I'm currently enrolled in College, and I had the pleasure of attending a lecture by John F. Kennedy Jr, nephew of President Kennedy. Most of what he said was that President Bush is the worst president the United States have ever had for the environment. He also said that in a real free market companies do NOT pollute, and cited the case of 1100 coal burning plants to produce electricity which produce about 60% of the mercury contaminating the US's waterways today. Mr. President, you say you share family values. In my family, one of the aspects my parents taught me was to not leave a mess behind me, and also how to take care of the environment. Shouldn't that be part of your plans too? Or do you favor the coal plants more because they donated over $100 million to your campaign? Also, according to Mr. Kennedy's lecture, the mercury contamination in water will be responsible for up to 30,000 deaths a year. That's more deaths than the ones that happened in the Twin Towers on sept. 11th! WHY are you letting American citizens die? And why do you appoint people that fake the numbers when it comes to science? Wouldn't the space shuttle Columbia disaster be related to your negligence in appointing people knowledgeable in critical positions?
Mr. Kerry, what will you do to support the environment? Will you re-open the lawsuits that our President has closed against the coal burning plants? Will you listen to the scientific community in general instead of a selected few that tell you what you want to hear instead of the truth?
Yes, I am a supporter of John Kerry in this campaign, but to be frank it is more because I fear President Bush more than Senator Kerry.
Aren't you afraid for the sake of the environment that by campaigning and offering yourself as a choice for the election you will favor the re-election of our incubemt president as Nader has in 2000? And if not, then why? And do you really think you have a chance of getting into office when you have the two major parties that will most likely attract 90 percent of the voters?
Ok, they've made deals with Intel, and they're making a new USB format. But frankly, everyone's not going to be happy with having to buy everything anew. They'll HAVE to make their new peripherals backwards compatible, no matter how hard they'd want to avoid that, because geeks that just bought their PCs aren't going to buy a new one a few months later when they don't have the cash for it, and they're going to be pissed if they can buy, say, a new memory stick, but that new memory stick won't work because of the USB mods.
Second, they didn't make deals with AMD, which to ME suggests that AMD might not follow the "hype". Nowadays we have divisions in the motherboards anyways, just by looking at the socket for the various processors: one socket for intel P4's, one for AMD's 32bit Athlons, one for the Opterons, one for the Athlon64 first version and then one for the new Athlon64s. So, in fact, the motherboard market is pretty much divided. Not to mention that no matter how hard they try, that IS anti-competitive, and even with the DMCA at hand, there is a clause that says that a user has to have a choice on various things, and one of them is the right to create an operating system or a bypass or some sort of device that will make the new technology compatible with any OS.
Linux is big in the server market, everyone knows that, and to be frank, I know a whole lot of people that would like their corporations to switch to linux. That move might make corporations spend a shitload of money, maybe more than switching to linux. I see it as the final challenge: either they'll buy a whole new set of PCs, or they'll keep their hardware and go to linux.
It's a challenge, but as many others I'm sure this is one that the open-source community has a chance to win.
Time will tell, but I feel reasonably confident.
LTSP!
Allow about 300 people to run the same program with only ONE (1) license of each, and use diskless terminals. SAVE MORE, and with Open Source software.
I won't say it enough! L(inux)T(erminal)S(erver)P(roject)!!!
I have to say that to me it doesn't sound like it does what they want it to. I mean, why would they have a version for x86, powerpc, et-al if it's supposed to run on multiple OSes? Shouldn't it subdivide the categories with windows, macOSX, linux-2.4, linux-2.6, *BSD, BeOS...?
Also, just a little quote from the article about the "almost no performance loss" : "QuickTransit fully supports accelerated 3-D graphics and about 80 percent computational performance on the main processor. "
So in fact when computing, those translated programs are 20% slower than a natively written or source-ported program in terms of fpu.
Now, I don't know about you guys, but 20% to me sounds ALOT! Especially for games. Doesn't sound like it's an impressive converter to me. Winex/Cedega does better for me in some cases.
Granted, it might be helpful for medical applications, but gamers are hardcore, they'll want all the juice they can squeeze out of their boxes, so no way they'll voluntarily cut off 20% of their gaming speed, even if the graphics follow.
Of course it SOUNDED great, but when you look under the hood it's impressive if it does work, granted, but it's not as impressive as they're trying to make it sound.
If you go back to the ancient Greece, where they had democracy, look at Plato, look at Socrates: they used others' IP to make their own conclusions.
And they were creative alright. Look later than that: Voltaire did the same thing, Nietzche as well. Philosophy wouldn't exist if IP sharing didn't exist. I don't know how people can argue with that.
Prove me wrong, I'll do like Socrates and revert your argument.
He's the guy that converted my high-school to Open-source. And I don't mean only part of it. The whole campus is running open-source. Everyone knows has to learn how to use openoffice, icewm and shared folders as well as email to submit homework to teachers. He's the one who basically showed the efficiency of the LTSP project (here) in a private medium size organization. His actions have made it possible to have only 3 people in the IT department for the service of 250 people altogether. He's also the one who taught linux classes and helped me follow through my independent study of computer graphics.
Derek is my hero, and I hope sometime he'll read this.
I totally share your problems with bureaucratic organizations as I am in one.
My college takes pride in it's diversity of ethnicity from it's students, and it's great, no doubt. But to make it even better at diversity, I have decided to undertake the difficult task of convincing the IT department here that Linux is not only for idiot geeks that think only in their box and that concerns.1% of the computer park.
As I type they only support Dell computers running windows XP or Apple laptops running Mac OSX.
How I'm going to change that perspective I don't know, but I'm definitely not going to give up. I'll use whatever tools I can find, including every distribution to convince the IT guys that Linux actually works, and most of the time without the terrible headaches of viruses.
If I have one piece of advice to give it would be "don't try to change it all on your own". Try find people in the IT department that are open and receptive to your arguments. Then go forward when you have a willing group of people to make the possibility of a change. Unless of course you are in the IT department, then you'd better find someone in the finance department that would estimate how much you spend in licenses each year and a basic estimation of how much time and money it would cost to re-train employees...
Good luck, I'm backing you up.
Do you hope that at one point in time Real's position on open-source will encourage hardware manufacturers of portable music devices to port their drivers to linux (i.e. Dell's Jukebox) and use a Real program as a music library program? In other words does Real hope to push the linux perspective into the media market? As a linux user I feel a little left out of the hype because even though it's growing it doesn't seem like enough corporations bother to notice it.
Ok, I've read about this countless times, where MS acquires patents about anything and then the rest of the world is stuck. Surely this time the patent will be revoked. Lynx uses the keyboard to navigate, and lynx has been around quite a while, so I'm hoping that THIS patent will disappear, otherwise all general web browsers are in trouble, not only mozilla, but safari, netscape, konqueror, opera... The entire world of browsers risks severe consequences if this patent is left into being. Someone please do this? I'd be willing to help, but I don't know where to start.
It would seem that canadians are always ahead eh?
When are Americans going to realize that they're not as far ahead as they think they are, and that compared to some they're way behind? Glad to know some people DO try to stop the evil at the root:)
I think that's enough specs to understand part of what's going on.
Most of the newer worms are made to affect winXP, win2000 or ME. 98 is more or less forgotten from most virus writers' mind, as the Blaster and Sasser worms demonstrate. Those worms can only affect winME, win2000, winXP or winServer2003 machines. So, basically, you're immune to most of the new worms because 98 is so old that most of the security breaches required to spread the worms don't exist: the functionality with the breach isn't there. I don't think Spybot should have too much to do with the situation.
So you're pretty much safe until someone decides to re-release a win98 virus on the web. That virus however, probably wouldn't affect winME, win2k or winXP users. It'd be interesting to find what the proportions of windows version in use on the web is, that could tell you what your risks are of getting an old virus, more or less.
mmm, invincible, I don't know. Perhaps. But maybe there's another reason. Do you have IPv6 or IPv4? Most viruses only know how to propagate to IPv4 machines.
I think that if we switched the web to IPv6 in the next 2 months, we'd see a HUGE diminution in viruses because most of them would have to be rewritten to work on IPv6. Some european countries already use IPv6 I think, I'm not sure which though. All I know is that I've seen a couple times things on/. about the US delaying the switch to IPv6 eternally, which of course puts the US behind everyone else in terms of technology and in front of the others in terms of spam, spywares, virii and other worms. It's time the US learned how to stop complaining and did something about their problems.
there is a little difference here. Most of the stories I read use winXP. You use win98. Granted, it's also insecure as hell until you install a firewall.
But I've had the experience of installing a firewall on winXP before plugging in the net, and within 2 minutes, because of winXP flaws that the firewall isn't supposed to "cover up" for, the firewall gets crashed, and it's a wide open box on the web. Which makes life so much more complicated for winXP users compared to win98 ones, like you. I'd go back to 98, but I have hardware that doesn't work with 98:/
you get only 60 a day? my firewall log is miles long, with SYN port attacks about every half hour.
And, same here, I don't use winXP for anything but the webcam (which will hopefully work with linux soon) and a couple games (which I'm trying to get running under wine). Eventually I'm planning on being in a windows-free household.
I have a better idea, make the ISPs shut the internet off of compromised machines until it's deemed safe for the network again?
That's how the university networks do, why not the ISPs? After all, they're the ones paying for the 1-800s of their hotlines that get jammed whenever something goes wrong with the web.
Imagine this, your ISP gets a program that instantly compares your throughput data with those of known viruses, port scans an other things a little nasty, and if you're the one spreading the virus, then you get cut off the web, a message gets sent and you only have access to an isolated network with all the windows updates or essential utilities deemed necessary for your computer. Once a remote scan has been run, you get access to the web again.
Besides, that could work for spam too... When are ISPs going to come up with that. I'd pay $5 more to get less spam and viruses.
nope, real experience, tried it 2 weekends ago, nothing was distorted. If anything, I cut short on the crashing part of windows.
For the M$, read my reply to another comment.
And, I am not an IT professional, not even pretending to be. Besides, installing the mcafee firewall on winXP should be enough to protect me, right? I mean, once everything's updated it does so fine. So, why does it crash before I have windows updated? because I forgot to reboot? I did it 5 times before plugging in the ethernet.
And I don't have the money to buy a firewall, college life is not one of abundance.
How do you do basic research when you're not online and you don't have more than one computer nor a printer?
Besides, that windows messaging search isn't always evident, and I'd like to see it off by default, instead of having it on when I install winXP.
You can't argue that a fresh XP install is a security blackhole compared to a fresh mandrake or SuSE install. No point to even compare to the BSDs.
So, I hate MS, yes, but because I've tried various things, and I don't like having to pay for an OS that is less convenient than a free one. And you can blame me for using M$, but I use it because all Microsoft wants is cash. That's their only purpose, and so they sell alpha versions of their software to consumers, everybody's unhappy with it except the people holding MS shares, and it goes on as if nothing had happened before.
My point was that compared to the installation of a linux distribution, installing windows XP is more than tricky for the average consumer out there. So, please, don't insult me without knowing or thinking.
excuse me, but I own a legit copy of mcafee. if you get yours from there, I don't care, but I'm not a thief. Besides, I am not dumb, and I do need the file sharing, as well as other services. I'm not dumb enough to complain about things I don't know. What I complain about is that windows just isn't secure enough by default. You need to pay for extra protection, while you still get a better one from Linux by default. And then for extra protection you don't need to install anything new, just modify iptables. So, in fact, I'd hope you'll take your "bullshit" back, because I am not, in fact, an idiot, you are.
yeah I know that. The problem wasn't with the installer. The installation works fine, while it's off the network. But it's afterwards, when trying to update it that it keeps crashing and crashing... Nothing else to do but download the updates manually. Really annoying, but at least it works.
I still prefer gentoo though.
I'm not sure I agree with your Linux distro analysis, because mandrake, SuSE, Fedora and other user friendly distros have presets for security that you choose during installation. So virtually that leaves M$ OS at stake, maybe along with MacOS... I don't know about the first versions, but I have seen version 7 and 8 in action, it's as unstable as win98.
I recently reinstalled winXP on my 'puter (shame on me) to be able to use the NetMD software. Well, I knew what was going to happen as soon as I plugged the ethernet in. So, as usual, I installed winblows, then McAfee Antivirus 7 + firewall, then plugged the cord to get the updates. 20 seconds later, mcafee stopped functionning. I received tons of windows messages about earning college degrees online, a couple porn ones and whatnot. Ok, so far, nothing (too) surprising. So, I take my courage with both hands, open up IE to go to windows update.
BIG mistake. Instead of windows update, I ended up on some obscure casino website with so many popups I thought my system was going to jam. A few hundred clicks later, I finally see the new windows update page. Then, I start downloading the updates, like everybody else does. Of course, in the meanwhile I left a total security black hole open for every hacker in Beijing to try and read the lack of data on my drive.
I can understand how some people overcome the integrated winXP firewall. But HOW in the world did they hack McAfee's to stop working? I had to download updates manually, and McAfee, just like windows update, REQUIRES IE, for some obscure non-standard non documented function. So... is M$ the only one at fault here? probably not, though I'm willing to bet it's because of winXP security failures that McAfee was disabled.
Sometimes I think of WinXP of a sponge. So many many many holes... And they have to be filled one by one. No wonder winblows will never be secure.
But, the reason lots of people use it, as my gf says: sponges are nicer, you don't wanna use a rock unless it's to crack heads.
So, moral of the story? It's the opensource world's role to crack the big fat happy M$ head.
I'm glad you already mentioned all this, because I was about to re-iterate most of your arguments.
What I'd like to add to it though is that there is currently NO, and I mean absolutely NO effort whatsoever to try and tell people that oil will run out one day. And it's not only the oil companies trying to slow down the effort as much as possible, it's the oil countries, and they have a really big political lever: oil price. That's why the price is rising, and I doubt it'll ever go down, the people that run those countries such as Saudi Arabia, the future government of Iraq, and all the others are trying to get as much money in their pockets as they can while they still can.
Lets be realistic, could the world be ready to work without oil in the next 5 years if there was a major global effort? Maybe not without oil, but with 95% less. We've got the technology. It's just politics preventing us from getting ready.
For the/. crowd, try getting solar panels to power your computers during the day, and then look at how much you'll save on your electricity bills... Most of the US electricity still comes from oil plants, when Switzerland produces almost 80% from turbines installed on dams. Why doesn't the US move to more nuclear to avoid immediate pollution? Politics. Why are solar panels in the US so expensive? Oil companies levering them that way, whereas Germany helps privates finance the installation of whole roofs of panels. If you want to know how to live without oil, look at European countries, nuclear plants, dams, solar panels, solar ovens, solar water heaters... All those efficient tools that save oil costs exist, but where do you look for them in the US?
Once again, this shows as you said that the US priorities are not saving on the oil bills. At least not on the political agenda, even while everyone's bitching about it, nobody buys hybrid or electric cars, going instead for the monstruous (and more dangerous) SUVs with 5,6,7 or even 8 liter engines to just drive around town. I say it's time the US admitted they were below the rest of the world and got their act together to attainable standards.
well, Reps are publicly about saving govt money, but realistically? they're about saving big corps. money and making as much money for themselves along the way. I wouldn't be surprised if M$ tried to bribe Schwarzenegger to not go forward with that move. But then, that's just me.
I have to say, this surprises me alot from a republican person. After all, by using OSS software, he's making M$ lose quite a bit of money. However, if he does go forward then I suppose it will help lower the CA state deficit. BUT I won't say I like Arnold after this. I'll just dislike him less because he's effectively trying to do something. I do hope he goes forward with that idea, as it would save money for the CA budget AND break ground in the US against OSS software as being "untrustworthy" for government agencies.
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I'm currently enrolled in College, and I had the pleasure of attending a lecture by John F. Kennedy Jr, nephew of President Kennedy. Most of what he said was that President Bush is the worst president the United States have ever had for the environment. He also said that in a real free market companies do NOT pollute, and cited the case of 1100 coal burning plants to produce electricity which produce about 60% of the mercury contaminating the US's waterways today.
Mr. President, you say you share family values. In my family, one of the aspects my parents taught me was to not leave a mess behind me, and also how to take care of the environment. Shouldn't that be part of your plans too? Or do you favor the coal plants more because they donated over $100 million to your campaign? Also, according to Mr. Kennedy's lecture, the mercury contamination in water will be responsible for up to 30,000 deaths a year. That's more deaths than the ones that happened in the Twin Towers on sept. 11th! WHY are you letting American citizens die? And why do you appoint people that fake the numbers when it comes to science? Wouldn't the space shuttle Columbia disaster be related to your negligence in appointing people knowledgeable in critical positions?
Mr. Kerry, what will you do to support the environment? Will you re-open the lawsuits that our President has closed against the coal burning plants? Will you listen to the scientific community in general instead of a selected few that tell you what you want to hear instead of the truth?
Yes, I am a supporter of John Kerry in this campaign, but to be frank it is more because I fear President Bush more than Senator Kerry.
Aren't you afraid for the sake of the environment that by campaigning and offering yourself as a choice for the election you will favor the re-election of our incubemt president as Nader has in 2000? And if not, then why? And do you really think you have a chance of getting into office when you have the two major parties that will most likely attract 90 percent of the voters?
Ok, they've made deals with Intel, and they're making a new USB format. But frankly, everyone's not going to be happy with having to buy everything anew. They'll HAVE to make their new peripherals backwards compatible, no matter how hard they'd want to avoid that, because geeks that just bought their PCs aren't going to buy a new one a few months later when they don't have the cash for it, and they're going to be pissed if they can buy, say, a new memory stick, but that new memory stick won't work because of the USB mods. Second, they didn't make deals with AMD, which to ME suggests that AMD might not follow the "hype". Nowadays we have divisions in the motherboards anyways, just by looking at the socket for the various processors: one socket for intel P4's, one for AMD's 32bit Athlons, one for the Opterons, one for the Athlon64 first version and then one for the new Athlon64s. So, in fact, the motherboard market is pretty much divided. Not to mention that no matter how hard they try, that IS anti-competitive, and even with the DMCA at hand, there is a clause that says that a user has to have a choice on various things, and one of them is the right to create an operating system or a bypass or some sort of device that will make the new technology compatible with any OS. Linux is big in the server market, everyone knows that, and to be frank, I know a whole lot of people that would like their corporations to switch to linux. That move might make corporations spend a shitload of money, maybe more than switching to linux. I see it as the final challenge: either they'll buy a whole new set of PCs, or they'll keep their hardware and go to linux. It's a challenge, but as many others I'm sure this is one that the open-source community has a chance to win. Time will tell, but I feel reasonably confident.
LTSP! Allow about 300 people to run the same program with only ONE (1) license of each, and use diskless terminals. SAVE MORE, and with Open Source software. I won't say it enough! L(inux)T(erminal)S(erver)P(roject)!!!
I have to say that to me it doesn't sound like it does what they want it to. I mean, why would they have a version for x86, powerpc, et-al if it's supposed to run on multiple OSes? Shouldn't it subdivide the categories with windows, macOSX, linux-2.4, linux-2.6, *BSD, BeOS...? Also, just a little quote from the article about the "almost no performance loss" : "QuickTransit fully supports accelerated 3-D graphics and about 80 percent computational performance on the main processor. " So in fact when computing, those translated programs are 20% slower than a natively written or source-ported program in terms of fpu. Now, I don't know about you guys, but 20% to me sounds ALOT! Especially for games. Doesn't sound like it's an impressive converter to me. Winex/Cedega does better for me in some cases. Granted, it might be helpful for medical applications, but gamers are hardcore, they'll want all the juice they can squeeze out of their boxes, so no way they'll voluntarily cut off 20% of their gaming speed, even if the graphics follow. Of course it SOUNDED great, but when you look under the hood it's impressive if it does work, granted, but it's not as impressive as they're trying to make it sound.
If you go back to the ancient Greece, where they had democracy, look at Plato, look at Socrates: they used others' IP to make their own conclusions. And they were creative alright. Look later than that: Voltaire did the same thing, Nietzche as well. Philosophy wouldn't exist if IP sharing didn't exist. I don't know how people can argue with that. Prove me wrong, I'll do like Socrates and revert your argument.
He's the guy that converted my high-school to Open-source. And I don't mean only part of it. The whole campus is running open-source. Everyone knows has to learn how to use openoffice, icewm and shared folders as well as email to submit homework to teachers. He's the one who basically showed the efficiency of the LTSP project (here) in a private medium size organization. His actions have made it possible to have only 3 people in the IT department for the service of 250 people altogether. He's also the one who taught linux classes and helped me follow through my independent study of computer graphics. Derek is my hero, and I hope sometime he'll read this.
I totally share your problems with bureaucratic organizations as I am in one. My college takes pride in it's diversity of ethnicity from it's students, and it's great, no doubt. But to make it even better at diversity, I have decided to undertake the difficult task of convincing the IT department here that Linux is not only for idiot geeks that think only in their box and that concerns .1% of the computer park.
As I type they only support Dell computers running windows XP or Apple laptops running Mac OSX.
How I'm going to change that perspective I don't know, but I'm definitely not going to give up. I'll use whatever tools I can find, including every distribution to convince the IT guys that Linux actually works, and most of the time without the terrible headaches of viruses.
If I have one piece of advice to give it would be "don't try to change it all on your own". Try find people in the IT department that are open and receptive to your arguments. Then go forward when you have a willing group of people to make the possibility of a change. Unless of course you are in the IT department, then you'd better find someone in the finance department that would estimate how much you spend in licenses each year and a basic estimation of how much time and money it would cost to re-train employees...
Good luck, I'm backing you up.
Do you hope that at one point in time Real's position on open-source will encourage hardware manufacturers of portable music devices to port their drivers to linux (i.e. Dell's Jukebox) and use a Real program as a music library program? In other words does Real hope to push the linux perspective into the media market? As a linux user I feel a little left out of the hype because even though it's growing it doesn't seem like enough corporations bother to notice it.
Ok, I've read about this countless times, where MS acquires patents about anything and then the rest of the world is stuck. Surely this time the patent will be revoked. Lynx uses the keyboard to navigate, and lynx has been around quite a while, so I'm hoping that THIS patent will disappear, otherwise all general web browsers are in trouble, not only mozilla, but safari, netscape, konqueror, opera...
The entire world of browsers risks severe consequences if this patent is left into being.
Someone please do this? I'd be willing to help, but I don't know where to start.
It would seem that canadians are always ahead eh? When are Americans going to realize that they're not as far ahead as they think they are, and that compared to some they're way behind? Glad to know some people DO try to stop the evil at the root :)
I think that's enough specs to understand part of what's going on. Most of the newer worms are made to affect winXP, win2000 or ME. 98 is more or less forgotten from most virus writers' mind, as the Blaster and Sasser worms demonstrate. Those worms can only affect winME, win2000, winXP or winServer2003 machines. So, basically, you're immune to most of the new worms because 98 is so old that most of the security breaches required to spread the worms don't exist: the functionality with the breach isn't there. I don't think Spybot should have too much to do with the situation. So you're pretty much safe until someone decides to re-release a win98 virus on the web. That virus however, probably wouldn't affect winME, win2k or winXP users. It'd be interesting to find what the proportions of windows version in use on the web is, that could tell you what your risks are of getting an old virus, more or less.
mmm, invincible, I don't know. Perhaps. But maybe there's another reason. Do you have IPv6 or IPv4? Most viruses only know how to propagate to IPv4 machines. I think that if we switched the web to IPv6 in the next 2 months, we'd see a HUGE diminution in viruses because most of them would have to be rewritten to work on IPv6. Some european countries already use IPv6 I think, I'm not sure which though. All I know is that I've seen a couple times things on /. about the US delaying the switch to IPv6 eternally, which of course puts the US behind everyone else in terms of technology and in front of the others in terms of spam, spywares, virii and other worms. It's time the US learned how to stop complaining and did something about their problems.
there is a little difference here. Most of the stories I read use winXP. You use win98. Granted, it's also insecure as hell until you install a firewall. But I've had the experience of installing a firewall on winXP before plugging in the net, and within 2 minutes, because of winXP flaws that the firewall isn't supposed to "cover up" for, the firewall gets crashed, and it's a wide open box on the web. Which makes life so much more complicated for winXP users compared to win98 ones, like you. I'd go back to 98, but I have hardware that doesn't work with 98 :/
you get only 60 a day? my firewall log is miles long, with SYN port attacks about every half hour. And, same here, I don't use winXP for anything but the webcam (which will hopefully work with linux soon) and a couple games (which I'm trying to get running under wine). Eventually I'm planning on being in a windows-free household.
I have a better idea, make the ISPs shut the internet off of compromised machines until it's deemed safe for the network again? That's how the university networks do, why not the ISPs? After all, they're the ones paying for the 1-800s of their hotlines that get jammed whenever something goes wrong with the web. Imagine this, your ISP gets a program that instantly compares your throughput data with those of known viruses, port scans an other things a little nasty, and if you're the one spreading the virus, then you get cut off the web, a message gets sent and you only have access to an isolated network with all the windows updates or essential utilities deemed necessary for your computer. Once a remote scan has been run, you get access to the web again. Besides, that could work for spam too... When are ISPs going to come up with that. I'd pay $5 more to get less spam and viruses.
nope, real experience, tried it 2 weekends ago, nothing was distorted. If anything, I cut short on the crashing part of windows. For the M$, read my reply to another comment. And, I am not an IT professional, not even pretending to be. Besides, installing the mcafee firewall on winXP should be enough to protect me, right? I mean, once everything's updated it does so fine. So, why does it crash before I have windows updated? because I forgot to reboot? I did it 5 times before plugging in the ethernet. And I don't have the money to buy a firewall, college life is not one of abundance.
How do you do basic research when you're not online and you don't have more than one computer nor a printer? Besides, that windows messaging search isn't always evident, and I'd like to see it off by default, instead of having it on when I install winXP. You can't argue that a fresh XP install is a security blackhole compared to a fresh mandrake or SuSE install. No point to even compare to the BSDs. So, I hate MS, yes, but because I've tried various things, and I don't like having to pay for an OS that is less convenient than a free one. And you can blame me for using M$, but I use it because all Microsoft wants is cash. That's their only purpose, and so they sell alpha versions of their software to consumers, everybody's unhappy with it except the people holding MS shares, and it goes on as if nothing had happened before. My point was that compared to the installation of a linux distribution, installing windows XP is more than tricky for the average consumer out there. So, please, don't insult me without knowing or thinking.
excuse me, but I own a legit copy of mcafee. if you get yours from there, I don't care, but I'm not a thief. Besides, I am not dumb, and I do need the file sharing, as well as other services. I'm not dumb enough to complain about things I don't know. What I complain about is that windows just isn't secure enough by default. You need to pay for extra protection, while you still get a better one from Linux by default. And then for extra protection you don't need to install anything new, just modify iptables. So, in fact, I'd hope you'll take your "bullshit" back, because I am not, in fact, an idiot, you are.
yeah I know that. The problem wasn't with the installer. The installation works fine, while it's off the network. But it's afterwards, when trying to update it that it keeps crashing and crashing... Nothing else to do but download the updates manually. Really annoying, but at least it works. I still prefer gentoo though.
I'm not sure I agree with your Linux distro analysis, because mandrake, SuSE, Fedora and other user friendly distros have presets for security that you choose during installation. So virtually that leaves M$ OS at stake, maybe along with MacOS... I don't know about the first versions, but I have seen version 7 and 8 in action, it's as unstable as win98.
I recently reinstalled winXP on my 'puter (shame on me) to be able to use the NetMD software. Well, I knew what was going to happen as soon as I plugged the ethernet in. So, as usual, I installed winblows, then McAfee Antivirus 7 + firewall, then plugged the cord to get the updates. 20 seconds later, mcafee stopped functionning. I received tons of windows messages about earning college degrees online, a couple porn ones and whatnot. Ok, so far, nothing (too) surprising. So, I take my courage with both hands, open up IE to go to windows update. BIG mistake. Instead of windows update, I ended up on some obscure casino website with so many popups I thought my system was going to jam. A few hundred clicks later, I finally see the new windows update page. Then, I start downloading the updates, like everybody else does. Of course, in the meanwhile I left a total security black hole open for every hacker in Beijing to try and read the lack of data on my drive. I can understand how some people overcome the integrated winXP firewall. But HOW in the world did they hack McAfee's to stop working? I had to download updates manually, and McAfee, just like windows update, REQUIRES IE, for some obscure non-standard non documented function. So... is M$ the only one at fault here? probably not, though I'm willing to bet it's because of winXP security failures that McAfee was disabled. Sometimes I think of WinXP of a sponge. So many many many holes... And they have to be filled one by one. No wonder winblows will never be secure. But, the reason lots of people use it, as my gf says: sponges are nicer, you don't wanna use a rock unless it's to crack heads. So, moral of the story? It's the opensource world's role to crack the big fat happy M$ head.
I'm glad you already mentioned all this, because I was about to re-iterate most of your arguments. What I'd like to add to it though is that there is currently NO, and I mean absolutely NO effort whatsoever to try and tell people that oil will run out one day. And it's not only the oil companies trying to slow down the effort as much as possible, it's the oil countries, and they have a really big political lever: oil price. That's why the price is rising, and I doubt it'll ever go down, the people that run those countries such as Saudi Arabia, the future government of Iraq, and all the others are trying to get as much money in their pockets as they can while they still can. Lets be realistic, could the world be ready to work without oil in the next 5 years if there was a major global effort? Maybe not without oil, but with 95% less. We've got the technology. It's just politics preventing us from getting ready. For the /. crowd, try getting solar panels to power your computers during the day, and then look at how much you'll save on your electricity bills... Most of the US electricity still comes from oil plants, when Switzerland produces almost 80% from turbines installed on dams. Why doesn't the US move to more nuclear to avoid immediate pollution? Politics. Why are solar panels in the US so expensive? Oil companies levering them that way, whereas Germany helps privates finance the installation of whole roofs of panels. If you want to know how to live without oil, look at European countries, nuclear plants, dams, solar panels, solar ovens, solar water heaters... All those efficient tools that save oil costs exist, but where do you look for them in the US?
Once again, this shows as you said that the US priorities are not saving on the oil bills. At least not on the political agenda, even while everyone's bitching about it, nobody buys hybrid or electric cars, going instead for the monstruous (and more dangerous) SUVs with 5,6,7 or even 8 liter engines to just drive around town. I say it's time the US admitted they were below the rest of the world and got their act together to attainable standards.
well, Reps are publicly about saving govt money, but realistically? they're about saving big corps. money and making as much money for themselves along the way. I wouldn't be surprised if M$ tried to bribe Schwarzenegger to not go forward with that move.
But then, that's just me.
I have to say, this surprises me alot from a republican person. After all, by using OSS software, he's making M$ lose quite a bit of money. However, if he does go forward then I suppose it will help lower the CA state deficit. BUT I won't say I like Arnold after this. I'll just dislike him less because he's effectively trying to do something. I do hope he goes forward with that idea, as it would save money for the CA budget AND break ground in the US against OSS software as being "untrustworthy" for government agencies.