...doesn't eliminate the problem of pesky viruses and the like (file corruption, unnoticed errors...). You don't always inmediately notice something is wrong, so you keep working. To go back in time a few hours/days might not be an option, if malware hits with high frequency. A cvs-like system might do the trick, although.
Perhaps in a few hundred years Debian will have a runtime package which can be depended on by mono apps without having to pull in the whole development environment. (mono-runtime vs. mono-devel, both depending on mono-common)
Perhaps this will happen sooner;) Anyway, if you like it to happen soon, why not join the Debian mono package mantainers?
I was just thinking the same. I personally think of crosshurd. This lets you choose between several kernels (4 at the moment) for a lot of architectures (12 at the moment). This should be 1337 enough for anyone... However, if everything else fails, what about good old Plan 9?
But reconnectability is great, specially when you mantain the same session across differents computers, some of them with windows (with which I have to use knoppix, in order both not to be tainted and not to break anything). I am somewhat of a newbie and always have problems with my hosts.allow and hosts.deny... so it's better (for me!) just to allow ssh, and do everything the "ssh -XC" way.
Genuine question: what are the other benefits from vnc, aside from reconnectability and (lossful) compression?
I must be unknowingly running FreeNX (under an alias to vncviewer). If vncserver is still alive, you can *always* reconnect to the session, from any computer! I use a knoppix CD, ssh -X to my machine and vncviewer my vnc session, and it works great!
But they really can support it themselves. Don't think of a 50 workers company, think of a big company... or of a national government. Your deals with your "services providers" are always sweeter if they know you can always switch to an in-house solution (or switch to another provider, which has access to the source code and can branch the distro for you). There's the freedom.
As make extensive use of linux, might I suggest that they include a tiny picture with the text "Google is powered by linux" with the search results? Maybe at the bottom, where you can't barely see it... but it will be enough to raise linux visibility a lot, if google users (i.e.: every internet user) realizes that linux is powerful enough for google.
I just hope to see "gaming editions" on the rise again. Bundle the best hardware detection (or, best, pre-install) with Cedega, some basic productivity tools as usual (OOo, mail, www), keep a low-profile WM like XFCE4, put in every great free (as in speech) game, a lot of free (as in beer) demos and maybe some discount on a set of popular propietary games which will run (either natively or through Cedega), and there you have a nice linux distro (or box) that runs enough games to be fun and enough software to be productive. No viri, no spyware, no problems! Of course, real gamers will need their Windows boxes, as well as PS2, Cube and XBox, but for a lot of people this would be "good enough".
Yeah, then I agree. A civilization which isn't good at violence doesn't last long. Aside from the Chinese, civilizations which are good at violence don't last forever, either. I suppose you can add to your list of "non successful-because-non-existing Empires" the Romans (as in "the Empire comprising all civilized Earth"), the Spanish (as in "the land where the Sun always shines") or the USSR (remember them?). You perhaps mean that the Romans, the Spanish or the USSR did a bad job in war (both practice and preparation)? No matter how militaristic you are, eventually your time passes (again, Chinese are special, at least up to now... we will see what happens to them now they are beginning to open their frontiers and starting to think aggresively towards the outside world).
If your society does not make valid cultural points, in the moment it ceases to exist (which will inevitably happen), it will matter no more. If it gives something valid to humanity, it will be appreciated forever. I concede, though, that if your society is annihilated rather than absorbed, your cultural contributions may not matter, either (as those of the Aztecs and Inca people).
I think we are reaching a point here. Successful at what, may I ask? Successful at winning wars and not being conquered, do you mean?
I'm thinking of the ancient greeks and romans. I suppose the Roman Empire was the succesful one, in your scale. A great empire, a long-lasting "Pax Romana"... In my point of view, the greek culture was the one inspiring the rise of Science and Philosophy, although they were "the slave nation", and the roman were "the master nation". "Survival of the fittest", you say... surely my mother tongue is derived from Latin, but I don't recall to have studied the thought of many romans, while I can easily think of several greeks (individuals or schools of thought) that pervive in our memories, up to this date.
Spain, as a close example (to me, as spaniard) was successful in South America, when they annihilated some totally valid civilizations? They surely builded a huge empire then, and argued that those Incas and Aztecs were uncivilized, waiting to be saved by our Lord. I would count that experience as a miserable failure.
Silly me, I thought decades of cold war and nuclear arms race translated into decades of fear of the world blowing up in pieces and that had drifted into "nobody needs to have the ability to blow the entire world in pieces". Implicit security? Yeah, sure.
While I appreciate that you took your time to answer, I can't really see that you have read my post, or composed an answer to it. I did not introduce the idea of justice, I was just trying to develop your axiom to its logical consequences. I repeat: "If every society applies your axiom, trying to be better at violence than their neighbours... how exactly does the solution to a violent world appear?"
Why do you assume that being better at violence than your neighbours has something to do with "Sometimes the application of violence prevents or halts a greater violence."? Any nation (or individual) can try to be better at violence than their neighbours. In fact, every party engaged in a war tries to be. Do you mean that every party engaged in a war has prevented or halted greater violence?
To say that violence is never the answer is absurd, as you point out. Violence is an usual answer. To say that violence is the solution to some problems is correct. Not the best solution, of course, but sometimes necessary. To say that violence is a solution to violence is overly optimistic, in my humble opinion. I think you really mean that there is no solution to violence, and you try to minimize losses (specially on your side).
I guess your definition of "solution" depends on your definition of "problem". If the solution to a violent world is "to be better at violence than your neighbours", I guess you don't consider war itself a problem, only the war you happen to lose. (I indeed consider any war a major violence problem itself, and specially not a solution for violence.)
I mean, did you read your own words? If every society applies your axiom, trying to be better at violence than their neighbours... how exactly does the solution to a violent world appear? You would think the world would engage in a global arms race (and eventually a global war, as strategigy give rise to tactics). Is this a solution for a violent world? I honestly think I don't get your point.
I agree with you... but I sense the tide is changing. Can't you hear it from where you are? It's only a rumor, but you can already hear it growing louder...
Once a government, an individual or a corporation tastes the freedom, they won't easily give up. I see a lot of new happy users of Free software in the corporate world, and I also see them in the governments, at least here in Europe. Once they pay to make a transition to Free software (gaining freedom to choose whom to make deals with, and the economic benefits of competition), I seriously doubt anybody can bring them back. If there is no one industry in the USA that wants to step in the market for "hardware for free software in Europe", either Japan or China will, or Europe will start to produce their own hardware. South America looks just the same (think of Brazil, for a great example). I can't think of the internet going all-trusted with so many content producers being trusted-free.
On a side note, I'm not sure if US laws will be so strong as to prevent US manufacturers from producing non-DRM-crippled-hardware in foreign countries, in order to sell it to foreign countries,thus losing tons of money... will they?
Finally, once again, I agree with you. We need a massive public backslash against Trusted Computing. My way to fight is to get as many individuals to go over Free software, Free music and Free information... and to push my government towards the same goal.
OpenBIOS wouldn't be of much use if DRM laws require a closed system.
Maybe it won't for you... If USA's DRM laws don't aply here in Spain, I will be glad to swap a crippled BIOS by a shiny Openfirmware... if there is one that works for my computer, of course. So, I say to developers: keep coding and don't worry for local laws. I will happily buy some T-shirts, if that improves your confort, as long as you improve mine:)
(writing this from an Openfirmware-powered Debian Sarge iBook;)
How many times do I have to suggest this? Do you have permission to delete files from a user called backup, who does nothing but making copies from every file you modify from time to time? (for example: once every hour, and once every week, bzipping the latter). Do you have too small a hard disk, in these days? If not to both questions: how exactly are you supposed to be able to delete your files without root access?
that a larger project in Extremadura, Spain, doesn't get this kind of attention (Some background for the spanish-impaired). It's already working (I thinks it's a little over two years now), it's been distributed to hundreds of thousands (including every desktop in the schools, one computer for every two students, mind you)... it even has inspired at least one already working project in Andalucía, Spain (and seeds of several others, as in Madrid, Zaragoza or Valencia; it seems all education in Spain is migrating to linux in the next few years).
There's nothing stopping a company to hire several proficient coders and start catching bounties, one at a time or several in parallel, is it? It doesn't sound as a terrible idea to me.
In the room I'm sitting, I count an IRIX silicon O2, a linux iBook, a Panther iBook, a linux PC and a Jaguar iBook. Next room, I see two Windows XP PCs and a MacOS9 Powerbook. In my faculty (chemistry) we have three computer rooms for students: two windows PCs and one MacOSX. For post-graduate students, a linux PC room was recently opened.
Outside the university, I only saw Macs in a design store... and in Apple stores, of course, and in some general computer stores also.
As probably many of you will already know, there are legal ways to listen to quality, Free music (with no ads, of course). This Free (as in GPL), cross-platform program is a great example, but I'm sure there are others. Eventually we will drive RIIA (here in Spain: SGAE) off, and change IP laws, but we will start off a better position if "propietary music" is no longer perceived as sinonymous with "music", something we are already achieving with software.
In the meantime, don't be surprised by nasty tricks like this one.
Also, Apple tends to lean HARD on Microsoft for office tools. In that vein, can you really say Apple has diverged from the path Microsoft set? I'd argue no.
It's not opensource (which is a huge pity), but keynote is definitely not Microsoft's way (and it looked vastly superior to me when I saw it in action). I am just waiting for Apple to pull a Safari to Microsoft Word/Excel. Many mac users are waiting for something like that: an innovative, cool, slightly "opensource-cored" new product from Apple. Specially if you take into account that a lot of new macosx users are ex-linux users... or ex-windows users with bad experiences with microsoft software.
Slashdot Mirror
If a computer is not my own computer i simply don't trust it.
Ah, but you don't need to trust it in order to use it!
...doesn't eliminate the problem of pesky viruses and the like (file corruption, unnoticed errors...). You don't always inmediately notice something is wrong, so you keep working. To go back in time a few hours/days might not be an option, if malware hits with high frequency. A cvs-like system might do the trick, although.
(Just my two off-topic eurocents).
Perhaps this will happen sooner ;) Anyway, if you like it to happen soon, why not join the Debian mono package mantainers?
I was just thinking the same. I personally think of crosshurd. This lets you choose between several kernels (4 at the moment) for a lot of architectures (12 at the moment). This should be 1337 enough for anyone... However, if everything else fails, what about good old Plan 9?
"This site safest when viewed with *anything* but IE. If Mozilla looks too bloated for you, try lynx."
I agree :)
But reconnectability is great, specially when you mantain the same session across differents computers, some of them with windows (with which I have to use knoppix, in order both not to be tainted and not to break anything). I am somewhat of a newbie and always have problems with my hosts.allow and hosts.deny... so it's better (for me!) just to allow ssh, and do everything the "ssh -XC" way.
Genuine question: what are the other benefits from vnc, aside from reconnectability and (lossful) compression?
The information may be slightly outdated, but we had an excellent, first-hand, report on tech (and general) situation in Iraq right here.
I must be unknowingly running FreeNX (under an alias to vncviewer). If vncserver is still alive, you can *always* reconnect to the session, from any computer! I use a knoppix CD, ssh -X to my machine and vncviewer my vnc session, and it works great!
But they really can support it themselves. Don't think of a 50 workers company, think of a big company... or of a national government. Your deals with your "services providers" are always sweeter if they know you can always switch to an in-house solution (or switch to another provider, which has access to the source code and can branch the distro for you). There's the freedom.
As make extensive use of linux, might I suggest that they include a tiny picture with the text "Google is powered by linux" with the search results? Maybe at the bottom, where you can't barely see it... but it will be enough to raise linux visibility a lot, if google users (i.e.: every internet user) realizes that linux is powerful enough for google.
I just hope to see "gaming editions" on the rise again. Bundle the best hardware detection (or, best, pre-install) with Cedega, some basic productivity tools as usual (OOo, mail, www), keep a low-profile WM like XFCE4, put in every great free (as in speech) game, a lot of free (as in beer) demos and maybe some discount on a set of popular propietary games which will run (either natively or through Cedega), and there you have a nice linux distro (or box) that runs enough games to be fun and enough software to be productive. No viri, no spyware, no problems! Of course, real gamers will need their Windows boxes, as well as PS2, Cube and XBox, but for a lot of people this would be "good enough".
Yeah, then I agree. A civilization which isn't good at violence doesn't last long. Aside from the Chinese, civilizations which are good at violence don't last forever, either. I suppose you can add to your list of "non successful-because-non-existing Empires" the Romans (as in "the Empire comprising all civilized Earth"), the Spanish (as in "the land where the Sun always shines") or the USSR (remember them?). You perhaps mean that the Romans, the Spanish or the USSR did a bad job in war (both practice and preparation)? No matter how militaristic you are, eventually your time passes (again, Chinese are special, at least up to now... we will see what happens to them now they are beginning to open their frontiers and starting to think aggresively towards the outside world).
If your society does not make valid cultural points, in the moment it ceases to exist (which will inevitably happen), it will matter no more. If it gives something valid to humanity, it will be appreciated forever. I concede, though, that if your society is annihilated rather than absorbed, your cultural contributions may not matter, either (as those of the Aztecs and Inca people).
Successful nation-states are good at violence
I think we are reaching a point here. Successful at what, may I ask? Successful at winning wars and not being conquered, do you mean?
I'm thinking of the ancient greeks and romans. I suppose the Roman Empire was the succesful one, in your scale. A great empire, a long-lasting "Pax Romana"... In my point of view, the greek culture was the one inspiring the rise of Science and Philosophy, although they were "the slave nation", and the roman were "the master nation". "Survival of the fittest", you say... surely my mother tongue is derived from Latin, but I don't recall to have studied the thought of many romans, while I can easily think of several greeks (individuals or schools of thought) that pervive in our memories, up to this date.
Spain, as a close example (to me, as spaniard) was successful in South America, when they annihilated some totally valid civilizations? They surely builded a huge empire then, and argued that those Incas and Aztecs were uncivilized, waiting to be saved by our Lord. I would count that experience as a miserable failure.
Silly me, I thought decades of cold war and nuclear arms race translated into decades of fear of the world blowing up in pieces and that had drifted into "nobody needs to have the ability to blow the entire world in pieces". Implicit security? Yeah, sure.
While I appreciate that you took your time to answer, I can't really see that you have read my post, or composed an answer to it. I did not introduce the idea of justice, I was just trying to develop your axiom to its logical consequences. I repeat: "If every society applies your axiom, trying to be better at violence than their neighbours... how exactly does the solution to a violent world appear?"
Why do you assume that being better at violence than your neighbours has something to do with "Sometimes the application of violence prevents or halts a greater violence."? Any nation (or individual) can try to be better at violence than their neighbours. In fact, every party engaged in a war tries to be. Do you mean that every party engaged in a war has prevented or halted greater violence?
To say that violence is never the answer is absurd, as you point out. Violence is an usual answer. To say that violence is the solution to some problems is correct. Not the best solution, of course, but sometimes necessary. To say that violence is a solution to violence is overly optimistic, in my humble opinion. I think you really mean that there is no solution to violence, and you try to minimize losses (specially on your side).
I guess your definition of "solution" depends on your definition of "problem". If the solution to a violent world is "to be better at violence than your neighbours", I guess you don't consider war itself a problem, only the war you happen to lose. (I indeed consider any war a major violence problem itself, and specially not a solution for violence.)
I mean, did you read your own words? If every society applies your axiom, trying to be better at violence than their neighbours... how exactly does the solution to a violent world appear? You would think the world would engage in a global arms race (and eventually a global war, as strategigy give rise to tactics). Is this a solution for a violent world? I honestly think I don't get your point.
I agree with you... but I sense the tide is changing. Can't you hear it from where you are? It's only a rumor, but you can already hear it growing louder...
Once a government, an individual or a corporation tastes the freedom, they won't easily give up. I see a lot of new happy users of Free software in the corporate world, and I also see them in the governments, at least here in Europe. Once they pay to make a transition to Free software (gaining freedom to choose whom to make deals with, and the economic benefits of competition), I seriously doubt anybody can bring them back. If there is no one industry in the USA that wants to step in the market for "hardware for free software in Europe", either Japan or China will, or Europe will start to produce their own hardware. South America looks just the same (think of Brazil, for a great example). I can't think of the internet going all-trusted with so many content producers being trusted-free.
On a side note, I'm not sure if US laws will be so strong as to prevent US manufacturers from producing non-DRM-crippled-hardware in foreign countries, in order to sell it to foreign countries,thus losing tons of money... will they?
Finally, once again, I agree with you. We need a massive public backslash against Trusted Computing. My way to fight is to get as many individuals to go over Free software, Free music and Free information... and to push my government towards the same goal.
OpenBIOS wouldn't be of much use if DRM laws require a closed system.
Maybe it won't for you... If USA's DRM laws don't aply here in Spain, I will be glad to swap a crippled BIOS by a shiny Openfirmware... if there is one that works for my computer, of course. So, I say to developers: keep coding and don't worry for local laws. I will happily buy some T-shirts, if that improves your confort, as long as you improve mine :)
(writing this from an Openfirmware-powered Debian Sarge iBook ;)
Actually, I suppose you mean: like al-Quaida selling coffins.
(The one selling life insurance would be most happy if mortality drops to zero. If viri dissapear, who is going to buy AV?)
How many times do I have to suggest this?
Do you have permission to delete files from a user called backup, who does nothing but making copies from every file you modify from time to time? (for example: once every hour, and once every week, bzipping the latter). Do you have too small a hard disk, in these days? If not to both questions: how exactly are you supposed to be able to delete your files without root access?
that a larger project in Extremadura, Spain, doesn't get this kind of attention (Some background for the spanish-impaired). It's already working (I thinks it's a little over two years now), it's been distributed to hundreds of thousands (including every desktop in the schools, one computer for every two students, mind you)... it even has inspired at least one already working project in Andalucía, Spain (and seeds of several others, as in Madrid, Zaragoza or Valencia; it seems all education in Spain is migrating to linux in the next few years).
There's nothing stopping a company to hire several proficient coders and start catching bounties, one at a time or several in parallel, is it? It doesn't sound as a terrible idea to me.
In the room I'm sitting, I count an IRIX silicon O2, a linux iBook, a Panther iBook, a linux PC and a Jaguar iBook. Next room, I see two Windows XP PCs and a MacOS9 Powerbook. In my faculty (chemistry) we have three computer rooms for students: two windows PCs and one MacOSX. For post-graduate students, a linux PC room was recently opened.
Outside the university, I only saw Macs in a design store... and in Apple stores, of course, and in some general computer stores also.
(Talking about Spain, btw).
As probably many of you will already know, there are legal ways to listen to quality, Free music (with no ads, of course). This Free (as in GPL), cross-platform program is a great example, but I'm sure there are others. Eventually we will drive RIIA (here in Spain: SGAE) off, and change IP laws, but we will start off a better position if "propietary music" is no longer perceived as sinonymous with "music", something we are already achieving with software.
In the meantime, don't be surprised by nasty tricks like this one.
Also, Apple tends to lean HARD on Microsoft for office tools. In that vein, can you really say Apple has diverged from the path Microsoft set? I'd argue no.
It's not opensource (which is a huge pity), but keynote is definitely not Microsoft's way (and it looked vastly superior to me when I saw it in action). I am just waiting for Apple to pull a Safari to Microsoft Word/Excel. Many mac users are waiting for something like that: an innovative, cool, slightly "opensource-cored" new product from Apple. Specially if you take into account that a lot of new macosx users are ex-linux users... or ex-windows users with bad experiences with microsoft software.