with cheap licenses and Gold Partner status and cut off your MSDN subscription
Talk like this wastes time.
Walmart carried the flag for OEM Linux in big box retail for the better part of a decade.
It could not solve the problem of marketing Linux to the masses. It could not consistently undercut OEM Windows on price - and in the end it could not justify maintaining a dual inventory and support structure for a product line whose sales barely showed a pulse.
And because the users refuse to switch to an operating system that works.
The number of PC users is about 1 to 1.2 billion, based on most estimates I've seen. That would put the number of Windows users at 900 million to 1 billion, at all skill levels.
I will take that as pretty strong evidence that the Windows OS works just fine for those who use it.
In that way, when companies refuse to develop free drivers for GNU/Linux, we won't be able to make our own because the hardware will reject them.
I suspect that signed drivers are inevitable, whatever your platform.
Then you explain that everyone will see the same design (yay!), and people using older browsers will experience a VERY SLOW page load. That is why they should upgrade to a more up to date browser.
Users are impatient.
Users don't give a damn why your page loads slowly and they won't take the time to hear you out. They will be gone before you can put up your Chrome or Firefox logo.
The one website that has defeated every browser I've tried is Slashdot. There is no more quirky and unresponsive a front page on the web.
When I was a child we used to play "Cowboys and Indians." It was by definition roll playing with simulated violence.
Simulated at a very high level of abstraction - ham-bone theatric - and arguably less violent - and far less sadistic - than the conventions of a Warner Brothers cartoon.
Slashdot Mirror
If the program dynamically links plug-ins, and they make function calls to each other and share data structures, we believe they form a single program
The key words here are "we believe." It is at least possible that a court might disagree.
This is all very interesting but ... do we really need another way to spy on people? One would wonder how the hell our ancestors managed to survive without living in a surveillance society.
Your ancestors never knew what it was like to live outside a surveillance society.
They might be Irish and Catholic, Russian and Jewish, Baptist and Negro - but the densely packed urban neighborhoods they inhabited were small towns writ large.
The small town knows you by sight from the day you are born. It can recite every breath of scandal that has touched your family for the last five generations.
There is one school, one church, one doctor, a general store, a post office....
a saloon, and a gin mill....
The saloon crowd more or less respectable and well-behaved. The gin mill - the road house just out of town - known to one and all for its drunkenness and danger.
1. Apple's computer unit sales have increased more than any other PC manufacturer in the past few years.
2. Apple's margins on their computers is the highest in the industry
3. Apple's profit on computer sales is very high
Apple makes the Apple computer. No one else.
The Apple PC has always been an up-market, high-margin product.
The rest of the world competes for their share of the Windows market - which is still 90% of the PC market - and there are a lot of players here.
5. Apple's been in the smart phone business 3 years and has managed to sweep a segment into majority play
I am not sure what this means.
In terms of web browsing, the iPhone has a 0.59% share of market, the iPad 0.17% Operating System Market Share
The primary purpose of a mobile phone remains the mobile phone call.
6. Apple's iPad, out for almost one quarter, is seen to be eating into low end, very low margin products from other vendors (cough::netbooks::/cough)
I think it has become very clear that the netbook has little to offer beyond a slight increase in mobility.
The more rural the area, the fewer route choices, and thusly the less importance a GPS due to the lack of choice.
The daily commute from A to B is easy.
Finding your brother-in-law's cabin by the lake - which is maybe forty-five miles off the main drag - assuming you don't miss the turn-off just past the burned-out barn - is hard.
Even in the event that the "less than 400K subscribers" loophole doesn't manage to give people enough freedom, there's always the various darknets.
I have wondered now and again how the ever-paranoid geek builds a network of trust that he can trust.
He trusts A because B trusts A. He trusts B because C trusts B. He trusts C because D trusts C... He doesn't know how big the network really is. He doesn't know how many nodes or super-nodes have been compromised.
It all seems very fragile.
The argument is over how severely he should be punished, given that he 1) didn't cause any damage, 2) wasn't acting out of malice, and 3) was at least accomplish what he did in large part due to the incompetence of those who are, in theory, supposed to be competent in protecting themselves from such attacks.
Imagine that a hacker makes his way into your system.
How much money and how many man-hours will it take to investigate and repair the breach?
Will you give a rat's ass about his motives?
Of course he should stand trial. In the UK.
Crimes are usually prosecuted where the body falls - and not where the shot was fired.
That would allow the criminal to choose a safe venue from which to commit his crimes by remote control.
...that's reserved for lawyers and elected politicians.
and, it would appear, for the Slashot modder who can't resist giving the most predictable of cheap shots a boost-up to +4, Insightful.
Since it's OS, maybe that's the best feature YOU could add.
If - and only if - he is a programmer.
Something to remember before the mod-up to "Insightful."
Having to download and install each program individually is nowhere near "as easily accessible" as using Ubuntu's software repositories to automatically do the same thing.
It is easier than migrating to a new OS. Root canal.
Ubuntu's repositories are not really automatic.
Simply accessing the repository requires entering a password.
Searching the repository can be tedious and uninformative. Many - many apps - are not supported by Canonical. No automatic upgrades.
There will be another hurdle or two to jump before the app you choose is installed and accessible.
Because all those are very different time periods, and what was true in one of them is not necessarily still true in the others.
The point is that you cannot say that there has been no clearly visible - commercially viable - alternative to Microsoft - when Apple has been in the PC market for thirty years.
Question: I'm just a little PC builder and repairman, so maybe I'm missing something, but why not use USB sticks for login?
Because USB has been disabled?
That little stick can cause a lot of grief in - and out - of the cubicle.
There are 4 million miles of public road in the US.
If you submit an error in the mapping system it has to be confirmed - your complaint simply can't be taken at face value - otherwise you will have cranks, hackers and hoaxers transforming the mapping system into Carmageddon.
I'm a pretty tech savvy user and even I had trouble with Linux when I converted one of my machines over to Ubuntu a while back (I finally just gave up)
True story:
I decided to try the Ubuntu Windows installer
"You, too, can download Ubuntu Desktop Edition and run it alongside your current Windows system."
The installer appeared to hang on a hard drive error. Opening a dialog box that could not be closed or canceled.
After killing the process in task manager, I searched the Ubuntu site for an answer. No help there.
On to Google where I spend the better part of an hour tracking down a solution. It seems that the installer treats every card slot and USB device on your system as a hard drive ---scanning and rescanning each port for what seems all eternity.
The work-around is to click "cancel" until you regain control.
60 clicks later I first saw daylight.
20 clicks later I could reboot into Ubuntu.
But the whole business left me in a sour and unforgiving mood.
The windows taskbar lacks discoverabilty, because practically everything is jammed into one menu (the start menu), or indecipherable little icons (system tray)
I take it you haven't tried Win 7.
Hover over a small system tray icon and I see a label. Hover over a large system tray icon and I see - in miniature - every open instance of an app.
When I open the Start menu what I see is "Search programs and files."
Instant access to pretty much everything.
There are large - labeled - icons for my most frequently used programs and folders. If I hover over Google Chrome what I see is are lists of my most frequently visited sites and recently closed sites.
It all works very well.
You typically don't really "choose" Windows when you buy a PC. It's just there unless you ask otherwise (and even know that you can so ask).
The Apple II was launched in 1977.
Three years before the IBM PC. The Macintosh in 1984.
Eleven years before Windows 95.
Apple has never been known for hiding its light under a bushel. Yet in 2010 it holds a bare 5% of the PC market.
That can't be explained unless the Windows buy is a real, conscious, choice.
Walmart carried the flag for OEM Linux in big box retail for the better part of ten years.
Nothing ever came of it.
Though, mind you, most of those years were spent selling carloads of overstock junk to the geek who thought he could spin straw into gold.
There's a little phrase at the core of the American society. "Freedom of speech". You might be familiar with it.
The Fifth Amendment did not abolish the law of libel and slander.
It did not legalize pornography.
American law - like American society - has a deep distrust of absolutes.
If you don't change your mind we'll stop providing you with cheap licenses and Gold Partner status and cut off your MSDN subscription
Talk like this wastes time.
Walmart carried the flag for OEM Linux in big box retail for the better part of a decade.
It could not solve the problem of marketing Linux to the masses. It could not consistently undercut OEM Windows on price - and in the end it could not justify maintaining a dual inventory and support structure for a product line whose sales barely showed a pulse.
So call it an "app store", except all the apps are free. Your mom will eat it up.
The FOSS programs his Mom will be looking for are all available for Windows and damn near as easily accessible.
And because the users refuse to switch to an operating system that works.
The number of PC users is about 1 to 1.2 billion, based on most estimates I've seen. That would put the number of Windows users at 900 million to 1 billion, at all skill levels.
I will take that as pretty strong evidence that the Windows OS works just fine for those who use it.
In that way, when companies refuse to develop free drivers for GNU/Linux, we won't be able to make our own because the hardware will reject them.
I suspect that signed drivers are inevitable, whatever your platform.
Even in my remote town in the middle of nowhere, we now have access to 12 megabits per second for commercial clients.
You haven't said anything about the price - or what drives your local economy.
"Remote" doesn't always mean poor or politically impotent.
Now the government wants to start influencing our kids at the gaming level? Eeeewwwwwww! How creepy is that?
About as creepy as The Oregon Trail.
1971. Still in print after 39 years. The Oregon Trail
Jolicloud.
Tell me why the geek's mind turn to mush when it comes to marketing his projects.
Is it "all the sugar and twice the caffeine" in his Jolt Cola?
Then you explain that everyone will see the same design (yay!), and people using older browsers will experience a VERY SLOW page load. That is why they should upgrade to a more up to date browser.
Users are impatient.
Users don't give a damn why your page loads slowly and they won't take the time to hear you out. They will be gone before you can put up your Chrome or Firefox logo.
The one website that has defeated every browser I've tried is Slashdot. There is no more quirky and unresponsive a front page on the web.
--
When I was a child we used to play "Cowboys and Indians." It was by definition roll playing with simulated violence.
Simulated at a very high level of abstraction - ham-bone theatric - and arguably less violent - and far less sadistic - than the conventions of a Warner Brothers cartoon.