use of well documented (open) formats makes life easier.
It certainly makes life easier in the short to medium term (maybe up to 150 years), but I'm not convinced it's going to help a lot 1000 years after the format became obsolete - you still have to find the specification for the format and write software to decode it.
So do I, but the data that was on them now occupies a tiny portion of the hard drives in my current computers. It's been copied onto half a dozen different backup formats, and I expect it'll migrate across a multitude more in the course of my life.
It's obvious to us techies, but sadly "normal people" just burns their photos to CD-R and put in on the shelf, expecting it to still work when they next want to use it. Yes, it's stupid, but they don't realise that.
I wrote an article on the subject a few years ago - really the best method is to take regular backups *and* keep the data on a running hard drive.
See, in a corporate world, Windows servers and Windows workstations are used for one simple reason. When something goes wrong, they know who to take to court.
How are you going to take anyone to court after you agreed to an EULA that absolves them of responsibility?
If you implement the salient bits in flashable firmware, you can issue firmware updates when you need to plug a hole in the algorithm.
If you make the device flashable then you open it up to the same problem that has plagued AACS - namely that it becomes possible to reflash the device with a modified firmware.
Anyone who wants to know how this is likely to pan out should probably be watching the ongoing war between satellite TV providers and the consumers who don't want to pay for satellite. They tend to have high-tech solutions and resourceful hackers working to thwart them, much like the situation should/will be for DRM.
It's a similar situation, but by no means the same. Satellite systems are mostly cracked by people who want free content and there are many different encryption schemes used since the platform operators get to choose which protection system to use. On the other hand, DRM schemes are fewer (e.g. HD content is all protected by AACS so the efforts of the code breakers are all directed at AACS) and many (most?) of the code breakers are people who want to make legitimate use of the content they rightfully own. I think both these factors will combine to make the attack against DRM systems far more intense than the attack against satellite encryption systems.
Also, satellite platforms are generally locked down to a small number of pieces of hardware (whether that be a decoder or a CAM), making the chances of a poor implementation much smaller than other DRM'd content which, by it's nature, must be widely supported.
I should also point out that whilest I respect the satellite platform operators' right to protect their content from copyright infringement, I feel that in some cases they have gone too far and are now preventing legitimate use of the content for the operator's gain. For example, BSkyB have cornered the market on DVB-S enabled PVRs in the UK because they are the only subscription satellite platform serving the region and they refuse to sell CAMs to enable 3rd party hardware to decode the stream. No other PVR manufacturer stands a chance to break into the DVB-S market because they cannot produce a device that can receive the more popular channels. Thus, BSkyB are doing a roaring trade on their own PVRs with no competition - an abuse of their market position and a clear conflict of interest.
Personally I use MythTV as my PVR - I have a DVB-S card with which to receive the free-to-air channels, but all the free-to-view and subscription channels still have to be received through my official Sky decoder. There are (illegal) CAMs available that can decode the NDS VideoGuard data stream, but they are very expensive and there are no guarantees that they will continue working in the future. What is needed is regulation to prevent legitimately paid for content being tied to specific devices, but the government is so far under the thumb of large corporations that I can't see that happening any time soon.
the only real way to go for DRM is by having consumer keys on smartcards, trusted hardware paths throughout the computer system, and access to the plaintext only at the very last link: user presentation.
What you effectively need is a hardware "DRM module" into which you shove the encrypted data stream and the resulting clear stream is pushed straight along the trusted data-path and never gets read back in by software. The problem here is that you've basically implemented a hardware solution that's difficult to replace when your DRM gets cracked. You can't expect people to upgrade their computers every year when the latest DRM gets broken (and lets face it, the firmware in HD-DVD players is getting reverse engineered and cracked at a spectacular rate at the moment).
DRM is fundamentally doomed - you're putting both the encrypted content and decryption system in the hands of a very large group of technically capable people who have plenty of motivation to break the system. Doing it in hardware makes things harder for the code breakers, but it also makes it harder to replace the system once it's broken.
The mobile phone market's wide open to someone who can introduce a coherent and sensible interface that doesn't behave like the bastard child of a mediocre desktop OS
I agree entirely. I bought my SE P900 shortly after they were released and have been pretty disappointed from day 1. Symbian UIQ seems to be less stable than Windows 3.1 was - even the built in software crashes the whole phone quite frequently, and the built in software is just plain rubbish to begin with. 3rd party software is expensive (no, I have no intention of paying 30 quid for an email reader that actually _works_ - that sort of thing is supposed to be part of the base installation).
So I've decided that I'm not going to buy a new phone until I can get some decent hardware running OpenMoko or similar. I want a device that I can treat like any of my other computer - that includes writing software for it without needing propriatory tools, being able to write bash scripts to do simple jobs, etc., being able to use the device without it crashing on a regular basis, and having a large collection of Free software available. And that last point is important in both meanings of the word "free" - under Symbian and PalmOS every little tool seems to be shareware and adding up the cost of all the tools I'd want would be a fortune, whereas under Linux I get all the tools for free.
Meaning the only reason to do this would be to plant code you hold a patent on into free software, allow it to be distributed, then sue everyone who is using the software that you yourself gave them.
Well, maybe you accidentally infringed your own patent.
But the situation I can immediately think of is a company creates code which is covered by their patent and then releases it in good faith without any intention of ever enforcing their patent. A few years down the line, that company is sold off to evil people who realise they hold a patent that hundreds of thousands of people are infringing and think they can make a bit of cash out of it. (Sounding a bit similar to SCO yet?:)
There has to be a typo hiding in there, but the whole thing is an empty set. It's hard to believe they can make 80 cores with 100E6 transistors when it take 261E6 transistors to make two.
Yeah, when I read it I thought it must be a typo (especially given that the die area is bigger). Although, the article says it's VLIW (it isn't specific, but I guess it'll be IA64 based), which means you can throw away a shed-load of transistors from the scheduler that would have to be present on an OOE superscalar device.
It's good that RMS is now telling everyone what are morally acceptable uses of software. I thought the idea of freedom was the freedom to do whatever you wanted with the software, so long as you shared the work.
The author of a piece of software is not being forced into publishing under this licence - the FSF is simply producing a number of different licences and leaving it up to the author to choose one. Sounds like freedom to me.
As the author of a piece of software, you might choose not to use GPL3 - that's your right.
However, as the author of a piece of software, maybe you want to be secure in the knowledge that any 3rd party improvements you receive and integrate into your project are not going to result in the 3rd party suing the users of your software for patent infringement - in this case it would be appropriate for you to licence it using the GPL3. But it's your choice, if you are happy for people to freely submit improvements to your project without protecting you and your project's users then that's fine, just don't publish under GPL3.
what if the software is designed specifically to perform a piece of CAM in a way that's patented? Would that patent become invalid because of this licence?
The licence doesn't render your patents invalid. It simply prevents you from suing anyone for patent infringement if the code that infringes your patent was published by you.
This makes a lot of sense - why would you publish the source code for something if you didn't want people to be able to use it? If you are publishing the source code which does something you've patented and you don't protect people then there really is no point publishing the code in the first place since it is illegal for someone to use it.
Why risk losing millions in licence fees when you could spend a few hundred thousand and fit your systems with software you know doesn't rob you these rights?
Why publish source code which could give your competetors an advantage? Clearly publishing code works because you gain an advantage too. Whilest you are potentially helping your competetors, any improvements they make to the code will come back to benefit you.
This is a very difficult balancing act - on the one hand it's very good for the customers since it forces all the vendors to continually improve their offerings. It's also very good for the vendors since they effectively get thousands of man-hours of work without directly paying for those developers. But on the other hand, it means that the vendor has to put a lot of resources into the project in order to continually improve it - they are never going to get into a situation where they have cornered the market and can lock everyone else out and relax like Microsoft has done over the past few years.
So to answer your question - you can risk losing millions in licence fees because in return for that risk you might also get licenses from other people worth millions.
Can any astronomers out there clue us in? Is this just observational bias or are elliptical orbits more common than our more circular ones? I mean, I know it's likely a long way in the future, but that could be a small problem for our future colonization of the galaxy. It would certainly mean our new homes would likely be less than earth-like.
I can't understand why we would make the assumption that these planets might have orbits similar to ours - I mean, they are observing planets with very short orbits so why should we expect the orbits in a solarsystem that's consisting of planets whipping around their star at a blazingly fast 1 orbit every 2.6 days to be similar to ours?
When we start finding planets with orbits in the hundreds of days, thats when things will get *really* interesting.
Re:Why not make an "Uncrippled for non-US" edition
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Dell Linux Details
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Perhaps. There is nothing to stop them shipping a closed and properly licensed DVD player with their machines.
Even though I wouldn't run one myself, this does seem like a reasonable option. I'd bet that the people who use the Dell-installed distribution are probably the types who just want stuff to work, even if they have to sell their soul to get it. These are the types who give Linux bad publicity by ranting about it being "crap" since it won't play their DVDs, MP3s, etc.
The people who really care about freedom are the people who would probably reinstall the distro from scratch anyway.
Once you've got people involved in running Free software, even though they also use non-Free bits, there is much more scope for them realising the advantages of the Free ethos instead of just dismissing it because it doesn't support their propriatory stuff. And once these people realise why Free implementations, formats, etc are better then there will be more people pressuring for this stuff to be Free.
Given that most folks are going to be coming from Windows, it probably makes sense to have their initial experience use the windows-like metaphors that they understand as much as possible.
Nope, I suspect that most people who install Linux are existing Linux users who aren't going to want to have to de-configure all the crappy Windows behaviour before they use a new install.
Features that are likely to confuse people should be (at least until the user decides otherwise) hidden away in somewhere that is clearly marked 'advanced'
The Gnome project explicitly believes that dual-mode (i.e. basic/advanced) systems are a very bad idea. I don't agree with them, but they are correct in the fact that most users think they are advanced, even (especially?) the really clueless ones.
Considering that Microsoft totally rips off each new version of Apple's OS
They both rip off a number of previous projects such as LookingGlass - nothing new here, move along.
Actually, I got to play with Aero yesterday for the first time while shopping for a new notebook. Maybe my expectations have been set far too high by using Beryl for ages, but I was very disappointed. When I first saw Compiz I thought "oooooooh", but when I got to fiddle with Aero my first thought was "It's just XP but with transparent bits"... actually my first thought was "So how do I rotate the desktop cu.... oh...":)
Have you noticed how easy an Ubuntu install has gotten? If someone is really new to computers Ubuntu is MUCH easier to install and set up than Windows.
I think desktop Linux distros in general have become very easy to install, not just Ubuntu.
Although I would be very interested to see a not-especially-technical-person doing a comparison between the ease of use of Ubuntu and Fedora (both installation and actually using it once it's installed). I know I'm going to catch flames for this but I personally find Ubuntu quite a bit less userfriendly than Fedora, but I'm biassed because I grew up on Red Hat. As far as I can see though, the only thing that makes Ubuntu more user friendly is it's support for non-Free stuff almost out of the box. I'm genuinely interested in what people find easier about Ubuntu.
Keep in mind that she has done the Linux Community a great service by documenting her trials and tribulations.
Indeed - I couldn't agree more.
However, I think that care must be taken when accepting such test reports from Windows users - they find many features in Linux distros to be difficult and confusing because they are not identical to the Windows features. Doing things in a different way to Windows isn't wrong, it's just different. In some cases the Linux way may be better. I would hate to see Linux desktops turn into a Windows clone just to keep the Windows users happy (IMHO we are seeing this to some extent already with desktop environments like Gnome, which has ripped off horrible Windows features such as the task bar and has taken to a policy of not letting the user configure anything incase it confuses them - this is something the article touched on WRT the fonts).
So by all means, we should look at the feedback from people who are migrating from Windows, but we shouldn't blindly implement everything they ask for without considering whether doing so would actually improve the environment or just make it more Windows-like. (And for what it's worth, I understand how people migrating from Windows feel - I have rarely used Windows in the past decade and find Windows _very_ difficult to use on the odd occasion that I have to, purely because I am not used to it).
I have no reason either to beleive or not to believe in them, but since the existance of invisible pink unicorns doesn't affect me in the slightest then it falls into the "things I don't care about" category. If you want to believe or disbelieve in them then that's up to you - just don't force your beliefs on anyone else.
All religions I've come across have (in my estimation) such a low probability of being true that the only logical response is to live my life on the assumption they are false. Therefore I am an Atheist.
But you are basing your estimation on a complete absence of evidence. If you ask someone very religious to estimate the probability of their religion being true they would probably tell you it's very high - again, this is an estimation based on exactly the same complete absence of evidence. I really see no difference - you have faith that there is no God, a Christian has faith that there is a God - there's no evidence one way or the other so how can you possibly state that one of a religion and the other one is not?
If you cannot prove god, then it's most reasonable to say there is no god.
And if at a later date some proof is found then you would have been proved wrong. In a similar way that not that long ago there was no proof that the earth was round, that the solarsystem wasn't geocentric, that quantum effects were real, etc - if you forever believe that a lack of evidence proves the nonexistance of something then you will constantly be proved wrong as new evidence is uncovered. I prefer to believe that without evidence you cannot know one way or the other - you can only say (with very vague certainty) that one way is a bit more likely to be correct.
Can you prove the Borg aren't out there getting ready to attack us?
No, I can't prove that at all. However, many reputable scientists believe that there may well be life elsewhere in the universe even though there is no evidence to support this belief.
The problem is religion tends to bring in the weak-minded whom need it, and will then assume YOU need it as well... I am against religion like I am against adults talking to imaginary friends; they are about the same thing, anyway.
I'm not sure how you being against religion is any different to someone religious being against Atheism - both of you are simply showing a lack of respect for the other person's beliefs and _that_ is what leads to wars.
Seems you need to learn it. From Wikipedia: "This is often paraphrased as "All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one." In other words, when multiple competing theories are equal in other respects, the principle recommends selecting the theory that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest hypothetical entities."
Notice that it says "simplest solution _tends_ to be the best one - it doesn't say it *is* the best one. Secondly, why would you consider all the complexities of evolution, quantum mechanics, etc to be "simpler" than the idea that there is just some omnipotent being making things happen?
Atheists range from the "Everyone who believes something different than me is an idiot" crowd to the "People who believe something different are probably wrong, but most of them are nice people I respect" crowd. Unsurprisingly, the same came be said of Christians...
I'd go so far as to say Atheism should be considered a religion in it's own right. Atheists believe there is no God despite the fact that there is no direct evidence to support this belief, just as Christians (and various other religions) believe there is a God even though there is no direct evidence to support the belief.
As a scientist, with no evidence either way I can accept that there may or may not be a God - I don't hold a strong belief one way or the other. Remember the basic scientific principles - a lack of evidence cannot disprove a theory.
In any case, the problems caused by religion are usually not caused by the religion itself, but by the closed minds of the religion's followers. As far as I'm concerned, people can believe whatever they want to believe so long as they don't feel the need to impose their beliefs on other people.
You publically claim that you've never driven an automatic and don't feel like trying it, and then you wonder why "Joe from Anytown, USA", who has never driven a manual transmission, would not want to try one?
You misunderstand - I have never _owned_ an automatic.
most of the cars in the US have automatic transmissions. Many US drivers have never driven a manual-transmission vehicle.
I'm curious why the US seems to be so attached to automatic transmission (which is less efficient than manual). For me I've always driven cars with a manual box - the idea of automatic transmission just doesn't appeal at all. I like the feeling of being fully in control of my car, and automatics feel very much like I'm nolonger in control of an important aspect of my vehicle (as well as having no control over the gear you're in you also have no clutch!).
Also, I certainly find my 6-speed manual a lot more fun to drive than I would an automatic, or even an SMT.
You go out and "buy" a DVD (yeah, yeah, you don't buy the content... and so on).
Nope, when I buy a DVD I buy the content that is on it (but I don't buy the copyright - I only buy a single copy). How can it possibly be interpretted any other way since I never agreed to any kind of licensing contract?
Does anyone know of a how-to for MythTV setup for dial-up users?
Easiest way is probably just to pull your TV listings over the air from the DVB EIT - that way you don't need a network connection at all (you can configure MythTV to do this when configuring your DVB card(s)).
you can be jailed for going over the speeding limit by 20 mph
This is bogus - you're only going to get jailed for doing 20mph over the limit if you kill/mame someone in the process.
there are more cameras than people
Where'd you pull that statistic from? Sure there are a lot of cameras, but nowhere near that many.
its illegal to own GPS recievers that tell you where the speeding cameras are
Completely bogus - GPS receivers and speeding camera maps (and the combination of the 2) are completely legal.
new speeding cameras that identify individual cars and time you over long distances to see if you broke the average speeding limit
Not over long distances - over short distances such as a mile or so. You're talking about the SPECS cameras, which many consider to be much safer than GATSOs since they don't cause hard braking. (Note: I'm opposed to speed cameras, but I don't see how you can claim that SPECS is worse than GATSO).
I'd rather live in the US than in England.
It seems that you're basing this almost entirely on bad information.
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use of well documented (open) formats makes life easier.
It certainly makes life easier in the short to medium term (maybe up to 150 years), but I'm not convinced it's going to help a lot 1000 years after the format became obsolete - you still have to find the specification for the format and write software to decode it.
So do I, but the data that was on them now occupies a tiny portion of the hard drives in my current computers. It's been copied onto half a dozen different backup formats, and I expect it'll migrate across a multitude more in the course of my life.
It's obvious to us techies, but sadly "normal people" just burns their photos to CD-R and put in on the shelf, expecting it to still work when they next want to use it. Yes, it's stupid, but they don't realise that.
I wrote an article on the subject a few years ago - really the best method is to take regular backups *and* keep the data on a running hard drive.
See, in a corporate world, Windows servers and Windows workstations are used for one simple reason. When something goes wrong, they know who to take to court.
How are you going to take anyone to court after you agreed to an EULA that absolves them of responsibility?
If you implement the salient bits in flashable firmware, you can issue firmware updates when you need to plug a hole in the algorithm.
If you make the device flashable then you open it up to the same problem that has plagued AACS - namely that it becomes possible to reflash the device with a modified firmware.
Anyone who wants to know how this is likely to pan out should probably be watching the ongoing war between satellite TV providers and the consumers who don't want to pay for satellite. They tend to have high-tech solutions and resourceful hackers working to thwart them, much like the situation should/will be for DRM.
It's a similar situation, but by no means the same. Satellite systems are mostly cracked by people who want free content and there are many different encryption schemes used since the platform operators get to choose which protection system to use. On the other hand, DRM schemes are fewer (e.g. HD content is all protected by AACS so the efforts of the code breakers are all directed at AACS) and many (most?) of the code breakers are people who want to make legitimate use of the content they rightfully own. I think both these factors will combine to make the attack against DRM systems far more intense than the attack against satellite encryption systems.
Also, satellite platforms are generally locked down to a small number of pieces of hardware (whether that be a decoder or a CAM), making the chances of a poor implementation much smaller than other DRM'd content which, by it's nature, must be widely supported.
I should also point out that whilest I respect the satellite platform operators' right to protect their content from copyright infringement, I feel that in some cases they have gone too far and are now preventing legitimate use of the content for the operator's gain. For example, BSkyB have cornered the market on DVB-S enabled PVRs in the UK because they are the only subscription satellite platform serving the region and they refuse to sell CAMs to enable 3rd party hardware to decode the stream. No other PVR manufacturer stands a chance to break into the DVB-S market because they cannot produce a device that can receive the more popular channels. Thus, BSkyB are doing a roaring trade on their own PVRs with no competition - an abuse of their market position and a clear conflict of interest.
Personally I use MythTV as my PVR - I have a DVB-S card with which to receive the free-to-air channels, but all the free-to-view and subscription channels still have to be received through my official Sky decoder. There are (illegal) CAMs available that can decode the NDS VideoGuard data stream, but they are very expensive and there are no guarantees that they will continue working in the future. What is needed is regulation to prevent legitimately paid for content being tied to specific devices, but the government is so far under the thumb of large corporations that I can't see that happening any time soon.
the only real way to go for DRM is by having consumer keys on smartcards, trusted hardware paths throughout the computer system, and access to the plaintext only at the very last link: user presentation.
What you effectively need is a hardware "DRM module" into which you shove the encrypted data stream and the resulting clear stream is pushed straight along the trusted data-path and never gets read back in by software. The problem here is that you've basically implemented a hardware solution that's difficult to replace when your DRM gets cracked. You can't expect people to upgrade their computers every year when the latest DRM gets broken (and lets face it, the firmware in HD-DVD players is getting reverse engineered and cracked at a spectacular rate at the moment).
DRM is fundamentally doomed - you're putting both the encrypted content and decryption system in the hands of a very large group of technically capable people who have plenty of motivation to break the system. Doing it in hardware makes things harder for the code breakers, but it also makes it harder to replace the system once it's broken.
The mobile phone market's wide open to someone who can introduce a coherent and sensible interface that doesn't behave like the bastard child of a mediocre desktop OS
I agree entirely. I bought my SE P900 shortly after they were released and have been pretty disappointed from day 1. Symbian UIQ seems to be less stable than Windows 3.1 was - even the built in software crashes the whole phone quite frequently, and the built in software is just plain rubbish to begin with. 3rd party software is expensive (no, I have no intention of paying 30 quid for an email reader that actually _works_ - that sort of thing is supposed to be part of the base installation).
So I've decided that I'm not going to buy a new phone until I can get some decent hardware running OpenMoko or similar. I want a device that I can treat like any of my other computer - that includes writing software for it without needing propriatory tools, being able to write bash scripts to do simple jobs, etc., being able to use the device without it crashing on a regular basis, and having a large collection of Free software available. And that last point is important in both meanings of the word "free" - under Symbian and PalmOS every little tool seems to be shareware and adding up the cost of all the tools I'd want would be a fortune, whereas under Linux I get all the tools for free.
Meaning the only reason to do this would be to plant code you hold a patent on into free software, allow it to be distributed, then sue everyone who is using the software that you yourself gave them.
:)
Well, maybe you accidentally infringed your own patent.
But the situation I can immediately think of is a company creates code which is covered by their patent and then releases it in good faith without any intention of ever enforcing their patent. A few years down the line, that company is sold off to evil people who realise they hold a patent that hundreds of thousands of people are infringing and think they can make a bit of cash out of it. (Sounding a bit similar to SCO yet?
There has to be a typo hiding in there, but the whole thing is an empty set. It's hard to believe they can make 80 cores with 100E6 transistors when it take 261E6 transistors to make two.
Yeah, when I read it I thought it must be a typo (especially given that the die area is bigger). Although, the article says it's VLIW (it isn't specific, but I guess it'll be IA64 based), which means you can throw away a shed-load of transistors from the scheduler that would have to be present on an OOE superscalar device.
It's good that RMS is now telling everyone what are morally acceptable uses of software. I thought the idea of freedom was the freedom to do whatever you wanted with the software, so long as you shared the work.
The author of a piece of software is not being forced into publishing under this licence - the FSF is simply producing a number of different licences and leaving it up to the author to choose one. Sounds like freedom to me.
As the author of a piece of software, you might choose not to use GPL3 - that's your right.
However, as the author of a piece of software, maybe you want to be secure in the knowledge that any 3rd party improvements you receive and integrate into your project are not going to result in the 3rd party suing the users of your software for patent infringement - in this case it would be appropriate for you to licence it using the GPL3. But it's your choice, if you are happy for people to freely submit improvements to your project without protecting you and your project's users then that's fine, just don't publish under GPL3.
what if the software is designed specifically to perform a piece of CAM in a way that's patented? Would that patent become invalid because of this licence?
The licence doesn't render your patents invalid. It simply prevents you from suing anyone for patent infringement if the code that infringes your patent was published by you.
This makes a lot of sense - why would you publish the source code for something if you didn't want people to be able to use it? If you are publishing the source code which does something you've patented and you don't protect people then there really is no point publishing the code in the first place since it is illegal for someone to use it.
Why risk losing millions in licence fees when you could spend a few hundred thousand and fit your systems with software you know doesn't rob you these rights?
Why publish source code which could give your competetors an advantage? Clearly publishing code works because you gain an advantage too. Whilest you are potentially helping your competetors, any improvements they make to the code will come back to benefit you.
This is a very difficult balancing act - on the one hand it's very good for the customers since it forces all the vendors to continually improve their offerings. It's also very good for the vendors since they effectively get thousands of man-hours of work without directly paying for those developers. But on the other hand, it means that the vendor has to put a lot of resources into the project in order to continually improve it - they are never going to get into a situation where they have cornered the market and can lock everyone else out and relax like Microsoft has done over the past few years.
So to answer your question - you can risk losing millions in licence fees because in return for that risk you might also get licenses from other people worth millions.
Can any astronomers out there clue us in? Is this just observational bias or are elliptical orbits more common than our more circular ones? I mean, I know it's likely a long way in the future, but that could be a small problem for our future colonization of the galaxy. It would certainly mean our new homes would likely be less than earth-like.
I can't understand why we would make the assumption that these planets might have orbits similar to ours - I mean, they are observing planets with very short orbits so why should we expect the orbits in a solarsystem that's consisting of planets whipping around their star at a blazingly fast 1 orbit every 2.6 days to be similar to ours?
When we start finding planets with orbits in the hundreds of days, thats when things will get *really* interesting.
Perhaps. There is nothing to stop them shipping a closed and properly licensed DVD player with their machines.
Even though I wouldn't run one myself, this does seem like a reasonable option. I'd bet that the people who use the Dell-installed distribution are probably the types who just want stuff to work, even if they have to sell their soul to get it. These are the types who give Linux bad publicity by ranting about it being "crap" since it won't play their DVDs, MP3s, etc.
The people who really care about freedom are the people who would probably reinstall the distro from scratch anyway.
Once you've got people involved in running Free software, even though they also use non-Free bits, there is much more scope for them realising the advantages of the Free ethos instead of just dismissing it because it doesn't support their propriatory stuff. And once these people realise why Free implementations, formats, etc are better then there will be more people pressuring for this stuff to be Free.
Given that most folks are going to be coming from Windows, it probably makes sense to have their initial experience use the windows-like metaphors that they understand as much as possible.
Nope, I suspect that most people who install Linux are existing Linux users who aren't going to want to have to de-configure all the crappy Windows behaviour before they use a new install.
Features that are likely to confuse people should be (at least until the user decides otherwise) hidden away in somewhere that is clearly marked 'advanced'
The Gnome project explicitly believes that dual-mode (i.e. basic/advanced) systems are a very bad idea. I don't agree with them, but they are correct in the fact that most users think they are advanced, even (especially?) the really clueless ones.
Considering that Microsoft totally rips off each new version of Apple's OS
:)
They both rip off a number of previous projects such as LookingGlass - nothing new here, move along.
Actually, I got to play with Aero yesterday for the first time while shopping for a new notebook. Maybe my expectations have been set far too high by using Beryl for ages, but I was very disappointed. When I first saw Compiz I thought "oooooooh", but when I got to fiddle with Aero my first thought was "It's just XP but with transparent bits"... actually my first thought was "So how do I rotate the desktop cu.... oh..."
Have you noticed how easy an Ubuntu install has gotten? If someone is really new to computers Ubuntu is MUCH easier to install and set up than Windows.
I think desktop Linux distros in general have become very easy to install, not just Ubuntu.
Although I would be very interested to see a not-especially-technical-person doing a comparison between the ease of use of Ubuntu and Fedora (both installation and actually using it once it's installed). I know I'm going to catch flames for this but I personally find Ubuntu quite a bit less userfriendly than Fedora, but I'm biassed because I grew up on Red Hat. As far as I can see though, the only thing that makes Ubuntu more user friendly is it's support for non-Free stuff almost out of the box. I'm genuinely interested in what people find easier about Ubuntu.
Keep in mind that she has done the Linux Community a great service by documenting her trials and tribulations.
Indeed - I couldn't agree more.
However, I think that care must be taken when accepting such test reports from Windows users - they find many features in Linux distros to be difficult and confusing because they are not identical to the Windows features. Doing things in a different way to Windows isn't wrong, it's just different. In some cases the Linux way may be better. I would hate to see Linux desktops turn into a Windows clone just to keep the Windows users happy (IMHO we are seeing this to some extent already with desktop environments like Gnome, which has ripped off horrible Windows features such as the task bar and has taken to a policy of not letting the user configure anything incase it confuses them - this is something the article touched on WRT the fonts).
So by all means, we should look at the feedback from people who are migrating from Windows, but we shouldn't blindly implement everything they ask for without considering whether doing so would actually improve the environment or just make it more Windows-like. (And for what it's worth, I understand how people migrating from Windows feel - I have rarely used Windows in the past decade and find Windows _very_ difficult to use on the odd occasion that I have to, purely because I am not used to it).
Do you believe in Invisible Pink Unicorns?
I have no reason either to beleive or not to believe in them, but since the existance of invisible pink unicorns doesn't affect me in the slightest then it falls into the "things I don't care about" category. If you want to believe or disbelieve in them then that's up to you - just don't force your beliefs on anyone else.
All religions I've come across have (in my estimation) such a low probability of being true that the only logical response is to live my life on the assumption they are false. Therefore I am an Atheist.
But you are basing your estimation on a complete absence of evidence. If you ask someone very religious to estimate the probability of their religion being true they would probably tell you it's very high - again, this is an estimation based on exactly the same complete absence of evidence. I really see no difference - you have faith that there is no God, a Christian has faith that there is a God - there's no evidence one way or the other so how can you possibly state that one of a religion and the other one is not?
If you cannot prove god, then it's most reasonable to say there is no god.
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And if at a later date some proof is found then you would have been proved wrong. In a similar way that not that long ago there was no proof that the earth was round, that the solarsystem wasn't geocentric, that quantum effects were real, etc - if you forever believe that a lack of evidence proves the nonexistance of something then you will constantly be proved wrong as new evidence is uncovered. I prefer to believe that without evidence you cannot know one way or the other - you can only say (with very vague certainty) that one way is a bit more likely to be correct.
Can you prove the Borg aren't out there getting ready to attack us?
No, I can't prove that at all. However, many reputable scientists believe that there may well be life elsewhere in the universe even though there is no evidence to support this belief.
The problem is religion tends to bring in the weak-minded whom need it, and will then assume YOU need it as well
I am against religion like I am against adults talking to imaginary friends; they are about the same thing, anyway.
I'm not sure how you being against religion is any different to someone religious being against Atheism - both of you are simply showing a lack of respect for the other person's beliefs and _that_ is what leads to wars.
Learn it.
Seems you need to learn it. From Wikipedia: "This is often paraphrased as "All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one." In other words, when multiple competing theories are equal in other respects, the principle recommends selecting the theory that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest hypothetical entities."
Notice that it says "simplest solution _tends_ to be the best one - it doesn't say it *is* the best one. Secondly, why would you consider all the complexities of evolution, quantum mechanics, etc to be "simpler" than the idea that there is just some omnipotent being making things happen?
Atheists range from the "Everyone who believes something different than me is an idiot" crowd to the "People who believe something different are probably wrong, but most of them are nice people I respect" crowd. Unsurprisingly, the same came be said of Christians...
I'd go so far as to say Atheism should be considered a religion in it's own right. Atheists believe there is no God despite the fact that there is no direct evidence to support this belief, just as Christians (and various other religions) believe there is a God even though there is no direct evidence to support the belief.
As a scientist, with no evidence either way I can accept that there may or may not be a God - I don't hold a strong belief one way or the other. Remember the basic scientific principles - a lack of evidence cannot disprove a theory.
In any case, the problems caused by religion are usually not caused by the religion itself, but by the closed minds of the religion's followers. As far as I'm concerned, people can believe whatever they want to believe so long as they don't feel the need to impose their beliefs on other people.
You publically claim that you've never driven an automatic and don't feel like trying it, and then you wonder why "Joe from Anytown, USA", who has never driven a manual transmission, would not want to try one?
You misunderstand - I have never _owned_ an automatic.
most of the cars in the US have automatic transmissions. Many US drivers have never driven a manual-transmission vehicle.
I'm curious why the US seems to be so attached to automatic transmission (which is less efficient than manual). For me I've always driven cars with a manual box - the idea of automatic transmission just doesn't appeal at all. I like the feeling of being fully in control of my car, and automatics feel very much like I'm nolonger in control of an important aspect of my vehicle (as well as having no control over the gear you're in you also have no clutch!).
Also, I certainly find my 6-speed manual a lot more fun to drive than I would an automatic, or even an SMT.
You go out and "buy" a DVD (yeah, yeah, you don't buy the content... and so on).
Nope, when I buy a DVD I buy the content that is on it (but I don't buy the copyright - I only buy a single copy). How can it possibly be interpretted any other way since I never agreed to any kind of licensing contract?
Does anyone know of a how-to for MythTV setup for dial-up users?
Easiest way is probably just to pull your TV listings over the air from the DVB EIT - that way you don't need a network connection at all (you can configure MythTV to do this when configuring your DVB card(s)).
I'm assuming you're talking about England here...
you can be jailed for going over the speeding limit by 20 mph
This is bogus - you're only going to get jailed for doing 20mph over the limit if you kill/mame someone in the process.
there are more cameras than people
Where'd you pull that statistic from? Sure there are a lot of cameras, but nowhere near that many.
its illegal to own GPS recievers that tell you where the speeding cameras are
Completely bogus - GPS receivers and speeding camera maps (and the combination of the 2) are completely legal.
new speeding cameras that identify individual cars and time you over long distances to see if you broke the average speeding limit
Not over long distances - over short distances such as a mile or so. You're talking about the SPECS cameras, which many consider to be much safer than GATSOs since they don't cause hard braking. (Note: I'm opposed to speed cameras, but I don't see how you can claim that SPECS is worse than GATSO).
I'd rather live in the US than in England.
It seems that you're basing this almost entirely on bad information.