Why has there been no discussion on Slashdot of IE 8 beta 1?
Might be because most who have tried IE 7, don't take IE 8 seriously and have switched to Firefox.
Not a joke either. Some people at work are using Vista with IE 7. The site fails, we tell them to use Firefox and it authenticates them and works well. Problem solved.
Thinking about scraping Vista myself, even though Firefox and Open Office works, too many quirks with it. Took me 3 hours to hack it to work with Samba.
It is true though, Vista is more secure out of the box, because nothing works.
Their network admins should be fired on the spot, that's ridiculous.
Yes it is ridiculous and someone should be fired.
But why does everyone go after the grunts and not the department heads? After all it is the department heads to allocate the money and resources to do such things as watch the network.
The local admin might be over worked, under trained, understaffed and no hardware to accomplish this task. Don't be so quick to pounce on the network person. This is a management issue pure an simple.
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work.
(One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may
have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal
law was passed.)
I agree, legislative will not work.
I want his snail mail address. If everyone forwarded his junk mail to his home address...let him deal with it.
Say Cisco specified a 1 ohm SMT resistor that has a.09% failure rate and costs $1/per (yes, it's just an example). When the '3rd shift' comes on board, they swap those out for 1 ohm resistors with a 5% failure rate but that only cost $.50/per. So it may even be the same assembly line but the components are much cheaper and not to Cisco specification, which is why Cisco doesn't stamp them as 'authorized'. And also why they may fail down the line long after the seller has disappeared.
I doubt that. I believe you exaggerated. If a resistor had a 5% failure rate and a system had many hundreds of them almost everything coming off the line would not work.
Second item is refitting a machine might take hours. Many hours, and the cost of using cheaper parts would not be worth the effort. These electronic houses make these in non-stop runs like making millions of cookies. You don't stop the line to swap parts unless you know they are defective.
In all likelihood, these are the authentic unlicensed items.
The real issue is outsourcing and control of it. Cisco can't control it in China. Neither could others like MasterLock. I once saw a knockoff HP computer part in out data center, and a 10 year veteran in hardware could not tell the difference. It was authentic all right, had the custom firmware and custom chips all in there. Worked good too. Only the serial number gave it away.
Then there is the principle of double billing. The custom chips almost certainly came from a licensed FAB. Then they arrive in products on our shores in unauthorized but otherwise authentic products and Cisco wants the retail cut. In reality, IP security was ignored and Cisco should really deal with it, not the police. If Cisco does not like Chinese manufacturing practices, they should not deal with the Chinese.
Somehow seeing a place I used to work close and go offshore, serves Cisco (and others) right. We didn't have these problems, we were not crooked and accounted for everything. My heart does not side with Cisco.
I can't remember where I first heard it, but the phrase, "The Internet sees censorship as damage and routes around it" seems applicable here.
I disagree with that to 98% is easily achievable. Internet access can be policed enough to prevent pirate down links, but not necessarily communication. One limitation a MP3 more MP4 is going to have is they are large enough using DNS to send/receive them, while it might work it is eventually and few will wait the time to download then listen. Plus, even that can be blocked and detected.
Even SSL can be intercepted. Nailed one idiot once this way who thought using a internet proxy and SSL would suffice to hide his tracks.
It comes down to will, policing, cost and management support. But it is policing, the old fashioned way. If a student gets caught, they get cut off. Do it again, and bye-bye - you fail. Without a defined big bat, enforcement is futile.
The question really is, should the school be doing this or not? Usually with like banks, protecting the bank is the owners responsibility. Not the building up the block unrelated to the bank. Is it the MPAA's responsibility or the Universities? This is where the question really come to play. MPAA industry is greedy and lazy. They want the rest of society to protect their property when in fact, they should be doing more. MPAA gets a big fat F for due diligence. The fact they picked medium that is insecure is not everyone elses responsibility. Every one else at fault but mine is a common disease today though.
If it is like business, they will do enough to keep their business running and it does put a load/cost on the network to let it happen. But they do not do more than is needed for this objective.
But I wish the courts would kick the RIAA/MPAA right out on the street and tell them it isn't the courts problem.
Ubuntu has reached a kind of critical mass never before seen for any distro - they have far more non-technical users, far wider participation in the Forums and a great attitude towards newcomers.
Thanks for your insightful post. When I first looked at I said 50% of this is necessary and good the way it is! WTF am I missing? So why are people crying? But when I read your post it made sense. Well deserved +5.
It is interesting that so many non-technical types are in fact categorizing and prioritizing the issues they see - and best yet, using Ubuntu/Linux!
Some items do show although that what a technical professional views as good and necessary that users do not understand nor view as good. Mounting/unmounting ISO images for example. I would have never guessed users had trouble with that. But then, I think about my first times with it... sure could be make less technical. But it is that kind of improvement the user needs for a better experience, then a redesign to accomodate making it easier is in order.
It attempted to download and run something on the computer I'm using. There's an "extra anonymous modifier" om the post so it's a registered slashdot user.
I agree, this user should be chased down, exposed and then kicked off.
I found it amusing that Ballmer writes like a barely-literate teenage girl would before all that sms-speak came about. I wonder if the only books he reads have pictures in them.
Many executives are functionally illiterate. Probably why many are mean too. But all have secretaries and most let them read and respond to their emails. Scary that they have such discretions too. But a sad fact none the less and it is not abnormal in the executive offices.
The problem with Vista is that to increase security, the OS had to restrict the ability to so easily add software that malware also was easy to install. This meant going to the Unix model of separating administrator accounts from user accounts by default. This caused problems in many device drivers which had not been properly written to use user level privileges by default. Many device manufactures really don't have smarts to write secure drivers, especially those who are trying to sell in the cost conscious consumer market.
Is that a long winded way of saying the simplicity of file permissions in/dev/* on Linux/UNIX is superior, easy and not so complex?
Hasn't Sun been falling behind in the just-about-everything race for quite a few years now?
Yep, too much Java beans I think. They have to get the lead out of Java. I have learned over the years when Nealy's makes comments like this next quarter sales announcements at Sun are not going to be good.
why don't they just mandate that banks have to send their customers a bootable read only flash drive that contains a basic operating system, browser, SSL certificates and a one time pad?
While I suspect this will protect many, what about others, perhaps the majority that were not broken into this way?
Lots of cases of people walking in to banks and jacking in a USB drive right to the tellers or bank managers machine. So far we have even trusted bank employees and government officials. They too could be on the take for a list of...
Don't overstate the users complicity in identity theft, while it does happen, not nearly as often as the banks would like you to think. This feeds the bank image, "we didn't do it" when in fact most of the time it was bank failure, not user failure.
But it is also why the banks do not do what you suggest, as then the only avenues of leaks are theres and they don't want us to realize how uncontrolled it really is.
SAP is already a nightmare, I can't imagine Microsoft expending serious efforts to roll it into the Windows Server platform. It'd be like watching a thousand train wrecks, again and again...
Let me rephrase that for you.
The Microsoft platforms can't handle a sizable SAP platform without becoming unstable for mid-afternoon siesta (reboot).
Remaking myloc.gov in silverlight doesn't bother me as long as they don't lock out non-silverlight enabled browsers. If I suddenly can't browse a government website that is at least partially funded with my tax dollars then I'm taking my money elsewhere! err wait... nevermind...
I think this is the intent. Get users to downlaod and install Silverlight into Firefox. Many har having issues too. Can't beat them, destabilize them. Plus MS gets code into the browser once again. But not me, I see that Silverlight Icon, I will just move on.
NAT is a really, really bad solution. It creates two classes of internet user: those that may run servers, and those that may not; a second-rank type of internet citizen, so to speak.
This already exists, I have to pay $20 extra for my 2 statics. And looking at my firewall logs, NAT for your average user is not a bad idea. Don't worry, P2P will find a way to deal with it. But does offer the ISP ways of cutting down abuse from careless PC Internet users.
But do also agree with the flip side, I am sure ISPs will find a way to screw customers.
Sinofsky will get a Vista replacement out by 2009 and it'll be a clean-up release that makes a lot of people happy. Lots of stuff cut from Vista will get back in, done right. He'll get a big feature release out by 2011. After that you won't see another major Windows release until 2015.
Insightful. That means Linux can east Vista alive. I don't want Vista, seen it, used it and dumped it. Fortunately the PC I had came with XP and I could reload after Vista hell.
Trouble is, I want to buy another PC and I want XP or Linux. And no, I don't want to pay $2000 for it, I want one of those $699 deals at the local store. A commodity PC. I wish the government would enforce bundling laws...
For top notch positions, the yearly salary is just cosmetic. Its not uncommon for high ranked managers and architects to make some silly salary like minimum wadge, but get hundreds over hundreds of thousands in bonus every year. Its a whole different ballbark from the average salaried developer monkey.
No, I think like CEOs with far too high compensation packages, it is corporate executive management taking a page from the CEO. Screw the company, just pay me lots of cash.
If M$ has this kind of problems with their executives, perhaps they are more rotten at the core than most people even realize. And Amazon paying $30M to start? Come now, that would hire 300 programmers for a year. Or 30 for 10. I guess these companies are throwing away cash, could give it to the shareholders.
Guess what fraction of the US GDP is composed of intellectual property? 45%
Might be, but I am sure it is on the decline.
It will not take too long before say China produces a $20 quad processor... where does that put Intel? Sue the bastards? Like SCO? Failed business model trying to milk the IP? You need to keep producing product that sells.
Someone once said, a good idea is good, but to turn it into reality is magic. Well I don't see SCO or other patent troll companies producing a damn thing other than record litigation costs. Where those with good financing win and the little guy gets squished. Innovation killer.
Why is it taking SCO so long to pay Novell the money it owes? Why are the courts taking so long? Might I suggest legal bull$ill?
a new case that could overturn that ruling and restore some sanity to the patent system
No bets here, lawyers enjoy the complexity and confusion too much to make this any better. Congress just needs to change the law. In a business like computers which is evolving so quickly, say a 2 year patent then it expires. And you can only sue if you produce a competing product with it and have been harmed.
You need to stop patent trolls dead. Like RAID and bugs. Let innovation back into this business.
Have you ever talked with Microsoft marketing people?
Sure did, and was sharp that day.
We were at an internal technology presentation, showing off what we do. Being security, we had our BSD, UNIX loggers and appliances on screens for everyone to see. We had a "tail -f syslog" and other logs just a moving every bad event across the screen in real time. Many called it similar to matrix.
Along comes the CFO and the Microsoft sales guy. And asked me, I haven't seen that before what is it. I said it was OpenBSD firewall logs on the vendor net. He said "OpenBSD what? That isn't an OS, is it? BSD what? Is that LSD?" with a smile (He knew).
I looked at our CFO and said, OpenBSD, the operating system we use to keep our Microsoft systems from getting wormed, infected and controlled by others. We also use it for firewalls, detection and system login because they cost less, run longer and don't requires the costly hand care to keep them going as does Microsoft Windows. We don't have the staff, software or capital budget for Microsoft.
Rubbed it right in. My manager heard from the CFO 2 days later, he was impressed and got a second tour with my manager. And a budget increase and authorization to use BSD and open source, in writing to the executive staff.
So...where did these big extra-terrestrial reserves come from?
Fantastic question. For if true, they are in fact admitting life is elsewhere. Who would have guessed to, our first possible absolute proof is hydrocarbon gue from another planet/moon in out solar system.
Actually, we are burning the mostly the old vegetation and not just the dinosaurs. But where there is vegetation there is likely bugs. Maybe even big ones. One must remember that all the oil burned today was alive at some distant part in the past, including carbon in gas form such as CO2. It is just going full circle.
So where did Titan get all this hydrocarbon from? But at -179C for so long, makes one wonder it if was not related to how life started here on earth. The things we do not know...
Re:So when do we get its successor?
on
X Power Tools
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I know X is entrenched and all, but really, aren't we all fed up with this dinosaur? A new window system might be a good thing for Linux as a whole.
Why does every new kid on the block insist you have to replace it to be any good without knowing how much effort it takes to get a GUI working right?
X-Windows is also 1984 from MIT as Wiki on X-Windows, which makes it almost 24 years old. And components of it likely existed before it's 1984 debut. It has had a lot of years to become polished. For without it Linux would likely still have some proprietary GUI that can't be used with other hosts. That is, I enjoy login into Linux, login to a different vendor of Linux or perhaps a BSD, AIX or Solaris....and it works!
I will admit, having used and programmed X-Windows from almost year one, it was initially heavy, had alignment bugs and was no where near like today's X. It was in fact ahead of it's time but now that the graphics hardware has enough juice it is in it's prime. A portable inter-operable network/GUI.
And just so you don't think this fossil is stodgy, GTK is a fantastic Motif replacement. You should try it, real nice.
Don't try to make Linux look like Vista, Vista will not last. And X-Windows will outlast Bill Gates himself. Bills empire still can't do portable Windows without outside help. Perhaps spend your time with that new X-Windows desktop for Linux, the one with the cube.
Slashdot Mirror
Why has there been no discussion on Slashdot of IE 8 beta 1?
Might be because most who have tried IE 7, don't take IE 8 seriously and have switched to Firefox.
Not a joke either. Some people at work are using Vista with IE 7. The site fails, we tell them to use Firefox and it authenticates them and works well. Problem solved.
Thinking about scraping Vista myself, even though Firefox and Open Office works, too many quirks with it. Took me 3 hours to hack it to work with Samba.
It is true though, Vista is more secure out of the box, because nothing works.
Their network admins should be fired on the spot, that's ridiculous.
Yes it is ridiculous and someone should be fired.
But why does everyone go after the grunts and not the department heads? After all it is the department heads to allocate the money and resources to do such things as watch the network.
The local admin might be over worked, under trained, understaffed and no hardware to accomplish this task. Don't be so quick to pounce on the network person. This is a management issue pure an simple.
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
I agree, legislative will not work.
I want his snail mail address. If everyone forwarded his junk mail to his home address...let him deal with it.
Say Cisco specified a 1 ohm SMT resistor that has a .09% failure rate and costs $1/per (yes, it's just an example). When the '3rd shift' comes on board, they swap those out for 1 ohm resistors with a 5% failure rate but that only cost $.50/per. So it may even be the same assembly line but the components are much cheaper and not to Cisco specification, which is why Cisco doesn't stamp them as 'authorized'. And also why they may fail down the line long after the seller has disappeared.
I doubt that. I believe you exaggerated. If a resistor had a 5% failure rate and a system had many hundreds of them almost everything coming off the line would not work.
Second item is refitting a machine might take hours. Many hours, and the cost of using cheaper parts would not be worth the effort. These electronic houses make these in non-stop runs like making millions of cookies. You don't stop the line to swap parts unless you know they are defective.
In all likelihood, these are the authentic unlicensed items.
The real issue is outsourcing and control of it. Cisco can't control it in China. Neither could others like MasterLock. I once saw a knockoff HP computer part in out data center, and a 10 year veteran in hardware could not tell the difference. It was authentic all right, had the custom firmware and custom chips all in there. Worked good too. Only the serial number gave it away.
Then there is the principle of double billing. The custom chips almost certainly came from a licensed FAB. Then they arrive in products on our shores in unauthorized but otherwise authentic products and Cisco wants the retail cut. In reality, IP security was ignored and Cisco should really deal with it, not the police. If Cisco does not like Chinese manufacturing practices, they should not deal with the Chinese.
Somehow seeing a place I used to work close and go offshore, serves Cisco (and others) right. We didn't have these problems, we were not crooked and accounted for everything. My heart does not side with Cisco.
Hey, with these guys, get your money now. The lawyers fees will eat it otherwise.
Totally amazes me how this takes so long to say what everyone believes, SCO - go-away. You have no claim nor future.
I can't remember where I first heard it, but the phrase, "The Internet sees censorship as damage and routes around it" seems applicable here.
I disagree with that to 98% is easily achievable. Internet access can be policed enough to prevent pirate down links, but not necessarily communication. One limitation a MP3 more MP4 is going to have is they are large enough using DNS to send/receive them, while it might work it is eventually and few will wait the time to download then listen. Plus, even that can be blocked and detected.
Even SSL can be intercepted. Nailed one idiot once this way who thought using a internet proxy and SSL would suffice to hide his tracks.
It comes down to will, policing, cost and management support. But it is policing, the old fashioned way. If a student gets caught, they get cut off. Do it again, and bye-bye - you fail. Without a defined big bat, enforcement is futile.
The question really is, should the school be doing this or not? Usually with like banks, protecting the bank is the owners responsibility. Not the building up the block unrelated to the bank. Is it the MPAA's responsibility or the Universities? This is where the question really come to play. MPAA industry is greedy and lazy. They want the rest of society to protect their property when in fact, they should be doing more. MPAA gets a big fat F for due diligence. The fact they picked medium that is insecure is not everyone elses responsibility. Every one else at fault but mine is a common disease today though.
If it is like business, they will do enough to keep their business running and it does put a load/cost on the network to let it happen. But they do not do more than is needed for this objective.
But I wish the courts would kick the RIAA/MPAA right out on the street and tell them it isn't the courts problem.
Ubuntu has reached a kind of critical mass never before seen for any distro - they have far more non-technical users, far wider participation in the Forums and a great attitude towards newcomers.
Thanks for your insightful post. When I first looked at I said 50% of this is necessary and good the way it is! WTF am I missing? So why are people crying? But when I read your post it made sense. Well deserved +5.
It is interesting that so many non-technical types are in fact categorizing and prioritizing the issues they see - and best yet, using Ubuntu/Linux!
Some items do show although that what a technical professional views as good and necessary that users do not understand nor view as good. Mounting/unmounting ISO images for example. I would have never guessed users had trouble with that. But then, I think about my first times with it... sure could be make less technical. But it is that kind of improvement the user needs for a better experience, then a redesign to accomodate making it easier is in order.
It attempted to download and run something on the computer I'm using. There's an "extra anonymous modifier" om the post so it's a registered slashdot user.
I agree, this user should be chased down, exposed and then kicked off.
I found it amusing that Ballmer writes like a barely-literate teenage girl would before all that sms-speak came about. I wonder if the only books he reads have pictures in them.
Many executives are functionally illiterate. Probably why many are mean too. But all have secretaries and most let them read and respond to their emails. Scary that they have such discretions too. But a sad fact none the less and it is not abnormal in the executive offices.
The problem with Vista is that to increase security, the OS had to restrict the ability to so easily add software that malware also was easy to install. This meant going to the Unix model of separating administrator accounts from user accounts by default. This caused problems in many device drivers which had not been properly written to use user level privileges by default. Many device manufactures really don't have smarts to write secure drivers, especially those who are trying to sell in the cost conscious consumer market.
Is that a long winded way of saying the simplicity of file permissions in /dev/* on Linux/UNIX is superior, easy and not so complex?
Hasn't Sun been falling behind in the just-about-everything race for quite a few years now?
Yep, too much Java beans I think. They have to get the lead out of Java. I have learned over the years when Nealy's makes comments like this next quarter sales announcements at Sun are not going to be good.
why don't they just mandate that banks have to send their customers a bootable read only flash drive that contains a basic operating system, browser, SSL certificates and a one time pad?
While I suspect this will protect many, what about others, perhaps the majority that were not broken into this way?
Lots of cases of people walking in to banks and jacking in a USB drive right to the tellers or bank managers machine. So far we have even trusted bank employees and government officials. They too could be on the take for a list of ...
Don't overstate the users complicity in identity theft, while it does happen, not nearly as often as the banks would like you to think. This feeds the bank image, "we didn't do it" when in fact most of the time it was bank failure, not user failure.
But it is also why the banks do not do what you suggest, as then the only avenues of leaks are theres and they don't want us to realize how uncontrolled it really is.
SAP is already a nightmare, I can't imagine Microsoft expending serious efforts to roll it into the Windows Server platform. It'd be like watching a thousand train wrecks, again and again...
Let me rephrase that for you.
The Microsoft platforms can't handle a sizable SAP platform without becoming unstable for mid-afternoon siesta (reboot).
Remaking myloc.gov in silverlight doesn't bother me as long as they don't lock out non-silverlight enabled browsers. If I suddenly can't browse a government website that is at least partially funded with my tax dollars then I'm taking my money elsewhere! err wait... nevermind...
I think this is the intent. Get users to downlaod and install Silverlight into Firefox. Many har having issues too. Can't beat them, destabilize them. Plus MS gets code into the browser once again. But not me, I see that Silverlight Icon, I will just move on.
Hm, could not get to youtube.com from two dramatically different network access points. Wonder what is up?
This already exists, I have to pay $20 extra for my 2 statics. And looking at my firewall logs, NAT for your average user is not a bad idea. Don't worry, P2P will find a way to deal with it. But does offer the ISP ways of cutting down abuse from careless PC Internet users.
But do also agree with the flip side, I am sure ISPs will find a way to screw customers.
Insightful. That means Linux can east Vista alive. I don't want Vista, seen it, used it and dumped it. Fortunately the PC I had came with XP and I could reload after Vista hell.
Trouble is, I want to buy another PC and I want XP or Linux. And no, I don't want to pay $2000 for it, I want one of those $699 deals at the local store. A commodity PC. I wish the government would enforce bundling laws...
He had the foresight to make himself am essential part of company A at exactly the time that company B wanted to begin competing with A.
Beg to differ. I think Amazon was stupid. $30M to start? I would say they saved Microsoft a big severance package for the Vista fiasco.
For top notch positions, the yearly salary is just cosmetic. Its not uncommon for high ranked managers and architects to make some silly salary like minimum wadge, but get hundreds over hundreds of thousands in bonus every year. Its a whole different ballbark from the average salaried developer monkey.
No, I think like CEOs with far too high compensation packages, it is corporate executive management taking a page from the CEO. Screw the company, just pay me lots of cash.
If M$ has this kind of problems with their executives, perhaps they are more rotten at the core than most people even realize. And Amazon paying $30M to start? Come now, that would hire 300 programmers for a year. Or 30 for 10. I guess these companies are throwing away cash, could give it to the shareholders.
My guess both will go bust in time.
Guess what fraction of the US GDP is composed of intellectual property? 45%
Might be, but I am sure it is on the decline.
It will not take too long before say China produces a $20 quad processor... where does that put Intel? Sue the bastards? Like SCO? Failed business model trying to milk the IP? You need to keep producing product that sells.
Someone once said, a good idea is good, but to turn it into reality is magic. Well I don't see SCO or other patent troll companies producing a damn thing other than record litigation costs. Where those with good financing win and the little guy gets squished. Innovation killer.
Why is it taking SCO so long to pay Novell the money it owes? Why are the courts taking so long? Might I suggest legal bull$ill?
a new case that could overturn that ruling and restore some sanity to the patent system
No bets here, lawyers enjoy the complexity and confusion too much to make this any better. Congress just needs to change the law. In a business like computers which is evolving so quickly, say a 2 year patent then it expires. And you can only sue if you produce a competing product with it and have been harmed.
You need to stop patent trolls dead. Like RAID and bugs. Let innovation back into this business.
But is anyone stupid enough to buy one of them?
When was the last time they had a competent and sizable development team improve it? Still using X11-R1? Anyone port apps to them?
Have you ever talked with Microsoft marketing people?
Sure did, and was sharp that day.
We were at an internal technology presentation, showing off what we do. Being security, we had our BSD, UNIX loggers and appliances on screens for everyone to see. We had a "tail -f syslog" and other logs just a moving every bad event across the screen in real time. Many called it similar to matrix.
Along comes the CFO and the Microsoft sales guy. And asked me, I haven't seen that before what is it. I said it was OpenBSD firewall logs on the vendor net. He said "OpenBSD what? That isn't an OS, is it? BSD what? Is that LSD?" with a smile (He knew).
I looked at our CFO and said, OpenBSD, the operating system we use to keep our Microsoft systems from getting wormed, infected and controlled by others. We also use it for firewalls, detection and system login because they cost less, run longer and don't requires the costly hand care to keep them going as does Microsoft Windows. We don't have the staff, software or capital budget for Microsoft.
Rubbed it right in. My manager heard from the CFO 2 days later, he was impressed and got a second tour with my manager. And a budget increase and authorization to use BSD and open source, in writing to the executive staff.
So...where did these big extra-terrestrial reserves come from?
Fantastic question. For if true, they are in fact admitting life is elsewhere. Who would have guessed to, our first possible absolute proof is hydrocarbon gue from another planet/moon in out solar system.
Actually, we are burning the mostly the old vegetation and not just the dinosaurs. But where there is vegetation there is likely bugs. Maybe even big ones. One must remember that all the oil burned today was alive at some distant part in the past, including carbon in gas form such as CO2. It is just going full circle.
So where did Titan get all this hydrocarbon from? But at -179C for so long, makes one wonder it if was not related to how life started here on earth. The things we do not know...
I know X is entrenched and all, but really, aren't we all fed up with this dinosaur? A new window system might be a good thing for Linux as a whole.
Why does every new kid on the block insist you have to replace it to be any good without knowing how much effort it takes to get a GUI working right?
X-Windows is also 1984 from MIT as Wiki on X-Windows, which makes it almost 24 years old. And components of it likely existed before it's 1984 debut. It has had a lot of years to become polished. For without it Linux would likely still have some proprietary GUI that can't be used with other hosts. That is, I enjoy login into Linux, login to a different vendor of Linux or perhaps a BSD, AIX or Solaris....and it works!
I will admit, having used and programmed X-Windows from almost year one, it was initially heavy, had alignment bugs and was no where near like today's X. It was in fact ahead of it's time but now that the graphics hardware has enough juice it is in it's prime. A portable inter-operable network/GUI.
And just so you don't think this fossil is stodgy, GTK is a fantastic Motif replacement. You should try it, real nice.
Don't try to make Linux look like Vista, Vista will not last. And X-Windows will outlast Bill Gates himself. Bills empire still can't do portable Windows without outside help. Perhaps spend your time with that new X-Windows desktop for Linux, the one with the cube.