Hmmmmm.....I don't know where you've been but it appears that Debian is doing just fine. It has more devleopers then ever before, has tons of sponsors, and more Distros then ever are being based on it. I assume you were referencing stable Debian in your post, however it is just what it's name says, "Stable". Stable has been tried and proven over years of testing and fixing. Its not like MS who releases Service Packs and updates with very few tests, and hopes that it doesn't break too many systems. If you want bleeding edge, then use unstable. Debian's unstable is about as stable as Red Hat or any other major distro out there. God forbid people take their time to ensure security and stability for the Stable version. Debian's package management is also the most envied of them all, even by MS users and has been said to be envied by many developers at MS as well. Debian is great, as a matter of fact I'll go so far as to say its perfect. If you had a problem installing it or somethng, you shouldn't generalize the entire distro. Its your fault, deal with it, get over it, and most importantly, learn from it. As Debian stands right now, it does take some knowledge to use, but thats because of it's many great aspects. Afterall, if you can sit down in front of an OS and do 95% of the most important things without having to know anything, how powerful or useful can it be? Learn to use Debian, once you get a hold of it I can almost assure you that you'll love it. One final thing, if you don't know already, UserLinux is being based on Debian for a reason. Learn from others mistakes and pay attention to those who know more then you. Those who are more knowledgeable on the subject obviously picked Debian for a reason. Stop spreading your FUD, your troll was hardly worth my time, but I don't want some newbie thinking that he/she should never try Debian because it sucks. I've used it for years alongside Mandrake, Redhat and Fedora. Debian is far superior for my needs, which are fairly general and anyone who does anything worthwhile with computers would certainly have the same needs.
-Steve
For any presentations that need to be done, Flash is a much better alternative.I haven't used powerpoint for about 5 years or so, but have seen presentations done by it. The flexibility and power offered by flash far surpasses any slideshow application. I'd love to go on about the greatness of Flash, but I haven't the time right now. BTW, it runs great under wine. There is no need to for someone who knows what he is doing to use Powerpoint or Impress.Pn the other side, does anyone know of any good SVG apps similar to Flash, I'd rather be using a truly OSS solution.
Regards,
Steve
not too mention that currently factoring a 512 bit key will still take months, if not years. If someone is willing to put all that money and effort into cracking your key then you've got worse problems on your hands, I'd recommend buying a gun. My point is that just because one key was factored of that length, doesn't mean it is all the sudden faster or easier, it just means that a group of people put alot of effort, money, and thinking into one number and were able to factor that one number. They can't go around factoring 512 bit numbers at their whim now, these things still take time, and alot of it.
Re:I think my form of encryption is better
on
RSA-576 Factored
·
· Score: 5, Informative
No because if you take a xor b where b is your message and a is the key then if all the person had was c (the output) then inorder to find b, they would have to xor it with every possible value of a. This would result in every possible combination of bits(do it on paper and you'll see). So the cracker would be left with a list of every possible way of representing a 2048(just an example) bit number essentially going from 0 to 2^2048. Convert this to ascii and you've got every possible combination of characters that can fit in 2048 bits. That means that any sentence that can be written in 2048 bits would appear in the cracker's lsit and therefore there would be too many logical outcomes and noway too tell which is right.i.e. you could have "The ships will attack on the east coast", "The ships will attack on the west coast", "The plane will attack on the west coast", "We made coffee for the Germans."... or literally every posible combination.
in some cases it is easier in OO. Back when I first learned regular expressions, we were told to turn on the wildcard feature in Find and Replace in MS Word and we were to use their own wierd version of "regular expressions" (if you can call it that)in order to find and replace things. Well I sure was excited to see that OpenOffice didn't replicate this feature, but instead actually uses real regular expressions which can be very useful and its not Microsoft's wierd thing(not only is MS's reg expr not standard but its rather limited). Sure enough I rocked those few assignments:) I sure miss those days.
Green lasers are more susceptible to this kind of thing. You can get one on thinkgeek, and yes you can see that one in mid air too. Its actually pretty cool, you may want to look into it.
So wait....now we can buy Karma from slashdot? Where do I go?
Lets all stop bashing AOL....
on
AOL's $299 PC
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Ok, first of all I know many small firms that use AOL (although it is usually AOL Broadband), second of all AOL does a lot of good for the net. AOL scans every email for viruses and doesn't let any through that has one, but rather they notify the sender, they also have great spam filters. Its very user friendly, and their DSL uses PPPoE so its easy to connect to through a router and then the client machines can jsut pop up AOL and connect throguh the LAN connection which is free (yes it is, i've done it on computers, and yes more then one person from the same acocunt can be using aol at the same time). It helps stop the spread of email worms, does excellent spam filtering, and gives the user every means of modern communication that he/she may need, at the tips of their fingers. Yes its not the most slashdotty type service where people use slackware simply becuase its hard to set up (not trying to start a war here, but thats what it sometimes seems like, where as debian, or gentoo in my opinion are better and easier to set up) AOL is no worse then MSN, except that AOL tries to do some good on the net and are very innovative. BTW, all kinds of music and media are available on AOL too at no cost. It realy is pretty nice and impressive, most of my family uses it. I dont use it, but most users love it. Oh yea AOL also are the nice guys that opened up the TOC protocol after it was the most popular protocol, unlike MSN who forced their protocol on users to make it one of the most popular then locked out everyone else. AOL also supports open source as is seen by the AOL Server and the fact that all(or most) of their servers run Linux. And if you IM ZolaOnAOL (that is AOL's chat bot, it was made by AOL and it isnt jsut some hackers bot) and ask her, "What is the best operating system in the world?" , She'll promptly answer that Linux is. Why are you guys so against a corporation that supports the Open Source movement (true they dont have a linux client, but thats because of the lack of market, it wouldnt really help anything if they did, through the other things that they are doing though, it is helping us) They hate MSN jsut as much as anyone else. We need to support corporations that support us and open protocols/software. Everyone needs to open their eyes. Just my 2 cents.
For all you naysayers who always talk trash about Fedora, I run fedora and debian and fedora alerted me this morning about the problem and patched it in seconds. I updated debian too, but I usually dont update on a daily basis, usually like once a week or something, unless I see something in the news. I would have had no clue about this for about a 3 days if i hadn't read slashdot and didn't have Fedora to alert me. I personally like Debian better for other reasons, but I'm just saying dont bang on Fedora, its a damn good product.
I wish the people I knew didn't recognize me as an expert... My aunt brought her computer to my house on Thanksgiving!And no it wasn't a laptop, and no she didn't mention this to me at all beforehand. Ya know what she said? she said, "Hey Steve, I brought a computer with me, think ya could fix it?" I laughed because we were at a family event and I knew noone would dare request something like that on Thanskgiving. After I realized that noone else was laughing, I grudgingly said, "Whats wrong with it?". And you know what she had the balls to say? "It's slow." !!!! It was a Dell if your wondering and it had a P4 with 1.8ghz and 128 mb of ram. It wasn't the fastest thing in the world, but it certainly wasn't the slowest! She was just used to her suped up computer in work. I tried explaining to her the situation, she just kept saying,"Oh I'm sure you can work that magic of yours" and thigns along those lines. She refused to accept no. And then she tried to make me feel bad because she had to bring it all the way here. I did eventually give in, give it a look and clean up some things, but it didn't really change anything(at least not what she wanted changed). In short, this Thanksgiving sucked.
The question is: Why the hell do people think that you can magically make their computers faster? And why do they ask you at the most inconvenient times? Anyone else have any stories like this?
Both OSes have their uses and I'm not trying to start a war here but... you can't compare Microsoft security to Linux security. Most probems found in linux are found solely due to the fact that its open, and most are theoretical. Compare the number to Microsoft's OS, which is not only closed source, but when a vulnerability is found, you know its exploitable right away.The process of finding vulnerabilities in closed source software is much harder, yet more are found with Microsoft's OS then with Linux. As far as the auto updates goes... a simple cron job can do that in linux if you want it to and it would be simpler then configuring Microsoft Update to do so. Or you could run thin clients if its feasible for whatever business your in, and that solves your problem as well.
Linux is very innovative as well, you obviously don't follow the change logs very closely. But excluding the linux kernel, and rather using some examples from an open source project, Mozilla, tabbed browsing,mouse gestures, pop-up blocking, and of course XUL. These are all extremely useful features that IE has been lacking for years. In particular XUL is a great idea that will likely be highly successful as it reaches the market, and tabbed browsing has made the research and work at my firm more efficient then ever before. Another innovative idea from Open Source is the multiple virtual desktops, which even microsoft realized were great and has incorporated into Longhorn. It is also rumored that Microsoft will be incorporating pop-up blocking into IE in Longhorn. So much for innovative ideas coming from Microsoft.
If you did any research, you would realize that most innovations do come from open source and are then borrowed from the closed source companies. There is a long history of this happening, even Open Office has surpassed Microsoft Office in many areas. Its pdf creation abilities, xml, text effects(its 3d capapbilites are far superior when dealing with text), its ability to type common words in your paper autmotically for you, as well as a ton of others, have all made OpenOffice my choice of office suites and I have actually started migrating my firm to OpenOffice, the reactions are fantastic.
As of right now I administrate an Exchange server at a law firm and I have for a few years. Microsoft isn't all bad and is rather convenient in some areas, but it just doesn't do it for me. I understand all of the "benefits" of using a microsoft solution, and quite frankly, none cut it for me, or I can just as easily (if not easier) obtain the same results under Linux. My work is the only place I use MS products and have recently started a total migration away from them. I didnt do it sooner, because I was at first helping a local highschool migrate to Linux with their Sys Admin on my spare time. I believe I have proven my case to the higher ups in my firm that OpenSource is a better choice. I did this at first through moving everyone's browser to Mozilla, and now am moving people to Open Office. After I complete the server migration, I will start on changing the clients' operating system. I wouldn't go through all this trouble if it wasn't going to make my life easier. I have shown many people that Open Source is better and have enjoyed the benefits myself. Perhaps you have a different preference then me, but my experience has led me to beleive that open source is the smarter choice.
You've got to sacrifice a little ease of use for a ton of usability in Linux. Linux is a very powerful OS in the right hands. OS X is less then par in that area, although it is extremely easy to use. The intents of both OSes are different. Anyway..back to the case in point. If you know what your doing in linux, overcoming something like what you cited isn't that big of a deal, but it can be a complicated process. But try installing two different versions of a Mac OS while keeping two separate boot loaders on two separate partitions on your computer and see how easy it is. The guy apparently knew what he was doing, and knew what he was getting himself into. Hate to tell you, but it wouldn't have been any easier to do what he did even if it was with a mac operating system. Anyone can format a harddrive, and install a linux distro from scratch on a clean system just as easy as anyother OS. Sun was correct in saying that his was a very special case.
BTW...watch your language, when you start your argument off like a moron, it automatically discredits anything else you may have to say.
I think your saying that having something download autmatically and apply itself is a good thing. Am I correct in that assumption? If I am, well then I feel very bad for you, I would never ever let anything be done to my system automatically, and neither should you. This applies especially to closed source programs. One day your gonna come home, try to install some nifty new program and all the sudden you'll see a little box that says "You can't install this. Microsoft has autmaticaly added some crazy DRM scheme to your computer. It was a critical update and this exe was not signed by us so you can't use it. As a matter of fact, you can't do anything anymore, unless someone pays us first and we say its ok by digitally signing their executable. Sorry." Stick with microsoft long enough and you'll feel the pain. I did, fortunately it was 3 years ago and I got out quick.
Yey Debian! Thanks for everything and keep up the good work.
Perhaps you didn't pay attention in history. Japan was trying to take over the world and they had all ready taken care of every other country except the US. The Japanese were very close to controlling the world. They knew that the US was the only thing that stood in its way. The Japanese also attacked America on its own land which was a big no-no. America tried to stay out of the war as long as they could, and they tried hard. After Europe couldn't defend themselves and screwed everything up, we went in and saved all your asses. You'd all be dead or slaves right now. And then after we took care of the Germans,the Japanese had made a lot of progress. We needed to do something and do it quick. You don't actually regret that we used atomic weapons do you? You probably wouldn't be alive right now if we hadn't. We did what we had to do, in the best interest of the world. The world should be on their knees thanking the US, and since the US is the only country that has proven itself as such, yes they should have some say in the matters of the very countries who's asses we saved a few years back. And as far as Iraq goes, every major country wanted it to happen, no one had the balls to do it, so the US did. If Saddam came in your country with guns blazing, nuked your major cities, raped your wives, etc... youd all be crying for the US to come and save you again, and bitching that we hadn't acted earlier before it happened. We saved Europe's ass by invading Iraq, and they are all too stubborn or ignorant to realize it or help us.
How long until hard drives are integrated? All this integration is starting to get a little ridiculous. Microsoft is doing away with Independant Software Developers (i.e. they are coming out with their own AV, and they now have integrated zip utils and cd burning utils), and Intel is doing away with Integrated Hardware Developers. When will the madness stop?
Linux is successful because it is modular. It is what helps it make it so great(besides the awesome community behind it). If Intel starts integrating everything then they are going the way that Microsoft has gone. Everything must be upgraded at once and when one thing breaks, everything must be replaced. Companies should learn from linux and make their products modular. It was great when you could just pull out a burnt card and get a 15 dollar replacment for it. The way wireless is going, I can't see a single standard being around for long. We'll be at 802.11z at 1000gbs before you know it. (That is somewhat of an exageration) My point is that, if i bought a 802.11g compatible motherboard, in 2 or 3 years g won't be the standard anymore. Joe Linuxhacker may get around this with his '1337' skillz, but Joe Schmo and Joe Corporate will most likely feel forced to upgrade. This move is partly intel making its customers life easier, but partly ensuring a future income for intel.My company could probably use its current computers for 10 more years. They used their last ones for at least 6. This integration type stuff I feel is trying to stop that and accelerate upgrades. Its much harder to fix a broken integrated board. Just my 2 cents.
Just imagine what the next generation will be capable of! With the advanage of learning with the aid of computers, the next gen. should think up some great things.
If I did the first thing I would do is format the harddrive. I mean isnt that kind of common sense? That is, if you weren't trying to get information off of the drives. This guy said he didn't know that there was important information on there, so he probably was looking to sell or use them personally (although he may have lied about not knowing). And if he was trying to get information off of the drive, boot up with knoppix. I mean its a good thing that only dumb people are thieves. Writing a program that sends information out whenever there is a net connection isn't hard to do. If I stole these I would have assumed that they had something similar on there and taken every precaution. Neither side really thought this through.
I mean I heard all these great things about this 'Linux' so I downloaded the new kernel thingy. I went into 'My Documents', double clicked it and my computer said that it wasn't an executable. It was the wierdest thing though cause it did execute and my screen turned all blue. It wasn't very functional, but it reminded me of windows exactly. The only it could do was restart my computer, but hey you gotta start somewhere.
I know its against typical slashdot philosophy, but if you did read the entire article you would have seen that he couldn't figure out how to use the bayesian filter! First of all this man is not qualified for writing articles on tech if he can't do this (for anyone who hasn't done it, it is really simple, try it and you'll see). Second of all, he pounded spam assassin for being terrible, but 63% without a bayesian filter is damn good, if not amazing. He should have disabled the bayesian filters on the other products, he would have been seeing like 20-40% accuracy. Spam Assassin is really good, really really good, something like 98-99% accurate. This guy didn't know what he was doing and because (as one poster stated earlier) there wasn't someone to hold his hand, his results were extremely inaccurate.
I in every way support free and open software, I use Debian and any software I use is free and open as well, but in the eyes of most companies, they dont want their competitors stealing their code(even if it is just flash). By "strength" I didnt mean it was good or bad, I just meant that its an edge that is has over wvg. One other point is that Macromedia does to some extent support Linux, i.e. the flash player for moz. If microsoft wins this, do you really think they'll make a viewer for linux? We'll all be left in the dust until a free player is written, but knowing Microsoft they may put some kind of copyright or something and could be capable of stopping that from legally happening. My point is that yes both systems are proprietary, but if i had to pick one, itd be Macromedia, they have no reason not to supoort linux.
...doesnt that mean that the source is easily obtainable. I mean as far as I know this wvg (or svg) doesnt compile. Flash's strength is that developers can develop knowing that noone will steal their code. If wvg stays as pure xml, then its only a "right click->view source" away. Developers wont like that. If wvg does compile, then having it xml based is dumb for there are far more efficient ways of achieving the same goal, granted they may be more complicated, but in the end better.Maybe I'm missing something here, correct me if I'm wrong.
Re:debian is a truly great distribution...
on
Debian 3.0r2 Released
·
· Score: 2, Informative
umm... use unstable, the name is more of a disclaimer then anything else. I'm using it right now and have for a least a year or so. Never had a stability issue. Either I'm just that damn good, or Debian is, and I know its not me.
Way to go Debian, keep up the good work!
Slashdot Mirror
Hmmmmm.....I don't know where you've been but it appears that Debian is doing just fine. It has more devleopers then ever before, has tons of sponsors, and more Distros then ever are being based on it. I assume you were referencing stable Debian in your post, however it is just what it's name says, "Stable". Stable has been tried and proven over years of testing and fixing. Its not like MS who releases Service Packs and updates with very few tests, and hopes that it doesn't break too many systems. If you want bleeding edge, then use unstable. Debian's unstable is about as stable as Red Hat or any other major distro out there. God forbid people take their time to ensure security and stability for the Stable version. Debian's package management is also the most envied of them all, even by MS users and has been said to be envied by many developers at MS as well. Debian is great, as a matter of fact I'll go so far as to say its perfect. If you had a problem installing it or somethng, you shouldn't generalize the entire distro. Its your fault, deal with it, get over it, and most importantly, learn from it. As Debian stands right now, it does take some knowledge to use, but thats because of it's many great aspects. Afterall, if you can sit down in front of an OS and do 95% of the most important things without having to know anything, how powerful or useful can it be? Learn to use Debian, once you get a hold of it I can almost assure you that you'll love it. One final thing, if you don't know already, UserLinux is being based on Debian for a reason. Learn from others mistakes and pay attention to those who know more then you. Those who are more knowledgeable on the subject obviously picked Debian for a reason. Stop spreading your FUD, your troll was hardly worth my time, but I don't want some newbie thinking that he/she should never try Debian because it sucks. I've used it for years alongside Mandrake, Redhat and Fedora. Debian is far superior for my needs, which are fairly general and anyone who does anything worthwhile with computers would certainly have the same needs. -Steve
For any presentations that need to be done, Flash is a much better alternative.I haven't used powerpoint for about 5 years or so, but have seen presentations done by it. The flexibility and power offered by flash far surpasses any slideshow application. I'd love to go on about the greatness of Flash, but I haven't the time right now. BTW, it runs great under wine. There is no need to for someone who knows what he is doing to use Powerpoint or Impress.Pn the other side, does anyone know of any good SVG apps similar to Flash, I'd rather be using a truly OSS solution. Regards, Steve
not too mention that currently factoring a 512 bit key will still take months, if not years. If someone is willing to put all that money and effort into cracking your key then you've got worse problems on your hands, I'd recommend buying a gun. My point is that just because one key was factored of that length, doesn't mean it is all the sudden faster or easier, it just means that a group of people put alot of effort, money, and thinking into one number and were able to factor that one number. They can't go around factoring 512 bit numbers at their whim now, these things still take time, and alot of it.
No because if you take a xor b where b is your message and a is the key then if all the person had was c (the output) then inorder to find b, they would have to xor it with every possible value of a. This would result in every possible combination of bits(do it on paper and you'll see). So the cracker would be left with a list of every possible way of representing a 2048(just an example) bit number essentially going from 0 to 2^2048. Convert this to ascii and you've got every possible combination of characters that can fit in 2048 bits. That means that any sentence that can be written in 2048 bits would appear in the cracker's lsit and therefore there would be too many logical outcomes and noway too tell which is right.i.e. you could have "The ships will attack on the east coast", "The ships will attack on the west coast", "The plane will attack on the west coast", "We made coffee for the Germans." ... or literally every posible combination.
in some cases it is easier in OO. Back when I first learned regular expressions, we were told to turn on the wildcard feature in Find and Replace in MS Word and we were to use their own wierd version of "regular expressions" (if you can call it that)in order to find and replace things. Well I sure was excited to see that OpenOffice didn't replicate this feature, but instead actually uses real regular expressions which can be very useful and its not Microsoft's wierd thing(not only is MS's reg expr not standard but its rather limited). Sure enough I rocked those few assignments:) I sure miss those days.
Green lasers are more susceptible to this kind of thing. You can get one on thinkgeek, and yes you can see that one in mid air too. Its actually pretty cool, you may want to look into it.
So wait....now we can buy Karma from slashdot? Where do I go?
Ok, first of all I know many small firms that use AOL (although it is usually AOL Broadband), second of all AOL does a lot of good for the net. AOL scans every email for viruses and doesn't let any through that has one, but rather they notify the sender, they also have great spam filters. Its very user friendly, and their DSL uses PPPoE so its easy to connect to through a router and then the client machines can jsut pop up AOL and connect throguh the LAN connection which is free (yes it is, i've done it on computers, and yes more then one person from the same acocunt can be using aol at the same time). It helps stop the spread of email worms, does excellent spam filtering, and gives the user every means of modern communication that he/she may need, at the tips of their fingers. Yes its not the most slashdotty type service where people use slackware simply becuase its hard to set up (not trying to start a war here, but thats what it sometimes seems like, where as debian, or gentoo in my opinion are better and easier to set up) AOL is no worse then MSN, except that AOL tries to do some good on the net and are very innovative. BTW, all kinds of music and media are available on AOL too at no cost. It realy is pretty nice and impressive, most of my family uses it. I dont use it, but most users love it. Oh yea AOL also are the nice guys that opened up the TOC protocol after it was the most popular protocol, unlike MSN who forced their protocol on users to make it one of the most popular then locked out everyone else. AOL also supports open source as is seen by the AOL Server and the fact that all(or most) of their servers run Linux. And if you IM ZolaOnAOL (that is AOL's chat bot, it was made by AOL and it isnt jsut some hackers bot) and ask her, "What is the best operating system in the world?" , She'll promptly answer that Linux is. Why are you guys so against a corporation that supports the Open Source movement (true they dont have a linux client, but thats because of the lack of market, it wouldnt really help anything if they did, through the other things that they are doing though, it is helping us) They hate MSN jsut as much as anyone else. We need to support corporations that support us and open protocols/software. Everyone needs to open their eyes. Just my 2 cents.
For all you naysayers who always talk trash about Fedora, I run fedora and debian and fedora alerted me this morning about the problem and patched it in seconds. I updated debian too, but I usually dont update on a daily basis, usually like once a week or something, unless I see something in the news. I would have had no clue about this for about a 3 days if i hadn't read slashdot and didn't have Fedora to alert me. I personally like Debian better for other reasons, but I'm just saying dont bang on Fedora, its a damn good product.
I wish the people I knew didn't recognize me as an expert... My aunt brought her computer to my house on Thanksgiving!And no it wasn't a laptop, and no she didn't mention this to me at all beforehand. Ya know what she said? she said, "Hey Steve, I brought a computer with me, think ya could fix it?" I laughed because we were at a family event and I knew noone would dare request something like that on Thanskgiving. After I realized that noone else was laughing, I grudgingly said, "Whats wrong with it?". And you know what she had the balls to say? "It's slow." !!!! It was a Dell if your wondering and it had a P4 with 1.8ghz and 128 mb of ram. It wasn't the fastest thing in the world, but it certainly wasn't the slowest! She was just used to her suped up computer in work. I tried explaining to her the situation, she just kept saying,"Oh I'm sure you can work that magic of yours" and thigns along those lines. She refused to accept no. And then she tried to make me feel bad because she had to bring it all the way here. I did eventually give in, give it a look and clean up some things, but it didn't really change anything(at least not what she wanted changed). In short, this Thanksgiving sucked.
The question is: Why the hell do people think that you can magically make their computers faster? And why do they ask you at the most inconvenient times? Anyone else have any stories like this?
Both OSes have their uses and I'm not trying to start a war here but... you can't compare Microsoft security to Linux security. Most probems found in linux are found solely due to the fact that its open, and most are theoretical. Compare the number to Microsoft's OS, which is not only closed source, but when a vulnerability is found, you know its exploitable right away.The process of finding vulnerabilities in closed source software is much harder, yet more are found with Microsoft's OS then with Linux. As far as the auto updates goes... a simple cron job can do that in linux if you want it to and it would be simpler then configuring Microsoft Update to do so. Or you could run thin clients if its feasible for whatever business your in, and that solves your problem as well.
Linux is very innovative as well, you obviously don't follow the change logs very closely. But excluding the linux kernel, and rather using some examples from an open source project, Mozilla, tabbed browsing,mouse gestures, pop-up blocking, and of course XUL. These are all extremely useful features that IE has been lacking for years. In particular XUL is a great idea that will likely be highly successful as it reaches the market, and tabbed browsing has made the research and work at my firm more efficient then ever before. Another innovative idea from Open Source is the multiple virtual desktops, which even microsoft realized were great and has incorporated into Longhorn. It is also rumored that Microsoft will be incorporating pop-up blocking into IE in Longhorn. So much for innovative ideas coming from Microsoft.
If you did any research, you would realize that most innovations do come from open source and are then borrowed from the closed source companies. There is a long history of this happening, even Open Office has surpassed Microsoft Office in many areas. Its pdf creation abilities, xml, text effects(its 3d capapbilites are far superior when dealing with text), its ability to type common words in your paper autmotically for you, as well as a ton of others, have all made OpenOffice my choice of office suites and I have actually started migrating my firm to OpenOffice, the reactions are fantastic.
As of right now I administrate an Exchange server at a law firm and I have for a few years. Microsoft isn't all bad and is rather convenient in some areas, but it just doesn't do it for me. I understand all of the "benefits" of using a microsoft solution, and quite frankly, none cut it for me, or I can just as easily (if not easier) obtain the same results under Linux. My work is the only place I use MS products and have recently started a total migration away from them. I didnt do it sooner, because I was at first helping a local highschool migrate to Linux with their Sys Admin on my spare time. I believe I have proven my case to the higher ups in my firm that OpenSource is a better choice. I did this at first through moving everyone's browser to Mozilla, and now am moving people to Open Office. After I complete the server migration, I will start on changing the clients' operating system. I wouldn't go through all this trouble if it wasn't going to make my life easier. I have shown many people that Open Source is better and have enjoyed the benefits myself. Perhaps you have a different preference then me, but my experience has led me to beleive that open source is the smarter choice.
You've got to sacrifice a little ease of use for a ton of usability in Linux. Linux is a very powerful OS in the right hands. OS X is less then par in that area, although it is extremely easy to use. The intents of both OSes are different. Anyway..back to the case in point. If you know what your doing in linux, overcoming something like what you cited isn't that big of a deal, but it can be a complicated process. But try installing two different versions of a Mac OS while keeping two separate boot loaders on two separate partitions on your computer and see how easy it is. The guy apparently knew what he was doing, and knew what he was getting himself into. Hate to tell you, but it wouldn't have been any easier to do what he did even if it was with a mac operating system. Anyone can format a harddrive, and install a linux distro from scratch on a clean system just as easy as anyother OS. Sun was correct in saying that his was a very special case.
BTW...watch your language, when you start your argument off like a moron, it automatically discredits anything else you may have to say.
What about that 500ghz transistor that was on /. a few weeks ago? I am by no means a hardware engineer so any input is welcome.
I think your saying that having something download autmatically and apply itself is a good thing. Am I correct in that assumption? If I am, well then I feel very bad for you, I would never ever let anything be done to my system automatically, and neither should you. This applies especially to closed source programs. One day your gonna come home, try to install some nifty new program and all the sudden you'll see a little box that says "You can't install this. Microsoft has autmaticaly added some crazy DRM scheme to your computer. It was a critical update and this exe was not signed by us so you can't use it. As a matter of fact, you can't do anything anymore, unless someone pays us first and we say its ok by digitally signing their executable. Sorry." Stick with microsoft long enough and you'll feel the pain. I did, fortunately it was 3 years ago and I got out quick.
Yey Debian! Thanks for everything and keep up the good work.
Perhaps you didn't pay attention in history. Japan was trying to take over the world and they had all ready taken care of every other country except the US. The Japanese were very close to controlling the world. They knew that the US was the only thing that stood in its way. The Japanese also attacked America on its own land which was a big no-no. America tried to stay out of the war as long as they could, and they tried hard. After Europe couldn't defend themselves and screwed everything up, we went in and saved all your asses. You'd all be dead or slaves right now. And then after we took care of the Germans,the Japanese had made a lot of progress. We needed to do something and do it quick. You don't actually regret that we used atomic weapons do you? You probably wouldn't be alive right now if we hadn't. We did what we had to do, in the best interest of the world. The world should be on their knees thanking the US, and since the US is the only country that has proven itself as such, yes they should have some say in the matters of the very countries who's asses we saved a few years back. And as far as Iraq goes, every major country wanted it to happen, no one had the balls to do it, so the US did. If Saddam came in your country with guns blazing, nuked your major cities, raped your wives, etc... youd all be crying for the US to come and save you again, and bitching that we hadn't acted earlier before it happened. We saved Europe's ass by invading Iraq, and they are all too stubborn or ignorant to realize it or help us.
How long until hard drives are integrated? All this integration is starting to get a little ridiculous. Microsoft is doing away with Independant Software Developers (i.e. they are coming out with their own AV, and they now have integrated zip utils and cd burning utils), and Intel is doing away with Integrated Hardware Developers. When will the madness stop?
Linux is successful because it is modular. It is what helps it make it so great(besides the awesome community behind it). If Intel starts integrating everything then they are going the way that Microsoft has gone. Everything must be upgraded at once and when one thing breaks, everything must be replaced. Companies should learn from linux and make their products modular. It was great when you could just pull out a burnt card and get a 15 dollar replacment for it. The way wireless is going, I can't see a single standard being around for long. We'll be at 802.11z at 1000gbs before you know it. (That is somewhat of an exageration) My point is that, if i bought a 802.11g compatible motherboard, in 2 or 3 years g won't be the standard anymore. Joe Linuxhacker may get around this with his '1337' skillz, but Joe Schmo and Joe Corporate will most likely feel forced to upgrade. This move is partly intel making its customers life easier, but partly ensuring a future income for intel.My company could probably use its current computers for 10 more years. They used their last ones for at least 6. This integration type stuff I feel is trying to stop that and accelerate upgrades. Its much harder to fix a broken integrated board. Just my 2 cents.
Just imagine what the next generation will be capable of! With the advanage of learning with the aid of computers, the next gen. should think up some great things.
If I did the first thing I would do is format the harddrive. I mean isnt that kind of common sense? That is, if you weren't trying to get information off of the drives. This guy said he didn't know that there was important information on there, so he probably was looking to sell or use them personally (although he may have lied about not knowing). And if he was trying to get information off of the drive, boot up with knoppix. I mean its a good thing that only dumb people are thieves. Writing a program that sends information out whenever there is a net connection isn't hard to do. If I stole these I would have assumed that they had something similar on there and taken every precaution. Neither side really thought this through.
I mean I heard all these great things about this 'Linux' so I downloaded the new kernel thingy. I went into 'My Documents', double clicked it and my computer said that it wasn't an executable. It was the wierdest thing though cause it did execute and my screen turned all blue. It wasn't very functional, but it reminded me of windows exactly. The only it could do was restart my computer, but hey you gotta start somewhere.
I know its against typical slashdot philosophy, but if you did read the entire article you would have seen that he couldn't figure out how to use the bayesian filter! First of all this man is not qualified for writing articles on tech if he can't do this (for anyone who hasn't done it, it is really simple, try it and you'll see). Second of all, he pounded spam assassin for being terrible, but 63% without a bayesian filter is damn good, if not amazing. He should have disabled the bayesian filters on the other products, he would have been seeing like 20-40% accuracy. Spam Assassin is really good, really really good, something like 98-99% accurate. This guy didn't know what he was doing and because (as one poster stated earlier) there wasn't someone to hold his hand, his results were extremely inaccurate.
I better hurry up and get this before its too late.
I in every way support free and open software, I use Debian and any software I use is free and open as well, but in the eyes of most companies, they dont want their competitors stealing their code(even if it is just flash). By "strength" I didnt mean it was good or bad, I just meant that its an edge that is has over wvg. One other point is that Macromedia does to some extent support Linux, i.e. the flash player for moz. If microsoft wins this, do you really think they'll make a viewer for linux? We'll all be left in the dust until a free player is written, but knowing Microsoft they may put some kind of copyright or something and could be capable of stopping that from legally happening. My point is that yes both systems are proprietary, but if i had to pick one, itd be Macromedia, they have no reason not to supoort linux.
...doesnt that mean that the source is easily obtainable. I mean as far as I know this wvg (or svg) doesnt compile. Flash's strength is that developers can develop knowing that noone will steal their code. If wvg stays as pure xml, then its only a "right click->view source" away. Developers wont like that. If wvg does compile, then having it xml based is dumb for there are far more efficient ways of achieving the same goal, granted they may be more complicated, but in the end better.Maybe I'm missing something here, correct me if I'm wrong.
umm... use unstable, the name is more of a disclaimer then anything else. I'm using it right now and have for a least a year or so. Never had a stability issue. Either I'm just that damn good, or Debian is, and I know its not me.
Way to go Debian, keep up the good work!