I spend a lot of time on Slashdot using an SSL connection (you can use https if you're a subscriber; perhaps they'll extend the feature one day when doing so doesn't require more hardware). I check my email using SSL. I SSH to several different computers over an SSL connection. Many sites I visit support SSL connections. Also, related to encryption, my wireless router uses WPA2 Personal (I'd use enterprise if I had a key server set up, but that's not really that important right now), so I'm always using encryption somewhere. I sign my emails using GPG. I use SSL/TLS connections wherever possible and encryption in general wherever possible. I don't do this for privacy reasons most of the time; I do it for security reasons.
Well, I try my best not to support shitty businesses like Verizon (costs money just to transfer pictures you took on your phone to your computer) and Sprint, so that's not issue for me. Besides, if one goes with Cingular or T-Mobile, you get to use GSM, and since GSM is the standard used in pretty much the rest of the world, you can get cheap international coverage by buying prepaid SIM cards while on the go.
Isn't EFI the software that enables treacherous computing? Why would we want to ditch BIOS (which can be replaced by OpenBIOS/LinuxBIOS/whatever it's called) in favour of a DRM-ladden piece of software?
Don't forget all the VPN activity going on for people working outside the actual physical office. Then there's SSH which is latency-sensitive when in interactive mode (bulk transfers via sftp or scp should probably be marked as such via QoS, but it's not like anyone along the way will listen to that). There are more legitimate uses for encrypted net connections than there are legitimate uses for BitTorrent, and that's saying a lot.
Slashdot is made of hundreds of thousands of individuals with different thoughts and beliefs about everything. The fact that trolls like you seem to think that Slashdot is some sort of corporation of like-minded individuals who all follow the same belief and tend to point out any time where this is impossible makes you all seem the same.
But to answer your question about that, perhaps some people here trust Google far more than they trust the government? Recall that Google was the only major search engine that didn't comply with the government's demands for search query logs without a warrant while your beloved Microsoft and Yahoo gladly handed it over.
I think they'd be useless until they were released under the X11 license like the rest of X.org is. It'd be nice if other platforms other than Linux can benefit from proper drivers for ATI cards as well.
All three next-gen systems are backwards-compatible with their previous system, so in essence, the developers are competing with old games at cheap prices. Maybe the fact that the 360 doesn't have full support for all Xbox games and the fact that anyone buying a PS3 surely isn't doing that so they can play PS2 games contributes to the more expensive games before any real competition can take place. They also don't feel that the Wii is competing with them when it is in fact doing just that at a much more reasonable cost.
About the syncing issue: most phones support something called SyncML, an open standard for syncing what you just said with another source. If you use OpenSync on Linux/BSD/etc., you can sync with such devices.
The Motorola RAZR V3 does most of what you asked, but it also has a camera (albeit crap quality like most camera phones), and the call log combines people's calls. You just use a normal USB A to USB mini-B cable to connect the phone, and you can charge it like that too (just requires a 5 V USB mini-B connector, so the charger it comes with is unnecessary if you have a computer that can charge it). However, there are some annoying "features" in the RAZR that I don't know how to get rid of (can probably be done via seam editting or whatever it's called), but it has an enormous modding community with lots of insight on how to make the phone work however you want.
I'd like to get a good smartphone based on Linux one day, but I'm not even sure where to look. I've heard of the OpenMoko, but I don't know how well that works or if it's even a smartphone. Trolltech has their SDK phone, but it's definitely more of a developer-oriented phone rather than one you can use and hack around with on the side. The iPhone is an overpriced, locked-in piece of crap, so I can do without that. I'd rather not get a crackberry due to more lock-in (Exchange I believe) and the fact that I'm not a corporate guy. Perhaps it'd be easier to just import a phone from Japan that has an english interface available and use that?
Don't buy the phone from the carrier in the first place? You get all the features the phone should have with no lock-in. You might need to contact your carrier for configuration information, but that's it. Just don't buy it from any carrier (especially ones that lock their phones they sell) and you'll be fine. Be warned that it costs more, but that's the cost of not getting locked in...
By generated, I mean from a user program, not a DOM tree. For instance, OpenOffice.org Math can generate perfectly valid MathML from user input. Several vector graphics programs can generate perfectly valid SVG from user input. However, there doesn't seem to be any WYSIWYG XHTML editors that generate perfectly valid XHTML.
I'm going to guess the iOverHypedProduct. I don't care which. At first, I thought you were talking about the AppleTV which streams its contents over the network from computers with actual storage, but then I remembered it was much cheaper than $600.
Well, that response makes a lot more sense than the trollish response I was responding to. I might have preferred to read a transcript instead just so I didn't need to spend two hours watching it just to get the message.
Well, XHTML seems to be the only XML-based language that can only be reliably written by hand and not generated by a program. MathML and SVG can do it just fine (which are very related to XHTML), why not XHTML?
Broadcom makes the chip and whatnot inside that Linksys wireless card. Linksys doesn't make any actual wireless chipsets; they just assemble them and make a usable product.
An old version (2.0, bash is at 3.2) with absolutely no command line completion other than primitive file name completion. I'd much prefer to install zsh or at least the latest version of bash than use that outdated package.
OpenVMS isn't UNIX, so you could consider that. Other than that, it seems that all other operating systems follow the UNIX (or POSIX) mentality except for a couple that use the VMS mentality and Windows.
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You might as well make a new account. The bad mods will probably get caught in metamod (M2), but that won't fix your account now.
I spend a lot of time on Slashdot using an SSL connection (you can use https if you're a subscriber; perhaps they'll extend the feature one day when doing so doesn't require more hardware). I check my email using SSL. I SSH to several different computers over an SSL connection. Many sites I visit support SSL connections. Also, related to encryption, my wireless router uses WPA2 Personal (I'd use enterprise if I had a key server set up, but that's not really that important right now), so I'm always using encryption somewhere. I sign my emails using GPG. I use SSL/TLS connections wherever possible and encryption in general wherever possible. I don't do this for privacy reasons most of the time; I do it for security reasons.
Well, I try my best not to support shitty businesses like Verizon (costs money just to transfer pictures you took on your phone to your computer) and Sprint, so that's not issue for me. Besides, if one goes with Cingular or T-Mobile, you get to use GSM, and since GSM is the standard used in pretty much the rest of the world, you can get cheap international coverage by buying prepaid SIM cards while on the go.
Isn't EFI the software that enables treacherous computing? Why would we want to ditch BIOS (which can be replaced by OpenBIOS/LinuxBIOS/whatever it's called) in favour of a DRM-ladden piece of software?
Everyone knows that anyone who works while on vacation does it via their crackberry...
Don't forget all the VPN activity going on for people working outside the actual physical office. Then there's SSH which is latency-sensitive when in interactive mode (bulk transfers via sftp or scp should probably be marked as such via QoS, but it's not like anyone along the way will listen to that). There are more legitimate uses for encrypted net connections than there are legitimate uses for BitTorrent, and that's saying a lot.
128 bit symmetric encryption is plenty strong with existing, proven cyphers. However, 128 bit asymmetric encryption would be laughably weak nowadays.
Slashdot is made of hundreds of thousands of individuals with different thoughts and beliefs about everything. The fact that trolls like you seem to think that Slashdot is some sort of corporation of like-minded individuals who all follow the same belief and tend to point out any time where this is impossible makes you all seem the same.
But to answer your question about that, perhaps some people here trust Google far more than they trust the government? Recall that Google was the only major search engine that didn't comply with the government's demands for search query logs without a warrant while your beloved Microsoft and Yahoo gladly handed it over.
I think they'd be useless until they were released under the X11 license like the rest of X.org is. It'd be nice if other platforms other than Linux can benefit from proper drivers for ATI cards as well.
All three next-gen systems are backwards-compatible with their previous system, so in essence, the developers are competing with old games at cheap prices. Maybe the fact that the 360 doesn't have full support for all Xbox games and the fact that anyone buying a PS3 surely isn't doing that so they can play PS2 games contributes to the more expensive games before any real competition can take place. They also don't feel that the Wii is competing with them when it is in fact doing just that at a much more reasonable cost.
That's slightly ironic...
Well, at least that explains how the web browser kicks ass on the Nokia phone.
About the syncing issue: most phones support something called SyncML, an open standard for syncing what you just said with another source. If you use OpenSync on Linux/BSD/etc., you can sync with such devices.
The Motorola RAZR V3 does most of what you asked, but it also has a camera (albeit crap quality like most camera phones), and the call log combines people's calls. You just use a normal USB A to USB mini-B cable to connect the phone, and you can charge it like that too (just requires a 5 V USB mini-B connector, so the charger it comes with is unnecessary if you have a computer that can charge it). However, there are some annoying "features" in the RAZR that I don't know how to get rid of (can probably be done via seam editting or whatever it's called), but it has an enormous modding community with lots of insight on how to make the phone work however you want.
I'd like to get a good smartphone based on Linux one day, but I'm not even sure where to look. I've heard of the OpenMoko, but I don't know how well that works or if it's even a smartphone. Trolltech has their SDK phone, but it's definitely more of a developer-oriented phone rather than one you can use and hack around with on the side. The iPhone is an overpriced, locked-in piece of crap, so I can do without that. I'd rather not get a crackberry due to more lock-in (Exchange I believe) and the fact that I'm not a corporate guy. Perhaps it'd be easier to just import a phone from Japan that has an english interface available and use that?
Don't buy the phone from the carrier in the first place? You get all the features the phone should have with no lock-in. You might need to contact your carrier for configuration information, but that's it. Just don't buy it from any carrier (especially ones that lock their phones they sell) and you'll be fine. Be warned that it costs more, but that's the cost of not getting locked in...
In Japan, CDs and DVDs cost a lot ($30-50), but the standard of living is probably higher than it is in the US to offset that.
People don't go to online banks? Or shop online? Or read their email online? *shock!*
This is the 21st century where cryptography is common...
Learn how to use the sig feature on Slashdot and stop spamming your damn blog.
By generated, I mean from a user program, not a DOM tree. For instance, OpenOffice.org Math can generate perfectly valid MathML from user input. Several vector graphics programs can generate perfectly valid SVG from user input. However, there doesn't seem to be any WYSIWYG XHTML editors that generate perfectly valid XHTML.
I'm going to guess the iOverHypedProduct. I don't care which. At first, I thought you were talking about the AppleTV which streams its contents over the network from computers with actual storage, but then I remembered it was much cheaper than $600.
Well, that response makes a lot more sense than the trollish response I was responding to. I might have preferred to read a transcript instead just so I didn't need to spend two hours watching it just to get the message.
Well, XHTML seems to be the only XML-based language that can only be reliably written by hand and not generated by a program. MathML and SVG can do it just fine (which are very related to XHTML), why not XHTML?
So maybe DirecTV is crap then? Try out another satellite company.
How did this get marked troll? I completely agree with everything he said. Fucking MS astroturfers...
Broadcom makes the chip and whatnot inside that Linksys wireless card. Linksys doesn't make any actual wireless chipsets; they just assemble them and make a usable product.
An old version (2.0, bash is at 3.2) with absolutely no command line completion other than primitive file name completion. I'd much prefer to install zsh or at least the latest version of bash than use that outdated package.
OpenVMS isn't UNIX, so you could consider that. Other than that, it seems that all other operating systems follow the UNIX (or POSIX) mentality except for a couple that use the VMS mentality and Windows.