1. More support from hardware manufacturers 2. More support from software manufacturers 3. More jobs for us Linux people
The added support from hardware manufacturers also means less time pissing about trying to find some hardware that works and more time actually making money.
Granted, that's a lot better than Win 98 where I lost count after 8 or 9 reboots to get all the drivers installed and updated on a machine I built.
Only 8 or 9? I think when I used to run Win98 it was something like:
1. Install Win98 2. reboot 3. install driver 4. repeat steps 2 and 3 about 10 times 5. windows spectacularly crashes after installing a particular driver, totally refuses to boot even after removing that driver again 6. Wipe and reinstall Win98 7. reboot 8. install drivers in a different order 9. repeat steps 7 and 8 about 10 times 10. A different driver spectacularly breaks windows 11. Open computer and rip out all the PCI and ISA cards 12. Wipe and reinstall windows again 13. reboot 14. install drivers for all the onboard stuff, rebooting between each 15. shutdown 16. plug in 1 PCI or ISA card 17. boot up again 18. install driver for hardware you just plugged in 19. repeat steps 15 - 18 until all your hardware is back in the box
After this you've just about got a working machine until you have to reinstall it 6 months later. Admittedly I did have all the PCI and ISA slots absolutely full, but its been my experience that if you've got a moderate number of cards in your machine win98's installer really stuggles to install a working machine.
Maybe I want to make one totally headless including having no video hardware at all, instead going to a serial port for a terminal?
Actually this is one thing I don't understand why it isn't supported. Why does every BIOS *require* a VGA card in order to boot? I can't think of any other piece of add-on hardware that is absolutely required for booting, even though you're never going to actually use it.
Unlike the PS2, PCs and their components are made by a large number of companies. IMHO there are enough boxes not running Windows (think of all the servers) that it would hurt the hardware manufacturers quite badly if they prevented people using Linux, etc. I think the danger is possibly that hardware without "trusted computing" rubbish (i.e. hardware that can run Linux, etc) will be considered "server grade" and will cost lots of money, whilest the cheapo "consumer grade" stuff we all use ATM will be crippled.
However, I stand by my opinion that DRM is fundamentally flawed - all DRM-protected media has to be decoded and presented as a human-usable data stream (i.e. audio eventually has to become real audio instead of an encrypted stream), and this will always be the weak point. Also, wherever you're putting decryption keys in the hands of the public, you're going to find someone who spends the time cracking them, even if draconian laws like the DMCA forbid it. So the best you can do is DRM protect things for a few months until they're cracked and then completely redesign the DRM system, which seems unmaintainable.
I hope that motherboard manufacturers would lose out badly enough if Linux couldn't run on their kit that they will never lock it out - remember that an aweful lot of motherboards (even "workstation" boards) end up in servers, and Microsoft doesn't have nearly the share in the server market that it has in the desktop market.
A lot of BIOSes have broken implementations of stuff (see the likes of ACPI for examples) - opensourcing the BIOS would be really useful for getting this kind of thing fixed. Especially since a lot of kit is still in use long after the manufacturers have finished caring about it - open BIOSes would allow people to fix BIOS bugs after the manufacturer has stopped bothering to release firmware updates.
That seems very shortsighted - what's wrong with well targetted text-only banner ads like Google serves? They're not annoying and they pay for the websites you're visiting (do you want to enter your credit card number on *every* site you visit?
The problem ads are the completely untargetted popups, stupid annoying animated gifs, flash, and increasingly DHTML floating objects (see the Dilbert site for details).
Rather than discouraging sites from using adverts at all (which will result in many useful sites shutting down), shouldn't we be enouraging them to use acceptable, and dare I say it - useful advertising? If for one find Google's *targetted* ads useful.
The same can be said of TV ads - if I see an ad that looks funny while watching TV I'll actually watch it, but if (like the vast majority) the ad is designed to be as annoying as possible, I'll just fastforward through it using my MythTV box. The advertisers need to be trained that spamming the consumers with annoying crap is unacceptable, but providing them with well targetted and not annoying ads is worthwhile.
Even if you did it deliberately, five mintues looking at a couple of pics (which might very well disgust you anyway) really shouldn't be enough to destroy your life.
Yes - I'm sure that there are a lot of "curious" people out there, who given the choice would actively seek out such images _once_ just to see what the fuss was about. They may well then be disguisted and never do it again - I don't see a problem with that. It's the people who actually *pay* for this stuff who are the problem.
PUNISH children for looking at porn? You must be a conservative American.
Nope, I'm British. Actually that wasn't quite what I meant anyway - punish them for breaking the rules rather than specifically looking at porn. If the school/whatever institution doesn't want kids looking at porn then they should make it clear that it's against the rules and that breaking any of the rules is punishable. If there are no rules against looking at porn then it wouldn't be right to punish the kid against it.
And I agree with you that a early-teenager looking at porn is getting educated, so I'm not entirely sure there's any reason to stop them - if you block their internet access they'll only look at top-shelf magazines instead. (However, if schools are seen to be allowing kids to surf porn I'm sure there would be public outcry from many parents).
This is definately down to enforcing people to follow whatever rules they have agreed to - the organisation providing the internet connection (i.e. the school/college/employer) has the right to specify what people may use that connection for - if the provider doesn't want people using it for looking at porn they have every right to make it clear that it isn't acceptable, and to enforce that.
Another rather more contravercial question - is it wrong for a 14 year old to be looking at porn involving 14 year olds? Yes, legally it's kiddie porn and so it's illegal, but it would seem completely natural for someone looking at porn to want to see people their own age.
I see the benefits of blocking in a school environment - it helps stop kids accidentally stumbling upon porn. If they actually want porn then they will of course get to it - nothing you can do about that, you can never block 100% of porn. In the case where the kids are actively trying to get at porn then you need to punish them, not just rely on filtering.
Now, for adults I think it's very different - filtering *always* leads to false positives, and in my experience those false positives are more annoying than accidentally hitting a porn site once in a while. So I have to question why you would want to filter adults - certainly for employers there seems no real need since there are usually diciplinery measures in the employee's contract which basically mean that if they actively seek out porn they'll get fired. No need to protect them from themselves here - they're responsible adults.
I am worried about the kiddie-porn laws though - "seeing this site is illegal" - what happens if you accidentally end up at the site? Should you be deemed to be breaking the law then? Infact I see no real reason to have such laws at all - the people who are "supporting" kiddie-porn are the people paying for it, so surely the laws should be targetted at the people paying for and making kiddie porn. Who cares if some pervert has found a free source of it - they're not putting money into it so they're not doing anything to support it, so the whole "every picture you download is supporting a kid being abused" arguement falls through.
Yeah, it's been around for a while - it doesn't do pagerank (apparantly it's some propriatory protocol.. wouldn't have thought its hard to reverse-engineer though)
I really wish google would hurry up and write a googlebar for firefox though - I don't want to fire up IE (and infact windows since that's all windows ever gets used for) to check pagerank scores...
Until MS implement tabbed browsing themselves... Maybe this is time for a Microsoft-style software patent on tabbed browsing, then licence it out for free to everyone except MS.:)
Oh, and if anyone finds a Symbian-UIQ SIP or IAX client that will run on my SE P900, that'd be really handy (I haven't found one yet, although there seems to be stuff available for the Symbian-60 devices). VoIP-over-bluetooth and turn it into a flashy cordless phone when I'm at home.:)
I've been playing with Asterisk myself for a week or so and it's pretty damned good (although takes some time getting your head around the configuration). I've got an FXO card on order to connect it to my POTS line and I have a couple of DDIs registered (for free!) at VoipUser which direct over the internet to my Asterisk server.
I've been looking for a half decent SoftPhone for linux and haven't been able to really find one - the best I've found is IAXComm, which has an annoying habit of missing the occasional call. So I'm hoping that PhoneGaim is what I've been looking for... but damned if I can get the thing to compile...
Quite simply, because it's a crime to find an exploit on someone else's network
Sounds like you're talking about the DMCA here - as much as the likes of the RIAA would like it to apply outside the US, it doesn't.
You can't force them to use secure transmission of YOUR data
I'm not sure that's entirely true - IANAL, but the Data Protection Act guarantees you some rights in the way your data is handled, including rights about the security of that data.
I'm not going to use icky javascript workarounds for this stuff - my site is readable in IE even if it doesn't look as nice as it should - IE users can live with it. I am contemplating doing some browser detection and putting a message on each page for IE users saying something to the effect of "you're using an insecure, non-complient browser - this site (and many others) will work far better in FireFox"
I'd love to know why the code is in IE to start with but just not used though.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you directly profit from Linux's market share?
Yes - greater market share means:
1. More support from hardware manufacturers
2. More support from software manufacturers
3. More jobs for us Linux people
The added support from hardware manufacturers also means less time pissing about trying to find some hardware that works and more time actually making money.
Given that less than 5% of the current CPUs sold support that feature, what difference will this make?
If I were building a internet-connected server I'd be seriously thinking of shoving an Athlon 64 in it now.
It's a shame that there are no lower spec processors with the NX flag though - seems a bit like overkill to run a webserver off an Ath-64
Granted, that's a lot better than Win 98 where I lost count after 8 or 9 reboots to get all the drivers installed and updated on a machine I built.
Only 8 or 9? I think when I used to run Win98 it was something like:
1. Install Win98
2. reboot
3. install driver
4. repeat steps 2 and 3 about 10 times
5. windows spectacularly crashes after installing a particular driver, totally refuses to boot even after removing that driver again
6. Wipe and reinstall Win98
7. reboot
8. install drivers in a different order
9. repeat steps 7 and 8 about 10 times
10. A different driver spectacularly breaks windows
11. Open computer and rip out all the PCI and ISA cards
12. Wipe and reinstall windows again
13. reboot
14. install drivers for all the onboard stuff, rebooting between each
15. shutdown
16. plug in 1 PCI or ISA card
17. boot up again
18. install driver for hardware you just plugged in
19. repeat steps 15 - 18 until all your hardware is back in the box
After this you've just about got a working machine until you have to reinstall it 6 months later. Admittedly I did have all the PCI and ISA slots absolutely full, but its been my experience that if you've got a moderate number of cards in your machine win98's installer really stuggles to install a working machine.
Maybe I want to make one totally headless including having no video hardware at all, instead going to a serial port for a terminal?
Actually this is one thing I don't understand why it isn't supported. Why does every BIOS *require* a VGA card in order to boot? I can't think of any other piece of add-on hardware that is absolutely required for booting, even though you're never going to actually use it.
I certainly wasn't suggesting that Linux dominates the market, merely that in the server world Linux isn't such a small chunk of the market.
Unlike the PS2, PCs and their components are made by a large number of companies. IMHO there are enough boxes not running Windows (think of all the servers) that it would hurt the hardware manufacturers quite badly if they prevented people using Linux, etc. I think the danger is possibly that hardware without "trusted computing" rubbish (i.e. hardware that can run Linux, etc) will be considered "server grade" and will cost lots of money, whilest the cheapo "consumer grade" stuff we all use ATM will be crippled.
However, I stand by my opinion that DRM is fundamentally flawed - all DRM-protected media has to be decoded and presented as a human-usable data stream (i.e. audio eventually has to become real audio instead of an encrypted stream), and this will always be the weak point. Also, wherever you're putting decryption keys in the hands of the public, you're going to find someone who spends the time cracking them, even if draconian laws like the DMCA forbid it. So the best you can do is DRM protect things for a few months until they're cracked and then completely redesign the DRM system, which seems unmaintainable.
I hope that motherboard manufacturers would lose out badly enough if Linux couldn't run on their kit that they will never lock it out - remember that an aweful lot of motherboards (even "workstation" boards) end up in servers, and Microsoft doesn't have nearly the share in the server market that it has in the desktop market.
A lot of BIOSes have broken implementations of stuff (see the likes of ACPI for examples) - opensourcing the BIOS would be really useful for getting this kind of thing fixed. Especially since a lot of kit is still in use long after the manufacturers have finished caring about it - open BIOSes would allow people to fix BIOS bugs after the manufacturer has stopped bothering to release firmware updates.
That seems very shortsighted - what's wrong with well targetted text-only banner ads like Google serves? They're not annoying and they pay for the websites you're visiting (do you want to enter your credit card number on *every* site you visit?
The problem ads are the completely untargetted popups, stupid annoying animated gifs, flash, and increasingly DHTML floating objects (see the Dilbert site for details).
Rather than discouraging sites from using adverts at all (which will result in many useful sites shutting down), shouldn't we be enouraging them to use acceptable, and dare I say it - useful advertising? If for one find Google's *targetted* ads useful.
The same can be said of TV ads - if I see an ad that looks funny while watching TV I'll actually watch it, but if (like the vast majority) the ad is designed to be as annoying as possible, I'll just fastforward through it using my MythTV box. The advertisers need to be trained that spamming the consumers with annoying crap is unacceptable, but providing them with well targetted and not annoying ads is worthwhile.
But who pays for their pr0n in this day and age?
:)
I dunno... someone must do otherwise the porn industry would collapse
Even if you did it deliberately, five mintues looking at a couple of pics (which might very well disgust you anyway) really shouldn't be enough to destroy your life.
Yes - I'm sure that there are a lot of "curious" people out there, who given the choice would actively seek out such images _once_ just to see what the fuss was about. They may well then be disguisted and never do it again - I don't see a problem with that. It's the people who actually *pay* for this stuff who are the problem.
PUNISH children for looking at porn? You must be a conservative American.
Nope, I'm British. Actually that wasn't quite what I meant anyway - punish them for breaking the rules rather than specifically looking at porn. If the school/whatever institution doesn't want kids looking at porn then they should make it clear that it's against the rules and that breaking any of the rules is punishable. If there are no rules against looking at porn then it wouldn't be right to punish the kid against it.
And I agree with you that a early-teenager looking at porn is getting educated, so I'm not entirely sure there's any reason to stop them - if you block their internet access they'll only look at top-shelf magazines instead. (However, if schools are seen to be allowing kids to surf porn I'm sure there would be public outcry from many parents).
This is definately down to enforcing people to follow whatever rules they have agreed to - the organisation providing the internet connection (i.e. the school/college/employer) has the right to specify what people may use that connection for - if the provider doesn't want people using it for looking at porn they have every right to make it clear that it isn't acceptable, and to enforce that.
Another rather more contravercial question - is it wrong for a 14 year old to be looking at porn involving 14 year olds? Yes, legally it's kiddie porn and so it's illegal, but it would seem completely natural for someone looking at porn to want to see people their own age.
I wonder about the adverts that keep appearing on telly... how the hell are they allowed?
I see the benefits of blocking in a school environment - it helps stop kids accidentally stumbling upon porn. If they actually want porn then they will of course get to it - nothing you can do about that, you can never block 100% of porn. In the case where the kids are actively trying to get at porn then you need to punish them, not just rely on filtering.
Now, for adults I think it's very different - filtering *always* leads to false positives, and in my experience those false positives are more annoying than accidentally hitting a porn site once in a while. So I have to question why you would want to filter adults - certainly for employers there seems no real need since there are usually diciplinery measures in the employee's contract which basically mean that if they actively seek out porn they'll get fired. No need to protect them from themselves here - they're responsible adults.
I am worried about the kiddie-porn laws though - "seeing this site is illegal" - what happens if you accidentally end up at the site? Should you be deemed to be breaking the law then? Infact I see no real reason to have such laws at all - the people who are "supporting" kiddie-porn are the people paying for it, so surely the laws should be targetted at the people paying for and making kiddie porn. Who cares if some pervert has found a free source of it - they're not putting money into it so they're not doing anything to support it, so the whole "every picture you download is supporting a kid being abused" arguement falls through.
god forbid - die by it
:)
Isn't that what McDonald's food does anyway?
Yeah, it's been around for a while - it doesn't do pagerank (apparantly it's some propriatory protocol.. wouldn't have thought its hard to reverse-engineer though)
If nothing else, the pop-ups did a wonderful job lowering my saluting penis.
:)
Weren't the popups advertising stuff to reverse that?
I really wish google would hurry up and write a googlebar for firefox though - I don't want to fire up IE (and infact windows since that's all windows ever gets used for) to check pagerank scores...
Until MS implement tabbed browsing themselves... Maybe this is time for a Microsoft-style software patent on tabbed browsing, then licence it out for free to everyone except MS. :)
Oh, and if anyone finds a Symbian-UIQ SIP or IAX client that will run on my SE P900, that'd be really handy (I haven't found one yet, although there seems to be stuff available for the Symbian-60 devices). VoIP-over-bluetooth and turn it into a flashy cordless phone when I'm at home. :)
I've been playing with Asterisk myself for a week or so and it's pretty damned good (although takes some time getting your head around the configuration). I've got an FXO card on order to connect it to my POTS line and I have a couple of DDIs registered (for free!) at VoipUser which direct over the internet to my Asterisk server.
I've been looking for a half decent SoftPhone for linux and haven't been able to really find one - the best I've found is IAXComm, which has an annoying habit of missing the occasional call. So I'm hoping that PhoneGaim is what I've been looking for... but damned if I can get the thing to compile...
Whoa! I just had a flashback to the O.J. Simpson trial.
:)
So SCO's going to win and doom all Linux users then?
Quite simply, because it's a crime to find an exploit on someone else's network
Sounds like you're talking about the DMCA here - as much as the likes of the RIAA would like it to apply outside the US, it doesn't.
You can't force them to use secure transmission of YOUR data
I'm not sure that's entirely true - IANAL, but the Data Protection Act guarantees you some rights in the way your data is handled, including rights about the security of that data.
I'm not going to use icky javascript workarounds for this stuff - my site is readable in IE even if it doesn't look as nice as it should - IE users can live with it. I am contemplating doing some browser detection and putting a message on each page for IE users saying something to the effect of "you're using an insecure, non-complient browser - this site (and many others) will work far better in FireFox"
I'd love to know why the code is in IE to start with but just not used though.
Well it sure as hell doesn't use the external Sun one...