When I see comments like "And so we have this huge cyclical myth propogating that for instance 'X sucks'." I wonder if some of you ever even read my origonal post.
The X Window system does not "suck" nor did I say it does. I however did say that WINE does NOT need to be the fastest. The X Window System works well for almost anything you can throw at it and can even be set up so that the actual program you are running is on a different computer and the one you are using just dislays what is going on. It was designed to be very useful, but not to be the best gaming engine on the face of the earth.
Many of you seem to be missing the point which is The X Window system is fast enough and the effort to make it faster isn't worth it.
And what is with that Anonymous Coward commment "DirectX dont access hardware through GDI, that would be sluggish. DX access directly to hardware by a driver implemented HAL."
I said "DirectX is good at getting around [MEANING NOT USING] using the slower Windows GDI." Are enough of you dumb enough to actually be confused by the phrase "getting around?" Yes, I now realize that was a poorly constructed sentence with two meanings and that is my fault, but that is no excuse. By the context you really should have figured out what I ment or at least asked what I ment but instead a bunch of you (but not all of you) acted like dumbasses and jumped to the wrong conclusion.
Yes, DirectX can use HAL (hardware abstraction layer) and if a spicific feature is not available it can sometimes use HEL (hardware emulation layer.) (And there is also the Reference Rasterizer. Unlike HEL, the reference rasterizer supports every Direct3D feature according to the DirectX 7.0 Programmer's Reference.)
Microsoft put a lot of time and effort into optimizing DirectX for speed. If you want to squeeze some more performance out of WINE you will most likely need to have the people working on the Kernel driver, the X Window System, and WINE working tward the goal of optimizing for speed. But why would they do that? As I said before "WINE doesn't need to be the fastest."
Please don't be upset by anything I have said. We are all dumbasses sometimes I forgive you. --- Summary 1: WINE does not need to have the best benchmarks( be the fastest.)
Summary 2: I know that many of you deal with dumbasses on Slashdot way too often and are fed up with it, but please realize that sometimes you are the dumbass.
Summary 3: The phrase "getting around" can be taken two ways. My bad! Sorry!
Summary 4: Because we are all dumbasses sometimes, I forgive you. --- This is just my opinion, please don't flame me just because you didn't take the time to not be a dumbass.
The Linux Kernel has some graphics support but neither the Kernel nor the X Window System are geared for fast 3D graphics. DirectX is good at getting around using the slower Windows GDI. DirectX is one of the few things Microsoft does somewhat well. (Insert joke here about Directx 9 and taking nine trys to get DirectX right.)
I have a feeling that unless some major changes are made to the X Window System (and maybe Linux drivers) that WINE will not catch up with WindowsXP and DirectX, but that just means I would need a faster computer.
WINE doesn't need to be the fastest. As long as it will run my older games (which Windows 2000 does not always do well) it may be more useful to me than an actual install of Windows. --- This is just my opinion, please don't flame me just because you like Windows.
Actually when I wrote "For some of you IE7 CSS 2.0 support may be a big thing and I am not trying to belittle it, but for me CSS 2.0 support lives in the shadow of being able to actually use IE7" I ment that I was unable to install and run IE7. Can anyone actually tell me what API calls in Windows XP and Windows 2003 are important enough to break compatibility with Windows 2000 and Windows NT4?
Some of IE's features actually piss me off. I do not like typing in a valid URL into IE or a valid Windows share name into Windows Explorer and have it suddenly search the web.
In my opinion IE6 has been around so long (even after tabbed browsing became popular) is because Microsoft was happy with IE6. Now Firefox and Mozilla (but not Opera?) have Tabbed Browsing and people don't like going back to IE because it lacks that wonderful feature. I guess enough people have complained loudly enough about Tabbed Browsing, but not about CSS 2 support.
If you really want IE7 to have good CSS 2 support then start yelling at Microsoft like they are a deaf person who doesn't give a rat's ass. If enough people do this then eventually they will get tired of being yelled at and do something. (I mean no disrespect to the deaf or rodents.)
So it looks like IE7 will not be ported to Windows 9x/ME/NT/2K, just Windows 2003/XP?
I don't know about the rest of you but Windows 98SE (Second Lousy Edition) works fine for my web browsing needs. Unless I wanted to play the latest PC games I have no reason to EVER upgrade from Windows 98SE and I think FireFox will be supporting my web browsing needs for a long time.
Why should I care if IE7 will have good CSS 2.0 support when I can't even run it? (Insert some zealot comment here about Open Source being supported as long as some programmer with way too much free time on his/her hands gives a d@mn.)
Okay now I pissed off the Windows zealots and the Open Source zealots. Mercy?
For some of you IE7 CSS 2.0 support may be a big thing and I am not trying to belittle it, but for me CSS 2.0 support lives in the shadow of being able to actually use IE7.
Okay, my subject title is just plain silly. If it made you laugh then I have done my good deed for the millennium.:p
I think the most interesting part of the article was when it said "Processor speed has increased many times -- it doubles every two years, while memory is still very slow, doubling every six years."
So maybe it would be more efficent for people to stop screwing around with new processor design ideas for a while and put a little effort in doubling the speed of memory access (and I don't mean by using level whatever caches). Selling motherboards with a faster memory bus would be easy, just give it a cool sounding name kind of like Sega's "Blast Processing". Let's call it "HyperRAM Technology!"
"If the cost hits $2 billion, that's three to four times what it would cost to send astronauts to do the job as they have four times before and as NASA planned before the Columbia disaster."
Although we have got a lot of good from NASA and the technology they developed, the shuttle seems to be a giant money pit sucking up money that could be spent on maybe a replacement for the current shuttles. Sure the current shuttles are reusable, but after the Colombia disaster they were used a lot less than what they were going to be.
NASA does seem to like hanging on to everything and I just hope the Hubble Space Telescope doesn't become a moneypit like the shuttles or an excuse to keep the shuttles in service.
(Yes, there was that event where some private people went into space, but currently that's not even close to replacing the shuttle.)
Oh well, that's just my opinion and like Dennis Miller I could be wrong.
I'm not sure that this completely solves the safety issue. Large conventional reactors have been constructed for the sole purpose of generating heavy hydrogen. Is there another feasible source that I don't know about?
I'm also not sure that it solves any political issues either. Where does the metal for the catalyst come from? Wouldn't those countries that have it be in the same position the middle east is in now?
I never said anything about Cold Fusion actually being safer, only feeling safer. As for the catalysts needed I am guessing that they are more common than what oil reserves are. I guess it depends what they use for a catalyst. (Actual results may vary. This is just a guess.)
However, the biggest problem I see for Cold Fusion is getting it to work in the first place. I am no physicist but what if to make Cold Fusion work it requires the proverbial "spherical cow"?
Agreed. Too many environmentalists only think things half way through. In Arizona we have spent way too much money trying to track down and catch wild animals that have lost their fear of people because of people feeding the wild animals. Why are the environmentalists not yelling and screaming about people feeding the animals like they do about the animals needing to be killed because now the don't fear humans?
In Arizona "Don't feed the critters" should be rule number two right behind rule number one, "Don't pet the cactus, not even the soft furry fluffy looking ones! Hint: that's not soft fluffy fur!"
As long as nothing goes wrong nuclear power plants are a very clean and efficent source of power.
I don't remember too clearly because it was before my time, but I think the distrust in Nuclear power is mostly the fault of the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) who didn't do their job correctly and overlooked blatent problems at Three Mile Island.
So how can we get people to trust the Government with Nuclear power again? Was it Acer that renamed itself as BENQ? Maybe if we call Nuclear power something else we can slip it past the public. Maybe we can call Nuclear power plants "Soft Fusion Plants" or "Warm Fusion Plants" and not tell the public what they really are.
A Cold Fusion Power Plant would not have the bad reputation that Nuclear Power Plants do (thank you Three Mile Island). With a new source of cheap and safe electricity people in the US can finally buy economical electric cars and use electric heating and begin to break the US dependancies on forign oil.
This of course assumes many things like Cold Fusion being practical, safe, and nobody screwing things up enough to create a Cold Fusion Three Mile Island or Chernobyl.
I agree with you that having plain-text config files and user-friendly front-ends is a great way to go. However, some front-end configuration programs sometimes fall short of enough control over the config files. Also, sometimes when a config file is edited directly the user-friendly config program will get cranky.
Kppp is one front-end that I wish the developers spend a little more time on. It took a long time for me to track down that I needed pppd to get the "noauth" setting set and Kppp was not allowed to send "noauth" to pppd.
Then there are packages that don't come with a good user-friendly front-end. apt-get comes to mind. Sure I could apt-get install dselect or aptitude, but they are seprate packages.
Also there are some software packages that maybe a novice should not setup and run. Apache, if not configured correctly, can be a huge security hole.
In the end maybe we just need to politely slap some programmers on the back of the head and point out what they can do to improve their config tools. For the novice user maybe a setting in the package manager that keeps track of if the user likes having user-friendly config tools installed by default would be a good idea. I assume Desktop OSs Like Xandros and Lindows have worked out many of these problems.
I still don't know how well these distros handle the installation of new hardware though. I don't think installing a new video card that uses a different chipset is going to be a walk in the park for a novice just yet on any distro.
Since you brought up Xandros I'll pimp that for a second.
Xandros looks like it may be a decent Desktop system although it is a commercial distro and I don't want to spend the money to find out. This is the first I have ever heard of it so if they can come out with a Free/Lite edition and get on TechTV and somehow get the general public's interest it may take off.
But my question still is how will the second group react to these distros? Will they feel that they have lost too much control? Will they suffer from command line withdrawl?
Some people don't like smart installers because you don't learn anything that way. (On the other hand isn't that the point of a smart installer, to guess what you may not know?)
Personally I would be happy with a combination of Debian for servers and Xandros for Desktops. * Misc * Lindows For info on Knoppix check out http://freshmeat.net/projects/knoppix/.
Linux spreads it's wings, but not to the Desktop?
on
Linux Spreads its Wings
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Using Linux in embeded products is one of the strong points of Linux: no directly messing with the Kernel by the user (no compiling, no inserting modules, no figuring out what exact chipset your sound card is, etc.) This makes Linux easy to use by anyone. Of course being custom fit to the device by the manufacturer helps a lot.
However, I don't see any mention of any Desktop Linux breakthroughs. Why? As far as I can tell there are two general types of computer users: those who want the computer to set itself up as much as possible and those who want total control over their computer and don't mind learning more than they ever set out to know about their computer.
If a decent Desktop Linux Distro ever comes out that is loved by the first group I can see the second group griping about how much it takes control away from the user. But wouldn't taking control away from the user be the goal of such a distro?
Thank you movie pirates. I couldn't care less about you before but now I am pissed off that there is now some pervert in the projection booth watching me make out with my girlfriend in the theature with night vision googles. Great, just great.
To install the Linux version of Heretic II I had to click on some file called setup.sh and it installed. Sure I had to download a patch from www.lokigames.com, but you usually need to do that for Windows games anyway.
My point is that you are blaming Linux for a lousy installer. I have seen some lousy installs in Windows too.
Sure for a Linux Box you need the X Window System installed and setup correctly, but with Windows to run the latest games you need to install the latest video drivers to go with the latest DirectX 9.x you just installed (because Microsoft didn't get it right the firxt 8 times???) Most Windows game installers come bundled with the needed version of Direct X. Maybe linux installers should check that the needed components are installed an configured correctly.
Quake 3 is kind of an extreme example of how dificult too many developers make their installs.
Anonymous Coward wrote,[Q] So, I guess the point I'm trying to make is that what seems easy and natural to Linux geeks is definitely not what regular people consider easy and natural. Hence, the preference towards Windows. [/Q] Double clicking on an icon isn't natural either. For those who have never seen a new computer user learn to use a mouse it goes something like this.
By the way, have you ever tried to setup Windows XP to browse smb shares on a local network when someone has coutomized it so there is not Nework Neighborhood (or whatever it is now called) on the desktop? Windows does it's fare share of stupid things too.
"Now go to My Computer." *click* "You need to double click it." *click* *long pause* *click* "You need to double click faster than that." *click* *slightly shorter pause* *click*
Solitaire is a great training tool for those who don't catch on quickly.
I'm sure the Kernel people were serious about USB and IEEE1394 from the start. The problem is that they can get things to run perfectly on their own machines and other people will still have problems. How do you check for problems on hardware you don't have access to? I guess all they can do is releace a stable kernel and wait for the bug reports to come in.
That is not normally enough to get a 2.6.x kernel working correctly with the rest of the system.
Debian Distros Only!
First edit your apt sources file so you are upgrading to unstable. (Insert Windows Joke Here!) (I don't know offhand if any other Debian branch has the right stuff for Linux Kernle 2.6.x)
apt-get upgrade may not upgrade module-init-tools for some reason. You might also want to run "apt-get install udev" if you have the hotplug stuff built into your kernel. Other things may need to be done for your system. This was enough for mine.
The debian command dselect may do a better job of Upgrading your debian system as far as conflict resolution is concerned, but I really don't like the user interface to it. If you want to know more about debian packages check out http://www.debian.org/distrib/packages.
A complete Debian 2.4.x to 2.6.x upgrade guide would be nice. Anyone know of one?
I have been getting USB Error messages with 2.4.25 and 2.6.3 about my UHCI controller being halted and some -110 error with my mouse. Strangly enough my USB card supports both OHCI and UHCI and only uses the OHCI controller (cat/proc/interrupts shows no UHCI activity). I hope this Kernel will fix whatever is going on because for me it's either a USB mouse or plug one into the serial port (no ps/2 port.)
At least when I plug in a USB mouse into a Linux Box it doesn't care what port it's plugged into. If I change what port the mouse is plugged into on Windows 98 however, first tells me there is no mouse, then it will detect new hardware, then it finds the USB mouse in the other USB port. One of my friends complained about the same problem on his system which is running a newer, better version of Windows.
Pinky and the Brain Parody
Steve Ballmer: So what are we going to do tomorrow night Bill?
Bill Gates: Same thing we do every night Ballmer, TRY TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD!
Excel Saga Parody
Gates: "THE WORLD IS CORRUPT! As you know Ballmer, our Secret Ideological Organisation Microsoft will soon be running the world! We shall first start by taking over the prefecture of x86 in the city of x86."
Ballmer: "Haaaaaaaaail Gates! I Ballmer Ballmer will suffer for you, lie for you, die for you, vomit for you,. . . What's that rope you are about to pull do?"
Yes, the current NTFS support for Linux is quite an accomplishment. I just said it would be nice if they had better support.
Oh, and btw, WINE does work with 95 too. Check your configs and documentation.
It's dificult to tell what you are trying to say. I never said WINE does not work with Win9x programs. It works very well with most Win9x programs. It's the Windows 9x drivers I don't know about. The one that is giving me problems is a video driver ment to talk to a spicific uncommon video card used to key effects effects to a switcher to be mixed in downstream.
WINE does not require a copy of XP except if you want to have good NTFS support. Many people who want or need good NTFS support already have Windows XP. If you want good NTFS support and don't have Windows XP then you are probably out of luck.
The Linux Kernel 2.6.x so far does not have very good NTFS writing support. With few exceptions I would suggest not using 2.6.x NTFS support until it nolonger says it is experimental. Also, I think the NTFS.SYS driver from WINE calls the Windows XP driver ntoskrnl.exe. The NTFS.SYS talked about in the article is part of WINE.
Jan had to reimplement about 300 functions in order to make the driver, NTFS.sys, work. Jan used four different methods to implement the necessary calls:
Pass the call straight through to ntoskrnl.exe (yes, the real WinXP ntoskrnl.exe)
It would be nice if someone worked on native NTFS support for writing to the disk that worked as well as it does in Windows. As far as I know the 2.6.x Linux kernels support writing that can't make a NTFS file larger on the disk.
What seemed to interest everyone was not the fact that the native NT drivers can be used for filesystem access, but how it could be extended to support other drivers. In particular, native Windows printer drivers, serial drivers, video drivers, and networking drivers may be able to be implemented using a similar method. All that special hardware using "Win" soft drivers might be possible to get working.
I hope they get some support for Win9x drivers too since I have only one program on Windows that WINE can't run because of some special drivers it installs and expects to work. At least that's why I think it's not running. That's one problem with Windows support: Windows is not one operating system.
I have only met two people who I know have shashdot accounts. Neither of them is an evil sys admin. Reading a person's post or responding to him/her or getting a responce from the person is not the same as meeting them. Maybe you disagree with me on this. I hope meeting people still requires some sort of actual interaction.
Second, you seem a bit upset. Calm down. You got the point of the whole thing although you seem to be upset that in my scenario they cought the guy that did it. I only made the crime a severe one to give the trial importance. You seem to think I am saying something that I am not.
Interesting that you bring up DNA. If enough criminals figure out how to harvest dna from like hospital medical waste or such and leaving it at crime scenes I could see Lawyers trying to get DNA inadmissible in court.
About that last part you wrote Dave. How did we get from is the system admin trustworthy to evidence of an assassination on somebody's machine? Through worms and rooting machines files get dumped places all the time. However in court the word of a system admin and his logs is considered truth. This will likely change. Maybe it should change. Actually I probably should have brought this up in my origonal post. My bad.
What if the admin used his job to alter the logs himself to hide a crime he committed? I have yet to meet an evil sys admin, but it could happen.
Mrhandstand brought up some interesting software and ideas on how to do things, but a lawyer doesn't need to prove the system is flawed; he just needs to get one person on a jury to think it might be flawed.
So let's say someone breaks into the MegaCorp computer and causes billions of dollars in damage and causes a few powerplants to go off line in the East Coast of the US during a heatwave causing many people to die.
Now let's say that the person who did this is found because he forgot to modify/erace the system logs and a criminal trial begins.
Now let's also say he hires Jacky Childs as his lawyer who asks the system admins, under oath, if the system logs are nothing more than common text files. Then he asks if it is possible that any of the admins could log on and edit that text file log. Unless they got the logs being directed to a line printer an constantly printed out, Jacky Childs just found his reasonable doubt. Good luck with the civil suits!
Seriously though, this could be a real problem one day soon.
Tony-A wrote:
If they show in a generated index of one of those directories, they are linked to! This includes any parent directories and guessable filenames and subdirectories.
Allow me to rephrase what I said.
"I have found hidden files in directories by looking at the location of images and looking in those directories. Those directories and some of the files were not directly linked to the rest of the site other to an index page that was also not linked to the rest of the site." That seems so much more wordy though.
To get to that generated index requires traversing the directory which was not linked anywhere. This took a small leap of faith that an auto-generated index would actually exist, but they too often do. The point was that the guy did not expect anyone to come across that stuff because it wasn't directly linked anywhere. I also told the guy about it just so he would be aware that these files could easily be found. Actually I was more concerned about him running a telnet daemon/service on his machine.
I disagree with your definition of guessable filenames and subdirectories being linked even without an explicit refrence to the file or directory though. To me an implied refrence or the likelihood of a file existing isn't being linked even though it means someone can just as easily access it. A parent directory not linked anywhere is still not linked, even if it's existance is implied by a file within that directory. The same with a web page that refrences only hyatt001.jpg and hyatt002.jpg. Everyone reading this should see the pattern guess that hyatt003.jpg may exist even without an explicit link.
Tony-A wrote:
My philosophy on security: If you actually need security, you'd better be paranoid.
I guess people with tripod or Yahoo! GeoCities hosted "homepages" usually don't need to worry, but almost everyone else should. I just wish the secure logins were the default and only allow secure FTP though.
Slashdot Mirror
When I see comments like "And so we have this huge cyclical myth propogating that for instance 'X sucks'." I wonder if some of you ever even read my origonal post.
The X Window system does not "suck" nor did I say it does. I however did say that WINE does NOT need to be the fastest. The X Window System works well for almost anything you can throw at it and can even be set up so that the actual program you are running is on a different computer and the one you are using just dislays what is going on. It was designed to be very useful, but not to be the best gaming engine on the face of the earth.
Many of you seem to be missing the point which is The X Window system is fast enough and the effort to make it faster isn't worth it.
And what is with that Anonymous Coward commment "DirectX dont access hardware through GDI, that would be sluggish. DX access directly to hardware by a driver implemented HAL."
I said "DirectX is good at getting around [MEANING NOT USING] using the slower Windows GDI." Are enough of you dumb enough to actually be confused by the phrase "getting around?" Yes, I now realize that was a poorly constructed sentence with two meanings and that is my fault, but that is no excuse. By the context you really should have figured out what I ment or at least asked what I ment but instead a bunch of you (but not all of you) acted like dumbasses and jumped to the wrong conclusion.
Yes, DirectX can use HAL (hardware abstraction layer) and if a spicific feature is not available it can sometimes use HEL (hardware emulation layer.) (And there is also the Reference Rasterizer. Unlike HEL, the reference rasterizer supports every Direct3D feature according to the DirectX 7.0 Programmer's Reference.)
Microsoft put a lot of time and effort into optimizing DirectX for speed. If you want to squeeze some more performance out of WINE you will most likely need to have the people working on the Kernel driver, the X Window System, and WINE working tward the goal of optimizing for speed. But why would they do that? As I said before "WINE doesn't need to be the fastest."
Please don't be upset by anything I have said. We are all dumbasses sometimes I forgive you.
---
Summary 1: WINE does not need to have the best benchmarks( be the fastest.)
Summary 2: I know that many of you deal with dumbasses on Slashdot way too often and are fed up with it, but please realize that sometimes you are the dumbass.
Summary 3: The phrase "getting around" can be taken two ways. My bad! Sorry!
Summary 4: Because we are all dumbasses sometimes, I forgive you.
---
This is just my opinion, please don't flame me just because you didn't take the time to not be a dumbass.
The Linux Kernel has some graphics support but neither the Kernel nor the X Window System are geared for fast 3D graphics. DirectX is good at getting around using the slower Windows GDI. DirectX is one of the few things Microsoft does somewhat well. (Insert joke here about Directx 9 and taking nine trys to get DirectX right.)
I have a feeling that unless some major changes are made to the X Window System (and maybe Linux drivers) that WINE will not catch up with WindowsXP and DirectX, but that just means I would need a faster computer.
WINE doesn't need to be the fastest. As long as it will run my older games (which Windows 2000 does not always do well) it may be more useful to me than an actual install of Windows.
---
This is just my opinion, please don't flame me just because you like Windows.
Some of IE's features actually piss me off. I do not like typing in a valid URL into IE or a valid Windows share name into Windows Explorer and have it suddenly search the web.
In my opinion IE6 has been around so long (even after tabbed browsing became popular) is because Microsoft was happy with IE6. Now Firefox and Mozilla (but not Opera?) have Tabbed Browsing and people don't like going back to IE because it lacks that wonderful feature. I guess enough people have complained loudly enough about Tabbed Browsing, but not about CSS 2 support.
If you really want IE7 to have good CSS 2 support then start yelling at Microsoft like they are a deaf person who doesn't give a rat's ass. If enough people do this then eventually they will get tired of being yelled at and do something. (I mean no disrespect to the deaf or rodents.)
So it looks like IE7 will not be ported to Windows 9x/ME/NT/2K, just Windows 2003/XP?
:p
I don't know about the rest of you but Windows 98SE (Second Lousy Edition) works fine for my web browsing needs. Unless I wanted to play the latest PC games I have no reason to EVER upgrade from Windows 98SE and I think FireFox will be supporting my web browsing needs for a long time.
Why should I care if IE7 will have good CSS 2.0 support when I can't even run it? (Insert some zealot comment here about Open Source being supported as long as some programmer with way too much free time on his/her hands gives a d@mn.)
Okay now I pissed off the Windows zealots and the Open Source zealots. Mercy?
For some of you IE7 CSS 2.0 support may be a big thing and I am not trying to belittle it, but for me CSS 2.0 support lives in the shadow of being able to actually use IE7.
Okay, my subject title is just plain silly. If it made you laugh then I have done my good deed for the millennium.
I think the most interesting part of the article was when it said "Processor speed has increased many times -- it doubles every two years, while memory is still very slow, doubling every six years."
So maybe it would be more efficent for people to stop screwing around with new processor design ideas for a while and put a little effort in doubling the speed of memory access (and I don't mean by using level whatever caches). Selling motherboards with a faster memory bus would be easy, just give it a cool sounding name kind of like Sega's "Blast Processing". Let's call it "HyperRAM Technology!"
Although we have got a lot of good from NASA and the technology they developed, the shuttle seems to be a giant money pit sucking up money that could be spent on maybe a replacement for the current shuttles. Sure the current shuttles are reusable, but after the Colombia disaster they were used a lot less than what they were going to be.
NASA does seem to like hanging on to everything and I just hope the Hubble Space Telescope doesn't become a moneypit like the shuttles or an excuse to keep the shuttles in service.
(Yes, there was that event where some private people went into space, but currently that's not even close to replacing the shuttle.)
Oh well, that's just my opinion and like Dennis Miller I could be wrong.
I never said anything about Cold Fusion actually being safer, only feeling safer. As for the catalysts needed I am guessing that they are more common than what oil reserves are. I guess it depends what they use for a catalyst. (Actual results may vary. This is just a guess.)
However, the biggest problem I see for Cold Fusion is getting it to work in the first place. I am no physicist but what if to make Cold Fusion work it requires the proverbial "spherical cow"?
Agreed. Too many environmentalists only think things half way through. In Arizona we have spent way too much money trying to track down and catch wild animals that have lost their fear of people because of people feeding the wild animals. Why are the environmentalists not yelling and screaming about people feeding the animals like they do about the animals needing to be killed because now the don't fear humans?
In Arizona "Don't feed the critters" should be rule number two right behind rule number one, "Don't pet the cactus, not even the soft furry fluffy looking ones! Hint: that's not soft fluffy fur!"
As long as nothing goes wrong nuclear power plants are a very clean and efficent source of power.
I don't remember too clearly because it was before my time, but I think the distrust in Nuclear power is mostly the fault of the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) who didn't do their job correctly and overlooked blatent problems at Three Mile Island.
So how can we get people to trust the Government with Nuclear power again? Was it Acer that renamed itself as BENQ? Maybe if we call Nuclear power something else we can slip it past the public. Maybe we can call Nuclear power plants "Soft Fusion Plants" or "Warm Fusion Plants" and not tell the public what they really are.
A Cold Fusion Power Plant would not have the bad reputation that Nuclear Power Plants do (thank you Three Mile Island). With a new source of cheap and safe electricity people in the US can finally buy economical electric cars and use electric heating and begin to break the US dependancies on forign oil.
This of course assumes many things like Cold Fusion being practical, safe, and nobody screwing things up enough to create a Cold Fusion Three Mile Island or Chernobyl.
I agree with you that having plain-text config files and user-friendly front-ends is a great way to go. However, some front-end configuration programs sometimes fall short of enough control over the config files. Also, sometimes when a config file is edited directly the user-friendly config program will get cranky.
Kppp is one front-end that I wish the developers spend a little more time on. It took a long time for me to track down that I needed pppd to get the "noauth" setting set and Kppp was not allowed to send "noauth" to pppd.
Then there are packages that don't come with a good user-friendly front-end. apt-get comes to mind. Sure I could apt-get install dselect or aptitude, but they are seprate packages.
Also there are some software packages that maybe a novice should not setup and run. Apache, if not configured correctly, can be a huge security hole.
In the end maybe we just need to politely slap some programmers on the back of the head and point out what they can do to improve their config tools. For the novice user maybe a setting in the package manager that keeps track of if the user likes having user-friendly config tools installed by default would be a good idea. I assume Desktop OSs Like Xandros and Lindows have worked out many of these problems.
I still don't know how well these distros handle the installation of new hardware though. I don't think installing a new video card that uses a different chipset is going to be a walk in the park for a novice just yet on any distro.
Since you brought up Xandros I'll pimp that for a second.
Xandros looks like it may be a decent Desktop system although it is a commercial distro and I don't want to spend the money to find out. This is the first I have ever heard of it so if they can come out with a Free/Lite edition and get on TechTV and somehow get the general public's interest it may take off.
But my question still is how will the second group react to these distros? Will they feel that they have lost too much control? Will they suffer from command line withdrawl?
Some people don't like smart installers because you don't learn anything that way. (On the other hand isn't that the point of a smart installer, to guess what you may not know?)
Personally I would be happy with a combination of Debian for servers and Xandros for Desktops.
* Misc *
Lindows
For info on Knoppix check out http://freshmeat.net/projects/knoppix/.
Using Linux in embeded products is one of the strong points of Linux: no directly messing with the Kernel by the user (no compiling, no inserting modules, no figuring out what exact chipset your sound card is, etc.) This makes Linux easy to use by anyone. Of course being custom fit to the device by the manufacturer helps a lot.
However, I don't see any mention of any Desktop Linux breakthroughs. Why? As far as I can tell there are two general types of computer users: those who want the computer to set itself up as much as possible and those who want total control over their computer and don't mind learning more than they ever set out to know about their computer.
If a decent Desktop Linux Distro ever comes out that is loved by the first group I can see the second group griping about how much it takes control away from the user. But wouldn't taking control away from the user be the goal of such a distro?
But that's what I think. I could be wrong.
Thank you movie pirates. I couldn't care less about you before but now I am pissed off that there is now some pervert in the projection booth watching me make out with my girlfriend in the theature with night vision googles. Great, just great.
To install the Linux version of Heretic II I had to click on some file called setup.sh and it installed. Sure I had to download a patch from www.lokigames.com, but you usually need to do that for Windows games anyway.
My point is that you are blaming Linux for a lousy installer. I have seen some lousy installs in Windows too.
Sure for a Linux Box you need the X Window System installed and setup correctly, but with Windows to run the latest games you need to install the latest video drivers to go with the latest DirectX 9.x you just installed (because Microsoft didn't get it right the firxt 8 times???) Most Windows game installers come bundled with the needed version of Direct X. Maybe linux installers should check that the needed components are installed an configured correctly.
Quake 3 is kind of an extreme example of how dificult too many developers make their installs.
Anonymous Coward wrote,[Q]
So, I guess the point I'm trying to make is that what seems easy and natural to Linux geeks is definitely not what regular people consider easy and natural. Hence, the preference towards Windows.
[/Q]
Double clicking on an icon isn't natural either. For those who have never seen a new computer user learn to use a mouse it goes something like this.
By the way, have you ever tried to setup Windows XP to browse smb shares on a local network when someone has coutomized it so there is not Nework Neighborhood (or whatever it is now called) on the desktop? Windows does it's fare share of stupid things too.
"Now go to My Computer."
*click*
"You need to double click it."
*click* *long pause* *click*
"You need to double click faster than that."
*click* *slightly shorter pause* *click*
Solitaire is a great training tool for those who don't catch on quickly.
I'm sure the Kernel people were serious about USB and IEEE1394 from the start. The problem is that they can get things to run perfectly on their own machines and other people will still have problems. How do you check for problems on hardware you don't have access to? I guess all they can do is releace a stable kernel and wait for the bug reports to come in.
That is not normally enough to get a 2.6.x kernel working correctly with the rest of the system.
Debian Distros Only!
First edit your apt sources file so you are upgrading to unstable. (Insert Windows Joke Here!) (I don't know offhand if any other Debian branch has the right stuff for Linux Kernle 2.6.x)
apt-get update && apt-get install module-init-tools && apt-get upgrade
apt-get upgrade may not upgrade module-init-tools for some reason. You might also want to run "apt-get install udev" if you have the hotplug stuff built into your kernel. Other things may need to be done for your system. This was enough for mine.
The debian command dselect may do a better job of Upgrading your debian system as far as conflict resolution is concerned, but I really don't like the user interface to it. If you want to know more about debian packages check out http://www.debian.org/distrib/packages.
A complete Debian 2.4.x to 2.6.x upgrade guide would be nice. Anyone know of one?
I have been getting USB Error messages with 2.4.25 and 2.6.3 about my UHCI controller being halted and some -110 error with my mouse. Strangly enough my USB card supports both OHCI and UHCI and only uses the OHCI controller (cat /proc/interrupts shows no UHCI activity). I hope this Kernel will fix whatever is going on because for me it's either a USB mouse or plug one into the serial port (no ps/2 port.)
At least when I plug in a USB mouse into a Linux Box it doesn't care what port it's plugged into. If I change what port the mouse is plugged into on Windows 98 however, first tells me there is no mouse, then it will detect new hardware, then it finds the USB mouse in the other USB port. One of my friends complained about the same problem on his system which is running a newer, better version of Windows.
Pinky and the Brain Parody
Steve Ballmer: So what are we going to do tomorrow night Bill?
Bill Gates: Same thing we do every night Ballmer, TRY TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD!
Excel Saga Parody
Gates: "THE WORLD IS CORRUPT! As you know Ballmer, our Secret Ideological Organisation Microsoft will soon be running the world! We shall first start by taking over the prefecture of x86 in the city of x86."
Ballmer: "Haaaaaaaaail Gates! I Ballmer Ballmer will suffer for you, lie for you, die for you, vomit for you,. . . What's that rope you are about to pull do?"
It's dificult to tell what you are trying to say. I never said WINE does not work with Win9x programs. It works very well with most Win9x programs. It's the Windows 9x drivers I don't know about. The one that is giving me problems is a video driver ment to talk to a spicific uncommon video card used to key effects effects to a switcher to be mixed in downstream.
The Linux Kernel 2.6.x so far does not have very good NTFS writing support. With few exceptions I would suggest not using 2.6.x NTFS support until it nolonger says it is experimental. Also, I think the NTFS.SYS driver from WINE calls the Windows XP driver ntoskrnl.exe. The NTFS.SYS talked about in the article is part of WINE.
Second, you seem a bit upset. Calm down. You got the point of the whole thing although you seem to be upset that in my scenario they cought the guy that did it. I only made the crime a severe one to give the trial importance. You seem to think I am saying something that I am not.
Interesting that you bring up DNA. If enough criminals figure out how to harvest dna from like hospital medical waste or such and leaving it at crime scenes I could see Lawyers trying to get DNA inadmissible in court.
About that last part you wrote Dave. How did we get from is the system admin trustworthy to evidence of an assassination on somebody's machine? Through worms and rooting machines files get dumped places all the time. However in court the word of a system admin and his logs is considered truth. This will likely change. Maybe it should change. Actually I probably should have brought this up in my origonal post. My bad.
What if the admin used his job to alter the logs himself to hide a crime he committed? I have yet to meet an evil sys admin, but it could happen.
Mrhandstand brought up some interesting software and ideas on how to do things, but a lawyer doesn't need to prove the system is flawed; he just needs to get one person on a jury to think it might be flawed.
So let's say someone breaks into the MegaCorp computer and causes billions of dollars in damage and causes a few powerplants to go off line in the East Coast of the US during a heatwave causing many people to die.
Now let's say that the person who did this is found because he forgot to modify/erace the system logs and a criminal trial begins.
Now let's also say he hires Jacky Childs as his lawyer who asks the system admins, under oath, if the system logs are nothing more than common text files. Then he asks if it is possible that any of the admins could log on and edit that text file log. Unless they got the logs being directed to a line printer an constantly printed out, Jacky Childs just found his reasonable doubt. Good luck with the civil suits!
Seriously though, this could be a real problem one day soon.
"I have found hidden files in directories by looking at the location of images and looking in those directories. Those directories and some of the files were not directly linked to the rest of the site other to an index page that was also not linked to the rest of the site." That seems so much more wordy though.
To get to that generated index requires traversing the directory which was not linked anywhere. This took a small leap of faith that an auto-generated index would actually exist, but they too often do. The point was that the guy did not expect anyone to come across that stuff because it wasn't directly linked anywhere. I also told the guy about it just so he would be aware that these files could easily be found. Actually I was more concerned about him running a telnet daemon/service on his machine.
I disagree with your definition of guessable filenames and subdirectories being linked even without an explicit refrence to the file or directory though. To me an implied refrence or the likelihood of a file existing isn't being linked even though it means someone can just as easily access it. A parent directory not linked anywhere is still not linked, even if it's existance is implied by a file within that directory. The same with a web page that refrences only hyatt001.jpg and hyatt002.jpg. Everyone reading this should see the pattern guess that hyatt003.jpg may exist even without an explicit link.
I guess people with tripod or Yahoo! GeoCities hosted "homepages" usually don't need to worry, but almost everyone else should. I just wish the secure logins were the default and only allow secure FTP though.