Allow me to cite the Halo games. The story was as good as any FF game, the gameplay was as good as any shooter -- id/Doom fun and military tactical all in one. And especially if you've read the books, the Chief is an experience.
Ok, I get it about wireless Internet. Not everywhere has an Ethernet jack in the same place as the power, and ethernet is harder to run, since you have to run it to some relatively centrallized switch. And we can use batteries, so we can literally be completely unwired. And it's nice to be able to automatically connect to the Internet. I really wish we had wireless power -- even decent solar power, a thin panel on the back of the LCD to charge a laptop...
I get it about wireless game controllers. If you're a typical console setup, you have the console hooked up to the TV/Entertainment center, facing a couch. You could buy an extension cord, but no matter how you do it, the cable is going to be in your lap. Wireless just makes sense, and you have to replace the batteries in remote controls also. There's even a Ctrl Alt Del comic about the habits we, as gamers, have built up around the cords, so that when you replace an xbox with a 360, you'll find yourself flicking the thing around like a spaz to get the cord out of the way... but no cord in sight.
Internet can reasonably be encrypted, since you're usually connecting a laptop to it, so you can at least type a password. Game consoles simply aren't worth cracking that way -- too difficult to snoop reliably, and if you piss them off by screwing up their game, they'll just get a wired controller. You can't screw up their game precisely without being in the room, and they'd kind of notice...
I get it about cordless phones. Phones are insecure anyway, and phone connections are as scarce as Internet. I get it about cell phones. Your phone, anywhere, with its contact list (killer feature) built in.
I don't get it about wireless keyboard and mouse. I've used them, but I just don't get it. People say "You can have it in your lap", and I pick up my wired, USB keyboard and place it in my lap. I've gotten used to the mouse cord as a sort of anchoring tension -- this may or may not be total BS, though. They say "I can type from across the room!" I whip out my Powerbook and ssh (or VNC) in over the wifi in less time than it takes you to try to tell me "That's not as convenient!" They say "It's a less cluttered desk" and I show them where their keyboard drawer is. They say "I don't have to worry about where to plug in" and I wonder how anyone could have trouble plugging in USB -- certainly at least as standard as BlueTooth, if not moreso.
Then I flip my keyboard and mouse over, and show them the bottom.
"See anything?" "No."
Exactly. No contacts for a charger, no holes to plug something in to, no battery meter, no battery compartment to pop out. And if I need to be across the room, I'll plug in my laptop across the room.
There are a few applications -- Quake4 over VLC would suck, but why would I need to be across the room? And it's still vulnerable to this problem. Gamers who get wireless stuff are retarded.
People actually pay extra for this inconvenience?
But even if the thing was free, I work hard to make sure my keystrokes are encrypted when I want them to be. OS X is set to not allow any app to intercept Terminal keystrokes, which are then sent over a Blowfish ssh tunnel authenticated with 4096-bit RSA keys both ways, my email usually goes over a VPN (to cover the wirelessness), my passwords are unguessable, my PGP is unbreakable. And for what? So some script kiddie next door can just grab my keystrokes right out of the air? No thanks!
This is why I like the mouse wheel. I mean, I usually use the keyboard anyway, but the mousewheel is awesome and accurate for first person shooters (a definite click, and easy to click a finite number of times by feel) and, because it's a wheel instead of a ball, gunk isn't nearly as much a problem.
But here's the kicker. That's a capital investment. A one shot deal. One season to play with oil, then it's gone again. Simulating going from here to there. When a part wears out, or the fuel is gone, you're going to have to come up with it, or its energy equivilent, from your land and the Sun.
See how long it takes to "wind down," and at what level of technology it winds down to, without oil to grease the wheels.
And this is why the people who are trying to do this have a point. I don't think anyone is arguing that you have to bootstrap without oil. I think what we're arguing is that as oil prices skyrocket, whoever can get completely bootstrapped off of oil first (viable replacements) is going to make the most money.
My parents specialize in getting investing for this kind of stuff. And my father has said two things that I think are relevant here:
Alternative energy is the new 90's tech boom, and fortunes will be made and lost. The tech is so close to there it's not even funny -- there will be more than one tiny upstart making a fortune on it.
NO one tech can do it, but many can. As you (or someone) said, hydrogen is just a transport. You also need wind, solar, maybe biodiesel, all that other good stuff. And as much oil as you can buy, borrow, or steal to get it off the ground.
In the end, it will happen. We, as a society, are addicted to cheap energy, so if it is possible for us to have cheap energy without oil, we will, because we won't have oil for much longer.
It does show a bit of their attitude, though. Reading that, my guess would be that Windows Live is mostly standards-compliant by accident -- after all, why not lock people to IE?
Really, even taken in context, that statement has an incredibly high WTF factor. It would be kind of like if I said "Really, our car business is decoupled from our house business. You're perfectly free to buy a house without a car."
WTF? Why would you phrase it that way unless you are trying to dispell rumors (probably founded in truth) that you were planning to require all people who buy a house from you to also buy your car? Why phrase it in such a way that it suggests (probably truthfully) that you cannot buy a car from that company without also buying a house?
I built my last two computers from components from Newegg. I assure you, the hard drives came completely blank. Had to download and install Linux from someone else or from my previous computer. I also have a (legit) copy of Windows that was burned from a school lab, as part of the MSDN Academic Alliance, installed on the most recent computer.
And there are some minor OEMs that will actually build and ship a computer without an OS. So what's your point?
I know this doesn't help you, but I'm still curious -- under what circumstances can you not use OpenGL for this? Under what circumstances would it be easier to implement it yourself than to find/create a decent GL binding? Or maybe you could just read the software implementation from Mesa?
And Google could shave off kilobytes by not serving images on every page. So what?
Most of the time, I try to make the code as clean and logical as I can, and if it's generated, I usually generate it with as little whitespace as I can. But the single biggest thing I do to save bandwidth is run the thing through mod_gzip or mod_deflate. Second biggest win is actually throwing most redundant data into separate files.
After that, a doctype is just a ludcrous thing to leave out. Couldn't Google make more money by being able to claim they're compliant?
I've never found a search for "porn" to return much that's actually porn. So I searched for "sex" on accessible search, and guess what? Apparently playboy.com is accessible...
Currently installing Gentoo on my Powerbook, so I'm stuck in text mode. My browser is links2, which does have graphics support via a framebuffer, but is definitely minimalist and makes stuff look generally out of place...
But playboy.com looks good. I went and read it for the articles. No, seriously, I wanted to see what they had to say about Clerks II...
HTML/CSS are incredibly clumsy to work with, but that can be solved with things like Dojo. But there are some things you really can't speed up -- JavaScript is interpreted pretty much everywhere, and HTML/CSS must be interpreted, because the JavaScript could be modifying the HTML source at any time.
But it's also incredibly difficult to extend HTML/CSS, since even the most recent standard versions will probably never be supported by Internet Exploder. This means that very few new things are ever added that could be useful to an AJAX developer, because anything new will only be supported in one browser, or none at all.
Thus, web applications will always be slower-running, and will probably be slower to develop for a very long time. But C can be almost pleasant to develop in, due to the massive amount of work that's been put into libraries, and it's also fast enough that it's almost a standard benchmark for measuring the speed of other languages.
I am not saying I prefer C, but I don't think C needs to be replaced. But much about the web really does. PHP is hideously ugly, Ruby is ungodly slow, and AJAX is both and then some.
You're right about one thing, Vista won't make a difference -- at least, being able to run apps as a normal user won't do much right out of the box.
The big thing missing on non-Linux OSes is decent package management. And not for lack of technical skill -- Windows has Windows Update, OS X has Software Update. Software Update is especially slick, but the essential problem is, they don't work for anyone else's software, and they generally only do updates, not fresh installations.
OS X is the only OS I've regularly used (other than Linux) for work over the past year. Just last week, I discovered that the company I work for only has FTP access to their website -- very, very stupid, but it's not at all likely that I can change it. But anyway, I got sick of trying to do a recursive upload from the commandline FTP client, so I thought I'd get a graphical one. Searched the Internet, downloaded Cyberduck.
On Linux, what would I have done? Assuming there was a Linux version of Cyberduck, I'd have done "emerge cyberduck", or maybe "apt-get install cyberduck". This does two things -- it automatically gets dependencies, which means cyberduck can be properly programmed to have dependencies (instead of trying to cram them all into the one downloadable executable/image) -- and it also verifies a signature of the downloaded file against the public key of the distro maintainers, which was on the install CD I downloaded. This means I was vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle attack exactly once -- when I downloaded the CD image. Assuming the CD image is good, I can be sure that the Gentoo or Ubuntu guys have at least done a quick check to make sure a given package is not spyware, incredibly old (abandonware), or a security hazard. It also means there's an incredibly low chance that it's been changed since it was on someone's CVS server by anyone except the distro maintainers, since even if said distro maintainers don't check gpg signatures by upstream maintainers, each update is vulnerable to that MITM attack exactly once -- when downloaded by the maintainer -- if it's safe that one time, it's completely safe for all the distro users installing stuff or updating.
It's also a nice tool for keeping a system secure. Since it's usually not the OS itself that lets the software in, you want all of your software to be up to date with the latest patches. A package manager makes it happen -- you just tell it to update, and it grabs all updates, to every installed programs. I believe I've got some 22 custom-installed programs on my Mac, but it's probably more than that -- can you imagine the torture of trying to check the website of each and every one of them? Some are self-updating, but how do I make sure they've all at least checked for an update recently? It'd be a day's work for what I see as a daily habit on other Linuxes: "emerge sync && emerge -uDN world" on Gentoo, "apt-get update && apt-get upgrade" on Ubuntu/Debian. Ubuntu even checks automatically -- but in one place, with one program, instead of 22 different programs.
Either you (and the grandparent) don't understand what userspace is, or you're missing the point entirely.
Yes, it could install itself into your startup scripts. This may or may not be easy to clean up. For one thing, though it'd be limited, it would be possible to do a rootkit for one user -- change the path, copy in executables from their system locations and crack them to not show the changes to startup scripts...
And it could still cause quite a bit of damage before you noticed it.
Although you can lock down Unix so hard that no virus (or user) can screw it up, the strength of Linux is in not letting the viruses in in the first place. This is done by patching things quickly, using package management, and several other things.
But not running as root is really more to protect you from yourself than to protect you from malware, although as you said, it does help -- and it also means that you can have a truly multi-user system. If I have to share a computer with a girlfriend, I can be sure that even if she installes BonziBuddyLinux, my own account is clean, and if I need resources, I can become root and kill -9 or renice anything her user has left running.
The Gentoo package manager is one example of a way to get around nVidia and Google Earth operating this way: since all packages are essentially shell scripts intended to compile software from source, there are actively maintained packages for nVidia and Google Earth.
The reason most distros can't do this is that it becomes a legal issue -- can you legally unpack from the binary installer, then repack as an rpm or deb, and distribute it from the repository? But with Gentoo, even if they aren't allowed to distribute the binary from mirrors, they can always place it under management after you download it manually. This is nice, because the package also includes checksums for all its source files.
What this means is, even most of the times you would download random software from the Internet, you still check it against a repository checksum.
It really amazes me that other "modern" OSes have never done this. It's not as if it's a foreign concept. Windows Update is a package manager, it just happens to only work for Windows. MSI is also a package manager, but I believe it relies on the app to provide its own uninstall. On OS X, it's even worse -- most mpkg packages do not have uninstallers, and everything else is completely un-managed. The open-source community has started a library which apps can use to update themselves, but even if it were 100% supported, it's still nowhere near as powerful as real package management, complete with uninstall and dependency handling.
There isn't anything "in the middle"; Java is already a pretty low-level language as far as languages go.
Oh wow...
The structure of the JVM does kind of prevent you from either including assembly in your Java, or easily hooking into things written in non-JVM languages.
C#, at least, allows you to easily call out to other C/C++ libraries.
Ruby is a great language, but it's a very high level language--it's far more high level than Java.
Exactly the point. Teaching Java exposes them to complexity they shouldn't have to see. Kind of like teaching Assembly would. Not that you shouldn't teach them lower level stuff also...
And knowing how pointers work is generally a good thing, especially if you've started with a language like Ruby, and don't have all the bad habits.
In my experience, people raised on pointers and low-level tricks rarely succeed at writing decent, clean, efficient code in languages like Java; they have never learned how to, and when their code runs slowly, they tend to blame the language instead of recognizing their own lack of skill.
I was raised on auto_ptr and other high-level techniques in C++, so switching to Java was pretty natural for me. The trick is to not start them out on the lower level arrays until they already know vectors...
Older engines will stop displaying after a certain draw distance, and since the portal chain stretches beyond that distance, you start getting graphical errors.
Seems their engine handles that the same way -- after a certain distance, the portal just becomes a solid wall.
On another note, it's perfectly possible this doesn't work the way I wish it did, and instead works in what would appear to be the most obvious way to do it in the Source engine, which is a teleporting material (brush) and cameras. But it does look like it's done properly...
I know Duke3D had another interesting property -- it had mirrors, but the mirrors had to have enough space on the other side of the mirror to hold everything you could see in the mirror. Probably implemented roughly the same way these portals would be...
Or that I genuinely enjoy games, but I do get sick of hearing "Linux can't do games". So every time someone says that, I drag them over and make them watch a beautiful Quake 4 on my 20" LCD screen.... on Gentoo Linux.
I am wondering if I shouldn't just buy a Wii and stop upgrading my computer, though. No worrying about open hardware on the desktop that way...
Funny that you should call it a weak ego, though. Maybe it's just a more focused one. There are so many other ways where I could care less about "keeping up with the Joneses".
yum is about RPMs. apt is about DEBs. And your biggest issue is probably not knowing how to use the package manage for what it's best at.
Rather than, say, downloading "foo" and then trying to make it work, try running "apt-get install foo". It will download and install it for you.
If it doesn't work, maybe update your system first:
apt-get update apt-get upgrade
And there are GUI tools for this -- synaptic, for one.
In my experience, Windows doesn't really work at all, certainly not out of the box. Oddly enough, when I google for help with Windows, I often end up at Experts Exchange, or no solution at all. On Linux, solutions are a Google away -- why were you talking to your local Linux bigots instead of some nice Google results?
Me: Hi, I just deleted my old qemu Windows image, and I need to install it on my main computer. MS: Ok, how many computers have you installed it on? Me: Well, one virtual and one real... MS: How many? Me: (OK, they want to hear:) Technically, just one. MS: Ok *reads long string of numbers*
Which wouldn't have been a problem, except it was a VERY long string of numbers (both ways) and she had a thick Indian accent.
By the way, saying that a suppository in your ass is better than a spiked club in your ass has not convinced me that a software company has any business telling me to bend over. Gentoo on my desktop now, OS X on my laptop.
Security is not a compelling reason, I have a strong (linux based) firewall and use Firefox instead of IE.
Wait, back up a second... You've got a Linux-based firewall, but you can't figure out Linux on the desktop? Or is this a firewall appliance, like a Linksys router or something?
Because it would seem to me that Desktop Linux is way easier than Firewall Linux.
I can give you one compelling reason -- package management. Windows doesn't have it (except for MS products), Linux not only has it, but it's pervasive -- there's a good chance that every single program on your system will be managed. That means your system will pretty much keep itself up to date. Does ALL of your Windows software do that?
Besides, I can't believe Knoppix is too much time. Just download, burn, boot, that way, you at least know if your hardware is supported.
Call me a zealot, but Transgaming worked out of the box for me. True, plenty of games didn't work, but there are still hundreds that do. Can you really play hundreds of games before they support hundreds more? I can't.
And really, is it that much harder to find the exe on the cdrom? That's about all it takes, when the game works. That, and next-next-next in the installer, then you're done.
Slashdot Mirror
I find the best games combine these.
Allow me to cite the Halo games. The story was as good as any FF game, the gameplay was as good as any shooter -- id/Doom fun and military tactical all in one. And especially if you've read the books, the Chief is an experience.
Ok, I get it about wireless Internet. Not everywhere has an Ethernet jack in the same place as the power, and ethernet is harder to run, since you have to run it to some relatively centrallized switch. And we can use batteries, so we can literally be completely unwired. And it's nice to be able to automatically connect to the Internet. I really wish we had wireless power -- even decent solar power, a thin panel on the back of the LCD to charge a laptop...
I get it about wireless game controllers. If you're a typical console setup, you have the console hooked up to the TV/Entertainment center, facing a couch. You could buy an extension cord, but no matter how you do it, the cable is going to be in your lap. Wireless just makes sense, and you have to replace the batteries in remote controls also. There's even a Ctrl Alt Del comic about the habits we, as gamers, have built up around the cords, so that when you replace an xbox with a 360, you'll find yourself flicking the thing around like a spaz to get the cord out of the way... but no cord in sight.
Internet can reasonably be encrypted, since you're usually connecting a laptop to it, so you can at least type a password. Game consoles simply aren't worth cracking that way -- too difficult to snoop reliably, and if you piss them off by screwing up their game, they'll just get a wired controller. You can't screw up their game precisely without being in the room, and they'd kind of notice...
I get it about cordless phones. Phones are insecure anyway, and phone connections are as scarce as Internet. I get it about cell phones. Your phone, anywhere, with its contact list (killer feature) built in.
I don't get it about wireless keyboard and mouse. I've used them, but I just don't get it. People say "You can have it in your lap", and I pick up my wired, USB keyboard and place it in my lap. I've gotten used to the mouse cord as a sort of anchoring tension -- this may or may not be total BS, though. They say "I can type from across the room!" I whip out my Powerbook and ssh (or VNC) in over the wifi in less time than it takes you to try to tell me "That's not as convenient!" They say "It's a less cluttered desk" and I show them where their keyboard drawer is. They say "I don't have to worry about where to plug in" and I wonder how anyone could have trouble plugging in USB -- certainly at least as standard as BlueTooth, if not moreso.
Then I flip my keyboard and mouse over, and show them the bottom.
"See anything?"
"No."
Exactly. No contacts for a charger, no holes to plug something in to, no battery meter, no battery compartment to pop out. And if I need to be across the room, I'll plug in my laptop across the room.
There are a few applications -- Quake4 over VLC would suck, but why would I need to be across the room? And it's still vulnerable to this problem. Gamers who get wireless stuff are retarded.
People actually pay extra for this inconvenience?
But even if the thing was free, I work hard to make sure my keystrokes are encrypted when I want them to be. OS X is set to not allow any app to intercept Terminal keystrokes, which are then sent over a Blowfish ssh tunnel authenticated with 4096-bit RSA keys both ways, my email usually goes over a VPN (to cover the wirelessness), my passwords are unguessable, my PGP is unbreakable. And for what? So some script kiddie next door can just grab my keystrokes right out of the air? No thanks!
Ok, what is it about that first mouse that you miss in this thing? Or in a decent Logitech mouse?
This is why I like the mouse wheel. I mean, I usually use the keyboard anyway, but the mousewheel is awesome and accurate for first person shooters (a definite click, and easy to click a finite number of times by feel) and, because it's a wheel instead of a ball, gunk isn't nearly as much a problem.
I've never had one do that without asking.
And this is why the people who are trying to do this have a point. I don't think anyone is arguing that you have to bootstrap without oil. I think what we're arguing is that as oil prices skyrocket, whoever can get completely bootstrapped off of oil first (viable replacements) is going to make the most money.
My parents specialize in getting investing for this kind of stuff. And my father has said two things that I think are relevant here:
In the end, it will happen. We, as a society, are addicted to cheap energy, so if it is possible for us to have cheap energy without oil, we will, because we won't have oil for much longer.
In theory, the looming threat of what you've described should be enough to motivate people to get it right the first time.
In practice, I wonder what the alternative looks like?
It does show a bit of their attitude, though. Reading that, my guess would be that Windows Live is mostly standards-compliant by accident -- after all, why not lock people to IE?
Really, even taken in context, that statement has an incredibly high WTF factor. It would be kind of like if I said "Really, our car business is decoupled from our house business. You're perfectly free to buy a house without a car."
WTF? Why would you phrase it that way unless you are trying to dispell rumors (probably founded in truth) that you were planning to require all people who buy a house from you to also buy your car? Why phrase it in such a way that it suggests (probably truthfully) that you cannot buy a car from that company without also buying a house?
I built my last two computers from components from Newegg. I assure you, the hard drives came completely blank. Had to download and install Linux from someone else or from my previous computer. I also have a (legit) copy of Windows that was burned from a school lab, as part of the MSDN Academic Alliance, installed on the most recent computer.
And there are some minor OEMs that will actually build and ship a computer without an OS. So what's your point?
I know this doesn't help you, but I'm still curious -- under what circumstances can you not use OpenGL for this? Under what circumstances would it be easier to implement it yourself than to find/create a decent GL binding? Or maybe you could just read the software implementation from Mesa?
And Google could shave off kilobytes by not serving images on every page. So what?
Most of the time, I try to make the code as clean and logical as I can, and if it's generated, I usually generate it with as little whitespace as I can. But the single biggest thing I do to save bandwidth is run the thing through mod_gzip or mod_deflate. Second biggest win is actually throwing most redundant data into separate files.
After that, a doctype is just a ludcrous thing to leave out. Couldn't Google make more money by being able to claim they're compliant?
I've never found a search for "porn" to return much that's actually porn. So I searched for "sex" on accessible search, and guess what? Apparently playboy.com is accessible...
Currently installing Gentoo on my Powerbook, so I'm stuck in text mode. My browser is links2, which does have graphics support via a framebuffer, but is definitely minimalist and makes stuff look generally out of place...
But playboy.com looks good. I went and read it for the articles. No, seriously, I wanted to see what they had to say about Clerks II...
It's all about speed.
HTML/CSS are incredibly clumsy to work with, but that can be solved with things like Dojo. But there are some things you really can't speed up -- JavaScript is interpreted pretty much everywhere, and HTML/CSS must be interpreted, because the JavaScript could be modifying the HTML source at any time.
But it's also incredibly difficult to extend HTML/CSS, since even the most recent standard versions will probably never be supported by Internet Exploder. This means that very few new things are ever added that could be useful to an AJAX developer, because anything new will only be supported in one browser, or none at all.
Thus, web applications will always be slower-running, and will probably be slower to develop for a very long time. But C can be almost pleasant to develop in, due to the massive amount of work that's been put into libraries, and it's also fast enough that it's almost a standard benchmark for measuring the speed of other languages.
I am not saying I prefer C, but I don't think C needs to be replaced. But much about the web really does. PHP is hideously ugly, Ruby is ungodly slow, and AJAX is both and then some.
You're right about one thing, Vista won't make a difference -- at least, being able to run apps as a normal user won't do much right out of the box.
The big thing missing on non-Linux OSes is decent package management. And not for lack of technical skill -- Windows has Windows Update, OS X has Software Update. Software Update is especially slick, but the essential problem is, they don't work for anyone else's software, and they generally only do updates, not fresh installations.
OS X is the only OS I've regularly used (other than Linux) for work over the past year. Just last week, I discovered that the company I work for only has FTP access to their website -- very, very stupid, but it's not at all likely that I can change it. But anyway, I got sick of trying to do a recursive upload from the commandline FTP client, so I thought I'd get a graphical one. Searched the Internet, downloaded Cyberduck.
On Linux, what would I have done? Assuming there was a Linux version of Cyberduck, I'd have done "emerge cyberduck", or maybe "apt-get install cyberduck". This does two things -- it automatically gets dependencies, which means cyberduck can be properly programmed to have dependencies (instead of trying to cram them all into the one downloadable executable/image) -- and it also verifies a signature of the downloaded file against the public key of the distro maintainers, which was on the install CD I downloaded. This means I was vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle attack exactly once -- when I downloaded the CD image. Assuming the CD image is good, I can be sure that the Gentoo or Ubuntu guys have at least done a quick check to make sure a given package is not spyware, incredibly old (abandonware), or a security hazard. It also means there's an incredibly low chance that it's been changed since it was on someone's CVS server by anyone except the distro maintainers, since even if said distro maintainers don't check gpg signatures by upstream maintainers, each update is vulnerable to that MITM attack exactly once -- when downloaded by the maintainer -- if it's safe that one time, it's completely safe for all the distro users installing stuff or updating.
It's also a nice tool for keeping a system secure. Since it's usually not the OS itself that lets the software in, you want all of your software to be up to date with the latest patches. A package manager makes it happen -- you just tell it to update, and it grabs all updates, to every installed programs. I believe I've got some 22 custom-installed programs on my Mac, but it's probably more than that -- can you imagine the torture of trying to check the website of each and every one of them? Some are self-updating, but how do I make sure they've all at least checked for an update recently? It'd be a day's work for what I see as a daily habit on other Linuxes: "emerge sync && emerge -uDN world" on Gentoo, "apt-get update && apt-get upgrade" on Ubuntu/Debian. Ubuntu even checks automatically -- but in one place, with one program, instead of 22 different programs.
Either you (and the grandparent) don't understand what userspace is, or you're missing the point entirely.
Yes, it could install itself into your startup scripts. This may or may not be easy to clean up. For one thing, though it'd be limited, it would be possible to do a rootkit for one user -- change the path, copy in executables from their system locations and crack them to not show the changes to startup scripts...
And it could still cause quite a bit of damage before you noticed it.
Although you can lock down Unix so hard that no virus (or user) can screw it up, the strength of Linux is in not letting the viruses in in the first place. This is done by patching things quickly, using package management, and several other things.
But not running as root is really more to protect you from yourself than to protect you from malware, although as you said, it does help -- and it also means that you can have a truly multi-user system. If I have to share a computer with a girlfriend, I can be sure that even if she installes BonziBuddyLinux, my own account is clean, and if I need resources, I can become root and kill -9 or renice anything her user has left running.
The Gentoo package manager is one example of a way to get around nVidia and Google Earth operating this way: since all packages are essentially shell scripts intended to compile software from source, there are actively maintained packages for nVidia and Google Earth.
The reason most distros can't do this is that it becomes a legal issue -- can you legally unpack from the binary installer, then repack as an rpm or deb, and distribute it from the repository? But with Gentoo, even if they aren't allowed to distribute the binary from mirrors, they can always place it under management after you download it manually. This is nice, because the package also includes checksums for all its source files.
What this means is, even most of the times you would download random software from the Internet, you still check it against a repository checksum.
It really amazes me that other "modern" OSes have never done this. It's not as if it's a foreign concept. Windows Update is a package manager, it just happens to only work for Windows. MSI is also a package manager, but I believe it relies on the app to provide its own uninstall. On OS X, it's even worse -- most mpkg packages do not have uninstallers, and everything else is completely un-managed. The open-source community has started a library which apps can use to update themselves, but even if it were 100% supported, it's still nowhere near as powerful as real package management, complete with uninstall and dependency handling.
Oh wow...
The structure of the JVM does kind of prevent you from either including assembly in your Java, or easily hooking into things written in non-JVM languages.
C#, at least, allows you to easily call out to other C/C++ libraries.
Exactly the point. Teaching Java exposes them to complexity they shouldn't have to see. Kind of like teaching Assembly would. Not that you shouldn't teach them lower level stuff also...
And knowing how pointers work is generally a good thing, especially if you've started with a language like Ruby, and don't have all the bad habits.
I was raised on auto_ptr and other high-level techniques in C++, so switching to Java was pretty natural for me. The trick is to not start them out on the lower level arrays until they already know vectors...
Seems their engine handles that the same way -- after a certain distance, the portal just becomes a solid wall.
On another note, it's perfectly possible this doesn't work the way I wish it did, and instead works in what would appear to be the most obvious way to do it in the Source engine, which is a teleporting material (brush) and cameras. But it does look like it's done properly...
I know Duke3D had another interesting property -- it had mirrors, but the mirrors had to have enough space on the other side of the mirror to hold everything you could see in the mirror. Probably implemented roughly the same way these portals would be...
Or that I genuinely enjoy games, but I do get sick of hearing "Linux can't do games". So every time someone says that, I drag them over and make them watch a beautiful Quake 4 on my 20" LCD screen.... on Gentoo Linux.
I am wondering if I shouldn't just buy a Wii and stop upgrading my computer, though. No worrying about open hardware on the desktop that way...
Funny that you should call it a weak ego, though. Maybe it's just a more focused one. There are so many other ways where I could care less about "keeping up with the Joneses".
I'm on Gentoo/xorg, on amd64, full closed/binary nvidia drivers, PCI Express, and everything works, out of the box.
I really don't know what's wrong with your setup. I might be able to help you over at irc.freenode.net#gentoo
iptables --flush wipes your firewall rules.
yum is about RPMs. apt is about DEBs. And your biggest issue is probably not knowing how to use the package manage for what it's best at.
Rather than, say, downloading "foo" and then trying to make it work, try running "apt-get install foo". It will download and install it for you.
If it doesn't work, maybe update your system first:
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
And there are GUI tools for this -- synaptic, for one.
In my experience, Windows doesn't really work at all, certainly not out of the box. Oddly enough, when I google for help with Windows, I often end up at Experts Exchange, or no solution at all. On Linux, solutions are a Google away -- why were you talking to your local Linux bigots instead of some nice Google results?
Quake2 native has released source now. One command and I can install Quake2. Then I just copy stuff off the CD -- maybe 1 minute -- and it works.
Really, every single Quake and Doom has worked flawlessly for me -- without Wine.
Here's what my conversation was like:
Me: Hi, I just deleted my old qemu Windows image, and I need to install it on my main computer.
MS: Ok, how many computers have you installed it on?
Me: Well, one virtual and one real...
MS: How many?
Me: (OK, they want to hear:) Technically, just one.
MS: Ok
*reads long string of numbers*
Which wouldn't have been a problem, except it was a VERY long string of numbers (both ways) and she had a thick Indian accent.
By the way, saying that a suppository in your ass is better than a spiked club in your ass has not convinced me that a software company has any business telling me to bend over. Gentoo on my desktop now, OS X on my laptop.
Wait, back up a second... You've got a Linux-based firewall, but you can't figure out Linux on the desktop? Or is this a firewall appliance, like a Linksys router or something?
Because it would seem to me that Desktop Linux is way easier than Firewall Linux.
I can give you one compelling reason -- package management. Windows doesn't have it (except for MS products), Linux not only has it, but it's pervasive -- there's a good chance that every single program on your system will be managed. That means your system will pretty much keep itself up to date. Does ALL of your Windows software do that?
Besides, I can't believe Knoppix is too much time. Just download, burn, boot, that way, you at least know if your hardware is supported.
Call me a zealot, but Transgaming worked out of the box for me. True, plenty of games didn't work, but there are still hundreds that do. Can you really play hundreds of games before they support hundreds more? I can't.
And really, is it that much harder to find the exe on the cdrom? That's about all it takes, when the game works. That, and next-next-next in the installer, then you're done.