In many cases they can see the code, albeit under pretty restrictive NDAs.
Which is why I consider open source more secure, anyone can find a hole and anyone, well programmers at least, can fix the hole. With closed source code a review can be restricted from informing users of said code the problems it has.
I guess this benefits open source software since any bug fix is a good thing, but why on earth would the department of homeland security be studying software. shouldn't they be worrying about things like preventing biological attacks or improving how they handle natural disasters?
c) It is not enforceable in most jurisdictions. In the US, and I assume most of the "free world", you can't prevent someone from talking about your products publicly. You can have them sign an NDA, but that doesn't work for publicly available software. McAfee tried something like this some time ago, stipulating in the EULA that you can't benchmark their software. It got shot down in court.
I haven't seen one in years but doesn't Microsoft's ULA have a clause that you can't publish a review of the software without having MS's approval? I think a year or so ago there was an article on/. about it.
Actually, the first line of the article reads "Open source code, much like its commercial counterpart, tends to contain one security exposure for every 1,000 lines of code, according to a program launched by the Department of Homeland Security to review and tighten up open source code's security."
The problem is is how do they know how many lines of code are in the closed commercial programs if they can't see the code?
Good, that would be a good replacement for nuclear in 40 years than. We can probably get 10 reactors online within five years though,
Or we could get wind farms online in months. Though the SciAm article didn't say anything about it the Rocky Mountains alone contain enough potential wind power to provide all of the states in the US except Alaska and Hawaii, which have their own sources of power, with all the electricity needed. However you're not limited to the Rockies for wind. On the Pacific Coast from Oregon through southern CA then eastward through AZ, NM, and Texas there are good sites for wind farms. Do you remember those rolling blackouts CA had several years ago? Guess what? During those blackouts a wind farm capable of supplying megawatts of electricity sat idle. It sat idle because the powerlines needed to deliver the power wasn't there. The Northern Midwest, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North and South Dakota have good sites for wind farms. As does the Appalachians. On the Atlantic Coast from Cape Cod south to Cape Hatteras there are good sites for wind farms off shore.
Simply, there are a lot of places in the US that are good for wind power and a wind generator can be erected and tied into the grid in months. Actually less than a month.
It was a few months ago but the cheapest modo with built in Firewire and USB2 was more than $100, there were some for less but they were missing Firewire and a Firewire card was more than $50. When I got the Linux PC it only came with 256MB so I also bought a 1GB card for about $90.
800GB hard drive
The HDD was only 40GB so I got another one that was 750GB for between $200 and $300, I don't recall exactly how much it was.
2GHz Dual-core CPU
The cheapest CPU I saw was about $80, a 2GH Celeron D if I recall right.
After pricing all the components I realized it was cheaper to just get the prebuilt PC. I'll admit that prices online such as at Newegg may of been lower but I can't see them being that much lower. And I have a problem buying something like these online, I want to look at them before buying and I want a local brick and mortar store I can take something back to if there's a problem with it.
I'm just saying macs are really expensive
For the past few years now Mac prices have been comparable to Windows PC prices. Macs have of been overpriced in the '80s and '90s but that's no longer true. The problem with Macs, which is a marketing problem, is that Apple doesn't offer that many Mac lines. If you want a desktop or tower that's expandable then you have to get a Mac Pro, which starts at $2500. If you just want a consumer model that's not expandable there's the iMac, which is an all-in-one and starts at $1300 if I recall right. Or you can get a Mac Mini for $600. But then you need to get a keyboard, monitor, and mouse as well unless you already have them. Since most people who replace their computer will keep the monitor, people tend to keep monitors longer than computers, someone can save there.
However Apple doesn't have anything that's expandable and upgradeable for less than the Mac Pro.
Flash drives certainly have the advantage over USB hard disks of being faster to write to (usually).
What about eSATA HDDs? Not a lot slower than flash drives, and a whole lot cheaper.
I don't know if they do, do eSATA HDDs have moving parts? Aren't they just regular external HDDs? Flash drives don't have moving parts therefore they are rugged, which is something you want in exploration.
Surely the global population of pirates factors into the equation somehow?
Yeah, the RI/MPAA will want their cut. One of these drives can hold thousands of songs and of course the RIAA will want at least a dollar per song. Or they could hold hundreds of movies, and the MPAA will want at least a $10 per movie, $15 for HD movies.
Nuclear isn't needed. SciAm has a good article in the January 2008 issue. "A Solar Grand Plan" details how solar power can provide 69% of the US's electricity and 35% of it's energy by 2050. And that doesn't use any sort of speculation or pie in the sky dreams (except under Bush and maybe the next president of the USA). It uses current technology and incremental advances in technology. But right now EVs in every driveway and garage, heck just 10% is unrealistic.
Hopefully Tesla Motors will finish their car soon, I'd love to hear how they run in real conditions.
56kbps modem (have to pay extra for this on the Mac)*
I see no need for a 56kbps modem.
The Dell doesn't have gigabit ethernet though, but most Mac users I know don't like being "tied down" anyway.
But I did and do want gigabit Ethernet. Besides my MBP I have tower PCs at home, two with Windows and another with Linux, and want the fastest connection I can get with a reasonable price. I want to be able to quickly and effortlessly sync my MBP with the PCs at home. It's better if I can do it on the road. Gigabit and 11.n help do this. Though I don't have one, I had wanted to get a docking station for the MBP so I wouldn't have to disconnect a bunch of cables and such when I left and reconnect them when I got back. However now, it only takes a minute or two to pack up the MBP, including shutting it down.
Then they should be developing a Linux version. Adobe had already developed versions for Unix, both SGI IRIX and Sun Solaris.
Adobe developed Photoshop for UNIX and it flopped. That's probably why they think that Photoshop for Linux is a bad idea in the first place.
And what was the market share of IRIX and Solaris then versus the market share for Linux now? I bet Linux is a lot bigger now than both IRIS and Solaris were together then.
I would have loved to record to reel-to-reel, but I was a starving student and couldn't afford good equipment.
Well I bought my stereo and reel-to-reel while I was in the Army. And I went in to save money to go to college. I hadn't even thought or knew of financial aid. All I knew was that my family was low income and I wanted to go to college. I couldn't afford to pay out of pocket and neither could my family, so I looked at my options.
I had 3, one not go to college, which was unacceptable. Two, I could join the military and save money to go to college when I got out. The third option was an offer a friend of mine and I were given. In our senior year in high school we were offered jobs at a research lab, Mote Marine Laboratory, when we graduated. For a class in Marine Biology I took, we went on a field trip there. There they offered my friend and I summer jobs, and told us that if we wanted to major in a related field they would help us get into and pay for college. Oh, I wanted to take them up on it so much. But I had already decided I wanted to major in Computer Engineering so I turned the offer down. And picked option 2, to go into the military and save money to go to college.
Now, I wish that I took the third option and figured out how to combine Marine Biology with Computer Engineering.
Oh, there's something else I forgot to mention in my original post. You can build a Linux PC.
It used to be that you could build your own PC cheap, cheaper than OEMs, if you know what you're doing. However the prices of OEM PCs have come down a lot whereas the prices of the components to BYO haven't come down as much. I've got an old HP Pavilion I was going to rebuild. I wanted to use the same case, hdds, and graphics but replace everything else, the mobo and cpu, the power supply, and add cards for USB2 and Firewire if the mobo didn't include them. I ended buying a PC with Linux preinstalled for about what a cheap new mobo and cpu would have cost, $250. And it came with a $50 mail in rebate. About the only tyme it's cheaper to BYO is when you have specific component requirements such as a specific graphic card and hdds.
So yes, you can say you can just buy that 23" Viewsonic, buy a mac in parts...and I'll just go to Newegg, buy a PC in parts. Guess which is cheaper?
Then buy Windows? I bought a Mac because I was sick and tired of dealing with Windows PCs. Or you can download and install Linux free. Good luck getting Photoshop CS3 installed and ready to use, especially if you're if you're new to Linux. And despite what people say GIMP IS NOT a drop in replacement for Photoshop. Accurate colour rendition is important for not just photographers but graphic artists who print. For print CMYK is also important. GIMP's 8 bits per colour channel comes no where near to having good colour rendition. Photoshop's 32 bit colour depth is so much better. And GIMP doesn't natively have CMYK support, instead you have to install a plugin to get it. And while CinePaint also has 32 bit colour depths and can do CMYK, can it do everything PH does?
If you had problems with XP, it was probably something wrong with your system. XP is rock-solid.
It was installed on a brand new Dell, I don't recall the model though, that was part of a shipment of a bunch of new PCs the college where I used it got.
If I remember right, the KDE guys also include the proper name in parenthesis, so you might see an application listed like "cd burning (k3b)" -- that strikes me as a nice balance of catering to the average degree of ignorence,
- why does the movie industry 'get it,' but the recording industry doesn't?
Because Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are part of the movie industry? LOL. The "G" in DreamWorks SKG is Bill Gates. And Steve Jobs sits on the board of and owns stocks in Disney, a major movie studio.
Second, a digital file never wears out, so there is no point to a "used market". On the other hand, it is easy to make unlimited perfect copies of a file
Oh but digital files do wear out. Media, both analogue and digital, wears out. And when digital files are duplicated random errors are introduced.
How many times must I buy an album before I can use it as I please? Let's take one example, Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon". I went through three vinyl albums way back before digital music was invented. I also owned a cassette of it (store bought, not copied). I might even have owned an eight-track version of it during a brief period of insanity. At the moment, I own two CD copies, the regular version and a "special remastered" version. That's seven copies of one album I have paid for. And you want to sue me because I ripped the CD onto my computer? FUCK YOU!
It sounds like maybe it would have been a good idea for you to do what I used to do myself. Back when I bought new vinyl records the first tyme I played the record I'd record it on my Reel to reel tape deck. I could then put away the record for safe keeping and listen to the tape. When the tape wore out I still had the record so I could rerecord it on a new tape. Now you could rip the record or the tape to play on an mpg3 player. I've noticed stores are now carrying new turntables, and some of them have built in USB ports so you can easily connect it to a PC.
And of those three, which will you replay the most? Which will you get bored of first? I don't know about you, but I've listened to the "one decent song" on a few albums far more than I've ever watched even my favorite movie
I last bought music about 4 years ago. Since then I've bought a bunch of movies. Whereas I rarely listen to music other than on the radio I frequently watch movies. Some of them I even watch a lot. One of my fav is "Hellfighters". I got it on tape more than 10 years ago and on DVD a few years ago. In that tyme I've watched them more than 100 tymes. Admittedly it's not as many as listening to 3 or 4 minute songs a few tymes a week, but I watch movies way more than I listen to music other than the music in the movies. Now, if I had a good stereo and turntable I'd listen to more music.
Before going CS3 I'd recommend giving Pixelmator [pixelmator.com] a try.
That's but Pixelmator has the same limitation as GIMP, it's only 8 bits per colour channel.
There are a few issues that I see frequently brought up by Mac users.
After using Windows almost exclusively for the last 10 years I had hardly any problems making the switch. The one thing I don't like is the maximize icon, in Windows it actually makes the window take all of the screen real estate, but not on the Mac. The only way, that I know of, to get a window to use the whole screen is by dragging the edges.
The dock has a few issues
I have the Dock set on auto hide and rarely use it.
The mouse acceleration curve feels very wrong
I don't use a mouse on my MBP, I have a trackball but haven't set it up yet. So for now I just use the trackpad.
So I really want to know where these $19 CDs are and why I can't find them
Out of curiosity, it's been years since I last bought any music (and I don't pirate music either, I just don't listen to music much anymore), I searched Amazon music for Norah Jones. On the first of three pages there are two albums, vinyl LP records, that are $30. Barnes and Noble has the list price of her "Come Away With Me" as $19, as is "Not Too Late", and The Little Willies".
I picked Norah Jones because the last CDs I bought were from her and Neko Case.
Slashdot Mirror
In many cases they can see the code, albeit under pretty restrictive NDAs.
Which is why I consider open source more secure, anyone can find a hole and anyone, well programmers at least, can fix the hole. With closed source code a review can be restricted from informing users of said code the problems it has.
FalconDHS, certainly more valuable than x-raying my shoes and confiscating my saline solution.
What would be more valuable would be to get rid of DHS.
FalconI guess this benefits open source software since any bug fix is a good thing, but why on earth would the department of homeland security be studying software. shouldn't they be worrying about things like preventing biological attacks or improving how they handle natural disasters?
Such as hurricanes?
Falconc) It is not enforceable in most jurisdictions. In the US, and I assume most of the "free world", you can't prevent someone from talking about your products publicly. You can have them sign an NDA, but that doesn't work for publicly available software. McAfee tried something like this some time ago, stipulating in the EULA that you can't benchmark their software. It got shot down in court.
I haven't seen one in years but doesn't Microsoft's ULA have a clause that you can't publish a review of the software without having MS's approval? I think a year or so ago there was an article on /. about it.
FalconActually, the first line of the article reads "Open source code, much like its commercial counterpart, tends to contain one security exposure for every 1,000 lines of code, according to a program launched by the Department of Homeland Security to review and tighten up open source code's security."
The problem is is how do they know how many lines of code are in the closed commercial programs if they can't see the code?
FalconGood, that would be a good replacement for nuclear in 40 years than. We can probably get 10 reactors online within five years though,
Or we could get wind farms online in months. Though the SciAm article didn't say anything about it the Rocky Mountains alone contain enough potential wind power to provide all of the states in the US except Alaska and Hawaii, which have their own sources of power, with all the electricity needed. However you're not limited to the Rockies for wind. On the Pacific Coast from Oregon through southern CA then eastward through AZ, NM, and Texas there are good sites for wind farms. Do you remember those rolling blackouts CA had several years ago? Guess what? During those blackouts a wind farm capable of supplying megawatts of electricity sat idle. It sat idle because the powerlines needed to deliver the power wasn't there. The Northern Midwest, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North and South Dakota have good sites for wind farms. As does the Appalachians. On the Atlantic Coast from Cape Cod south to Cape Hatteras there are good sites for wind farms off shore.
Simply, there are a lot of places in the US that are good for wind power and a wind generator can be erected and tied into the grid in months. Actually less than a month.
FalconI've got Firewire and USB2
It was a few months ago but the cheapest modo with built in Firewire and USB2 was more than $100, there were some for less but they were missing Firewire and a Firewire card was more than $50. When I got the Linux PC it only came with 256MB so I also bought a 1GB card for about $90.
800GB hard drive
The HDD was only 40GB so I got another one that was 750GB for between $200 and $300, I don't recall exactly how much it was.
2GHz Dual-core CPU
The cheapest CPU I saw was about $80, a 2GH Celeron D if I recall right.
After pricing all the components I realized it was cheaper to just get the prebuilt PC. I'll admit that prices online such as at Newegg may of been lower but I can't see them being that much lower. And I have a problem buying something like these online, I want to look at them before buying and I want a local brick and mortar store I can take something back to if there's a problem with it.
I'm just saying macs are really expensive
For the past few years now Mac prices have been comparable to Windows PC prices. Macs have of been overpriced in the '80s and '90s but that's no longer true. The problem with Macs, which is a marketing problem, is that Apple doesn't offer that many Mac lines. If you want a desktop or tower that's expandable then you have to get a Mac Pro, which starts at $2500. If you just want a consumer model that's not expandable there's the iMac, which is an all-in-one and starts at $1300 if I recall right. Or you can get a Mac Mini for $600. But then you need to get a keyboard, monitor, and mouse as well unless you already have them. Since most people who replace their computer will keep the monitor, people tend to keep monitors longer than computers, someone can save there.
However Apple doesn't have anything that's expandable and upgradeable for less than the Mac Pro.
FalconFlash drives certainly have the advantage over USB hard disks of being faster to write to (usually).
What about eSATA HDDs? Not a lot slower than flash drives, and a whole lot cheaper.
I don't know if they do, do eSATA HDDs have moving parts? Aren't they just regular external HDDs? Flash drives don't have moving parts therefore they are rugged, which is something you want in exploration.
FalconSurely the global population of pirates factors into the equation somehow?
Yeah, the RI/MPAA will want their cut. One of these drives can hold thousands of songs and of course the RIAA will want at least a dollar per song. Or they could hold hundreds of movies, and the MPAA will want at least a $10 per movie, $15 for HD movies.
FalconNuclear isn't needed. SciAm has a good article in the January 2008 issue. "A Solar Grand Plan" details how solar power can provide 69% of the US's electricity and 35% of it's energy by 2050. And that doesn't use any sort of speculation or pie in the sky dreams (except under Bush and maybe the next president of the USA). It uses current technology and incremental advances in technology. But right now EVs in every driveway and garage, heck just 10% is unrealistic.
Hopefully Tesla Motors will finish their car soon, I'd love to hear how they run in real conditions.
Agreed!
Falcon56kbps modem (have to pay extra for this on the Mac)*
I see no need for a 56kbps modem.
The Dell doesn't have gigabit ethernet though, but most Mac users I know don't like being "tied down" anyway.
But I did and do want gigabit Ethernet. Besides my MBP I have tower PCs at home, two with Windows and another with Linux, and want the fastest connection I can get with a reasonable price. I want to be able to quickly and effortlessly sync my MBP with the PCs at home. It's better if I can do it on the road. Gigabit and 11.n help do this. Though I don't have one, I had wanted to get a docking station for the MBP so I wouldn't have to disconnect a bunch of cables and such when I left and reconnect them when I got back. However now, it only takes a minute or two to pack up the MBP, including shutting it down.
FalconThen they should be developing a Linux version. Adobe had already developed versions for Unix, both SGI IRIX and Sun Solaris.
Adobe developed Photoshop for UNIX and it flopped. That's probably why they think that Photoshop for Linux is a bad idea in the first place.
And what was the market share of IRIX and Solaris then versus the market share for Linux now? I bet Linux is a lot bigger now than both IRIS and Solaris were together then.
FalconI would have loved to record to reel-to-reel, but I was a starving student and couldn't afford good equipment.
Well I bought my stereo and reel-to-reel while I was in the Army. And I went in to save money to go to college. I hadn't even thought or knew of financial aid. All I knew was that my family was low income and I wanted to go to college. I couldn't afford to pay out of pocket and neither could my family, so I looked at my options.
I had 3, one not go to college, which was unacceptable. Two, I could join the military and save money to go to college when I got out. The third option was an offer a friend of mine and I were given. In our senior year in high school we were offered jobs at a research lab, Mote Marine Laboratory, when we graduated. For a class in Marine Biology I took, we went on a field trip there. There they offered my friend and I summer jobs, and told us that if we wanted to major in a related field they would help us get into and pay for college. Oh, I wanted to take them up on it so much. But I had already decided I wanted to major in Computer Engineering so I turned the offer down. And picked option 2, to go into the military and save money to go to college.
Now, I wish that I took the third option and figured out how to combine Marine Biology with Computer Engineering.
FalconOh, there's something else I forgot to mention in my original post. You can build a Linux PC.
It used to be that you could build your own PC cheap, cheaper than OEMs, if you know what you're doing. However the prices of OEM PCs have come down a lot whereas the prices of the components to BYO haven't come down as much. I've got an old HP Pavilion I was going to rebuild. I wanted to use the same case, hdds, and graphics but replace everything else, the mobo and cpu, the power supply, and add cards for USB2 and Firewire if the mobo didn't include them. I ended buying a PC with Linux preinstalled for about what a cheap new mobo and cpu would have cost, $250. And it came with a $50 mail in rebate. About the only tyme it's cheaper to BYO is when you have specific component requirements such as a specific graphic card and hdds.
So yes, you can say you can just buy that 23" Viewsonic, buy a mac in parts...and I'll just go to Newegg, buy a PC in parts. Guess which is cheaper?
Then buy Windows? I bought a Mac because I was sick and tired of dealing with Windows PCs. Or you can download and install Linux free. Good luck getting Photoshop CS3 installed and ready to use, especially if you're if you're new to Linux. And despite what people say GIMP IS NOT a drop in replacement for Photoshop. Accurate colour rendition is important for not just photographers but graphic artists who print. For print CMYK is also important. GIMP's 8 bits per colour channel comes no where near to having good colour rendition. Photoshop's 32 bit colour depth is so much better. And GIMP doesn't natively have CMYK support, instead you have to install a plugin to get it. And while CinePaint also has 32 bit colour depths and can do CMYK, can it do everything PH does?
FalconIf you had problems with XP, it was probably something wrong with your system. XP is rock-solid.
It was installed on a brand new Dell, I don't recall the model though, that was part of a shipment of a bunch of new PCs the college where I used it got.
FalconIf I remember right, the KDE guys also include the proper name in parenthesis, so you might see an application listed like "cd burning (k3b)" -- that strikes me as a nice balance of catering to the average degree of ignorence,
I agree, that is good.
FalconMy mom isn't going to repurchase the White Album no matter what new wacky format it comes out in.
If and when I ever get a new turntable the "White Album" will be one of the first vinyl records I get.
Falcon- why does the movie industry 'get it,' but the recording industry doesn't?
Because Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are part of the movie industry? LOL. The "G" in DreamWorks SKG is Bill Gates. And Steve Jobs sits on the board of and owns stocks in Disney, a major movie studio.
FalconSecond, a digital file never wears out, so there is no point to a "used market". On the other hand, it is easy to make unlimited perfect copies of a file
Oh but digital files do wear out. Media, both analogue and digital, wears out. And when digital files are duplicated random errors are introduced.
FalconHow many times must I buy an album before I can use it as I please? Let's take one example, Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon". I went through three vinyl albums way back before digital music was invented. I also owned a cassette of it (store bought, not copied). I might even have owned an eight-track version of it during a brief period of insanity. At the moment, I own two CD copies, the regular version and a "special remastered" version. That's seven copies of one album I have paid for. And you want to sue me because I ripped the CD onto my computer? FUCK YOU!
It sounds like maybe it would have been a good idea for you to do what I used to do myself. Back when I bought new vinyl records the first tyme I played the record I'd record it on my Reel to reel tape deck. I could then put away the record for safe keeping and listen to the tape. When the tape wore out I still had the record so I could rerecord it on a new tape. Now you could rip the record or the tape to play on an mpg3 player. I've noticed stores are now carrying new turntables, and some of them have built in USB ports so you can easily connect it to a PC.
FalconAnd of those three, which will you replay the most? Which will you get bored of first? I don't know about you, but I've listened to the "one decent song" on a few albums far more than I've ever watched even my favorite movie
I last bought music about 4 years ago. Since then I've bought a bunch of movies. Whereas I rarely listen to music other than on the radio I frequently watch movies. Some of them I even watch a lot. One of my fav is "Hellfighters". I got it on tape more than 10 years ago and on DVD a few years ago. In that tyme I've watched them more than 100 tymes. Admittedly it's not as many as listening to 3 or 4 minute songs a few tymes a week, but I watch movies way more than I listen to music other than the music in the movies. Now, if I had a good stereo and turntable I'd listen to more music.
FalconBefore going CS3 I'd recommend giving Pixelmator [pixelmator.com] a try.
That's but Pixelmator has the same limitation as GIMP, it's only 8 bits per colour channel.
There are a few issues that I see frequently brought up by Mac users.
After using Windows almost exclusively for the last 10 years I had hardly any problems making the switch. The one thing I don't like is the maximize icon, in Windows it actually makes the window take all of the screen real estate, but not on the Mac. The only way, that I know of, to get a window to use the whole screen is by dragging the edges.
The dock has a few issues
I have the Dock set on auto hide and rarely use it.
The mouse acceleration curve feels very wrong
I don't use a mouse on my MBP, I have a trackball but haven't set it up yet. So for now I just use the trackpad.
Falconart
Oh, especially the drum solo "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida".
FalconSo I really want to know where these $19 CDs are and why I can't find them
Out of curiosity, it's been years since I last bought any music (and I don't pirate music either, I just don't listen to music much anymore), I searched Amazon music for Norah Jones. On the first of three pages there are two albums, vinyl LP records, that are $30. Barnes and Noble has the list price of her "Come Away With Me" as $19, as is "Not Too Late", and The Little Willies".
I picked Norah Jones because the last CDs I bought were from her and Neko Case.
FalconI dont recall any such shootouts or any Linux development or testing within Apple.
There may be others but the only Linux I know of that Apple worked on was MkLinux.
Falcon