Behaviour such as graffiti writing and dis-orderly conduct are considered anti-social behaviour, and its perpetrators won't have as easy a time with deniability, plausible or otherwise, when the pictures/video comes into play.
Also the guy who always maintains that there was money in the meter will have a hard time of it. This tech sorely needed states-side...but won't happen for fear of invasion of privacy issues.
All good points. Just to comment on the "one CD-ROM" issue: take a look at Mepis, which coincidentally has made a deal with Ubuntu and is using their repositories. Mepis is perhaps the main reason that I like Ubuntu's strategy since it is my current distro of choice, having been a Red Hat/Fedora user since RH 6.0. As far as I am concerned, the better Ubuntu gets, the better for me.
Now if Kubuntu could be a bit more like Mepis....
It seems to me that the folks at Canonical are positioning themselves to be the distro of choice for users coming from Windows that have expectation of certain types of software, and are not averse to proprietary software, that is, the non hard-core linux users. By keeping themselves in the public's eye they stand a good chance of doing so.
Any idea about how hot these things will be in a typical notebook? That will be an issue as well as their power consumption over time, especially during a boring 3 hour lecture, or when outside downloading a torrent.
Don't know about you folks, but to enter the library in C.U.N.Y. you had to show valid ID. That part of the "law" does not really worry me, since good terrorists will have fake Id in any case it won't hamper their activities that way. Those in country illegally for non-terror activities will be severly hampered, but that is another issue entirely. The real story is tracking your electronic communication. We know that if done right, this con help track those that are using the internet for subversive intententions such as for kidnapping, bombings and... distribution of music files:)
At some level the ability to be able to track such activity and use it by linking it with to people that were in the internet cafe at the time is quite desirable, especially after part of your neighbourhood gets destroyed and it comes to light that those responsible used various internet technologies in public places to plan, fund and implement it. However, its going to be a lot of information to be stored and looked over to find patterns of information, etc. Who is going to do that? A beaucracy who has problems gettingout from under its own feet, or a privately contracted firm (with individuals who have interests in sharing such information secretly with others)?
This is a mess logistically, and they should know it. It sounds good at one level, but how many petabytes of info are going to be generated and scanned? They might as well just use Carnivore or whatever the USA uses and be done with it... as if it will really help before an attack, or to catch the person who really came up with the idea of the attack... or the bankers or "charitable organisations" from whom the funds came.
...and programming effectively with the (end)user in mind. most of us upon reflection will realise that any properly coded "secure" application will need to ship with a password already enabled. The programmer needs to ensure that the end user not only creates an unique password for personal use, but also creates a scenario where only physical access can "uncreate" any thusly made password via code from a generated passcode sheet (for example).
Corporations should be more concerned about those that can break in via their unchanged admin password on their routers.
These measures that the government of the UK proposes may very well be a bit more intrusive, passive or not, that most people care for. We can feel this way because of certain rights and privileges that have been earned by blood. There are certain individuals that use these same rights to prepare themselves to do all manner of mischief, which include attempting to de-stabalize the elected government.
While having one eye firmly planted on the hands that will be using and storing the collected information, the other eye should also be placed at those that use our freedoms to pursue their owm aims that are firmly diametrically oppossed to our free expression of our freedoms, including the right to live in a place where we can be unfraid of taking a train, bus or plane.
As an aside, would it upset many of you to know that a group of people were tracked from a suspected "terrosist" safehouse to a bus station where they were held with incendiary devices using this or similar technology?
Once again those with deep pockets go forth and argue a case for something that has existed under another name or description, but not functionality. I think that is where the Patent Office falls down: the wording of applied patents.
It is in the practical examples and application of the descriptions that make "prior art." With sufficiently trained researchers (and sufficient numbers of said people... or bots??!!?) these types of applications and patents will be minimised at the door, and eventually even less will be brought in since it will be known that thorough checking will be done.
I think that Microsft has looked at how well Apple has used BSD in their OS offering, and the wheel began turning.
They have been targetting Unix for a while, and this is aimed squarely at killing off Unix as a viable alternative inside of 5 years, as Win for Workgroups was aimed at Novell. Their other target are the switchers from Unix who tend to gravitate towards BSD or Linux. Doing this will give an option that will be quite tempting, given their installed base.
Off course, could be a bit more smoke and mirrors designed to bait switchers....
Well Judy, after reading the Dvorak article again, the points he raised about Itanium goes well with other posts postulating about whether it would be x86 or just (some as yet un-named) Intel chip.
64 bits is the way to go, but there is still that little problem with the Powerbook... which chip will go in it eventually?
An interesting article, but an even more interesting thing would be ascertain if there is any correlation between software liscensing revenues going soft(er), and the OS in use to run said software.
Another intriguing question would be if this may have an impact on the decision to switch, even partially, to another OS in order to realise savings accrueing from use of software with less restrictive liscensing.
As a user of both Outlook and Evolution, I am already familiar with the lengths the designers of the latter went to make windows users comfortable visually with their product. Home users will care less about Exchange (assuming they know what it is) than being able to jump in and start using it, especially from scratch on a new machine.
As an Evolution user, I am personally saddenned by the demise of the one thing that it had over Outlook (to me), and that was its start page in version 1.4.x. Configuring it to give me an overview of Linux Today,/., and other feeds, plus mail views and tasks... gone are those days, and don't tell me about rss feeds and tickers: they don't have the same impact.
When I read news that these two companies are working together so that their respective office suites can seamlessly open each others documents, then I will be suitably impressed.
All this "sign-on" and "identity management" thing is all well and good, but IMHO the home user will benefit more immediately and palpably with interoperability between suites/programs. Maybe Microsoft will actually become "standards compliant" soon....
Friend, just in case you missed an earlier comment of mine, I will give you one reason why Mozilla,(and by extension Firefox, since that is what I use on my SO's machine) is just that much better: right click on a page in IE and select "Save Page" or "Send Page"... oops... sorry... you can't, and that is a pity.
BTW, I don't know if " Close other Tabs" will help you with your last point... and some of us actually just want a plain old new window, maybe to type in an url or something....
That is true for some things, but not for some little things that I have experienced, such as printer installation (drivers are "in there"), monitors (same story), motherboards (ditto). This is especially seen when moving a HDD into another machine, or adding new hardware. If a component fails, modern distributions are pretty smart about adjusting... and not naggin you to verify, or whatever it is you have to do in XP.
I am taking this from the stance of someone who is an average user, who (normally) doesn't install his version of Windows him/her self, etc (just buys the box pre-configured), and has to call on the knowledgeable friend to troubleshoot/rebuild. Those of us who had been around since the late '80's remember just how rough upgrading could be. To a new user, the modern Linux distribution makes life a whole lot simpler, like the modern Windows OS (which si preety close to a distribution, but i'm not going there!), but has a little leg up in said aspects.
As many posters have said, familiarity is the key, but when the user is just starting out, it is really great to be able to simply setup things without going to driver disks.
Oh... and anybody else catch themselves right clicking a page in IE and looking for "Save page" as an option...? Easier indeed!
I think that the true point is not whether the data is "floating about as raw audio" but rather if the data can be readily collected and made into a readable (listenable) voice stream. Wouldn't that be easier to do if the device itself is hacked, or if the data collection is done at the point where it leaves your machine?
I may be wrong, but I think that after about two hops, that data stream is no longer a stream in the ether that is the internet, but is more akin to a vapour trail of directed packets....
How about the probability that those dear friends of the Indian Government, the U.S. and the U.K. governments would from time to time "borrow" the satelite? How about the possibility that said governments have already placed their orders of delivery of similarly configured satelites? As an aside, lets hope that the uplink doesn't get hacked/suborned and used by others who would like to get a better view at some of our activties.
Let me see if i get this right: You say that what matters is the quality of the original post, and not the content of the post?!!!? IMHO you should no longer take up precious bandwidth on ridiculous statements like that which have little (yeah, right) basis for being rational. Please go to an alternative such as msn....
And to think that the initial part of your post was actually sensible.... Was the latter part a brain fart? Insightful, my dead granny's behind.
I wonder if you took classes in english, and understand the meaning of "any" in your rant. It means "none at all" and I really hope that you are one of the "geeks and shit" that are visually impaired so that you can't really see what it is on the screen in front of you.
Maybe your terminal window (since you are a geek (and shit)) isn't refined enough for you. Sad.
Or maybe it is the Kernel that is Linux that you are refering to? You ever see the WinXP kernel and how preety it is? Or the refined Registry?
Slashdot Mirror
Once more it pays to be well connected in the online community. Now if only this would work with the IRS and DMV.
Behaviour such as graffiti writing and dis-orderly conduct are considered anti-social behaviour, and its perpetrators won't have as easy a time with deniability, plausible or otherwise, when the pictures/video comes into play. Also the guy who always maintains that there was money in the meter will have a hard time of it. This tech sorely needed states-side...but won't happen for fear of invasion of privacy issues.
All good points. Just to comment on the "one CD-ROM" issue: take a look at Mepis, which coincidentally has made a deal with Ubuntu and is using their repositories. Mepis is perhaps the main reason that I like Ubuntu's strategy since it is my current distro of choice, having been a Red Hat/Fedora user since RH 6.0. As far as I am concerned, the better Ubuntu gets, the better for me. Now if Kubuntu could be a bit more like Mepis....
It seems to me that the folks at Canonical are positioning themselves to be the distro of choice for users coming from Windows that have expectation of certain types of software, and are not averse to proprietary software, that is, the non hard-core linux users. By keeping themselves in the public's eye they stand a good chance of doing so.
Any idea about how hot these things will be in a typical notebook? That will be an issue as well as their power consumption over time, especially during a boring 3 hour lecture, or when outside downloading a torrent.
Don't know about you folks, but to enter the library in C.U.N.Y. you had to show valid ID. That part of the "law" does not really worry me, since good terrorists will have fake Id in any case it won't hamper their activities that way. Those in country illegally for non-terror activities will be severly hampered, but that is another issue entirely. The real story is tracking your electronic communication. We know that if done right, this con help track those that are using the internet for subversive intententions such as for kidnapping, bombings and... distribution of music files :)
At some level the ability to be able to track such activity and use it by linking it with to people that were in the internet cafe at the time is quite desirable, especially after part of your neighbourhood gets destroyed and it comes to light that those responsible used various internet technologies in public places to plan, fund and implement it. However, its going to be a lot of information to be stored and looked over to find patterns of information, etc. Who is going to do that? A beaucracy who has problems gettingout from under its own feet, or a privately contracted firm (with individuals who have interests in sharing such information secretly with others)?
This is a mess logistically, and they should know it. It sounds good at one level, but how many petabytes of info are going to be generated and scanned? They might as well just use Carnivore or whatever the USA uses and be done with it... as if it will really help before an attack, or to catch the person who really came up with the idea of the attack... or the bankers or "charitable organisations" from whom the funds came.
...and programming effectively with the (end)user in mind. most of us upon reflection will realise that any properly coded "secure" application will need to ship with a password already enabled. The programmer needs to ensure that the end user not only creates an unique password for personal use, but also creates a scenario where only physical access can "uncreate" any thusly made password via code from a generated passcode sheet (for example).
Corporations should be more concerned about those that can break in via their unchanged admin password on their routers.
These measures that the government of the UK proposes may very well be a bit more intrusive, passive or not, that most people care for. We can feel this way because of certain rights and privileges that have been earned by blood. There are certain individuals that use these same rights to prepare themselves to do all manner of mischief, which include attempting to de-stabalize the elected government. While having one eye firmly planted on the hands that will be using and storing the collected information, the other eye should also be placed at those that use our freedoms to pursue their owm aims that are firmly diametrically oppossed to our free expression of our freedoms, including the right to live in a place where we can be unfraid of taking a train, bus or plane. As an aside, would it upset many of you to know that a group of people were tracked from a suspected "terrosist" safehouse to a bus station where they were held with incendiary devices using this or similar technology?
Once again those with deep pockets go forth and argue a case for something that has existed under another name or description, but not functionality. I think that is where the Patent Office falls down: the wording of applied patents.
It is in the practical examples and application of the descriptions that make "prior art." With sufficiently trained researchers (and sufficient numbers of said people... or bots??!!?) these types of applications and patents will be minimised at the door, and eventually even less will be brought in since it will be known that thorough checking will be done.
I think that Microsft has looked at how well Apple has used BSD in their OS offering, and the wheel began turning.
They have been targetting Unix for a while, and this is aimed squarely at killing off Unix as a viable alternative inside of 5 years, as Win for Workgroups was aimed at Novell. Their other target are the switchers from Unix who tend to gravitate towards BSD or Linux. Doing this will give an option that will be quite tempting, given their installed base.
Off course, could be a bit more smoke and mirrors designed to bait switchers....
Just my two cents.
This is probably the reason why Google shutdown the Google Wallpaper site mentoned previously.... taking care of competitors, but in a nice way.
..due to Apple's planned/hinted switch over to an Intel chip.
*smack*
Well Judy, after reading the Dvorak article again, the points he raised about Itanium goes well with other posts postulating about whether it would be x86 or just (some as yet un-named) Intel chip.
64 bits is the way to go, but there is still that little problem with the Powerbook... which chip will go in it eventually?
An interesting article, but an even more interesting thing would be ascertain if there is any correlation between software liscensing revenues going soft(er), and the OS in use to run said software.
Another intriguing question would be if this may have an impact on the decision to switch, even partially, to another OS in order to realise savings accrueing from use of software with less restrictive liscensing.
As a user of both Outlook and Evolution, I am already familiar with the lengths the designers of the latter went to make windows users comfortable visually with their product. Home users will care less about Exchange (assuming they know what it is) than being able to jump in and start using it, especially from scratch on a new machine.
/., and other feeds, plus mail views and tasks... gone are those days, and don't tell me about rss feeds and tickers: they don't have the same impact.
As an Evolution user, I am personally saddenned by the demise of the one thing that it had over Outlook (to me), and that was its start page in version 1.4.x. Configuring it to give me an overview of Linux Today,
Wanting to turn a perfectly good internet cafe into a coffee shop!
When I read news that these two companies are working together so that their respective office suites can seamlessly open each others documents, then I will be suitably impressed.
All this "sign-on" and "identity management" thing is all well and good, but IMHO the home user will benefit more immediately and palpably with interoperability between suites/programs. Maybe Microsoft will actually become "standards compliant" soon....
Friend, just in case you missed an earlier comment of mine, I will give you one reason why Mozilla,(and by extension Firefox, since that is what I use on my SO's machine) is just that much better: right click on a page in IE and select "Save Page" or "Send Page"... oops... sorry... you can't, and that is a pity. BTW, I don't know if " Close other Tabs" will help you with your last point... and some of us actually just want a plain old new window, maybe to type in an url or something....
That is true for some things, but not for some little things that I have experienced, such as printer installation (drivers are "in there"), monitors (same story), motherboards (ditto). This is especially seen when moving a HDD into another machine, or adding new hardware. If a component fails, modern distributions are pretty smart about adjusting... and not naggin you to verify, or whatever it is you have to do in XP.
I am taking this from the stance of someone who is an average user, who (normally) doesn't install his version of Windows him/her self, etc (just buys the box pre-configured), and has to call on the knowledgeable friend to troubleshoot/rebuild. Those of us who had been around since the late '80's remember just how rough upgrading could be. To a new user, the modern Linux distribution makes life a whole lot simpler, like the modern Windows OS (which si preety close to a distribution, but i'm not going there!), but has a little leg up in said aspects.
As many posters have said, familiarity is the key, but when the user is just starting out, it is really great to be able to simply setup things without going to driver disks.
Oh... and anybody else catch themselves right clicking a page in IE and looking for "Save page" as an option...? Easier indeed!
I think that the true point is not whether the data is "floating about as raw audio" but rather if the data can be readily collected and made into a readable (listenable) voice stream. Wouldn't that be easier to do if the device itself is hacked, or if the data collection is done at the point where it leaves your machine? I may be wrong, but I think that after about two hops, that data stream is no longer a stream in the ether that is the internet, but is more akin to a vapour trail of directed packets....
How about the probability that those dear friends of the Indian Government, the U.S. and the U.K. governments would from time to time "borrow" the satelite? How about the possibility that said governments have already placed their orders of delivery of similarly configured satelites? As an aside, lets hope that the uplink doesn't get hacked/suborned and used by others who would like to get a better view at some of our activties.
Let me see if i get this right: You say that what matters is the quality of the original post, and not the content of the post?!!!? IMHO you should no longer take up precious bandwidth on ridiculous statements like that which have little (yeah, right) basis for being rational. Please go to an alternative such as msn.... And to think that the initial part of your post was actually sensible.... Was the latter part a brain fart? Insightful, my dead granny's behind.
"any sort of refined look"
I wonder if you took classes in english, and understand the meaning of "any" in your rant. It means "none at all" and I really hope that you are one of the "geeks and shit" that are visually impaired so that you can't really see what it is on the screen in front of you.
Maybe your terminal window (since you are a geek (and shit)) isn't refined enough for you. Sad.
Or maybe it is the Kernel that is Linux that you are refering to? You ever see the WinXP kernel and how preety it is? Or the refined Registry?