Smarten up...A real unix system...Linux/BSD is the only way...
As a Linux user of four years who has recently bought their first, personal, mac laptop I wish to call bullshit. I'd like to point out that OSX still plays a very important part in Linux development (less so in BSD) - specifically in regards to new features. Take for example xgl/compiz and xcompmgr which will be in full deployment for when Vista ships to compete with the M$ eye candy...Sure it only came into the lime light when Vistas beta's started shipping and the glory project status moved to them though without earlier projects like luminocity (etc) which was an attempt to add mac grade eye candy to Linux there wouldn't have been the ground work or the test case for this. And even now look at xcompmgr with transett or compiz - they just basically fashion themselves after inbuilt mac effects or 3rd party add ins that have existed for awhile under OSX.
On top of that mac make computers end users like and OSX Just Works(tm) which for a Linux user is really handy some days when Debian sid decides it wants to blow the heads off all the toys. It also interconnects flawlessly with my other Linux boxes through ssh, samba, nfs, vnc and everything I need (I use Fink for random unix tools I need).
Lastly OSX shows every day users that there are Real! alternatives to Windows that don't have the stigma of To Hard attached that they can try and enjoy. So really outside the RM ethos of everything should be open (to which, hypocritically in context of the above, I subscribe) there isn't really much reason for a mac user to smarten up and switch, try maybe, to Linux (and a mac user wouldn't touch BSD).
Not really those of us who are too lazy but more those of us that just don't have the time. Saying that as a person who's only just realised how handy Backslash can be. This post was really helpful in giving me a quick overview on some thing I'll have to look into in a few weeks and since I'd missed the original story when it came out it was handy.
So hands up who didn't see this coming more than a year ago when they started talking about it...Don't forget this is still Microsoft we are talking about - the upper management is still in place which means the ethos while hidden hasn't changed - maybe when gates and the others go it might improve though not before then.
We supported AMD during its long fight with Intel. We gave it its power. We can take that away in one mass consumer action.
It's been very clear for along time that ATI are rubbish outside the fanboy wars and that you get the best bang for your buck using AMD+nForce+nVidia GPUs. That is the combination I've bought for the last few years now and I've never regretted any of those purchases. If that were to change I guess my grassroots support for AMD may have to be realigned, although very painfully, to Intel. Hopefully the (major) shareholders in this company understand what they are playing with when they come to vote on monday if this rumour is true.
These nice people really do remind me of a large aggressive dog that lashes out at everything. If a master gets jack of it (EU) and gives it a punch square in the nose (I'm against animal cruelty!) it will back off hurt while it works out The New World Order. Then the dog will work on a way to then correct its wrong doings (these 12 steps) and after a short time completely ignore them and go back to what it was doing after forgetting that the threat of being punched is real. Moral of the story is it wont last.
Mmm here is a message for EA and other huge gaming houses. At the large LAN we run locally we let users play the games they want for the thirty hours gaming or so it goes for. This LAN followed a trend we've been noticing for awhile: people are jack of rubbish no content games with flashy graphics. All of the users this time mostly played aoe2 and tremulous (tremulous.net - open source) and a small amount of call of duty.
How damn pathetic that after years these games still get play time (not that I'm not a fan of them myself), we should be onto far more creative and fun games these days! This is a broken industry so fix it.
Agreed. Until last week we used out right strings for our sandbox users passwords on servers and test servers (syntax username12345). That was of course before a friendly Windows script kiddie used a dictionary attack against them and in a stroke of luck the username they got was one of the sandbox accounts and their dictionary just had a huge list of username, username1, username12, username1..6. Luckly we had no out standing security flaws and that the sandbox accounts were indeed sandboxed though poor Undernet got an extra 2mbit to the face for half a day while we tracked down the problem and stopped it.
So using strings that are non random are just an out right bad idea because even a dictionary attack that is large enough can get them and then incremental on top of it is even worse because it gives you a false sense of security. If the attacker knows it is company policy to =/- 1 every month they will just try the pw +/- 1 per month old the pw is. So yeah it is just a bad idea all up when put in userland.
I have noticed what you talk about though I've seen it go to further extremes. While at work (we run a mainly Windows network with a few hundred users) I've done further education (out side of Uni) at Australian TAFEs (basically vocational collages) in Queensland - the TAFE I went to runs a pure Windows network with around twenty thousand plus users over several sites...Any one who has been to one of these TAFEs understands how much of a raping they have taken from Microsoft, and I say raping because they run the 'perfect Windows network' following all of Microsoft guidelines etc which mean some machines take over fifteen minutes to log in and are laggy as all hell once they are in.
Anyway onto the topic. They also follow the recommended guidelines for passwords which includes at least one capital, two numbers, over six chars, and cannot be any of your previous passwords (with I believe a 80% match so you can't just add a 1 or a 2 to it) and these roll every thirty days. Now as a geek I have my own unique password system where no two are the same, they are long, and they have numbers, and at least one capital - unfortunately there is only five or six possible combinations that meet the password system for each item meaning after five months going to this TAFE (I was there a year part time) I ran out of passwords. This put me on the tred mill that every one else had been on for a few months (they did a fresh roll over to XP from 98 at the start of last year) of forgetting the password (that I made up to get into the system after my old one expired) or where I wrote it down (yes, every one wrote down their passwords in blatant places so they could find them again, which to me makes passwords null anyway) and then starting to use generic passwords that every one else was using that month for example t4f3IsShit or fUkp455words and the like. As you can probably see this just ends up a mockery of the idea.
So basically the point I'm trying to make is you have to be careful with what you mean by a 'good set of password rules' as if you go overboard even to the slightest extent (as I've seen happen time and time again) passwords just become a joke and you may as well not have them.
Personally I've found that if you teach people/users what a secure password is, teach them not to tell it to any one, get them to use firefox to avoid keyloggers, and then enforce a six to twelve month roll over no problems ever come up. That's my happy medium and 2cents anyway.:)
I agree completely. As a Windows, Mac, and Linux user I would happily like to see the death of Windows though I wouldn't like to see one OS take over completely. While we are mostly safe with Linux as there are many distros and it's limited in some regards I still like the idea of cross platform and people being able to choose. After all that is why I use and love Linux over Windows and even Mac: The User Chooses.
You'd be suprised to notice that there is some legacy gender nouns about - many more than I thought when I started looking out for them after learning french. You have to look around a bit to find them - kind of like looking for unix/vms legacy support in Windows XP.
As far as I am concerned Google is hitting two birds with one stone here. Sure they are protecting their profits to some extent though look at it in a bigger picture...If they wanted they could be crushing every one in a race for profits (Microsoft style) yet they are holding back and asking for the minimum they need to continue working. I see it as calling in some respect which I for one think they have earnt. On top of it they are using it as a commercial charge against those who wish to destroy the neutrality of the net.
It's chicken and the egg in my opinion and Google is giving both at the same time to save a bit of stuffing around. And for this we should give them some space and kudos remembering of course that if legislation fails it really comes down to Google standing up and taking the beatings from telco's to show that the net wont stand for lack of neutrality. (I'm generalising, don't shoot me, and feel free to go into more detail in replies - just don't assume I don't understand the deeper issues.)
Gnome and KDE already run on Mac OSX and I assume can be made to run on Windows without to much effort (not sure about the X to Win32 GUI migration though...). Anyway from the amount of people I've seen run KDE and Gnome on their Macs I can easily crush your hopes of a Bright Future(tm) as a result of this. Why? (I should add reason so I don't seem like a troll) It's simple...People will view KDE as nothing more than a new skinning program and the extent of those who use skinning programs are those who are bored with Windows already and you can safely bet that they have flirted with or are in the process of flirting with Linux. This is going after the wrong group of people; instead of finding a way to expose every day users all this will do is expose those who've already made their choice.
Also Linux is not Windows. I dislike this whole out look suggesting that we have to beat Windows - Why can't we just have our nice OS that does what the FOSS community wants and just make sure it maintains a big enough percentage of the server/desktop market to be worth it - sure if we take over the world in the process all is good:) . I use Linux because it isn't Windows and that is why I use Gnome over KDE and while I do agree with you in part I completely disagree with the suggestion that Ubuntu should use KDE. In fact I rather like to see the other side: a new user comes across from Windows and sees Gnome and realises that Linux isn't about competing and that it is really about choice and that they are openly able to choose (via a simple apt-get line) to switch to KDE/XFCE/BlackBox.
You've been modded funny so I'll assume you were making a joke. Though to head off the usual trolls who bitch and moan about the editors I'd just like to point out that this story isn't time related. Accounting packages haven't changed at all and it is still a big issue. So before any one puts there boot into the editors at least look around for some of the good reasoning in this thread to be enlightened.
What kind of support? Can some one please out line who these squads are in more detail...I keep hearing about them here though we don't seem to have anything similar in Australia so I don't get it. At our versions of Best Buy, like Harvey Normans etc, the one or two techs they have are mostly knowledgeable for the basic tasks they have to do.
To me if there is an upgrade that is vital/important (and not cosmetic) users should upgrade to it. Though to me upgrades for vital/important things should only exist if the conditions 'if it isn't borken don't fix it' are met. So while I agree with you I also think that users should follow important updates and when needed upgrade. Unfortunately I'm shot down as the market doesn't follow my thinking/logic as they release utter crap as an important update so users learn to ignore them.
So I agree with you in reality though in thoery I disagree.:P
Though while reading my, badly spelt and lacking grammar wise, post please assume I'm talking in the case of a critical update like the one in question - Which I think my logic should apply to without fail. And again, sorry grammar nazi's...I already know I've done wrong!
I've been working with end users enough at uni and work to realise the most even the slightly geeky user will only ever upgrade their graphics card on their laptop when they are forced too.
This will be a huge problem no matter how you look at it full stop.
While on one hand I can't wait to get my hands on the sploit I'm just thinking how painful this will be unless Windows (and this is the only OS I'm worried about as most Linux and Mac users will get a new driver in their regular updates if they are effected) works out some way to force an update for all wireless drivers out there.
The Linux 'brand' is now almost a household word and many none techie people are at least receptive of the suggestion of trying it out. Some of these people are even converting for good. Sure they aren't fanboi's, in fact most of them are over 45 in my expirence, though at least they are also showing their children their nice easy to use computer that 'Just Works'(tm). Also with the addition of wine and cedega support for WoW every day not-so-geeky types are also dipping their feet in the water and enjoying what they find (mostly with ubuntu or some with suse).
So in reality the Linux Desktop is here, it has been for over a year, and the people have been coming.
There are down sides you must admit...For example the government raised the fees 22% on a whim; sure most uni's said they wouldn't in flict all of this on students though, as you know, our unis have a very well known ability to lie. Not that I'm still overly annoyed about that - it is just an example. There is no competition to level it out. Having gone to private schools all my life it is kind of weird to finally be in the public sector where no person or group matters as this big black cloud (read: government) just hangs over the system. Remembering of course that this black cloud is the same one that doesn't support those brilliant academics once they are finished. Maybe I just think our whole uni system is broken and it needs a decent rethink and shouldn't be put forward as a good model.
Also I'm sure we pay interest on our loans, I know mines going to be a killer to try and pay back...
Understanding how the body deals with antibodies is important here... A vaccination is, now there are many types but on the whole they tend to be, mostly dead versions of the virus which the body can identify clearly and do magical things with T cells that blow away the infection. Now a simple way of thinking of it is antibodies are regenerated based on importance of the antibody - in reality there is no intelligence in this process just based on which out break needed more antibodies to fight off - all antibody designs will stop being regenerated at some point so effectiveness is normally a time scale for anything. So while the average vaccination antibodies may only last say five to seven years in the case of whooping cough (I don't know the specifics for this one) some one who in fact had a full out break with serious virus cells that wanted to kill them may have managed to hang onto the blue print to craft the T cells to fight it. Now that isn't taking into account that the batch of vaccinations your family was part of could have been underpowered, a dud, or some thing else and please no one slaughter me on the generalisations here!
My point is basically that you shouldn't discredit vaccinations as a waste of time as they have done wonders for society along with general quality of life and you should understand that the idea is to use both herd immunity and individual immunity against virus just like a network may have a boarder virus scanner and each workstation has antivirus.
We have been using Evolution on our linux workstations and early win32 builds on the windows boxes for a rather long time. There are two huge problems that just make integration onto a network using Exchange servers pointless and annoying: first is it looks crap, not the program but the folder listing, if any one is expected to ever use it it needs to clone Outlook in the way the folders are displayed and the current 'it's close enough, it's good enough' just doesn't cut it in an environment filled with users who only know Outlook. Secondly administrators hate Outlook as you cannot add many mailboxes to the one account like you can in Outlook. Now I use Evolution at home and at work and I love it but until those two Exchange interoperation problems are fixed it will never gain mainstream adoption. Note that if they are fixed it has so many features over Outlook I think people will have trouble not looking at it.
One thing I hear a lot from people interested in doing this sort of thing is worries about fog and buildings. So here are my observations on these two topics, I hope they are helpful if they are in the back of your mind. Though I have no real idea about laser as it tends to be rather expensive (I'd love to know about some home brew solutions if any one knows some) I have had dealings in fibre through the company that I work for and personally I'd rather wireless for simple tasks (like the ones you listed) and fibre for that intersite LAN feeling (at work all of the sites are effectively on the one LAN which can be handy as they all use centralised DBs and content systems.
Fog has little to no effect on short range and long range wireless links. I have rarely used extreme short range (standard 6dbi antenna that you get with your home dsl router) wireless and have no idea what fog does to its already pathetic range. Though I have done extensive testing with one to eight km range gear (15 to 36dbi austar standard, grey sat, omni 180/360 wave guide, omni sticksomethings, and many more) transferring large files during fog periods and during sunny normal days and at most (you can't see five feet in front of you fog) the difference is a drop of around 20kb/s (sustained speeds of around 600kb/s) max to deal with the slightly contorted packet noise from the bounces. Over long range links (using 4watt Austraian max on the old 3 foot grey sat dishes to similar and to 24dbi austar) from 25km to 61km fog has had at most a 40-50kb/s (sustained-ish speeds of 550kb/s) effect which is nothing compared to lite dust which just kills the connection with a loss of around 430kb/s. So in my extensive experience in home brew/city wide community wireless projects (specifically Brismesh, Ipsmesh, and DDwireless in Queensland Australia) I can happily say fog is not some thing to worry about and rain may even give you small boosts in speed on short range links.
Large buildings in your way however will almost completely kill off any chances you have of getting a stable connection. And even if you can some how pull off enough of an angle to get a connection to your other site you may get a problem we often noticed where the noise causes a stable 600kb/s connection to drop to around 80kb/s after 20 minutes to around 12-13kb/s after 35 minutes or just drop out while moving large files. Remember that in Australia we have a 4watt limit so blasting our way through objects other than trees is a lot more illegal and a lot harder than it is in the US so it may be possible, I'm not sure. So as a rule of thumb...If you can't see it don't bother.
If you need to know more details or have other worries I am happy to answer and link you to wiki write ups on testing and projects we've done.
Grammatically I think I was accurate, sorry if I missed out a comma or similar. What I ment was that all of the hardware on my computer was using gpl drivers excluding the nvidia module when I use it over nv which I do to play games.
Also I find it rich that I get modded flamebait when I was defending my choice (what Linux is all about) over some one trying to push what they think is better (and in this case they didn't even back it up). Oh well at least now I can truthly claim I've been modded as a troll on/. at least once.:)
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Smarten up...A real unix system...Linux/BSD is the only way...
As a Linux user of four years who has recently bought their first, personal, mac laptop I wish to call bullshit. I'd like to point out that OSX still plays a very important part in Linux development (less so in BSD) - specifically in regards to new features. Take for example xgl/compiz and xcompmgr which will be in full deployment for when Vista ships to compete with the M$ eye candy...Sure it only came into the lime light when Vistas beta's started shipping and the glory project status moved to them though without earlier projects like luminocity (etc) which was an attempt to add mac grade eye candy to Linux there wouldn't have been the ground work or the test case for this. And even now look at xcompmgr with transett or compiz - they just basically fashion themselves after inbuilt mac effects or 3rd party add ins that have existed for awhile under OSX.
On top of that mac make computers end users like and OSX Just Works(tm) which for a Linux user is really handy some days when Debian sid decides it wants to blow the heads off all the toys. It also interconnects flawlessly with my other Linux boxes through ssh, samba, nfs, vnc and everything I need (I use Fink for random unix tools I need).
Lastly OSX shows every day users that there are Real! alternatives to Windows that don't have the stigma of To Hard attached that they can try and enjoy. So really outside the RM ethos of everything should be open (to which, hypocritically in context of the above, I subscribe) there isn't really much reason for a mac user to smarten up and switch, try maybe, to Linux (and a mac user wouldn't touch BSD).
Not really those of us who are too lazy but more those of us that just don't have the time. Saying that as a person who's only just realised how handy Backslash can be. This post was really helpful in giving me a quick overview on some thing I'll have to look into in a few weeks and since I'd missed the original story when it came out it was handy.
So hands up who didn't see this coming more than a year ago when they started talking about it...Don't forget this is still Microsoft we are talking about - the upper management is still in place which means the ethos while hidden hasn't changed - maybe when gates and the others go it might improve though not before then.
We supported AMD during its long fight with Intel. We gave it its power. We can take that away in one mass consumer action.
It's been very clear for along time that ATI are rubbish outside the fanboy wars and that you get the best bang for your buck using AMD+nForce+nVidia GPUs. That is the combination I've bought for the last few years now and I've never regretted any of those purchases. If that were to change I guess my grassroots support for AMD may have to be realigned, although very painfully, to Intel. Hopefully the (major) shareholders in this company understand what they are playing with when they come to vote on monday if this rumour is true.
I'll give you my broken space bar and you can hit them with that. :)
I was about to say non DRM is awesome but seriously...Jessica Simpson?
Who's going to buy her music let a lone pirate it!
These nice people really do remind me of a large aggressive dog that lashes out at everything. If a master gets jack of it (EU) and gives it a punch square in the nose (I'm against animal cruelty!) it will back off hurt while it works out The New World Order. Then the dog will work on a way to then correct its wrong doings (these 12 steps) and after a short time completely ignore them and go back to what it was doing after forgetting that the threat of being punched is real. Moral of the story is it wont last.
Mmm here is a message for EA and other huge gaming houses. At the large LAN we run locally we let users play the games they want for the thirty hours gaming or so it goes for. This LAN followed a trend we've been noticing for awhile: people are jack of rubbish no content games with flashy graphics. All of the users this time mostly played aoe2 and tremulous (tremulous.net - open source) and a small amount of call of duty.
How damn pathetic that after years these games still get play time (not that I'm not a fan of them myself), we should be onto far more creative and fun games these days! This is a broken industry so fix it.
Agreed. Until last week we used out right strings for our sandbox users passwords on servers and test servers (syntax username12345). That was of course before a friendly Windows script kiddie used a dictionary attack against them and in a stroke of luck the username they got was one of the sandbox accounts and their dictionary just had a huge list of username, username1, username12, username1..6. Luckly we had no out standing security flaws and that the sandbox accounts were indeed sandboxed though poor Undernet got an extra 2mbit to the face for half a day while we tracked down the problem and stopped it.
So using strings that are non random are just an out right bad idea because even a dictionary attack that is large enough can get them and then incremental on top of it is even worse because it gives you a false sense of security. If the attacker knows it is company policy to =/- 1 every month they will just try the pw +/- 1 per month old the pw is. So yeah it is just a bad idea all up when put in userland.
And we are all BOFHs! ...or in my case PFYs. :(
I have noticed what you talk about though I've seen it go to further extremes. While at work (we run a mainly Windows network with a few hundred users) I've done further education (out side of Uni) at Australian TAFEs (basically vocational collages) in Queensland - the TAFE I went to runs a pure Windows network with around twenty thousand plus users over several sites...Any one who has been to one of these TAFEs understands how much of a raping they have taken from Microsoft, and I say raping because they run the 'perfect Windows network' following all of Microsoft guidelines etc which mean some machines take over fifteen minutes to log in and are laggy as all hell once they are in.
:)
Anyway onto the topic. They also follow the recommended guidelines for passwords which includes at least one capital, two numbers, over six chars, and cannot be any of your previous passwords (with I believe a 80% match so you can't just add a 1 or a 2 to it) and these roll every thirty days. Now as a geek I have my own unique password system where no two are the same, they are long, and they have numbers, and at least one capital - unfortunately there is only five or six possible combinations that meet the password system for each item meaning after five months going to this TAFE (I was there a year part time) I ran out of passwords. This put me on the tred mill that every one else had been on for a few months (they did a fresh roll over to XP from 98 at the start of last year) of forgetting the password (that I made up to get into the system after my old one expired) or where I wrote it down (yes, every one wrote down their passwords in blatant places so they could find them again, which to me makes passwords null anyway) and then starting to use generic passwords that every one else was using that month for example t4f3IsShit or fUkp455words and the like. As you can probably see this just ends up a mockery of the idea.
So basically the point I'm trying to make is you have to be careful with what you mean by a 'good set of password rules' as if you go overboard even to the slightest extent (as I've seen happen time and time again) passwords just become a joke and you may as well not have them.
Personally I've found that if you teach people/users what a secure password is, teach them not to tell it to any one, get them to use firefox to avoid keyloggers, and then enforce a six to twelve month roll over no problems ever come up. That's my happy medium and 2cents anyway.
I agree completely. As a Windows, Mac, and Linux user I would happily like to see the death of Windows though I wouldn't like to see one OS take over completely. While we are mostly safe with Linux as there are many distros and it's limited in some regards I still like the idea of cross platform and people being able to choose. After all that is why I use and love Linux over Windows and even Mac: The User Chooses.
You'd be suprised to notice that there is some legacy gender nouns about - many more than I thought when I started looking out for them after learning french. You have to look around a bit to find them - kind of like looking for unix/vms legacy support in Windows XP.
As far as I am concerned Google is hitting two birds with one stone here. Sure they are protecting their profits to some extent though look at it in a bigger picture...If they wanted they could be crushing every one in a race for profits (Microsoft style) yet they are holding back and asking for the minimum they need to continue working. I see it as calling in some respect which I for one think they have earnt. On top of it they are using it as a commercial charge against those who wish to destroy the neutrality of the net.
It's chicken and the egg in my opinion and Google is giving both at the same time to save a bit of stuffing around. And for this we should give them some space and kudos remembering of course that if legislation fails it really comes down to Google standing up and taking the beatings from telco's to show that the net wont stand for lack of neutrality. (I'm generalising, don't shoot me, and feel free to go into more detail in replies - just don't assume I don't understand the deeper issues.)
Gnome and KDE already run on Mac OSX and I assume can be made to run on Windows without to much effort (not sure about the X to Win32 GUI migration though...). Anyway from the amount of people I've seen run KDE and Gnome on their Macs I can easily crush your hopes of a Bright Future(tm) as a result of this. Why? (I should add reason so I don't seem like a troll) It's simple...People will view KDE as nothing more than a new skinning program and the extent of those who use skinning programs are those who are bored with Windows already and you can safely bet that they have flirted with or are in the process of flirting with Linux. This is going after the wrong group of people; instead of finding a way to expose every day users all this will do is expose those who've already made their choice.
:) . I use Linux because it isn't Windows and that is why I use Gnome over KDE and while I do agree with you in part I completely disagree with the suggestion that Ubuntu should use KDE. In fact I rather like to see the other side: a new user comes across from Windows and sees Gnome and realises that Linux isn't about competing and that it is really about choice and that they are openly able to choose (via a simple apt-get line) to switch to KDE/XFCE/BlackBox.
Also Linux is not Windows. I dislike this whole out look suggesting that we have to beat Windows - Why can't we just have our nice OS that does what the FOSS community wants and just make sure it maintains a big enough percentage of the server/desktop market to be worth it - sure if we take over the world in the process all is good
You've been modded funny so I'll assume you were making a joke. Though to head off the usual trolls who bitch and moan about the editors I'd just like to point out that this story isn't time related. Accounting packages haven't changed at all and it is still a big issue. So before any one puts there boot into the editors at least look around for some of the good reasoning in this thread to be enlightened.
What kind of support? Can some one please out line who these squads are in more detail...I keep hearing about them here though we don't seem to have anything similar in Australia so I don't get it. At our versions of Best Buy, like Harvey Normans etc, the one or two techs they have are mostly knowledgeable for the basic tasks they have to do.
To me if there is an upgrade that is vital/important (and not cosmetic) users should upgrade to it. Though to me upgrades for vital/important things should only exist if the conditions 'if it isn't borken don't fix it' are met. So while I agree with you I also think that users should follow important updates and when needed upgrade. Unfortunately I'm shot down as the market doesn't follow my thinking/logic as they release utter crap as an important update so users learn to ignore them.
:P
So I agree with you in reality though in thoery I disagree.
Though while reading my, badly spelt and lacking grammar wise, post please assume I'm talking in the case of a critical update like the one in question - Which I think my logic should apply to without fail. And again, sorry grammar nazi's...I already know I've done wrong!
No one will update. And I'm serious; no one .
I've been working with end users enough at uni and work to realise the most even the slightly geeky user will only ever upgrade their graphics card on their laptop when they are forced too.
This will be a huge problem no matter how you look at it full stop.
While on one hand I can't wait to get my hands on the sploit I'm just thinking how painful this will be unless Windows (and this is the only OS I'm worried about as most Linux and Mac users will get a new driver in their regular updates if they are effected) works out some way to force an update for all wireless drivers out there.
Agreed.
The Linux 'brand' is now almost a household word and many none techie people are at least receptive of the suggestion of trying it out. Some of these people are even converting for good. Sure they aren't fanboi's, in fact most of them are over 45 in my expirence, though at least they are also showing their children their nice easy to use computer that 'Just Works'(tm). Also with the addition of wine and cedega support for WoW every day not-so-geeky types are also dipping their feet in the water and enjoying what they find (mostly with ubuntu or some with suse).
So in reality the Linux Desktop is here, it has been for over a year, and the people have been coming.
There are down sides you must admit...For example the government raised the fees 22% on a whim; sure most uni's said they wouldn't in flict all of this on students though, as you know, our unis have a very well known ability to lie. Not that I'm still overly annoyed about that - it is just an example. There is no competition to level it out. Having gone to private schools all my life it is kind of weird to finally be in the public sector where no person or group matters as this big black cloud (read: government) just hangs over the system. Remembering of course that this black cloud is the same one that doesn't support those brilliant academics once they are finished. Maybe I just think our whole uni system is broken and it needs a decent rethink and shouldn't be put forward as a good model.
Also I'm sure we pay interest on our loans, I know mines going to be a killer to try and pay back...
Understanding how the body deals with antibodies is important here... A vaccination is, now there are many types but on the whole they tend to be, mostly dead versions of the virus which the body can identify clearly and do magical things with T cells that blow away the infection. Now a simple way of thinking of it is antibodies are regenerated based on importance of the antibody - in reality there is no intelligence in this process just based on which out break needed more antibodies to fight off - all antibody designs will stop being regenerated at some point so effectiveness is normally a time scale for anything. So while the average vaccination antibodies may only last say five to seven years in the case of whooping cough (I don't know the specifics for this one) some one who in fact had a full out break with serious virus cells that wanted to kill them may have managed to hang onto the blue print to craft the T cells to fight it. Now that isn't taking into account that the batch of vaccinations your family was part of could have been underpowered, a dud, or some thing else and please no one slaughter me on the generalisations here!
My point is basically that you shouldn't discredit vaccinations as a waste of time as they have done wonders for society along with general quality of life and you should understand that the idea is to use both herd immunity and individual immunity against virus just like a network may have a boarder virus scanner and each workstation has antivirus.
We have been using Evolution on our linux workstations and early win32 builds on the windows boxes for a rather long time. There are two huge problems that just make integration onto a network using Exchange servers pointless and annoying: first is it looks crap, not the program but the folder listing, if any one is expected to ever use it it needs to clone Outlook in the way the folders are displayed and the current 'it's close enough, it's good enough' just doesn't cut it in an environment filled with users who only know Outlook. Secondly administrators hate Outlook as you cannot add many mailboxes to the one account like you can in Outlook. Now I use Evolution at home and at work and I love it but until those two Exchange interoperation problems are fixed it will never gain mainstream adoption. Note that if they are fixed it has so many features over Outlook I think people will have trouble not looking at it.
One thing I hear a lot from people interested in doing this sort of thing is worries about fog and buildings. So here are my observations on these two topics, I hope they are helpful if they are in the back of your mind. Though I have no real idea about laser as it tends to be rather expensive (I'd love to know about some home brew solutions if any one knows some) I have had dealings in fibre through the company that I work for and personally I'd rather wireless for simple tasks (like the ones you listed) and fibre for that intersite LAN feeling (at work all of the sites are effectively on the one LAN which can be handy as they all use centralised DBs and content systems.
Fog has little to no effect on short range and long range wireless links. I have rarely used extreme short range (standard 6dbi antenna that you get with your home dsl router) wireless and have no idea what fog does to its already pathetic range. Though I have done extensive testing with one to eight km range gear (15 to 36dbi austar standard, grey sat, omni 180/360 wave guide, omni sticksomethings, and many more) transferring large files during fog periods and during sunny normal days and at most (you can't see five feet in front of you fog) the difference is a drop of around 20kb/s (sustained speeds of around 600kb/s) max to deal with the slightly contorted packet noise from the bounces. Over long range links (using 4watt Austraian max on the old 3 foot grey sat dishes to similar and to 24dbi austar) from 25km to 61km fog has had at most a 40-50kb/s (sustained-ish speeds of 550kb/s) effect which is nothing compared to lite dust which just kills the connection with a loss of around 430kb/s. So in my extensive experience in home brew/city wide community wireless projects (specifically Brismesh, Ipsmesh, and DDwireless in Queensland Australia) I can happily say fog is not some thing to worry about and rain may even give you small boosts in speed on short range links.
Large buildings in your way however will almost completely kill off any chances you have of getting a stable connection. And even if you can some how pull off enough of an angle to get a connection to your other site you may get a problem we often noticed where the noise causes a stable 600kb/s connection to drop to around 80kb/s after 20 minutes to around 12-13kb/s after 35 minutes or just drop out while moving large files. Remember that in Australia we have a 4watt limit so blasting our way through objects other than trees is a lot more illegal and a lot harder than it is in the US so it may be possible, I'm not sure. So as a rule of thumb...If you can't see it don't bother.
If you need to know more details or have other worries I am happy to answer and link you to wiki write ups on testing and projects we've done.
Grammatically I think I was accurate, sorry if I missed out a comma or similar. What I ment was that all of the hardware on my computer was using gpl drivers excluding the nvidia module when I use it over nv which I do to play games.
/. at least once. :)
Also I find it rich that I get modded flamebait when I was defending my choice (what Linux is all about) over some one trying to push what they think is better (and in this case they didn't even back it up). Oh well at least now I can truthly claim I've been modded as a troll on