The Slashdot summary is a bit misleading. What the article says is that Andrew Morton has been expecting a kernel submission for Xen for quite some time now but a) has yet to receive it, and b) needs to go through the usual process with other "stakeholders" before any incorporation. Later the article quotes the Xen folks themselves who point out that "feature creep" and the need to generally get things really solid and stable has made everything take a little longer.
What the article actually seems to be saying - it uses the word "agressive" a lot as if this was some kind of virtue - is that Red Hat has a new senior honcho who'd like to make his mark. The issue of incorporating virtualization technologies into the Linux kernel is taken as a given by all parties. Which is hardly news. Chalk one up to the Red Hat marketing department for a nicely planted "news" story about their increased investment in the area (new hires, etc.), perhaps.
Don't be taken in by their reputation for fine home cooking. These old birds can be as tough as battalion of guardsmen. Hmmn, a meeting of the local branch would probably conclude that there isn't much room for a nuclear waste dump in a typical English village of only 100-200 people, especially where every square inch of garden is given over to dahlias for the village flower show or prize marrows. A proposal from Lady Snides from the "big house" that the dump be located in the village council estate was narrowly rejected.
I think they might tell the government that they are already suffering the consequences of a nuclear waste dump in the form of a gipsy encampment half a mile up the road. On reflection, the Institute might recommend the government should send the stuff to America instead. About time that ghastly George Bush with his face puckered up like a goat's bottom returned a favour. And there'll be no need to send Tony Blair back after he's been reprocessed.
The Good Steve / Bad Steve gig has been around for a long time. It's hardly original and anyway is a very reductive way of looking at something as complex as a human being. If this is all legendary journo Lunchtime O'Booze, sorry Alan Deutschmann, can manage then he's not really worth spending time on, imho.
Much more interesting is the address Steve Jobs gave at Stanford earlier this year - see http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/ jobs-061505.html. There are plenty of luminaries and big-shot businessmen in the IT world but it's hard to imagine them coming up with an address like this. Being told you have terminal cancer is something we'd all pray to be spared, and the way Steve Jobs came through it suggests to me he's a very special person.
Ah, Microsoft: for a company returning net profits well north of $30 million per day, you'd think the poor lambs might be able to afford more than a single computer. Perhaps the news that these here "zombies" exist and are used to send this strange stuff called "spam" came as a terrific shock. Agree with another poster: this comes over as a publicity stunt. One wonders if they even paid for the computer.
Perhaps it's time for a name and shame campaign on spam with the big IT companies. How much is each of them spending on combating spam and taking down spammers? I'll bet it's not nearly as much as they'd like us all to think.
Scientists around the world went on alert Friday after photographs from a weather satellite showed the appearance of a gigantic and hitherto unknown coral reef in the South China Sea.
A scientist commented: "This is one of the greatest discoveries of all time, perhaps even the site of the fabled classical city of Atlantis. You can imagine our excitement - technical analysis of the reef showes that it is made up of millions upons millions of silver-coloured, platter-shaped objects perhaps deposited there by an alien civilization. Rudimentary textual analysis of inscriptions on the platters suggests an association between the phonemes ''Mi', 'Win', 'For', 'Sou', 'Kor' but as yet no one has been able to decipher their precise meaning. We think they might refer to an ancient ruler or despot who chose to be buried at sea with his treasure."
I was drawn to Linux by the charter for a universal operating system, freely available to anyone who wants it without fear or favour all over the world. In an age of sometimes rotten materialism, this stands out as something worth aspiring to. Like any ideal, we'll never get there but the goal is in the journey. Debian has come to be the best expression of that for me, but there are plenty of alternatives to choose from.
I still use Windows and it has many fine qualities. But increasingly I dislike it's one-size-fits-all approach and its reduction of all human experience to just one crass American vision: pay up pay up, consume consume, more more. Most of all I dislike its dishonesty - wherever you are in Windowsland, the helpful guides who take you by the elbow and recommend the sights to see are all taking a cut from Big Bill and so are paid to steer you in one direction only. It's not for me.
This sounds a novel ploy. The next time Microsoft are asked to conform to some open standard, they will announce a relationship with a mysterious company in, say, the Yemen whose staff, it may even be insinuated, consist entirely of fanatical Muslims and convicted rapists. At that point, the Microsofties will ask the politicians on the interviewing panel to sign off on the tax dollars for the work, to be remitted directly to the nutters concerned, and sit back and watch the politicos slowly melt.
In any case, it's all just window-dressing. Most folks will just click on the "Save" (doc format) button. Few will know how to obtain and install a third-party plug-in, or go through the hassle of doing a "Save As" assuming Microsoft make it even as easy as that. Chances are they won't, I guess.
I am the Fiduciary Collections Officer for the Bank of Mwuangabana e Sanctu Spiritu, Lagos, and am seeking by the same a trustworthy and reliable partner concerning the deposition in cash specie of 7.8 million dollars US by dependable American business the Microsoft Corporation for information leading to the identification of two missing persons. Now I find the money unclaimed and wish to transfer...
Hate to say it, but the notion that troubles at Novell won't affect SUSE is complete bullshit. They need enterprise sales. The enterprise generally doesn't invest in troubled companies that might have gone down the tubes one year into a five-year support package. And that's excluding any impact on Novell Linux if a new strategy vaporizes their R&D budgets. Any long-term cloud over Novell is going to be a killer for SUSE. In Linux terms, it would be a case of no one ever went broke buying Red Hat.
That wouldn't be attractive for many companies. I mean, why change from Windows to Linux when the only credible Linux game in town is Red Hat and they want to be just like Microsoft anyway. This sounds much more like analysts talking up SUSE because they know full well that if it comes to a showdown at Novell, the Linux part is the one that will sell for decent money, if they can keep it untarnished.
The article really doesn't tell us much, apart from the notion that ideas about extraterrestrial life project a society's current fears and preoccupations, but then we knew that.
Perhaps our ideas have changed a bit in the last 20-30 years, though. These days it seems that we are slowly coming round to the notion that extraterrestrial life does exist and is more of a given than a wild speculation, so the next and pressing question is what sort of life?
You can see the old projections in the popular coverage of the Mars explorers, where the theme seems to be that life, if it existed, is or was on a collision course with the planet whose conditions fostered it in the first place and then snuffed it out. Cue global warming, etc.
Could be a smart move. I guess the CEO of Novell will shortly be needing to flee to somewhere a long way away after his "investors" have finished with him.
I guess you could show someone some pictures of Richard Stallman, Alan Cox, Mark Shuttleworth, Eric Raymond and a goggle-eyed Tux and see whether they fancy a spin with Linux. Nuff said, most likely.
Linux still manages to be a bit snobby, which doesn't help. The ubiquitous term "newbie" is both patronising and hints at initiation into some sect. I guess most folks don't take up an OS in order to be thrust back into a school playground. They are exhausted from the day job and they just want something that works. Perhaps they should be tougher, and if called a newbie retort that they will make it their business to seek out and shoot a penguin every time they are called one. On the Debian mailing lists, make that a penguin and a wildebeest.
Where I live, computer stores neither stock nor offer Linux. Microsoft has them under its thumb. If you can't obtain it, no one can use it. Simple. In addition, modern Linux distros require a lot of power and a lot of ram. There are huge numbers of folks out there who can't afford more than fairly old computers from the p2 or early p3 eras with +/- say 64 megs of ram. Windows - say, Win98 - and an older version of Office will run fine on these whereas gnome 2.12 and all the rest either won't or will struggle. So, for many folks, "modern" Linux has priced itself out of the market.
Well if Slackware works for this guy then great, as it clearly also works for a lot of other folks, not all of them going on 80:) I guess in the years ahead we'll get used to the oldies fighting in the aisles over their favourite distro rather than, as now, over politics, world war two, medical care and who got to the discounted cookies first.
However, perhaps a certain amount of prudence might be a good idea. If someone is going to invest a great deal of time in learning Linux then maybe they'd want to choose a solid distro whose future looks brighter than its past. So I guess that might mean, say, Red Hat, SUSE, Ubuntu or Debian. OK, everyone will have variations on that (Gentoo, Mandriva, etc.). But I wonder whether Slackware fits the bill?
Software gets more, not less, complex. And we ask it to do more not fewer things (VOIP and multimedia functionality being only the latest two in a long line). I wonder whether this means that traditional Linux distros put together by just one or at most a few people are going to become untenable. Only the bigger outfits will really be able to keep up because they have enough developers and contributors to allow it.
Dunno. Kudos to Slackware and all who sail in her - the guy behind it sounds like a hero - but is this really the future?
I don't think the "review" mentions the colour depth, but then I guess it is not addressing a readership for whom this is a priority. It would be for me. I'm not sure whether LCD-makers have yet cracked it so that an LCD can be both fast enough to avoid ghosting and show a full gamut of 16.7 million, 8-bit colours or whatever.
Hmmn, your last paragraph says that you are "Famous" and that probably "a total of 5 people" have recognized you.
Are you hinting that you are a member of the Famous Five? If so, wow!! I often wondered what happened to them after I stopped reading Enid Blyton several decades ago.
Why not stick to solid English fare like my nick? People know where you're coming from. None of this fancy foreign muck. If CmdrTaco is becoming a problemo and in some circles a no-no, I'd suggest switching to something you'll never need to change like BaconandEggs, SteakandKidneyPie, Kedgeree, MarmiteBap, JelliedEels, SaveloyandChips - the possibilities of English cuisine are almost endless.
I think the point is that it's quite a good idea to evaulate what needs to be done and what doesn't when social issues crop up. This might lead people to ask whether the current row about internet "ownership" is getting out of proportion and, possibly, is being stoked by politicians eager to distract attention from things that impact badly on them. Yes, some of these things are more important than the internet which, for most people alive today, is a luxury they can only imagine. So when US, European and other politicians start sounding off about the net, it's no bad thing to ask the question that journalists are said to ask of politicos and shifty customers everywhere: "Why is this lying bastard lying to me?"
Well who knows, but it would be nice to see Google really launch something bigtime stylee and stand behind it, instead of trickling out an unimpressive beta (and thus dubiously supported) that's all potential and little action, like the messenging service. Classified ads and online auctions? We'll soon find out.
No shortage of computing power to hand among their chums I guess. Why, Sun has that massive grid rental system they touted a year ago but which has failed to attract a single public customer apparently. I'm sure Google could fill it up quickly enough. So much more interesting than news that Solaris will carry a Google Toolbar, though that must be a great reassurance to Sun admins everywhere.
Today, the 2000th American soldier died for his country in Iraq (of all rotten places, fgs).
Today, it also looks as if indictments are just about to be handed down on two of the President's key aides.
And this is the news that, allegedly, preoccupies us all.
Are politicians that desperate to distract attention from far more important matters? Let's forget about brave men dying like dogs and worry about whether we'll still be able to order groceries online next Tuesday! It's enough to make you despair. Besides, that one quote in the preamble sums it up well: "Today, in a globalized world in which the Internet has become a global resource for freedom of expression and for economic exchange, this monopolistic oversight of the Internet by one government is no longer a politically tenable solution."
It's so insulting. If the academy members had any principles, they'd return the material with an angry letter alogn the lines of "This is not material that deserves to be taken lightly. On the contrary, it deserves to be thrown with great force into the nearest fireplace."
So many members are in a position to influence the studios in a way the rest of us never will be. Instead they seem to be supinely laying down moaning "Treat me like dirt! I'll do anything to be told I'm important and can afford to run five Ferraris at once."
Still, perhaps nearer the time Slashdot could run an article entitled "101 things to do instead of watching the Academy Awards". Alas, not very hard to do anyway, I guess, considering the crap standard of so many films these days.
I've used SUSE for more than four years now in successive versions. IME, SUSE is head and shoulders away the best of the big, all-rounder distros for those non-techs who don't want to poke around too deeply under the bonnet and appreciate GUI config tools like YaST. So much of SUSE "just works" and its hardware detection is second to none. I haven't found 10 to be any different, just incremental improvements over 9.3 which in turn showed incremental improvements over 9.2.
Besides here is that rare thing these days, in any industry: an outfit that takes obvous pride in what it does and stands behind its products. This, to me, is what wins customer loyalty and deserves support. You can't just sling together a good distro and a satisfying desktop. It requires huge work and attention to detail through a hundred little touches here and there. SUSE are very good at this and always have been. Ubuntu is a great distro too but I think they could learn a lot from the awesome thoroughness which SUSE show, right down to the documentation which is the best in the industry.
So many people criticize SUSE for its multimedia limitations out of the box. So what. This is a Linux-wide problem not limited to one distro. SUSE have made it as easy as possible to restore full functionality via some straightforward downloads. Why should they lay themselves open to legal troubles and possible litigation? The folks who criticize them for this are very often the same folks who demand free downloads of everything - freeloaders, in other words. If you really want free everything, then go Debian or Ubuntu and live with any consequences. The vast majority of computer users will never fall into this camp. They are happy to exchange convenience and time-saving for a little money. It's not SUSE's fault that the entertainment industry is obsessed with making life as difficult as possible.
So be grateful for another great distro, easily the rival of WinXP I'd reckon. So many posts in this thread show a rather unwholesome ingratitude towards a product you can have for free. Just my 2 cents.
It sure looks as if Microsoft is faced with a lose-lose in China and most likely the other major developing powers. Essentially it boils down to the fact that those powers use piracy as a political tool. The argument is really "Let us use Windows on a pirated basis, or at least a token-cost basis, until our economies are stronger otherwise we will take up Linux en masse and you will lose this huge market forever." What is left unsaid is that as soon as their economies are stronger, these powers will take up Linux or something else en masse anyway. They are never going to make themselves dependent on a US corporation. In the meantime, Microsoft is left doing darn near give-away deals (as in Indonesia) or issuing dinky cutdown editions for these markets that fool no one.
Perhaps what we are really seeing is the beginning of a Microsoft withdrawal from swathes of the world that will accelerate in the years ahead. Microsoft's bastions are North America and Europe. The colony in China turned out to an expensive venture that led nowhere. The locals had other plans. They decided to produce not merely their own software but their own computers too.
There are plenty of ways out of this other than a "showdown". And the fact that it should even be seen as coming to a showdown is a sad comment on the Bush administration's grasp of foreign policy, considering all the other far more important issues troubling the USA and the world. Some ways to take the heat out of the issue were mentioned in the article in the Economist.
In any case, you can't have it both ways. If the internet is just another utility as many proponents claim, then it is about as interesting as gas, plumbing or electricity. By this argument, moving some aspects of internet regulation to an international body isn't remotely controversial and not much different to the international postal and telephone agreements that have been in force for years. These work well and so unremarkably that no one gives them a second thought. Why should the internet be any different? No one is suggesting that the internet be given away or placed in the hands of a cosmic villain.
On the other hand, if the internet is a some kind of special case and qualitatively different by an order of magnitude from simple utilities, they let's hear some reasoned argument from the US establishment instead of jingoism (and a lot less hype from the big IT companies about a global inforamtion economy).
Alas, it looks as if this is developing in a way all too typical of the current Administration. We begin with intransigence and hostility. This gives way to bad-tempered haggling which eventually results in a sour US withdrawal from its position. Eventually there is a compromise. Everyone is left feeling crap and the US, most likely, is left with less than it would have achieved had it been a little more thoughtful and subtle in the first place.
Some form of international settlement for the regulation of the internet is absolutely inevitable, imho. Unless you are a flat-earther, the only next question is how best to achieve this. Unfortunately it looks as if the US Administration is settling for flag-waiving. I don't think this has yet been backed up with fire-breathing quotations from the bible, but it probably will be. It ain't gonna fly.
Watching Ballmer in action really is like watching an old pro toggle up yet again for some feisty action with the pesky "competition". Others have long retired from the ring but, as the saying goes, this guy would cross the street if he thought there was a chance of getting into a good brawl.
I guess, though, that you can battle some of the people some of the time and win. But if you battle all of the people all the time you will lose. At the moment, Microsoft seems to be in the second mode. Hardly a day goes by without them announcing some initiative involving their "innovation pipeline" (whatever that is) which means crushing competition in some far-flung province of the empire. Good old Ballmero, he'll still be fighting as they carry him into the Open Sauce Memorial Cemetery and he'll probably still be struggling as he reaches six foot under. I guess at least it will be possible to set a pin on the headstone using Google Earth.
Something like this is pretty well inevitable. It's not hard to see why. Bear in mind that big software outfits don't want their stuff to just run on Linux, they want it to run well and with a guaranteed "user experience". Both are deal-breakers for the Adobes of this world. It's also important to remember that top-class and easy to use software development tools are very important to the success of a platform. Microsoft were very clever in getting this aspect down pat for Windows.
And, hey, no one has to certify to this LSB or anything else in that line. If you don't want to, you'll very probably find that a swathe of apps won't run on your distro (in a few years' time) and many of your users will go elsewhere, but hey that is fine too. It's called consequences, and growing up to take responsibility for them.
I guess it's possible to try to influence change to the platform as the big money moves in, or to marginalize yourself by ranting at the world. But for good or ill, change of the kind envisioned in this article is clearly going to happen.
Slashdot Mirror
The Slashdot summary is a bit misleading. What the article says is that Andrew Morton has been expecting a kernel submission for Xen for quite some time now but a) has yet to receive it, and b) needs to go through the usual process with other "stakeholders" before any incorporation. Later the article quotes the Xen folks themselves who point out that "feature creep" and the need to generally get things really solid and stable has made everything take a little longer.
What the article actually seems to be saying - it uses the word "agressive" a lot as if this was some kind of virtue - is that Red Hat has a new senior honcho who'd like to make his mark. The issue of incorporating virtualization technologies into the Linux kernel is taken as a given by all parties. Which is hardly news. Chalk one up to the Red Hat marketing department for a nicely planted "news" story about their increased investment in the area (new hires, etc.), perhaps.
UK Women's Institute?
Don't be taken in by their reputation for fine home cooking. These old birds can be as tough as battalion of guardsmen. Hmmn, a meeting of the local branch would probably conclude that there isn't much room for a nuclear waste dump in a typical English village of only 100-200 people, especially where every square inch of garden is given over to dahlias for the village flower show or prize marrows. A proposal from Lady Snides from the "big house" that the dump be located in the village council estate was narrowly rejected.
I think they might tell the government that they are already suffering the consequences of a nuclear waste dump in the form of a gipsy encampment half a mile up the road. On reflection, the Institute might recommend the government should send the stuff to America instead. About time that ghastly George Bush with his face puckered up like a goat's bottom returned a favour. And there'll be no need to send Tony Blair back after he's been reprocessed.
The Good Steve / Bad Steve gig has been around for a long time. It's hardly original and anyway is a very reductive way of looking at something as complex as a human being. If this is all legendary journo Lunchtime O'Booze, sorry Alan Deutschmann, can manage then he's not really worth spending time on, imho.
/ jobs-061505.html. There are plenty of luminaries and big-shot businessmen in the IT world but it's hard to imagine them coming up with an address like this. Being told you have terminal cancer is something we'd all pray to be spared, and the way Steve Jobs came through it suggests to me he's a very special person.
Much more interesting is the address Steve Jobs gave at Stanford earlier this year - see http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15
Just my 2 cents. I'm not an Apple user, either.
Ah, Microsoft: for a company returning net profits well north of $30 million per day, you'd think the poor lambs might be able to afford more than a single computer. Perhaps the news that these here "zombies" exist and are used to send this strange stuff called "spam" came as a terrific shock. Agree with another poster: this comes over as a publicity stunt. One wonders if they even paid for the computer.
Perhaps it's time for a name and shame campaign on spam with the big IT companies. How much is each of them spending on combating spam and taking down spammers? I'll bet it's not nearly as much as they'd like us all to think.
Scientists around the world went on alert Friday after photographs from a weather satellite showed the appearance of a gigantic and hitherto unknown coral reef in the South China Sea.
A scientist commented: "This is one of the greatest discoveries of all time, perhaps even the site of the fabled classical city of Atlantis. You can imagine our excitement - technical analysis of the reef showes that it is made up of millions upons millions of silver-coloured, platter-shaped objects perhaps deposited there by an alien civilization. Rudimentary textual analysis of inscriptions on the platters suggests an association between the phonemes ''Mi', 'Win', 'For', 'Sou', 'Kor' but as yet no one has been able to decipher their precise meaning. We think they might refer to an ancient ruler or despot who chose to be buried at sea with his treasure."
I was drawn to Linux by the charter for a universal operating system, freely available to anyone who wants it without fear or favour all over the world. In an age of sometimes rotten materialism, this stands out as something worth aspiring to. Like any ideal, we'll never get there but the goal is in the journey. Debian has come to be the best expression of that for me, but there are plenty of alternatives to choose from.
I still use Windows and it has many fine qualities. But increasingly I dislike it's one-size-fits-all approach and its reduction of all human experience to just one crass American vision: pay up pay up, consume consume, more more. Most of all I dislike its dishonesty - wherever you are in Windowsland, the helpful guides who take you by the elbow and recommend the sights to see are all taking a cut from Big Bill and so are paid to steer you in one direction only. It's not for me.
This sounds a novel ploy. The next time Microsoft are asked to conform to some open standard, they will announce a relationship with a mysterious company in, say, the Yemen whose staff, it may even be insinuated, consist entirely of fanatical Muslims and convicted rapists. At that point, the Microsofties will ask the politicians on the interviewing panel to sign off on the tax dollars for the work, to be remitted directly to the nutters concerned, and sit back and watch the politicos slowly melt.
In any case, it's all just window-dressing. Most folks will just click on the "Save" (doc format) button. Few will know how to obtain and install a third-party plug-in, or go through the hassle of doing a "Save As" assuming Microsoft make it even as easy as that. Chances are they won't, I guess.
Dear Colleague
...
I am the Fiduciary Collections Officer for the Bank of Mwuangabana e Sanctu Spiritu, Lagos, and am seeking by the same a trustworthy and reliable partner concerning the deposition in cash specie of 7.8 million dollars US by dependable American business the Microsoft Corporation for information leading to the identification of two missing persons. Now I find the money unclaimed and wish to transfer
Hate to say it, but the notion that troubles at Novell won't affect SUSE is complete bullshit. They need enterprise sales. The enterprise generally doesn't invest in troubled companies that might have gone down the tubes one year into a five-year support package. And that's excluding any impact on Novell Linux if a new strategy vaporizes their R&D budgets. Any long-term cloud over Novell is going to be a killer for SUSE. In Linux terms, it would be a case of no one ever went broke buying Red Hat.
That wouldn't be attractive for many companies. I mean, why change from Windows to Linux when the only credible Linux game in town is Red Hat and they want to be just like Microsoft anyway. This sounds much more like analysts talking up SUSE because they know full well that if it comes to a showdown at Novell, the Linux part is the one that will sell for decent money, if they can keep it untarnished.
The article really doesn't tell us much, apart from the notion that ideas about extraterrestrial life project a society's current fears and preoccupations, but then we knew that.
Perhaps our ideas have changed a bit in the last 20-30 years, though. These days it seems that we are slowly coming round to the notion that extraterrestrial life does exist and is more of a given than a wild speculation, so the next and pressing question is what sort of life?
You can see the old projections in the popular coverage of the Mars explorers, where the theme seems to be that life, if it existed, is or was on a collision course with the planet whose conditions fostered it in the first place and then snuffed it out. Cue global warming, etc.
Could be a smart move. I guess the CEO of Novell will shortly be needing to flee to somewhere a long way away after his "investors" have finished with him.
I guess you could show someone some pictures of Richard Stallman, Alan Cox, Mark Shuttleworth, Eric Raymond and a goggle-eyed Tux and see whether they fancy a spin with Linux. Nuff said, most likely.
Linux still manages to be a bit snobby, which doesn't help. The ubiquitous term "newbie" is both patronising and hints at initiation into some sect. I guess most folks don't take up an OS in order to be thrust back into a school playground. They are exhausted from the day job and they just want something that works. Perhaps they should be tougher, and if called a newbie retort that they will make it their business to seek out and shoot a penguin every time they are called one. On the Debian mailing lists, make that a penguin and a wildebeest.
Where I live, computer stores neither stock nor offer Linux. Microsoft has them under its thumb. If you can't obtain it, no one can use it. Simple. In addition, modern Linux distros require a lot of power and a lot of ram. There are huge numbers of folks out there who can't afford more than fairly old computers from the p2 or early p3 eras with +/- say 64 megs of ram. Windows - say, Win98 - and an older version of Office will run fine on these whereas gnome 2.12 and all the rest either won't or will struggle. So, for many folks, "modern" Linux has priced itself out of the market.
Well if Slackware works for this guy then great, as it clearly also works for a lot of other folks, not all of them going on 80 :) I guess in the years ahead we'll get used to the oldies fighting in the aisles over their favourite distro rather than, as now, over politics, world war two, medical care and who got to the discounted cookies first.
However, perhaps a certain amount of prudence might be a good idea. If someone is going to invest a great deal of time in learning Linux then maybe they'd want to choose a solid distro whose future looks brighter than its past. So I guess that might mean, say, Red Hat, SUSE, Ubuntu or Debian. OK, everyone will have variations on that (Gentoo, Mandriva, etc.). But I wonder whether Slackware fits the bill?
Software gets more, not less, complex. And we ask it to do more not fewer things (VOIP and multimedia functionality being only the latest two in a long line). I wonder whether this means that traditional Linux distros put together by just one or at most a few people are going to become untenable. Only the bigger outfits will really be able to keep up because they have enough developers and contributors to allow it.
Dunno. Kudos to Slackware and all who sail in her - the guy behind it sounds like a hero - but is this really the future?
From the spec sheet on Viewsonic's site:
Colour Depth 16.2M colours (6-bit+2-bit FRC)
I don't think the "review" mentions the colour depth, but then I guess it is not addressing a readership for whom this is a priority. It would be for me. I'm not sure whether LCD-makers have yet cracked it so that an LCD can be both fast enough to avoid ghosting and show a full gamut of 16.7 million, 8-bit colours or whatever.
Hmmn, your last paragraph says that you are "Famous" and that probably "a total of 5 people" have recognized you.
Are you hinting that you are a member of the Famous Five? If so, wow!! I often wondered what happened to them after I stopped reading Enid Blyton several decades ago.
Why not stick to solid English fare like my nick? People know where you're coming from. None of this fancy foreign muck. If CmdrTaco is becoming a problemo and in some circles a no-no, I'd suggest switching to something you'll never need to change like BaconandEggs, SteakandKidneyPie, Kedgeree, MarmiteBap, JelliedEels, SaveloyandChips - the possibilities of English cuisine are almost endless.
Sarcasm rarely works in my experience.
I think the point is that it's quite a good idea to evaulate what needs to be done and what doesn't when social issues crop up. This might lead people to ask whether the current row about internet "ownership" is getting out of proportion and, possibly, is being stoked by politicians eager to distract attention from things that impact badly on them. Yes, some of these things are more important than the internet which, for most people alive today, is a luxury they can only imagine. So when US, European and other politicians start sounding off about the net, it's no bad thing to ask the question that journalists are said to ask of politicos and shifty customers everywhere: "Why is this lying bastard lying to me?"
Well who knows, but it would be nice to see Google really launch something bigtime stylee and stand behind it, instead of trickling out an unimpressive beta (and thus dubiously supported) that's all potential and little action, like the messenging service. Classified ads and online auctions? We'll soon find out.
No shortage of computing power to hand among their chums I guess. Why, Sun has that massive grid rental system they touted a year ago but which has failed to attract a single public customer apparently. I'm sure Google could fill it up quickly enough. So much more interesting than news that Solaris will carry a Google Toolbar, though that must be a great reassurance to Sun admins everywhere.
Jeez, not this subject again.
Today, the 2000th American soldier died for his country in Iraq (of all rotten places, fgs).
Today, it also looks as if indictments are just about to be handed down on two of the President's key aides.
And this is the news that, allegedly, preoccupies us all.
Are politicians that desperate to distract attention from far more important matters? Let's forget about brave men dying like dogs and worry about whether we'll still be able to order groceries online next Tuesday! It's enough to make you despair. Besides, that one quote in the preamble sums it up well: "Today, in a globalized world in which the Internet has become a global resource for freedom of expression and for economic exchange, this monopolistic oversight of the Internet by one government is no longer a politically tenable solution."
It's hard to know what else to say.
It's so insulting. If the academy members had any principles, they'd return the material with an angry letter alogn the lines of "This is not material that deserves to be taken lightly. On the contrary, it deserves to be thrown with great force into the nearest fireplace."
So many members are in a position to influence the studios in a way the rest of us never will be. Instead they seem to be supinely laying down moaning "Treat me like dirt! I'll do anything to be told I'm important and can afford to run five Ferraris at once."
Still, perhaps nearer the time Slashdot could run an article entitled "101 things to do instead of watching the Academy Awards". Alas, not very hard to do anyway, I guess, considering the crap standard of so many films these days.
I've used SUSE for more than four years now in successive versions. IME, SUSE is head and shoulders away the best of the big, all-rounder distros for those non-techs who don't want to poke around too deeply under the bonnet and appreciate GUI config tools like YaST. So much of SUSE "just works" and its hardware detection is second to none. I haven't found 10 to be any different, just incremental improvements over 9.3 which in turn showed incremental improvements over 9.2.
Besides here is that rare thing these days, in any industry: an outfit that takes obvous pride in what it does and stands behind its products. This, to me, is what wins customer loyalty and deserves support. You can't just sling together a good distro and a satisfying desktop. It requires huge work and attention to detail through a hundred little touches here and there. SUSE are very good at this and always have been. Ubuntu is a great distro too but I think they could learn a lot from the awesome thoroughness which SUSE show, right down to the documentation which is the best in the industry.
So many people criticize SUSE for its multimedia limitations out of the box. So what. This is a Linux-wide problem not limited to one distro. SUSE have made it as easy as possible to restore full functionality via some straightforward downloads. Why should they lay themselves open to legal troubles and possible litigation? The folks who criticize them for this are very often the same folks who demand free downloads of everything - freeloaders, in other words. If you really want free everything, then go Debian or Ubuntu and live with any consequences. The vast majority of computer users will never fall into this camp. They are happy to exchange convenience and time-saving for a little money. It's not SUSE's fault that the entertainment industry is obsessed with making life as difficult as possible.
So be grateful for another great distro, easily the rival of WinXP I'd reckon. So many posts in this thread show a rather unwholesome ingratitude towards a product you can have for free. Just my 2 cents.
It sure looks as if Microsoft is faced with a lose-lose in China and most likely the other major developing powers. Essentially it boils down to the fact that those powers use piracy as a political tool. The argument is really "Let us use Windows on a pirated basis, or at least a token-cost basis, until our economies are stronger otherwise we will take up Linux en masse and you will lose this huge market forever." What is left unsaid is that as soon as their economies are stronger, these powers will take up Linux or something else en masse anyway. They are never going to make themselves dependent on a US corporation. In the meantime, Microsoft is left doing darn near give-away deals (as in Indonesia) or issuing dinky cutdown editions for these markets that fool no one.
Perhaps what we are really seeing is the beginning of a Microsoft withdrawal from swathes of the world that will accelerate in the years ahead. Microsoft's bastions are North America and Europe. The colony in China turned out to an expensive venture that led nowhere. The locals had other plans. They decided to produce not merely their own software but their own computers too.
There are plenty of ways out of this other than a "showdown". And the fact that it should even be seen as coming to a showdown is a sad comment on the Bush administration's grasp of foreign policy, considering all the other far more important issues troubling the USA and the world. Some ways to take the heat out of the issue were mentioned in the article in the Economist.
In any case, you can't have it both ways. If the internet is just another utility as many proponents claim, then it is about as interesting as gas, plumbing or electricity. By this argument, moving some aspects of internet regulation to an international body isn't remotely controversial and not much different to the international postal and telephone agreements that have been in force for years. These work well and so unremarkably that no one gives them a second thought. Why should the internet be any different? No one is suggesting that the internet be given away or placed in the hands of a cosmic villain.
On the other hand, if the internet is a some kind of special case and qualitatively different by an order of magnitude from simple utilities, they let's hear some reasoned argument from the US establishment instead of jingoism (and a lot less hype from the big IT companies about a global inforamtion economy).
Alas, it looks as if this is developing in a way all too typical of the current Administration. We begin with intransigence and hostility. This gives way to bad-tempered haggling which eventually results in a sour US withdrawal from its position. Eventually there is a compromise. Everyone is left feeling crap and the US, most likely, is left with less than it would have achieved had it been a little more thoughtful and subtle in the first place.
Some form of international settlement for the regulation of the internet is absolutely inevitable, imho. Unless you are a flat-earther, the only next question is how best to achieve this. Unfortunately it looks as if the US Administration is settling for flag-waiving. I don't think this has yet been backed up with fire-breathing quotations from the bible, but it probably will be. It ain't gonna fly.
Maybe they used this extra-long claw for some hitherto unsuspected purpose, like picking their nose?
Anyway, bad luck, Phil. I guess it's back to the disembowelling board for you.
Watching Ballmer in action really is like watching an old pro toggle up yet again for some feisty action with the pesky "competition". Others have long retired from the ring but, as the saying goes, this guy would cross the street if he thought there was a chance of getting into a good brawl.
I guess, though, that you can battle some of the people some of the time and win. But if you battle all of the people all the time you will lose. At the moment, Microsoft seems to be in the second mode. Hardly a day goes by without them announcing some initiative involving their "innovation pipeline" (whatever that is) which means crushing competition in some far-flung province of the empire. Good old Ballmero, he'll still be fighting as they carry him into the Open Sauce Memorial Cemetery and he'll probably still be struggling as he reaches six foot under. I guess at least it will be possible to set a pin on the headstone using Google Earth.
Something like this is pretty well inevitable. It's not hard to see why. Bear in mind that big software outfits don't want their stuff to just run on Linux, they want it to run well and with a guaranteed "user experience". Both are deal-breakers for the Adobes of this world. It's also important to remember that top-class and easy to use software development tools are very important to the success of a platform. Microsoft were very clever in getting this aspect down pat for Windows.
And, hey, no one has to certify to this LSB or anything else in that line. If you don't want to, you'll very probably find that a swathe of apps won't run on your distro (in a few years' time) and many of your users will go elsewhere, but hey that is fine too. It's called consequences, and growing up to take responsibility for them.
I guess it's possible to try to influence change to the platform as the big money moves in, or to marginalize yourself by ranting at the world. But for good or ill, change of the kind envisioned in this article is clearly going to happen.