There is a lower entry barrier just in that MySQL and PostgreSQL run on many more platforms than Oracle, SQL Server or DB2. Lets face it you can run those on Windows, Linux or Solaris depending on the product and then only on a subset of CPUs. Oracle sort of has a Mac OS X version but it sucks.
So if you like BSD or run linux on something besides x86 you are screwed. If you have a new shiny intel mac and only have a PPC version you are screwed. Some people can argue MySQL doesn't run as good as it should on non linux platforms, but at least it does run!
And for those linux users thinking so what if it runs on non x86, consider embedded devices. Imagine running a webapp off a PS3 or xbox360 or your cell phone. There are valid reasons to want products that are ported to new systems.
I found it interesting that Ada Lovelace was listed as the first programmer. I thought recently new notes were discovered that indicate Babbage had done most of that work himself and she was merely interested in the machine. When I looked at this issue a few months ago, Wikipedia's article indicated Ada Lovelace was not the first programmer. Then again its wikipedia...
Anyone know what the current consensus is on Lovelace as the first programmer? My wife was taught that she was in her CS program, but I was taught there were questions on it. (i started after her)
Yes, they could have handcuffed him and escorted him out. I think he was doing something wrong but the response was over the top. Does anyone know how it feels to get tasered 5 times? I'm just curious if he actually couldn't get up after being hit that many times. Certainly he was passively resisting them early on but could he have complied near the end?
Unless they decided to use Redhat or some other pay linux distro which requires support agreements. Redhat is more expensive than windows in some cases if you consider how cheap it is to buy a PC with Windows on it. Others have already pointed out that other operating systems require certain hardware to work properly due to lack of driver support. For instance, they could not buy an intel 965 chipset system unless it was all sata and the distro of choice had the absolute latest kernel which is unlikely. When dealing with one PC, its easy to rebuild the kernel but deploying a large number of desktops that may have slightly different hardware, its not as easy. One could argue for netbooting or something but in reality they probably want it to work like windows with a local OS install. Its also entirely possible they did not come up with a good system for imaging. Not everyone is a linux expert and if they used Microsoft friendly employees who aren't familiar with linux, it could be a very difficult, slow and expensive process to switch.
Remember in GNU land, its free as in freedom not in price. Redhat can charge whatever they want for their distro and support agreements. Even if they used a free (price) distro like fedora or gentoo it may still have been more costly with personnel or they simply didn't know how to automate certain tasks like patching that Microsoft tries to do. Most free systems are not polished enough to make mass rollouts easy and knowing how to do it isn't always clear for Microsoft users.
Don't assume 1 game per system. It may average at least that, but there are enough videos of people smashing them or wishing to use them for scientific research that its unlikely all will be used for gaming. Don't forget its still a cheap blueray player. There might be a few parents who don't know that it doesn't come with a game. For $600, you'd think they could include a game.
Its entirely possible the PS3 will be a success, but they have a very late start. They have to do do what Microsoft did with the xbox and Nintendo did with the Super NES. Launching last is not always a good thing. I think the real make or break for all three consoles is what console companies decide to make games for. If EA and friends like the Wii and the xbox360, Sony is screwed. Part of that decision is based on how many potential sales they can get, how hard it is to develop for it, and feasibility with the target audience. In this case, Wii fans are not just little kids. Its possible to target the older games who grew up with the NES in addition to the younger gamers Nintendo is known for getting. That leaves a battle between Sony and Microsoft for the other type of gamers and Microsoft has a lead.
Sony fans, you'll need to buy a lot of games to turn the tide. Then again some of you can afford it if you can afford $600 for a console. That's a PC to me.
I can go even farther back. My first PC was a Packard Bell which had phone software that allowed me to use speakerphone from the computer using a phone like interface and it also was fax and answering machine software. My PC shipped with WFW 3.11 in 1995 right before the Windows 95 launch. I got a "free" upgrade to Windows 95 and a newer version of the software that worked with it. I no longer have the PC, but I think I still have the CD somewhere.
Firefox sucks in OS X, but its rather nice in BSD or Windows. I prefer safari for casual surfing unless I'm going to a news site. Most of them require Windows Media Player and IE.
I find the comparison between OS X and Windows funny. To a non technical user, there is almost no difference aside from the location of a few things. You have a gui, it runs apps. You can print, surf, check email, IM and write papers on it. Both can do games. Its a computer. Now if you start adding qualifiers like person x is a gamer, programmer, open source zealot, etc. then the picture changes. I do feel that both are slightly better at different tasks. I much prefer to use dreamweaver and photoshop in OS X. I use iTunes in both. I much prefer to program anything but a.NET app in OS X unless I'm doing BSD development. It doesn't mean OS X is the best choice for everyone. I do think your assumption that OS X is overrated is a bit unfair but also somewhat true. Apple has a slight lead right now, and I think vista catches Microsoft up. I'm sure KDE and Gnome developers are already working on duplicating and possibly extending some of the features for their next releases. From one perspective, joe sixpack could use ANY OS as long as it was a gui and let him look at websites. I would wager you like windows because its familiar to you. I know of many people who have intel macs that only run OS X on it... it doesn't prove OS X is perfect just as your buddies like windows doesn't prove OS X sucks either.
Bottom line is that all gui development is starting to converge at the same place. There have not been very many innovations in the last few years and most people are working on utilities now. The same thing happened with command line interfaces. Its getting very hard to distinguish yourself in the GUI space and the only way to do it is to provide some killer app which everyone will try to copy. Integration is the key now. It makes business people feel good about themselves. Think about it, apple gets points for integrating all the iApps. KDE and Gnome try to do the same thing and Microsoft has always had problems doing it. They go so far but then want to charge for parts and in order to do that there have to be differences (office suite integration for instance). The linux movement and Apple are causing people to look at the entire software stack instead of just what's under the hood. The environments can be duplicated on any OS provided the source is available or the motivation. Even your complaints were about the browser which is integrated with the OS. I predict that people will care even more about complete software packages or in linux terms the distro since that entire stack will be under scrutiny by the decision makers at companies and people buying home PCs. Microsoft can win this war since they have the momentum long term. Gamers alone could keep OS X or linux form taking off. (desktop space) If linux users want to win, they need to stop caring about closed source games and start buying them. When I say win, i mean have linux replace windows. Stallman's vision isn't possible here unless the type of open source software projects diversifies greatly. Open source games need to be more fun and original than the crap activision publishes for windows.
Yes, part of the problem isn't evenbalance's fault. ETPRO 3.2.6 with ET 2.60b does checks that catch FreeBSD clients as cheating best I can tell. I'm the overzealous server admin as well so I know what cvar checks are on beyond etpro and I don't see how they could cause a problem.
I'm sure that some people get broadband for porn. Remember that previous research shows women use the internet more than men. Women rarely look at porn since they are not turned on by merely visual imagery. The first site I went to was a speedtest site to make sure I wasn't getting ripped off from the cable company! The second site was apple.com to stream some movie trailers.
I'm sure the typical slashdot reader is more likely to view porn since most of us don't get laid much. I'm married and do get laid so don't frequent porn sites.
I do hope Blizzard will fix these users accounts. I don't currently play WoW on OSS platforms, but I plan on doing so in the future. It would be even better if they would make a Linux version of the game. Then again, I'd probably get caught "cheating" since I'd run it on BSD.
I've seen this happen with PunkBuster checks in some games when you try to run then in another OS as well.
I didn't throw out my TV, but I don't watch it often. If you stop watching television for a few months and then sit down one day and watch, you'll notice quite a few attempts at influence. I've been watching less and less television. When I do watch a show with my wife, I find the ads funny or confusing. I don't get some of the references because I missed the 4 previous ads to setup what its supposed to tell me.
The other effect is that watching the news on television is painful. When they begin to show fake news, or start on a fluff story I just want to click on the next article! It seems like such a waste of time to watch the news. I don't like watching video clips on news sites either. By the time it gets through ads and their spin, I could have read 3 articles on 3 different sites about the topic instead.
The downside to skipping on television is that everyone thinks something is wrong with you as you don't watch Lost or haven't seen desperate housewives. You sometimes miss references to "television events".
Unlike the grandparent, I do still watch some television. I also watch old televison on DVD. It is not the medium but merely the poor content.
It would also prevent litigation from false positives. On a white list setup, there wouldn't be a need to sue unless it was difficult to get a legit site added to the list. Then again, it might make attacking whitelisted sites more appealing.
And that is why Microsoft bought Virtual PC. Microsoft can eventually use virtualization for backward compatibility and make the underlying OS secure and reliable without all the crap. The real question is will they follow through.
I thought they had developed land mines that could be turned off? Its possible they could give a warning or be removed but what happens if they malfunction or the other side gets control of them? Sometimes high tech just causes the enemy to attack you remotely.
It depends if people are using flash. Try running a flash 9 intensive site on an old PC or Mac. It will not keep up. To some degree, you do need a faster processor to handle flash and the new "High Def" video codecs coming out. It entirely depends on what you use the net for, but it is important to some people.
I noticed a difference upgrading from a Dual Xeon 2.0Ghz to a Dual Core Pentium D 805 (2.66Ghz) with quicktime streams for instance. Aside from my poor choice in video card (Geforce 7300), my new system is much faster than my old system. I didn't buy the new system to speed up quicktime. I just wanted a 64bit processor for experimentation purposes.
Not just linus. This could force a lot of people to go to GPLv3 and possible get some last minute revisions in it to try to prevent some things Microsoft may try. The result would be problematic for many open source projects. Software will need to be rewritten in cases where people won't consent to "upgrading" their license. Non GPLv3 projects might not be able to include applications with GPLv3 licensing because of the attempts to stop them from running on drm'd hardware.
Then again it could just be a lame attempt to get into the linux community which microsoft has avoided for so long. Just don't turn your back on Microsoft and let them stab you.
Not showing changes to the source code? That only happens if a company like say Microsoft uses BSD licensed code in their system. I think GPL zealots forget companies misuse GPL licensed code in their products. Some have been caught.
If you were referring to the idea that the GPL is better as companies can't use the code in private products, consider that they can break the license and do that anyway. They might get caught, but not always. The code has protections under the law, but it is not safe or FREE by any means. Its merely free.
I don't have a problem with someone using a completely unsecured wireless network because its sometimes hard to determine if its intentional or not. One neighbor runs a "public" wireless network for everyone. I know he's sniffing traffic on it, but it is intentionally public. Another neighbor regularly tries to break into other wireless networks. He actually went up to my wife a month ago and said that ours was much more challenging that the rest. She told him we did that because we don't want people sniffing our network!
In my opinion, an open wireless network is an invite and any attempt to close the network (MAC addresses, WEP, WPA, etc) is a clear indication its private and to leave it alone. I think the real problem is that security for wireless routers is always behind the tools to attack them. (consumer level at least) There are methods to minimize impact on your network, but they are often time consuming and/or expensive. It also rarely solves the problem with wireless clients transmitting something that can be intercepted. Perhaps wireless routers should ship with vpn capabilities as well. Some type of encrypted tunnel beyond the existing authentication methods that everyone can easily use would be extremely helpful. Many wireless routers still don't allow for a key per computer, etc.
I've looked at a few sites using google that describe tools or possible attacks, but it is difficult to get clear information how to protect your home network. Another problem I personally have is a lack of wireless on a PC. I've only got Mac wireless clients and airport extreme cards do not support many of tools to attack networks so I can not do a self audit. Eventually I'll break down and buy a usb wireless device and before you say they are $10 on newegg or at compusa remember those old models don't support WPA2 personal and I'm not going to use WEP because I know that is easy to crack.
Does anyone know how easy it is to break WPA/WPA2 personal? I need to know if its worth changing my key periodically etc.
The desktop has always been the war. Linus wanted a free desktop from the beginning... linux got popular on servers and so people jumped on that. Linux developers got Microsoft's attention and now its time to worry.
Last I checked, the xbox 360 isn't all that cheap either. The problem most people have with the price is that they are forced to only buy one console. Most real gamers have two consoles and that's why there have always been at least two popular consoles. Nintendo and Sega held the crown in the 16bit era and there was atari and nintendo early on. The other factor is that you can buy a whole PC for the price of these things. (not from sony) I can go to dell and buy a PC for less than the launch price of the PS3. What is a better online/gaming platform? The other problem is the cell processor isn't as amazing as people thought. Remember, IBM used to say the same thing about POWER and while i like a good PPC box its not 10x better than an intel chip is it?
I'm an older gamer, and I have 7 consoles in the house. During this last generation I bought the gamecube and xbox. I plan on buying a Wii, and I will not buy an xbox 360 unless the price drops to a point I can justify the cost. I have avoided Sony because I don't think the games on the PS2 look very good and I don't like the play control. Sega didn't have as good of graphics either, but I still found the games fun and loved the play control. I know a large number of people disagree with me and are sony fanyboys but I think its time you guys realize you are rooting for your sega. They will go down and Microsoft will dethrown them. I thought it would be nintendo for awhile, but sony has screwed themselves on price and overhyped the hardware. Sega did that too with the saturn. The boys in redmond are here to stay.
I also figure HD-DVD will take over since I like blueray. It has the better name and the specs are terrible which means they can sell us another format in a few years. They will want to do that just as they want to make my DVD collection obsolete.
The inverse problem is true in linux. Its hard to run new hardware on it, but support for ancient hardware is an install disk away. Many of the new motherboards have sata to pata bridges on them. There are only a few vendors who make them, but the linux community stopped at one since everyone can just buy systems with that part. This is not the way to gain market share. Eventually there will be enough pressure and hard work from a few dedicated programmers to make boards like the intel DP965LT work properly in linux.
This problem is also true with other operating systems. Microsoft only cares about new hardware now. They know people won't upgrade to vista in waves. Everyone on slashdot should be happy as we've all said windows is bloated! Removing legacy support makes debugging, security and other aspects easier for microsoft. Now if they would just clean up their api...
I agree. With the release of IE7 and Windows Media Player 11 there is no new feature worth caring about. Its possible DirectX 10 could be an issue down the road with gaming but only if its adopted heavily by game developers. Regardless, as people buy new hardware the installs will increase. Even Windows ME is still run on some computers.
Its hard to say who the faulted party is entirely. Apple does change APIs and vendors use APIs they are told not to. Regardless, its a big problem. Most adobe products that are say 2 versions behind do not install properly on OS 10.4.x and require a patch to even install. When they are installed, there are issues with the programs ranging from permissions changes to severe breaking of the apps. When companies have to upgrade constantly or sit on old hardware as long as possible it benefits neither the company nor apple. This is a defect in OS X that needs to be addressed. Microsoft breaks apps, but you usually get a few windows releases in between and Microsoft is on a much longer upgrade cycle.
Point releases should NOT break api compatibility. If the code is that different change the major version number. I feel the linux kernel, gnome and several other open source projects break this rule all the time. Apple breaks this rule too... and no i don't just mean the linux 2.6 kernel is so different it should be called 3.0. I mean 2.6.8 is quite different than 2.6.18 and therefore should be 2.8 (odd are test versions right?) With apple, 10.4 has broken kernel module compatibility twice. This in turn broke the evil netware prosoft client i had to support in my last job and several other things like drivers for usb soundcards, etc. I've got a $300 emagic usb sound card that no longer works in OSX because apple broke the api and they bought the company so I can't ever get a driver update. Microsoft sucks, but they rarely go this far. XP SP2 was close on some fronts.
Yes, but wouldn't they need to sue each person uploading. Once she distributes it to x people, she is no longer in control with what they do with it. How does that work legally? A similar example would be if i burned a track i bought on iTunes onto a cd, gave it to my mom and then she sold it to everyone she ran into at work. Who would be liable? Do I have to pay for all of those incidents or is my mother liable? (no i don't distribute to my mom, i give her gift cards to buy her own damn music which I hate anyway)
They might be able to improve the new combined code to execute faster. This whole thing sounds a lot like Java to me. It will be slow starting up and after a page is loaded, it can execute very quickly. Based on recent research for ecommerce sites, I suspect this may have a negative impact on Firefox adoption down the road. The point of JavaScript was to make a lightweight interpreted language that could glue together other components such as plugins, later java, flash and active x controls.
I understand why some people like flash, but I don't understand why people support flash taking over. Macromedia and now Adobe support 99% of all browsers supposedly, but at the same time there are huge gaps in platform support. Its near impossible to have a new OS enter the market without support for Firefox, Flash and a slew of other things. What happens if Linux forks someday or gets so commercial the grass roots folks start over. Remember, the uniqueness of linux was that it was free. The idea of developing in an open environment started long before linux and shortly after linux was public we had 386BSD > NetBSD and FreeBSD. What if someone develops a miracle microkernel design that just works. Anything is a possibility and I think the open source community needs to take charge with Flash if we are going to push it on people. I'd rather go an SVG route where we have open source libraries for it already. A combination of SVG, and some other open source technologies could get us an equivalent to flash but it would need serious adoption to take off. Perhaps when people are tired of paying the adobe premium for Flash? To a windows developer, Adobe products are reasonable but to a Mac or OSS developer you can't beat free. As we are talking about flash as an application platform, xcode is a fair comparison here.
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There is a lower entry barrier just in that MySQL and PostgreSQL run on many more platforms than Oracle, SQL Server or DB2. Lets face it you can run those on Windows, Linux or Solaris depending on the product and then only on a subset of CPUs. Oracle sort of has a Mac OS X version but it sucks.
So if you like BSD or run linux on something besides x86 you are screwed. If you have a new shiny intel mac and only have a PPC version you are screwed. Some people can argue MySQL doesn't run as good as it should on non linux platforms, but at least it does run!
And for those linux users thinking so what if it runs on non x86, consider embedded devices. Imagine running a webapp off a PS3 or xbox360 or your cell phone. There are valid reasons to want products that are ported to new systems.
I found it interesting that Ada Lovelace was listed as the first programmer. I thought recently new notes were discovered that indicate Babbage had done most of that work himself and she was merely interested in the machine. When I looked at this issue a few months ago, Wikipedia's article indicated Ada Lovelace was not the first programmer. Then again its wikipedia...
Anyone know what the current consensus is on Lovelace as the first programmer? My wife was taught that she was in her CS program, but I was taught there were questions on it. (i started after her)
Yes, they could have handcuffed him and escorted him out. I think he was doing something wrong but the response was over the top. Does anyone know how it feels to get tasered 5 times? I'm just curious if he actually couldn't get up after being hit that many times. Certainly he was passively resisting them early on but could he have complied near the end?
Unless they decided to use Redhat or some other pay linux distro which requires support agreements. Redhat is more expensive than windows in some cases if you consider how cheap it is to buy a PC with Windows on it. Others have already pointed out that other operating systems require certain hardware to work properly due to lack of driver support. For instance, they could not buy an intel 965 chipset system unless it was all sata and the distro of choice had the absolute latest kernel which is unlikely. When dealing with one PC, its easy to rebuild the kernel but deploying a large number of desktops that may have slightly different hardware, its not as easy. One could argue for netbooting or something but in reality they probably want it to work like windows with a local OS install. Its also entirely possible they did not come up with a good system for imaging. Not everyone is a linux expert and if they used Microsoft friendly employees who aren't familiar with linux, it could be a very difficult, slow and expensive process to switch.
Remember in GNU land, its free as in freedom not in price. Redhat can charge whatever they want for their distro and support agreements. Even if they used a free (price) distro like fedora or gentoo it may still have been more costly with personnel or they simply didn't know how to automate certain tasks like patching that Microsoft tries to do. Most free systems are not polished enough to make mass rollouts easy and knowing how to do it isn't always clear for Microsoft users.
Don't assume 1 game per system. It may average at least that, but there are enough videos of people smashing them or wishing to use them for scientific research that its unlikely all will be used for gaming. Don't forget its still a cheap blueray player. There might be a few parents who don't know that it doesn't come with a game. For $600, you'd think they could include a game.
Its entirely possible the PS3 will be a success, but they have a very late start. They have to do do what Microsoft did with the xbox and Nintendo did with the Super NES. Launching last is not always a good thing. I think the real make or break for all three consoles is what console companies decide to make games for. If EA and friends like the Wii and the xbox360, Sony is screwed. Part of that decision is based on how many potential sales they can get, how hard it is to develop for it, and feasibility with the target audience. In this case, Wii fans are not just little kids. Its possible to target the older games who grew up with the NES in addition to the younger gamers Nintendo is known for getting. That leaves a battle between Sony and Microsoft for the other type of gamers and Microsoft has a lead.
Sony fans, you'll need to buy a lot of games to turn the tide. Then again some of you can afford it if you can afford $600 for a console. That's a PC to me.
I can go even farther back. My first PC was a Packard Bell which had phone software that allowed me to use speakerphone from the computer using a phone like interface and it also was fax and answering machine software. My PC shipped with WFW 3.11 in 1995 right before the Windows 95 launch. I got a "free" upgrade to Windows 95 and a newer version of the software that worked with it. I no longer have the PC, but I think I still have the CD somewhere.
Firefox sucks in OS X, but its rather nice in BSD or Windows. I prefer safari for casual surfing unless I'm going to a news site. Most of them require Windows Media Player and IE.
.NET app in OS X unless I'm doing BSD development. It doesn't mean OS X is the best choice for everyone. I do think your assumption that OS X is overrated is a bit unfair but also somewhat true. Apple has a slight lead right now, and I think vista catches Microsoft up. I'm sure KDE and Gnome developers are already working on duplicating and possibly extending some of the features for their next releases. From one perspective, joe sixpack could use ANY OS as long as it was a gui and let him look at websites. I would wager you like windows because its familiar to you. I know of many people who have intel macs that only run OS X on it... it doesn't prove OS X is perfect just as your buddies like windows doesn't prove OS X sucks either.
I find the comparison between OS X and Windows funny. To a non technical user, there is almost no difference aside from the location of a few things. You have a gui, it runs apps. You can print, surf, check email, IM and write papers on it. Both can do games. Its a computer. Now if you start adding qualifiers like person x is a gamer, programmer, open source zealot, etc. then the picture changes. I do feel that both are slightly better at different tasks. I much prefer to use dreamweaver and photoshop in OS X. I use iTunes in both. I much prefer to program anything but a
Bottom line is that all gui development is starting to converge at the same place. There have not been very many innovations in the last few years and most people are working on utilities now. The same thing happened with command line interfaces. Its getting very hard to distinguish yourself in the GUI space and the only way to do it is to provide some killer app which everyone will try to copy. Integration is the key now. It makes business people feel good about themselves. Think about it, apple gets points for integrating all the iApps. KDE and Gnome try to do the same thing and Microsoft has always had problems doing it. They go so far but then want to charge for parts and in order to do that there have to be differences (office suite integration for instance). The linux movement and Apple are causing people to look at the entire software stack instead of just what's under the hood. The environments can be duplicated on any OS provided the source is available or the motivation. Even your complaints were about the browser which is integrated with the OS. I predict that people will care even more about complete software packages or in linux terms the distro since that entire stack will be under scrutiny by the decision makers at companies and people buying home PCs. Microsoft can win this war since they have the momentum long term. Gamers alone could keep OS X or linux form taking off. (desktop space) If linux users want to win, they need to stop caring about closed source games and start buying them. When I say win, i mean have linux replace windows. Stallman's vision isn't possible here unless the type of open source software projects diversifies greatly. Open source games need to be more fun and original than the crap activision publishes for windows.
Yes, part of the problem isn't evenbalance's fault. ETPRO 3.2.6 with ET 2.60b does checks that catch FreeBSD clients as cheating best I can tell. I'm the overzealous server admin as well so I know what cvar checks are on beyond etpro and I don't see how they could cause a problem.
I'm sure that some people get broadband for porn. Remember that previous research shows women use the internet more than men. Women rarely look at porn since they are not turned on by merely visual imagery. The first site I went to was a speedtest site to make sure I wasn't getting ripped off from the cable company! The second site was apple.com to stream some movie trailers.
I'm sure the typical slashdot reader is more likely to view porn since most of us don't get laid much. I'm married and do get laid so don't frequent porn sites.
I do hope Blizzard will fix these users accounts. I don't currently play WoW on OSS platforms, but I plan on doing so in the future. It would be even better if they would make a Linux version of the game. Then again, I'd probably get caught "cheating" since I'd run it on BSD.
I've seen this happen with PunkBuster checks in some games when you try to run then in another OS as well.
I didn't throw out my TV, but I don't watch it often. If you stop watching television for a few months and then sit down one day and watch, you'll notice quite a few attempts at influence. I've been watching less and less television. When I do watch a show with my wife, I find the ads funny or confusing. I don't get some of the references because I missed the 4 previous ads to setup what its supposed to tell me.
The other effect is that watching the news on television is painful. When they begin to show fake news, or start on a fluff story I just want to click on the next article! It seems like such a waste of time to watch the news. I don't like watching video clips on news sites either. By the time it gets through ads and their spin, I could have read 3 articles on 3 different sites about the topic instead.
The downside to skipping on television is that everyone thinks something is wrong with you as you don't watch Lost or haven't seen desperate housewives. You sometimes miss references to "television events".
Unlike the grandparent, I do still watch some television. I also watch old televison on DVD. It is not the medium but merely the poor content.
It would also prevent litigation from false positives. On a white list setup, there wouldn't be a need to sue unless it was difficult to get a legit site added to the list. Then again, it might make attacking whitelisted sites more appealing.
And that is why Microsoft bought Virtual PC. Microsoft can eventually use virtualization for backward compatibility and make the underlying OS secure and reliable without all the crap. The real question is will they follow through.
Didn't you watch terminator?
I thought they had developed land mines that could be turned off? Its possible they could give a warning or be removed but what happens if they malfunction or the other side gets control of them? Sometimes high tech just causes the enemy to attack you remotely.
It depends if people are using flash. Try running a flash 9 intensive site on an old PC or Mac. It will not keep up. To some degree, you do need a faster processor to handle flash and the new "High Def" video codecs coming out. It entirely depends on what you use the net for, but it is important to some people.
I noticed a difference upgrading from a Dual Xeon 2.0Ghz to a Dual Core Pentium D 805 (2.66Ghz) with quicktime streams for instance. Aside from my poor choice in video card (Geforce 7300), my new system is much faster than my old system. I didn't buy the new system to speed up quicktime. I just wanted a 64bit processor for experimentation purposes.
Not just linus. This could force a lot of people to go to GPLv3 and possible get some last minute revisions in it to try to prevent some things Microsoft may try. The result would be problematic for many open source projects. Software will need to be rewritten in cases where people won't consent to "upgrading" their license. Non GPLv3 projects might not be able to include applications with GPLv3 licensing because of the attempts to stop them from running on drm'd hardware.
Then again it could just be a lame attempt to get into the linux community which microsoft has avoided for so long. Just don't turn your back on Microsoft and let them stab you.
Not showing changes to the source code? That only happens if a company like say Microsoft uses BSD licensed code in their system. I think GPL zealots forget companies misuse GPL licensed code in their products. Some have been caught.
l /src/
If you think all BSD licensed code is hidden, please visit http://cvsweb.freebsd.org/ or http://www.midnightbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi or any other BSD project and look for "web" or "cvsweb" on their websites. You can look at the code right now. This doesn't just apply to operating systems. My blogging website code is under BSD license (although the windows client is GPL), http://justjournal.cvs.sourceforge.net/justjourna
If you were referring to the idea that the GPL is better as companies can't use the code in private products, consider that they can break the license and do that anyway. They might get caught, but not always. The code has protections under the law, but it is not safe or FREE by any means. Its merely free.
I don't have a problem with someone using a completely unsecured wireless network because its sometimes hard to determine if its intentional or not. One neighbor runs a "public" wireless network for everyone. I know he's sniffing traffic on it, but it is intentionally public. Another neighbor regularly tries to break into other wireless networks. He actually went up to my wife a month ago and said that ours was much more challenging that the rest. She told him we did that because we don't want people sniffing our network!
In my opinion, an open wireless network is an invite and any attempt to close the network (MAC addresses, WEP, WPA, etc) is a clear indication its private and to leave it alone. I think the real problem is that security for wireless routers is always behind the tools to attack them. (consumer level at least) There are methods to minimize impact on your network, but they are often time consuming and/or expensive. It also rarely solves the problem with wireless clients transmitting something that can be intercepted. Perhaps wireless routers should ship with vpn capabilities as well. Some type of encrypted tunnel beyond the existing authentication methods that everyone can easily use would be extremely helpful. Many wireless routers still don't allow for a key per computer, etc.
I've looked at a few sites using google that describe tools or possible attacks, but it is difficult to get clear information how to protect your home network. Another problem I personally have is a lack of wireless on a PC. I've only got Mac wireless clients and airport extreme cards do not support many of tools to attack networks so I can not do a self audit. Eventually I'll break down and buy a usb wireless device and before you say they are $10 on newegg or at compusa remember those old models don't support WPA2 personal and I'm not going to use WEP because I know that is easy to crack.
Does anyone know how easy it is to break WPA/WPA2 personal? I need to know if its worth changing my key periodically etc.
I believe this is the admiral you were thinking of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admiral_Yamamoto
The desktop has always been the war. Linus wanted a free desktop from the beginning... linux got popular on servers and so people jumped on that. Linux developers got Microsoft's attention and now its time to worry.
Last I checked, the xbox 360 isn't all that cheap either. The problem most people have with the price is that they are forced to only buy one console. Most real gamers have two consoles and that's why there have always been at least two popular consoles. Nintendo and Sega held the crown in the 16bit era and there was atari and nintendo early on. The other factor is that you can buy a whole PC for the price of these things. (not from sony) I can go to dell and buy a PC for less than the launch price of the PS3. What is a better online/gaming platform? The other problem is the cell processor isn't as amazing as people thought. Remember, IBM used to say the same thing about POWER and while i like a good PPC box its not 10x better than an intel chip is it?
I'm an older gamer, and I have 7 consoles in the house. During this last generation I bought the gamecube and xbox. I plan on buying a Wii, and I will not buy an xbox 360 unless the price drops to a point I can justify the cost. I have avoided Sony because I don't think the games on the PS2 look very good and I don't like the play control. Sega didn't have as good of graphics either, but I still found the games fun and loved the play control. I know a large number of people disagree with me and are sony fanyboys but I think its time you guys realize you are rooting for your sega. They will go down and Microsoft will dethrown them. I thought it would be nintendo for awhile, but sony has screwed themselves on price and overhyped the hardware. Sega did that too with the saturn. The boys in redmond are here to stay.
I also figure HD-DVD will take over since I like blueray. It has the better name and the specs are terrible which means they can sell us another format in a few years. They will want to do that just as they want to make my DVD collection obsolete.
The inverse problem is true in linux. Its hard to run new hardware on it, but support for ancient hardware is an install disk away. Many of the new motherboards have sata to pata bridges on them. There are only a few vendors who make them, but the linux community stopped at one since everyone can just buy systems with that part. This is not the way to gain market share. Eventually there will be enough pressure and hard work from a few dedicated programmers to make boards like the intel DP965LT work properly in linux.
This problem is also true with other operating systems. Microsoft only cares about new hardware now. They know people won't upgrade to vista in waves. Everyone on slashdot should be happy as we've all said windows is bloated! Removing legacy support makes debugging, security and other aspects easier for microsoft. Now if they would just clean up their api...
Just remember, customers asked for this.
I agree. With the release of IE7 and Windows Media Player 11 there is no new feature worth caring about. Its possible DirectX 10 could be an issue down the road with gaming but only if its adopted heavily by game developers. Regardless, as people buy new hardware the installs will increase. Even Windows ME is still run on some computers.
Its hard to say who the faulted party is entirely. Apple does change APIs and vendors use APIs they are told not to. Regardless, its a big problem. Most adobe products that are say 2 versions behind do not install properly on OS 10.4.x and require a patch to even install. When they are installed, there are issues with the programs ranging from permissions changes to severe breaking of the apps. When companies have to upgrade constantly or sit on old hardware as long as possible it benefits neither the company nor apple. This is a defect in OS X that needs to be addressed. Microsoft breaks apps, but you usually get a few windows releases in between and Microsoft is on a much longer upgrade cycle.
Point releases should NOT break api compatibility. If the code is that different change the major version number. I feel the linux kernel, gnome and several other open source projects break this rule all the time. Apple breaks this rule too... and no i don't just mean the linux 2.6 kernel is so different it should be called 3.0. I mean 2.6.8 is quite different than 2.6.18 and therefore should be 2.8 (odd are test versions right?) With apple, 10.4 has broken kernel module compatibility twice. This in turn broke the evil netware prosoft client i had to support in my last job and several other things like drivers for usb soundcards, etc. I've got a $300 emagic usb sound card that no longer works in OSX because apple broke the api and they bought the company so I can't ever get a driver update. Microsoft sucks, but they rarely go this far. XP SP2 was close on some fronts.
Yes, but wouldn't they need to sue each person uploading. Once she distributes it to x people, she is no longer in control with what they do with it. How does that work legally? A similar example would be if i burned a track i bought on iTunes onto a cd, gave it to my mom and then she sold it to everyone she ran into at work. Who would be liable? Do I have to pay for all of those incidents or is my mother liable? (no i don't distribute to my mom, i give her gift cards to buy her own damn music which I hate anyway)
They might be able to improve the new combined code to execute faster. This whole thing sounds a lot like Java to me. It will be slow starting up and after a page is loaded, it can execute very quickly. Based on recent research for ecommerce sites, I suspect this may have a negative impact on Firefox adoption down the road. The point of JavaScript was to make a lightweight interpreted language that could glue together other components such as plugins, later java, flash and active x controls.
I understand why some people like flash, but I don't understand why people support flash taking over. Macromedia and now Adobe support 99% of all browsers supposedly, but at the same time there are huge gaps in platform support. Its near impossible to have a new OS enter the market without support for Firefox, Flash and a slew of other things. What happens if Linux forks someday or gets so commercial the grass roots folks start over. Remember, the uniqueness of linux was that it was free. The idea of developing in an open environment started long before linux and shortly after linux was public we had 386BSD > NetBSD and FreeBSD. What if someone develops a miracle microkernel design that just works. Anything is a possibility and I think the open source community needs to take charge with Flash if we are going to push it on people. I'd rather go an SVG route where we have open source libraries for it already. A combination of SVG, and some other open source technologies could get us an equivalent to flash but it would need serious adoption to take off. Perhaps when people are tired of paying the adobe premium for Flash? To a windows developer, Adobe products are reasonable but to a Mac or OSS developer you can't beat free. As we are talking about flash as an application platform, xcode is a fair comparison here.