Wow. Your answer is almost the same. I think that answer is prevalent amongst Linux users.
First, you have to realize that I'm pretty geeky... my experience may not translate well to Grandma or Uncle Joe.
I'm a geek too, and years ago I realized something: I actually use my computer for real life things. I use MS Office to manage my software development business. I encode videos. I play games. I realized that being a geek doesn't make me different from Grandma or Uncle Joe. I want my computer to work, and when it doesn't work I get unhappy.
I always imagined that the engineer who invented a new type of can opener liked to eat canned food. And that Betty Crocker liked to cook because she liked to eat. I code software because there are tasks I do everyday and I want to make them easier and better.
But I keep meeting computer geeks who don't actually have a reason to use their computer. When asked what they do with it: they hook it to a network and administer it. They are like mechanics who work on engines, but have never driven a car. They know all about the means and the technology, but they have no applied use for it.
A friend of mine had "Norton Utilities" under Start - Programs - Applications. Norton Utilities is not an applied use for a computer. Microsoft Office is. Even a game is. This guy didn't actually have a reason to use his computer. Now there is nothing wrong with that of course, but it does make it difficult to trust that person's experience and apply it to the real world. There's that word again: "apply."
What did the Baltimore LUG have to say?
A buddy of mine asked the Baltimore LUG what these guys used Linux for that was better than Windows. My friend liked to create music using Live! and a few other music programs. Nobody at the LUG made music. I was coding some cool 3D stuff, but there were no developers there. I also ran my business using Microsoft Office, but nobody there had a home based business or used any serious office features. After a bit of discussion, I realized that none of them knew what an applied use of a computer was. Except email and browsing the web -- they got that one right away.
I felt more productive because I had instant access to a huge range of powerful utilities
When I asked them what was better about Linux, it was the themes, or the shell, or the low-level details. You list lots of nice things about Linux. Personally, I like that Linux treats everything as a file. And I like the binary package formats and the way dependencies are handled. But I can't actually think of a way that Linux makes me more productive. It's not easier to develop on, surfing the web is about the same, it surely doesn't help me do my taxes.
So over the past few years as I've learned about Linux and ported some code and stuff I've learned a lot about how the engine runs and I like it: But the car just doesn't get me to my destination. I keep hoping to find someone who has applied it, so I can learn from them.
I've blocked outbound port 25 (since my ISP doesn't)
Most ISPs don't block port 25 because they still haven't migrated to SSL SMTP on port 465. Why is this? The last 2 ISPs I've used don't support it, and my complaints fall on deaf ears.
B&W was a great psychology experiment. Let me explain why.
The most common complaint I hear about the first B&W was that the creature was too hard to train. So now it pops up bubbles explaining to you what it is thinking. The second biggest complaint was constant micromanagement of villages.
I thought it was easy to train a creature: less is more. By the end of the first level I had trained my creature to heal hurt peasants, give them food if they need it, and water trees and fields in the spare time. It didn't take much effort and it was quite intuitive. And the creature did all the micromanagement for me. Brilliant!
But on to my point about patience: I watched my 9 year old brother play the game. He spent 99% of the game doing stuff with his creature. Punishing him, rewarding him, giving him stuff to eat, etc. Whereas I spent 10 minutes out of each hour doing that. His creatures never acted on their own, they followed him around, they ate everything, they pooped on everything.
I get the impression that most people doing game reviews have the attention span of 9 year olds. It wasn't the game's fault: these reviewers need to go back to playing Quake 3 because they fingers were twitching too much.
I felt a lot MORE productive on Mandrake than on Windows, once I'd figured it out.
I've been waiting for someone to say this for a while so I could ask this question. What do you do with your computer that made Linux more productive for you? I'm also curious what aspects you had to "figure out" in order to make Linux productive.
I asked this at a the Baltimore Linux Users Group a while back, and I was surprised at the answer. (I'll divulge that after I see your response, I don't want to put words in your mouth).
This guy isn't an asshole: he is The Devil's advocate. And he has a point.
Everyone wants the government to subsidize environmentally friendly alternatives, but nobody wants to go out on their own and pay for them. Do you think that if the government or the corporations pay for it that the people don't pay for it too?
It would actually be cheaper if people "put their money where their mouth is" and paid for environmentally friendly solutions out of their own pay checks. The alternative is to have the pay check taxed, then the taxes to go to a subsidy, then the subsidy to pay for it. You still pay, the only difference is that you incurred the inefficiency and bloat of a tax system to do it.
So make life simple and just do it. (Maybe I am preaching to the choir: I would love to see a Slashdot poll on how many mpg your main commuter vehicle gets)
A lot of replies to this talk about the fact that you see the EULAs after you buy the software. But that's not the point. What happens when they start making us agree to the license before we buy the software? Ex: When you sign the credit card receipt, or if you buy the software online. The real issue with license agreements isn't the fact that they appear after you buy the software.
The real issue is these two things:
1) They are unconscionable: You agree not to use competitors products, not to modify your copy, and not to write a review of it. These clauses should not be legal.
2) The average person should not be reasonably expected to read and understand a license agreement for basic consumer products like software or hardware. What about bread? You can't write a review of my company's bread. Or you can't reverse-engineer the 7 secret herbs and spices in my restaurant's food. Or you can't go join another gym club while you are a member of this club. Are these things reasonable?
This is where the wikipedia is great but it also shows weakness. The table shows fluorescent bulbs as 6.6% - 8.8% efficient. The following paragraph says fluorescent bulbs are 40% efficient. The table lists references, but the references are either bad links or corporate marketing info.
Does anybody have any real authoritative information on this?
People like to connect the dots. "i go *here* to play my media, why can't i burn my playlists from here as well?"
That is an excellent point. It is also a perfect example of how people still don't understand the desktop. You don't go to Windows Media Player to play your media. You go to "My Music" or wherever. People still use the old DOS way of doing stuff: Run the application, then click open, then browse to the location. That's backwards. If they went to the location first, then they could do all of the things the GP post is talking about right from there (copy, rename, delete, organize, burn, play,...) and you won't need the application to then have al lthe same features as Explorer.
You point out the issues with sharing, and applications creating multiple folders, etc. So you do make a good point: Users won't ever "get" the desktop analogy until the software uses it properly. Until 95% of apps start using these folders properly, it won't be useful.
This is absolutely great for Microsoft shops who use the Windows API and related technologies. So often things don't work as intended, and you need to pay big $$$ to have MS debug it for you. And they aren't usually willing or capable. At my last job, you had to be stuck for at least 1 week and have had a review of the problem by the senior architect before you could call Microsoft -- it was that expensive. Often times a fails and you don't know why. Having the source code can help so much.
Your code:
/* Why does this always return -1, when the docs say
it returns either 0 or a positive number? */ LONG result = ObscureAPICall(null, "Some string");
Microsoft code:
void ObscureAPICall(void *p, LPCTSTR) { /* TODO: Implement version that works with NULL value for p */
if (!p)
return -1; . . . }
I'm not a sports nut, but one did give me this advice one time when I asked the same question:
1) There is a players union that requires that referees be humans with certain salaries. 2) To a sports nut, the human referees are just as much a part of the game as the coaches. Replacing the referees with machines would be like replacing the players with machines.
Because there are two families of file-formats for text formatting: 1) Word Processing/Page Layout formats such as Open Document, MS Word, Word Perfect, and PDF. 2) Hyper text formats such as HTML, XML, and SGML.
The first family contains the exact specific information required to render (display, print) the document. In theory, I can open a Word Document or a PDF file on any computer in the universe and it will print exactly the same. It also MAY contain SOME semantic, contextual, "hypertext" information.
The second family contains mostly semantic information required to parse and convert the document. It is good for outlines, blind reders, or computers. It also MAY contain SOME rendering information, but it is not necessary, and each client may choose to render the document in whatever way is most appropriate.
This is why CSS was created. The idea is that HTML is the content (semantics) and CSS is the formatting (rendering, printing, display). But I don't think HTML & CSS specifies enough detail that it can do everything that MS Word, PDF, etc. can do.
I don't think HTML+CSS will ever become the format of choice. I don't see it moving in the direction that is needed to replace word processing formats. It will most likely remain a format for output and web transmitting. Although, maybe one day we will have browsers that can render Open Document files. That would be nifty.
Can you name a SINGLE INSTANCE where you chose your O/S based on some performance graph?
I'll name one. Many years ago I worked for a company where a client chose to deploy a Linux file server instead of a Windows server like we recommended. They had constant problems with speed because Linux 2.2 + Samba 1 was very slow. No matter how much power they put in that server it couldn't keep up with a low-end Windows box.
So OS speed is important in terms of scalability. In this case they should have looked at the graph before buying.
Fortunately, Linux/Samba has matured and this would not be a problem today.
Dvorak shows his ignorance on security in this article.
Most recently, I forgot to turn off my CUTEftp client and left it running all night...Exactly how anything manages to worm in through the open port and place items in the Registry is beyond me, but it happens all the time.
This is wrong is so many ways. 1) CuteFTP is a client not a server. The only way anyone got in through that is by him connecting to a malicious site. 2) If someone got in through a bug in CuteFTP, it isn't Microsoft's fault. 3) Typical Windows running as Administrator. 4) If software has a security problem, it has nothing to do with leaving it on all night. What, does he think he is safe if it is running during the day? Or so long as he is watching it? 5) "How a burgler climbs in through an open window and steals my money is beyond me, but it happens all the time."
His registry comment... He sounds like Jerry Seinfeld: "The registry, what's up with that. I mean like, there has to be a better way." With that brilliant thinking, we can eliminate the registry and viruses and spyware will go away. Thanks John!
Your concepts are right, but I see two flaws in your execution:
1) Write a rule that says "Passwords may contain only letters, numbers, and underscores."
Rules like this are arbitrary and cause other problems. My passwords use more than just letters, numbers, and underscores. There are lots of other characters that are perfectly valid. If you are going to define what is good, define it universally, not arbitrarily. How about all non-control ASCII characters: 32-126? It is safe but also non-restrictive.
2)For a simple, but very very real-world example, don't write a rule that says "If the password contains/, =, or \, reject it."
There is nothing wrong with / = and \. If your code somewhere on the back-end treats those as escape characters then you have a security bug that needs to be fixed at that level. Limiting the user is not the solution because what if those characters make it in to your library through some other route?
If you are referring to the Unicode escape strings like \u000A then you are not following another rule, which I'll add to your list as rule #3:
1. Defining "badness" instead of "goodness"
2. Trying to "clean up" invalid code
3. Not using the appropriate parser
If someone enters in \u000A and then your code should either treat that as the 6 character sequence that it is, at which point there is no problem; or it should treat it as a newline character which will be rejected. Either way you are fine. It is only a problem if you treat it one way in one part of the code, and another way in another part of the code. That's why you use the proper parser. If the user entered ASCII and you wanted UNICODE then the UNICODE parser will see that as a newline and you will reject it. If they entered ASCII and you wanted ASCII then that sequence does nothing and you are fine. If your filtering routine treats it as ASCII then you later make it UNICODE and pass it to a SQL server then the user may have snuck something in.
Really, if you use the appropriate parser than characters never need to be filtered. Suppose a malicious tries a SQL injection by entering in a \ or an unmatched quote or a newline character, then I don't need to be afraid so long as I used the SQL engine's prepare() command to parse the string. It knows how to escape the strings properly. So there is no need to filter anything.
The parent post was written to be funny, but it is actually very insightful. This biggest problem for Linux isn't where the menus are located, or how the icons look, or the confusion over the meaning of the "Send/Receive" button. Those things happen on all operating systems and all software. The users eventually figure it out. But Linux isn't even ready for that stage yet.
Linux needs to work on getting software and hardware to work together reliably. That means without having to edit configuration files and without going to a command prompt. Simple basic things are missing. We need to work on drivers, resolving dependencies properly, and making packages that just work (including installing icons and adding documentation).
After we get that stuff resolved, then tweaking the UI will become more relevant.
That sounds like a cool course. However I don't think it is an OSS course. Except for Lecture 1 and Lecture 6, the rest is stuff that is general stuff that applies to open and closed-source software. It sounds more like an introduction to Unix programming tools or the beginnings of a software development life-cycle course of some sort.
This more pertains to yesterday's article on performance, but it relates to Java in general.
I see lots of articles saying how garbage collection prevents memory leaks and provides security improvements. That is a slight misunderstanding: The automatic memory management is what makes it secure, not the garbage collection. The garbage collector is merely HOW the memory is freed. If Java eliminated the garbage collector and freed the memory immediately the language would be equally secure. What matters is that you don't have access to pointers.
For example, take Visual Basic 6: This language does not have garbage collection, but it is about as safe as Java. It frees memory/objects that aren't used, uses bounds checking, doesn't allow bad casts, and doesn't use pointers. The only time VB6 is a problem is when you call an outside library (which is the same problem you have in Java). So it isn't the garbage collector that matters.
Inherently, a language with access to pointers is always going to be less secure than a language that does not have them, and uses automatic memory management. None of the security enhancements to the compiler can change code that assigns a pointer to the wrong object and overwrites the memory for it. None of them can prevent a bad cast from screwing things up.
But the importance of heat and power are are underrated. And most of us don't have loud projectors. If I lived next to a freight train then a silent PC might not be significant.
I live in a row house. It has old wiring, very little sound insulation, and no central A/C. My living room isn't big enough for a projector even if I wanted one. In that small room, the sound is noticeable - especially when you aren't watching TV. I prefer a low-power system because I can feel the temperature difference in the room if the PC runs hot. And it limits what I can plug into that circuit. And it means it is too hot to put into an enclosed entertainment center.
So maybe it doesn't matter on your setup, but for mine it is significant.
I watched DVD video scaled to 1024x768 on 600Mhz PCs with low-end 3D PCI cards years ago. If your system is having trouble doing that, you probably have a slow DVD drive or some other bottleneck. I currently do this on my 900Mhz HTPC with an old ATI Radeon 9200 that I bought for $50. It doesn't have a fan either, just a heat sink.
Debian SPARC is not a general-purpose 64-bit/32-bit mixed architecture. It is a 64-bit kernel that runs 32-bit applications. There is some limited incomplete support for 64-bit applications. You can't just install a 64-bit.package and a 32-bit package side-by-side on that system and expect it to work.
Fedora Core supports having 32-bit applications/libraries and 64-applications/libraries running side-by-side simultaneously. The packaging system and the linker know the x86_64 packages from the i386 packages.
From your link:
The Debian SPARC 64 porting effort is not currently conceived as a full porting effort...In fact, there is really no point in having all applications running in 64-bit mode. Full 64-bit mode involves a significant overhead (memory and disk size) with often no benefit. Some applications really can benefit from being in 64-bit mode, and that is the purpose of this porting effort.
The specs say 2250 watts. 2250 watts divided by 120 volts = 18.75 amps. So, in theory, you could hook this to a circuit with an 18 amp fuse or breaker.
Of course, doing this is surely a crazy violation of electrical codes. Would it be that hard just to plug the computers into the UPS? It has plenty of outlets, it really looks like that is how it was intended. Wiring it right to the electrical box might get you some geek points, but you might also become a Darwin awards nominee.
rpm supports multiple architectures out of the box, and knows how to install them to the proper location. Apt does not. This is actually very frustrating because as a Fedora users, I prefer using apt to yum. But for Debian users, you aren't supposed to even be able to have 64-bit and 32-bit binaries co-existing on one system.
This article on FC4 had some interesting information.
Whatever happened to these systems? As I understood it, an encrypted handshake combined with some other well-known techniques provides for an anonymous digital cash system. Why is there no company that has implemented this?
Slashdot Mirror
I always imagined that the engineer who invented a new type of can opener liked to eat canned food. And that Betty Crocker liked to cook because she liked to eat. I code software because there are tasks I do everyday and I want to make them easier and better.
But I keep meeting computer geeks who don't actually have a reason to use their computer. When asked what they do with it: they hook it to a network and administer it. They are like mechanics who work on engines, but have never driven a car. They know all about the means and the technology, but they have no applied use for it.
A friend of mine had "Norton Utilities" under Start - Programs - Applications. Norton Utilities is not an applied use for a computer. Microsoft Office is. Even a game is. This guy didn't actually have a reason to use his computer. Now there is nothing wrong with that of course, but it does make it difficult to trust that person's experience and apply it to the real world. There's that word again: "apply." A buddy of mine asked the Baltimore LUG what these guys used Linux for that was better than Windows. My friend liked to create music using Live! and a few other music programs. Nobody at the LUG made music. I was coding some cool 3D stuff, but there were no developers there. I also ran my business using Microsoft Office, but nobody there had a home based business or used any serious office features. After a bit of discussion, I realized that none of them knew what an applied use of a computer was. Except email and browsing the web -- they got that one right away.When I asked them what was better about Linux, it was the themes, or the shell, or the low-level details. You list lots of nice things about Linux. Personally, I like that Linux treats everything as a file. And I like the binary package formats and the way dependencies are handled. But I can't actually think of a way that Linux makes me more productive. It's not easier to develop on, surfing the web is about the same, it surely doesn't help me do my taxes.
So over the past few years as I've learned about Linux and ported some code and stuff I've learned a lot about how the engine runs and I like it: But the car just doesn't get me to my destination. I keep hoping to find someone who has applied it, so I can learn from them.
B&W was a great psychology experiment. Let me explain why.
The most common complaint I hear about the first B&W was that the creature was too hard to train. So now it pops up bubbles explaining to you what it is thinking. The second biggest complaint was constant micromanagement of villages.
I thought it was easy to train a creature: less is more. By the end of the first level I had trained my creature to heal hurt peasants, give them food if they need it, and water trees and fields in the spare time. It didn't take much effort and it was quite intuitive. And the creature did all the micromanagement for me. Brilliant!
But on to my point about patience: I watched my 9 year old brother play the game. He spent 99% of the game doing stuff with his creature. Punishing him, rewarding him, giving him stuff to eat, etc. Whereas I spent 10 minutes out of each hour doing that. His creatures never acted on their own, they followed him around, they ate everything, they pooped on everything.
I get the impression that most people doing game reviews have the attention span of 9 year olds. It wasn't the game's fault: these reviewers need to go back to playing Quake 3 because they fingers were twitching too much.
I asked this at a the Baltimore Linux Users Group a while back, and I was surprised at the answer. (I'll divulge that after I see your response, I don't want to put words in your mouth).
This guy isn't an asshole: he is The Devil's advocate. And he has a point.
Everyone wants the government to subsidize environmentally friendly alternatives, but nobody wants to go out on their own and pay for them. Do you think that if the government or the corporations pay for it that the people don't pay for it too?
It would actually be cheaper if people "put their money where their mouth is" and paid for environmentally friendly solutions out of their own pay checks. The alternative is to have the pay check taxed, then the taxes to go to a subsidy, then the subsidy to pay for it. You still pay, the only difference is that you incurred the inefficiency and bloat of a tax system to do it.
So make life simple and just do it.
(Maybe I am preaching to the choir: I would love to see a Slashdot poll on how many mpg your main commuter vehicle gets)
A lot of replies to this talk about the fact that you see the EULAs after you buy the software. But that's not the point. What happens when they start making us agree to the license before we buy the software? Ex: When you sign the credit card receipt, or if you buy the software online. The real issue with license agreements isn't the fact that they appear after you buy the software.
The real issue is these two things:
1) They are unconscionable: You agree not to use competitors products, not to modify your copy, and not to write a review of it. These clauses should not be legal.
2) The average person should not be reasonably expected to read and understand a license agreement for basic consumer products like software or hardware. What about bread? You can't write a review of my company's bread. Or you can't reverse-engineer the 7 secret herbs and spices in my restaurant's food. Or you can't go join another gym club while you are a member of this club. Are these things reasonable?
This is where the wikipedia is great but it also shows weakness. The table shows fluorescent bulbs as 6.6% - 8.8% efficient. The following paragraph says fluorescent bulbs are 40% efficient. The table lists references, but the references are either bad links or corporate marketing info.
Does anybody have any real authoritative information on this?
That is an excellent point. It is also a perfect example of how people still don't understand the desktop. You don't go to Windows Media Player to play your media. You go to "My Music" or wherever. People still use the old DOS way of doing stuff: Run the application, then click open, then browse to the location. That's backwards. If they went to the location first, then they could do all of the things the GP post is talking about right from there (copy, rename, delete, organize, burn, play,
You point out the issues with sharing, and applications creating multiple folders, etc. So you do make a good point: Users won't ever "get" the desktop analogy until the software uses it properly. Until 95% of apps start using these folders properly, it won't be useful.
Your code:Microsoft code:Ooooooooooh, THATS why!!!
I'm not a sports nut, but one did give me this advice one time when I asked the same question:
1) There is a players union that requires that referees be humans with certain salaries.
2) To a sports nut, the human referees are just as much a part of the game as the coaches. Replacing the referees with machines would be like replacing the players with machines.
Because there are two families of file-formats for text formatting:
1) Word Processing/Page Layout formats such as Open Document, MS Word, Word Perfect, and PDF.
2) Hyper text formats such as HTML, XML, and SGML.
The first family contains the exact specific information required to render (display, print) the document. In theory, I can open a Word Document or a PDF file on any computer in the universe and it will print exactly the same. It also MAY contain SOME semantic, contextual, "hypertext" information.
The second family contains mostly semantic information required to parse and convert the document. It is good for outlines, blind reders, or computers. It also MAY contain SOME rendering information, but it is not necessary, and each client may choose to render the document in whatever way is most appropriate.
This is why CSS was created. The idea is that HTML is the content (semantics) and CSS is the formatting (rendering, printing, display). But I don't think HTML & CSS specifies enough detail that it can do everything that MS Word, PDF, etc. can do.
I don't think HTML+CSS will ever become the format of choice. I don't see it moving in the direction that is needed to replace word processing formats. It will most likely remain a format for output and web transmitting. Although, maybe one day we will have browsers that can render Open Document files. That would be nifty.
So OS speed is important in terms of scalability. In this case they should have looked at the graph before buying.
Fortunately, Linux/Samba has matured and this would not be a problem today.
1) CuteFTP is a client not a server. The only way anyone got in through that is by him connecting to a malicious site.
2) If someone got in through a bug in CuteFTP, it isn't Microsoft's fault.
3) Typical Windows running as Administrator.
4) If software has a security problem, it has nothing to do with leaving it on all night. What, does he think he is safe if it is running during the day? Or so long as he is watching it?
5) "How a burgler climbs in through an open window and steals my money is beyond me, but it happens all the time."
His registry comment... He sounds like Jerry Seinfeld: "The registry, what's up with that. I mean like, there has to be a better way." With that brilliant thinking, we can eliminate the registry and viruses and spyware will go away. Thanks John!
If you are referring to the Unicode escape strings like \u000A then you are not following another rule, which I'll add to your list as rule #3:
1. Defining "badness" instead of "goodness"
2. Trying to "clean up" invalid code
3. Not using the appropriate parser
If someone enters in \u000A and then your code should either treat that as the 6 character sequence that it is, at which point there is no problem; or it should treat it as a newline character which will be rejected. Either way you are fine. It is only a problem if you treat it one way in one part of the code, and another way in another part of the code. That's why you use the proper parser. If the user entered ASCII and you wanted UNICODE then the UNICODE parser will see that as a newline and you will reject it. If they entered ASCII and you wanted ASCII then that sequence does nothing and you are fine. If your filtering routine treats it as ASCII then you later make it UNICODE and pass it to a SQL server then the user may have snuck something in. Really, if you use the appropriate parser than characters never need to be filtered. Suppose a malicious tries a SQL injection by entering in a \ or an unmatched quote or a newline character, then I don't need to be afraid so long as I used the SQL engine's prepare() command to parse the string. It knows how to escape the strings properly. So there is no need to filter anything.
The parent post was written to be funny, but it is actually very insightful. This biggest problem for Linux isn't where the menus are located, or how the icons look, or the confusion over the meaning of the "Send/Receive" button. Those things happen on all operating systems and all software. The users eventually figure it out. But Linux isn't even ready for that stage yet.
Linux needs to work on getting software and hardware to work together reliably. That means without having to edit configuration files and without going to a command prompt. Simple basic things are missing. We need to work on drivers, resolving dependencies properly, and making packages that just work (including installing icons and adding documentation).
After we get that stuff resolved, then tweaking the UI will become more relevant.
The crucial difference is that you paid for the magazine. (We need micropayments!)
That sounds like a cool course. However I don't think it is an OSS course. Except for Lecture 1 and Lecture 6, the rest is stuff that is general stuff that applies to open and closed-source software. It sounds more like an introduction to Unix programming tools or the beginnings of a software development life-cycle course of some sort.
This more pertains to yesterday's article on performance, but it relates to Java in general.
I see lots of articles saying how garbage collection prevents memory leaks and provides security improvements. That is a slight misunderstanding: The automatic memory management is what makes it secure, not the garbage collection. The garbage collector is merely HOW the memory is freed. If Java eliminated the garbage collector and freed the memory immediately the language would be equally secure. What matters is that you don't have access to pointers.
For example, take Visual Basic 6: This language does not have garbage collection, but it is about as safe as Java. It frees memory/objects that aren't used, uses bounds checking, doesn't allow bad casts, and doesn't use pointers. The only time VB6 is a problem is when you call an outside library (which is the same problem you have in Java). So it isn't the garbage collector that matters.
Inherently, a language with access to pointers is always going to be less secure than a language that does not have them, and uses automatic memory management. None of the security enhancements to the compiler can change code that assigns a pointer to the wrong object and overwrites the memory for it. None of them can prevent a bad cast from screwing things up.
The problem is that Slashdot reports one kilobucks as $1024, while USA Today uses $1000
I live in a row house. It has old wiring, very little sound insulation, and no central A/C. My living room isn't big enough for a projector even if I wanted one. In that small room, the sound is noticeable - especially when you aren't watching TV. I prefer a low-power system because I can feel the temperature difference in the room if the PC runs hot. And it limits what I can plug into that circuit. And it means it is too hot to put into an enclosed entertainment center.
So maybe it doesn't matter on your setup, but for mine it is significant.
No.
I watched DVD video scaled to 1024x768 on 600Mhz PCs with low-end 3D PCI cards years ago. If your system is having trouble doing that, you probably have a slow DVD drive or some other bottleneck. I currently do this on my 900Mhz HTPC with an old ATI Radeon 9200 that I bought for $50. It doesn't have a fan either, just a heat sink.
Fedora Core supports having 32-bit applications/libraries and 64-applications/libraries running side-by-side simultaneously. The packaging system and the linker know the x86_64 packages from the i386 packages.
From your link:
The specs say 2250 watts. 2250 watts divided by 120 volts = 18.75 amps. So, in theory, you could hook this to a circuit with an 18 amp fuse or breaker.
Of course, doing this is surely a crazy violation of electrical codes. Would it be that hard just to plug the computers into the UPS? It has plenty of outlets, it really looks like that is how it was intended. Wiring it right to the electrical box might get you some geek points, but you might also become a Darwin awards nominee.
I doubt it is worth it.
rpm supports multiple architectures out of the box, and knows how to install them to the proper location. Apt does not. This is actually very frustrating because as a Fedora users, I prefer using apt to yum. But for Debian users, you aren't supposed to even be able to have 64-bit and 32-bit binaries co-existing on one system.
This article on FC4 had some interesting information.
Whatever happened to these systems? As I understood it, an encrypted handshake combined with some other well-known techniques provides for an anonymous digital cash system. Why is there no company that has implemented this?