Thank you...I looked at the article just to see how long it would be till someone said that VB is for retards(And rightly so). Sadly, most of the top posts of people using VB for projects and dealing with incompatibilities. Really sad...
VB is a language for morons who can't be bothered to learn to code properly...period. No debate, no saving grace. VB is only in use in a professional environment today so management can hire the lowest rung of the IT totem pole in order to save money.
Mod me a troll if you want, but no-one on a Linux centered tech forum should care much about migrating from VB.
The sad thing is this was Modded up, as informative even:(
The poster just restates what's in the article(Except added, with skillfull prose and diction, the fact that IBM uses OSS), and misuses a fairly common acronym. Why the hell isn't there a -50 Mod for Slashbots?
My first thought was BS, if the local pigs can't get it, they'll just ship it to whoever can. And if this article was largely spread it's obviously intentional misinformation.
They've set up fake Drug checkpoints to watch people throw drugs out windows and then stop them for littering and charge them with possesion. I've seen similar things for seatbelts and fireworks(Watch people where the sign is, and stop those who react). Try reading some of the shit the DEA does to nail clandestine chemists(Fake chemical companies), dealers(NARC buyers) and even users(Take over a seller's house). So to all you slashdot users who are talking about how stupid law enforcement is, and how you can get away with anything, go for it. Keep your sick ass kiddie porn unencrypted and sitting in cache and get caught(Good riddance to you). I'll stick with strategy of cfs with pgp 128-bit encryption over particulary sensitive data...and requiring a USB token and password to get in.
Anywho, I personally have a small partition with cryptOS that I have also encrypted the sensitive data with pgp. It requires a 25 character password and a USB token to get into. The swap and free space is scheduled in cron to be wiped every night 35 times with BCWipe. But maybe I'm slightly paranoid.
You undemocratic radical terrorist. How can you not enjoy a life of victory^W freedom fries, and knowing we are winning against eurasia/eastasia. Ohhh, and don't you just hate Bin-Laden or Saddam Hussein, we need more segments on TV about how much we hate them. You need a time-out in room 101, and think about how wrong you are. Our freedoms may or may not be going away, but what I'm sure of is that we actually are gaining more freedoms at an exponential pace.
Actually though I'm just waiting for them to say there are no more laws, build some sort of secretive reformation centre, and have survelience in people's houses. Then I can say with certainty we're all completely fucked.
OT I know...but exactly how would you know things about the Taliban not in the media? I doubt you've been to Afghanistan(Although it's possible). If your talking about how the US funded and supplied them in order to kill anyone caught growing opium, that's pretty bad but alot of the blame is on the US drug war. If you're talking about one of the several video's that float around the web of people's hands, tongues, etc. being cut off then I say you're oversensitive. What the christians did during the crusades and puritinism was much worse. Also, more recent, is the conflicts in Ireland. While maybe not as bad, abuse and murder still occur from christianity.
I'm using Linux (Knoppix) for the first time right now. It's cool and everything, but how come I haven't turned gay yet?
Okay, this is a common problem. Goto a terminal(The thing that looks like a screen with a seashell in front of it for no apparent reason) and type in: man mount Also, how long will it take for my GNU/Hippie beard to grow?
That depends on body weight/odor. Try eating high fat foods(A tub of crisco works well) and keep your eyes on the screen at all times. Also, do NOT use deodorant...it will double the time to grow a nice healthy RMS style beard. Ohh...and saying GNU/Linux helps too. Should I stop showering today or tomorrow? I need help!
Stop immediately. If you've recently showered, it's okay, just don't let it happen again. If you do the BSD Demons will come and showering(or lack thereof) will be the least of your worries...you've been warned!
Okay, here's what I've never understood and always forget to ask my professors...why do they change the books then? Each semester many of my teachers bitch about how they release a new book each year without adding new content, just to make a larger profit. Does the textbook industry quickly stop selling the old versions to make them scarce so there aren't enough to go around next year? Or is it some sort of crappy politics the school's administration hands down?
What the hell does truancy have do with delinquent behavior. The U.S. school system is a joke(At least it was when I was in it, but I'm sure it's gotten worse in 5 years), why should someone be punished for not going? An American school is a synonym for jail. People go, raped of their normal rights(Random searches, ask for bathroom permission, etc.) and cannot leave without a gaurdian, yet it's somehow wrong for them to want to leave, and thus they are punished? And don't say they need to go for education, with coaches teaching half the classes it's no wonder most kids don't give a shit, also god knows it doesn't prepare them for any sort of 4-year college. I am mostly talking about highschooler's though, but I assumed you meant the same since you mentioned trashing cars. As I see it if a kid can keep up their grades(Which is easy, go in once a week to turnin in your homework take your tests), I don't see the point for them to have to punish themselves 7 hours a day 5 days a week just because that's the norm. Get some REAL teachers(Like Finland), let them feel they have a little more control(Can go out to lunch, instead of in a cafeteria with crap food and 400 kids), and maybe the truancy problem will fix itself
Connect it to a broadband connection with no protection and wait for a couple hours. The influx of virii will cancel XP and you won't be able to get on the internet anymore. Problem solved!
Or you'll obviously have a boner so long that you'll never get your pants off again.
Jebus, I've seen those sites...they're not that bad. The preteen girls at the mall wear shit worse than half those pictures. I can agree, that those might be considered paedo fodder...but so is Mary Kate and Ashley, Hilary Duff, Amanda Bines...or any other manufactured teeny bopper pop idol. If you ban those sites, you might as well fucking ban Nickolodean as well. Your too goddamned sensitive, people have problems and find girls that are way too young attractive. Some people also find animals attractive, so we need to get rid of all those obvious zoophiliac sites like http://www.SandiegoZoo.org/
And also many of those sites are for 15+ girls...and when they reach sexaul maturation of course they will be attractive to the opposite sex. Just because a law says it's wrong doesn't change biology.
Okay, I've been affected somewhat by child abuse, so I don't really like to joke about it. But the brainless knee-jerk reactions some people have is ridiculous. Murder, that's nothing...Prison rape, they get what they deserve. But children being sexually abused is somehow the worse possible thing, and anyone who makes jokes about it is automatically a sick fucking paedo?!? There are alot of horrible and grotesque things that happen, but child rape is somehow exponentially worse? I do agree it's an awful and tragic thing...it ruins people's emotions forever. But do you think kids in Libya seeing there parents mutilated in front of them is any better. Or what about the poor SOB in prison, who get's raped every day and now will never know a day without fear, even when he is released. I hear people talk about children with no soul...but this isn't uncommon. Children in forced labor, bullied mercilessly at school, with a perfectionist family, severe depression, in a family where the parents abuse each other...in an extreme of any of these a child can be souless and scarred beyond repair for life.
Also, I really hate to see the laws going psychotic on child nudity. There is a huge difference between nudity and pornography, there is nothing wrong with the human form, especially that of early youth, but obviously there is something wrong with a 9 year old having intercourse. Again, it makes me sad that people can be arrested for taking pictures of their children playing in the tub, just because sexually repressed, moral nazis, say it's sexual. By this logic, eventually it will be illegal for women to breast feed, since she's obviously coercing the child into a sexual position to satiate her own carnal desires.
With all that said, I see where people with children or people who were severly abused are coming from. It would be strange for them not to hate paedophiles...but it still wouldn't make it okay to torture paedos.
Sorry to beat a dead horse, but you had good points that I wanted to respond to, and clarify myself on.
I completely agree that ease of use is completly subjective. So I was wrong to say that Apple products have a smaller learning curve than MS products. It boils down to preference and past exposures.
I agree that MS's programming is probably not much worse than most Unix-like systems(Except BSD which seems pretty hardened to me), what I mostly meant is that security takes a back seat to everything else. Defaulting to administrator is one of them, but also things like having applications automatically run when downloaded. I know they have some of the best coders working for them, but they are probably drowned in beuracracy and not allowed to take the logical choices for implementation.
I was thinking back to the 98se and ME days when I was talking about crap software. From what I've used of 2000 and XP they seem much better, but it's taken them a LONG time.
And last, but not least, the XBOX. Regardless of how many they've sold or how well it's doing they have lost millions on it. There's an article
here
that talks about it some. Basically they sell there massive system at a loss to themselves and hope to make it up selling games and online services, but it hasn't went that well so far.
But aren't they adapting? Here are some of their major complaints:
1) Criticized of security problems
-- Put a team of developers on making XP more secure. Release SP2 with focus on security. It isn't perfect, and there are still flaws, but they are listening to the critics and working on the public's number 1 concern. I believe we'll see Longhorn as a very secure. Does that mean it will be full-proof? No, that would be impossible, but I do think that it will be much, much better. After all, Linux has security problems. Mozilla has security problems. They just don't get as much attention and are fixed slightly quicker.
Yes but as far as I can tell home installs still default to administrator, so regardless of how many patches they apply to their software, they still have to user running in the MS equivalent of root. They probably won't fix this in the near future since all normal install processes are based on having Administrator access. And until they fix that they will never have a secure home distribution.
Look for this as the number 1 improvement in the coming months / years.
2) Product Quality
-- In the past MS has sacrificed security and to some extent quality for ease of use. I think they will still but ease of use as a top priority, but look to see the quality level increase. They have already delayed Longhorn and cut feature in order to really nail down the important ones.
Apple seems to have balanced out ease of use with quality and security with out having to choose only one. Yet somehow MS can never do this, despite the fact that they have over 10 times the budget. They haven't got it right yet and probably won't for some time, I can't imagine Longhorn being some kind of silver bullet that puts it's security up there with BSD/OSX.
It is very hypocritical to read here how people blast MS for their quality problems and then blast them again for delaying a future product in order to enhance the quality. I just don't get that.
Not hypocritical at all. They spend billions of dollars more than other software companies on there products yet take years to make any improvements, and when those come out the quality is crap, even though it took them foo years to make it. To me the two go hand in hand. If they are going to take forever making there product then the quality ought to be pretty decent when it comes out.
So let's take a look at a few things they have done:
- MSN - recognized the AOL threat and jumped in to compete
- online music - recognized a growth opportunity so they are now competing with iTunes
- XBox - jumping into the home gaming / entertainment center market
Again, note the hypocrisy. Blast MS for being a monopoly. Blast them for not adapting to the business market...effectively losing market share. So what do you want? A monopoly or a competitor?
To me MS screams adaptation. Maybe I just don't get it. Maybe I'm just a little dense. Or maybe people just love to hate MS...no matter what.
Actually they are a monopoly for OSes and Office software only. On all other fronts they suck. I don't see how those three things show them as adapting. How many people use MSN as there ISP?
I don't think very many. iTunes is used MUCH more fequently then whatever MS has made...I've actually not heard of it yet. And the XBox is one of their biggest failures. They had lower sales than the PSOne in Japan last christmas which wouldn't be a big deal except that alot of the games people are interested come from Japan, so maybe they can keep it afloat with sports and shooting games in the U.S., but I'cant imagine them making much from it. Other notable endeavors include: portable devices, tablet devices, multimedia centers, and I'm sure there are many more.
MS tries to keep a monopoly on OSes and Office Suites because it's all they can do. They've repeatedly demonstrated that can't do anything else. But I do agree that software won't be siphoned away like it talks about in the article, since people will make there software MS compatible until MS isn't the leading OS.
You apparently have never been exposed to the drug culture at all...yes there are some people who take one of the more addictive drugs(Crack, Heroin, Smokable/IV Meth) and are immediately fiending for more, but many drug users (that you don't see since they aren't arrested as often or begging on the streets) are responsible individuals. I have had friends who have only done coke(Powder not freebase or crack) on the weekends and do just fine through the week, it's not a problem for them, they are addicted but it doesn't interfere with their lives. Innumerable amount of people I know have tried E(MDMA), GHB, Ketamine, Acid, Mescaline, AMT, 2CB, etc... and never have had a problem. They go out once a month get completely screwed up and they are fine the rest of the time. Most illegal drugs are not physically addictive, the one's that are can be a problem(Cigarettes, Alcohol, Heroine, etc.) especially if you don't have the money.
Also heroin/coke isn't much worse than cigarretes...the biggest threat is injection problems. If heroin was legal it would be free from adulterants and could be safely snorted, so the needle issue would dissappear. Addiction wise heroin is absolutely no worse than cigarattes. The only problem is heroin addicts have to pay outrageous street prices(Especially during a drought) so they have no money. If each hit cost a dollar they could function perfectly fine in society, and would have to take the equivalent of smoke breaks.
I do agree some drugs are bad though...crack/freebase is shitty because it's high is way too quick and leads to fiending alot quicker than normal powder coke. Also PCP is terrible, not addiction wise but in other ways...but there's not much of a demand for it.
Alcohol is IMO one of the worst drugs. Highly toxic, can make people violent(Only other one's I know that do that are pcp and longterm amphetamine use), impairs judgement for the worst(Many drugs don't do that), and is physically addictive(Delerium tremens, etc. from withdrawl).
People should not be denied freedom based solely on the fact that Alcohol is a crappy high, and they'd rather have something that works better and can be safer if you are responsible and have a decent source. It's a person's own choice what they want to do with there body, and not up to anyone else. If it's your personal/religous belief that drugs are bad, don't do them...but many other people don't feel the same way.
What I think the parent post meant is that in Windows you have very little control of what people can and can not access in terms of devices. For *nix you can specifically change who has access to what and even add special permissions so that maybe they can access the floppy but not the CD-rom or anything you do or do not want them to do(Take out HPFS+ support to get rid of the ipod). I consider having no control of what people are allowed to access a flaw for an OS, but that's just me.
On a side note, people here always complain about Linux zealots...but it seems that many people on Slashdot don't know the first thing about it. With basic knowledge of automounter, sudo, devfs, or chmod one would know that *nix systems slaughter Windows in terms of privledge control...
The parent was a joke. The point was you don't really need all that to program, and alot of *nix programmers look down on using complicated graphical tools. Actually most of that is available in *nix environments, and yes you can even view a function parameters in vim(it tags where all of them are and you can just skip to it and back).
Umm..most decent schools are like that. I'm currently going to Purdue, we originally had 300 undergrad CS majors, it was down to 100 by the end of the first semester and more drop each semester. Some project sizes are insane(A complete compiler, read/write i/o in sparc assembly in less than a week). A assume all middle and top-tier CS schools are rough.
For people who just need the basics, it's good. You throw in something easy like Mandrake and e-mail, web browsing, and office tools are all set up. I think it's simple like PJ said when doing the 'well beaten path'. And for your power users who aren't afraid of a CLI and understand that echoing junk to/dev/kmem as root will kill your system, then they can use whatever they want. But for the inbetweens who want to add webcams, usb drives, odd software, etc. It's horrid. When I was new to Linux it litteraly took me days to figure out how to configure Xinerama to handle multiple monitors, and set up the resolutions correctly. Most people don't want to deal with config files, recompiling, and the like. And will not take the time to figure it out.
But do we really want too many common users? We get to enjoy not having too much crap and evil software floating around, like their is for Windows. If Linux ever became the dominant market share we'd have spyware like Gator(AKA Claria) running around, and we'd have to worry if our super easy installs could be doing something malicous, like they can on Windows. I know Linux is structurally more secure than MS junk, but if it's a double click install from anywhere on the net, we'll probably have to worry more.
HTML Tags. (1) Use them. (2) so your comments (3) are actually readable.
But honestly I think your using an older kernel. I've NEVER had that many problems with Linux sound and video on any computer even laptops. Most things are now supported out of the box so you won't have whatever wierd splash-screen you managed to install. I'll agree Mozilla plugins are a tad bit of a pain...especially on older systems, some systems it flawlessly installs, others it takes a while. As far as updates there are many solutions besides Redhat...emerge, apt etc...all simple. It sounds like most of your trouble could be fixed with a new version of Debian or something similar.
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you...I looked at the article just to see how long it would be till someone said that VB is for retards(And rightly so). Sadly, most of the top posts of people using VB for projects and dealing with incompatibilities. Really sad...
VB is a language for morons who can't be bothered to learn to code properly...period. No debate, no saving grace. VB is only in use in a professional environment today so management can hire the lowest rung of the IT totem pole in order to save money.
Mod me a troll if you want, but no-one on a Linux centered tech forum should care much about migrating from VB.
The sad thing is this was Modded up, as informative even :(
The poster just restates what's in the article(Except added, with skillfull prose and diction, the fact that IBM uses OSS), and misuses a fairly common acronym. Why the hell isn't there a -50 Mod for Slashbots?
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought this.
My first thought was BS, if the local pigs can't get it, they'll just ship it to whoever can. And if this article was largely spread it's obviously intentional misinformation.
They've set up fake Drug checkpoints to watch people throw drugs out windows and then stop them for littering and charge them with possesion. I've seen similar things for seatbelts and fireworks(Watch people where the sign is, and stop those who react). Try reading some of the shit the DEA does to nail clandestine chemists(Fake chemical companies), dealers(NARC buyers) and even users(Take over a seller's house). So to all you slashdot users who are talking about how stupid law enforcement is, and how you can get away with anything, go for it. Keep your sick ass kiddie porn unencrypted and sitting in cache and get caught(Good riddance to you). I'll stick with strategy of cfs with pgp 128-bit encryption over particulary sensitive data...and requiring a USB token and password to get in.
Someone's got something good on his computer.
Anywho, I personally have a small partition with cryptOS that I have also encrypted the sensitive data with pgp. It requires a 25 character password and a USB token to get into. The swap and free space is scheduled in cron to be wiped every night 35 times with BCWipe. But maybe I'm slightly paranoid.
You undemocratic radical terrorist. How can you not enjoy a life of victory^W freedom fries, and knowing we are winning against eurasia/eastasia. Ohhh, and don't you just hate Bin-Laden or Saddam Hussein, we need more segments on TV about how much we hate them. You need a time-out in room 101, and think about how wrong you are. Our freedoms may or may not be going away, but what I'm sure of is that we actually are gaining more freedoms at an exponential pace.
Actually though I'm just waiting for them to say there are no more laws, build some sort of secretive reformation centre, and have survelience in people's houses. Then I can say with certainty we're all completely fucked.
OT I know...but exactly how would you know things about the Taliban not in the media? I doubt you've been to Afghanistan(Although it's possible). If your talking about how the US funded and supplied them in order to kill anyone caught growing opium, that's pretty bad but alot of the blame is on the US drug war. If you're talking about one of the several video's that float around the web of people's hands, tongues, etc. being cut off then I say you're oversensitive. What the christians did during the crusades and puritinism was much worse. Also, more recent, is the conflicts in Ireland. While maybe not as bad, abuse and murder still occur from christianity.
I'm using Linux (Knoppix) for the first time right now. It's cool and everything, but how come I haven't turned gay yet?
Okay, this is a common problem. Goto a terminal(The thing that looks like a screen with a seashell in front of it for no apparent reason) and type in:
man mount
Also, how long will it take for my GNU/Hippie beard to grow?
That depends on body weight/odor. Try eating high fat foods(A tub of crisco works well) and keep your eyes on the screen at all times. Also, do NOT use deodorant...it will double the time to grow a nice healthy RMS style beard. Ohh...and saying GNU/Linux helps too.
Should I stop showering today or tomorrow? I need help!
Stop immediately. If you've recently showered, it's okay, just don't let it happen again. If you do the BSD Demons will come and showering(or lack thereof) will be the least of your worries...you've been warned!
Wow, you posted *before* the 381 exam was officially over...I don't know whether I should be sad or scared ;)
tell me your fucking joking. Hamster Dance was irritating in the 90's when it was popular, please don't encourage people to 'rediscover' it.
Okay, here's what I've never understood and always forget to ask my professors...why do they change the books then? Each semester many of my teachers bitch about how they release a new book each year without adding new content, just to make a larger profit. Does the textbook industry quickly stop selling the old versions to make them scarce so there aren't enough to go around next year? Or is it some sort of crappy politics the school's administration hands down?
What the hell does truancy have do with delinquent behavior. The U.S. school system is a joke(At least it was when I was in it, but I'm sure it's gotten worse in 5 years), why should someone be punished for not going? An American school is a synonym for jail. People go, raped of their normal rights(Random searches, ask for bathroom permission, etc.) and cannot leave without a gaurdian, yet it's somehow wrong for them to want to leave, and thus they are punished? And don't say they need to go for education, with coaches teaching half the classes it's no wonder most kids don't give a shit, also god knows it doesn't prepare them for any sort of 4-year college. I am mostly talking about highschooler's though, but I assumed you meant the same since you mentioned trashing cars. As I see it if a kid can keep up their grades(Which is easy, go in once a week to turnin in your homework take your tests), I don't see the point for them to have to punish themselves 7 hours a day 5 days a week just because that's the norm. Get some REAL teachers(Like Finland), let them feel they have a little more control(Can go out to lunch, instead of in a cafeteria with crap food and 400 kids), and maybe the truancy problem will fix itself
XP is easy to cancel out.
Connect it to a broadband connection with no protection and wait for a couple hours. The influx of virii will cancel XP and you won't be able to get on the internet anymore. Problem solved!
Actually good mac and cheese is easy:
1. Throw away macaroni
2. Replace artificial cheese flavored goo with mozarella
3. ???
4. Pizza!
Or you'll obviously have a boner so long that you'll never get your pants off again. Jebus, I've seen those sites...they're not that bad. The preteen girls at the mall wear shit worse than half those pictures. I can agree, that those might be considered paedo fodder...but so is Mary Kate and Ashley, Hilary Duff, Amanda Bines...or any other manufactured teeny bopper pop idol. If you ban those sites, you might as well fucking ban Nickolodean as well. Your too goddamned sensitive, people have problems and find girls that are way too young attractive. Some people also find animals attractive, so we need to get rid of all those obvious zoophiliac sites like http://www.SandiegoZoo.org/ And also many of those sites are for 15+ girls...and when they reach sexaul maturation of course they will be attractive to the opposite sex. Just because a law says it's wrong doesn't change biology.
Okay, I've been affected somewhat by child abuse, so I don't really like to joke about it. But the brainless knee-jerk reactions some people have is ridiculous. Murder, that's nothing...Prison rape, they get what they deserve. But children being sexually abused is somehow the worse possible thing, and anyone who makes jokes about it is automatically a sick fucking paedo?!? There are alot of horrible and grotesque things that happen, but child rape is somehow exponentially worse? I do agree it's an awful and tragic thing...it ruins people's emotions forever. But do you think kids in Libya seeing there parents mutilated in front of them is any better. Or what about the poor SOB in prison, who get's raped every day and now will never know a day without fear, even when he is released. I hear people talk about children with no soul...but this isn't uncommon. Children in forced labor, bullied mercilessly at school, with a perfectionist family, severe depression, in a family where the parents abuse each other...in an extreme of any of these a child can be souless and scarred beyond repair for life. Also, I really hate to see the laws going psychotic on child nudity. There is a huge difference between nudity and pornography, there is nothing wrong with the human form, especially that of early youth, but obviously there is something wrong with a 9 year old having intercourse. Again, it makes me sad that people can be arrested for taking pictures of their children playing in the tub, just because sexually repressed, moral nazis, say it's sexual. By this logic, eventually it will be illegal for women to breast feed, since she's obviously coercing the child into a sexual position to satiate her own carnal desires. With all that said, I see where people with children or people who were severly abused are coming from. It would be strange for them not to hate paedophiles...but it still wouldn't make it okay to torture paedos.
IAMEAZAEQ, but I think it stands for "Idiot Newbies Only Like Boys".
Sorry to beat a dead horse, but you had good points that I wanted to respond to, and clarify myself on.
I completely agree that ease of use is completly subjective. So I was wrong to say that Apple products have a smaller learning curve than MS products. It boils down to preference and past exposures.
I agree that MS's programming is probably not much worse than most Unix-like systems(Except BSD which seems pretty hardened to me), what I mostly meant is that security takes a back seat to everything else. Defaulting to administrator is one of them, but also things like having applications automatically run when downloaded. I know they have some of the best coders working for them, but they are probably drowned in beuracracy and not allowed to take the logical choices for implementation.
I was thinking back to the 98se and ME days when I was talking about crap software. From what I've used of 2000 and XP they seem much better, but it's taken them a LONG time.
And last, but not least, the XBOX. Regardless of how many they've sold or how well it's doing they have lost millions on it. There's an article here that talks about it some. Basically they sell there massive system at a loss to themselves and hope to make it up selling games and online services, but it hasn't went that well so far.
But aren't they adapting? Here are some of their major complaints: 1) Criticized of security problems -- Put a team of developers on making XP more secure. Release SP2 with focus on security. It isn't perfect, and there are still flaws, but they are listening to the critics and working on the public's number 1 concern. I believe we'll see Longhorn as a very secure. Does that mean it will be full-proof? No, that would be impossible, but I do think that it will be much, much better. After all, Linux has security problems. Mozilla has security problems. They just don't get as much attention and are fixed slightly quicker.
Yes but as far as I can tell home installs still default to administrator, so regardless of how many patches they apply to their software, they still have to user running in the MS equivalent of root. They probably won't fix this in the near future since all normal install processes are based on having Administrator access. And until they fix that they will never have a secure home distribution.
Look for this as the number 1 improvement in the coming months / years. 2) Product Quality -- In the past MS has sacrificed security and to some extent quality for ease of use. I think they will still but ease of use as a top priority, but look to see the quality level increase. They have already delayed Longhorn and cut feature in order to really nail down the important ones.
Apple seems to have balanced out ease of use with quality and security with out having to choose only one. Yet somehow MS can never do this, despite the fact that they have over 10 times the budget. They haven't got it right yet and probably won't for some time, I can't imagine Longhorn being some kind of silver bullet that puts it's security up there with BSD/OSX.
It is very hypocritical to read here how people blast MS for their quality problems and then blast them again for delaying a future product in order to enhance the quality. I just don't get that.
Not hypocritical at all. They spend billions of dollars more than other software companies on there products yet take years to make any improvements, and when those come out the quality is crap, even though it took them foo years to make it. To me the two go hand in hand. If they are going to take forever making there product then the quality ought to be pretty decent when it comes out.
So let's take a look at a few things they have done: - MSN - recognized the AOL threat and jumped in to compete - online music - recognized a growth opportunity so they are now competing with iTunes - XBox - jumping into the home gaming / entertainment center market Again, note the hypocrisy. Blast MS for being a monopoly. Blast them for not adapting to the business market...effectively losing market share. So what do you want? A monopoly or a competitor? To me MS screams adaptation. Maybe I just don't get it. Maybe I'm just a little dense. Or maybe people just love to hate MS...no matter what.
Actually they are a monopoly for OSes and Office software only. On all other fronts they suck. I don't see how those three things show them as adapting. How many people use MSN as there ISP? I don't think very many. iTunes is used MUCH more fequently then whatever MS has made...I've actually not heard of it yet. And the XBox is one of their biggest failures. They had lower sales than the PSOne in Japan last christmas which wouldn't be a big deal except that alot of the games people are interested come from Japan, so maybe they can keep it afloat with sports and shooting games in the U.S., but I'cant imagine them making much from it. Other notable endeavors include: portable devices, tablet devices, multimedia centers, and I'm sure there are many more.
MS tries to keep a monopoly on OSes and Office Suites because it's all they can do. They've repeatedly demonstrated that can't do anything else. But I do agree that software won't be siphoned away like it talks about in the article, since people will make there software MS compatible until MS isn't the leading OS.
Also heroin/coke isn't much worse than cigarretes...the biggest threat is injection problems. If heroin was legal it would be free from adulterants and could be safely snorted, so the needle issue would dissappear. Addiction wise heroin is absolutely no worse than cigarattes. The only problem is heroin addicts have to pay outrageous street prices(Especially during a drought) so they have no money. If each hit cost a dollar they could function perfectly fine in society, and would have to take the equivalent of smoke breaks.
I do agree some drugs are bad though...crack/freebase is shitty because it's high is way too quick and leads to fiending alot quicker than normal powder coke. Also PCP is terrible, not addiction wise but in other ways...but there's not much of a demand for it.
Alcohol is IMO one of the worst drugs. Highly toxic, can make people violent(Only other one's I know that do that are pcp and longterm amphetamine use), impairs judgement for the worst(Many drugs don't do that), and is physically addictive(Delerium tremens, etc. from withdrawl).
People should not be denied freedom based solely on the fact that Alcohol is a crappy high, and they'd rather have something that works better and can be safer if you are responsible and have a decent source. It's a person's own choice what they want to do with there body, and not up to anyone else. If it's your personal/religous belief that drugs are bad, don't do them...but many other people don't feel the same way.
What I think the parent post meant is that in Windows you have very little control of what people can and can not access in terms of devices. For *nix you can specifically change who has access to what and even add special permissions so that maybe they can access the floppy but not the CD-rom or anything you do or do not want them to do(Take out HPFS+ support to get rid of the ipod). I consider having no control of what people are allowed to access a flaw for an OS, but that's just me. On a side note, people here always complain about Linux zealots...but it seems that many people on Slashdot don't know the first thing about it. With basic knowledge of automounter, sudo, devfs, or chmod one would know that *nix systems slaughter Windows in terms of privledge control...
The parent was a joke. The point was you don't really need all that to program, and alot of *nix programmers look down on using complicated graphical tools. Actually most of that is available in *nix environments, and yes you can even view a function parameters in vim(it tags where all of them are and you can just skip to it and back).
The link wasn't working(space between 6 and 1), and many people won't read it since it's copy and paste ;)
RIAA Agents Murder Unarmed Man
Umm..most decent schools are like that. I'm currently going to Purdue, we originally had 300 undergrad CS majors, it was down to 100 by the end of the first semester and more drop each semester. Some project sizes are insane(A complete compiler, read/write i/o in sparc assembly in less than a week). A assume all middle and top-tier CS schools are rough.
For people who just need the basics, it's good. You throw in something easy like Mandrake and e-mail, web browsing, and office tools are all set up. I think it's simple like PJ said when doing the 'well beaten path'. And for your power users who aren't afraid of a CLI and understand that echoing junk to /dev/kmem as root will kill your system, then they can use whatever they want. But for the inbetweens who want to add webcams, usb drives, odd software, etc. It's horrid. When I was new to Linux it litteraly took me days to figure out how to configure Xinerama to handle multiple monitors, and set up the resolutions correctly. Most people don't want to deal with config files, recompiling, and the like. And will not take the time to figure it out.
But do we really want too many common users? We get to enjoy not having too much crap and evil software floating around, like their is for Windows. If Linux ever became the dominant market share we'd have spyware like Gator(AKA Claria) running around, and we'd have to worry if our super easy installs could be doing something malicous, like they can on Windows. I know Linux is structurally more secure than MS junk, but if it's a double click install from anywhere on the net, we'll probably have to worry more.
HTML Tags. (1) Use them. (2) so your comments (3) are actually readable.
But honestly I think your using an older kernel. I've NEVER had that many problems with Linux sound and video on any computer even laptops. Most things are now supported out of the box so you won't have whatever wierd splash-screen you managed to install. I'll agree Mozilla plugins are a tad bit of a pain...especially on older systems, some systems it flawlessly installs, others it takes a while. As far as updates there are many solutions besides Redhat...emerge, apt etc...all simple. It sounds like most of your trouble could be fixed with a new version of Debian or something similar.