For starters, MS didn't invent the start menu, it was Apple, all MS did was market it in a way that disillusioned people who didn't do much research thought that it Microsofts idea
Now.. where to start:
http://wwws.sun.com/software/looking_glass/
Composite/Xdamage: One thing that has kept us behind Microsoft for a while graphics wise. These allow real transparencies. they are 1 month off..
Enlightenment 17: This has amazing graphics already (try entrance.. it works already), and blows away anything I have ever seen. The people who code enlightenment are also well known as technical geniuses and are excellent at optimisation, so they can do high quality graphics VERY fast, and very efficiently.
Dashboard: While Microsoft is bragging about their integrated search technologies, unknown to many, this is already available in linux too.. http://www.nat.org/dashboard . In fact, Microsoft stole the idea from that...
Full hardware accellerated window: The accelleration system is being changed now, and I'm guessing that within 2 Xorg releases, there will be nothing left that isn't accellerated.
"DirectX shading" Let me ruin your disillusions about the magical directx.. Its behind, its always been behind, and whatever it can do, opengl can do a lot easier.
XUL: Our new XAML like thing.. Its being developed for Mozilla. Do you even know what that is???
And about your comment about no desktops using the new features.. do more research!!! You'll notice that everyone has been migrating to SVG type graphics already and cairo is the most likely method that will be used to accellerate them. You obviously haven't noticed this though.. Because I bet you haven't touched CVS though, so have no idea whats really going on.
Now, heres the thing you prove you haven't done your research on.. What about stuff like SElinux that Linux has but Microsoft doesn't eh. Microsoft is bragging about the new stack smashing protection in SP2, but just about every Nix distro/type has had it for years.
And what about stuff like gdesklets and superkaramba?? I'm not sure exactly, but I think that we beat Microsoft on those things...
Come back after you've tried Entrance from E17.. http://xcomputerman.com/pages/entrance.html . Those kind of effects already I can honestly say beat longhorns by a long shot (at least what I've seen). After you tried that.. You'll get a taste for the future.
And about integration, you have no idea about dbus, shared-mime-info, etc obviously, because that stuff is already making a massive difference integration wise..
We have cairo.. same kind of thing, and people are modifying stuff to implement it everywhere.. Theres also many other technologies to make up everything that Microsofts new one will do (the difference is though that we are much closer to getting a stable version)
http://www.freedesktop.org/Cairo/Home
Just dont take all of Microsofts noise too seriously, just be aware that by 2006, linux will have completely equivilent technologies (in many cases we already do), and just cause we dont make much noise about it, dont think that they dont exist, or aren't planned for the near future.
Honestly, the stuff which I have seen for longhorn so far hasn't been mindblowingly amazing, and are really just things where they are trying to catch up to MAC OS X, or linux
distributed security is one thing I would like to see improved.. Currently I doubt any Unix OS has any system to secure over network, like distributed policies or something.. policies for openmosix or something similar.. I wonder how well jail systems would work over openmosix..
You mean SElinux?? Thats improves linux security dramatically, but it all depends on the policies really..
http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/
Stuff like Selinux though and NX should be considered as the last line of defence though, because they wont prevent people crashing the daemon, and can be circumvented..
I've seen this article, and its completely wrong... The reason is that they are basing the results on all the linux programs, which means that they are using security advisaries for programs even like X-chat and such, advisaries which MS will never release, so the valnerablilities exist, but are hidden.
Its also been long known that IE and OE, and the entire internal infrastructure of Windows is insecure, while linux can be set up without those problems (I personally would never set up a public remote shell using windows).
It also doesn't take into account a lot of things such as propolice, or other systems that are commonly enabled on linux distributions today.
Dont give this article any credit.. Because I bet that if we compared the internal list from Microsoft of known security flaws, with all the internal lists of linux, then there will be a clear winner security wise.
The only people who use public exploits to highlight the security of the operating systems, are either done by highly incompetant security "experts", or by people trying to bend the results like what MS tried to do previously by comparing an ancient copy of redhat to windows 2003.
I've heard about many courses like this.. and believe me, its not a new concept. Overall, the courses I believe are generally relatively crap too, because they only teach simple exploits.
One good thing, is that it keeps them script kiddies. The day the "ethical hackers" (as they like to call themselves, probably because they think it sounds better then script kiddie) actually wake up and know what they are doing, is the day we get worms which we cant control.
I've never actually seen a ethical hacker who actually has something to really contribute to the hacking community, in fact, I've seen alot of irony in the ethical hacking community. One persom who called himself a ethical hacker, actually blackmailed companies into paying up (what he did was kept crashing servers.. I know an adobe server was one of his targets), and then tell them that he could fix that if they payed him. The irony is that he didn't think it was melicious because "he wasn't forcing them to pay up". And just after seeing stuff like that by the ethical hacking community, pretty much confirmed to me that to become a ethical hacker, the steps are:
1) Go to security focus
2) get an exploit
3) Scan a few computers and use it
For starters, Security.. I have never heard of anyone getting an IE exploit fixed when they privately disclosed it to MS in less then 3 months.. And I believe that that will be a major cause of windows attacks after NX gets added. In fact, Microsoft's only real attempt at trying to secure windows against script kiddies has been bugging securityfocus and forums to stop disclosing windows exploits (which still leaves it open to the better hackers, who might just one day release a worm using that exploit, which is when it will get fixed).
Next, me and my friends were doing a group assignment for 2 days, and all 3 of my friends laptops had explorer crash at least once, while my linux laptop easily stood its ground even though it had less ram and was slower then all the rest, but ran linux (in fact, at that time it was even running a version of gnome not yet marked as stable and it still beat windows).
Microsoft blatantly ignores bug fix requests for months on end.. Yesterday I asked for a bug fix for a D plugin for eclipse.. It was fixed by the time I woke up the next morning.
Microsoft also purposely digitally signs simple stuff like themes, so that only they can install new themes on your computer.. That doesn't appeal to me. In gnome I dont even need to pay for external programs like windowsblinds to skin anything I want. In fact, I even gave grub a new background
Microsoft barely puts much effort into optimisation. NTFS runs 2X slower then reiser4, and reiser4 is getting old.. Because Microsoft doesn't have any competition to benchmark things against, they prioritise new features over performance.. Thats why the only things you ever see them actively working on are things like Directx, which is only updated to try to get knock opengl out of the market, and all the coders out there know that opengl is highly portable, unlike directx.
Windows is poorly organised.. Lets be brutally honest.. When you need those annoying personalisation buttons at the bottom of the screen, even though you only installed a fifth of the apps you have installed on your linux box, you know that microsoft has some serious problems with proper gui design and organisation.
It costs a killing when you have more then one computer, and you dont even get free tech support.. In fact, you need to pay microsoft to tell them when you find an exploit..
Its uninnovative.. Whens the last time you have been able to spot something in windows which hasn't been done before.. NEVER. They just patent everything, even though it is rare they thought of it first.
Its hard to fix bugs... Microsoft have conveniantly designed windows in a way that if theres problems, you only solution is to wipe and completely reinstall.. Not make it easy to diagnose the problem.. that would be crazy.
you dont get what you paid for.. if you buy a mac, or you buy linux, you get an advantage.. If you pay for windows all you get is a command.com file basically.. nothing of use is included.. If you buy linux at least you get free tech support and many commercial apps and ebooks etc. If you buy a MAC, you dont just get a stripped down OS either, you get a OS with a great GUI, thats easy to use (a commercial copy of unix that is powerful).. Even though its only a bit less stripped down then windows, at least a MAC is always cutting edge, Windows just tags behind macs with nothing. While linux just tags along behind macs, at least it comes with programs to make up for it.
And thats my incomplete list of problems with windows:)
Last time I checked, http://www.nat.org/dashboard/ has been doing this for a very long time.. So this patent probably isn't legal..
http://www.nat.org/dashboard/fixme.php3 thats their automatically generated todo list..
So, I guess this patent wont last long...
The reason isn't only because of the licensing, its also because Xfree86 was a badly managed project.. It was very common for programmers to write code which wasn't accepted (I heard for instance the cygwin coders spent a very long time coding patches which they refused to accept).
They also moved slowly.. At the rate Xfree86 was going.. in 10 years maybe we'd be getting up to OS X level, but with xorg, I know a few people are working on the compositing already (the stuff needed for the translucent window effects and stuff), and libraries like cairo I'd imagine will be better utilised.
So, many of the flames here I think are wrong, and are made by people who have no idea what the current situation is.. In fact, I'm betting that it will be a year tops until everyone here is thankful of the changes..
I'm not a coder for Xorg, but I do hang around the channel alot, and have seen how fast Xorg is evolving (I do code though)
Anyway, you want simple applications, and maybe a bit more stable server, go Xfree86.. If you want something, that is more cutting edge, can easily produce nice next generation effects that can surpass longhorn, Xorg is your best choice for the future.
Haven't you noticed that nothing has visibly changed in X since the first accellerated ones came out, other then more drivers (lets face it, you could still run Xfree86 3.3 and get pretty much the same experience then now, if your drivers worked on it). Xorg however will add extensions that will finally make it worth while enough to be hoping for an upgrade.
The other day I saw one that wasn't self installing, however had the mozilla firefox extensions..
Maybe the mozilla developers should have security levels on the extensions so that certain ones can be permanently blocked so u dont accidently install them, after the 10th time its popped up.. Would also be nice if there was a untrusted extensions database too, that means that if someone chooses to use it, that some known dodgy applets would be blocked (which contain spyware or whatever)..
But to avoid any legal problems, just let users mark stuff as spyware, and when a certain threshold is reached.. block it in the database.
Maybe talk about it on the IRC chan.. I want to at least wait until alpha 3 or 4 before I get the community to touch it though (ur right about the need for sandboxing though, that will come in later).
irc.freenode.net
#driverondemand
I'm in there alot of the time..
To deal with different kernel versions, theres a flag for each driver on the list that sets what kernels it works on.. Whole thing needs revamping though, so I will improve that.. But yeah, if a driver doesn't work on a specific kernel, the next suitable one on the list is installed instead..
It doesn't have to run in automated mode... Theres also a rating system (which allows u to disable unreliable drivers).. Thats gonna take some work though to get it up to scratch..
activex is completely different.. No one reviews the code for that, and bad activex controls dont even get their certificites revoked, and they just hand out their certs without checking.. This is completely different.. There will be lots of checks to ensure that the vendor certs actually belong to the vendor, and if one is found to be compromised, or their or files with worms, they will just be taken off the server to protect ppl..
This system is no less secure then apt-get, RPM's, or whatever, and just about everyone these days uses package management..
In the cases of stuff like RPM's, actually more secure (its especially more secure then services like RPMfind)
kudzu is a bit different.. That just looks at a list of installed devices and finds an appropriate driver (only installed ones)..
Mine looks at a list of installed devices, and if no driver is found, it goes online and downloads one.. The lists of devices can contain many drivers on the db, and so if a driver doesn't work in the list, it tries the next..
Think of mine as kudzu/hotplug with an unlimited amount of drivers for every device out (included ones not installed yet)..
Kudzu just uses installed ones..
Driver on demand solves the old linux problem of having to look up drivers for devices you dont have installed, and automatically installs them for you..
The cool thing is that when PCI-hotplug comes out, u can pretty much change every device in your system without installing any drivers for them.. So newbies can easily handle it
Thats a obvious drawback of the system:P
Network cards very rarely have problems though (in fact, never seen anyone object that their's doesn't work).. Wireless networks though very commonly have problems.. I didn't think that was that much of a concern because users could just use a hardwired network to install the drivers and get them running.
I have actually thought about hooking this up with a P2P like system for large drivers, but if I end up doing that, its way in the future.. Such a system would probably use gnutella or something like that, but at this time, I think its better the manufacturers handle the entire traffic, because even if we P2P'ed the drivers, they probably still wouldn't bother dropping prices:(
I think people are finally starting to realise that they are nutcases.. 5 days ago their stocks were 11 days, now they are 8.. their stocks are dropping faster and faster.. if the drop continues at this rate, they will be bankrupt within a month..
The best thing is that they have killed any chances of anyone buying SCO products again.. Because why would you spend money on a product that is in a very high risk position, from a company obviously going bankrupt.. And now that they examined it to ensure theres no stolen code, it leaves them with no income because no one will buy a license now that they are sure that we didn't steal anything.
Lets bet on how long until they go bankrupt.. I'm betting 2 months;)
umm, I go to monash uni too and before they were using NFS, I haven't really tried out the AFS drives yet except over ra-clay and stuff, but from the short time I used them on the network, they are far better. I remember all the NFS probs they had (I must have lost at least 4 or 5 assignments on them and lost at least 20% in marks). AFS has disconnected operation so should be much better.. Have you tried it out this year much..
It might also be hanging because they are trying to make different fetches off the network though all the time that can't be cached..
To me its seemed to be alot better then all of those NFS stale file entries from last year, that I used to get all the time.. So far I've had no probs with AFS at monash. But then again, I'm 3rd year comp sci now so I haven't been using it as much as I used to.
Then again, doesn't surprise me if its not set up right.. Monash administration is awful. they wont even support setting up a jabber server:(
Network also seemed faster at monash (probably a side effect of the disconnected operation by AFS)..
I doubt SCO will have any money left by the end of the IBM case to be honest (they will have to file for bankrupsy before then)
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=SCOX&t=3m&l=on&z=m &q=l&c= I expect the climb in that graph to start dropping again quickly cause of this..
At some point SCO will have to give up anyway..
The funny thing about this whole lawsuit is that even if SCO by some off chance wins, IBM will just sue them anyway again.. And there must be at least a few hundred pending lawsuits against SCO now in every country (which are waiting the conclusion of this case). What I predict will happen is that these lawsuits will be emphasised more close to the end of the lawsuit, and SCO's stocks will drop like a brick at that point forcing them to completely cut back their operations and sell everything to make it through this case.
So, what is happening now is irrelevant, its what happens near the end of the case where things will really warm up
Thats not strictly true.. On a speed/watt basis, efficeons are by far the best. It also depends on what ur doing.. The VLIW architecture auto optimises, so some things will run very well on efficeons (and they get faster as they run).. Also, unlike the intel and AMD mobile processors, efficeons aren't just some hacked up processor designed for something else.. The 3 hours of computing on even the centrino's isn't great when u consider that the transmeta's last about 12 hours, and chances are u wont use ur laptop to play doom3 either
He is right though.. the efficeons are fast.. not as fast as the pentium-m's or mobile AMD's, but a very decent speed, gets faster as it runs and awesome battery life make transmeta processors a very good choice..
Could be wrong, but transmeta's I think dont need fans, so they are also very silent.
People should remember that the future of computers is clustered CPU's (like openmosix) and wireless, to share CPU power, so in that point of time u wont need much CPU (cause u will just leech it off other computers on the wireless network if u need it) and when that happens, the only reason why the CPU will matter is for when u aren't connected to a network... still, 1GHZ, or more processing power is definately sufficient (my laptop only has 850 P3, which I'm surviving off easily, even with gentoo). Its no athlon 64 FX, but honestly, if u need that kind of power just buy a workstation...
Thats what i meant.. To maintain control over something, it needs a point of centralisation.. For instance, if u have online stores, u need a central point to collect the money (or u cant collect it), if u have a car, theres a point in which the driver is in control (the drivers seat), if that wasn't there, the car would be in control of itself. And finally, another example is spyware.. it needs a central point to collect the data..
And that was the point that I guess I should have emphasized more on.. Networks like jabber are impossible to control, because MS can take one server offline, they can mess with their own servers protocols, but they cant control all the servers because it doesn't have a central point to control
Slashdot Mirror
well, you've really done your research..
For starters, MS didn't invent the start menu, it was Apple, all MS did was market it in a way that disillusioned people who didn't do much research thought that it Microsofts idea
Now.. where to start: http://wwws.sun.com/software/looking_glass/
Composite/Xdamage: One thing that has kept us behind Microsoft for a while graphics wise. These allow real transparencies. they are 1 month off..
Enlightenment 17: This has amazing graphics already (try entrance.. it works already), and blows away anything I have ever seen. The people who code enlightenment are also well known as technical geniuses and are excellent at optimisation, so they can do high quality graphics VERY fast, and very efficiently.
Dashboard: While Microsoft is bragging about their integrated search technologies, unknown to many, this is already available in linux too.. http://www.nat.org/dashboard . In fact, Microsoft stole the idea from that...
Full hardware accellerated window: The accelleration system is being changed now, and I'm guessing that within 2 Xorg releases, there will be nothing left that isn't accellerated.
"DirectX shading" Let me ruin your disillusions about the magical directx.. Its behind, its always been behind, and whatever it can do, opengl can do a lot easier.
XUL: Our new XAML like thing.. Its being developed for Mozilla. Do you even know what that is???
And about your comment about no desktops using the new features.. do more research!!! You'll notice that everyone has been migrating to SVG type graphics already and cairo is the most likely method that will be used to accellerate them. You obviously haven't noticed this though.. Because I bet you haven't touched CVS though, so have no idea whats really going on.
Now, heres the thing you prove you haven't done your research on.. What about stuff like SElinux that Linux has but Microsoft doesn't eh. Microsoft is bragging about the new stack smashing protection in SP2, but just about every Nix distro/type has had it for years.
And what about stuff like gdesklets and superkaramba?? I'm not sure exactly, but I think that we beat Microsoft on those things...
Come back after you've tried Entrance from E17.. http://xcomputerman.com/pages/entrance.html . Those kind of effects already I can honestly say beat longhorns by a long shot (at least what I've seen). After you tried that.. You'll get a taste for the future.
And about integration, you have no idea about dbus, shared-mime-info, etc obviously, because that stuff is already making a massive difference integration wise..
We have cairo.. same kind of thing, and people are modifying stuff to implement it everywhere.. Theres also many other technologies to make up everything that Microsofts new one will do (the difference is though that we are much closer to getting a stable version)
http://www.freedesktop.org/Cairo/Home
Just dont take all of Microsofts noise too seriously, just be aware that by 2006, linux will have completely equivilent technologies (in many cases we already do), and just cause we dont make much noise about it, dont think that they dont exist, or aren't planned for the near future.
Honestly, the stuff which I have seen for longhorn so far hasn't been mindblowingly amazing, and are really just things where they are trying to catch up to MAC OS X, or linux
distributed security is one thing I would like to see improved.. Currently I doubt any Unix OS has any system to secure over network, like distributed policies or something.. policies for openmosix or something similar.. I wonder how well jail systems would work over openmosix..
You mean SElinux?? Thats improves linux security dramatically, but it all depends on the policies really..
http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/
Stuff like Selinux though and NX should be considered as the last line of defence though, because they wont prevent people crashing the daemon, and can be circumvented..
I've seen this article, and its completely wrong... The reason is that they are basing the results on all the linux programs, which means that they are using security advisaries for programs even like X-chat and such, advisaries which MS will never release, so the valnerablilities exist, but are hidden.
Its also been long known that IE and OE, and the entire internal infrastructure of Windows is insecure, while linux can be set up without those problems (I personally would never set up a public remote shell using windows).
It also doesn't take into account a lot of things such as propolice, or other systems that are commonly enabled on linux distributions today.
Dont give this article any credit.. Because I bet that if we compared the internal list from Microsoft of known security flaws, with all the internal lists of linux, then there will be a clear winner security wise.
The only people who use public exploits to highlight the security of the operating systems, are either done by highly incompetant security "experts", or by people trying to bend the results like what MS tried to do previously by comparing an ancient copy of redhat to windows 2003.
I've heard about many courses like this.. and believe me, its not a new concept. Overall, the courses I believe are generally relatively crap too, because they only teach simple exploits.
One good thing, is that it keeps them script kiddies. The day the "ethical hackers" (as they like to call themselves, probably because they think it sounds better then script kiddie) actually wake up and know what they are doing, is the day we get worms which we cant control.
I've never actually seen a ethical hacker who actually has something to really contribute to the hacking community, in fact, I've seen alot of irony in the ethical hacking community. One persom who called himself a ethical hacker, actually blackmailed companies into paying up (what he did was kept crashing servers.. I know an adobe server was one of his targets), and then tell them that he could fix that if they payed him. The irony is that he didn't think it was melicious because "he wasn't forcing them to pay up". And just after seeing stuff like that by the ethical hacking community, pretty much confirmed to me that to become a ethical hacker, the steps are:
1) Go to security focus
2) get an exploit
3) Scan a few computers and use it
For starters, Security.. I have never heard of anyone getting an IE exploit fixed when they privately disclosed it to MS in less then 3 months.. And I believe that that will be a major cause of windows attacks after NX gets added. In fact, Microsoft's only real attempt at trying to secure windows against script kiddies has been bugging securityfocus and forums to stop disclosing windows exploits (which still leaves it open to the better hackers, who might just one day release a worm using that exploit, which is when it will get fixed).
:)
Next, me and my friends were doing a group assignment for 2 days, and all 3 of my friends laptops had explorer crash at least once, while my linux laptop easily stood its ground even though it had less ram and was slower then all the rest, but ran linux (in fact, at that time it was even running a version of gnome not yet marked as stable and it still beat windows).
Microsoft blatantly ignores bug fix requests for months on end.. Yesterday I asked for a bug fix for a D plugin for eclipse.. It was fixed by the time I woke up the next morning.
Microsoft also purposely digitally signs simple stuff like themes, so that only they can install new themes on your computer.. That doesn't appeal to me. In gnome I dont even need to pay for external programs like windowsblinds to skin anything I want. In fact, I even gave grub a new background
Microsoft barely puts much effort into optimisation. NTFS runs 2X slower then reiser4, and reiser4 is getting old.. Because Microsoft doesn't have any competition to benchmark things against, they prioritise new features over performance.. Thats why the only things you ever see them actively working on are things like Directx, which is only updated to try to get knock opengl out of the market, and all the coders out there know that opengl is highly portable, unlike directx.
Windows is poorly organised.. Lets be brutally honest.. When you need those annoying personalisation buttons at the bottom of the screen, even though you only installed a fifth of the apps you have installed on your linux box, you know that microsoft has some serious problems with proper gui design and organisation.
It costs a killing when you have more then one computer, and you dont even get free tech support.. In fact, you need to pay microsoft to tell them when you find an exploit..
Its uninnovative.. Whens the last time you have been able to spot something in windows which hasn't been done before.. NEVER. They just patent everything, even though it is rare they thought of it first.
Its hard to fix bugs... Microsoft have conveniantly designed windows in a way that if theres problems, you only solution is to wipe and completely reinstall.. Not make it easy to diagnose the problem.. that would be crazy.
you dont get what you paid for.. if you buy a mac, or you buy linux, you get an advantage.. If you pay for windows all you get is a command.com file basically.. nothing of use is included.. If you buy linux at least you get free tech support and many commercial apps and ebooks etc. If you buy a MAC, you dont just get a stripped down OS either, you get a OS with a great GUI, thats easy to use (a commercial copy of unix that is powerful).. Even though its only a bit less stripped down then windows, at least a MAC is always cutting edge, Windows just tags behind macs with nothing. While linux just tags along behind macs, at least it comes with programs to make up for it.
And thats my incomplete list of problems with windows
last time I checked xfree is a blocker, so you need to uninstall that first....
Last time I checked, http://www.nat.org/dashboard/ has been doing this for a very long time.. So this patent probably isn't legal.. http://www.nat.org/dashboard/fixme.php3 thats their automatically generated todo list.. So, I guess this patent wont last long...
The reason isn't only because of the licensing, its also because Xfree86 was a badly managed project.. It was very common for programmers to write code which wasn't accepted (I heard for instance the cygwin coders spent a very long time coding patches which they refused to accept).
They also moved slowly.. At the rate Xfree86 was going.. in 10 years maybe we'd be getting up to OS X level, but with xorg, I know a few people are working on the compositing already (the stuff needed for the translucent window effects and stuff), and libraries like cairo I'd imagine will be better utilised.
So, many of the flames here I think are wrong, and are made by people who have no idea what the current situation is.. In fact, I'm betting that it will be a year tops until everyone here is thankful of the changes..
I'm not a coder for Xorg, but I do hang around the channel alot, and have seen how fast Xorg is evolving (I do code though)
Anyway, you want simple applications, and maybe a bit more stable server, go Xfree86.. If you want something, that is more cutting edge, can easily produce nice next generation effects that can surpass longhorn, Xorg is your best choice for the future.
Haven't you noticed that nothing has visibly changed in X since the first accellerated ones came out, other then more drivers (lets face it, you could still run Xfree86 3.3 and get pretty much the same experience then now, if your drivers worked on it). Xorg however will add extensions that will finally make it worth while enough to be hoping for an upgrade.
The other day I saw one that wasn't self installing, however had the mozilla firefox extensions.. Maybe the mozilla developers should have security levels on the extensions so that certain ones can be permanently blocked so u dont accidently install them, after the 10th time its popped up.. Would also be nice if there was a untrusted extensions database too, that means that if someone chooses to use it, that some known dodgy applets would be blocked (which contain spyware or whatever).. But to avoid any legal problems, just let users mark stuff as spyware, and when a certain threshold is reached.. block it in the database.
Maybe talk about it on the IRC chan.. I want to at least wait until alpha 3 or 4 before I get the community to touch it though (ur right about the need for sandboxing though, that will come in later). irc.freenode.net #driverondemand I'm in there alot of the time..
because those are the drivers which are already installed.. This handles even the drivers which aren't yet, and it can automatically install them
To deal with different kernel versions, theres a flag for each driver on the list that sets what kernels it works on.. Whole thing needs revamping though, so I will improve that.. But yeah, if a driver doesn't work on a specific kernel, the next suitable one on the list is installed instead..
It doesn't have to run in automated mode... Theres also a rating system (which allows u to disable unreliable drivers).. Thats gonna take some work though to get it up to scratch..
activex is completely different.. No one reviews the code for that, and bad activex controls dont even get their certificites revoked, and they just hand out their certs without checking.. This is completely different.. There will be lots of checks to ensure that the vendor certs actually belong to the vendor, and if one is found to be compromised, or their or files with worms, they will just be taken off the server to protect ppl.. This system is no less secure then apt-get, RPM's, or whatever, and just about everyone these days uses package management.. In the cases of stuff like RPM's, actually more secure (its especially more secure then services like RPMfind)
kudzu is a bit different.. That just looks at a list of installed devices and finds an appropriate driver (only installed ones).. Mine looks at a list of installed devices, and if no driver is found, it goes online and downloads one.. The lists of devices can contain many drivers on the db, and so if a driver doesn't work in the list, it tries the next.. Think of mine as kudzu/hotplug with an unlimited amount of drivers for every device out (included ones not installed yet).. Kudzu just uses installed ones.. Driver on demand solves the old linux problem of having to look up drivers for devices you dont have installed, and automatically installs them for you.. The cool thing is that when PCI-hotplug comes out, u can pretty much change every device in your system without installing any drivers for them.. So newbies can easily handle it
Thats a obvious drawback of the system :P
Network cards very rarely have problems though (in fact, never seen anyone object that their's doesn't work).. Wireless networks though very commonly have problems.. I didn't think that was that much of a concern because users could just use a hardwired network to install the drivers and get them running.
I have actually thought about hooking this up with a P2P like system for large drivers, but if I end up doing that, its way in the future.. Such a system would probably use gnutella or something like that, but at this time, I think its better the manufacturers handle the entire traffic, because even if we P2P'ed the drivers, they probably still wouldn't bother dropping prices :(
I think people are finally starting to realise that they are nutcases.. 5 days ago their stocks were 11 days, now they are 8.. their stocks are dropping faster and faster.. if the drop continues at this rate, they will be bankrupt within a month..
;)
The best thing is that they have killed any chances of anyone buying SCO products again.. Because why would you spend money on a product that is in a very high risk position, from a company obviously going bankrupt.. And now that they examined it to ensure theres no stolen code, it leaves them with no income because no one will buy a license now that they are sure that we didn't steal anything.
Lets bet on how long until they go bankrupt.. I'm betting 2 months
oops, sorry, forgot to preview that so the breaks are missing.. :(
umm, I go to monash uni too and before they were using NFS, I haven't really tried out the AFS drives yet except over ra-clay and stuff, but from the short time I used them on the network, they are far better. I remember all the NFS probs they had (I must have lost at least 4 or 5 assignments on them and lost at least 20% in marks). AFS has disconnected operation so should be much better.. Have you tried it out this year much.. It might also be hanging because they are trying to make different fetches off the network though all the time that can't be cached.. To me its seemed to be alot better then all of those NFS stale file entries from last year, that I used to get all the time.. So far I've had no probs with AFS at monash. But then again, I'm 3rd year comp sci now so I haven't been using it as much as I used to. Then again, doesn't surprise me if its not set up right.. Monash administration is awful. they wont even support setting up a jabber server :(
Network also seemed faster at monash (probably a side effect of the disconnected operation by AFS)..
I doubt SCO will have any money left by the end of the IBM case to be honest (they will have to file for bankrupsy before then) http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=SCOX&t=3m&l=on&z=m &q=l&c= I expect the climb in that graph to start dropping again quickly cause of this..
At some point SCO will have to give up anyway..
The funny thing about this whole lawsuit is that even if SCO by some off chance wins, IBM will just sue them anyway again.. And there must be at least a few hundred pending lawsuits against SCO now in every country (which are waiting the conclusion of this case). What I predict will happen is that these lawsuits will be emphasised more close to the end of the lawsuit, and SCO's stocks will drop like a brick at that point forcing them to completely cut back their operations and sell everything to make it through this case.
So, what is happening now is irrelevant, its what happens near the end of the case where things will really warm up
Thats not strictly true.. On a speed/watt basis, efficeons are by far the best. It also depends on what ur doing.. The VLIW architecture auto optimises, so some things will run very well on efficeons (and they get faster as they run).. Also, unlike the intel and AMD mobile processors, efficeons aren't just some hacked up processor designed for something else.. The 3 hours of computing on even the centrino's isn't great when u consider that the transmeta's last about 12 hours, and chances are u wont use ur laptop to play doom3 either
He is right though.. the efficeons are fast.. not as fast as the pentium-m's or mobile AMD's, but a very decent speed, gets faster as it runs and awesome battery life make transmeta processors a very good choice..
Could be wrong, but transmeta's I think dont need fans, so they are also very silent.
People should remember that the future of computers is clustered CPU's (like openmosix) and wireless, to share CPU power, so in that point of time u wont need much CPU (cause u will just leech it off other computers on the wireless network if u need it) and when that happens, the only reason why the CPU will matter is for when u aren't connected to a network... still, 1GHZ, or more processing power is definately sufficient (my laptop only has 850 P3, which I'm surviving off easily, even with gentoo). Its no athlon 64 FX, but honestly, if u need that kind of power just buy a workstation...
Thats what i meant.. To maintain control over something, it needs a point of centralisation.. For instance, if u have online stores, u need a central point to collect the money (or u cant collect it), if u have a car, theres a point in which the driver is in control (the drivers seat), if that wasn't there, the car would be in control of itself. And finally, another example is spyware.. it needs a central point to collect the data..
And that was the point that I guess I should have emphasized more on.. Networks like jabber are impossible to control, because MS can take one server offline, they can mess with their own servers protocols, but they cant control all the servers because it doesn't have a central point to control