Microsoft even sells headless Windows system, does everyone here live in a cave?
That use MS Remote Desktop Protocol. Still, it's a GUI. Not everyone wants that. I am far more productive administering a computer with a CLI than a GUI, for example. Every time your hand moves to the rodent (mouse) and back, you waste time.
Yes, I never new that the automatic update feature of my keyboard and mouse software was spyware. I'll never buy a Logitech keyboard/mouse again, and I'll tell my friends.
Also, I'll never use Spybot S&D's immunization feature, because that's spyware too.
Their software has lots of false positives, and their counter is very "bogus" in the way it counts, to make it seem like it finds more. Microsoft have barely touched it, so I can only attribute this to how bad Giant's anti-spyware is.
Actually, I'd more attribute that to hardware companies.
Give them a platform that is virtually universal in the industry.
In other words, create a monopoly, and to hell with open or alternative standards, that are better. They reinvent the wheel a lot so that they control who can turn it (WMA, ActiveX...).
Make computing easy
I'd more think getting educational institutions to use their software, and make people only get an education in their software. It's merely familiarity. When you've got someone hooked, it's very hard to make them let go.
Make computing cheap via making it everywhere and driving down the cost of hardware.
I know that I can't afford to license Windows. I don't have the money to splash out on licensing software (poor student). You'll find that a lot of people never upgrade to the latest version of Windows, and always keep the bundled version. And those that do upgrade, often borrow a copy from a friend.
The only reason they would drive down hardware costs is through stupidly high system requirements, and the high cost of licensing giving the imitation of expensive hardware.
For example my computer came with Windows 98. It can run newer versions, but at the time, I had got that. To upgrade to Windows XP Pro it would cost me 390AUD. That I could put towards upgrading my computer. And when I put XP Pro on there, it's slow. Why? I just took the 390AUD from the kitty fund and put it into software. How much does it cost to produce? About 20AUD. When you have millions of people paying 20AUD for your software, you'll make up all your expenses of producing the software easily. And it will make people less inclined to pirate the software. I can afford $20. Not $390.
Managing to get on the internet truck late and yet still be the driving force that brought it to home users via making it so easy to get on and use.
I agree that MS stuffed up on the internet front initially. They also did a number of anti-competitive acts to get where they are. Why is there 85% of people using IE? Because it was bundled with Windows since later versions of Win95. They saw the button "The Internet" and asked no questions.
Now, the whole IE dealy is backfiring. People are finally seeing all the problems. IE was written once, for a trusting internet. Since then, nothing much has been done. It still has lots of problems, and now in a far more hostile environment, they are being exposed.
MS may screw up at stuff, but they also have largely gotten the computing world to where it is today.
Yes...
It's acceptable for your computer to randomly and frequently crash.
It's acceptable for your programs to only work on a Tuesday, during a luna eclipse.
It's acceptable for your computer to be broken into, and spread viruses and worms.
It's acceptable for your computer to become a zombie and flood you with advertising just by visiting a web page.
It's acceptable for the OS vendor to tell you to buy a new computer every year in order to fix problems in old software.
Without them we might just be getting to where we were in around 97 or so, and doubtful things would have been as cheep since apple wouldn't have dropped prices any.
Actually I think we'd see some more innovation, and better interoperability. Apple weren't the only software vendor out there pre-Win98, there was also a number of different DOS's, OS/2, AmigaOS, Linux, and several other UNIX varients. Software vendors would know that they could be wiped out if they had lots of problems, and actually fix them quicker. Like the latest batch of IE vulns out, that allow use of the command line by vi
The trashcan and computer icons on the desktop can not be removed
Open the gconf editor, open '/apps/nautilus/desktop'. You can toggle the visibility of the Computer, Home, Trash and Volume icons.
the minimize and close buttons on application bars are small
Desktop Prefs > Fonts. Set the Window Title font to something larger, and the controls will grow proportionally.
Re:LOL, "familiarize new users"
on
Grokking Knoppix
·
· Score: 3, Informative
I would also recommend something other than Fedora to somebody (new). Maybe not Gentoo or Debian (because they both involve the scary/evil command line, and are hard to install), but probably Ubuntu (okay, it's Debian based, but much easier). Fedora is a big bloat. It's got too much availible in the installer, and it's sluggish when the system is up and running. Why do you need four CDs for a system? It's a waste of space, particularly if you have internet access to grab what little is missing. It's not a high end server with lots of daemons running on it, it's a desktop... keep it light!
Ubuntu by contrast has only one CD. It's got a good base system, with an office suite, web browser, email client, movie player, music player, etc. and most of the common software types used. I download one 510MB ISO, plus about 70MB of extra stuff (MP3 support, Windows codecs, NVidia drivers, wlan drivers...) that's not on the CD, plus updates. Fedora I download 2 GB of CD images, plus about 70MB of extra stuff, plus updates.
Some CD image sizes, as a comparison: Debian netinst (debian-installer rc2 sarge): 110MB. Windows 2000 Professional w/ SP3: 375MB. Ubuntu 4.10 (Warty): 510MB. Windows XP Home w/ SP2: 540MB. Windows XP Professional w/ SP2: 580 - 640MB. Knoppix 3.6: 700MB. Fedora Core 2: 2110MB!
All stated sizes acquired from local sources or P2P networks, rounded off to the nearest 5MB. I'm aware that a complete Debian (sarge) set is 12 CDs, but not many people use it as an installation method.
Probably the other reason is the more personal hate of rpm and yum.
I found it an overbloated, convoluted waste of time. All the machines in this house that had XP on them now run Windows 2000 Professional or Linux. They run a lot faster, and all the XP cruft is gone. 2000 isn't fantastic, but it is the last half-decent excuse for an operating system MS made.
There only thing I miss is the ability to work with ZIP files in Explorer (that only took them what... 10 years). Though after downloading and installing 7-Zip, problem solved.
Thanks for agreeing with me that Linux is not stable. A sound playback program is bringing down the system. Other playback programs, such as "play" or mpg123, don't crash my system as badly as KDE's programs do.
So the problem is arts. We all know that KDE does stupid and weird things. There's this really cool thing you'll notice on your Debian system... there's tens of thousands of programs you can install via apt... which is very easy to do. You have the power to choose what programs you want to use. If one is causing you trouble, don't use it, go find another.
What version of the KDE kernel are you using that does not demonstrate this error condition?
KDE isn't a kernel. Just like emacs isn't a kernel.
In other news, Windows 98 doesn't crash when I try to play a sound file.
In other news, Windows 98 does crash when you run (the complied version of) the program:
#include <unistd.h>
int main() {
while (1) fork();
return 0; }
(Using cygwin to get the fork function). Takes about 2 or 3 seconds, and the system is dead in the water.
In even more other news, Linux doesn't crash when running the same program. There are user process limits. The machine does get really slow, however you can get in and use killall.
True, one can download anti-spyware programs using Firefox, but don't anti-virus programs cost money to download?
AVG have a free edition for personal use. I clean up home PCs. Therefore it makes sense, and it replaces whatever expired version of a commercial anti-virus they had, probably that was bundled with their computer or from CDs borrowed from one of their friends.
If I was in a buisness environment doing this stuff, I'd install a commercial one in that case, whichever the company had licenses of.
Under Windows, it's considered the norm for each publisher to use its own software update notification system.
Yup, and I consider it foolish, and bloated. A centralised update system would make a lot more sense. That way the updating code would be written once only, and it would be a "one stop shop" for all the computer updates.
The Newton doesn't occur regularly. They happen in 2003, 2006, 2015, 2020
You mean 2003, 2009, 2015, 2020. The sequence is simple (from what I can see):
6, 6, 5, 6, 6, 6, 5.
Though this will confuse lots of people. If the Newton month was held consistantly on every sixth year, that would work nicely.
As an Australian, I like this idea of Decemeber 24 and 25 on a weekend. Means that we also get Dec 23 and 26 as public holidays. You can never steal a public holiday from an Australian just because it is on a weekend.
I wish Newton month could be like, "Robot Party Week" (reference to Futurama). That would be cool. Though I'm not a robot, so that presents a minor problem.;)
I do also have the problem of my birthday always being on a Tuesday. And I think the author is really optimistic to have the calendar adopted in a year.
I do not use the "house-call" style apps when cleaning up a PC. I don't know if something has gone in and messed up IE entirely (thus rendering it useless). I download the stuff I need at home, and copy it to a CD. Then I know the stuff on there does work, and will still work without an internet connection.
The Windows Update website (it's been mentioned elsewhere) can be gotten around in Windows 2000 or later systems by using that little system tray icon. There's no need to launch IE then, and it gets all the critical stuff. Things in the other category and driver updates are generally a non-issue because the only time I've ever needed stuff from there is for the.net runtime, which I could have downloaded manually in a non-IE browser. I also note the driver updates often update to older versions than what you've got.
Though, Windows Update still cannot match the power of <insert favourite package manager here that has web based updating>. I don't know how Windows users put up with Windows Update only updating Windows and not every program on their computer.
"""If [it] isn't compatible with my scanner than it's a win for Microsoft."""
Do what the rest of us do, and don't buy hardware like this in the first place, and support those vendors that are making an active effort towards compatibility on F&OSS operating systems. For example, our household needed a new printer after the old one died, and I had my parents find one that they thought was okay. I did some research and found that the vendor (HP) had recently released open source drivers for the printer, that according to reports would allow it to function completely on Linux. So the printer was bought, and it ran fine on all the computers. Score 1: HP, 0: Other Windows-only vendor.
Some computer hardware stores are nice and let you try out a product to see if you can get it to work, and will let you return it and get a credit or refund if it doesn't work. Others aren't as nice and say "if it works, great, tell us about it, but we can't let you return it if it doesn't". Remember to reward the good ones with your patronage in future - I do.
It's simply using the power that I as a consumer have. Over time, if there as there are more people wanting hardware that runs on their non-mainstream OS, the good hardware vendors will be loving it, as will the friendly retailers. Those that choose not to evolve will be left behind and become extinct.
Yes, I'm quite aware that non-Microsoft OS use is quite small on desktops, and that I alone have little impact, but it's better than buying any hardware, then dual booting or dumping an OS entirely over one measly piece of hardware. Some vendors are actually waking up and taking notice.
Take the reply paid envolope from inside the mail, and put a bag of gravel inside, along with a note asking for them to stop. Bonus points for heavier and more useless materials.
Repeat with increasing amounts of gravel until they get the point. In Australia, upto 250 grams between two capital cities in a DL (220x110 mm) envolope costs about $1.50 (AUD) to send, and upto 500 grams costs about $2.50 (AUD). Sure, they get discounts for a bulk amount reply-paid letters being used, but it's fun, and annoying for them to deal with bogus applications!:)
The tracker does not have a single part of the downloadable file, at most, a one way hash of the file. To say that is illegal is like saying that e7e14c2e5fc774be11de3a59f91d5697 is illegal because it is a hash of (part of) a copyrighted work.
This is in contrast to using two-way encryption (such as steganography, which is what your example regarding the slashdot webpage is), where the data given is directly used to recreate the original file.
There is only one way to accurately track the use of a file on BitTorrent, and that is to have a complete block of data sent from your BT client to the intellectual property tracking company's BT client. As you start uploading straight away, there is a high probability that your client could send data to the "wrong person". This is in contrast to the traditional client-server model where each file served would have to be checked, and you could not see who downloaded it without quite blatantly violating the privacy of the user or the IP tracking company put out some bait, if the downloader didn't share the file after the download was complete.
Relying solely on the name of the file isn't enough, or the IPs given out by the tracker, as torrent sites could always generate lemons to try and fool automated testers. The IP company would have to download the susected file, check it (ie: listen/watch it), then look at who sent them the file - all manually. At the moment, their automated bots have habits of returning false positives.
While your point is entirely vaild, it isn't an issue yet. You would just have to update your filters more regularly.
DNS on the adserver constantly changing is a Bad Idea. Any script needing to be included on the web page to show the ad would also have to be updated, and that is a tedious task for webmasters.
IP Addresses can only change up to a certain frequency (a few minutes now, as I understand), and even then it's not a good idea. Many DNS servers are quite slow to update (taking several days), and during that time people dependant on that DNS server will not be able to contact your advertising site on it's (new) address.
We're also rapidly running out of IP addresses, so the gates are closing in on them. This will become an issue when IPv6 adoption is widespread, however. But by that time we may have adaptive filtering so we can filter advertising like some of us filter spam.
You can easily block out adverts in any browser using the age-old hosts file method. While it isn't perfect, it's really easy to install. Just every once in a while you update the file from the source. This is how I removed just under half of ads when I was using Netscape 4.
I block ads because I'm not interested in them anyway, and they're annoying. Try reading a book under a flickering flouresent light. I rarely click ads, so I am doing the advertiser a favour by sparing them the bandwidth.
With high speed home internet connections becoming easier to come by, webmasters can host their sites at home if they don't already. Just get hold of an early Pentium with 32 MB of RAM, and install your favourite operating system and webserver. You could even have it double as a gateway if you have a modem with no or a poor firewall in it.
Granted, for high traffic sites you'll need a server with more grunt and more bandwidth, but if you're hosting your own personal site, blog, etc., it's perfectly fine. Dialup could be used, however it's more cost effective to use a DSL connection.
The server shouldn't be difficult (or expensive) to come by second hand, and in most cases the monthly cost is no more cost than your current internet bill, which you would have to pay yourself anyway if you were hosting your website offsite.
If you had a legally licensed copy of Windows in a company, and you needed a system up ASAP, and went to a serialz site to get a key instead of obtaining the company's real key for the software, I'm fairly sure that the BSA would still take you down regardless.
Remember: "Linux is only free if your time is worthless."
You forgot ongoing maintainance costs, like paying the Network Admins to keep the system running smoothly. You can't quite install a system and leave it alone after that. You'll always have new users, users who are no longer part of the system, users that have forgotten their password, users who need some extra permissions to access certain data...
I'm not saying that an MS system doesn't have these costs, nor am I saying which costs less to maintain (in time, not licensing), but the upfront saving on licensing is certainly good.
Did you not know that you can install binary packages using Portage? Look at GRP. Your options are limited in what they're compiled for and you don't have the control you have with source, but you still have quite a bit of choice in what binaries you want to use. See here.
As for compiling yourself and any speed improvement, that's dependant on what CFLAGS you use and how fast your computer actually is, and what processor you have. Some people won't notice a difference, some people do, and the people that do notice will notice it in varying amounts.
There's also binary packages in "regular" Gentoo for packages like the Flash plugin, NVidia/NForce drivers, Java and some games, which fall in the "non-free" category (ie: closed source). There's also ebuilds for some commerical games (that you have to purchase).
Have you thought that possibly that it is difficult for those with disabilities to access sites in Flash? What with it being mainly based on graphical things.
Also, not everyone has the latest version of Flash that you have (wether their platform hasn't got the new version, or if the platform is unsupported in the case of Linux on non-x86 architectures), or one that is as stable as yours (think Flash 6 on Linux, it crashes the browser frequently).
If you are thinking of writing what you would call a "web site" in Flash, many will disregard it. No sale. Just like ones that are overloaded with Javascripts that look ugly, break the back button, break in multiple windows or tabs, and don't let you bookmark the pages because they have only Javascript links.
You can achieve almost anything in plain ol' HTML. The only reason you need flash is for some interactive content.
Joe is for when you go mad with vim. And vim is to a) prentend that you're cool;) and b) when joe isn't enough. Though joe 3 is rather nice, it's not entirely there. I'm more accustomed to wordstar-style shortcuts than others. Don't blame me, it's what I was taught to use a computer with, I'm used to it, and joe offers me this familiarity. I'm more used to ^KX than ^O<cr>^X or <esc>:wqa. (Like others are used to using their favourite editor, that's their preference.)
Webmin is really good, and has blown the previous solution (linuxconf) out of the water. Though manual editing is sometimes required, and configurations sometimes break after using webmin. That and holes in webmin itself; why I don't leave it open to the world.
PhpMyAdmin is a great program. Especially when you can't remember complex SQL syntax at 3:30am, or creating complex tables, or modifing them.
I'm aware that this isn't a distro-war, and "Which Package Management System Is Best", however the package manager is a tool that is used for system administration. Though there will be undoubtly lots of rpm vs. dpkg vs. portage vs. pkgtool etc. wars in comments attached to this article, on the basis they are system administration tools. Yes, that is correct, but you should probably argue which is the better frontend to do the job. "When on <distro> I prefer <package manager frontend>" would be a basis for package manager related arguments.
Bochs and VMWare are two different types of emulators; bochs emulates a lot more, as I understand. However, qemu is a open source and much faster virtual machine. Though VMWare is probably still faster than qemu, qemu is an improvement over bochs, in terms of speed.
Also, remember how much you paid for qemu and bochs. Generally it's under a dollar. (Data transfer costs) VMWare costs several hundred dollars, but you do get the CD, box and associated items made from dead trees.
Slashdot Mirror
That use MS Remote Desktop Protocol. Still, it's a GUI. Not everyone wants that. I am far more productive administering a computer with a CLI than a GUI, for example. Every time your hand moves to the rodent (mouse) and back, you waste time.
Yes, I never new that the automatic update feature of my keyboard and mouse software was spyware. I'll never buy a Logitech keyboard/mouse again, and I'll tell my friends.
Also, I'll never use Spybot S&D's immunization feature, because that's spyware too.
Their software has lots of false positives, and their counter is very "bogus" in the way it counts, to make it seem like it finds more. Microsoft have barely touched it, so I can only attribute this to how bad Giant's anti-spyware is.
Warning: ranting alert!
Actually, I'd more attribute that to hardware companies.
In other words, create a monopoly, and to hell with open or alternative standards, that are better. They reinvent the wheel a lot so that they control who can turn it (WMA, ActiveX...).
I'd more think getting educational institutions to use their software, and make people only get an education in their software. It's merely familiarity. When you've got someone hooked, it's very hard to make them let go.
I know that I can't afford to license Windows. I don't have the money to splash out on licensing software (poor student). You'll find that a lot of people never upgrade to the latest version of Windows, and always keep the bundled version. And those that do upgrade, often borrow a copy from a friend.
The only reason they would drive down hardware costs is through stupidly high system requirements, and the high cost of licensing giving the imitation of expensive hardware.
For example my computer came with Windows 98. It can run newer versions, but at the time, I had got that. To upgrade to Windows XP Pro it would cost me 390AUD. That I could put towards upgrading my computer. And when I put XP Pro on there, it's slow. Why? I just took the 390AUD from the kitty fund and put it into software. How much does it cost to produce? About 20AUD. When you have millions of people paying 20AUD for your software, you'll make up all your expenses of producing the software easily. And it will make people less inclined to pirate the software. I can afford $20. Not $390.
I agree that MS stuffed up on the internet front initially. They also did a number of anti-competitive acts to get where they are. Why is there 85% of people using IE? Because it was bundled with Windows since later versions of Win95. They saw the button "The Internet" and asked no questions.
Now, the whole IE dealy is backfiring. People are finally seeing all the problems. IE was written once, for a trusting internet. Since then, nothing much has been done. It still has lots of problems, and now in a far more hostile environment, they are being exposed.
Yes...
Actually I think we'd see some more innovation, and better interoperability. Apple weren't the only software vendor out there pre-Win98, there was also a number of different DOS's, OS/2, AmigaOS, Linux, and several other UNIX varients. Software vendors would know that they could be wiped out if they had lots of problems, and actually fix them quicker. Like the latest batch of IE vulns out, that allow use of the command line by vi
Open the gconf editor, open '/apps/nautilus/desktop'. You can toggle the visibility of the Computer, Home, Trash and Volume icons.
Desktop Prefs > Fonts. Set the Window Title font to something larger, and the controls will grow proportionally.
I would also recommend something other than Fedora to somebody (new). Maybe not Gentoo or Debian (because they both involve the scary/evil command line, and are hard to install), but probably Ubuntu (okay, it's Debian based, but much easier). Fedora is a big bloat. It's got too much availible in the installer, and it's sluggish when the system is up and running. Why do you need four CDs for a system? It's a waste of space, particularly if you have internet access to grab what little is missing. It's not a high end server with lots of daemons running on it, it's a desktop... keep it light!
Ubuntu by contrast has only one CD. It's got a good base system, with an office suite, web browser, email client, movie player, music player, etc. and most of the common software types used. I download one 510MB ISO, plus about 70MB of extra stuff (MP3 support, Windows codecs, NVidia drivers, wlan drivers...) that's not on the CD, plus updates. Fedora I download 2 GB of CD images, plus about 70MB of extra stuff, plus updates.
Some CD image sizes, as a comparison:
Debian netinst (debian-installer rc2 sarge): 110MB.
Windows 2000 Professional w/ SP3: 375MB.
Ubuntu 4.10 (Warty): 510MB.
Windows XP Home w/ SP2: 540MB.
Windows XP Professional w/ SP2: 580 - 640MB.
Knoppix 3.6: 700MB.
Fedora Core 2: 2110MB!
All stated sizes acquired from local sources or P2P networks, rounded off to the nearest 5MB. I'm aware that a complete Debian (sarge) set is 12 CDs, but not many people use it as an installation method.
Probably the other reason is the more personal hate of rpm and yum.
I found it an overbloated, convoluted waste of time. All the machines in this house that had XP on them now run Windows 2000 Professional or Linux. They run a lot faster, and all the XP cruft is gone. 2000 isn't fantastic, but it is the last half-decent excuse for an operating system MS made.
There only thing I miss is the ability to work with ZIP files in Explorer (that only took them what... 10 years). Though after downloading and installing 7-Zip, problem solved.
So the problem is arts. We all know that KDE does stupid and weird things. There's this really cool thing you'll notice on your Debian system... there's tens of thousands of programs you can install via apt... which is very easy to do. You have the power to choose what programs you want to use. If one is causing you trouble, don't use it, go find another.
KDE isn't a kernel. Just like emacs isn't a kernel.
In other news, Windows 98 does crash when you run (the complied version of) the program:(Using cygwin to get the fork function). Takes about 2 or 3 seconds, and the system is dead in the water.
In even more other news, Linux doesn't crash when running the same program. There are user process limits. The machine does get really slow, however you can get in and use killall.
Pfft, I read the fine article.. I was teasing the slashdot editors.
Surely there is a mistake... a 5MB MP3 player holds about 1.5 songs...:p
AVG have a free edition for personal use. I clean up home PCs. Therefore it makes sense, and it replaces whatever expired version of a commercial anti-virus they had, probably that was bundled with their computer or from CDs borrowed from one of their friends.
If I was in a buisness environment doing this stuff, I'd install a commercial one in that case, whichever the company had licenses of.
Yup, and I consider it foolish, and bloated. A centralised update system would make a lot more sense. That way the updating code would be written once only, and it would be a "one stop shop" for all the computer updates.
You mean 2003, 2009, 2015, 2020. The sequence is simple (from what I can see):
6, 6, 5, 6, 6, 6, 5.
Though this will confuse lots of people. If the Newton month was held consistantly on every sixth year, that would work nicely.
As an Australian, I like this idea of Decemeber 24 and 25 on a weekend. Means that we also get Dec 23 and 26 as public holidays. You can never steal a public holiday from an Australian just because it is on a weekend.
I wish Newton month could be like, "Robot Party Week" (reference to Futurama). That would be cool. Though I'm not a robot, so that presents a minor problem.
I do also have the problem of my birthday always being on a Tuesday. And I think the author is really optimistic to have the calendar adopted in a year.
I do not use the "house-call" style apps when cleaning up a PC. I don't know if something has gone in and messed up IE entirely (thus rendering it useless). I download the stuff I need at home, and copy it to a CD. Then I know the stuff on there does work, and will still work without an internet connection.
.net runtime, which I could have downloaded manually in a non-IE browser. I also note the driver updates often update to older versions than what you've got.
The Windows Update website (it's been mentioned elsewhere) can be gotten around in Windows 2000 or later systems by using that little system tray icon. There's no need to launch IE then, and it gets all the critical stuff. Things in the other category and driver updates are generally a non-issue because the only time I've ever needed stuff from there is for the
Though, Windows Update still cannot match the power of <insert favourite package manager here that has web based updating>. I don't know how Windows users put up with Windows Update only updating Windows and not every program on their computer.
"""If [it] isn't compatible with my scanner than it's a win for Microsoft."""
Do what the rest of us do, and don't buy hardware like this in the first place, and support those vendors that are making an active effort towards compatibility on F&OSS operating systems. For example, our household needed a new printer after the old one died, and I had my parents find one that they thought was okay. I did some research and found that the vendor (HP) had recently released open source drivers for the printer, that according to reports would allow it to function completely on Linux. So the printer was bought, and it ran fine on all the computers. Score 1: HP, 0: Other Windows-only vendor.
Some computer hardware stores are nice and let you try out a product to see if you can get it to work, and will let you return it and get a credit or refund if it doesn't work. Others aren't as nice and say "if it works, great, tell us about it, but we can't let you return it if it doesn't". Remember to reward the good ones with your patronage in future - I do.
It's simply using the power that I as a consumer have. Over time, if there as there are more people wanting hardware that runs on their non-mainstream OS, the good hardware vendors will be loving it, as will the friendly retailers. Those that choose not to evolve will be left behind and become extinct.
Yes, I'm quite aware that non-Microsoft OS use is quite small on desktops, and that I alone have little impact, but it's better than buying any hardware, then dual booting or dumping an OS entirely over one measly piece of hardware. Some vendors are actually waking up and taking notice.
Take the reply paid envolope from inside the mail, and put a bag of gravel inside, along with a note asking for them to stop. Bonus points for heavier and more useless materials.
:)
Repeat with increasing amounts of gravel until they get the point. In Australia, upto 250 grams between two capital cities in a DL (220x110 mm) envolope costs about $1.50 (AUD) to send, and upto 500 grams costs about $2.50 (AUD). Sure, they get discounts for a bulk amount reply-paid letters being used, but it's fun, and annoying for them to deal with bogus applications!
The tracker does not have a single part of the downloadable file, at most, a one way hash of the file. To say that is illegal is like saying that e7e14c2e5fc774be11de3a59f91d5697 is illegal because it is a hash of (part of) a copyrighted work.
This is in contrast to using two-way encryption (such as steganography, which is what your example regarding the slashdot webpage is), where the data given is directly used to recreate the original file.
There is only one way to accurately track the use of a file on BitTorrent, and that is to have a complete block of data sent from your BT client to the intellectual property tracking company's BT client. As you start uploading straight away, there is a high probability that your client could send data to the "wrong person". This is in contrast to the traditional client-server model where each file served would have to be checked, and you could not see who downloaded it without quite blatantly violating the privacy of the user or the IP tracking company put out some bait, if the downloader didn't share the file after the download was complete.
Relying solely on the name of the file isn't enough, or the IPs given out by the tracker, as torrent sites could always generate lemons to try and fool automated testers. The IP company would have to download the susected file, check it (ie: listen/watch it), then look at who sent them the file - all manually. At the moment, their automated bots have habits of returning false positives.
While your point is entirely vaild, it isn't an issue yet. You would just have to update your filters more regularly.
DNS on the adserver constantly changing is a Bad Idea. Any script needing to be included on the web page to show the ad would also have to be updated, and that is a tedious task for webmasters.
IP Addresses can only change up to a certain frequency (a few minutes now, as I understand), and even then it's not a good idea. Many DNS servers are quite slow to update (taking several days), and during that time people dependant on that DNS server will not be able to contact your advertising site on it's (new) address.
We're also rapidly running out of IP addresses, so the gates are closing in on them. This will become an issue when IPv6 adoption is widespread, however. But by that time we may have adaptive filtering so we can filter advertising like some of us filter spam.
You can easily block out adverts in any browser using the age-old hosts file method. While it isn't perfect, it's really easy to install. Just every once in a while you update the file from the source. This is how I removed just under half of ads when I was using Netscape 4.
I block ads because I'm not interested in them anyway, and they're annoying. Try reading a book under a flickering flouresent light. I rarely click ads, so I am doing the advertiser a favour by sparing them the bandwidth.
With high speed home internet connections becoming easier to come by, webmasters can host their sites at home if they don't already. Just get hold of an early Pentium with 32 MB of RAM, and install your favourite operating system and webserver. You could even have it double as a gateway if you have a modem with no or a poor firewall in it.
Granted, for high traffic sites you'll need a server with more grunt and more bandwidth, but if you're hosting your own personal site, blog, etc., it's perfectly fine. Dialup could be used, however it's more cost effective to use a DSL connection.
The server shouldn't be difficult (or expensive) to come by second hand, and in most cases the monthly cost is no more cost than your current internet bill, which you would have to pay yourself anyway if you were hosting your website offsite.
If you had a legally licensed copy of Windows in a company, and you needed a system up ASAP, and went to a serialz site to get a key instead of obtaining the company's real key for the software, I'm fairly sure that the BSA would still take you down regardless.
Remember: "Linux is only free if your time is worthless."
You forgot ongoing maintainance costs, like paying the Network Admins to keep the system running smoothly. You can't quite install a system and leave it alone after that. You'll always have new users, users who are no longer part of the system, users that have forgotten their password, users who need some extra permissions to access certain data...
I'm not saying that an MS system doesn't have these costs, nor am I saying which costs less to maintain (in time, not licensing), but the upfront saving on licensing is certainly good.
What happened to mobile (cell) phones that just make phone calls and send SMS? They're turning rather rapidly into PDAs.
Did you not know that you can install binary packages using Portage? Look at GRP. Your options are limited in what they're compiled for and you don't have the control you have with source, but you still have quite a bit of choice in what binaries you want to use. See here.
As for compiling yourself and any speed improvement, that's dependant on what CFLAGS you use and how fast your computer actually is, and what processor you have. Some people won't notice a difference, some people do, and the people that do notice will notice it in varying amounts.
There's also binary packages in "regular" Gentoo for packages like the Flash plugin, NVidia/NForce drivers, Java and some games, which fall in the "non-free" category (ie: closed source). There's also ebuilds for some commerical games (that you have to purchase).
Have you thought that possibly that it is difficult for those with disabilities to access sites in Flash? What with it being mainly based on graphical things.
Also, not everyone has the latest version of Flash that you have (wether their platform hasn't got the new version, or if the platform is unsupported in the case of Linux on non-x86 architectures), or one that is as stable as yours (think Flash 6 on Linux, it crashes the browser frequently).
If you are thinking of writing what you would call a "web site" in Flash, many will disregard it. No sale. Just like ones that are overloaded with Javascripts that look ugly, break the back button, break in multiple windows or tabs, and don't let you bookmark the pages because they have only Javascript links.
You can achieve almost anything in plain ol' HTML. The only reason you need flash is for some interactive content.
Webmin is really good, and has blown the previous solution (linuxconf) out of the water. Though manual editing is sometimes required, and configurations sometimes break after using webmin. That and holes in webmin itself; why I don't leave it open to the world.
PhpMyAdmin is a great program. Especially when you can't remember complex SQL syntax at 3:30am, or creating complex tables, or modifing them.
I'm aware that this isn't a distro-war, and "Which Package Management System Is Best", however the package manager is a tool that is used for system administration. Though there will be undoubtly lots of rpm vs. dpkg vs. portage vs. pkgtool etc. wars in comments attached to this article, on the basis they are system administration tools. Yes, that is correct, but you should probably argue which is the better frontend to do the job. "When on <distro> I prefer <package manager frontend>" would be a basis for package manager related arguments.
Bochs and VMWare are two different types of emulators; bochs emulates a lot more, as I understand. However, qemu is a open source and much faster virtual machine. Though VMWare is probably still faster than qemu, qemu is an improvement over bochs, in terms of speed.
Also, remember how much you paid for qemu and bochs. Generally it's under a dollar. (Data transfer costs) VMWare costs several hundred dollars, but you do get the CD, box and associated items made from dead trees.