I must agree with you that people intentionally download things that will harm their machine. I do computer support and I have had more than one client say "But the included smilies aren't good enough, why did you remove my other ones?" after they ask me to make their machine run faster. As long as spyware/adware/botnet software can be distributed with "free" software that users want the problem isn't going anywhere. Once Vista arrives the UAC stuff will help with remote exploits but people wont understand the importance of that "Enter your password to continue" screen and will happily do it if it gets them some new smileys. This is how Linux is so secure, most users understand the importance of their root password and would never enter it into the brower, other than during the initial install.
On a corporate system where users don't have admin access botnets aren't much of a problem. But on home machines were every user has admin no technological measures will help as long as they can be lowered. As a power user I want to keep my own machine but for many users a subscription PC would be the best idea. They pay per month, don't have admin, and an admin employed by the company you rent the machine from takes care of security. It would be like extending the corporate world into the home. People don't care about security and they're not going to start anytime soon, they don't understand the connection between those smileys and the spam in their inbox.
It's not surprising people can't fix their own machine, how many people can fix their own car? How many people can even change the oil in their own car? The other option would be for computers to be more like cars. People don't install things in their car, and if they want something installed they take it to the dealer. That would work for most people, pick the software you want with the machine, and take it to authorized service center when you want upgrades. There are people that install things in their own cars, just like there will be people that buy non-locked PCs, but users want easy above all else and if a company could do that by pre-installing everything I think most users would get it.
The botnet problem wont dissapear but it can be significantley reduced so it wont be a problem.
Why choose? Mandriva has a multi-disk version and a single disk one. And the multi-CD version has a single DVD version. Not every location has a high speed internet connection, and even if it does it takes a while. As someone who installs most of what's on the DVD it sure beats waiting for everything to download. Sure I have to download it initially but when I've got 5 machines to install on it takes less time in the end.
Get tickets and go the visitor's centre
on
Watching a Space Shot?
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· Score: 3, Informative
Kennedy Space Centre has a visitor's centre where you can go on tours of the launch pads, landing facilities, etc. (they take you out in busses) and as someone who has gone it's a really cool experience. I talked to the guide (who had worked for NASA for many years) about where the best place to see a launch is and his reccomendation was to get tickets and they'll bus you out to the closest you can get to the launch pad as a civilian. There are stands for VIPs about 3 km closer but getting a ticket requires some connection to NASA though people have gotten them by writing their representative in congress. His advice however was that becuase of the angles you'll get a better view from the public viewing spot.
Around here it seems everyone bashes cable, but it's not the technology that sucks, but the providers. I don't know what available in your area but here (Toronto, Canada) I have the choice of Bell (DSL) or Rogers (Cable) for highspeed. On a 3 Mbps DSL line ($40/month CAD) you'll likely pull 3-4Mbps from any decent server. Over one of the 6Mbps cable lines ($46/month CAD) you can generally pull about 10Mbps or download speeds of 1.25MB/sec sustained.
My suggestion to the poster is try a different ISP, they're not all bad. I don't know your location so I can't be more specific but if your in the US you're sort of stuck with the fact that all the ISPs I've seen down there suck.
There are still those of us that program, I'm 16 and know Java (6 years), PHP (3 years), VB (5 years), Turing and, although not programming, HTML/XHTML/CSS (10 years for HTML). But fewer and fewer people my age program, I haven't met anyone my age with my kind of experience. In my high school programming class we have an incompetent teacher that doesn't get OOP and most people in the class take it because it's easy not because they care. There are some of us that program, but fewer and fewer.
All their DNS servers and hosting services are staying on Linux. The switch only applies to parked domains, and while a domain is parked, do you really care what web server they use? As soon as you point it at your website it will be under your control again.
As an International (Canadian) customer of Alienware, I am really excited by this announcement. Although Alienware's machines are well built, their customer service for people not in the US isn't just bad, it's absolutley horrible. One person I talked to thought Canada was overseas! I had to pay for shipping for a warranty exchange, my computer was delayed, and no body there knew anything or had the authority to do anything.
I've owned 2 Dell machines and both have been reliable (6 years and 3 years now). They don't have great performance on their standard line but their XPS line matches Alienware for performance. If Dell can leave the way Alienware build's their machines alone but overhaul their customer service I will be very happy.
One of the most interesting definition I've heard of so far is that something is a planet if it dominates gravitationally in the area. This would mean that Pluto isn't a planet and wouldn't give an arbitrary size for is/isn't a planet. It also means that an astroid belt of very large astroids wouldn't all have to be planets, if something like that ever were to be found in another solar system.
Did anyone else notice, either while the pages were loading or in a text browser, that the alternate text for every graph is Harry Potter? I guess someone at Google did some copying and pasting without checking over what they wrote.
If you can find somewhere to donate the RAM, do it. Schools are always horribly out of date. The *newest* computers I use at my high school are 400Mhz iMac G3s with 128MB of RAM, I would love to have more RAM to put in them, and I imagine many other schools are in a similar situation.
Try being a sysadmin for a week and you'll know what I mean. I want to deploy Linux, but doing requires more time than I, or anyone else, has.
I do not follow your logic. A few people spending the time to make a corporate desktop load right and then deploying it is far cheaper then rolling something out untested or unconfigured and then going back and fixing it or adding to it after the fact. This applies to MS or Linux and is no different then what a huge MS shop already does with a disk images. For an existing MS shop with existing MS admins, managing Linux and getting it off the ground will obviously be a challenge. At some point, it could be an existing Linux shop with existing Linux admins and administration would not be such that challenge.
Yes, it takes time to configure windows, but the central management tools are there, they just need to be set-up. On Linux the tools aren't there, you have to assemble a custom system yourself. Which will work eventually, but it requires alot of time to get the management side of a Linux setup working. More than it takes for Windows, or for OS X (which is almost nothing).
This is the thing Open Source advocates often miss (not flaimbait, I advocate OSS and use Linux). When you are a large company delpoying Windows, the price of licenses for 50 000 machines isn't the problem. The problem is how much it costs to support it. These are companies with budgets of millions, billions, of dollars. An administrator doesn't have time to tinker with distributions, and create a system from scratch, there need to be packaged, reliable system from big name vendors which do this with ease. Try being a sysadmin for a week and you'll know what I mean. I want to deploy Linux, but doing requires more time than I, or anyone else, has.
The company you are refering to, is called IBM, Novell, Suse, take your pick.
They are starting to offer services, but the level of service still doesn't match Windows.
The amount large companies spend on support contracts dwarf what they spend on actual licenses. When your running Windows you can get a contract which will guarantee a support time of under two hours.
Two hours? Just to get a forigner on the phone that can't speak-a your language? That sucks. OSS developers would have it FIXED and back into your hands in less time than that. Its amazing what you closed-source advocates put up with.
That is two hours to have a fully qualified IBM technician ON SITE, fixing the problem. I don't know of any companies that can do that for Open Source software.
The other part is how to manage it and deploy it. Things like ActiveDirectory, which are a pain in the ass, but they provide one complete, integrated location to go to for managing everything. I know you can setup the same thing in Linux but it takes ALOT longer, because you have to do everything manually.
Norton Ghost is a good start. Have you heard of it? Most everyone in your closed-source community have.
I do use Norton Ghost, and that is great for the INITIAL configuration, but do you want to re-image hundreds of machines every time you change a setting, results in 30 minutes of downtime for every machine? I don't think so.
Those two points are what keep companies from adopting Linux. Linux needs reliable support from big names, Novell is stepping up here, but they still aren't IBM. As for the management system, I have no idea, I have yet to find a system that will handle users, desktop lockdown, applications management/deployment/permissions, etc. from one, central, automated location. Even Apple has managed to create a system to do this (I manage an OS 9/OS X/Windows mixed environment).
There, you just said everything you said above was wrong.
No, I said it's moving in the right direction, very different from being there.
(NOTE: By automated I mean, I change the desktop lockdown settings and every computer changes instantly. And adding more desktops is as simple as choosing a setting like "Managed by Server: lmanage.internal.company.org")
I believe on Linux you can do this by modding the server live, and reboot the clients... ONCE. Not 10 times.
Settings like say, power management, aren't handled by the server, they are currently set on every machine INDIVIDUALLY. Some things are managed, but far too many settings still have to be changed on every machine.
This is the thing Open Source advocates often miss (not flaimbait, I advocate OSS and use Linux). When you are a large company delpoying Windows, the price of licenses for 50 000 machines isn't the problem. The problem is how much it costs to support it. These are companies with budgets of millions, billions, of dollars. An administrator doesn't have time to tinker with distributions, and create a system from scratch, there need to be packaged, reliable system from big name vendors which do this with ease. Try being a sysadmin for a week and you'll know what I mean. I want to deploy Linux, but doing requires more time than I, or anyone else, has.
The amount large companies spend on support contracts dwarf what they spend on actual licenses. When your running Windows you can get a contract which will guarantee a support time of under two hours.
The other part is how to manage it and deploy it. Things like ActiveDirectory, which are a pain in the ass, but they provide one complete, integrated location to go to for managing everything. I know you can setup the same thing in Linux but it takes ALOT longer, because you have to do everything manually.
Those two points are what keep companies from adopting Linux. Linux needs reliable support from big names, Novell is stepping up here, but they still aren't IBM. As for the management system, I have no idea, I have yet to find a system that will handle users, desktop lockdown, applications management/deployment/permissions, etc. from one, central, automated location. Even Apple has managed to create a system to do this (I manage an OS 9/OS X/Windows mixed environment).
(NOTE: By automated I mean, I change the desktop lockdown settings and every computer changes instantly. And adding more desktops is as simple as choosing a setting like "Managed by Server: lmanage.internal.company.org")
All the major Canadian ISPs (except Videotron) fought the CRIA when they attempted to sue filsharers, and they won. Even Rogers who has other media investments (TV studios, etc.) fought the CRIA.
My current ISP (Rogers) I've had good service with (very fast), except for the 60GB/month bandwidth cap they just put in place.
Judging by how many items there are on that list, and that this is a port, not a re-write, I think that KDE4 will be full of features. Though there are some which could go, really minor useless ones.
Mandrake/Mandriva is a good choice. It's very easy to use and a simple setup. It was the distribution I started using Linux with, and after having tried other distros is still my favourite. The default desktop is KDE.
If you are coming from a Mac background you may want to use Gnome instead of KDE, it will probably be more familiar, Mandriva can be switched to use Gnome, or the easiest Gnome based distro out there right now is Ubuntu.
I reccomend KDE but I don't want to start a flamewar so that is all I'll say.
None of the user-friendly distros are known for their speed, the more GUI you put in the slower it goes. I however have a 550Mhz with 384 RAM running Mandrake and it works quite nicely, perfectly fast enough for most things and to get to know Linux. My first Linux machine was a 133 w/ 64MB RAM running a recent version of Mandrake, it was *extremely* slow, but it was still enough to convince me to switch.
If you want to try Linux you could try running it under VMWare if your primary machine is substantially faster (2Ghz+, 512MB RAM+).
It is not impossible, just very unlikely. However, the universe is "fucking big", possibly even infinite, and has many, many planets where the process failed. We however appear to have been lucky.
Even if the chance is 1 in 1000000000000 there are more than 1000000000000 planets for it to have been tried on. And atleast one of them suceeded.
"Smaller boxes" is relative. Google's cluster nodes are dual Xeons with terabyte+ HDs. For Google it is small, for anyone else, that is powerful computer you're going to be paying alot for. If you're buying one of those computers you're probably going to look at one of these cards, and that is exactly the market they're looking for.
Right now everyone is worrying what this will do to Linux but I can put it in one word: Nothing. The reason? Apple is locking OS X into their computers.
Apple has said it themselves, OS X will not run on generic PC hardware. If someone is looking to switch OSes their choices will be the same as before. Linux and Windows will be the only two OSes that people will be able to run without buying a new computer. And if you're looking to buy a new computer, well, you already could buy a Mac.
I know some people will say "But now you can run Windows on Mac computers!" But that really wont make a difference. The general population will have no idea how to go about doing this, and the geeks that do wont cause a serious disruption. If the geeks want to install windows they either are going to do a triple boot with Linux or wouldn't be using Linux anyways (and if that wasn't enough, geeks really aren't that serious of a market force).
If Apple was to release OS X for generic hardware then Linux should definetly worry. But until that happens there is still going to be this division between Mac and non-Macs.
Mandrake 10.1 was done with a focus on laptop compatability. As a result all Mandrake/Mandriva versions since then (10.1 and LE2005) work very nicely on every laptop I have tried.
Also means they have good GUI tools for setting up Wireless and managing it (connecting to new networks, WEP, etc.).
You'd actually be surprised and the mindshare of Linux. Most people I have talked to (average, not at all tech savvy people included) have heard of Linux, many know it is amazing, they know it has to do with their computer, but that is it. It companies could let people know what it is, people will start asking.
What the market is in need of is a really big player (not like IBM big, but multi-million dollar corporation, RedHat/Novell/Mandriva are the likely ones) to put some real money in as a part of a long term strategy.
First, polish the desktop to look good, as in good enough to show off. Doesn't need to be like OS X, but nice looking.
Second, do retail packaging, that means nice friendly, *explanitory* boxes on store shelves.
Third, do marketing! I have *never* seen a TV advertisement by a linux distributor. 1 SuperBowl ad would do it, probably get much more publicity than other prime-time ads. Just put in a sloagan like "Get your next computer with Mandriva Linux! for the best your computer can be." After that there would be millions of people asking the next time they buy a computer "Does it have Linux?" The returns will not be immediate, but suddenly you would have millions of people knowing what Linux is, that it is good, and that it is worth asking about. Everyone has heard of a Mac, everyone has heard of Windows, do that, just ones, and most of North America will have heard of Linux. People already like it, now they'll know why to like it.
There have been ALOT of changes beyond trivial things like tabbed browsing (I love it, but it still is trivial). Some of the the things missing in IE are, for example: CSS2, (proper) CSS1, (proper) PNG rendering, (proper) XSLT/XML/XHTML/Everything else XML related.
As someone who develops alot of websites, not as a job, but in my personal time, I find there are many features in CSS which I like and want to use to develop my websites but I just can't.
I end up making one design for standards compliant browsers and then adding tweaks (JavaScript with browser detection, additional (improper) CSS attributes (text-align does NOT adjust block level elements in the spec, none has precedance in the spec, etc.)
I really think this is quite a failing on their part. Although I make all my websites render reasonably in IE, some features are missing, such as fades made with PNGs, fixed position items, etc. I put those features in with the hope some day they will be supported by the majority of the browsing population so that they can expereince the web to its full extent. But so far, no luck.
"I agree with points one and three, but how is the benefit of a complete road infrastructure transparent? Would it be so hard to charge people a fee to use roads? We all use them, it's not some kind of abstract need that is hard to grasp. That way, we'd get a better idea of how much transportation costs, which is good because we all pay for it."
The reason is universal service. In some parts of the country (cities) your method would work well, the cost is spread out over alot of people. However in rual areas the number of people that use the roads means that they would never turn a profit (my prediction). You charge people more and they would use them less.
It is however not an option to simply ignore these people, everyone needs roads, and we don't want the entire population of a country in cities, that would completely destroy agriculture.
"Universal service" is why I listed it, it is one of those basic things that *everyone* needs. Another example is telephone service. (Water and electicity can be found/generated onsite, that is why they are not listed).
The above is very true. From a commercial standpoint research ventures generally fail becuase they require long-term investment with low payback. These research ventures are however something that needs to be done, the world is not yet perfect, and stopping research wont help that.
Science has what is called "indivisible benefit", it will always benefit everyone, regardless of whether they pay or not. However if the payment was left up the those willing to pay regardless then they would there wouldn't be enough money to fund research. The idea in government funding is forcing everyone to pay becuase it helps them in ways people don't realize directly enough that they would give money without being forced.
The same idea applies to cleaning up the environment, building a complete road infrastructure, millitary and so on. They are all essential things to do which cannot be done without forcing everyone to chip in.
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I must agree with you that people intentionally download things that will harm their machine. I do computer support and I have had more than one client say "But the included smilies aren't good enough, why did you remove my other ones?" after they ask me to make their machine run faster. As long as spyware/adware/botnet software can be distributed with "free" software that users want the problem isn't going anywhere. Once Vista arrives the UAC stuff will help with remote exploits but people wont understand the importance of that "Enter your password to continue" screen and will happily do it if it gets them some new smileys. This is how Linux is so secure, most users understand the importance of their root password and would never enter it into the brower, other than during the initial install.
On a corporate system where users don't have admin access botnets aren't much of a problem. But on home machines were every user has admin no technological measures will help as long as they can be lowered. As a power user I want to keep my own machine but for many users a subscription PC would be the best idea. They pay per month, don't have admin, and an admin employed by the company you rent the machine from takes care of security. It would be like extending the corporate world into the home. People don't care about security and they're not going to start anytime soon, they don't understand the connection between those smileys and the spam in their inbox.
It's not surprising people can't fix their own machine, how many people can fix their own car? How many people can even change the oil in their own car? The other option would be for computers to be more like cars. People don't install things in their car, and if they want something installed they take it to the dealer. That would work for most people, pick the software you want with the machine, and take it to authorized service center when you want upgrades. There are people that install things in their own cars, just like there will be people that buy non-locked PCs, but users want easy above all else and if a company could do that by pre-installing everything I think most users would get it.
The botnet problem wont dissapear but it can be significantley reduced so it wont be a problem.
Why choose? Mandriva has a multi-disk version and a single disk one. And the multi-CD version has a single DVD version. Not every location has a high speed internet connection, and even if it does it takes a while. As someone who installs most of what's on the DVD it sure beats waiting for everything to download. Sure I have to download it initially but when I've got 5 machines to install on it takes less time in the end.
Kennedy Space Centre has a visitor's centre where you can go on tours of the launch pads, landing facilities, etc. (they take you out in busses) and as someone who has gone it's a really cool experience. I talked to the guide (who had worked for NASA for many years) about where the best place to see a launch is and his reccomendation was to get tickets and they'll bus you out to the closest you can get to the launch pad as a civilian. There are stands for VIPs about 3 km closer but getting a ticket requires some connection to NASA though people have gotten them by writing their representative in congress. His advice however was that becuase of the angles you'll get a better view from the public viewing spot.
Around here it seems everyone bashes cable, but it's not the technology that sucks, but the providers. I don't know what available in your area but here (Toronto, Canada) I have the choice of Bell (DSL) or Rogers (Cable) for highspeed. On a 3 Mbps DSL line ($40/month CAD) you'll likely pull 3-4Mbps from any decent server. Over one of the 6Mbps cable lines ($46/month CAD) you can generally pull about 10Mbps or download speeds of 1.25MB/sec sustained.
My suggestion to the poster is try a different ISP, they're not all bad. I don't know your location so I can't be more specific but if your in the US you're sort of stuck with the fact that all the ISPs I've seen down there suck.
There are still those of us that program, I'm 16 and know Java (6 years), PHP (3 years), VB (5 years), Turing and, although not programming, HTML/XHTML/CSS (10 years for HTML). But fewer and fewer people my age program, I haven't met anyone my age with my kind of experience. In my high school programming class we have an incompetent teacher that doesn't get OOP and most people in the class take it because it's easy not because they care. There are some of us that program, but fewer and fewer.
All their DNS servers and hosting services are staying on Linux. The switch only applies to parked domains, and while a domain is parked, do you really care what web server they use? As soon as you point it at your website it will be under your control again.
As an International (Canadian) customer of Alienware, I am really excited by this announcement. Although Alienware's machines are well built, their customer service for people not in the US isn't just bad, it's absolutley horrible. One person I talked to thought Canada was overseas! I had to pay for shipping for a warranty exchange, my computer was delayed, and no body there knew anything or had the authority to do anything.
I've owned 2 Dell machines and both have been reliable (6 years and 3 years now). They don't have great performance on their standard line but their XPS line matches Alienware for performance. If Dell can leave the way Alienware build's their machines alone but overhaul their customer service I will be very happy.
One of the most interesting definition I've heard of so far is that something is a planet if it dominates gravitationally in the area. This would mean that Pluto isn't a planet and wouldn't give an arbitrary size for is/isn't a planet. It also means that an astroid belt of very large astroids wouldn't all have to be planets, if something like that ever were to be found in another solar system.
Did anyone else notice, either while the pages were loading or in a text browser, that the alternate text for every graph is Harry Potter? I guess someone at Google did some copying and pasting without checking over what they wrote.
If you can find somewhere to donate the RAM, do it. Schools are always horribly out of date. The *newest* computers I use at my high school are 400Mhz iMac G3s with 128MB of RAM, I would love to have more RAM to put in them, and I imagine many other schools are in a similar situation.
Try being a sysadmin for a week and you'll know what I mean. I want to deploy Linux, but doing requires more time than I, or anyone else, has.
I do not follow your logic. A few people spending the time to make a corporate desktop load right and then deploying it is far cheaper then rolling something out untested or unconfigured and then going back and fixing it or adding to it after the fact. This applies to MS or Linux and is no different then what a huge MS shop already does with a disk images. For an existing MS shop with existing MS admins, managing Linux and getting it off the ground will obviously be a challenge. At some point, it could be an existing Linux shop with existing Linux admins and administration would not be such that challenge.
Yes, it takes time to configure windows, but the central management tools are there, they just need to be set-up. On Linux the tools aren't there, you have to assemble a custom system yourself. Which will work eventually, but it requires alot of time to get the management side of a Linux setup working. More than it takes for Windows, or for OS X (which is almost nothing).
This is the thing Open Source advocates often miss (not flaimbait, I advocate OSS and use Linux). When you are a large company delpoying Windows, the price of licenses for 50 000 machines isn't the problem. The problem is how much it costs to support it. These are companies with budgets of millions, billions, of dollars. An administrator doesn't have time to tinker with distributions, and create a system from scratch, there need to be packaged, reliable system from big name vendors which do this with ease. Try being a sysadmin for a week and you'll know what I mean. I want to deploy Linux, but doing requires more time than I, or anyone else, has.
The company you are refering to, is called IBM, Novell, Suse, take your pick.
They are starting to offer services, but the level of service still doesn't match Windows.
The amount large companies spend on support contracts dwarf what they spend on actual licenses. When your running Windows you can get a contract which will guarantee a support time of under two hours.
Two hours? Just to get a forigner on the phone that can't speak-a your language? That sucks. OSS developers would have it FIXED and back into your hands in less time than that. Its amazing what you closed-source advocates put up with.
That is two hours to have a fully qualified IBM technician ON SITE, fixing the problem. I don't know of any companies that can do that for Open Source software.
The other part is how to manage it and deploy it. Things like ActiveDirectory, which are a pain in the ass, but they provide one complete, integrated location to go to for managing everything. I know you can setup the same thing in Linux but it takes ALOT longer, because you have to do everything manually.
Norton Ghost is a good start. Have you heard of it? Most everyone in your closed-source community have.
I do use Norton Ghost, and that is great for the INITIAL configuration, but do you want to re-image hundreds of machines every time you change a setting, results in 30 minutes of downtime for every machine? I don't think so.
Those two points are what keep companies from adopting Linux. Linux needs reliable support from big names, Novell is stepping up here, but they still aren't IBM. As for the management system, I have no idea, I have yet to find a system that will handle users, desktop lockdown, applications management/deployment/permissions, etc. from one, central, automated location. Even Apple has managed to create a system to do this (I manage an OS 9/OS X/Windows mixed environment).
There, you just said everything you said above was wrong.
No, I said it's moving in the right direction, very different from being there.
(NOTE: By automated I mean, I change the desktop lockdown settings and every computer changes instantly. And adding more desktops is as simple as choosing a setting like "Managed by Server: lmanage.internal.company.org")
I believe on Linux you can do this by modding the server live, and reboot the clients... ONCE. Not 10 times.
Settings like say, power management, aren't handled by the server, they are currently set on every machine INDIVIDUALLY. Some things are managed, but far too many settings still have to be changed on every machine.
This is the thing Open Source advocates often miss (not flaimbait, I advocate OSS and use Linux). When you are a large company delpoying Windows, the price of licenses for 50 000 machines isn't the problem. The problem is how much it costs to support it. These are companies with budgets of millions, billions, of dollars. An administrator doesn't have time to tinker with distributions, and create a system from scratch, there need to be packaged, reliable system from big name vendors which do this with ease. Try being a sysadmin for a week and you'll know what I mean. I want to deploy Linux, but doing requires more time than I, or anyone else, has.
The amount large companies spend on support contracts dwarf what they spend on actual licenses. When your running Windows you can get a contract which will guarantee a support time of under two hours.
The other part is how to manage it and deploy it. Things like ActiveDirectory, which are a pain in the ass, but they provide one complete, integrated location to go to for managing everything. I know you can setup the same thing in Linux but it takes ALOT longer, because you have to do everything manually.
Those two points are what keep companies from adopting Linux. Linux needs reliable support from big names, Novell is stepping up here, but they still aren't IBM. As for the management system, I have no idea, I have yet to find a system that will handle users, desktop lockdown, applications management/deployment/permissions, etc. from one, central, automated location. Even Apple has managed to create a system to do this (I manage an OS 9/OS X/Windows mixed environment).
(NOTE: By automated I mean, I change the desktop lockdown settings and every computer changes instantly. And adding more desktops is as simple as choosing a setting like "Managed by Server: lmanage.internal.company.org")
All the major Canadian ISPs (except Videotron) fought the CRIA when they attempted to sue filsharers, and they won. Even Rogers who has other media investments (TV studios, etc.) fought the CRIA.
My current ISP (Rogers) I've had good service with (very fast), except for the 60GB/month bandwidth cap they just put in place.
The KDE website has a list of upcoming features at:
- 4.0-features.html
http://developer.kde.org/development-versions/kde
Judging by how many items there are on that list, and that this is a port, not a re-write, I think that KDE4 will be full of features. Though there are some which could go, really minor useless ones.
Mandrake/Mandriva is a good choice. It's very easy to use and a simple setup. It was the distribution I started using Linux with, and after having tried other distros is still my favourite. The default desktop is KDE.
If you are coming from a Mac background you may want to use Gnome instead of KDE, it will probably be more familiar, Mandriva can be switched to use Gnome, or the easiest Gnome based distro out there right now is Ubuntu.
I reccomend KDE but I don't want to start a flamewar so that is all I'll say.
None of the user-friendly distros are known for their speed, the more GUI you put in the slower it goes. I however have a 550Mhz with 384 RAM running Mandrake and it works quite nicely, perfectly fast enough for most things and to get to know Linux. My first Linux machine was a 133 w/ 64MB RAM running a recent version of Mandrake, it was *extremely* slow, but it was still enough to convince me to switch.
If you want to try Linux you could try running it under VMWare if your primary machine is substantially faster (2Ghz+, 512MB RAM+).
It is not impossible, just very unlikely. However, the universe is "fucking big", possibly even infinite, and has many, many planets where the process failed. We however appear to have been lucky.
Even if the chance is 1 in 1000000000000 there are more than 1000000000000 planets for it to have been tried on. And atleast one of them suceeded.
"Smaller boxes" is relative. Google's cluster nodes are dual Xeons with terabyte+ HDs. For Google it is small, for anyone else, that is powerful computer you're going to be paying alot for. If you're buying one of those computers you're probably going to look at one of these cards, and that is exactly the market they're looking for.
Right now everyone is worrying what this will do to Linux but I can put it in one word: Nothing. The reason? Apple is locking OS X into their computers.
Apple has said it themselves, OS X will not run on generic PC hardware. If someone is looking to switch OSes their choices will be the same as before. Linux and Windows will be the only two OSes that people will be able to run without buying a new computer. And if you're looking to buy a new computer, well, you already could buy a Mac.
I know some people will say "But now you can run Windows on Mac computers!" But that really wont make a difference. The general population will have no idea how to go about doing this, and the geeks that do wont cause a serious disruption. If the geeks want to install windows they either are going to do a triple boot with Linux or wouldn't be using Linux anyways (and if that wasn't enough, geeks really aren't that serious of a market force).
If Apple was to release OS X for generic hardware then Linux should definetly worry. But until that happens there is still going to be this division between Mac and non-Macs.
Mandrake 10.1 was done with a focus on laptop compatability. As a result all Mandrake/Mandriva versions since then (10.1 and LE2005) work very nicely on every laptop I have tried.
Also means they have good GUI tools for setting up Wireless and managing it (connecting to new networks, WEP, etc.).
You'd actually be surprised and the mindshare of Linux. Most people I have talked to (average, not at all tech savvy people included) have heard of Linux, many know it is amazing, they know it has to do with their computer, but that is it. It companies could let people know what it is, people will start asking.
What the market is in need of is a really big player (not like IBM big, but multi-million dollar corporation, RedHat/Novell/Mandriva are the likely ones) to put some real money in as a part of a long term strategy.
First, polish the desktop to look good, as in good enough to show off. Doesn't need to be like OS X, but nice looking.
Second, do retail packaging, that means nice friendly, *explanitory* boxes on store shelves.
Third, do marketing! I have *never* seen a TV advertisement by a linux distributor. 1 SuperBowl ad would do it, probably get much more publicity than other prime-time ads. Just put in a sloagan like "Get your next computer with Mandriva Linux! for the best your computer can be." After that there would be millions of people asking the next time they buy a computer "Does it have Linux?" The returns will not be immediate, but suddenly you would have millions of people knowing what Linux is, that it is good, and that it is worth asking about. Everyone has heard of a Mac, everyone has heard of Windows, do that, just ones, and most of North America will have heard of Linux. People already like it, now they'll know why to like it.
No, it is a result of slow displays. I too have a 17" Dell Flat Panel and I have no problem at all with ghosting during gaming and movies.
(And I do know what to look for, I also have a 17" BenQ illuminated crap (yes, it's that bad) and the ghosting is horrible)
I may not like having a Dell computer that much, but my Dell Flat Panel is the nicest I've seen.
There have been ALOT of changes beyond trivial things like tabbed browsing (I love it, but it still is trivial). Some of the the things missing in IE are, for example: CSS2, (proper) CSS1, (proper) PNG rendering, (proper) XSLT/XML/XHTML/Everything else XML related.
As someone who develops alot of websites, not as a job, but in my personal time, I find there are many features in CSS which I like and want to use to develop my websites but I just can't.
I end up making one design for standards compliant browsers and then adding tweaks (JavaScript with browser detection, additional (improper) CSS attributes (text-align does NOT adjust block level elements in the spec, none has precedance in the spec, etc.)
I really think this is quite a failing on their part. Although I make all my websites render reasonably in IE, some features are missing, such as fades made with PNGs, fixed position items, etc. I put those features in with the hope some day they will be supported by the majority of the browsing population so that they can expereince the web to its full extent. But so far, no luck.
"I agree with points one and three, but how is the benefit of a complete road infrastructure transparent? Would it be so hard to charge people a fee to use roads? We all use them, it's not some kind of abstract need that is hard to grasp. That way, we'd get a better idea of how much transportation costs, which is good because we all pay for it."
The reason is universal service. In some parts of the country (cities) your method would work well, the cost is spread out over alot of people. However in rual areas the number of people that use the roads means that they would never turn a profit (my prediction). You charge people more and they would use them less.
It is however not an option to simply ignore these people, everyone needs roads, and we don't want the entire population of a country in cities, that would completely destroy agriculture.
"Universal service" is why I listed it, it is one of those basic things that *everyone* needs. Another example is telephone service. (Water and electicity can be found/generated onsite, that is why they are not listed).
The above is very true. From a commercial standpoint research ventures generally fail becuase they require long-term investment with low payback. These research ventures are however something that needs to be done, the world is not yet perfect, and stopping research wont help that.
Science has what is called "indivisible benefit", it will always benefit everyone, regardless of whether they pay or not. However if the payment was left up the those willing to pay regardless then they would there wouldn't be enough money to fund research. The idea in government funding is forcing everyone to pay becuase it helps them in ways people don't realize directly enough that they would give money without being forced.
The same idea applies to cleaning up the environment, building a complete road infrastructure, millitary and so on. They are all essential things to do which cannot be done without forcing everyone to chip in.
BTW, sorry if this double-posts.