Microsoft doesn't include ANY sort of browser in the default Windows install. Only the technically literate will be able to get a browser using commandline FTP tools. This limits people's access to other browsers more than the current situation.
WRONG. In this case, it would be as it was in the old days. OEMs would include a browser that was popular, or requested by the user, or matched their branding strategy, etc. All Dells might come with "Dell Uber Browser 2.7." Which will probably just be a rebranded Mozilla. Bottom line is, MS' failure to include a browser will only impact people who build systems. Any end user savvy enough to custom build his own system can manage to find a suitable browser somewhere.
Everyone else can choose (if the vendor allows) or use the vendor's choice.
The only youth oriented channel on US Cable that doesn't steadily pump our kids full of marketing hype is Cartoon Network, and that's probably just a matter of time.
You do realise that He-Man, Thundercats, The Smurfs, Pokemon, PowerPuff Girls, etc. are just ~30 minute infomercials for their respective merchandising vehicles. Right?
These large fee awards get passed on to consumers.
Like MS couldn't settle for something a little more reasonable than their 80%+ profit margins on Windows and Office. This is such bull. It's designed to get the government and public to be more accepting of their outrageous pricing.
The Register is reporting that more than 30 companies are working together to define a new file format intended to serve as a universal 3D file format.
I forget who said it, but I think this fits very well: "The great thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from."
I personally have no love for MS, but I can't help seeing this as a good thing for people that have to support the legacy windows platform.
I recently did some reasearch in AI, and one of the things I did was port an existing simulation written by a former student at my university from a VB/MS Powerpoint front end with BC++ core, to an OpenGL/wxWindows (now wxWidgets) frontend with ISO C++ core.
To establish a baseline I had to make comparisons on the Win32 platfrom. What really amazed me was the difference in efficiency and memory footprint between the VC++.NET 2003 compiler and gcc 3.3.
Although gcc is an excellent compiler, I don't think anyone can argue that MS has the inside track on optimizing Win32 apps.
I wish that people that pretend to be computer experts would do the teeniest bit of research.
How about this gem: First introduced in 1995, Microsoft's DirectX application programming interface (API) was designed to make life easier for developers by providing a standard platform for Windows-based PCs. Before the arrival of DirectX, developers had to program their software titles to take advantage of features found in individual hardware components. With the wealth of devices on the market, this could become a tedious, time-consuming process.
I'm glad he cleared that up for us. Because this little known company called SGI didn't develop OpenGL back in 1992. In fact, were it not for MS, we would still be in the computer graphics dark ages.
I'm not trying to troll here. I am just pissed that people pretend to be experts when they don't have a clues what they are talking about.
I don't like that a company is using Linux in a way that (seemingly) intentionally keeps its software from being of use to anyone who doesn't buy their product. It seems to go around the purpose of GNU and OSS.
Actually, you have it backwards. This is exactly what the GPL was designed for. This company has snazzy new hardware. Since the company can customize an OS around GNU/Linux, they are saved the millions of dollars requisite to develop a proprietary OS. Now you can buy the base model for $799, instead of $2799. Nevermind that then vendors and OSS projects would have to work on porting their products to the new OS (not likely in many cases) in the case of a new proprietary OS.
It's better for them as a company because they are quicker to market and can make their products more economical. It's better for the users because thay can use a well established, rock solid stable OS with thousands of already available applications.
So what if you can only get the hardware from them? As long as they comply with the GPL (or the licesnse for any app they modify), it's all good.
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No. after you came down, you'd be fined by the FAA.
No disrespect to the FAA, but shouldn't something like this that potentially affects other countries involve the ICAO or another internationally recognized body?
Please, no flames. I am American and am in no way saying that we should subordinate to others. But something that could impact others really should involve those others. Really, anything (especially not military) approaching orbital altitudes should not be done unilaterally.
"In an effort to make its version of Unix compare more favorably to Red Hat's Linux, Sun Microsystems plans in coming weeks to begin selling its Solaris operating system through a subscription model."
I would be more concerned about a possible unfavorabe comparison with MS. Both MS and Sun sell proprietary operating systems. They would need to tread carefully to not scare off the folks that have started considering *nix alternatives to keep Microsoft's tentacles out their bank accounts.
Sun also needs to make it clear to people that they are really paying for support (with a small bit for licensing) and not the MS-style license renewal. Otherwise a comparison with RHAT is not valid.
I was very impressed with the way that they explain the differences between distros. I.e., same kernel/under the hood with different apps on top.
Although I am a diehard Debian user, I totally agree with the recommendation for RH, SUSE, or Mandrake. Personally, if I am helping the person migrate and doing the Linux install for them, I usually do Debian stable with GNOME or KDE backport, depending on the user's preferences. However, if they intend on doing it themselves I recommend RH, Mandrake or a Knopppix hard drive install.
I am also impressed with the way in which they specify which apps work best for certain things. I.e., Evolution for email, OOo for office productivity. There wasn't any "you need to choose from one of these 50 email clients and one of these 5 office suites."
Kudos to THG for a well thought out and well written article. Hopefully the rest of the articles in the series are as well written.
Hardware costs will fall sharply within a decade to the point where widespread computing with speech and handwriting won't be limited by expensive technology, Microsoft Corp. (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) Chairman Bill Gates (news - web sites) said on Monday.
This looks like a quote from 10 years ago talking about today. In '93, an "entry level" PC cost upwards of $2000. Today, an entry level machine that is far more capable costs only 10% of that. Not to mention that the $200 price tag represents a now miniscule fraction of most people's income.
I would say that hardware is already "free" when compared to software. This is becuase you can buy a $200 machine (real tangible manufacturing cost per unit) and put a $200 copy of Windows (with no real production cost) on it. I am sure that the hardware prices can go lower, but hardware is already a commodity. Software has yet to become a true commodity.
Here is HP's news release. It is mostly marketing fluff, but has a few more details than the Reuter's piece. Their server also isn't melting down at the moment.
"GNOME 2.6 was scheduled to be released sometime today, however after evidence of possible intrusion on the web server, the release has been delayed by one week, until March 31st."
That could have been disasterous had they been forced to delay until April 1. Imagine all the jokes that would have ensued.
It's pretty light on details, but it seems that the two most logical applications are problematic:
1) When you register foo.{com,net,biz,org,*} you also got foo.mail as a bonus. But if one person rgisters foo.com and also gets foo.mail, what happens to the person who later registers foo.net.
2) As a possible solution to point 1, when you register foo.com you also get foo.com.mail. This just seems ugly.
Also, will it cost me another $15-$45/year to get the benefit of this new domian? What of people who choose to not porticipate?
I still fail to see what the problem is with just doing a reverse lookup on the domain's MX. It utilizes existing infrastructure and isn't as ugly as throwing in another TLD to the mix.
... Vocera Communications and their little internal communication system that they have working at their office that functions like the badge communicators from ST:TNG.
There is no way I will ever be able to talk my wife into letting me have one of these setups. Darn!
What software or strategies do you use to protect your parents' PCs? Is it possible for inexperienced users to surf the net in safety?
I demoed him my laptop (with Debian). He liked it, so I got rid of WinME that had become riddled with spyware and installed (this was about a year ago) Woody, a GNOME2 backport, a 2.4 kernel, Firebird, Thunderbird, OOo, and Shoreline firewall with rules to deny all incoming connections expect for SSH from my personal machine's MAC address. Never had another problem. In fact, his job issued him a laptop (Compaq w/ XP) that he hardly uses because he finds Debian so much easier. To keep him up to date, I log in remotely and do the apt-get upgrade for the security updates.
I also did something similar for my brother with an old Dell P-II laptop he had with Windows 2000 that kept getting viruses and spyware. Only, since my brother is on the road alot, I taught him how to do the security updates himself.
The number of support calls I get from my family has dropped from one a week to almost none.
... a development box (which in the end is probably going to end up running a Microsoft OS, because mainly I'm going to be working on a game project I've put aside for too long, and unfortunately if I ever want to sell it, the "mainstream" is still running MS.
No need to pollute your machine. I develop a computer simulation (it started as a thesis project), so it has almost all the same requirements a modern game would have: 3-D graphics, sound, GUI, etc. I use wxWidgets (formerly wxWindows) which gets me pretty much every feature I need. The best part is tha I can use the gcc cross-compiler to build the win32 target.exe from my Linux box. I then have friends of mine test the final windows.exe (after I do some preliminary testing through WINE).
I would assert that is better to develop the Win32 apps from linux than from win32. Especially since I don't have to worry about VS.NET flaking out on me, or the other crappy tools that are common on Windows.
Apparently the new Lyra A/V Jukebox will sometimes display a message stating that 'this feature will be available in future upgrades.'
I think that this is happening because vendors have determined it is better, from a marketing stand-point, to got a half-done product first to market and finish it later than it is to bring a complete product where the competition already has gained a user-base.
Thankfully, this is more difficult other industries, like automobiles. But as electronics take over more of our lives, I would not be at all surprised to see this happen in relatively strange places. I can see: "If you would like your SVT Mustang to travel over 50 MPH, please downlaod the latest firmware from ford.com."
If you need a newer kernel, install a newer distribution.
Really? apt-get install kernel-image-2.6.3-1-686, followed by a reboot didn't seem too overly difficult for my little brother (very much a non-techie).
Asking a Vietnam refugee... About civil liberties is like asking Jack Valenti about fair use.
Wrong. Asking a Vietnam refugee about civil liberties is more like asking DVD Jon about fair use. Jack Valenti knows nothing about fair use because he never lost the right; a Vietnamese refugee has losh his civil liberties.
My parents fled from Castro's regime in Cuba (which came to power in when they were teenagers). Consequently, they have a deeper appreciation for liberty than any natural born American I have ever met. Why? Because they had liberty and it was taken. They don't want to get it taken again. I imagine that Vietnamese refugees are similarly inclined.
APT already handles debs and rpms. tgzs should not be a far stretch. The problem is establishing standards and getting everyone to follow them. For example, all debs in the Debian archive follow the Debian packaging standard, else they would not be accepted into the archive.
Naturally, third parties are free to create their own non-conformant debs. This is just the same as someone creating an rpm for RH9, but it not conforming to the conventions used by Red Hat.
I assert that the tools already exist. I.e., we don't need a new one. The emphasis needs to be on getting people to follow the standards, and possibly creaitng a cross-dsitro standard fo everyone to follow.
Shut the fuck up It's kind of obvious that this is a doing of a Linux user, so please stop writing your pointless letters, no one cares. Heed my advice, and once and for all Shut the fuck up
Seeing as Bruce is considered to be one of the leaders/spokesmen of the Free/Open Source Software Community, he has a responsibility to speak out on issues such as this. Since so many people, organizations, and companies pay heed to what he says, his silence would be considered tacit approval by some.
Additionally, this single worm has the potential to do more harm to the Free/Open Source Software Community than all of SCO's shenanigans combined. evereyone really needs to speak out against this.
What did you draw on when creating works? Or did you claim that you created works in a vacuum?
I know that by draw on you meant experiences and previous exposure. However, the first time I misread and thought of the physical drawing medium used by an artist. This got me thinking of a great way to raise awareness of how ridiculuos the current state of copyrights is.
Have some big company start producing drawing paper and canvases (easiy identifiable via some watermark or something). On the back of each package (in small lettering) have a statement indicating that any work produced on the enclosed medium is considered a derivative work (because the manufacturer has desinged and copyrighted the desing to the medium). Once artists begin to use it, go around and start suing them for ownership of their artistic works. I know it sounds twisted, but this would hit home with many more people.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft doesn't include ANY sort of browser in the default Windows install. Only the technically literate will be able to get a browser using commandline FTP tools. This limits people's access to other browsers more than the current situation.
WRONG. In this case, it would be as it was in the old days. OEMs would include a browser that was popular, or requested by the user, or matched their branding strategy, etc. All Dells might come with "Dell Uber Browser 2.7." Which will probably just be a rebranded Mozilla. Bottom line is, MS' failure to include a browser will only impact people who build systems. Any end user savvy enough to custom build his own system can manage to find a suitable browser somewhere. Everyone else can choose (if the vendor allows) or use the vendor's choice.
The only youth oriented channel on US Cable that doesn't steadily pump our kids full of marketing hype is Cartoon Network, and that's probably just a matter of time.
You do realise that He-Man, Thundercats, The Smurfs, Pokemon, PowerPuff Girls, etc. are just ~30 minute infomercials for their respective merchandising vehicles. Right?
These large fee awards get passed on to consumers.
Like MS couldn't settle for something a little more reasonable than their 80%+ profit margins on Windows and Office. This is such bull. It's designed to get the government and public to be more accepting of their outrageous pricing.
The Register is reporting that more than 30 companies are working together to define a new file format intended to serve as a universal 3D file format.
I forget who said it, but I think this fits very well: "The great thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from."
I personally have no love for MS, but I can't help seeing this as a good thing for people that have to support the legacy windows platform.
I recently did some reasearch in AI, and one of the things I did was port an existing simulation written by a former student at my university from a VB/MS Powerpoint front end with BC++ core, to an OpenGL/wxWindows (now wxWidgets) frontend with ISO C++ core.
To establish a baseline I had to make comparisons on the Win32 platfrom. What really amazed me was the difference in efficiency and memory footprint between the VC++.NET 2003 compiler and gcc 3.3.
Although gcc is an excellent compiler, I don't think anyone can argue that MS has the inside track on optimizing Win32 apps.
I wish that people that pretend to be computer experts would do the teeniest bit of research.
How about this gem: First introduced in 1995, Microsoft's DirectX application programming interface (API) was designed to make life easier for developers by providing a standard platform for Windows-based PCs. Before the arrival of DirectX, developers had to program their software titles to take advantage of features found in individual hardware components. With the wealth of devices on the market, this could become a tedious, time-consuming process.
I'm glad he cleared that up for us. Because this little known company called SGI didn't develop OpenGL back in 1992. In fact, were it not for MS, we would still be in the computer graphics dark ages.
I'm not trying to troll here. I am just pissed that people pretend to be experts when they don't have a clues what they are talking about.
I don't like that a company is using Linux in a way that (seemingly) intentionally keeps its software from being of use to anyone who doesn't buy their product. It seems to go around the purpose of GNU and OSS.
Actually, you have it backwards. This is exactly what the GPL was designed for. This company has snazzy new hardware. Since the company can customize an OS around GNU/Linux, they are saved the millions of dollars requisite to develop a proprietary OS. Now you can buy the base model for $799, instead of $2799. Nevermind that then vendors and OSS projects would have to work on porting their products to the new OS (not likely in many cases) in the case of a new proprietary OS.
It's better for them as a company because they are quicker to market and can make their products more economical. It's better for the users because thay can use a well established, rock solid stable OS with thousands of already available applications.
So what if you can only get the hardware from them? As long as they comply with the GPL (or the licesnse for any app they modify), it's all good.
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Notice tho comlpete lack of ads. :-)
No. after you came down, you'd be fined by the FAA.
No disrespect to the FAA, but shouldn't something like this that potentially affects other countries involve the ICAO or another internationally recognized body?
Please, no flames. I am American and am in no way saying that we should subordinate to others. But something that could impact others really should involve those others. Really, anything (especially not military) approaching orbital altitudes should not be done unilaterally.
"In an effort to make its version of Unix compare more favorably to Red Hat's Linux, Sun Microsystems plans in coming weeks to begin selling its Solaris operating system through a subscription model."
I would be more concerned about a possible unfavorabe comparison with MS. Both MS and Sun sell proprietary operating systems. They would need to tread carefully to not scare off the folks that have started considering *nix alternatives to keep Microsoft's tentacles out their bank accounts.
Sun also needs to make it clear to people that they are really paying for support (with a small bit for licensing) and not the MS-style license renewal. Otherwise a comparison with RHAT is not valid.
I was very impressed with the way that they explain the differences between distros. I.e., same kernel/under the hood with different apps on top.
Although I am a diehard Debian user, I totally agree with the recommendation for RH, SUSE, or Mandrake. Personally, if I am helping the person migrate and doing the Linux install for them, I usually do Debian stable with GNOME or KDE backport, depending on the user's preferences. However, if they intend on doing it themselves I recommend RH, Mandrake or a Knopppix hard drive install.
I am also impressed with the way in which they specify which apps work best for certain things. I.e., Evolution for email, OOo for office productivity. There wasn't any "you need to choose from one of these 50 email clients and one of these 5 office suites."
Kudos to THG for a well thought out and well written article. Hopefully the rest of the articles in the series are as well written.
Hardware costs will fall sharply within a decade to the point where widespread computing with speech and handwriting won't be limited by expensive technology, Microsoft Corp. (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) Chairman Bill Gates (news - web sites) said on Monday.
This looks like a quote from 10 years ago talking about today. In '93, an "entry level" PC cost upwards of $2000. Today, an entry level machine that is far more capable costs only 10% of that. Not to mention that the $200 price tag represents a now miniscule fraction of most people's income.
I would say that hardware is already "free" when compared to software. This is becuase you can buy a $200 machine (real tangible manufacturing cost per unit) and put a $200 copy of Windows (with no real production cost) on it. I am sure that the hardware prices can go lower, but hardware is already a commodity. Software has yet to become a true commodity.
Here is HP's news release. It is mostly marketing fluff, but has a few more details than the Reuter's piece. Their server also isn't melting down at the moment.
"GNOME 2.6 was scheduled to be released sometime today, however after evidence of possible intrusion on the web server, the release has been delayed by one week, until March 31st."
That could have been disasterous had they been forced to delay until April 1. Imagine all the jokes that would have ensued.
Here's the goddamned standard... Make it ultra-easy so it's simple to hit critical mass where everyone uses it.
Take a look at this: Sender Policy Framework.
There is even a wizard that walks you through the creation of the appropriate TXT records for your DNS zone file.
It's pretty light on details, but it seems that the two most logical applications are problematic:
1) When you register foo.{com,net,biz,org,*} you also got foo.mail as a bonus. But if one person rgisters foo.com and also gets foo.mail, what happens to the person who later registers foo.net.
2) As a possible solution to point 1, when you register foo.com you also get foo.com.mail. This just seems ugly.
Also, will it cost me another $15-$45/year to get the benefit of this new domian? What of people who choose to not porticipate?
I still fail to see what the problem is with just doing a reverse lookup on the domain's MX. It utilizes existing infrastructure and isn't as ugly as throwing in another TLD to the mix.
There is no way I will ever be able to talk my wife into letting me have one of these setups. Darn!
What software or strategies do you use to protect your parents' PCs? Is it possible for inexperienced users to surf the net in safety?
I demoed him my laptop (with Debian). He liked it, so I got rid of WinME that had become riddled with spyware and installed (this was about a year ago) Woody, a GNOME2 backport, a 2.4 kernel, Firebird, Thunderbird, OOo, and Shoreline firewall with rules to deny all incoming connections expect for SSH from my personal machine's MAC address. Never had another problem. In fact, his job issued him a laptop (Compaq w/ XP) that he hardly uses because he finds Debian so much easier. To keep him up to date, I log in remotely and do the apt-get upgrade for the security updates.
I also did something similar for my brother with an old Dell P-II laptop he had with Windows 2000 that kept getting viruses and spyware. Only, since my brother is on the road alot, I taught him how to do the security updates himself.
The number of support calls I get from my family has dropped from one a week to almost none.
No need to pollute your machine. I develop a computer simulation (it started as a thesis project), so it has almost all the same requirements a modern game would have: 3-D graphics, sound, GUI, etc. I use wxWidgets (formerly wxWindows) which gets me pretty much every feature I need. The best part is tha I can use the gcc cross-compiler to build the win32 target .exe from my Linux box. I then have friends of mine test the final windows .exe (after I do some preliminary testing through WINE).
I would assert that is better to develop the Win32 apps from linux than from win32. Especially since I don't have to worry about VS.NET flaking out on me, or the other crappy tools that are common on Windows.
Apparently the new Lyra A/V Jukebox will sometimes display a message stating that 'this feature will be available in future upgrades.'
I think that this is happening because vendors have determined it is better, from a marketing stand-point, to got a half-done product first to market and finish it later than it is to bring a complete product where the competition already has gained a user-base.
Thankfully, this is more difficult other industries, like automobiles. But as electronics take over more of our lives, I would not be at all surprised to see this happen in relatively strange places. I can see: "If you would like your SVT Mustang to travel over 50 MPH, please downlaod the latest firmware from ford.com."
If you need a newer kernel, install a newer distribution.
Really? apt-get install kernel-image-2.6.3-1-686, followed by a reboot didn't seem too overly difficult for my little brother (very much a non-techie).
Asking a Vietnam refugee... About civil liberties is like asking Jack Valenti about fair use.
Wrong. Asking a Vietnam refugee about civil liberties is more like asking DVD Jon about fair use. Jack Valenti knows nothing about fair use because he never lost the right; a Vietnamese refugee has losh his civil liberties.
My parents fled from Castro's regime in Cuba (which came to power in when they were teenagers). Consequently, they have a deeper appreciation for liberty than any natural born American I have ever met. Why? Because they had liberty and it was taken. They don't want to get it taken again. I imagine that Vietnamese refugees are similarly inclined.
APT already handles debs and rpms. tgzs should not be a far stretch. The problem is establishing standards and getting everyone to follow them. For example, all debs in the Debian archive follow the Debian packaging standard, else they would not be accepted into the archive.
Naturally, third parties are free to create their own non-conformant debs. This is just the same as someone creating an rpm for RH9, but it not conforming to the conventions used by Red Hat.
I assert that the tools already exist. I.e., we don't need a new one. The emphasis needs to be on getting people to follow the standards, and possibly creaitng a cross-dsitro standard fo everyone to follow.
Shut the fuck up It's kind of obvious that this is a doing of a Linux user, so please stop writing your pointless letters, no one cares. Heed my advice, and once and for all Shut the fuck up
Seeing as Bruce is considered to be one of the leaders/spokesmen of the Free/Open Source Software Community, he has a responsibility to speak out on issues such as this. Since so many people, organizations, and companies pay heed to what he says, his silence would be considered tacit approval by some.
Additionally, this single worm has the potential to do more harm to the Free/Open Source Software Community than all of SCO's shenanigans combined. evereyone really needs to speak out against this.
What did you draw on when creating works? Or did you claim that you created works in a vacuum?
I know that by draw on you meant experiences and previous exposure. However, the first time I misread and thought of the physical drawing medium used by an artist. This got me thinking of a great way to raise awareness of how ridiculuos the current state of copyrights is.
Have some big company start producing drawing paper and canvases (easiy identifiable via some watermark or something). On the back of each package (in small lettering) have a statement indicating that any work produced on the enclosed medium is considered a derivative work (because the manufacturer has desinged and copyrighted the desing to the medium). Once artists begin to use it, go around and start suing them for ownership of their artistic works. I know it sounds twisted, but this would hit home with many more people.