If they fix all the problems in technology X, then X won't have any more problems!
If they fixed all the problems in physical voting systems, then they would be more accurate too.
Besides, you haven't even begun to address the problems of coercian, secrecy, access, reliability, security, scalability, etc... Surely, examples like passport and the disaster that is IIS should tell you just how difficult it is to make software really bullet-proof!
Aaaarrgh! Where are my moderation points when I need them?!?
I was just going to say this. Clearly, every compromised system used in these DDoS attacks bears some responsibility. If it were possible to impose some small fine on every system involved (or worse yet, if the suystem's ISP were fined, encouraging them to shut down offending systems), then people would start to take notice. Hopefully, people would start to realize that it is everyone's responsibility to maintain safe systems. We do it for automobiles, requiring yearly safety inspections. Why not for computers connected to the Internet?
Obviously, implementing this would be a very sticky technical and legal issue, but I still think it makes sense.
And you don't need a
"brand-new-ultra-modern-speedy" pc, nope...you can have a nice workstation with a pentium 75. And they are cheap in purchase!!!
Hummm... P75? Well, that'd make a great server, but don't try to run X on it. Well, I've actually done it, but that was three or four years ago when software was less bloated, and it gave me somewhat reasonable response.
That being said, I agree that you can run Linux on much less expensive hardware than, lets say, Windows XP. However, if you are talking that many systems, it'd probably still be easier to buy new, but less than "cutting edge" hardware, probably something like a 700MHz AMD. It would be much too much paperwork and manual labor collecting and setting up used equipment.
Re:Who's doing well out of Chrimbo?
on
Merry Christmas
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· Score: 1
But.. when I woke up this morning (approx 11am), I found my mobile phone memory had been exhausted with text messages - all
wishing me merry christmas etc..
Just be glad they are real messages from people you know. How long will it be before you start getting SPAM on your cell phone?
Let's not get fooled by the fanatic followers of Mr. Christ who are trying to pervert a perfectly fine pagan feast into some kind of
superstitious x-tian celebration.
Let's not get fooled by the fanatic followers of Paganism who are trying to pervert a perfectly fine Christian tradition into some kind of superstitious pagan celebration.
May the Blessings of Christmas be with you all, wherever and however you may celebrate this Season. May Peace and Joy be with you this year, and may you spread wisdom and kindness to everyone you interact with.
OK... I may not have as low a/. ID as you have, but I'll bet dollars to donuts that I've been around computers longer than you have. Shit -- I've programmed computers with 256 BYTES of RAM, where the display consisted of 4 digits of 7 segment LED's and a Hex keypad.
Technically, that's ALL you need to "make a computer sing (especially if you put an old AM radio close to the board and tune the busy loops to the right frequency...), but I think even you would agree that some of the recent advances in UI technology make things easier to do.
The essence of bigotry is the assumption that, "Everyone else should be just like me!"
> I suppose with the economy in its current state, struggling companies are forced to sue on possible infringement cases to earn some kind of revenue.
If you'd stop the knee-jerk "patents are BAD" reaction and think about the facts before spouting off, you'd realize that this case has been going on since long before the previous ecconomic boom! This isn't about the Tech Slump. Yea, sure -- Xerox is tight for cash, and would love to generate a few $$ off every sale of Palm, Handspring or other devices, but they aren't trying to stiffle competition or put Palm out of business.
Xerox gave us plenty of innovations (e.g., the mouse). This is just one invention they are trying to get credit for.
Oh come on. Can't you come up with anything better than to trot out the tired old, "The Linux desktop isn't useful yet" malarky. I've read this line so many times in this thread that I'm starting to think if it's someone with an Elisa program spouting/. posts.
You didn't specifically mention it in your post, but a number of other people droned on about the lack of hardware support in Linux, or about how hard it is to install Linux and auto-detect ann their old cheapo integrated network chipsets or sound cards. Have you ever actually tried to install Winblows on a home built computer, or something that wasn't specifically configured to work with Windows? It's a freaking disaster!! I've seen plenty of hardware combinations that simply will not work on a Windows install, but when I re-install with Linux, the drivers load up without a hitch. The best part is that, if your Windows install fails, you're SOL. No errors. No diagnostics. It just sits there staring at you.
Oh yea, and then there's the, "I once tried to load a document in StarOffice and it didn't work, so SO blows!" And, I suppose the last time you tried it, you were using version 5.0, reading a Windows doc file? Have you ever even tried the latest SO version? Have you ever tried ceating a document from scratch and comparing the features? Have you spent even 0.001% of the time on StarOffice learning how it works, as you have in MS Office? Are you any different from the people who say, "Gee, I used MS Office, and one time it Blue Screened on me and I lost all my work, so Office must be the suckiest software on the face of the planet, and no one will ever want to use it."
Lets face it. Most home users want to surf the Web, write email, and play games. Linux is short on games, but the SO is just as usable as Office, as long as you aren't trying to convert funky MS formats, and the browsers are functional for 98% of the Web sites, as long as they are not specifically tailored for IE. It's a classic chicken and egg problem, but there is no reason why, if you sold a pre-installed Linux based system to a typical user, they couldn't function just as well as they do now with a Windows box.
In summary, if you're going to whine about "Linux Usability", then please at least try to come up with something original, or perhaps back up your complaints with some real efforts. Don't assume that, just because you are to lazy or set in your ways to change, that everyone else has to be like you.
OK... I didn't see any mention of price in my quick scan of the announcement. Does anyone know how this will compare with other Linksys wireless setups? Initial investment for the hub? Incremental cost for connections?
I'd like to use this to network a small school I've been supporting. We've put a lot of work into running 10baseT cables, but haven't found a solution for getting to the other building. Wireless would be nice, but even that is still out of the budget for now. (We're talking really small school here!)
The local reviewers here tend to be pretty easily amused, but I just saw the writeup they did in the local paper, and they gave this movie a ZERO. His comments here were pretty much along the same lines as what you said.
The point is, the economy is in a slump. If we want a strong nation capable of sustaining a long term "War on Terrorism," then we (or the government) has to do something about it. If Microsoft is in fact a preditory monopoly, then that is hurting the economy, and you can be damn sure that the job of the DoJ (and FTC and everyone else) is to FIX it.
The question then is, how do you best fix something like this without simply bludgening MS to death? Dedicating a couple of people to skim through a few hundred emails in order to get a feeling for people's opinions isn't that difficult.
OK... you're not the only one who has been generally happy with their cable service. I've been on Roadrunner since just before they put the 2Mb/s cap on downloads. Yea, sure, my download speeds dropped when they put the cap on, but they've been pretty stable since them. This may have more to do with the city neighborhood I live in (lower middle income families, with probably not a lot of other people using cable modems), but the reliability has been good. I rarely see outages in service.
Funny thing is the difference I see in download speeds between the Linux and Windows computers I have on my network. I run everything through a Linux NAT box. Nothing out of the ordinary -- a P200 with a pair of plain old 10/100 PCI NIC's, but I can regularly pull 250K bytes/sec through it, if I go to somewhere like www.kernel.org that has screaming fast servers.
However, I run the same download on any one of the Windows computers behind the firewall, all of which have faster processors than my main Linux box, and the best they can squeak out is something like 50K bytes/s. Same site, same file, same firewall, similar NIC's, and I get about 1/10 the effective download speed.
Now there's an great testimonial for how bloody fast Win98 is...:-/
First of all, there are a lot of "Organized Religions" out there. Using the term "Priest" does not necessarily mean I'm picking on Catholics, or Episcopals or any other particular denomination you may be thinking of.
A "priesthood" can be any heirarchy of religous or thought authority.
A personal belief of mine is that even Athiests are an "organized religion", since Athiesm forms a system of beliefs about such fundamental questions of life as "Where did I come from and why am I here?" Hence, the "religion" of Athiesm may fufill the same function of providing a ready made set of tidy answers to the complex questions of life for people who don't want to face these questions on their own.
Second, this may be bad form, but I'm going to go ahead and somewhat contradict what I just said in my previous post.
The mere fact that something is organized does not in and of itself mean that it is a bad thing. Traditions are useful teaching vehicles, as long as they do not become an end to themselves. It is human nature to form organized communities, and I pitty the sorry community that abandons the accumulated experience of its elders. However, belief must stand on its own truth, not just because someone told us that we should think such and such.
Slight difference
on
God's Debris
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Not that I think Jesse Ventura necessarily understood the subtle difference, but there is a difference between "Religion" (i.e., the fundamental belief in the existence of a Higher Power (i.e., "God") outside of the scope of our physical world) and "Organized Religion" (a formalized set of beliefs, often propagated by an organized, hierarchal system of "Priests").
The former is a system of beliefs which one comes to based on one's own experiences and understanding.
The latter is an external system, often forced on individuals, without any thought on their own part.
I happen to be a very "religious" person myself, but I'll be the first to admit that a huge percentage of people filling our churches, synagogues, mosques or whatever are there simply to be led around by the nose without having to really wrestle with the deeper questions of life and their existence.
In that sense, yes - "Organized Religion" is certainly an Opiate.
Ultimately, technology managers don't want to hear about the operating system, Robinson believes. "All you care about is wanting a stable, scalable platform for applications to run on."
Well, duh... Isn't this the one thing in the entire article that actually makes sense? Recently, I read in an InfoWorld article, "Linux isn't exciting any more." Think about it. Do people jump up and down and foam at the mouth over the latest release of Solaris? How about Yet Another Windows Patch? Linux has matured to the point where it is starting to be a seen as a tool to do other important things, rather than an end unto itself. Sure, for us Geeks, it remains to be a "cool" new thing, an evolving platform, a new release to download and try out every week or two. But, for the PHBs, they want something that's conservative -- BORING -- because in this ecomomy, they can't afford to make risky decisions.
So... the fact that Linux is "no longer on the radar screen" may actually be a good thing.
(Actually, what I'd like to see as a comparison is, how many corporations have plans for adopting XP this year, compared to plans for Linux. That would give us something to chew on...)
What is so unfortunate about something not being harmful to MS? Does harming MS somehow benefit others?
Actually, it's not so much a matter of "hurting" MS as it is wresting the control they have over the computer industry and the standards it runs on, out of their hands.
Look at the Halloween Documents again. The strategy outlined there is to "Embrace and Extend". As long as Microsoft owns 95% or more of the desktop market, it remains a fairly simple matter for them to force their way into the server marketplace. Once they own both sides of the client/server equation, they have a blank check to extend previously open standards, creating an infrastructure where only they know all the "secret codes". The end result is that all competitors (including Open Source) are religated to a sort of software getto.
If Microsoft loses some portion of its market share, it also loses the assurance that it can force standards to do its bidding, and customers in general end up with more choices.
Because you want the branded version with all the proprietary gewgaws...
In particular, the Netscape spell checker. That's the one thing I really miss using Mozilla. Unfortunately, I do not have either perfect spelling (or typing), so I still require such crutches...:-(
I went to the KMelon download site on Sourceforge, and all I found there were links to "exe" downloads. Does this only run under Windows, or do I have to build from source if I want to try it under Linux or any other OS???
My first REAL computer (not counting the Atari 400 running Basic) was a cast off Xerox 820 CP/M system, built in a cardboard box. It had real 5.25 floppy disks, 64K of RAM, and I had an Aztec "C" compiler. Worked great!
It wasn't until a year or two later that I upgraded to a wooden box for the motherboard and drives. The monitor however, remained in a cardboard cover until several years when I upgraded to a UNIX based AT&T 3B1.
Well, this guy goes all the way from real machines making real products (tempered, formed glass), making real money (ie., successful in the real world), to "antigravity machines" which he says will "prove some of Newtons laws to be wrong."
So, is the guy a real inventor, or a hopeless crackpot dreamer, or somewhere inbetween?
Actually, of all the things I read in the interview, that was the one thing that troubled me. Linus has demonstrated in many ways just how effective he is in getting the details right, but you still need the ability to "see the big picture" in order to keep ahead of the curve. We are changing the way we look at and use computers (the "perception thing" he spoke of), and those changes in perception are going to exert a lot of different pressures on computers and the applications that run on them. There is a lot of work going on with fundamentally different ways of looking at computing. (Quantum computers anyone?) Maybe that's why he is doing kernels while other people are working on the "Cool" stuff like user interfaces and whatnot. Perhaps that's what has kept the kernel fairly pure -- in contrast with the Windows "kernel" that tries to be all things to all applications.
So, perhaps he is doing the right thing, but it still set me back a little, and made me think...
So... if you have old, highly specialized hardware that only works on old drivers, then why do you need to update to a new kernel? You know, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!" Offer your "solutions" as a turn-key box.
On the other hand, if you aren't strictly dependent on specialized hardware, then scrap your old stuff and spend a couple of bucks to buy modern hardware that IS supported.
Sheesh... Just installed the StarOffice 6.0 Beta on my system yesterday!
Does anyone know specifics on the differences between OpenOffice and StarOffice versions 6.0? I think that StarOffice is actually based on the new OpenOffice source code base. (Or, is it the other way around?) Theu look very similar. Are there significant technical or feature differences?
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Besides, you haven't even begun to address the problems of coercian, secrecy, access, reliability, security, scalability, etc... Surely, examples like passport and the disaster that is IIS should tell you just how difficult it is to make software really bullet-proof!
I was just going to say this. Clearly, every compromised system used in these DDoS attacks bears some responsibility. If it were possible to impose some small fine on every system involved (or worse yet, if the suystem's ISP were fined, encouraging them to shut down offending systems), then people would start to take notice. Hopefully, people would start to realize that it is everyone's responsibility to maintain safe systems. We do it for automobiles, requiring yearly safety inspections. Why not for computers connected to the Internet?
Obviously, implementing this would be a very sticky technical and legal issue, but I still think it makes sense.
That being said, I agree that you can run Linux on much less expensive hardware than, lets say, Windows XP. However, if you are talking that many systems, it'd probably still be easier to buy new, but less than "cutting edge" hardware, probably something like a 700MHz AMD. It would be much too much paperwork and manual labor collecting and setting up used equipment.
Just be glad they are real messages from people you know. How long will it be before you start getting SPAM on your cell phone?
Ugh...
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Technically, that's ALL you need to "make a computer sing (especially if you put an old AM radio close to the board and tune the busy loops to the right frequency...), but I think even you would agree that some of the recent advances in UI technology make things easier to do.
The essence of bigotry is the assumption that, "Everyone else should be just like me!"
If you'd stop the knee-jerk "patents are BAD" reaction and think about the facts before spouting off, you'd realize that this case has been going on since long before the previous ecconomic boom! This isn't about the Tech Slump. Yea, sure -- Xerox is tight for cash, and would love to generate a few $$ off every sale of Palm, Handspring or other devices, but they aren't trying to stiffle competition or put Palm out of business.
Xerox gave us plenty of innovations (e.g., the mouse). This is just one invention they are trying to get credit for.
You didn't specifically mention it in your post, but a number of other people droned on about the lack of hardware support in Linux, or about how hard it is to install Linux and auto-detect ann their old cheapo integrated network chipsets or sound cards. Have you ever actually tried to install Winblows on a home built computer, or something that wasn't specifically configured to work with Windows? It's a freaking disaster!! I've seen plenty of hardware combinations that simply will not work on a Windows install, but when I re-install with Linux, the drivers load up without a hitch. The best part is that, if your Windows install fails, you're SOL. No errors. No diagnostics. It just sits there staring at you.
Oh yea, and then there's the, "I once tried to load a document in StarOffice and it didn't work, so SO blows!" And, I suppose the last time you tried it, you were using version 5.0, reading a Windows doc file? Have you ever even tried the latest SO version? Have you ever tried ceating a document from scratch and comparing the features? Have you spent even 0.001% of the time on StarOffice learning how it works, as you have in MS Office? Are you any different from the people who say, "Gee, I used MS Office, and one time it Blue Screened on me and I lost all my work, so Office must be the suckiest software on the face of the planet, and no one will ever want to use it."
Lets face it. Most home users want to surf the Web, write email, and play games. Linux is short on games, but the SO is just as usable as Office, as long as you aren't trying to convert funky MS formats, and the browsers are functional for 98% of the Web sites, as long as they are not specifically tailored for IE. It's a classic chicken and egg problem, but there is no reason why, if you sold a pre-installed Linux based system to a typical user, they couldn't function just as well as they do now with a Windows box.
In summary, if you're going to whine about "Linux Usability", then please at least try to come up with something original, or perhaps back up your complaints with some real efforts. Don't assume that, just because you are to lazy or set in your ways to change, that everyone else has to be like you.
I'd like to use this to network a small school I've been supporting. We've put a lot of work into running 10baseT cables, but haven't found a solution for getting to the other building. Wireless would be nice, but even that is still out of the budget for now. (We're talking really small school here!)
Figures that Katz would call it whitty.
The question then is, how do you best fix something like this without simply bludgening MS to death? Dedicating a couple of people to skim through a few hundred emails in order to get a feeling for people's opinions isn't that difficult.
(Ever read, "The Soul of a New Machine"? Starts out with someone going through, "You are in a maze of twisty passages that all look the same...")
Funny thing is the difference I see in download speeds between the Linux and Windows computers I have on my network. I run everything through a Linux NAT box. Nothing out of the ordinary -- a P200 with a pair of plain old 10/100 PCI NIC's, but I can regularly pull 250K bytes/sec through it, if I go to somewhere like www.kernel.org that has screaming fast servers.
However, I run the same download on any one of the Windows computers behind the firewall, all of which have faster processors than my main Linux box, and the best they can squeak out is something like 50K bytes/s. Same site, same file, same firewall, similar NIC's, and I get about 1/10 the effective download speed.
Now there's an great testimonial for how bloody fast Win98 is... :-/
A personal belief of mine is that even Athiests are an "organized religion", since Athiesm forms a system of beliefs about such fundamental questions of life as "Where did I come from and why am I here?" Hence, the "religion" of Athiesm may fufill the same function of providing a ready made set of tidy answers to the complex questions of life for people who don't want to face these questions on their own.
Second, this may be bad form, but I'm going to go ahead and somewhat contradict what I just said in my previous post. The mere fact that something is organized does not in and of itself mean that it is a bad thing. Traditions are useful teaching vehicles, as long as they do not become an end to themselves. It is human nature to form organized communities, and I pitty the sorry community that abandons the accumulated experience of its elders. However, belief must stand on its own truth, not just because someone told us that we should think such and such.
The former is a system of beliefs which one comes to based on one's own experiences and understanding.
The latter is an external system, often forced on individuals, without any thought on their own part.
I happen to be a very "religious" person myself, but I'll be the first to admit that a huge percentage of people filling our churches, synagogues, mosques or whatever are there simply to be led around by the nose without having to really wrestle with the deeper questions of life and their existence.
In that sense, yes - "Organized Religion" is certainly an Opiate.
So... the fact that Linux is "no longer on the radar screen" may actually be a good thing.
(Actually, what I'd like to see as a comparison is, how many corporations have plans for adopting XP this year, compared to plans for Linux. That would give us something to chew on...)
Look at the Halloween Documents again. The strategy outlined there is to "Embrace and Extend". As long as Microsoft owns 95% or more of the desktop market, it remains a fairly simple matter for them to force their way into the server marketplace. Once they own both sides of the client/server equation, they have a blank check to extend previously open standards, creating an infrastructure where only they know all the "secret codes". The end result is that all competitors (including Open Source) are religated to a sort of software getto.
If Microsoft loses some portion of its market share, it also loses the assurance that it can force standards to do its bidding, and customers in general end up with more choices.
In particular, the Netscape spell checker. That's the one thing I really miss using Mozilla. Unfortunately, I do not have either perfect spelling (or typing), so I still require such crutches... :-(
I went to the KMelon download site on Sourceforge, and all I found there were links to "exe" downloads. Does this only run under Windows, or do I have to build from source if I want to try it under Linux or any other OS???
It wasn't until a year or two later that I upgraded to a wooden box for the motherboard and drives. The monitor however, remained in a cardboard cover until several years when I upgraded to a UNIX based AT&T 3B1.
Like they say, "It's the engine that counts!"
So, is the guy a real inventor, or a hopeless crackpot dreamer, or somewhere inbetween?
Actually, of all the things I read in the interview, that was the one thing that troubled me. Linus has demonstrated in many ways just how effective he is in getting the details right, but you still need the ability to "see the big picture" in order to keep ahead of the curve. We are changing the way we look at and use computers (the "perception thing" he spoke of), and those changes in perception are going to exert a lot of different pressures on computers and the applications that run on them. There is a lot of work going on with fundamentally different ways of looking at computing. (Quantum computers anyone?) Maybe that's why he is doing kernels while other people are working on the "Cool" stuff like user interfaces and whatnot. Perhaps that's what has kept the kernel fairly pure -- in contrast with the Windows "kernel" that tries to be all things to all applications.
So, perhaps he is doing the right thing, but it still set me back a little, and made me think...
On the other hand, if you aren't strictly dependent on specialized hardware, then scrap your old stuff and spend a couple of bucks to buy modern hardware that IS supported.
Does anyone know specifics on the differences between OpenOffice and StarOffice versions 6.0? I think that StarOffice is actually based on the new OpenOffice source code base. (Or, is it the other way around?) Theu look very similar. Are there significant technical or feature differences?