I imagine security firms are concentrating their efforts on web browsers; firewalls, such as Windows XPs and other third party products, mitigate, rather than directly address, any vulnerabilities in system services, but a web browser cannot be protected in the same way. And, for most people, the web browser and the email client are their primary interfaces for the web, simply requiring a black hat or script kiddie to coerce the user to visit their infecte web site/ page; a depressingly easy thing to get your average net-user to do, it would appear from the continued popularity of phishing scams. Of course... one may ponder how much havock could be wreaked a vulnerability on a P2P client; all those users on a single virtual network and little to no coercion would be required, depending where the flaw lay.
Probably just being nitpicky here, but isn't X11 a downloadable add-on from Apple? There are X Servers available for Windows, too, both free and commercial. For example, the current Cygwin server, which I believe is a port of x.org, supports OS managed windows in a similar manner to Apple's, in addition to "rootless" mode and "traditional" mode with a root window, and even provides an experimental hardware accelerated (if supported by the OS and available hardware) Open GL server.
Whilst UNIX support is, of course, not directly possible with Windows, may UNIX tools and applications can, and have, been ported to Cygwin for Windows.
Of course, neither of these options really beats an X Server with direct access to the hardware on a dedicated *NIX box instead of having to emulate X through another display layer:)
Considering their anti-opensource stance, utilising the above-mentioned phrases such as "open-sore" and so forth, I find it incredible that the site's own title advocates the use of Mozilla Firefox: "Alexis de Tocqueville Institution: Best viewed using Mozilla Firefox".
Emulating a 5.25" isn't actually 100% necessary. The FDC that controls a 3.5" floppy is quite capable of controlling a 5.25" floppy in all three modes (DSDD, SSDD and SSSD) for reading any 'PC compatible' formatted disk. There are also a number of hardware options, such as the CatWeasel, that cen be used to drive a standard 5.25" drive to read non-PC Compatible disks.
Admittedly, you're still probably better off just using such a drive to create images of real world disks. Emulating drives with images is something that has been the core of almost all emulations of disk-enabled devices
The big problem, as far as I can see it, is reading 8" discs (as these do not, I believe, use the same controller as the others), or proprietry discs.
I am probably missing something here, and am, based upon the general feeling here, going to attract a lot of flame for this comment, but, here goes:
What on Earth is the problem here? Per-processor licencing already exists; it is a fact of business computing. All a multi-core processor is, is two processors in one physical package. You cannot just whack two processors together and pretend that it's just one; no matter what they're packaged in two processors is still two processors.
Many companies give leeway to HT enabled processors as they are, essentially, one real CPU that uses, as previous posts have stated, neat low level tricks to squeeze a bit of extra performance out in the form of a second logical processor. This does *not* apply to a second core, as it is a totally physical entity.
Get a real alternative OS people! Linux/x86 is way too mainstream.
Right... because everyone knows that a good OS nowadays is one that nobody actually uses.
People aren't (or, at least, shouldn't) be taking up Linux just to "fight-the-power" or because it's "fringe" or "out there". They're adopting it, I hope, because it is, currently, the best OS for the task. And, by best, I don't just mean the codebase - I mean the wide range of applications for it, and the support provided by the open source community.
As for applications becoming more Linux-centric - well it happens. You can either make apps generic enough to work on any OS, and sacrifice features, optimisations, etc, or you spend an inordinately large amount of time writing modules specific to each OS you wish to support, which also requires access to that OS, not all of which are cost-free to use.
If you wish to adopt an OS so weird and unusued that it is only known of by a handfull of techies who rarely see the light of day - then go ahead. I'd be curious to see your personal efforts to port popular (or, indeed, just essential) applications to 'NeverNeverOS' where the pixies reign supreme.
Slashdot Mirror
I imagine security firms are concentrating their efforts on web browsers; firewalls, such as Windows XPs and other third party products, mitigate, rather than directly address, any vulnerabilities in system services, but a web browser cannot be protected in the same way. And, for most people, the web browser and the email client are their primary interfaces for the web, simply requiring a black hat or script kiddie to coerce the user to visit their infecte web site/ page; a depressingly easy thing to get your average net-user to do, it would appear from the continued popularity of phishing scams.
Of course... one may ponder how much havock could be wreaked a vulnerability on a P2P client; all those users on a single virtual network and little to no coercion would be required, depending where the flaw lay.
Probably just being nitpicky here, but isn't X11 a downloadable add-on from Apple? There are X Servers available for Windows, too, both free and commercial. For example, the current Cygwin server, which I believe is a port of x.org, supports OS managed windows in a similar manner to Apple's, in addition to "rootless" mode and "traditional" mode with a root window, and even provides an experimental hardware accelerated (if supported by the OS and available hardware) Open GL server.
Whilst UNIX support is, of course, not directly possible with Windows, may UNIX tools and applications can, and have, been ported to Cygwin for Windows.
Of course, neither of these options really beats an X Server with direct access to the hardware on a dedicated *NIX box instead of having to emulate X through another display layer :)
Considering their anti-opensource stance, utilising the above-mentioned phrases such as "open-sore" and so forth, I find it incredible that the site's own title advocates the use of Mozilla Firefox: "Alexis de Tocqueville Institution: Best viewed using Mozilla Firefox".
Hypocrites, or just plain retarded?
Emulating a 5.25" isn't actually 100% necessary. The FDC that controls a 3.5" floppy is quite capable of controlling a 5.25" floppy in all three modes (DSDD, SSDD and SSSD) for reading any 'PC compatible' formatted disk. There are also a number of hardware options, such as the CatWeasel, that cen be used to drive a standard 5.25" drive to read non-PC Compatible disks.
Admittedly, you're still probably better off just using such a drive to create images of real world disks. Emulating drives with images is something that has been the core of almost all emulations of disk-enabled devices
The big problem, as far as I can see it, is reading 8" discs (as these do not, I believe, use the same controller as the others), or proprietry discs.
I am probably missing something here, and am, based upon the general feeling here, going to attract a lot of flame for this comment, but, here goes:
What on Earth is the problem here? Per-processor licencing already exists; it is a fact of business computing. All a multi-core processor is, is two processors in one physical package. You cannot just whack two processors together and pretend that it's just one; no matter what they're packaged in two processors is still two processors.
Many companies give leeway to HT enabled processors as they are, essentially, one real CPU that uses, as previous posts have stated, neat low level tricks to squeeze a bit of extra performance out in the form of a second logical processor. This does *not* apply to a second core, as it is a totally physical entity.
Get a real alternative OS people! Linux/x86 is way too mainstream.
Right... because everyone knows that a good OS nowadays is one that nobody actually uses.
People aren't (or, at least, shouldn't) be taking up Linux just to "fight-the-power" or because it's "fringe" or "out there". They're adopting it, I hope, because it is, currently, the best OS for the task. And, by best, I don't just mean the codebase - I mean the wide range of applications for it, and the support provided by the open source community.
As for applications becoming more Linux-centric - well it happens. You can either make apps generic enough to work on any OS, and sacrifice features, optimisations, etc, or you spend an inordinately large amount of time writing modules specific to each OS you wish to support, which also requires access to that OS, not all of which are cost-free to use.
If you wish to adopt an OS so weird and unusued that it is only known of by a handfull of techies who rarely see the light of day - then go ahead. I'd be curious to see your personal efforts to port popular (or, indeed, just essential) applications to 'NeverNeverOS' where the pixies reign supreme.