TODAY, when you do reach the limit, the kernel uses an heuristic (a very good one) that choses a process to close. This heuristic normaly closes the last process that you oppened or the one that is spending more memory (depends on the how long ago you oppened it and how much memory it is spending).
Normaly, yor apps should auto-save your work (and it is normal on Linux, althoug not being on some other systems), so there is little to lose if it is suddenly closed. Also, the behaviour above tends to close the program that you are oppening right now. This gives you no time for editions, so, no data to lose.
A module combimnation that crashes the system is a problem of every monolitical kernel out there. At least on Linux, the 1% that can discover a kernel bug of the 1% that has the hardware combination can do something about it. Of corse they'll take a lot of time, but it is sonner than never.
Now, changing the easyest element that fix the problem is not stupid. It is the right thing to do! He is right to change to Windows.
"Personally, I would modify the kernel/desktop enviroment (or something) that it will not allow launching of new apps when physical memory limit is closing in"
Just not create a swap partition. The kernel won't go chasing every usable memory on your computer, it uses only what it is told to use.
I really cant decide if you are a troll or just misinformed. But the reason most people on the World are poor is because lack of education (this and government corruption). If you RTFA, you'll see that this is an educational program.
Your need to open MS Office documents, and thus, your interoperability problems happen because you use it for small things, not despite it. The governement is a really big body, that has the autority to impose how people deal with it. So, what they'll do is the folowing: If you want to send them a document, you'll have to send it in the OpenDocument format. If it comes as a MS Office document, they'll simply refuse to open it. No interoperability problems now:)
People don't have an animosity towards polutting the Earth! Just a few more interested on the subject (early adopters).
It is also a bit arrogant to think that they sould be as concerned of internet polution as they are about phisical one. Phisical pollution can put their lives at danger.
There is another objective, to make it possible to write a standard compilant web page and have it suddenly work on almost all browsers out there. This one could be reached by Firefox dissemination, but is still far from real.
If he didn't write this rootkit and made it available, someone elase would. And worse, someone else could not publish the rootkit, so the good guys have a chance of improvening the system*, they could just sell it on the black market.
Blamming him because people use the rootkit is advocating security trhought obscurity.
* Not that MS will do that, but this is MS problem.
Just a few weeks ago, MS was looking for a cooperative project with OSDL or Red Hat (here). Now they anounce a cooperative project with JBoss. That is weard!
The deal with OSDL (or Red Hat) had a clear oportunity to a backstab, but this one not.
OpenOffice now uses a well documented and standardized format by default. So, the situation is not as bad as seems to be from your comment. Yes, Sun may take away the air from OpenOffice, but we can still advocate it, because if it goes away, we'll can easily replace it. Once again, RMS is right. But we still have the documents format open, and that is what really matters here.
Microsof always feared the internet and tried to control it. The reasons are quite simple: The internet is a Unix based system, where MS couldn't dominate yet. It is also an universal interface, that separate engine from presentation and make it possible to migrate one to another system while the other is stuk with a MS one. And, for last, the internet is a huge "application" that is (mostly) plattaform independent.
Probably based on this, MS is trying to stop internet evolution (by eliminating competitiors and dominating with crap products) near since the creation of the WWW. Google is the new killer application (at first, it was Netscape), so MS needs to stop it.
The problem with the fundamentalists answer is that they know that God did it, they are sure. You made it pretty clear that it is an hypotesis, you are not sure. So, you are not the same.
Sonny is not only a distributor. Sonny is also the owner of all the intelectual property the bands crete. So, if a band ditches the label, they can't sing their old musics anymore. This makes this step pretty hard...
If this was easy to solve, it would aready be solved.
"how do we work for free and still make money? Obviously the "making money off support" is not always workable, especially for the smaller companies."
I think that you said just the oposite of what happens. Making money on support or customization is clearly possible, but can't maintain a big company. That option is only available to smaller business, and make it very hard for they to grow.
I have the contrary experience. Really, maybe you are looking at the wrong place. What I see is a lot of free software getting better and better (by the parameters you described, interface, documentation,...) and a huge amount of software that is even better than most closed counterparts. I was even able to found some examples of software companies that opened (freed) their software to stay competitive, because free software was so ahead.
But if you don't want to look so far, yes. Most free software projects are crap. Not most like 60%* of them, but something like 80%. Yet, from the 20% that isn't crap, just 1/4 shines. The really interesting thing is that those 5% of the free software outnumbers the closed software stars. So, if you want quality, you just need to look for it. But you must look hard.
And about the 18 years genius that you talk about. Well, this is just not the reality. It just makes your comment look like a troll. Must big free software projects are run by quite competent people, not just for programming.
I also felt that I was more productive on Linux just for programming, but this was by 1999 - 2000. It is only a matter of getting used to the new system, and discover what tools are usefull*. By that time, I used Windows a lot of times, and rebooted my machine very often.
Now I my feelings are the oposite, I hate working on Windows. I assume that this is both because of getting used to another way of doing things and because of the huge degradation that Windows interface suffered from that time to now.
*And a matter of the tool existing. There where a lot of gaps by 1999 - 2000.
Great ones, otherwise, are not. That said, it is quite easy to see how people can be upset by the total failure of some people to have good ideas from time to time.
US is being seen as a terrorist country more and more often. If its government gives good reason for the rest of the world to belive that it will use nuclear weapons, "the world community as whole" can suddenly have a much harder meaning.
But the question I really want to make is this: US president have the authority to make a preemptive nuclear strike against who? There are not many countries capable of reaching US with nuclear weapons, and all of them are friendly (I may be wrong about this). So, why so much worring?
"Exactly. Mainstream journalism, by design, was never meant to be a reliable source for scientific information."
No. Mainstream journalism is meant to be a reliable source of scientific information. Just not complete or current. Don't forgue that the media is meant to be reliable, although it is not even near that.
This raises the problem that the current generation is not very interested on science*, and we'll probably see less scientists on the future.
* Before you come to say that this is the golden age falacy, go read some science publications of the 80's. If you are still not convinced, go read some of the 60's or 40's. They are very different from now.
You are making that same mistake that I see repeated again and again... On a confrontation both sides lose. That means that if US and China face some real confrontation (even if a cold one) the most likely result is the growth of another power (EU?).
"I realize that if it wasn't for GNU, Linux would have found some other system tools or written their own, but the point is to give credit where it is deserved."
It is more likely the other way around: If Linux wasn't created to be the core of the GNU system, GNU would have found another kernel elsewere or written their own.
A kernel is a reasonable piece of software. But user space tools are a huge amount of programs, that took GNU decades of developping until they have a good amount of them. There is no chance that the Linux development people could do it by now.
If you had read the post to what you are answering, you'd see that naming a Linux distribution with the Linux trademark have Linus permission automaticaly (you don't need to ask him). Note that those companies don't have the word "Linux" on their name, that is what Linus is looking for.
But, anyway, those companies have probably alread asked permission to use it on their products, even if not needed. And you can use the trademark on documentation, even if Linus don't let you, bacause of fair use.
Do programs start to functioning different if you change their names? If no, restricting the use of the program names don't affect the freedom to use or distribute those programs. And, so is not a concern to FSF.
Slashdot Mirror
TODAY, when you do reach the limit, the kernel uses an heuristic (a very good one) that choses a process to close. This heuristic normaly closes the last process that you oppened or the one that is spending more memory (depends on the how long ago you oppened it and how much memory it is spending).
Normaly, yor apps should auto-save your work (and it is normal on Linux, althoug not being on some other systems), so there is little to lose if it is suddenly closed. Also, the behaviour above tends to close the program that you are oppening right now. This gives you no time for editions, so, no data to lose.
A module combimnation that crashes the system is a problem of every monolitical kernel out there. At least on Linux, the 1% that can discover a kernel bug of the 1% that has the hardware combination can do something about it. Of corse they'll take a lot of time, but it is sonner than never.
Now, changing the easyest element that fix the problem is not stupid. It is the right thing to do! He is right to change to Windows.
"Personally, I would modify the kernel/desktop enviroment (or something) that it will not allow launching of new apps when physical memory limit is closing in"
Just not create a swap partition. The kernel won't go chasing every usable memory on your computer, it uses only what it is told to use.
I really cant decide if you are a troll or just misinformed. But the reason most people on the World are poor is because lack of education (this and government corruption). If you RTFA, you'll see that this is an educational program.
Your need to open MS Office documents, and thus, your interoperability problems happen because you use it for small things, not despite it. The governement is a really big body, that has the autority to impose how people deal with it. So, what they'll do is the folowing: If you want to send them a document, you'll have to send it in the OpenDocument format. If it comes as a MS Office document, they'll simply refuse to open it. No interoperability problems now :)
People don't have an animosity towards polutting the Earth! Just a few more interested on the subject (early adopters).
It is also a bit arrogant to think that they sould be as concerned of internet polution as they are about phisical one. Phisical pollution can put their lives at danger.
There is another objective, to make it possible to write a standard compilant web page and have it suddenly work on almost all browsers out there. This one could be reached by Firefox dissemination, but is still far from real.
If he didn't write this rootkit and made it available, someone elase would. And worse, someone else could not publish the rootkit, so the good guys have a chance of improvening the system*, they could just sell it on the black market.
Blamming him because people use the rootkit is advocating security trhought obscurity.
* Not that MS will do that, but this is MS problem.
Just a few weeks ago, MS was looking for a cooperative project with OSDL or Red Hat (here). Now they anounce a cooperative project with JBoss. That is weard!
The deal with OSDL (or Red Hat) had a clear oportunity to a backstab, but this one not.
Very, very weard.
OpenOffice now uses a well documented and standardized format by default. So, the situation is not as bad as seems to be from your comment. Yes, Sun may take away the air from OpenOffice, but we can still advocate it, because if it goes away, we'll can easily replace it. Once again, RMS is right. But we still have the documents format open, and that is what really matters here.
Microsof always feared the internet and tried to control it. The reasons are quite simple: The internet is a Unix based system, where MS couldn't dominate yet. It is also an universal interface, that separate engine from presentation and make it possible to migrate one to another system while the other is stuk with a MS one. And, for last, the internet is a huge "application" that is (mostly) plattaform independent.
Probably based on this, MS is trying to stop internet evolution (by eliminating competitiors and dominating with crap products) near since the creation of the WWW. Google is the new killer application (at first, it was Netscape), so MS needs to stop it.
The problem with the fundamentalists answer is that they know that God did it, they are sure. You made it pretty clear that it is an hypotesis, you are not sure. So, you are not the same.
Sonny is not only a distributor. Sonny is also the owner of all the intelectual property the bands crete. So, if a band ditches the label, they can't sing their old musics anymore. This makes this step pretty hard...
If this was easy to solve, it would aready be solved.
"how do we work for free and still make money? Obviously the "making money off support" is not always workable, especially for the smaller companies."
I think that you said just the oposite of what happens. Making money on support or customization is clearly possible, but can't maintain a big company. That option is only available to smaller business, and make it very hard for they to grow.
I have the contrary experience. Really, maybe you are looking at the wrong place. What I see is a lot of free software getting better and better (by the parameters you described, interface, documentation,...) and a huge amount of software that is even better than most closed counterparts. I was even able to found some examples of software companies that opened (freed) their software to stay competitive, because free software was so ahead.
But if you don't want to look so far, yes. Most free software projects are crap. Not most like 60%* of them, but something like 80%. Yet, from the 20% that isn't crap, just 1/4 shines. The really interesting thing is that those 5% of the free software outnumbers the closed software stars. So, if you want quality, you just need to look for it. But you must look hard.
And about the 18 years genius that you talk about. Well, this is just not the reality. It just makes your comment look like a troll. Must big free software projects are run by quite competent people, not just for programming.
*All numbers from the back of the envelope.
"Leveraging their desktop monopoly is very nearly the only thing Microsoft ever does!
This is so unfair!!!! Microsoft also build mice.
I also felt that I was more productive on Linux just for programming, but this was by 1999 - 2000. It is only a matter of getting used to the new system, and discover what tools are usefull*. By that time, I used Windows a lot of times, and rebooted my machine very often.
Now I my feelings are the oposite, I hate working on Windows. I assume that this is both because of getting used to another way of doing things and because of the huge degradation that Windows interface suffered from that time to now.
*And a matter of the tool existing. There where a lot of gaps by 1999 - 2000.
"Stupid ideas are pretty universal."
Great ones, otherwise, are not. That said, it is quite easy to see how people can be upset by the total failure of some people to have good ideas from time to time.
US is being seen as a terrorist country more and more often. If its government gives good reason for the rest of the world to belive that it will use nuclear weapons, "the world community as whole" can suddenly have a much harder meaning.
But the question I really want to make is this: US president have the authority to make a preemptive nuclear strike against who? There are not many countries capable of reaching US with nuclear weapons, and all of them are friendly (I may be wrong about this). So, why so much worring?
"Exactly. Mainstream journalism, by design, was never meant to be a reliable source for scientific information."
No. Mainstream journalism is meant to be a reliable source of scientific information. Just not complete or current. Don't forgue that the media is meant to be reliable, although it is not even near that.
This raises the problem that the current generation is not very interested on science*, and we'll probably see less scientists on the future.
* Before you come to say that this is the golden age falacy, go read some science publications of the 80's. If you are still not convinced, go read some of the 60's or 40's. They are very different from now.
You are making that same mistake that I see repeated again and again... On a confrontation both sides lose. That means that if US and China face some real confrontation (even if a cold one) the most likely result is the growth of another power (EU?).
"I realize that if it wasn't for GNU, Linux would have found some other system tools or written their own, but the point is to give credit where it is deserved."
It is more likely the other way around: If Linux wasn't created to be the core of the GNU system, GNU would have found another kernel elsewere or written their own.
A kernel is a reasonable piece of software. But user space tools are a huge amount of programs, that took GNU decades of developping until they have a good amount of them. There is no chance that the Linux development people could do it by now.
If you had read the post to what you are answering, you'd see that naming a Linux distribution with the Linux trademark have Linus permission automaticaly (you don't need to ask him). Note that those companies don't have the word "Linux" on their name, that is what Linus is looking for.
But, anyway, those companies have probably alread asked permission to use it on their products, even if not needed. And you can use the trademark on documentation, even if Linus don't let you, bacause of fair use.
Do programs start to functioning different if you change their names? If no, restricting the use of the program names don't affect the freedom to use or distribute those programs. And, so is not a concern to FSF.
Ok, so more people is discovering blogs nowadays. Since geeks are a minority, there is not shocking news that geek blogs are becomming less common.