It means you can then go on to define each of those terms as needed until the judge stops asking questions. He's a judge. If he can understand the law even moderately well, he should be able to process new jargon and abstract concepts fairly easily.
Subject says it all. I understand the fear of viruses, of needing it to be legally sound, etc. So handle the first by using Linux, and figure out the second -- financial institutions have managed to go more and more paperless, why not legal ones?
If forgery in the backups is a concern, why not cryptographically sign everything and dump it onto WORM memory (DVDs)?
I'm not saying such a system would be invincible, but it would be no worse than paper, and probably significantly better.
Games: You've got me there. But then, there are at least a few large-ish games that came out with simultaneous or very closely-followed Linux releases -- UT2004, for example. You can bet that the next UT engine (at work in Gears of War) will have a native Linux port. In the mean time, you have tons of Quake/Doom/UT mods (ANY version of Quake/Doom/UT), and a few unique things (Darwinia, Uplink, Lugaru, Neverwinter Nights), and all the stuff that works in Cedega.
I admit, you lose a huge amount of choice. But you don't have to give up gaming by a longshot. And that's assuming you stick to 100% Linux for your games.
Personally, I have an XP partition, which I boot only for games, and it makes it a lot easier to keep it clean when I boot it once a month for a LAN party. There's also consoles.
or recognize my new hardware.
Which hardware would that be? All of mine seems to be recognized just fine, including one or two things that aren't detected out-of-the-box by Windows (or at least, XP).
Bonus: I get nvidia driver updates automatically. Have to manually check for them on Windows.
new office software
Try OpenOffice on Windows, then. In any case, it's not different enough from MS Office for it to be a real problem.
new photo editing software
Gimp is also on Windows, plus there are a few others.
new burning/ripping software
Given that burning and ripping are really simple operations (roughly equivalent to copying files around), you may as well be bitching about learning a new file explorer.
there's no iTunes
Amarok rocks.
and, oh yeah, when I call tech support for my software/hardware/ISP
Software? You just got through complaining about how you have to learn all this new software that -- gues what? -- comes free with Linux. If you've got support for your Linux distro, chances are it covers most of the above.
Hardware? Buy it from Dell, once they start pre-loading Ubuntu. Problem solved. Assuming there was a problem in the first place -- unless you have particularly exotic hardware, chances are it's already supported.
ISP? Ah, this might be a problem; I at least had a Mac that I could use to convince them that it wasn't my problem. But with modern Internet, if an ISP "doesn't support Linux", you probably want a different ISP. Not that they should support Linux, but that you shouldn't generally have a reason to call an ISP's tech support. Internet support is actually insanely simple, anyawy.
But I'm sure that's worth saving $200 in five years.
First, note it's every five years, not just the next five years. Also note: It could be two years, or ten years, you never know. But if, say, it costs $1000 of your time to switch to Linux, it will pay for itself in 25 years. And yes, Linux will be here it 25 years -- and you'll even be able to read your ODF documents. (Can you say the same for MS Office documents?)
But, let's see: You've covered replacing Windows Vista (at least $200, or $400 for Ultimate), Office 2007 (at least $150, or $540 for an Ultimate (upgrade, full version costs $680)), Photoshop (at least $200 to upgrade, or $650 new).
So, in sheer upgrades, that's already $550 -- you may as well just buy a new computer, at that price, but who knows if that will come with the software you want?
And if you were buying it new, best of everything, that's $1830, by my count. Just for basic fucking software -- we haven't even looked at hardware, or anti-virus/firewall/antispyware, or flowcharts, project management, GUI database design, groupware -- hell, the last three I mentioned don't even have Windows ports. But Linux comes with all that software, with tens of thousands more in the
This is going to sound horrible, so maybe someone has a link to a better version, but here goes:
Three women are talking about their sex lives.
First woman: "My husband's in construction, so he just pounds me like a jackhammer all night long." Second woman: "My husband's a doctor, so he's always slow, methodical, and compassionate." Third woman: "My husband works for Microsoft. He just sits on the edge of the bed and tells me how good it's going to be when I get it."
I'm trying to parse that, and I honestly can't figure out whether he wants the iPhone to be more general purpose (like Windows Mobile is, with its ability to download 3rd-party apps) or more special-purpose (like my cell phone is -- even with all the bells and whistles, I only really have to know how to dial a number and hit "send", just like any other cell phone).
I'm assuming he's slamming the iPhone, because you said so. Maybe it makes more sense in context, but... Seriously, what the fsck? It seems like there's some law of nature that as you get higher on the corporate ladder, you must learn to make statements and speeches that:
Are long
Sound intelligent/important if you don't bother to try to understand it
I'm a diehard Linux fanboy, most of the time, but I have to admit, it doesn't look good.
Put simply, since the death of Palm, Windows Mobile is, quite literally, the only mobile platform out there that even compares to the PC.
Sure, there are other attempts. The iPhone, OpenMoKo, or whatever the fuck is on my stock cell phone (that shows the Java logo everytime it takes 30 seconds to boot up) are all well and good, but OpenMoko looks like the only one that could turn into a platform.
As in, right now, someone can develop a Windows Mobile app, and it's guaranteed to work pretty much the same on every Windows Mobile device (assuming the same arch, but they're all ARM now), and it's even possible to have free ones (I believe you can even get VLC for WM). OpenMoko is the closest we've got, but they only have one device. The iPhone looks to be closed to third-party developers. My current phone seems to allow third-party apps, but they nickel and dime you to death (charging $5-10 for a solitaire game, plus network charges to download it).
So, really, Microsoft has even more of a monopoly in the mobile market, and what's more, their mobile stuff actually works. And it's also the one area where they really do have a monopoly -- on the desktop, Linux and OS X are alternate platforms, whereas with mobile devices, everything but Windows seems to either be too hobbyist/clunky/expensive (OpenMoKo) or too appliance-like (my phone).
Seems to me, they'd be crazy not to press that advantage, while they have it. Last I bothered to look, mobile stuff was moving even faster than PCs.
Throwing out a guess: I'm guessing that croquet is slower than torque, given that croquet is written in Squeak, and I can't get Squeak to run on my 64-bit machine, haven't even considered trying dual-core. Guessing (again) that Torque is written in something like C++ or C#, and thus, will be able to do both of these things -- and it's probably easier to port a game engine than an entire language.
Also, Second Life is not what you should be using to measure how much horsepower this takes. Pretty much anything that can do compositing (Vista, Beryl, or OSX), and probably a few things that can't, are capable of playing World of Warcraft. Worst case, you'll have to turn some settings down.
Consider, also, that most offices tend to have standardized hardware that they upgrade every now and then anyway, and I'd say it should be easily possible to have some sort of "virtual reality" going on. I'd argue further that the reason most people seem to think this takes hardware is because all attempts I have EVER seen at "virtual reality" that weren't directly tied with a commercial game (not a "game" like Second Life, but a GAME like Counter-Strike or WoW) simply had sucky 3D engines. Embarrassingly sucky ones.
Let me put it this way: Take Half-life. The original. As in, released in '95, and can run at full quality at several hundred FPS on just about any computer since 2000. Now consider a mod for this game: Natural Selection. Now, NS does have somewhat higher graphical requirements -- it might lag slightly on a computer made it 2000, maybe. Run it on anything made in the last 3-5 years, and you'll be able to easily play games with teams of 25-30 people. And it takes at least two teams to make a game. And you're not just standing around a boardroom talking, you're using voice chat, a HUD, you're shooting, building stuff, gathering resources...
Any 3D "virutal reality" app that is forcing a hardware upgrade is either sloppily written or overly detailed, probably both.
But hell, we're in an age where ACT requires a gig of RAM to run comfortably. (Tell me again why Outlook/Kontact/Evolution isn't enough?)
Practice of any kind is good. This is practice in a somewhat structured format. Added bonus: You will probably learn more by listening to others' speches and evaluating them (good ones and bad ones) than you will practicing on your own.
Disclaimer: I'm not still a member, and not likely to be again for awhile.
One can always hope that at least a few developers are going to flip MS the bird and go to OpenGL instead, where they can gain all the benefits of some next-gen graphics library (OpenGL 2.0?), but instead of forcing users to upgrade their whole OS, they'll only need to force us to update our video drivers.
How many of those licenses are due to people buying a new Dell and deciding to go with Vista, rather than purchasing XP retail?
I mean, yes, they are forcing it on us as best they can, and there are still enough people who don't like it that Dell is giving us XP again. I really don't see a better time for Dell to ship Ubuntu, either. My recommendation to many people is: "Vista is likely to piss you off at least as much as Ubuntu is while you're learning it, and while people are rushing to release Vista-compatible versions of everything. If you're so determined to put yourself through the pain of a new OS, you may as well install Ubuntu (or Kubuntu), so that at least the next time around, you won't be paying for an upgrade."
One of my biggest complaints about Windows and OS X is the lack of decent universal package management. Basically, Apple's Software Update is great, for Apple software only. Microsoft Update is great, for MS software only, assuming your version of Office is recent enough. If you want anything else to auto-update, you have to provide your own auto-update mechanism (like Java/Firefox/etc does), and the user may or may not pay attention, even if they follow Microsoft Updates religiously.
And it's a hassle either way, because many of them will want you to reboot for no good reason, and may or may not ask nicely before doing so.
That's the ones that auto-update at all. There are quite a few that don't -- for instance, the nvidia drivers. Here, you have to go manually check each app (or driver) for an update.
Compare that to Ubuntu/Kubuntu: One system-tray icon. Click it and you'll download/install updates for every single app installed on your system. Afterwards, it will automatically restart the services that it figures it can restart without asking you, and then tell you what else you should do -- if there was a kernel update, it will suggest a reboot, for example. If it was something like Firefox, and it sees you have Firefox open, it'll suggest you restart Firefox whenever you're ready. If it was a shared library (like openssl, say), it will often suggest some services that use that library (like openssh, openvpn, etc).
If you can wait long enough, it will even cover things like nvidia drivers.
So, the big question here: Is Microsoft likely to close this "security hole"? Or is it a potential opportunity for legitimate software to "hijack" Microsoft Update, and use it for non-microsoft products?
The only Linux number I have seen recently were for Ubuntu, and that was based on the number of people downloading updates through the automated system.
I thought there was also this thing called "popularity contest"? I'm not sure how that works, but I hope it's more than just updates through the automated system. I hope this because if so, every apt-proxy I setup only counts as one Linux installation for however many debian-based (or ubuntu-based) systems it fetches updates for.
Offtopic question: My apt-proxy seems to have a rather annoying bug where it hangs when more than one client attempts to do anything with it at once -- which kind of defeats the purpose of apt-proxy, and makes me want to go to a more generic proxy like Polipo or Squid. Anyone know an easy fix for this?
No. The dual booters I have met use Linux as their primary OS and use Windows for games.
I do, except where I can use Linux for games. I like making sure all the shiny Half-Life 2 effects work, so I use Windows for Steam games, but I like not having some Windows keylogger intercept my MMO passwords, so I use Linux for any MMO I play.
it never was, never was meant to be and never will be a mass market operating system used by the naive users
I know several naive users who prefer it to Windows.
Interestingly enough, I find that if you can get users to stick with it long enough to make a fair assessment -- figure however long it would take them to really get used to OS X after using Windows, or vice versa -- they often come away with at least a few features they really like about Linux. This happens no matter who they are.
That may or may not make Linux better in their eyes, and many go back to Windows, but to suggest that it has nothing to offer a "naive user" is just as stupid as to suggest that Wine works for everything.
I've almost deliberately exposed my email address all over the place, without the ridiculous antispam obfuscations (no "ninja AT slaphack DOT com" here), because I prefer not to use CAPTCHAS where I can help it, and that's just a poor-man's CAPTCHA.
The reason? Simple:
Statistical spamfiltering of any kind -- bogofilter, in this case -- is creepily accurate.
Recently, I lost my bogofilter database (due to my own stupidity). It took one day for it to get back to 95% accuracy, and another day to get up to 99%, with one false positive -- the first I had seen in about six months.
And on a related note, I know how to take screenshots, but what do I need to take a running video of my desktop? Is there a way to, say, record X traffic?
I think the instructional DVD should be really short and simple, and should basically involve what's required to get the install CD (or DVD) to boot. The rest should be contained on that disc, where it could be more interactive.
But if anyone wants to do this, pull together funding somehow, I'd like to help. Maybe we could even get it on the Dell preinstalls...
Windows and OS X have been copying features from Linux for years. In fact, all of them copy from everyone else.
Notice how the default Ubuntu desktop has a very Windows-like taskbar at the bottom, for minimized stuff, and a Windows-like system tray in the upper right, and an OS9-like menu bar at the top left... Notice how we also have virtual desktops, which are a hackish addon everywhere else but Leopard, which isn't out yet...
Notice how we also have things like package management, which does not exist ANYWHERE except in the Unix world, except (you guessed it) as hackish addons, or very proprietary things. That is, Apple has Software Update, which updates Apple software only. Windows has Microsoft Update, which is the same thing, but for Microsoft software. There's Fink for OS X, which is out of date, ugly, and hackish, and I forget what there is for Windows, other than cygwin, which hardly counts. And before any of these, we had apt on Linux.
We also had print to PDF in OpenOffice before anyone else.
We have a file/web browser (Konqueror) which is a bit like Windows/Internet Explorer (only done right), and we have external drives automagically appearing on the desktop (almost exactly like OS X, only they're mounted under/media instead of/Volumes).
Need I go on?
The Linux distros that are meant for end-users are still way more flexible than Windows or OS X. For a quick example, install a different window manager or desktop environment -- even GNOME to KDE should show a difference, but try Fluxbox, WindowMaker, RatPoison, Enlightenment, or straight Beryl for something completely different. Or hit ctrl+alt+f1.
Sure, out of the box, they resemble Windows a bit more closely, but even the stupidly-conservative GNOME has things that Windows doesn't. KDE, while it superficially looks more like Windows, has even more -- out of the box, on Kubuntu, try alt+space and start typing something (like "konqueror") to see what I mean. Or pop a CD in -- on Windows, you can always eject the CD by punching the botton on the drive, but if it's in use, you get something resembling a BSOD. (It's been awhile, so this may be better by now...) On my Kubuntu, the physical "eject" button is intercepted by the OS, and if the CD is busy, it won't eject, but it will pop up a message telling you it couldn't, and exactly what programs are still using the CD. (And if you know what you're doing, you can always force-unmount it and then eject, or kill the processes involved.) This is actually somewhat borrowed from Macs, which have no physical eject button, only a button on the keyboard which is handled entirely in software.
Only works on Firefox, but Firefox is the default for Ubuntu (though not Kubuntu). Even if you don't have Flash working, you can download any YouTube video and watch it in VLC.
Others tell me it doesn't always work, but it's easy -- go online and look for help with bcm43xx-fwcutter. That's the utility you need, it will slice the firmware out of Windows drivers for use with the Linux kernel driver.
Actually may be easier, I believe the Ubuntu bcm43xx-fwcutter package will automagically download the Windows drivers and slice out what you need. It probably works better than ndiswrapper, too -- especially given ndiswrapper only works on x86 machines anyway, and Powerbooks have broadcom cards in them.
I think most of the people COMING to Linux in the Desktop world could care less about these "ethical" issues.....However, since some of these closed-source drivers aren't working for some, it's nice that AMD wants to open theirs so that eventually they can be modified until they work.
And that's the point, really. Or more importantly: Open drivers for a given card will work forever, on any platform, no matter what the user wants to do to their system. Closed drivers for a given card will work as long as it's profitable for the company to make them work, on the platforms that are profitable, in the use cases common enough to be profitable. Or, maybe in the case of Linux, "less unprofitable".
So, for example: Open ATI drivers mean I'll get 3D on my Powerbook (which I believe has an ATI card), whereas nvidia Linux drivers are x86 or x86_64 only. Open ATI drivers mean we'll get compositing that works (like the current Intel drivers) -- currently, the only way this works on ATI is with XGL, and I still get random lockups (10 seconds or so at a time) with the binary nVidia drivers. Open ATI drivers mean I don't have to worry about upgrading my kernel as often as I want, especially if the drivers actually become part of the kernel -- with nVidia, it will probably work, but you never know.
And the list goes on and on and on.
Most people could care less about the "ethical" side, if by that you mean RMS fanaticism where RMS himself refuses to own a car (since most contain proprietary software). I still tell most people to buy nVidia, because it Just Works, even if the drivers are currently less open than ATI. But given a year or two for these drivers to actually come out, stablize, and get the features we've been begging for, I imagine I'll be leading people back to ATI. (One guy will miss his nVidia SLI -- boo-frickin'-hoo.)
Let your children have emotional distress. Let your children smash their heads on the bad facts of life. They are children -they will quickly learn and know how to react and they will become stronger and stronger (if you have a family shaping those conflicts correctly, of course).
And herein lies the problem: Many of them don't, anymore.
In the world we actually live in, too many parents simply don't care about their children, and there's some insanely high statistic for a divorce rate. We have parents who drop their kids at day care to go to work, then hire a babysitter to have an evening out. Then, once they get into school, these same kids are basically dumped at school all day, and then babysat by TV and videogames at night.
And then you have the teachers who really don't care, and could essentially be replaced by Steve Ballmer reading from the book and threatening to throw chairs if you don't do your homework.
Some kids will be stronger, yes, but not because they want to learn something, or contribute something -- simply because they want to win, to look good, or to avoid punishment.
And some will get depressed and demotivated and end up not doing anything. And some will get violent.
Now, it's true that if we go to the other extreme, it's not really any better. You don't want them to be arrogant brats with a sense of entitlement because they've been handed everything on a silver platter. But at the same time, everyone involved in raising a child -- which does include teachers, these days -- needs to at least be reasonably alert and intelligent about it. Not coddling, but not abusive, either.
This kind of "drill" was truly moronic -- would you do that to your own child? If not, why would you do it to someone else's?
So being forced to run a 32-bit browser in an otherwise 64-bit clean environment just to support a 32-bit piece of closed crapware is not ugly or hackish?
I didn't say that. I just said you don't have to use a chroot.
Also: It's for more than just the browser. In fact, most of us consider multilib to be a good thing. It means we can run all kinds of 32-bit apps, even open source ones (wine).
Similarly, loading a 32-bit DSO into a 64-bit browser is not ugly or hackish?
I actually thought it was a clever hack, but that's irrelevant. I am not saying that Flash is better. I'm actually saying that Java is only really marginally better -- notice how, despite being open source, there still isn't a 64-bit Java plugin.,/p>
Those open technologies you mention are nice, but they've never caught on for whatever reason.
So rather than try to find out the reason, you're suddently going to assume that Java is our best bet?
Why???
I can't imagine you really think that being at the whim of Adobe's clowns-in-charge and marketroids is a good thing.
I don't, as a matter of fact. But I also think that among the open technologies we have, Java is just about the worst one we could use.
Didn't they try the same thing? Horribly bloated game engine, MMO platform, so opensource it and hope the community fixes it for you (God knows we wanted to).
It's never a bad thing to GPL code. It's just, we much prefer something that's in a semi-usable state to begin with -- why use Second Life for a project you could do with, say, Quake 3 Arena?
Of course, maybe they really do have a competitive offering here -- look what we did with Netscape, and remember how horrible Netscape 4 was!
Here's how it works: I currently buy nVidia, because they're powerful enough to handle things like Quake 4, and because they have Linux drivers that mostly work.
If I didn't care so much about performance -- like if I just wanted something that can do Beryl reasonably well -- I'd buy Intel, because they have open source drivers that rock.
I know ATI can give me competitive performance. If they can also give me an entirely open driver, missing no functionality, and as solid as, say, the Intel drivers, I'll switch to ATI. If Intel comes out with something that has performance that blows away ATI and nVidia, and keeps up the same level of quality drivers, I'll switch to Intel. Otherwise, I'll stick with nVidia.
I mean, couldn't I claim, for instance, that I only decrypted the DVD to make sure that it really is something they have the copyright to, and that I was allowed to decrypt it to find that much out?
But they've created this perfect catch 22. No matter what the reason (AFAIK), you cannot decrypt a copyrighted work, so I just have to claim it was copyrighted.
So I can simply say that I'm the copyright holder of the super-secret stuff encrypted here. Their only way around is if law enforcement is allowed to break the law (and read the file anyway), but how, exactly, do they get a search warrant for it?
There's an old dillema here, and it revolves around unreasonable searches and seizures. If evidence is gained from an unreasonable search, it's invalid. For instance, if a cop pulls a guy over and searches his trunk without a warrant (or permission), and finds a dead body in there, and arrests the guy and charges him with murder -- easy dismissal. They know about the body because of their own illegal search, so the body may not be used as evidence -- with nothing else, they can't convict him.
The dillema is, you know the guy is guilty, but if you let him be convicted, the cops now know that, even at considerable risk to their own career, they can always do an illegal search and know the guy will be put away. The law as it stands means no cop will EVER do a search without at least getting a warrant, or some sort of Patriot Act protection, because they know it won't work -- you have to do things by the book.
So it comes back to the same thing: you know I'm guilty, but you have no legal way of proving it. Your only real recourse would be downloading it yourself -- in which case, I could simply put in my upload notice that no one should ever download this, ever, meaning the only thing you could legally do is get people for pirating MY stuff (and I can simply choose not to press charges).
I don't know if the law really works this way, and I doubt it does in practice. What I'm hoping is that some judge sees the absurdity of the DMCA and strikes it down, even if I go down with it.
Unfortunately, I neither have the balls nor the resources to do this myself. (I don't actually have access to any DVDs not already on P2P networks anyway.)
Save up enough that you can comfortably go on a leave of absence of a year or two, or retire completely. If you can't do that, you don't really have the luxury of a new career.
As for where to go, I can only say what I'd do: writing. I do enjoy it, I'm told I'm good at it, and the world really does need at least one or two books, movies, and stories that get it right.
What if I distribute a very simple jigsaw puzzle, with two pieces. One has 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0, and the other says "Processing key for AACS". All one has to do is put the pieces together, but I don't include the instructions.
Does that mean that it's perfectly legal to distribute said puzzle, but not legal for people to put it together?
Couldn't you do similar things all over the place? For instance, in the first paragraph of this post, I had The Number, and I had What It Is, but I never said or implied that the two go together in any way. But I mean, what about the front/back of a T-Shirt?
It's an old-ish legal hack. For instance, the GPL was meant to prevent things like the nvidia drivers currently in my kernel. However, nvidia was free to develop these drivers in-house, so long as they didn't distribute modified binaries. And they were free to distribute their own patches, so long as the actual patching/compilation is done on my machine, so that the modified source/binary is never actually distributed (and thus never comes under the GPL).
So, does that work here? Simply distribute the number, and enough hints as to what it is, but require people to figure it out on their own, even if a blind person could see it?
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It means you can then go on to define each of those terms as needed until the judge stops asking questions. He's a judge. If he can understand the law even moderately well, he should be able to process new jargon and abstract concepts fairly easily.
Subject says it all. I understand the fear of viruses, of needing it to be legally sound, etc. So handle the first by using Linux, and figure out the second -- financial institutions have managed to go more and more paperless, why not legal ones?
If forgery in the backups is a concern, why not cryptographically sign everything and dump it onto WORM memory (DVDs)?
I'm not saying such a system would be invincible, but it would be no worse than paper, and probably significantly better.
Games: You've got me there. But then, there are at least a few large-ish games that came out with simultaneous or very closely-followed Linux releases -- UT2004, for example. You can bet that the next UT engine (at work in Gears of War) will have a native Linux port. In the mean time, you have tons of Quake/Doom/UT mods (ANY version of Quake/Doom/UT), and a few unique things (Darwinia, Uplink, Lugaru, Neverwinter Nights), and all the stuff that works in Cedega.
I admit, you lose a huge amount of choice. But you don't have to give up gaming by a longshot. And that's assuming you stick to 100% Linux for your games.
Personally, I have an XP partition, which I boot only for games, and it makes it a lot easier to keep it clean when I boot it once a month for a LAN party. There's also consoles.
Which hardware would that be? All of mine seems to be recognized just fine, including one or two things that aren't detected out-of-the-box by Windows (or at least, XP).
Bonus: I get nvidia driver updates automatically. Have to manually check for them on Windows.
Try OpenOffice on Windows, then. In any case, it's not different enough from MS Office for it to be a real problem.
Gimp is also on Windows, plus there are a few others.
Given that burning and ripping are really simple operations (roughly equivalent to copying files around), you may as well be bitching about learning a new file explorer.
Amarok rocks.
Software? You just got through complaining about how you have to learn all this new software that -- gues what? -- comes free with Linux. If you've got support for your Linux distro, chances are it covers most of the above.
Hardware? Buy it from Dell, once they start pre-loading Ubuntu. Problem solved. Assuming there was a problem in the first place -- unless you have particularly exotic hardware, chances are it's already supported.
ISP? Ah, this might be a problem; I at least had a Mac that I could use to convince them that it wasn't my problem. But with modern Internet, if an ISP "doesn't support Linux", you probably want a different ISP. Not that they should support Linux, but that you shouldn't generally have a reason to call an ISP's tech support. Internet support is actually insanely simple, anyawy.
First, note it's every five years, not just the next five years. Also note: It could be two years, or ten years, you never know. But if, say, it costs $1000 of your time to switch to Linux, it will pay for itself in 25 years. And yes, Linux will be here it 25 years -- and you'll even be able to read your ODF documents. (Can you say the same for MS Office documents?)
But, let's see: You've covered replacing Windows Vista (at least $200, or $400 for Ultimate), Office 2007 (at least $150, or $540 for an Ultimate (upgrade, full version costs $680)), Photoshop (at least $200 to upgrade, or $650 new).
So, in sheer upgrades, that's already $550 -- you may as well just buy a new computer, at that price, but who knows if that will come with the software you want?
And if you were buying it new, best of everything, that's $1830, by my count. Just for basic fucking software -- we haven't even looked at hardware, or anti-virus/firewall/antispyware, or flowcharts, project management, GUI database design, groupware -- hell, the last three I mentioned don't even have Windows ports. But Linux comes with all that software, with tens of thousands more in the
This is going to sound horrible, so maybe someone has a link to a better version, but here goes:
Three women are talking about their sex lives.
First woman: "My husband's in construction, so he just pounds me like a jackhammer all night long."
Second woman: "My husband's a doctor, so he's always slow, methodical, and compassionate."
Third woman: "My husband works for Microsoft. He just sits on the edge of the bed and tells me how good it's going to be when I get it."
I'm trying to parse that, and I honestly can't figure out whether he wants the iPhone to be more general purpose (like Windows Mobile is, with its ability to download 3rd-party apps) or more special-purpose (like my cell phone is -- even with all the bells and whistles, I only really have to know how to dial a number and hit "send", just like any other cell phone).
I'm assuming he's slamming the iPhone, because you said so. Maybe it makes more sense in context, but... Seriously, what the fsck? It seems like there's some law of nature that as you get higher on the corporate ladder, you must learn to make statements and speeches that:
I'm a diehard Linux fanboy, most of the time, but I have to admit, it doesn't look good.
Put simply, since the death of Palm, Windows Mobile is, quite literally, the only mobile platform out there that even compares to the PC.
Sure, there are other attempts. The iPhone, OpenMoKo, or whatever the fuck is on my stock cell phone (that shows the Java logo everytime it takes 30 seconds to boot up) are all well and good, but OpenMoko looks like the only one that could turn into a platform.
As in, right now, someone can develop a Windows Mobile app, and it's guaranteed to work pretty much the same on every Windows Mobile device (assuming the same arch, but they're all ARM now), and it's even possible to have free ones (I believe you can even get VLC for WM). OpenMoko is the closest we've got, but they only have one device. The iPhone looks to be closed to third-party developers. My current phone seems to allow third-party apps, but they nickel and dime you to death (charging $5-10 for a solitaire game, plus network charges to download it).
So, really, Microsoft has even more of a monopoly in the mobile market, and what's more, their mobile stuff actually works. And it's also the one area where they really do have a monopoly -- on the desktop, Linux and OS X are alternate platforms, whereas with mobile devices, everything but Windows seems to either be too hobbyist/clunky/expensive (OpenMoKo) or too appliance-like (my phone).
Seems to me, they'd be crazy not to press that advantage, while they have it. Last I bothered to look, mobile stuff was moving even faster than PCs.
Throwing out a guess: I'm guessing that croquet is slower than torque, given that croquet is written in Squeak, and I can't get Squeak to run on my 64-bit machine, haven't even considered trying dual-core. Guessing (again) that Torque is written in something like C++ or C#, and thus, will be able to do both of these things -- and it's probably easier to port a game engine than an entire language.
Also, Second Life is not what you should be using to measure how much horsepower this takes. Pretty much anything that can do compositing (Vista, Beryl, or OSX), and probably a few things that can't, are capable of playing World of Warcraft. Worst case, you'll have to turn some settings down.
Consider, also, that most offices tend to have standardized hardware that they upgrade every now and then anyway, and I'd say it should be easily possible to have some sort of "virtual reality" going on. I'd argue further that the reason most people seem to think this takes hardware is because all attempts I have EVER seen at "virtual reality" that weren't directly tied with a commercial game (not a "game" like Second Life, but a GAME like Counter-Strike or WoW) simply had sucky 3D engines. Embarrassingly sucky ones.
Let me put it this way: Take Half-life. The original. As in, released in '95, and can run at full quality at several hundred FPS on just about any computer since 2000. Now consider a mod for this game: Natural Selection. Now, NS does have somewhat higher graphical requirements -- it might lag slightly on a computer made it 2000, maybe. Run it on anything made in the last 3-5 years, and you'll be able to easily play games with teams of 25-30 people. And it takes at least two teams to make a game. And you're not just standing around a boardroom talking, you're using voice chat, a HUD, you're shooting, building stuff, gathering resources...
Any 3D "virutal reality" app that is forcing a hardware upgrade is either sloppily written or overly detailed, probably both.
But hell, we're in an age where ACT requires a gig of RAM to run comfortably. (Tell me again why Outlook/Kontact/Evolution isn't enough?)
Practice of any kind is good. This is practice in a somewhat structured format. Added bonus: You will probably learn more by listening to others' speches and evaluating them (good ones and bad ones) than you will practicing on your own.
Disclaimer: I'm not still a member, and not likely to be again for awhile.
One can always hope that at least a few developers are going to flip MS the bird and go to OpenGL instead, where they can gain all the benefits of some next-gen graphics library (OpenGL 2.0?), but instead of forcing users to upgrade their whole OS, they'll only need to force us to update our video drivers.
Not likely, I know, but we can hope...
How many of those licenses are due to people buying a new Dell and deciding to go with Vista, rather than purchasing XP retail?
I mean, yes, they are forcing it on us as best they can, and there are still enough people who don't like it that Dell is giving us XP again. I really don't see a better time for Dell to ship Ubuntu, either. My recommendation to many people is: "Vista is likely to piss you off at least as much as Ubuntu is while you're learning it, and while people are rushing to release Vista-compatible versions of everything. If you're so determined to put yourself through the pain of a new OS, you may as well install Ubuntu (or Kubuntu), so that at least the next time around, you won't be paying for an upgrade."
One of my biggest complaints about Windows and OS X is the lack of decent universal package management. Basically, Apple's Software Update is great, for Apple software only. Microsoft Update is great, for MS software only, assuming your version of Office is recent enough. If you want anything else to auto-update, you have to provide your own auto-update mechanism (like Java/Firefox/etc does), and the user may or may not pay attention, even if they follow Microsoft Updates religiously.
And it's a hassle either way, because many of them will want you to reboot for no good reason, and may or may not ask nicely before doing so.
That's the ones that auto-update at all. There are quite a few that don't -- for instance, the nvidia drivers. Here, you have to go manually check each app (or driver) for an update.
Compare that to Ubuntu/Kubuntu: One system-tray icon. Click it and you'll download/install updates for every single app installed on your system. Afterwards, it will automatically restart the services that it figures it can restart without asking you, and then tell you what else you should do -- if there was a kernel update, it will suggest a reboot, for example. If it was something like Firefox, and it sees you have Firefox open, it'll suggest you restart Firefox whenever you're ready. If it was a shared library (like openssl, say), it will often suggest some services that use that library (like openssh, openvpn, etc).
If you can wait long enough, it will even cover things like nvidia drivers.
So, the big question here: Is Microsoft likely to close this "security hole"? Or is it a potential opportunity for legitimate software to "hijack" Microsoft Update, and use it for non-microsoft products?
I thought there was also this thing called "popularity contest"? I'm not sure how that works, but I hope it's more than just updates through the automated system. I hope this because if so, every apt-proxy I setup only counts as one Linux installation for however many debian-based (or ubuntu-based) systems it fetches updates for.
Offtopic question: My apt-proxy seems to have a rather annoying bug where it hangs when more than one client attempts to do anything with it at once -- which kind of defeats the purpose of apt-proxy, and makes me want to go to a more generic proxy like Polipo or Squid. Anyone know an easy fix for this?
I do, except where I can use Linux for games. I like making sure all the shiny Half-Life 2 effects work, so I use Windows for Steam games, but I like not having some Windows keylogger intercept my MMO passwords, so I use Linux for any MMO I play.
Interestingly enough, I find that if you can get users to stick with it long enough to make a fair assessment -- figure however long it would take them to really get used to OS X after using Windows, or vice versa -- they often come away with at least a few features they really like about Linux. This happens no matter who they are.
That may or may not make Linux better in their eyes, and many go back to Windows, but to suggest that it has nothing to offer a "naive user" is just as stupid as to suggest that Wine works for everything.
I've almost deliberately exposed my email address all over the place, without the ridiculous antispam obfuscations (no "ninja AT slaphack DOT com" here), because I prefer not to use CAPTCHAS where I can help it, and that's just a poor-man's CAPTCHA.
The reason? Simple:
Statistical spamfiltering of any kind -- bogofilter, in this case -- is creepily accurate.
Recently, I lost my bogofilter database (due to my own stupidity). It took one day for it to get back to 95% accuracy, and another day to get up to 99%, with one false positive -- the first I had seen in about six months.
And on a related note, I know how to take screenshots, but what do I need to take a running video of my desktop? Is there a way to, say, record X traffic?
I think the instructional DVD should be really short and simple, and should basically involve what's required to get the install CD (or DVD) to boot. The rest should be contained on that disc, where it could be more interactive.
But if anyone wants to do this, pull together funding somehow, I'd like to help. Maybe we could even get it on the Dell preinstalls...
Windows and OS X have been copying features from Linux for years. In fact, all of them copy from everyone else.
/media instead of /Volumes).
Notice how the default Ubuntu desktop has a very Windows-like taskbar at the bottom, for minimized stuff, and a Windows-like system tray in the upper right, and an OS9-like menu bar at the top left... Notice how we also have virtual desktops, which are a hackish addon everywhere else but Leopard, which isn't out yet...
Notice how we also have things like package management, which does not exist ANYWHERE except in the Unix world, except (you guessed it) as hackish addons, or very proprietary things. That is, Apple has Software Update, which updates Apple software only. Windows has Microsoft Update, which is the same thing, but for Microsoft software. There's Fink for OS X, which is out of date, ugly, and hackish, and I forget what there is for Windows, other than cygwin, which hardly counts. And before any of these, we had apt on Linux.
We also had print to PDF in OpenOffice before anyone else.
We have a file/web browser (Konqueror) which is a bit like Windows/Internet Explorer (only done right), and we have external drives automagically appearing on the desktop (almost exactly like OS X, only they're mounted under
Need I go on?
The Linux distros that are meant for end-users are still way more flexible than Windows or OS X. For a quick example, install a different window manager or desktop environment -- even GNOME to KDE should show a difference, but try Fluxbox, WindowMaker, RatPoison, Enlightenment, or straight Beryl for something completely different. Or hit ctrl+alt+f1.
Sure, out of the box, they resemble Windows a bit more closely, but even the stupidly-conservative GNOME has things that Windows doesn't. KDE, while it superficially looks more like Windows, has even more -- out of the box, on Kubuntu, try alt+space and start typing something (like "konqueror") to see what I mean. Or pop a CD in -- on Windows, you can always eject the CD by punching the botton on the drive, but if it's in use, you get something resembling a BSOD. (It's been awhile, so this may be better by now...) On my Kubuntu, the physical "eject" button is intercepted by the OS, and if the CD is busy, it won't eject, but it will pop up a message telling you it couldn't, and exactly what programs are still using the CD. (And if you know what you're doing, you can always force-unmount it and then eject, or kill the processes involved.) This is actually somewhat borrowed from Macs, which have no physical eject button, only a button on the keyboard which is handled entirely in software.
Only works on Firefox, but Firefox is the default for Ubuntu (though not Kubuntu). Even if you don't have Flash working, you can download any YouTube video and watch it in VLC.
Not easy or seamless, but not a deal breaker.
Others tell me it doesn't always work, but it's easy -- go online and look for help with bcm43xx-fwcutter. That's the utility you need, it will slice the firmware out of Windows drivers for use with the Linux kernel driver.
Actually may be easier, I believe the Ubuntu bcm43xx-fwcutter package will automagically download the Windows drivers and slice out what you need. It probably works better than ndiswrapper, too -- especially given ndiswrapper only works on x86 machines anyway, and Powerbooks have broadcom cards in them.
And that's the point, really. Or more importantly: Open drivers for a given card will work forever, on any platform, no matter what the user wants to do to their system. Closed drivers for a given card will work as long as it's profitable for the company to make them work, on the platforms that are profitable, in the use cases common enough to be profitable. Or, maybe in the case of Linux, "less unprofitable".
So, for example: Open ATI drivers mean I'll get 3D on my Powerbook (which I believe has an ATI card), whereas nvidia Linux drivers are x86 or x86_64 only. Open ATI drivers mean we'll get compositing that works (like the current Intel drivers) -- currently, the only way this works on ATI is with XGL, and I still get random lockups (10 seconds or so at a time) with the binary nVidia drivers. Open ATI drivers mean I don't have to worry about upgrading my kernel as often as I want, especially if the drivers actually become part of the kernel -- with nVidia, it will probably work, but you never know.
And the list goes on and on and on.
Most people could care less about the "ethical" side, if by that you mean RMS fanaticism where RMS himself refuses to own a car (since most contain proprietary software). I still tell most people to buy nVidia, because it Just Works, even if the drivers are currently less open than ATI. But given a year or two for these drivers to actually come out, stablize, and get the features we've been begging for, I imagine I'll be leading people back to ATI. (One guy will miss his nVidia SLI -- boo-frickin'-hoo.)
And herein lies the problem: Many of them don't, anymore.
In the world we actually live in, too many parents simply don't care about their children, and there's some insanely high statistic for a divorce rate. We have parents who drop their kids at day care to go to work, then hire a babysitter to have an evening out. Then, once they get into school, these same kids are basically dumped at school all day, and then babysat by TV and videogames at night.
And then you have the teachers who really don't care, and could essentially be replaced by Steve Ballmer reading from the book and threatening to throw chairs if you don't do your homework.
Some kids will be stronger, yes, but not because they want to learn something, or contribute something -- simply because they want to win, to look good, or to avoid punishment.
And some will get depressed and demotivated and end up not doing anything. And some will get violent.
Now, it's true that if we go to the other extreme, it's not really any better. You don't want them to be arrogant brats with a sense of entitlement because they've been handed everything on a silver platter. But at the same time, everyone involved in raising a child -- which does include teachers, these days -- needs to at least be reasonably alert and intelligent about it. Not coddling, but not abusive, either.
This kind of "drill" was truly moronic -- would you do that to your own child? If not, why would you do it to someone else's?
I didn't say that. I just said you don't have to use a chroot.
Also: It's for more than just the browser. In fact, most of us consider multilib to be a good thing. It means we can run all kinds of 32-bit apps, even open source ones (wine).
I actually thought it was a clever hack, but that's irrelevant. I am not saying that Flash is better. I'm actually saying that Java is only really marginally better -- notice how, despite being open source, there still isn't a 64-bit Java plugin.,/p>
So rather than try to find out the reason, you're suddently going to assume that Java is our best bet?
Why???
I don't, as a matter of fact. But I also think that among the open technologies we have, Java is just about the worst one we could use.
Didn't they try the same thing? Horribly bloated game engine, MMO platform, so opensource it and hope the community fixes it for you (God knows we wanted to).
It's never a bad thing to GPL code. It's just, we much prefer something that's in a semi-usable state to begin with -- why use Second Life for a project you could do with, say, Quake 3 Arena?
Of course, maybe they really do have a competitive offering here -- look what we did with Netscape, and remember how horrible Netscape 4 was!
Here's how it works: I currently buy nVidia, because they're powerful enough to handle things like Quake 4, and because they have Linux drivers that mostly work.
If I didn't care so much about performance -- like if I just wanted something that can do Beryl reasonably well -- I'd buy Intel, because they have open source drivers that rock.
I know ATI can give me competitive performance. If they can also give me an entirely open driver, missing no functionality, and as solid as, say, the Intel drivers, I'll switch to ATI. If Intel comes out with something that has performance that blows away ATI and nVidia, and keeps up the same level of quality drivers, I'll switch to Intel. Otherwise, I'll stick with nVidia.
How do you prove it?
I mean, couldn't I claim, for instance, that I only decrypted the DVD to make sure that it really is something they have the copyright to, and that I was allowed to decrypt it to find that much out?
But they've created this perfect catch 22. No matter what the reason (AFAIK), you cannot decrypt a copyrighted work, so I just have to claim it was copyrighted.
So I can simply say that I'm the copyright holder of the super-secret stuff encrypted here. Their only way around is if law enforcement is allowed to break the law (and read the file anyway), but how, exactly, do they get a search warrant for it?
There's an old dillema here, and it revolves around unreasonable searches and seizures. If evidence is gained from an unreasonable search, it's invalid. For instance, if a cop pulls a guy over and searches his trunk without a warrant (or permission), and finds a dead body in there, and arrests the guy and charges him with murder -- easy dismissal. They know about the body because of their own illegal search, so the body may not be used as evidence -- with nothing else, they can't convict him.
The dillema is, you know the guy is guilty, but if you let him be convicted, the cops now know that, even at considerable risk to their own career, they can always do an illegal search and know the guy will be put away. The law as it stands means no cop will EVER do a search without at least getting a warrant, or some sort of Patriot Act protection, because they know it won't work -- you have to do things by the book.
So it comes back to the same thing: you know I'm guilty, but you have no legal way of proving it. Your only real recourse would be downloading it yourself -- in which case, I could simply put in my upload notice that no one should ever download this, ever, meaning the only thing you could legally do is get people for pirating MY stuff (and I can simply choose not to press charges).
I don't know if the law really works this way, and I doubt it does in practice. What I'm hoping is that some judge sees the absurdity of the DMCA and strikes it down, even if I go down with it.
Unfortunately, I neither have the balls nor the resources to do this myself. (I don't actually have access to any DVDs not already on P2P networks anyway.)
Save up enough that you can comfortably go on a leave of absence of a year or two, or retire completely. If you can't do that, you don't really have the luxury of a new career.
As for where to go, I can only say what I'd do: writing. I do enjoy it, I'm told I'm good at it, and the world really does need at least one or two books, movies, and stories that get it right.
What if I distribute a very simple jigsaw puzzle, with two pieces. One has 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0, and the other says "Processing key for AACS". All one has to do is put the pieces together, but I don't include the instructions.
Does that mean that it's perfectly legal to distribute said puzzle, but not legal for people to put it together?
Couldn't you do similar things all over the place? For instance, in the first paragraph of this post, I had The Number, and I had What It Is, but I never said or implied that the two go together in any way. But I mean, what about the front/back of a T-Shirt?
It's an old-ish legal hack. For instance, the GPL was meant to prevent things like the nvidia drivers currently in my kernel. However, nvidia was free to develop these drivers in-house, so long as they didn't distribute modified binaries. And they were free to distribute their own patches, so long as the actual patching/compilation is done on my machine, so that the modified source/binary is never actually distributed (and thus never comes under the GPL).
So, does that work here? Simply distribute the number, and enough hints as to what it is, but require people to figure it out on their own, even if a blind person could see it?