> "With "user-friendly" linuxes coming out, many of > which login as root by default, a lot of that > protection will go away."
> This is absolutely false. The Live CD distros > (mepis, knoppix, gnoppix) all have demo and root > accounts. SuSe, Fedora, etc all create a non-root > account on installation.
I've used all these distros, and I don't consider any user-friendly. I was talking about Linspire, specifically, which uses root login (or did, last time I used it). I like fedora/redhat's popup that lets you escalate your priveleges when necessary, though--I just don't think the average user finds fedora user-friendly.
Perhaps "user-friendly" is the wrong term, but I'm talking about OSes that are "brain-dead" easy to use, and so far, Linspire has been the simplest (although I dislike it, personally).
Here's hoping that Linuxes don't drop their security for the sake of ease of use, and that Windows' default "root login" mode disappears, but I'm not confident, for some reason.
Actually, that's false. This is only true if you run in windows as "root" (Administrator). If you login into X-windows as root, you're just as vulnerable (assuming you are using a program like IE that will allow some script to do something malicious).
The obvious problem is that it's much more common to run Windows as "root" than it is on *nix, for various reasons. Not the least of which is the fact that *nix users usually are smart enough to use one account for administration, and other for doing "user" stuff. Also not the least of which is that many Windows apps aren't written in such a way that it's feasible to run them in non-root mode.
This isn't to say that Active-X isn't dangerous...it is. But the big difference between *nix and Windows here, is that *nix is run by somewhat security-savvy people, and Windows (often) isn't. With "user-friendly" linuxes coming out, many of which login as root by default, a lot of that protection will go away.
The average user simply isn't willing to have an "administrator" account that they have to use every time they want to install an app. That fact means that for *nix to go mainstream, a lot of security inherent in *nix philosophy will have to be lost.
Luckily, mozilla/firefox are being designed in such a way that they are much less likely to exploit lax security than IE is. This will only partially mitigate the problem, though, as people dumb enough to click on a random link and run the program can still get screwed.
Right, in terms of vulnerability, Bittorrent was a step back. It was created for efficiency's sake. It was a huge step forward in p2p efficiency. Now that it has been proven as an efficient p2p system, it is being extended to have other advantages that p2p has. Thus, there are several categories of improvement that need to be considered:
P2P transfer, P2P search, P2P speed, and P2P anonymity. Actually, Kazaa had all of these except anonymity (it was speedy in many ways, but not nearly as optimized as BT). Bittorrent only has two of them (transfer and speed), and will have three with the addition of Kenosis. Emule already has all except anonymity, and its transfer algorithm is very similar to BT (horde vs. swarm). Freenet has all except speed, and Napster had only one (P2P transfer). So, I agree; BT is only just arriving as a true 3rd-gen P2P app.
One advantage BT has over other centralized apps, however, is its ability to use many trackers for many purposes. Thus, although suprnova is down, I am not affected, as the files I am interested in were never hosted there in the first place. Of course, the files I am intersted in are not illegal, but would never be hosted normally thanks to bandwidth issues.
On the other hand, e-mule is basically a decentralized bittorrent, so I'm a little surprised that people get so excited about being able to search torrents through p2p. For me, the main advantage of torrents was confirming before download that you would get the file you sought. Once you start trusting p2p searches, you can be fooled at the search level before you even begin the download. E.g., every huge file on emule seems to be a french porn flick renamed.
Decentralized searching is only part of the problem. We also need a way to inject the confidence that getting the torrent from a trusted site gives you. A voting mechanism, that can't easily be spoofed, that verifies that files are what they say they are. Perhaps this is 4th-gen. 3rd gen (emule) is still heavily susceptible to false seeding, as will Kenosis+BT be.
> With respect to cheating: If somebody cheats in
> school, they are going to cheat in other aspects
> of their lives.
Could you please state the logical steps that led you to this conclusion? Also, please define "cheat." If by "cheat" you mean attaining a certain degree of success by not adhering to the socially acceptable methods, I'm not sure all cheating is bad. Rebelling against the system, whether in school, business, or life in general is what causes stupid rules to be overturned. It's not to say that many of our laws aren't good or important to follow, of course, but there are an awful lot that are unreasonable, I believe.
> That is a reflection on their character makeup
> and not on the failings of a school.
Yes, I'd agree with this. However, it doesn't say anything bad about the person. It says that for some reason they didn't feel they needed to adhere to the rules set by the school. Maybe this means they are dishonest. Maybe it means they think school is a farcical way of determining who should succeed, and they choose to beat the system. Maybe they are lazy and didn't want to study, but feel they deserve a good grade because memorizing and forgetting a bunch of stuff doesn't prove anything.
Just for the record, I graduated college with a 3.85 and didn't need to cheat. However, I did cheat on things that were a waste of my time, like homework that was simply rote exercise of stuff I learned in high schoo.
-Dan
We can't stop calling everything an iPod killer until someone finally makes a device that beats it on a significant number of features without failing miserably in any major feature. It' been king of the hill so long it's ridiculous, and even the latest competitors still fail to surpass its design.
Oh, sure, the iPod has its flaws--lots of them. And frankly, I'm waiting for a damn "iPod killer" so I can buy one. Once something actually kills it, we can start talking about that product being beaten.
Until a portable audio device actually competes with the (current) iPod on space, size, ui, etc., any device that comes out will be designed to do one thing: take market share away from Apple. Its the only competitor that needs to be beaten right now. Until that day, they will all be appropriately labeled potenial "ipod killers." Sure, we could use another name for it, say it a different way, but in the end a lot of people are extremely interested in whether these new devices actually have a chance of competing with the current best.
It's not just a cliche; it's an important question. Of course, I don't think it belongs in this article, since this device isn't even in the same market as the iPod, but it does look like it might be an iPod-mini killer.
He is a hypocrite, pretending to be an advancer of open source, when really he is just trying to advance his particular breed of open source. I'm well aware of the meaning of hypocrite. Personally, I like the following from m-w.com:
a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue or religion
Linus acts like he's a champion of open-source, but he mocks other open-source projects. It sort of seems he's only interested in his own fame, nowadays.
Lots of people questioning my "new [kid] on the block" reference, and I meant this in terms of it going open source. Obviously Solaris x86 has been around for a while. However, it has not competed in the open source market, hence I call it the "new (open source) kid on the block."
That was a valid point, back when Solaris x86 was retail, but it isn't going to be the same argument going forward. Linus is dismissing Solaris x86 as a "joke," because it lacks drivers...the same problem Linux has had forever. Once it goes open source, don't you think the drivers will appear? That's part of the reason for open sourcing things.
It almost seems that Linus is less interested in open-source growing and more interested in Linux being *the* open source OS. Can't say I blame him, but it's not an admirable attitude.
Solaris/x86 is a joke, last I heard. (It has) very little support for any kind of strange hardware. If you thought Linux had issues with driver availability for some things, let's see you try Solaris/x86. (Editors' note: Drivers enable an operating system to communicate with specific hardware such as a video card or network adapter.)
Oh really? I guess Linux was a joke for the longest time, then, considering its lack of hardware support. In fact, I guess it's still a joke compared to windows, if driver support is all that (apparently) matters. Why is Linus ripping on the new kind on the block for the exact problem his OS has had since its inception? This is disgusting hypocrisy.
He should be proud of what he's accomplished, and I'm grateful for his and other's work--but to take this snide attitude when another OS comes along, because it has some of the same problems his OS did originally, is pretty sad.
But compliment, yes. Counter-Strike has already been mentioned, but it has been the most popular multiplayer FPS for many years now. That's amazing! The most popular online FPS for the last several years was a FREE MOD. Is there any reason an engine as good as HL couldn't be created by open source developers? No, there isn't. And if it's done (and done well), we may see many more mods like CS become popular.
Of course, we still need the servers to play on, but that's another issue.
-Dan
Re:Seriously... Why would you use this?
on
GIMP 2.2 Released
·
· Score: 1
You misunderstood my statement, I think:
> If PS is better for the job, even considering its > price, it makes sense to use it.
What this means is, taking into consideration the price, if Photoshop is still a better value for your work, you should use it. For example, if using Photoshop saves me 10 hours over using the GIMP, my employer has already made up the price of paying for a Photoshop license. Photoshop has easily saved me this much time over the GIMP.
I didn't mean that the price of Photoshop is irrelevant. I meant that, from a business standpoint, you should use it if it is a better value, with all factors considered.
... useable is a correct spelling, although less common than "usable."
-Dan
Re:Seriously... Why would you use this?
on
GIMP 2.2 Released
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
That's great to only use open source, but if there is no opensource program for what you want to do, what do you do? Wait? Write your own? These may be fine ideas, fundamentally, but certainly not pragmatically.
Luckily, the GIMP is a useable program, and if you don't want to use PS, you probably don't have to, but that's not the issue. If PS is better for the job, even considering its price, it makes sense to use it.
If you're a fundamentalist, and refuse to use anything non-open-source, that's your choice. Lucky for you, there are some good open-source options out there. But would you stick to your guns if Mozilla didn't exist (you can thank corporate dollars for that)? Would you be so sure of yourself if the GIMP had never been created? If the answers to these questions is "no," then maybe you can begin to understand why some of us, who love open-source, still use Photoshop even though it is expensive and closed-source. As far as we are concerned, there *isn't* an open-source tool for the job. The GIMP isn't even in the same category as Photoshop.
If the answer to the above question is "no," either you are young and naive, or you adopted these notions recently, because open-source software hasn't even been useable all that long. I prefer to adopt open source as the tools become sufficient for my needs. I use Firefox, FreeBSD, Apache, cygwin, Thunderbird, Ethereal, just to name a few, but I still use Win2K, Photoshop, Trillian, and a bunch of other proprietary programs because they do the job better than the open-source equivalents.
It's crazy to use an inferior program because in theory you could modify it if you needed to, or because you don't have to pay for it. Only if the sum of those benefits and the useability of the program exceed that of a closed-source app, will I ever switch.
ReactOS can use the Wine implementations of everything but the low level APIs. Anything Wine implements in the win32 API that isn't tied directly to graphics can essentially be put into ReactOS.
How many bugs are there in the NT micro kernel? Not so many, I'd warrant. Comparing the entire win32 api and the XP GUI to the linux kernel doesn't make any sense at all. Granted, it's not really possible for the average person to separate the two, but in order to get the closest comparison, you'd need to compare Windows XP To Linux + Gnome or Linux + KDE, or something along those lines. I believe the number of bugs in KDE or Gnome easily exceeds the bugs in Windows XP, although I can only prove it anecdotally.
I'm excluding Internet Explorer from this, which I refuse to use, but if I were to include it, I'd have to compare it to Mozilla, which also has a huge number of bugs. Also, are security vulnerabilities considered bugs, or not? I'll admit upfront I haven't RTFA, but the summary seems to indicate a comparison of apples to oranges.
That's not it at all. Big evil government has taken over, and there's a rebel alliance forming to defeat the alien/human alliance that's attempting to crush all free thinkers. Only one man can reach and defeat the evil emperor, who lives up in a powerful tower with incredible defenses. You have to kill the emperor and destroy his "citadel."
Wait a minute, this is starting to sound like Star Wars. Next we're going to find out that Alex is Gordon's sister.
> Every Zaurus owner I know runs OpenZaurus instead > of the Sharp software
No offense, but I think this says a lot more about you (and the kind of people you hang out with) than it does about OpenZaurus. My guess is that these people bought the Zaurus with the intention of installing OpenZaurus, rather than buying the Zaurus, and then deciding to install a different OS.
I'd bet money that the average Zaurus user doesn't use OpenZaurus. However, this isn't to say it's not a great OS, or very successful as you've mentioned. It just means that you can't base statistics on a limited group of people, especially when they're are nerds (no offense intended--I consider myself a nerd).
Well, I'm not going to disagree with anything you've posted here, but are we sure Apple charged these people anywhere near full price for the hardware? Just a question, I don't actually know the answer.
Oh, really? I don't think anyone had any trouble understanding what you meant by "moron" in your post. It has a very meaningful definition, IMO.
Perhaps you meant that it loses its specific definition. If so, that would be true, and I can't say whether that's necessarily bad or good. However, I'm not sure it's always because of "morons" that this happens. In our society, the word "decimation" would be near worthless except as a historical term, if it were not for evolution of language. If simplicity is desired, fewer words would be preferred, but if richness of language is, generalizing words that have lost their usefulness doesn't seem alltogether bad.
The practice of "decimation" as practiced historically can still be easily explained with relative ease, without us isolating its use to that uncommon reference.
But, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe morons like me are decimating the English language.
I have implemented an encrypted class loader that never delivers the unencrypted bytes to the java class. The author of this article is mostly correct, and I have read this article before. He states the following:
until JVM architecture changes to, say, support class decoding inside native code...
This is already possible and I have implemented it. It involves making direct calls to the jvm libraries from JNI rather than callbacks to java from JNI. There is still a way to get the bytes, but it involves hacking native code...a much harder task.
"According to a poll by X-bit labs, around 56% of users had 'Powered by ATI' graphics cards inside their PCs."...
"About a year ago ATI was regarded as the best graphics processors designer in 2003 by 81% of X-bit labs readers."
The number of people who have ATI cards was not 81% in 2003. That would be amazing, though! The number of people who prefer a brand and the number who have a card of that brand are not the same. For example, one year ago I considered ATI the best...and I had Nvidia in all my PCs until one month ago.
> and nVidia is dominating the performance market.
Slashdot Mirror
> "With "user-friendly" linuxes coming out, many of
> which login as root by default, a lot of that
> protection will go away."
> This is absolutely false. The Live CD distros
> (mepis, knoppix, gnoppix) all have demo and root
> accounts. SuSe, Fedora, etc all create a non-root
> account on installation.
I've used all these distros, and I don't consider any user-friendly. I was talking about Linspire, specifically, which uses root login (or did, last time I used it). I like fedora/redhat's popup that lets you escalate your priveleges when necessary, though--I just don't think the average user finds fedora user-friendly.
Perhaps "user-friendly" is the wrong term, but I'm talking about OSes that are "brain-dead" easy to use, and so far, Linspire has been the simplest (although I dislike it, personally).
Here's hoping that Linuxes don't drop their security for the sake of ease of use, and that Windows' default "root login" mode disappears, but I'm not confident, for some reason.
-Dan
Actually, that's false. This is only true if you run in windows as "root" (Administrator). If you login into X-windows as root, you're just as vulnerable (assuming you are using a program like IE that will allow some script to do something malicious).
The obvious problem is that it's much more common to run Windows as "root" than it is on *nix, for various reasons. Not the least of which is the fact that *nix users usually are smart enough to use one account for administration, and other for doing "user" stuff. Also not the least of which is that many Windows apps aren't written in such a way that it's feasible to run them in non-root mode.
This isn't to say that Active-X isn't dangerous...it is. But the big difference between *nix and Windows here, is that *nix is run by somewhat security-savvy people, and Windows (often) isn't. With "user-friendly" linuxes coming out, many of which login as root by default, a lot of that protection will go away.
The average user simply isn't willing to have an "administrator" account that they have to use every time they want to install an app. That fact means that for *nix to go mainstream, a lot of security inherent in *nix philosophy will have to be lost.
Luckily, mozilla/firefox are being designed in such a way that they are much less likely to exploit lax security than IE is. This will only partially mitigate the problem, though, as people dumb enough to click on a random link and run the program can still get screwed.
-Dan
Complains loudly? VNC is considered a "low" (2/5 I think) threat and the default action is to "ignore" it. I'd hardly call that complaining loudly.
I have yet to have it suggest I remove something I actually wanted.
-Dan
Uh, ever heard of arithmetic coding? Lots better than huffman coding...same basic application.
-Dan
Right, in terms of vulnerability, Bittorrent was a step back. It was created for efficiency's sake. It was a huge step forward in p2p efficiency. Now that it has been proven as an efficient p2p system, it is being extended to have other advantages that p2p has. Thus, there are several categories of improvement that need to be considered:
P2P transfer, P2P search, P2P speed, and P2P anonymity. Actually, Kazaa had all of these except anonymity (it was speedy in many ways, but not nearly as optimized as BT). Bittorrent only has two of them (transfer and speed), and will have three with the addition of Kenosis. Emule already has all except anonymity, and its transfer algorithm is very similar to BT (horde vs. swarm). Freenet has all except speed, and Napster had only one (P2P transfer). So, I agree; BT is only just arriving as a true 3rd-gen P2P app.
One advantage BT has over other centralized apps, however, is its ability to use many trackers for many purposes. Thus, although suprnova is down, I am not affected, as the files I am interested in were never hosted there in the first place. Of course, the files I am intersted in are not illegal, but would never be hosted normally thanks to bandwidth issues.
On the other hand, e-mule is basically a decentralized bittorrent, so I'm a little surprised that people get so excited about being able to search torrents through p2p. For me, the main advantage of torrents was confirming before download that you would get the file you sought. Once you start trusting p2p searches, you can be fooled at the search level before you even begin the download. E.g., every huge file on emule seems to be a french porn flick renamed.
Decentralized searching is only part of the problem. We also need a way to inject the confidence that getting the torrent from a trusted site gives you. A voting mechanism, that can't easily be spoofed, that verifies that files are what they say they are. Perhaps this is 4th-gen. 3rd gen (emule) is still heavily susceptible to false seeding, as will Kenosis+BT be.
-Dan
> With respect to cheating: If somebody cheats in > school, they are going to cheat in other aspects > of their lives. Could you please state the logical steps that led you to this conclusion? Also, please define "cheat." If by "cheat" you mean attaining a certain degree of success by not adhering to the socially acceptable methods, I'm not sure all cheating is bad. Rebelling against the system, whether in school, business, or life in general is what causes stupid rules to be overturned. It's not to say that many of our laws aren't good or important to follow, of course, but there are an awful lot that are unreasonable, I believe. > That is a reflection on their character makeup > and not on the failings of a school. Yes, I'd agree with this. However, it doesn't say anything bad about the person. It says that for some reason they didn't feel they needed to adhere to the rules set by the school. Maybe this means they are dishonest. Maybe it means they think school is a farcical way of determining who should succeed, and they choose to beat the system. Maybe they are lazy and didn't want to study, but feel they deserve a good grade because memorizing and forgetting a bunch of stuff doesn't prove anything. Just for the record, I graduated college with a 3.85 and didn't need to cheat. However, I did cheat on things that were a waste of my time, like homework that was simply rote exercise of stuff I learned in high schoo. -Dan
We can't stop calling everything an iPod killer until someone finally makes a device that beats it on a significant number of features without failing miserably in any major feature. It' been king of the hill so long it's ridiculous, and even the latest competitors still fail to surpass its design.
Oh, sure, the iPod has its flaws--lots of them. And frankly, I'm waiting for a damn "iPod killer" so I can buy one. Once something actually kills it, we can start talking about that product being beaten.
Until a portable audio device actually competes with the (current) iPod on space, size, ui, etc., any device that comes out will be designed to do one thing: take market share away from Apple. Its the only competitor that needs to be beaten right now. Until that day, they will all be appropriately labeled potenial "ipod killers." Sure, we could use another name for it, say it a different way, but in the end a lot of people are extremely interested in whether these new devices actually have a chance of competing with the current best.
It's not just a cliche; it's an important question. Of course, I don't think it belongs in this article, since this device isn't even in the same market as the iPod, but it does look like it might be an iPod-mini killer.
-Dan
He is a hypocrite, pretending to be an advancer of open source, when really he is just trying to advance his particular breed of open source. I'm well aware of the meaning of hypocrite. Personally, I like the following from m-w.com:
a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue or religion
Linus acts like he's a champion of open-source, but he mocks other open-source projects. It sort of seems he's only interested in his own fame, nowadays.
-Dan
lol
Lots of people questioning my "new [kid] on the block" reference, and I meant this in terms of it going open source. Obviously Solaris x86 has been around for a while. However, it has not competed in the open source market, hence I call it the "new (open source) kid on the block."
-Dan
That was a valid point, back when Solaris x86 was retail, but it isn't going to be the same argument going forward. Linus is dismissing Solaris x86 as a "joke," because it lacks drivers...the same problem Linux has had forever. Once it goes open source, don't you think the drivers will appear? That's part of the reason for open sourcing things.
It almost seems that Linus is less interested in open-source growing and more interested in Linux being *the* open source OS. Can't say I blame him, but it's not an admirable attitude.
-Dan
Solaris/x86 is a joke, last I heard. (It has) very little support for any kind of strange hardware. If you thought Linux had issues with driver availability for some things, let's see you try Solaris/x86. (Editors' note: Drivers enable an operating system to communicate with specific hardware such as a video card or network adapter.)
Oh really? I guess Linux was a joke for the longest time, then, considering its lack of hardware support. In fact, I guess it's still a joke compared to windows, if driver support is all that (apparently) matters. Why is Linus ripping on the new kind on the block for the exact problem his OS has had since its inception? This is disgusting hypocrisy.
He should be proud of what he's accomplished, and I'm grateful for his and other's work--but to take this snide attitude when another OS comes along, because it has some of the same problems his OS did originally, is pretty sad.
-Dan
But compliment, yes. Counter-Strike has already been mentioned, but it has been the most popular multiplayer FPS for many years now. That's amazing! The most popular online FPS for the last several years was a FREE MOD. Is there any reason an engine as good as HL couldn't be created by open source developers? No, there isn't. And if it's done (and done well), we may see many more mods like CS become popular.
Of course, we still need the servers to play on, but that's another issue.
-Dan
You misunderstood my statement, I think:
> If PS is better for the job, even considering its
> price, it makes sense to use it.
What this means is, taking into consideration the price, if Photoshop is still a better value for your work, you should use it. For example, if using Photoshop saves me 10 hours over using the GIMP, my employer has already made up the price of paying for a Photoshop license. Photoshop has easily saved me this much time over the GIMP.
I didn't mean that the price of Photoshop is irrelevant. I meant that, from a business standpoint, you should use it if it is a better value, with all factors considered.
-Dan
... useable is a correct spelling, although less common than "usable."
-Dan
That's great to only use open source, but if there is no opensource program for what you want to do, what do you do? Wait? Write your own? These may be fine ideas, fundamentally, but certainly not pragmatically.
Luckily, the GIMP is a useable program, and if you don't want to use PS, you probably don't have to, but that's not the issue. If PS is better for the job, even considering its price, it makes sense to use it.
If you're a fundamentalist, and refuse to use anything non-open-source, that's your choice. Lucky for you, there are some good open-source options out there. But would you stick to your guns if Mozilla didn't exist (you can thank corporate dollars for that)? Would you be so sure of yourself if the GIMP had never been created? If the answers to these questions is "no," then maybe you can begin to understand why some of us, who love open-source, still use Photoshop even though it is expensive and closed-source. As far as we are concerned, there *isn't* an open-source tool for the job. The GIMP isn't even in the same category as Photoshop.
If the answer to the above question is "no," either you are young and naive, or you adopted these notions recently, because open-source software hasn't even been useable all that long. I prefer to adopt open source as the tools become sufficient for my needs. I use Firefox, FreeBSD, Apache, cygwin, Thunderbird, Ethereal, just to name a few, but I still use Win2K, Photoshop, Trillian, and a bunch of other proprietary programs because they do the job better than the open-source equivalents.
It's crazy to use an inferior program because in theory you could modify it if you needed to, or because you don't have to pay for it. Only if the sum of those benefits and the useability of the program exceed that of a closed-source app, will I ever switch.
-Dan
ReactOS can use the Wine implementations of everything but the low level APIs. Anything Wine implements in the win32 API that isn't tied directly to graphics can essentially be put into ReactOS.
-Dan
How many bugs are there in the NT micro kernel? Not so many, I'd warrant. Comparing the entire win32 api and the XP GUI to the linux kernel doesn't make any sense at all. Granted, it's not really possible for the average person to separate the two, but in order to get the closest comparison, you'd need to compare Windows XP To Linux + Gnome or Linux + KDE, or something along those lines. I believe the number of bugs in KDE or Gnome easily exceeds the bugs in Windows XP, although I can only prove it anecdotally.
I'm excluding Internet Explorer from this, which I refuse to use, but if I were to include it, I'd have to compare it to Mozilla, which also has a huge number of bugs. Also, are security vulnerabilities considered bugs, or not? I'll admit upfront I haven't RTFA, but the summary seems to indicate a comparison of apples to oranges.
-Dan
> "aliens have taken over. Shoot stuff."
That's not it at all. Big evil government has taken over, and there's a rebel alliance forming to defeat the alien/human alliance that's attempting to crush all free thinkers. Only one man can reach and defeat the evil emperor, who lives up in a powerful tower with incredible defenses. You have to kill the emperor and destroy his "citadel."
Wait a minute, this is starting to sound like Star Wars. Next we're going to find out that Alex is Gordon's sister.
-Dan
Yeah, the only reason any of it works at all is because of the patches in ports. Thank god for ports. -Dan
> Every Zaurus owner I know runs OpenZaurus instead
> of the Sharp software
No offense, but I think this says a lot more about you (and the kind of people you hang out with) than it does about OpenZaurus. My guess is that these people bought the Zaurus with the intention of installing OpenZaurus, rather than buying the Zaurus, and then deciding to install a different OS.
I'd bet money that the average Zaurus user doesn't use OpenZaurus. However, this isn't to say it's not a great OS, or very successful as you've mentioned. It just means that you can't base statistics on a limited group of people, especially when they're are nerds (no offense intended--I consider myself a nerd).
-Dan
Well, I'm not going to disagree with anything you've posted here, but are we sure Apple charged these people anywhere near full price for the hardware? Just a question, I don't actually know the answer.
-Dan
> the word loses all meaningful definition
Oh, really? I don't think anyone had any trouble understanding what you meant by "moron" in your post. It has a very meaningful definition, IMO.
Perhaps you meant that it loses its specific definition. If so, that would be true, and I can't say whether that's necessarily bad or good. However, I'm not sure it's always because of "morons" that this happens. In our society, the word "decimation" would be near worthless except as a historical term, if it were not for evolution of language. If simplicity is desired, fewer words would be preferred, but if richness of language is, generalizing words that have lost their usefulness doesn't seem alltogether bad.
The practice of "decimation" as practiced historically can still be easily explained with relative ease, without us isolating its use to that uncommon reference.
But, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe morons like me are decimating the English language.
-Dan
I have implemented an encrypted class loader that never delivers the unencrypted bytes to the java class. The author of this article is mostly correct, and I have read this article before. He states the following:
until JVM architecture changes to, say, support class decoding inside native code...
This is already possible and I have implemented it. It involves making direct calls to the jvm libraries from JNI rather than callbacks to java from JNI. There is still a way to get the bytes, but it involves hacking native code...a much harder task.
-Dan
"According to a poll by X-bit labs, around 56% of users had 'Powered by ATI' graphics cards inside their PCs." ...
"About a year ago ATI was regarded as the best graphics processors designer in 2003 by 81% of X-bit labs readers."
The number of people who have ATI cards was not 81% in 2003. That would be amazing, though! The number of people who prefer a brand and the number who have a card of that brand are not the same. For example, one year ago I considered ATI the best...and I had Nvidia in all my PCs until one month ago.
> and nVidia is dominating the performance market.
Yes, for now they are.
-Dan