I've been a Fedora user since RH8, and still am. This Q&A and the discussion hasn't touched on some areas of Fedora's place in the world that seem important to me.
Firstly, in comparison with Ubuntu, Max Spevak mentions that Ubuntu's web presence is better organized. IMHO, this is a reflection of the fact that Ubuntu has a much better-organized community. Community is the primary difference between Fedora and Ubuntu, and it's not a superficial difference.
Second, I don't see much discussion of Max Spevak's role or discussion of Fedora leadership in general. From a mere user's point of view, Fedora has lacked for a guiding hand. Developers who (deservedly) "own" their fiefdoms get to make decisions, but you need someone at a higher level to help keep an even keel and referee the bigger picture. A decent example of this is here, where the Fedora Advisory Board ultimately made the decision to prevent some needless chaos for nvidia driver users that would have been caused by an X.org update. Holding the update for the upcoming FC6 release was a stroke of wisdom IMO, but even if you disagree, it's still an example of project-level leadership.
Additional leadership might help resolve situations like this. There has been much dysfunctional hostility between the "official" Fedora repo folks and the unofficial ones. This is the opposite of community building.
Another place where a guiding hand is useful is maintaining consistency on the desktop. Early versions of Fedora had a consistent look. Now my panel icons are drifting away from any unifying theme. For example, wireshark, firefox, and the Fedora menu all have icons that don't fit visually with any installed theme.
One place Fedora suffers for its lack of community is that usability (that is, the perspective of end-users) is not a key focus for developers. (Network manager would be a *shining* exception, you folks rock.) End-users are ghettoized in forums and lists that developers rarely go near. There is no usability champion. It doesn't "feel" like a priorty in Fedora. (But again, props to the FAB for the X.org update decision.)
An example of where Ubuntu "gets it" when it comes to real-world usability would be the way that package updates are handled. Notification is automatic, and users are already in sudoers or something, so they only need their own password to authorize the updates. (Imperfect yes, but it "Just works" for the most common use-case of a desktop system, and is pre-configured out of the box. Even Aunt Tilly can handle it.)
I haven't switched to Ubuntu myself yet, but I have started installing it for the friends/family for whom I am the go-to-geek, because for them usability trumps all.
I'll be interested to see if Ubuntu can follow through over time, and if Fedora can put down community roots.
That pretty well covers it, thanks. I'm curious whether you find yourself needing an external keyboard alot, but I'll scan through your blog...
By replacement I mean something I can take instead of the lappy when only doing those few things, since schlepping the lappy can be more of a chore and a theft risk. It sounds like the 770 would work for that use-case.
Plus there are those times when it would be nice to do some quick googling but it's just not quite worth the hassle of breaking out the laptop.
(Can you tell I'm rehearsing what to tell the GF? See honey, this is much better than that Maui trip you wanted.)
So as a frequent user, could you spell out the geek-oriented use-cases that the 770 is and isn't good for?
I'm hankering for something that will replace my laptop for doing wifi browsing and email, and the occasional emergency ssh session. This might be it.
I could carry this and a phone, but not another device (PDA or MP3). So the 770 &/or the phone have to pick up the slack. It's not clear from what I've read whether the 770 is a reasonable replacement for the PDA. It's clearly not for MP3.
Also, do you find the small RAM limiting in real-world use?
The vast majority of people at Google can't get at log data. The vast majority of the ones who can, can't get at unscrubbed log data. Very, very few people can actually access the unscrubbed data.
Well that's just what I want to hear. (Of course, it would be better coming from a named source, but hey an AC on Slashdot has almost as much credibility as an official spokescritter these days.)
The geek in me wonders what scrubbing methods are used. (Do they preserve usefulness for the kind of research supposedly intended by the AOL release, yet prevent the NYTimes from finding out who is who?)
And the privacy freak in me wonders if these methods and the need to protect privacy are used and understood in the rest of the industry (AOL we know about, let's hear from Yahoo) and the wider academic research community.
You say you are "alarmed" at what happened at AOL and say "it wasn't a good idea." But please explain what makes you "reasonably satisfied... that this sort of thing would not happen at Google."
Are there serious policies in place protecting individual privacy? Is it something actively on the mind of every employee who loads a big pile of search data onto their laptop for some work project? Are there standard tools for scrubbing indentifying information?
I'd like to give Google the benefit of the doubt here, but this is just too important to me.
Pressure AOL? They have already revoked the data (tried anyway) and have publicly renounced its release. I'm not sure what more you're going to do besides join the inevitable class-action lawsuit.
I'm not the eBay seller, but we have one thing in common. He says in the listing:
Since I love a good bit of irony as much as the next guy, 50% of the proceeds from this sale will go toward the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has worked relentlessly to protect our online privacy.
If you really feel that way, then visit The Electronic Freedom Foundation. They *are* taking the initiative, and you can join them if they match your values.
Even if you don't donate money, they're on top of the issue and can tell you when a call to your congresscritter be most effective.
I'm also glad you brought up public-owned cable service. So long as companies are allowed to compete against city-owned cable, I say the more the merrier.
Of course they can compete. The city-owned cable exists at the pleasure of the citizenry. They are free to demand that their elected officials dump the city-owned operation in favor of a more "Comcastic" offer. (As indeed many municipalities are turning their waterworks over to giant commercial entities that promise lower rates.)
The real real problem with franchising is that it's takes 6 months to a year and who knows how much money to negotiate each one.
I think you mean it takes 6 months to a year for a municpal bureaucrat to pull the contract out of their throat and sign it as given, don't you? I've seen next-to-zero evidence that *any* "negotiating" takes place on behalf of rate-payers in the places I've lived. Not the case with garbage contracts and such, but definitely the case with cable and telco.
In Palo Alto, CA, which has (or did 10 years ago when I lived there) it's own cable service and its own power utility, the rates were significantly lower than in surrounding communities. Imagine that.
We'd all have a lot more/cheaper bandwidth if it wasn't for franchising laws.
The real problem with franchising is that cities don't seem to bother with negotiating a good deal, which requires being willing on ocassion to switch providers. When was the last time you got to *vote* on your telco or cable provider?
OTOH, you now have apartment owners locking into 10-year contracts with cable companies to prevent incursion of future video provided by telcos. That's free market competition, except of course that the individual apartment occupants get no choice.
Personally I don't care what succeeds commercially. The distro that works for "Aunt Tilly" (and my non-geek girlfriend) is the one that will rock the world.
So far neither Fedora nor Ubuntu is there yet, but Ubuntu seems to be trying harder for that audience.
The net neutrality issue is massively important, but that point aside:
Only this year 2006, has the promotional 1-year contract price of 3-6Mbps DSL in my area fallen to what @Home cost EIGHT YEARS AGO.
[When I had service with @Home back in the day, I got 6Mbps for $34/month. At that time, DSL wasn't even offered in my area, and later, after @Home was eviscerated by a phone company, DSL in my area cost $50/month for 1.5Mbps.]
Since the US undeniably has complete control over the worlds oceans, and China depends so much on ships brining in oil, they want to be able to ensure that their economy can't be potentially sabotaged by the US.
Are you kidding me? If the US sabotaged China's access to oil the cost of McDonald's happy meals in Ohio would skyrocket. Have you been to a WalMart or Target since the 80's? EVERYTHING is "Made in China", and WalMart likes it that way because their customers like cheap stuff. And that's not even to mention Chinese financing of US gov't debt through ongoing purchase of treasury bills...
The US needs some real data protection laws, similar to whats in Europe.
I've come to the same conclusion. I'm not aware of proposed legislation to do this, but if any bubbles up I'll be phoning my congresscritters in support of it. It's way overdue.
I'm getting that this about "liveness" and personal expression.
The "liveness" space, where we use our broadband connectivity to join together in real time to socialize around some kind of event, is so wide open and undefined right now.
Video conferencing and online games are just a tiny taste of the possible. It will be really cool to see what pops up to fill this space, and I just hope that us grups get to play too.
So did the other eight vote, and then hold off for Alito, or what? How can you definitively say that Alito cast the deciding vote?
From TFA you didn't read:
A year ago, O'Connor authored a 5-4 decision that encouraged whistleblowers to report sex discrimination in schools. The current case was argued in October but not resolved before her retirement in late January.
A new argument session was held in March with Alito on the bench. He joined the court's other conservatives in Tuesday's decision, which split along traditional conservative-liberal lines.
This would provide the most amazing trolling database ever. Can you imagine the glee within the govt at being able to freely scan every file "owned" by every member of the public.
Actually I would have thought the gov't already had secret deals with the big antivirus companies, forcing them to scan every "private" file for terrorism-related key words.
But then the IRS nailed Symantec with a $1B bill for back taxes, which wouldn't have happened in the world of corrupt secret gov't/bizness collusion that I have nightmares about when I go to bed on a full stomach. So maybe that hasn't happened yet.
You were assigned to the wrong crowd. We're the folks who actually get Dilbert.
[Translation for any partisan astroturfers paid to post here: slashdotters know that engineers often understand reality on the ground much better than the suits.]
The Foundation was a good thing because it allowed $$ to be covered under the not for profit category, and development could continue. That isn't going to happen any more.
Complete FUD. Development on Fedora tomorrow will continue exactly like it did yesterday.
Not to be confused with: U-bum-u -- Linux for *sshats.
Obligatory on-topic remark: Ubuntu is not just the "distro of the week" in comparison with Red Hat. The guy who said that earlier needs to try U-bum-u.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been a Fedora user since RH8, and still am. This Q&A and the discussion hasn't touched on some areas of Fedora's place in the world that seem important to me.
Firstly, in comparison with Ubuntu, Max Spevak mentions that Ubuntu's web presence is better organized. IMHO, this is a reflection of the fact that Ubuntu has a much better-organized community. Community is the primary difference between Fedora and Ubuntu, and it's not a superficial difference.
Second, I don't see much discussion of Max Spevak's role or discussion of Fedora leadership in general. From a mere user's point of view, Fedora has lacked for a guiding hand. Developers who (deservedly) "own" their fiefdoms get to make decisions, but you need someone at a higher level to help keep an even keel and referee the bigger picture. A decent example of this is here, where the Fedora Advisory Board ultimately made the decision to prevent some needless chaos for nvidia driver users that would have been caused by an X.org update. Holding the update for the upcoming FC6 release was a stroke of wisdom IMO, but even if you disagree, it's still an example of project-level leadership.
Additional leadership might help resolve situations like this. There has been much dysfunctional hostility between the "official" Fedora repo folks and the unofficial ones. This is the opposite of community building.
Another place where a guiding hand is useful is maintaining consistency on the desktop. Early versions of Fedora had a consistent look. Now my panel icons are drifting away from any unifying theme. For example, wireshark, firefox, and the Fedora menu all have icons that don't fit visually with any installed theme.
One place Fedora suffers for its lack of community is that usability (that is, the perspective of end-users) is not a key focus for developers. (Network manager would be a *shining* exception, you folks rock.) End-users are ghettoized in forums and lists that developers rarely go near. There is no usability champion. It doesn't "feel" like a priorty in Fedora. (But again, props to the FAB for the X.org update decision.)
An example of where Ubuntu "gets it" when it comes to real-world usability would be the way that package updates are handled. Notification is automatic, and users are already in sudoers or something, so they only need their own password to authorize the updates. (Imperfect yes, but it "Just works" for the most common use-case of a desktop system, and is pre-configured out of the box. Even Aunt Tilly can handle it.)
I haven't switched to Ubuntu myself yet, but I have started installing it for the friends/family for whom I am the go-to-geek, because for them usability trumps all.
I'll be interested to see if Ubuntu can follow through over time, and if Fedora can put down community roots.
That pretty well covers it, thanks. I'm curious whether you find yourself needing an external keyboard alot, but I'll scan through your blog...
By replacement I mean something I can take instead of the lappy when only doing those few things, since schlepping the lappy can be more of a chore and a theft risk. It sounds like the 770 would work for that use-case.
Plus there are those times when it would be nice to do some quick googling but it's just not quite worth the hassle of breaking out the laptop.
(Can you tell I'm rehearsing what to tell the GF? See honey, this is much better than that Maui trip you wanted.)
So as a frequent user, could you spell out the geek-oriented use-cases that the 770 is and isn't good for?
I'm hankering for something that will replace my laptop for doing wifi browsing and email, and the occasional emergency ssh session. This might be it.
I could carry this and a phone, but not another device (PDA or MP3). So the 770 &/or the phone have to pick up the slack. It's not clear from what I've read whether the 770 is a reasonable replacement for the PDA. It's clearly not for MP3.
Also, do you find the small RAM limiting in real-world use?
TIA.
Well that's just what I want to hear. (Of course, it would be better coming from a named source, but hey an AC on Slashdot has almost as much credibility as an official spokescritter these days.)
The geek in me wonders what scrubbing methods are used. (Do they preserve usefulness for the kind of research supposedly intended by the AOL release, yet prevent the NYTimes from finding out who is who?)
And the privacy freak in me wonders if these methods and the need to protect privacy are used and understood in the rest of the industry (AOL we know about, let's hear from Yahoo) and the wider academic research community.
Dear Mr. Schmidt,
... that this sort of thing would not happen at Google."
You say you are "alarmed" at what happened at AOL and say "it wasn't a good idea." But please explain what makes you "reasonably satisfied
Are there serious policies in place protecting individual privacy? Is it something actively on the mind of every employee who loads a big pile of search data onto their laptop for some work project? Are there standard tools for scrubbing indentifying information?
I'd like to give Google the benefit of the doubt here, but this is just too important to me.
If the http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/08/business/media/0 8aol.html">New York Times counts as mainstream in your part of the world, then it has already hit the fan.
Pressure AOL? They have already revoked the data (tried anyway) and have publicly renounced its release. I'm not sure what more you're going to do besides join the inevitable class-action lawsuit.
I'm not the eBay seller, but we have one thing in common. He says in the listing:
If you really feel that way, then visit The Electronic Freedom Foundation. They *are* taking the initiative, and you can join them if they match your values.
Even if you don't donate money, they're on top of the issue and can tell you when a call to your congresscritter be most effective.
Maybe because AOL's privacy policy says so? First because it defines Member Information to include:
And then it says:
Of course they can compete. The city-owned cable exists at the pleasure of the citizenry. They are free to demand that their elected officials dump the city-owned operation in favor of a more "Comcastic" offer. (As indeed many municipalities are turning their waterworks over to giant commercial entities that promise lower rates.)
I think you mean it takes 6 months to a year for a municpal bureaucrat to pull the contract out of their throat and sign it as given, don't you? I've seen next-to-zero evidence that *any* "negotiating" takes place on behalf of rate-payers in the places I've lived. Not the case with garbage contracts and such, but definitely the case with cable and telco.
In Palo Alto, CA, which has (or did 10 years ago when I lived there) it's own cable service and its own power utility, the rates were significantly lower than in surrounding communities. Imagine that.
The real problem with franchising is that cities don't seem to bother with negotiating a good deal, which requires being willing on ocassion to switch providers. When was the last time you got to *vote* on your telco or cable provider?
OTOH, you now have apartment owners locking into 10-year contracts with cable companies to prevent incursion of future video provided by telcos. That's free market competition, except of course that the individual apartment occupants get no choice.
Personally I don't care what succeeds commercially. The distro that works for "Aunt Tilly" (and my non-geek girlfriend) is the one that will rock the world.
So far neither Fedora nor Ubuntu is there yet, but Ubuntu seems to be trying harder for that audience.
Aw c'mon, not even to test the new OhSh*tImInFreefallParkTheHeadBeforeWeBounce command?
The net neutrality issue is massively important, but that point aside:
Only this year 2006, has the promotional 1-year contract price of 3-6Mbps DSL in my area fallen to what @Home cost EIGHT YEARS AGO.
[When I had service with @Home back in the day, I got 6Mbps for $34/month. At that time, DSL wasn't even offered in my area, and later, after @Home was eviscerated by a phone company, DSL in my area cost $50/month for 1.5Mbps.]
P.S.: The FCC can get bent.
Are you kidding me? If the US sabotaged China's access to oil the cost of McDonald's happy meals in Ohio would skyrocket. Have you been to a WalMart or Target since the 80's? EVERYTHING is "Made in China", and WalMart likes it that way because their customers like cheap stuff. And that's not even to mention Chinese financing of US gov't debt through ongoing purchase of treasury bills...
It's a global world-tradin' economy now boy.
I'm getting that this about "liveness" and personal expression.
The "liveness" space, where we use our broadband connectivity to join together in real time to socialize around some kind of event, is so wide open and undefined right now.
Video conferencing and online games are just a tiny taste of the possible. It will be really cool to see what pops up to fill this space, and I just hope that us grups get to play too.
Well of course it doesn't. In order to actually be a fascist someone has to both disagree with me and learn the secret fascist handshake[1].
_______
1. The secret fascist handshake consists of clasping hands while whispering the phrase "Hillary is a socialist."
From TFA you didn't read:
Actually I would have thought the gov't already had secret deals with the big antivirus companies, forcing them to scan every "private" file for terrorism-related key words.
But then the IRS nailed Symantec with a $1B bill for back taxes, which wouldn't have happened in the world of corrupt secret gov't/bizness collusion that I have nightmares about when I go to bed on a full stomach. So maybe that hasn't happened yet.
You were assigned to the wrong crowd. We're the folks who actually get Dilbert.
[Translation for any partisan astroturfers paid to post here: slashdotters know that engineers often understand reality on the ground much better than the suits.]
Complete FUD. Development on Fedora tomorrow will continue exactly like it did yesterday.
Not to be confused with:
U-bum-u -- Linux for *sshats.
Obligatory on-topic remark: Ubuntu is not just the "distro of the week" in comparison with Red Hat. The guy who said that earlier needs to try U-bum-u.
Sounds like Yoda is starting to lose it. The rest of us don't stand a chance.