You would not be saying this if we were talking about the Zune store making a similar choice, and only being available for Windows. Why bother going to an open standard if you have to open Internet Explorer and enable an ActiveX control in order to use it? Or worse, Windows Media Player...
It's an Internet thing. The stupidly simple thing to do would be to put the entire DRM-free store in a standards-compliant website. They can still have iTunes for the convenience on the platforms that support it, but frankly, even on Windows, I wouldn't want to use iTunes, and I neither have nor want an iPod.
And sorry, but $400 to be able to buy music for a much higher cost than simple CDs is just not a smart deal.
Darwin does play nicely with Linux. It does have rsync and ssh. But that's about all I can say about it -- most of my favorite packages are not there automatically, there's a complete lack of decent package management, and the filesystem structure is entirely different for no real reason.
I mean, sure, mp3s, if you want to make sure none of your users even have the chance to be confused.
Or, un-DRM'd AACs, for probably the most reasonable size/quality on iPods.
Or WMA for Zune. Or Vorbis for Linux geeks. Or whatever.
I'd encode to everything, because encoding music is, at this point, a completely automatic process. Given an hour or two and a decently fast computer, you could encode an album in every conceivable format in every conceivable container, even vorbis/mkv.
But no matter how many you choose to do, I'd throw FLAC in there -- both for archival purposes (if you don't actually keep a multitrack recording somewhere), and so that if your customers are reasonably savvy and want a format you didn't think to support, or if they just want to make sure they encode it their way, they can do it themselves.
Regarding the springy windows: Mine snap to where they're supposed to go, which works. As for "distracting", I've gotten used to it, and really don't see what the big deal is. It seems like, to a certain extent, we're all luddites -- take drop shadows. A waste of resources? Maybe, but it's also very useful for showing, visually, where the border of a window is, and which window is on top of which.
Regarding the cube: No one understood virtual desktops until I got a similar effect on OS X, and now I can actually rotate the cube slowly enough to show them what's going on. I can still do a quick ctrl+alt+left/right, though, and it's ultimately no slower than when I did the same thing in Fluxbox -- even half a second is just not going to make any dent on the system's usability.
For that matter, here's the real difference: With Quartz Extreme, you get the features they give you, and that's it. With Beryl/Compiz, you get all kinds of plugins, which you can enable or disable at will. If you don't like the wobbly windows, disable them -- it doesn't mean the rest of the desktop is suddenly unusable. A favorite plugin of mine is "put" -- you can use the number pad to place windows, for instance, startkey+1 places the current window in the lower left corner. Here, the eye candy is really useful -- I see the window actually move to there, without any lag or tearing, and I imagine it would just be disorienting without any animation at all.
I like Quartz Extreme, but the fact is, Linux can now do any of the visual effects that OS X can do, so your argument here basically boils down to how you don't need more than OS X -- which is simply not a problem. You can tweak it, easily, and I'm sure someone will create one button or plugin or something which duplicates the OS X experience here, probably everything short of the unified menu bar.
The thing is, should Linus be forced into choosing a specific license to put his own code in just because other people prefer that license or should he choose the license he prefers himself?
No one's forcing him into anything. If he really wanted to, he could certainly try to rip out every code copyrighted anyone but him, and release the entire thing under MS Shared Source. Or he could refuse to port it to GPLv3, forcing anyone who wants GPLv3 Linux to completely rewrite anything Linus has contributed.
The point isn't what his rights are. You are entirely within your rights to be an asshole, but that still means you're an asshole.
I wouldn't mind seeing Linux go GPLv3, but I also think people should not be freeloading -- as you say, TiVo will either continue with the GPLv2 branch, or they'll switch to something else, probably a BSD. The point is, Linus should think about these kinds of consequences -- because, after all, that's the whole reason for choosing a license in the first place, to define what other people are allowed to do with your code, and how it affects others. If you truly don't care, you'll public-domain everything, or license it however you have to in order to link it against libraries you like.
It's his code, so it's entirely upto him.
Except the kernel no longer is just his code. It is pretty much entirely GPLv2, with a clause saying no later version applies. So even if he wanted GPLv3, he'll have to get every single contributor to make that change, or rewrite their code.
I can't remember when I've actually thought of AI as a real opponent; it's always just been another part of the system, another obstacle to overcome. Stack boxes, move bricks, don't get sniped, etc.
But, play Halo (and Halo 2, and Halo 3). The AI still sucks by your standards, but it's employed in a game which has a plot which allows your one guy to be badass enough to go against an army and win -- even an army with superior firepower (which they don't always have). And the monsters are placed such that an area can be incredibly challenging, even with truly pathetic AI, yet the AI that's there does occasionally cooperate in interesting ways to take you down.
It's not about making AI such that one bot can put up a good fight against one human -- especially considering that would make for a short and uninteresting game. It's about making the AI seem intelligent enough to scare you, while actually being stupidly limited.
I remember hearing a story about the LOTR movie -- Battle of Helm's Deep -- all of those orcs and people managed by a massive AI program, which they had to tweak quite a bit to allow the final charge of the riders of Rohan -- too much one way, and one human rider wiped out the entire enemy force. Too far the other way, and the entire charge just went SPLAT against the wall of orcs. If it's that hard to tweak AI against AI, how do you make a challenging AI for a human to play against -- challenging, but not so obscenely overpowered that no human can beat it?
I've done exactly this, although I wasn't going for anything particularly lightweight -- it's a 1.8 ghz amd64 with a gig of RAM. But, for instance, I can SSH in to the server and have it wake the desktop, then SSH into the desktop and tell it to reboot to Windows, then VPN+rdesktop, if I need (for instance) a real version of MS Office on the go.
One thing I'm toying with is finding some sort of device which can be controlled via USB or somesuch to turn on and off power at will. Thus, I could have the server wake the desktop, then the desktop can turn on its own speakers and wake me!
WoW does have real items such as "The Unstoppable Force" (a wicked-looking hammer/mace/scythe thing), and its companion, "The Stoppable Force" (a simple wooden mallet). It also has, I'm told, items which you can fish up which turn you into a ninja or a pirate.
So, this Tinfoil Hat item would not be entirely out of character for them, either as an April 1 joke, or as an actual, real improvement to the game.
Support: Plenty of commercial support options for Linux. That's assuming you ever need it. Like I said -- if it's set up properly, it should run itself. I'm actually thinking of starting a business managing things like this, where I ssh in to fix them if there's a problem...
Pretty interface: You described it yourself (monowall and others).
Mail: Postfix. AV: Clamav + Postfix. Easy to do. URL Filtering: Squid. Probably not as easy.
VPNs can be done with OpenVPN -- you have to install it on the clients, but there are point-and-click ports to everywhere.
If I wanted a simple firewall, I'd grab a Linksys box -- that way, I get wireless, too. But the Linux box is nice for doing more interesting things -- DMZs, VPNs between sites, etc -- without paying for more than the hardware.
Dedicated hardware firewalls will always be my choice for many reasons.
Care to enumerate them?
I've seen plenty of small businesses (and 400-plus users is still relatively small) run off a similar setup to what you described. Maybe not a Pentium 2, but maybe some stock Dell (couple gigahertz) is still going to be cheaper than a Cisco box. It also doesn't stop you from buying a Cisco box later, if you really want it, but this would be more flexible, cheaper, potentially easier to admin.
Regarding warranty, support and maintenance: That P2 will run for years and years, and when it finally does break, you can pay some kid $50 to build you a brand new one. Again, probably still cheaper.
But, I'm not making a judgment -- not really -- I'm still waiting to hear what your reasons are.
If you can get them to set up a Windows terminal server somewhere (which could be as simple as XP Pro or a sufficiently high-end copy of Vista), connect to it with rdesktop and use it for the IE stuff. That's assuming you don't have to spend a lot of time on it.
Another possibility would be running IE in Linux, under Wine -- there is actually a script (ies4linux, I think?) which does that very well.
Also, complain to whoever did the sloppy stuff. I don't mean pitch a fit, call the CEO, nothing like that -- just send a calm email, saying you'd much rather use Unix (Solaris, Linux, whatever), and suggesting that next time, they code cross-platform stuff. Expect a no -- you are not crusading here, just being a statistic, and maybe putting the idea in their heads.
if we pissed off the label, then the stream of free CDs would stop...
That's the one thing I like about this, and makes me want to start a blog just to try it out and see if I am right:
Basically, the site pays you to blog about something. You get to choose what that something is -- you can browse through the stuff that advertisers have submitted. If an advertiser wants an honest review, you can give them a negative one -- and if it pisses them off, there will be other advertisers. If an advertiser does not want an honest review, you don't have to review that item.
So, if you're lazy, you can just be a shill for them. What would be ideal here is to say exactly what you would have said anyway, but get paid for it.
It is possible that you're right. But I was making a similar distinction -- before his comments now, it genuinely seemed like he was saying something like "I don't like vi because it doesn't support search and replace." Kind of similar to people I have heard saying "I don't like Linux because it doesn't support printing."
Just because you don't know how it works doesn't mean it doesn't work. Linus really and honestly sounded like he didn't know what he was talking about -- most of his previous complaints against GPLv3 were not just a matter of opinion, but provably false.
The choice of a license is purely a matter of taste;)
It's a bit more than that.
Who the fuck cares what text color Linus uses, or if he prefers KDE over GNOME? That is a personal preference. I don't have to use KDE just because he does. Nor will him using KDE, or even him endorsing KDE, cause GNOME to suffer.
But what license he chooses to release his code under matters a great deal, especially if others follow him. If he went to GPLv3, I'm sure Tivo wouldn't just shrug and say "It's a matter of taste..."
It is just a matter of taste, except when it affects other people. I'm sure you're not so deluded as to think the Linux license does not affect people other than Linus.
My point was the belief that the majority of the accused have, at one time or another, used a P2P file sharing system to obtain a song that the RIAA holds copyright on to to restrict this free distribution.
I understand that, and I understand that you're not implying that all of the accused have stolen the specific file they've been accused of stealing (but rather, that they have pirated at one time).
Was a movie about this. Premise was, someone was convicted of killing her husband, went to prison, served a sentence, got out, and found he was alive -- but she'd already been convicted of killing him, so she was free to do that.
I don't think that applies here for a couple of reasons. First, defendants were not found guilty, so no double jeopardy -- and also not found 'not guilty', yet. But more importantly, I imagine they count as different crimes -- not guilty for downloading it in 2005, but maybe guilty when downloaded again in 2007. Or maybe it was a different file...
How could a class action lawsuit of "People vs RIAA" work when the "people" have mostly previously settled with the RIAA?
Because more people are getting sued by them all the time.
The problem is that the majority of the accused are music pirates.
What is your basis for this?
The sad fact is that as a business, the RIAA member organizations are free to pursue judgement regarding their dishonorable copyright contracts because they have bought the rights to these songs.
The sad fact is, you're making the wrong argument here. That they have bought the legal rights to these songs is completely irrelevant to them suing people who have never used a computer, people who are dead, people who don't know what filesharing is, and people who maybe have shared files, but not the ones they're talking about -- and of course, innocent but tech-savvy people.
They have the right to go after people that they know are stealing their stuff. They do not have the right to just arbitrarily pick a target and sue them for filesharing, and see what happens when they scan the person's hard drive. Even if everyone in the world was sharing files, the RIAA would not have that right.
I'm still not entirely sure about GPLv3 myself, and I should probably go back and read a draft.
I know it's a fine distinction, but I have read a draft. It was awhile ago, and I didn't entirely understand it (I assume wording has gotten clearer now.) Thinking I should go back and read an earlier draft, and then this one, so I can appreciate what they've done.
This is, essentially, my wishlist for Linux on a Dell, but it goes a bit beyond that.
The configuration on the website should be powerful, but easy to use. I would suggest going from a one-dimensional to a two-dimensional interface, or maybe even a tree. Right now, ordering a Dell laptop means going step by step, each step being a page full of configuration.
I would suggest, instead, that you provide a single page of configuration options. Basic things, like "CPU", with a dropdown menu -- however, some things could be "All", "Typical", "Custom", "None". Everything should have the dollar amount it is costing right next to the item. A perfect candidate: Pre-loaded software. Total amount it's costing you right next to it. "All" makes your machine positively loaded -- Vista Ultimate, Ubuntu, BSD, Photoshop, MS Office, OpenOffice, etc etc... "None" means they won't do anything other than format the disk, and maybe install FreeDOS if they have to. "Typical" would probably be Vista Home Basic + MS Office, or vanilla Ubuntu if it was marketed as a Linux machine -- in other words, just the defaults, I-don't-want-to-look-at-it setting. "Custom" would expand that part of the page, or popup a new window, and allow you to configure the living hell out of it.
The rest of my post is based on the assumption that, given the above web interface, you won't reject a configuration option because it would confuse Grandma. Grandma can just click "Typical" for everything and be done. People who dig deeper should not be denied any functionality which can be easily achieved.
First thing: Partitioning. It should be possible to set up partitions, and configure which OS is the default to boot when installing multiple OSes. It should also be possible to specify partition type and filesystem to format, with a reasonable selection. I'm not asking for Reiser4 support or jffs2 support, or even cryptoloop support, just all the standard stuff -- XFS, JFS, ReiserFS, ext3, linux-swap, vfat, and so on. Keep in mind that even NTFS partitions can be created with fairly standard Linux tools, so for this stage, you do not have to code any of this yourself -- just the interface for me to choose my filesystem.
Operating Systems: I should be able to choose from a selection of images that Dell provides, to start with. Simplest way to implement this is with disk images. For example, a Windows image could be prepared on the smallest partition it can possibly be installed to. Then, it can be copied with ntfsclone and resized with ntfsresize to fit whatever amount of space I've allocated to Windows on that machine.
A similar procedure could be used for any OSes not natively supported by your install scripts. In fact, any OS or distro you don't want to support on your own could still make a few partition images available for you to download, and have it set up so that on first boot, the relevant partitions are expanded to the size they need to be. This could even be such that a user can visit the website of a third-party distro and configure a custom OS image, then paste the URL into the partition editor on the Dell website. This is not as wasteful as it sounds -- you do not have to actually download it until the user has made the purchase (at which point you have enough information to prosecute them if they've made you do something illegal), and you can charge them a small fee for the bandwidth used, and cache any single image that seems popular.
For distros you don't support, you could take a similar approach, but with a tarball instead. Unpack the tarball, chroot and run some predefined install script -- or make it possible to download the install script separately. This is more efficient and easier to customize than a partition image -- also more likely to work, as not all filesystems can be easily resized -- but not really portable beyond Linux.
It's been said before -- basically, a lot of the crapware is stuff that Dell is paid to preload onto Windows, and more than pays for the cost of the OS itself. Awhile ago, MS made some noise about hating this stuff, which may be part of why Dell is doing Linux at all -- but the fact remains, it may end up costing them more to do a completely free OS than to do one preloaded to the gills with crapware.
The good news is, at least, if they do it right, they'll give you a debian-based distro preloaded with all their crap, and someone will be able to easily write a script to switch it over to an Ubuntu desktop -- or even some combination, a third repository which provides a virtual package (dellbuntu-desktop) which depends mostly on ubuntu-desktop, but also on the useful or at least innocuous preinstalled Dell stuff (a Dell logo, a Dell support app) while automatically nuking the stuff that isn't needed.
Such an approach, along with significant configuration on their website (you used to be able to choose between FAT and NTFS, so one would hope you could choose between out-of-the-box supported Ubuntu filesystems and partition layouts) would keep me from reformatting the machine as soon as I got it. It would make it possible for us to clean crapware off our machines pretty much automatically, in far less time than a reinstall -- whereas it may not even be POSSIBLE on Windows without a reinstall. It would allow Dell-specific tools to be available, which could be pretty useful -- including support. And, at the same time, even if they bundled such a package (which strips out crapware), making it really easy to disable once your system is setup, you still have to boot with the crapware once, so that's still quite a bit of impressions considering Joe User won't remove them, and even I will at least see them -- so Dell could probably still make money off the crapware, without having to actually crap up our machines.
I realize I'm dreaming, though. But maybe I should submit this idea to Dell, to make sure it isn't lost?
I still don't feel that Linus "gets it" about GPLv3. I'm still not entirely sure about GPLv3 myself, and I should probably go back and read a draft.
But, at least now it's obvious he's reading and comprehending. He may still disagree with it, and I disagree with him, but it looks like they're talking now.
Which is more than I can say about the last round of flamewars... Last time, he honestly sounded like a Slashdotter who hadn't bothered to RTFA, just repeating the same unfounded arguments, some of which were blatantly wrong to anyone who actually read the license...
I know plenty of people who are attracted to Dell because they're finally making solid machines, and because if you watch their homepage for awhile, you can occasionally find really nice sales. I like to build my own computer, but if I can get an equivalent Dell for half the price of the components, and not have to put it together myself and hope it works, I call it a win.
And I'm a Linux user.
But suppose I was an XP user. Right now, Linux can have better support for pre-Vista software via Wine -- Vista is actually broken enough that it depends on your software whether it's easier to go to Wine or to Vista. And, remember all those problems nVidia was having with Vista? I'm not sure if those are resolved yet, or what other problems there might be, but Linux support from nVidia has been rock solid -- and thus, actually better than Vista right now.
So, oddly enough, I would recommend Linux over Vista for gaming, although you're really better off with XP. I fully expect this to change, though -- Vista SP1 will probably fix every problem I've described here.
What you're saying is a bit like me expecting to not only go to work and get a paycheck, but also to videotape myself working (typing at my computer all day, not very interesting) and sell that to millions of people. I'm already getting paid.
I realize this isn't the case for everyone, just pointing out that some bands on that list (Pearl Jam?) could give their CDs away and still make obscene amounts of profit.
For everything else I hated about Sharp's support -- apparently it's a trade secret where they get their hard drives from, so I cannot buy a replacement hard drive without shipping the box to them and paying them massive service fees -- they did honor their warranty, so long as I could reproduce the problem in Windows. Didn't matter what I had before (and they wouldn't have any of my very useful kernel logs), as long as I wiped the drive and reinstalled the recovery CD...
When you try to point that out people say not it isn't you can use Mono.
First lesson: This is a comma, learn to use it. In fact, punctuation is your friend!
Also: not? I don't think the phrase "not is isn't" makes any sense, in any context.
So, the above sentence should read: "When you try to point that out, people say "No it isn't, you can use Mono."
And it's still ugly as sin. Do you actually read what you type? Alright, going to ignore punctuation for the rest of the paragraph...
A convent lie that lets.NET compete with Java
What's a convent lie? Is that a lie told in a convent?
I think the word you're looking for is convenient.
Now, on to what I actually disagree with...
You know Mono really has fallen behind.NET. You can port your applications if you want but it would just be cheaper to stick with Windows.
Or you could switch to Rotor. Microsoft does actually provide the.NET source under some Shared-Source crap, and if you've got tens of thousands of lines of code, chances are you can afford some MS-owned port to somewhere else.
Also,.NET does have strengths Java doesn't, and vice versa.
Consider: Java has a fairly long-standing and stable bunch of libraries, including cross-platform stuff, but not limited to it. There's tons of open-source frameworks, but also plenty of official and commercial frameworks. The server frameworks are apparently very good.
However, Java is not well supported in a few places -- including out-of-the-box Windows. You have to install Sun's JVM if you really want your app to work. Vista comes with.NET, if I remember right, and older versions of Windows can get it via Windows Update. It integrates better, too -- they look and feel like native Windows apps, and are.exe files, so the user doesn't even have to know they're.NET.
Then again,.NET does not work very well on the server. Trying to get.NET working under Linux/Apache is probably worse than trying to make Ruby/Rails to work under Windows -- and you'd still need a SQL server, most likely.
I've always felt that Mono is a great project, but that it's going to be held back by Microsoft's dominance over the language. I like that there's a standard, but after "OpenXML", I don't trust Microsoft's standards.
Are the judges and lawyers who eventually decide and argue these matters going to be aware of these extremely fine technical distinctions?... Lots of uncertainty, here, as far as I see it.
Believe it or not, GPLv3 is designed to resolve exactly this kind of issue. It's designed to be much clearer about what is and isn't allowed.
Of course, a lot of people don't like this, because they can get away with certain things that the GPLv2 allows, that it wasn't intended to. Tivo-ization is the perfect example -- the GPLv2 was never meant to allow you to see source code, but not be able to produce a modified binary that works. If, when it was being drafted, they had considered this a real threat, it would have been written the way GPLv3 is today.
Which, I believe, does require that GPL-derived web apps be distributed with their source code in full -- meaning if you visit such a website, there should be a download link somewhere.
Slashdot Mirror
You would not be saying this if we were talking about the Zune store making a similar choice, and only being available for Windows. Why bother going to an open standard if you have to open Internet Explorer and enable an ActiveX control in order to use it? Or worse, Windows Media Player...
It's an Internet thing. The stupidly simple thing to do would be to put the entire DRM-free store in a standards-compliant website. They can still have iTunes for the convenience on the platforms that support it, but frankly, even on Windows, I wouldn't want to use iTunes, and I neither have nor want an iPod.
And sorry, but $400 to be able to buy music for a much higher cost than simple CDs is just not a smart deal.
Darwin does play nicely with Linux. It does have rsync and ssh. But that's about all I can say about it -- most of my favorite packages are not there automatically, there's a complete lack of decent package management, and the filesystem structure is entirely different for no real reason.
I mean, sure, mp3s, if you want to make sure none of your users even have the chance to be confused.
Or, un-DRM'd AACs, for probably the most reasonable size/quality on iPods.
Or WMA for Zune. Or Vorbis for Linux geeks. Or whatever.
I'd encode to everything, because encoding music is, at this point, a completely automatic process. Given an hour or two and a decently fast computer, you could encode an album in every conceivable format in every conceivable container, even vorbis/mkv.
But no matter how many you choose to do, I'd throw FLAC in there -- both for archival purposes (if you don't actually keep a multitrack recording somewhere), and so that if your customers are reasonably savvy and want a format you didn't think to support, or if they just want to make sure they encode it their way, they can do it themselves.
Regarding the springy windows: Mine snap to where they're supposed to go, which works. As for "distracting", I've gotten used to it, and really don't see what the big deal is. It seems like, to a certain extent, we're all luddites -- take drop shadows. A waste of resources? Maybe, but it's also very useful for showing, visually, where the border of a window is, and which window is on top of which.
Regarding the cube: No one understood virtual desktops until I got a similar effect on OS X, and now I can actually rotate the cube slowly enough to show them what's going on. I can still do a quick ctrl+alt+left/right, though, and it's ultimately no slower than when I did the same thing in Fluxbox -- even half a second is just not going to make any dent on the system's usability.
For that matter, here's the real difference: With Quartz Extreme, you get the features they give you, and that's it. With Beryl/Compiz, you get all kinds of plugins, which you can enable or disable at will. If you don't like the wobbly windows, disable them -- it doesn't mean the rest of the desktop is suddenly unusable. A favorite plugin of mine is "put" -- you can use the number pad to place windows, for instance, startkey+1 places the current window in the lower left corner. Here, the eye candy is really useful -- I see the window actually move to there, without any lag or tearing, and I imagine it would just be disorienting without any animation at all.
I like Quartz Extreme, but the fact is, Linux can now do any of the visual effects that OS X can do, so your argument here basically boils down to how you don't need more than OS X -- which is simply not a problem. You can tweak it, easily, and I'm sure someone will create one button or plugin or something which duplicates the OS X experience here, probably everything short of the unified menu bar.
No one's forcing him into anything. If he really wanted to, he could certainly try to rip out every code copyrighted anyone but him, and release the entire thing under MS Shared Source. Or he could refuse to port it to GPLv3, forcing anyone who wants GPLv3 Linux to completely rewrite anything Linus has contributed.
The point isn't what his rights are. You are entirely within your rights to be an asshole, but that still means you're an asshole.
I wouldn't mind seeing Linux go GPLv3, but I also think people should not be freeloading -- as you say, TiVo will either continue with the GPLv2 branch, or they'll switch to something else, probably a BSD. The point is, Linus should think about these kinds of consequences -- because, after all, that's the whole reason for choosing a license in the first place, to define what other people are allowed to do with your code, and how it affects others. If you truly don't care, you'll public-domain everything, or license it however you have to in order to link it against libraries you like.
Except the kernel no longer is just his code. It is pretty much entirely GPLv2, with a clause saying no later version applies. So even if he wanted GPLv3, he'll have to get every single contributor to make that change, or rewrite their code.
I can't remember when I've actually thought of AI as a real opponent; it's always just been another part of the system, another obstacle to overcome. Stack boxes, move bricks, don't get sniped, etc.
But, play Halo (and Halo 2, and Halo 3). The AI still sucks by your standards, but it's employed in a game which has a plot which allows your one guy to be badass enough to go against an army and win -- even an army with superior firepower (which they don't always have). And the monsters are placed such that an area can be incredibly challenging, even with truly pathetic AI, yet the AI that's there does occasionally cooperate in interesting ways to take you down.
It's not about making AI such that one bot can put up a good fight against one human -- especially considering that would make for a short and uninteresting game. It's about making the AI seem intelligent enough to scare you, while actually being stupidly limited.
I remember hearing a story about the LOTR movie -- Battle of Helm's Deep -- all of those orcs and people managed by a massive AI program, which they had to tweak quite a bit to allow the final charge of the riders of Rohan -- too much one way, and one human rider wiped out the entire enemy force. Too far the other way, and the entire charge just went SPLAT against the wall of orcs. If it's that hard to tweak AI against AI, how do you make a challenging AI for a human to play against -- challenging, but not so obscenely overpowered that no human can beat it?
I've done exactly this, although I wasn't going for anything particularly lightweight -- it's a 1.8 ghz amd64 with a gig of RAM. But, for instance, I can SSH in to the server and have it wake the desktop, then SSH into the desktop and tell it to reboot to Windows, then VPN+rdesktop, if I need (for instance) a real version of MS Office on the go.
One thing I'm toying with is finding some sort of device which can be controlled via USB or somesuch to turn on and off power at will. Thus, I could have the server wake the desktop, then the desktop can turn on its own speakers and wake me!
WoW does have real items such as "The Unstoppable Force" (a wicked-looking hammer/mace/scythe thing), and its companion, "The Stoppable Force" (a simple wooden mallet). It also has, I'm told, items which you can fish up which turn you into a ninja or a pirate.
So, this Tinfoil Hat item would not be entirely out of character for them, either as an April 1 joke, or as an actual, real improvement to the game.
Support: Plenty of commercial support options for Linux. That's assuming you ever need it. Like I said -- if it's set up properly, it should run itself. I'm actually thinking of starting a business managing things like this, where I ssh in to fix them if there's a problem...
Pretty interface: You described it yourself (monowall and others).
Mail: Postfix. AV: Clamav + Postfix. Easy to do. URL Filtering: Squid. Probably not as easy.
VPNs can be done with OpenVPN -- you have to install it on the clients, but there are point-and-click ports to everywhere.
If I wanted a simple firewall, I'd grab a Linksys box -- that way, I get wireless, too. But the Linux box is nice for doing more interesting things -- DMZs, VPNs between sites, etc -- without paying for more than the hardware.
Care to enumerate them?
I've seen plenty of small businesses (and 400-plus users is still relatively small) run off a similar setup to what you described. Maybe not a Pentium 2, but maybe some stock Dell (couple gigahertz) is still going to be cheaper than a Cisco box. It also doesn't stop you from buying a Cisco box later, if you really want it, but this would be more flexible, cheaper, potentially easier to admin.
Regarding warranty, support and maintenance: That P2 will run for years and years, and when it finally does break, you can pay some kid $50 to build you a brand new one. Again, probably still cheaper.
But, I'm not making a judgment -- not really -- I'm still waiting to hear what your reasons are.
If you can get them to set up a Windows terminal server somewhere (which could be as simple as XP Pro or a sufficiently high-end copy of Vista), connect to it with rdesktop and use it for the IE stuff. That's assuming you don't have to spend a lot of time on it.
Another possibility would be running IE in Linux, under Wine -- there is actually a script (ies4linux, I think?) which does that very well.
Also, complain to whoever did the sloppy stuff. I don't mean pitch a fit, call the CEO, nothing like that -- just send a calm email, saying you'd much rather use Unix (Solaris, Linux, whatever), and suggesting that next time, they code cross-platform stuff. Expect a no -- you are not crusading here, just being a statistic, and maybe putting the idea in their heads.
That's the one thing I like about this, and makes me want to start a blog just to try it out and see if I am right:
Basically, the site pays you to blog about something. You get to choose what that something is -- you can browse through the stuff that advertisers have submitted. If an advertiser wants an honest review, you can give them a negative one -- and if it pisses them off, there will be other advertisers. If an advertiser does not want an honest review, you don't have to review that item.
So, if you're lazy, you can just be a shill for them. What would be ideal here is to say exactly what you would have said anyway, but get paid for it.
It is possible that you're right. But I was making a similar distinction -- before his comments now, it genuinely seemed like he was saying something like "I don't like vi because it doesn't support search and replace." Kind of similar to people I have heard saying "I don't like Linux because it doesn't support printing."
Just because you don't know how it works doesn't mean it doesn't work. Linus really and honestly sounded like he didn't know what he was talking about -- most of his previous complaints against GPLv3 were not just a matter of opinion, but provably false.
It's a bit more than that.
Who the fuck cares what text color Linus uses, or if he prefers KDE over GNOME? That is a personal preference. I don't have to use KDE just because he does. Nor will him using KDE, or even him endorsing KDE, cause GNOME to suffer.
But what license he chooses to release his code under matters a great deal, especially if others follow him. If he went to GPLv3, I'm sure Tivo wouldn't just shrug and say "It's a matter of taste..."
It is just a matter of taste, except when it affects other people. I'm sure you're not so deluded as to think the Linux license does not affect people other than Linus.
I understand that, and I understand that you're not implying that all of the accused have stolen the specific file they've been accused of stealing (but rather, that they have pirated at one time).
Again: Do you have any basis for this belief?
Was a movie about this. Premise was, someone was convicted of killing her husband, went to prison, served a sentence, got out, and found he was alive -- but she'd already been convicted of killing him, so she was free to do that.
I don't think that applies here for a couple of reasons. First, defendants were not found guilty, so no double jeopardy -- and also not found 'not guilty', yet. But more importantly, I imagine they count as different crimes -- not guilty for downloading it in 2005, but maybe guilty when downloaded again in 2007. Or maybe it was a different file...
Because more people are getting sued by them all the time.
What is your basis for this?
The sad fact is, you're making the wrong argument here. That they have bought the legal rights to these songs is completely irrelevant to them suing people who have never used a computer, people who are dead, people who don't know what filesharing is, and people who maybe have shared files, but not the ones they're talking about -- and of course, innocent but tech-savvy people.
They have the right to go after people that they know are stealing their stuff. They do not have the right to just arbitrarily pick a target and sue them for filesharing, and see what happens when they scan the person's hard drive. Even if everyone in the world was sharing files, the RIAA would not have that right.
I know it's a fine distinction, but I have read a draft. It was awhile ago, and I didn't entirely understand it (I assume wording has gotten clearer now.) Thinking I should go back and read an earlier draft, and then this one, so I can appreciate what they've done.
Re-typed one last time, posting it on IdeaStorm:
This is, essentially, my wishlist for Linux on a Dell, but it goes a bit beyond that.
The configuration on the website should be powerful, but easy to use. I would suggest going from a one-dimensional to a two-dimensional interface, or maybe even a tree. Right now, ordering a Dell laptop means going step by step, each step being a page full of configuration.
I would suggest, instead, that you provide a single page of configuration options. Basic things, like "CPU", with a dropdown menu -- however, some things could be "All", "Typical", "Custom", "None". Everything should have the dollar amount it is costing right next to the item. A perfect candidate: Pre-loaded software. Total amount it's costing you right next to it. "All" makes your machine positively loaded -- Vista Ultimate, Ubuntu, BSD, Photoshop, MS Office, OpenOffice, etc etc... "None" means they won't do anything other than format the disk, and maybe install FreeDOS if they have to. "Typical" would probably be Vista Home Basic + MS Office, or vanilla Ubuntu if it was marketed as a Linux machine -- in other words, just the defaults, I-don't-want-to-look-at-it setting. "Custom" would expand that part of the page, or popup a new window, and allow you to configure the living hell out of it.
The rest of my post is based on the assumption that, given the above web interface, you won't reject a configuration option because it would confuse Grandma. Grandma can just click "Typical" for everything and be done. People who dig deeper should not be denied any functionality which can be easily achieved.
First thing: Partitioning. It should be possible to set up partitions, and configure which OS is the default to boot when installing multiple OSes. It should also be possible to specify partition type and filesystem to format, with a reasonable selection. I'm not asking for Reiser4 support or jffs2 support, or even cryptoloop support, just all the standard stuff -- XFS, JFS, ReiserFS, ext3, linux-swap, vfat, and so on. Keep in mind that even NTFS partitions can be created with fairly standard Linux tools, so for this stage, you do not have to code any of this yourself -- just the interface for me to choose my filesystem.
Operating Systems: I should be able to choose from a selection of images that Dell provides, to start with. Simplest way to implement this is with disk images. For example, a Windows image could be prepared on the smallest partition it can possibly be installed to. Then, it can be copied with ntfsclone and resized with ntfsresize to fit whatever amount of space I've allocated to Windows on that machine.
A similar procedure could be used for any OSes not natively supported by your install scripts. In fact, any OS or distro you don't want to support on your own could still make a few partition images available for you to download, and have it set up so that on first boot, the relevant partitions are expanded to the size they need to be. This could even be such that a user can visit the website of a third-party distro and configure a custom OS image, then paste the URL into the partition editor on the Dell website. This is not as wasteful as it sounds -- you do not have to actually download it until the user has made the purchase (at which point you have enough information to prosecute them if they've made you do something illegal), and you can charge them a small fee for the bandwidth used, and cache any single image that seems popular.
For distros you don't support, you could take a similar approach, but with a tarball instead. Unpack the tarball, chroot and run some predefined install script -- or make it possible to download the install script separately. This is more efficient and easier to customize than a partition image -- also more likely to work, as not all filesystems can be easily resized -- but not really portable beyond Linux.
For the "official" distro, here i
It's been said before -- basically, a lot of the crapware is stuff that Dell is paid to preload onto Windows, and more than pays for the cost of the OS itself. Awhile ago, MS made some noise about hating this stuff, which may be part of why Dell is doing Linux at all -- but the fact remains, it may end up costing them more to do a completely free OS than to do one preloaded to the gills with crapware.
The good news is, at least, if they do it right, they'll give you a debian-based distro preloaded with all their crap, and someone will be able to easily write a script to switch it over to an Ubuntu desktop -- or even some combination, a third repository which provides a virtual package (dellbuntu-desktop) which depends mostly on ubuntu-desktop, but also on the useful or at least innocuous preinstalled Dell stuff (a Dell logo, a Dell support app) while automatically nuking the stuff that isn't needed.
Such an approach, along with significant configuration on their website (you used to be able to choose between FAT and NTFS, so one would hope you could choose between out-of-the-box supported Ubuntu filesystems and partition layouts) would keep me from reformatting the machine as soon as I got it. It would make it possible for us to clean crapware off our machines pretty much automatically, in far less time than a reinstall -- whereas it may not even be POSSIBLE on Windows without a reinstall. It would allow Dell-specific tools to be available, which could be pretty useful -- including support. And, at the same time, even if they bundled such a package (which strips out crapware), making it really easy to disable once your system is setup, you still have to boot with the crapware once, so that's still quite a bit of impressions considering Joe User won't remove them, and even I will at least see them -- so Dell could probably still make money off the crapware, without having to actually crap up our machines.
I realize I'm dreaming, though. But maybe I should submit this idea to Dell, to make sure it isn't lost?
I still don't feel that Linus "gets it" about GPLv3. I'm still not entirely sure about GPLv3 myself, and I should probably go back and read a draft.
But, at least now it's obvious he's reading and comprehending. He may still disagree with it, and I disagree with him, but it looks like they're talking now.
Which is more than I can say about the last round of flamewars... Last time, he honestly sounded like a Slashdotter who hadn't bothered to RTFA, just repeating the same unfounded arguments, some of which were blatantly wrong to anyone who actually read the license...
I know plenty of people who are attracted to Dell because they're finally making solid machines, and because if you watch their homepage for awhile, you can occasionally find really nice sales. I like to build my own computer, but if I can get an equivalent Dell for half the price of the components, and not have to put it together myself and hope it works, I call it a win.
And I'm a Linux user.
But suppose I was an XP user. Right now, Linux can have better support for pre-Vista software via Wine -- Vista is actually broken enough that it depends on your software whether it's easier to go to Wine or to Vista. And, remember all those problems nVidia was having with Vista? I'm not sure if those are resolved yet, or what other problems there might be, but Linux support from nVidia has been rock solid -- and thus, actually better than Vista right now.
So, oddly enough, I would recommend Linux over Vista for gaming, although you're really better off with XP. I fully expect this to change, though -- Vista SP1 will probably fix every problem I've described here.
They make most of their money from concerts.
What you're saying is a bit like me expecting to not only go to work and get a paycheck, but also to videotape myself working (typing at my computer all day, not very interesting) and sell that to millions of people. I'm already getting paid.
I realize this isn't the case for everyone, just pointing out that some bands on that list (Pearl Jam?) could give their CDs away and still make obscene amounts of profit.
The first would be the biosphere.
For everything else I hated about Sharp's support -- apparently it's a trade secret where they get their hard drives from, so I cannot buy a replacement hard drive without shipping the box to them and paying them massive service fees -- they did honor their warranty, so long as I could reproduce the problem in Windows. Didn't matter what I had before (and they wouldn't have any of my very useful kernel logs), as long as I wiped the drive and reinstalled the recovery CD...
First lesson: This is a comma, learn to use it. In fact, punctuation is your friend!
Also: not? I don't think the phrase "not is isn't" makes any sense, in any context.
So, the above sentence should read: "When you try to point that out, people say "No it isn't, you can use Mono."
And it's still ugly as sin. Do you actually read what you type? Alright, going to ignore punctuation for the rest of the paragraph...
What's a convent lie? Is that a lie told in a convent?
I think the word you're looking for is convenient.
Now, on to what I actually disagree with...
Or you could switch to Rotor. Microsoft does actually provide the .NET source under some Shared-Source crap, and if you've got tens of thousands of lines of code, chances are you can afford some MS-owned port to somewhere else.
Also, .NET does have strengths Java doesn't, and vice versa.
Consider: Java has a fairly long-standing and stable bunch of libraries, including cross-platform stuff, but not limited to it. There's tons of open-source frameworks, but also plenty of official and commercial frameworks. The server frameworks are apparently very good.
However, Java is not well supported in a few places -- including out-of-the-box Windows. You have to install Sun's JVM if you really want your app to work. Vista comes with .NET, if I remember right, and older versions of Windows can get it via Windows Update. It integrates better, too -- they look and feel like native Windows apps, and are .exe files, so the user doesn't even have to know they're .NET.
Then again, .NET does not work very well on the server. Trying to get .NET working under Linux/Apache is probably worse than trying to make Ruby/Rails to work under Windows -- and you'd still need a SQL server, most likely.
I've always felt that Mono is a great project, but that it's going to be held back by Microsoft's dominance over the language. I like that there's a standard, but after "OpenXML", I don't trust Microsoft's standards.
Believe it or not, GPLv3 is designed to resolve exactly this kind of issue. It's designed to be much clearer about what is and isn't allowed.
Of course, a lot of people don't like this, because they can get away with certain things that the GPLv2 allows, that it wasn't intended to. Tivo-ization is the perfect example -- the GPLv2 was never meant to allow you to see source code, but not be able to produce a modified binary that works. If, when it was being drafted, they had considered this a real threat, it would have been written the way GPLv3 is today.
Which, I believe, does require that GPL-derived web apps be distributed with their source code in full -- meaning if you visit such a website, there should be a download link somewhere.