The scenario that comes most easily to mind is that of the car breaking down on the highway. What are you going to do, without a cellphone, without being able to access the hood? What if the temp outside is subzero and you're 5 miles from the nearest inhabitant?
As the result of a company policy, this hypothetical person would be in a pretty horrible position (unless some nice motorist happened to stop by....Like that would happen =P)
Granted, the article does say many of the features on this "prototype" will never exist in actual production cars; but, I do not think the hood-less feature will ever be released to the market, unless it has a failsafe phone-home device when it breaks down.
Crits aside though, the car is pretty nice, and it is also good to see that we are able to make cars easier for the dumba^H^H^H^H^Hnormal people who drive cars and don't want to be concerned with how their car works.
Inertia. Also, in terms of learning, people are familiar with windows, and it's what has always been around. It takes a lot of effort to change that.
I think the major failure is getting the word out to people that linux is just like windows in terms of usability with environments like KDE and Gnome; now we just need the application and driver vendors supporting linux like they support windows.
It's all in the marketing man. Marketing is key. It has nothing to do with this supposed "elitism" you speak of. Elitism is a thing of the 90s. I don't see vendors like Mandrake, Xandros, Lin---s, etc. being "elitist" towards their users.
We need someone with a lot of money, and we need to get the word out in as many places as possible.
Aye, there's the rub! We need money to advertise, and yet, money is only made once the operating system is quite popular (i.e. on support, etc.). So, someone is going to have to invest in it; and with the recent bursting of the bubble, investment has gone wayyy down, RIGHT when linux became really viable on the desktop!
Just great, eh? Oh well, I'm hopeful that with IBM's efforts and others, things will come around eventually.
It's ok man, and remember, market dominance isn't everything.
That people shouldn't volunteer their services for the public good? What kind of amoral philosophy makes him believe this?
I pray our society has not come to the point where the only reason a person does a thing is for the money. That is a very undesirable situation for everyone, as it reduces the drive to help other people out.
I hope this is not a prevalent viewpoint, as it is quite disturbing. I do not want to live in a society where we are all little happy drones doing the bidding of the overmind for our little paystubs.
Don't always think about the money. I think of writing programs similar to doing exercises and proofs in Mathematics. I view programming for computers and proving statements in math as exercises for the brain; Each time I do a proof, each time I write a program, it makes me better. I am able to see the problems from a different perspective and to creatively come up with solutions to issues. Also, over time, the process of analyzing a problem and figuring out a solution (in both Math and Computer Science) becomes more streamlined and efficient.
Money is just a secondary aspect to this process. The primary goal is to make my mind grow and my abilities to be enhanced through experience.
I think the open letter to the young developer is rather bigoted and assumes that all knowledge and ability a person has should be kept out of sight, like a black box. I heartily disagree with that viewpoint.
I agree your original post didn't deserve a flamebait rating. However, I will say I don't believe that forks will cause fragmentation; in fact, I think different distros contribute to the versatility of linux. That's my own opinion, and you're entitled to your own =)
I'm not so sure incompatibility issues are a problem with forks, because most programmers try to get people to use their fork, and they won't intentionally break stuff. This is true even when you are making a new version of an application.
Of course, there IS a difference between forking and using a different prog for the graphical display; it would upset a lot of things if something other than X was used as a desktop; but if that alternative was close to X, then all it would take is some rewrites and dep changes (OK so it would be more complicated, but not impossible) and then everything would be fine after that change.
As you point out, some of what happens, re. forking is destructive, but it is also very constructive (i.e. competition) and I don't think it means linux will die.
I don't know if Xfree86 is completely impossible to fix at this point; I hope the Xfree team aren't intentionally writing their license to cause problems with GPL, but if they are, then a fork with the xfree codebase prior to the license change won't cause major compatibility issues because it's basically 4.4 before the 4.4 license. I'm not exactly sure when the new license takes effect or which codebase the fork can start from; I'm not terribly familiar with the project. I'm sure there are many others here who are posting/have posted on this subject.
What do you mean? How will it be the downfall of linux? Some people don't like the way a project is going, so they start a fork with the same codebase. People choose the best of the two forks, and then most people go to the new fork.
Sure, it seems bad while it's happening, but in the end you get a better product. Often projects get way too political and forking is a way to bypass that bureaucratic nightmare.
Sorry, that appears to be a paradoxical name; marine stands for the ocean, sub means under; An air submarine would be really quite impossible (under the ocean, yet in the air?)
What's the world coming to where you turn into a crotchety old guy at mid-twenties? I think exactly the same way you do about the situation of gaming, but I realize our attitudes are similar to those old fogies who go around saying "Back in my day we had to walk through 6 feet of snow etc."
I'm really hoping Video games will go through a period of revitalization, 'cause they're heading down the path of mass commercialization.
What feature would longhorn contain that would make Linux a tough sell?
Is Microsoft giving away longhorn? No? Didn't think so. Well, that's pretty much the reason you should use linux.
Sure, there are other reasons. Like the fact that windows at the moment is the one being targeted by spammers/virus writers to create nefarious spam relay zombies. Or that Linux has user-level protection.
I don't see Windows Longhorn being able to change those situations drastically. Can you imagine the furor if Longhorn comes with user-level management, restricting access with root passwords? People would be up in arms!
I'd also be really surprised if windows suddenly became completely invulnerable to all viruses and worms. That would pretty much put AV vendors out of business! (might be cool though =P)
I fail to see how a release of longhorn would in any way affect adoption of linux. In fact, I think an early release date of longhorn would increase linux adoption, because more people would be disinclined at this point in the economic cycle to purchase YAOS (Yet Another Operating System) when they bought XP a couple of years ago. I think what MS is doing is a good strategy for them.
The next big market?
on
Borg Cube Case
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Selling awesome case mods? I know I'd buy one in a flash! Put this in a manufacturing plant, and you've got yourself a winner. Man...What a cool case mod!!!~~~~
I want one!
Hopefully less than 200$ though...
Think about it, if he was able to use this case as the master, he could make tons of 'em without much additional effort... Maybe the fab costs would be high, but I bet he could pitch something this cool with such an intrinsic following to a corporate exec!
Well, this probably displays my ignorance of manufacturing... I have no idea if such an idea would be feasible. It looks like he put so much detail on the sides of the case, that it would be pretty hard to do that in a manufacturing process... I don't know though, anyone else familiar with this?
Well, no shit! Why do you have to go on about how photoshop has tons more features? (1) Photoshop has been around longer (2) Photoshop has a hella lot more money behind it!
Try to appreciate GIMP for what it is and give the maintainers some support instead of going on about things photoshop has that gimp doesn't.
GIMP isn't trying to replace photoshop, and I feel people don't give it as much cred as it deserves.
From other MDK users I've heard that the 2.6 kernel with mandrake is working great, and though I haven't tried RC1, it's fairly stable at this point. FYI the reason they released RC1 was because of the XFree86 4.4 -> XFree86 4.3 reversion. I'm thinking they should do a RC3 this time around; it seemed kind of quick to go right to RC1.
You're saying it's OK for companies to say "Hey, this is my idea! I don't want to pay anyone else, even though they came up with it first! Ahem, don't pay attention to what I just said!" It's ok for companies to claim they created something, even when they didn't, just to protect their asses?
That seems really lame and an abuse of the patent office to me. Microsoft should get shot down over this; this is a clear case of them trying to get a patent on something which has been around for quite a while (i.e. prior art).
I may also have the wrong impression about this patent, but it appears uspto.gov is slashdotted atm... (!)
Not just knoppix. So if you're concerned about mandrake compatibility with your system, download the MandrakeMove cd (bittorrent or the download page) and try it out on your machine!
Who the hell is Mandrake the Wizard?? I live in the U.S. and I've NEVER heard of such a thing. This is the most ridiculous trademark case I've ever seen. How does a character from some fantasy story relate to a linux product? How could people possibly confuse the two?
More importantly, why is the name Mandrake, originally applied to a plant, trademarkable? That'd be like saying I can't name a distro "Willow" because there's a movie called "Willow." Or maybe I just have no idea what trademarks are all about (I'll admit I'm pretty ignorant about such things).
Right, I overreacted a bit in my post... (I did a supplementary post afterwards... Man sometimes I wish I could edit posts on slashdot!)
Widespread use of an operating system does cause a problem for protection from worms, but I think the adoption of Macs is going to be limited by the fact Macs are so expensive (well not the old iMacs). At any rate, I think the BEST solution isn't getting a new type of machine or operating system, it's getting those users to educate themselves about the risks they face on the web.
If only there was a way to get people to learn... I don't know though, I've given up on people. They just don't seem to want to learn new things about computers! I think people still perceive computers as somewhat magical and/or mystical.
Sorry, I was overreacting a bit as well in my post. I'd just like to clarify windows does NOT have "gaping holes" for users to be abused through...As long as they keep up with updates. What I meant was that it is easier for people to be abused on Windows machines than on other alternative platforms.
Then again, the cost of changing systems may not be warranted in this case. The user would probably be far better off taking a class or two in basic computer security, or some such. I'm not even aware if those kind of classes are even offered thouhgh.
Talk about overreacting. But, you proved the grandparent posters point. You are obviously not a user who needs to switch to a mac. You know what you are doing.
These people STILL infected with MyDoom don't know the first thing about computer security. They would be MUCH MUCH better off with a Mac than with windows. All they probably do anyway is chat with their little friends on AIM and check their webmail.
It's obvious that windows is NOT the perfect OS for clueless newbie users, because it leaves gaping holes for them to be abused through. Think about it from the newbie point of view, not the experienced user point of view.
It has the checksums checker built in. Of course, if you were a member of mandrakeclub.com as I am (silver member, shameless plug), there are bittorrents available on mandrakeclub.com through a secure connection to mandrakesoft's website. Also I have md5sums to compare to if I'm ultra paranoid. But I do trust Mandrake's distribution methods, just as much as I trust ftp mirrors (if not more).
I think most people would agree it's not a good idea to use a bittorrent file that wasn't from a trusted source.
You cannot say it is no more secure than windows. Linux adds another layer of defense (i.e. the user has to give the trojan a password) This isn't a perfect solution, but don't you agree it's better than nothing?
Saying linux is no more secure than windows implies that linux gives no advantages over windows against trojans. By your own argument, this is a false statement.
A true (IMO) statement is "Linux is not much more secure than windows against trojans." This is true in any operating system. Trojans tend to rely on the stupidity of the user, which I venture to say is nearly universal.
As a side note and completely unrelated to the parent, it still amazes me that people with any ounce of knowledge would open an attachment claiming to be an email in binary form. What are you going to do, read a bunch of 1's and 0's?? Come on people!
I've often thought that something like this should be done so parasites (i.e. SCO) can't just go out and say a bunch of stuff with no opposition or facts to compare their statements to. Props to Groklaw for their continued good efforts on helping out the linux community!
I hope it has lots of details, references, and footnotes, so the less technically inclined can follow it if they so desire to (though it may take a lot of reading!) That always helps the integrity and validity of a piece of work. I'll love to see the finished product!
Slashdot Mirror
The scenario that comes most easily to mind is that of the car breaking down on the highway. What are you going to do, without a cellphone, without being able to access the hood? What if the temp outside is subzero and you're 5 miles from the nearest inhabitant?
As the result of a company policy, this hypothetical person would be in a pretty horrible position (unless some nice motorist happened to stop by....Like that would happen =P)
Granted, the article does say many of the features on this "prototype" will never exist in actual production cars; but, I do not think the hood-less feature will ever be released to the market, unless it has a failsafe phone-home device when it breaks down.
Crits aside though, the car is pretty nice, and it is also good to see that we are able to make cars easier for the dumba^H^H^H^H^Hnormal people who drive cars and don't want to be concerned with how their car works.
Looks like a great game! I'll be there too when it's out =)
LucasArts is making a huge blunder in canceling this project. Is there no way to convince them that what they are doing is a mistake?
I think the major failure is getting the word out to people that linux is just like windows in terms of usability with environments like KDE and Gnome; now we just need the application and driver vendors supporting linux like they support windows.
It's all in the marketing man. Marketing is key. It has nothing to do with this supposed "elitism" you speak of. Elitism is a thing of the 90s. I don't see vendors like Mandrake, Xandros, Lin---s, etc. being "elitist" towards their users.
We need someone with a lot of money, and we need to get the word out in as many places as possible.
Aye, there's the rub! We need money to advertise, and yet, money is only made once the operating system is quite popular (i.e. on support, etc.). So, someone is going to have to invest in it; and with the recent bursting of the bubble, investment has gone wayyy down, RIGHT when linux became really viable on the desktop!
Just great, eh? Oh well, I'm hopeful that with IBM's efforts and others, things will come around eventually.
It's ok man, and remember, market dominance isn't everything.
I pray our society has not come to the point where the only reason a person does a thing is for the money. That is a very undesirable situation for everyone, as it reduces the drive to help other people out.
I hope this is not a prevalent viewpoint, as it is quite disturbing. I do not want to live in a society where we are all little happy drones doing the bidding of the overmind for our little paystubs.
Money is just a secondary aspect to this process. The primary goal is to make my mind grow and my abilities to be enhanced through experience.
I think the open letter to the young developer is rather bigoted and assumes that all knowledge and ability a person has should be kept out of sight, like a black box. I heartily disagree with that viewpoint.
I'm not so sure incompatibility issues are a problem with forks, because most programmers try to get people to use their fork, and they won't intentionally break stuff. This is true even when you are making a new version of an application.
Of course, there IS a difference between forking and using a different prog for the graphical display; it would upset a lot of things if something other than X was used as a desktop; but if that alternative was close to X, then all it would take is some rewrites and dep changes (OK so it would be more complicated, but not impossible) and then everything would be fine after that change.
As you point out, some of what happens, re. forking is destructive, but it is also very constructive (i.e. competition) and I don't think it means linux will die.
I don't know if Xfree86 is completely impossible to fix at this point; I hope the Xfree team aren't intentionally writing their license to cause problems with GPL, but if they are, then a fork with the xfree codebase prior to the license change won't cause major compatibility issues because it's basically 4.4 before the 4.4 license. I'm not exactly sure when the new license takes effect or which codebase the fork can start from; I'm not terribly familiar with the project. I'm sure there are many others here who are posting/have posted on this subject.
Sure, it seems bad while it's happening, but in the end you get a better product. Often projects get way too political and forking is a way to bypass that bureaucratic nightmare.
Just call it an airship and be done with it.
What's the world coming to where you turn into a crotchety old guy at mid-twenties? I think exactly the same way you do about the situation of gaming, but I realize our attitudes are similar to those old fogies who go around saying "Back in my day we had to walk through 6 feet of snow etc."
I'm really hoping Video games will go through a period of revitalization, 'cause they're heading down the path of mass commercialization.
Is Microsoft giving away longhorn? No? Didn't think so. Well, that's pretty much the reason you should use linux.
Sure, there are other reasons. Like the fact that windows at the moment is the one being targeted by spammers/virus writers to create nefarious spam relay zombies. Or that Linux has user-level protection.
I don't see Windows Longhorn being able to change those situations drastically. Can you imagine the furor if Longhorn comes with user-level management, restricting access with root passwords? People would be up in arms!
I'd also be really surprised if windows suddenly became completely invulnerable to all viruses and worms. That would pretty much put AV vendors out of business! (might be cool though =P)
I fail to see how a release of longhorn would in any way affect adoption of linux. In fact, I think an early release date of longhorn would increase linux adoption, because more people would be disinclined at this point in the economic cycle to purchase YAOS (Yet Another Operating System) when they bought XP a couple of years ago. I think what MS is doing is a good strategy for them.
I want one!
Hopefully less than 200$ though...
Think about it, if he was able to use this case as the master, he could make tons of 'em without much additional effort... Maybe the fab costs would be high, but I bet he could pitch something this cool with such an intrinsic following to a corporate exec!
Well, this probably displays my ignorance of manufacturing... I have no idea if such an idea would be feasible. It looks like he put so much detail on the sides of the case, that it would be pretty hard to do that in a manufacturing process... I don't know though, anyone else familiar with this?
Try to appreciate GIMP for what it is and give the maintainers some support instead of going on about things photoshop has that gimp doesn't.
GIMP isn't trying to replace photoshop, and I feel people don't give it as much cred as it deserves.
From other MDK users I've heard that the 2.6 kernel with mandrake is working great, and though I haven't tried RC1, it's fairly stable at this point. FYI the reason they released RC1 was because of the XFree86 4.4 -> XFree86 4.3 reversion. I'm thinking they should do a RC3 this time around; it seemed kind of quick to go right to RC1.
That seems really lame and an abuse of the patent office to me. Microsoft should get shot down over this; this is a clear case of them trying to get a patent on something which has been around for quite a while (i.e. prior art).
I may also have the wrong impression about this patent, but it appears uspto.gov is slashdotted atm... (!)
Not just knoppix. So if you're concerned about mandrake compatibility with your system, download the MandrakeMove cd (bittorrent or the download page) and try it out on your machine!
But I found a working link to a Mandrake character: Mandrake the Magician. Dating from 1934 (!).
More importantly, why is the name Mandrake, originally applied to a plant, trademarkable? That'd be like saying I can't name a distro "Willow" because there's a movie called "Willow." Or maybe I just have no idea what trademarks are all about (I'll admit I'm pretty ignorant about such things).
Widespread use of an operating system does cause a problem for protection from worms, but I think the adoption of Macs is going to be limited by the fact Macs are so expensive (well not the old iMacs). At any rate, I think the BEST solution isn't getting a new type of machine or operating system, it's getting those users to educate themselves about the risks they face on the web.
If only there was a way to get people to learn... I don't know though, I've given up on people. They just don't seem to want to learn new things about computers! I think people still perceive computers as somewhat magical and/or mystical.
Then again, the cost of changing systems may not be warranted in this case. The user would probably be far better off taking a class or two in basic computer security, or some such. I'm not even aware if those kind of classes are even offered thouhgh.
These people STILL infected with MyDoom don't know the first thing about computer security. They would be MUCH MUCH better off with a Mac than with windows. All they probably do anyway is chat with their little friends on AIM and check their webmail.
It's obvious that windows is NOT the perfect OS for clueless newbie users, because it leaves gaping holes for them to be abused through. Think about it from the newbie point of view, not the experienced user point of view.
Thank you.
I think most people would agree it's not a good idea to use a bittorrent file that wasn't from a trusted source.
Saying linux is no more secure than windows implies that linux gives no advantages over windows against trojans. By your own argument, this is a false statement.
A true (IMO) statement is "Linux is not much more secure than windows against trojans." This is true in any operating system. Trojans tend to rely on the stupidity of the user, which I venture to say is nearly universal.
As a side note and completely unrelated to the parent, it still amazes me that people with any ounce of knowledge would open an attachment claiming to be an email in binary form. What are you going to do, read a bunch of 1's and 0's?? Come on people!
My mind is falling apart!! Agh!! This is SLASHDOT for Pete's sake! I can't take the differing opinions!!! >explodes<
Seriously though, who's right and who's wrong? Not everyone can be right!
Or does getting modded up not necessarily delineate truth?
I hope it has lots of details, references, and footnotes, so the less technically inclined can follow it if they so desire to (though it may take a lot of reading!) That always helps the integrity and validity of a piece of work. I'll love to see the finished product!