Your opinion? Is it the result of envy because a mac user spends more time using their system productively instead of configuring it? Those that spend all day configuring their system, installing software they'll never use and reinstalling stuff for "fun" are obviously envious of the productive mac users who spend their computer time creating content and not just playing with the content designed by others.
I don't spend very much time configuring my Ubuntu Studio box these days, except for perhaps setting up connections in JACK (which is really part of the music-making process, but still counts as 'configuring'. It's got the apps I need, plus it's stable.
Sure, from time-to-time I play with new apps (doesn't everybody here?), but most of the time I spend on my Ubuntu Studio machine is either programming (productivity), making music (productivity), doing designs (productivity) or surfing the Web (killing time). Like everyone else, I need to perform basic maintenance (clearing out old unwanted files to make room for others, reorganizing my file systems, etc.), but I spend very little time configuring my box except for the OS upgrade I do about once a year.
WTF would you make bomb threats using your own PC, at home, anyway? For crying out loud, if you're going to commit a felony, go find an open wireless relay, using a borrowed, rented, or stolen notebook.
and know what each of those kernel modules are for and what they do. HInt: names are not always that revealing.
And if you really are paranoid, you should probably have built your entire system with something like Linux From Scratch, but at some point you need to trust some piece of software. (Think this through if you're not sure what I mean)
If some jerk comes and tries to exploit the word "good", what will happen ?
I dunno. Let's find out!
The MAFIAA don't want you to have any fair use rights. That's good! Disney wants copyrights to last forever, in the name of all that is good. Good for Microsoft trying to rule the known universe through monopolistic skulduggery! It's good that Google participates in censorship in China. The USA Patriot Act taking away all your freedoms is a good thing! The death of Internet radio will do us all some good.
and finally,
Bush's trampling on all our rights, extinquishing our freedoms and forcing our troops in Iraq to stay and be killed is not just good, it's great!
Sounds like sudo/gksudo or super (which attempts eliminate some of the insecurities of sudo by only allowing specific commands to be run -- not that this can't be done with sudo).
Ditto, except that the last time I had Comcast installed, they they were still using the stupid install CDs, and this was less than 2 years ago. It was the only way to get your modem 'configured' for the network.
Only this time, my wife called Comcast and made the mistake of telling them we're running Linux. I wanted to kill her. But the nice tech on the phone actually said "Oh, ok. I can't do anything, but I can have your cable modem configured from remote." And this time they actually did it. I was at least somewhat impressed that they didn't just throw up their hands and say "we don't support you."
As far as Firefox goes -- yes, those stupid install CDs require IE 5.5 or later. They will not work on ANY box that doesn't have IE 5.5, not even a Windows 98 box with IE 5.0 on it. The Comcast start page *does* work okay with Firefox, however, provided you have the latest Flash player installed. There are a few minor rendering difficulties at times, however.
I'm going to reply to your post backwards, but you'll see why.
Unix security if just flawed and the flaw is called "root".
There is a fix for this flaw. It's called 'groups.'
Only when the little bugger of an hotplug-manager changes the user id for the scanner device to the logged on user. Which still only gives one user access to the scanner. Have my Wife remote logged in and only one of us can use the scanner.
This is distro-dependant. On Ubuntu, scanner access is controlled by groups. Want a user to be able to scan? You add them to the scanner group. You want someone to have access to burn CDs/DVDs? You add them to the cdrom group. If the scanner device is owned by any user, and owned by the group scanner, the permissions on the scanning device are set to group read/write, and both you and your wife are in the scanner group, then you both have access to the scanner. Try it yourself. Problem solved.
BTW--with SANE, the best way to have two people access the same scanner is via the saned network sharing mechanism, which allows other systems using xsane (or other sane front-end) to access the scanner over the network without having to remote login.
Who me? Anti-MS-bent? Just because I called MS on their bullshit about their ODF? Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that I dared MS' chief counsel to sue me and other open source developers, knowing full well that they are just spreading FUD about the number of supposed Microsoft patents that are allegedly violated in most common Linux distros? Or perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I've never given Microsoft a dime of money for their software and likely never will? (Full disclosure: I do own a Microsoft Intellimouse trackball. Call me a hypocrite.) Or perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I'm posting on Slashdot?
Or maybe it has something to do with my incessant mimics of Steve Ballmer's "I'M GONNA FSCKING *KILL* GOOGLE!" *throws chair*.
Nah. I'm not anti-MS-bent. Call up Eric Raymond. Now he's really anti-MS bent.:)
I still don't think Calc is even as good as Excel in Office 2000 but then I haven't really used it a lot in a long time.
Hmph. I respectfully disagree. I use OOCalc even when I have Excel available to me sometimes because it has features that are not found in any version of Excel, such as additional formulas, automatic column resizing on import of CSV files, better conditional formatting, export as PDF built-in... I could go on. Also OOCalc will often open Excel documents that Excel won't open -- so it's handy to fix broken XLS files!
Yep. You read my mind. It would be nothing but good for us and for Microsoft. It would be dirty, yes, but I seem to remember a quote somewhere along the lines of "If you have rats to get rid of, sometimes what you need is a snake."
Yes. "We don't like it when governments or businesses make policies that exclude the use of our format. We'll support ODF as long no one makes it so it's the only format. That way, when our products produce an inferior ODF file that can't be read flawlessly by the competition due to our 'extensions', people will blame it on limitations in the format and they'll stop using it and stick to our proprietary formats, which is right where we want them. After all, that way they'll have to keep paying us for updates forever! Muahahahahahah!"
I'm not a Google fanboi. Check my posts. I'm as quick to criticize them for their negative actions as anybody. And I'm just as quick to praise them for bringing useful tools to the Internet. If Microsoft is out to screw Google, it's no skin off my nose -- it's not like I own any Google stock. But Microsoft does have a history of using patents to threaten and beat potential competitors into submission, and I'm very much against that, no matter which of their competitors they're playing dirty pool with.
this is a horrible idea. Using the client's whole computer, hard drive contents included, to sell ads is just wrong.
I think you guys are all getting the wrong idea. Microsoft isn't likely to be so much as implementing, as much as being in the patent license business. IOW, the plan is to sue adware producers for patent infringement, driving them away from producing the adware that plagues their operating system products. They might license it to a select few companies who do adware that doesn't screw up someone's entire OS, but I think the general goal is to get rid of adware through brute force rather than fixing the technological problems that allow it to proliferate.
Can any company sustain losing $77 million per quarter indefinitely? I'm not trolling, but seriously asking becasue I was considering moving to Vonage before reading this.
Actually, according to TFA, it was $73 million, but what's $4 million between friends?;)
And the answer is obviously "no." But, the real question is will the company continuously sustain losses in the millions? And the answer again, is "no." That's because the ratio of their net losses to total revenue dropped last year. It was 0.89 in 2004, 0.98 in 2005, but last year it dropped 0.52. See for yourself. It means that they've been losing less money. (Comparing the actual net loss figures doesn't make sense because the total revenue for each year grew exponentially, so you really need to compare their losses as a ratio to the total revenue). It also means that they are likely to continue losing less money as they add more subscribers.
So, based on what I know about business economics, I would say that it's most likely that Vonage will continue to be around, so long as they don't lose their pending litigation against Verizon.
IOW, just as in the opearting system business, their office suite business is hampered by backwards compatibility with everything else they've ever produced?
3 billion human lives ended on July 17, 2007. The survivors of the nuclear fire called the war Judgment Day. They lived only to face a new nightmare: the war against the machines.
'ODF's design may make it attractive to those users that are interested in a particular level of functionality in their productivity suite or developers who want to work that format. Open XML may be more attractive to those who want richer functionality [...] This is not to say that one is better than the other -- just that they meet different needs in the marketplace.
In plain English with a little bit of background.
In English, with background:
"We need people to think that OpenOffice.org and other programs that use ODF are inferior products. So, we will constantly position our product and our formats as being more flexible, having more features. So, without saying it, what we are saying is that ODF sucks and OOXML is much, much better, but we'll support ODF anyway because other people seem to want to use it. Maybe we'll do another 'embrace, extend, extinguish' thing like we did with so many other standardds."
I agree 100%! I won't ever get my service from Verizon or AT&T. They can suck it. If it comes down to it, and the telcos succeed in killing Vonage and everyone else in their industry, I'll probably either suck it up and get my VOIP service from Bright House, or just go back to having a cell phone as my primary line (which is also not from Verizon or AT&T).
I'd call for boycott against Verizon and AT&T, but all those people who just signed up for a 2-year contract when they bought their iPhone would for sure not be following me.:)
I'm guessing the SunRocket customers will be moved to Vonage.
I wouldn't worry about Vonage so much. They have 2.4 million subscribers already. Plus, it's not as if the cable company or telcos offering VOIP service have that much more control over the quality of their service either. They're still stuck with the same problems everyone else is in regard to Internet traffic.
For not having control over their traffic, I've been using Vonage for almost 3 years now over Comcast in Michigan and now Bright House Networks' Road Runner service in the Tampa Bay area and I have to say, the quality of service has never sucked so long as my Internet connection is working right.
With Nokia already backing Maemo based on GTK, and Trolltech's Qtopia based on Qt, what perceived need did Intel have for starting a new project to develop a mobile UI rather than joining an existing effort?
With HP backing Red Hat and IBM backing SuSE and Red Hat, why did Mark Shuttleworth start a new Linux distro, Ubuntu?
Answer: because if other projects didn't fill the bill, the easiest way to get what you want is to start new one, rather than trying to wrangle with the politics of the existing ones.
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I don't spend very much time configuring my Ubuntu Studio box these days, except for perhaps setting up connections in JACK (which is really part of the music-making process, but still counts as 'configuring'. It's got the apps I need, plus it's stable.
Sure, from time-to-time I play with new apps (doesn't everybody here?), but most of the time I spend on my Ubuntu Studio machine is either programming (productivity), making music (productivity), doing designs (productivity) or surfing the Web (killing time). Like everyone else, I need to perform basic maintenance (clearing out old unwanted files to make room for others, reorganizing my file systems, etc.), but I spend very little time configuring my box except for the OS upgrade I do about once a year.
I did. He told me it was 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0.
Works for me on Firefox 2.0 on Windows XP. Haven't tested on Linux FF, though, but it should work after looking at the page source.
WTF would you make bomb threats using your own PC, at home, anyway? For crying out loud, if you're going to commit a felony, go find an open wireless relay, using a borrowed, rented, or stolen notebook.
Criminals are dumb.
and know what each of those kernel modules are for and what they do. HInt: names are not always that revealing.
And if you really are paranoid, you should probably have built your entire system with something like Linux From Scratch, but at some point you need to trust some piece of software. (Think this through if you're not sure what I mean)
I dunno. Let's find out!
The MAFIAA don't want you to have any fair use rights. That's good!
Disney wants copyrights to last forever, in the name of all that is good.
Good for Microsoft trying to rule the known universe through monopolistic skulduggery!
It's good that Google participates in censorship in China.
The USA Patriot Act taking away all your freedoms is a good thing!
The death of Internet radio will do us all some good.
and finally,
Bush's trampling on all our rights, extinquishing our freedoms and forcing our troops in Iraq to stay and be killed is not just good, it's great!
Ok. So anything happen?
Sounds like sudo/gksudo or super (which attempts eliminate some of the insecurities of sudo by only allowing specific commands to be run -- not that this can't be done with sudo).
Ditto, except that the last time I had Comcast installed, they they were still using the stupid install CDs, and this was less than 2 years ago. It was the only way to get your modem 'configured' for the network.
Only this time, my wife called Comcast and made the mistake of telling them we're running Linux. I wanted to kill her. But the nice tech on the phone actually said "Oh, ok. I can't do anything, but I can have your cable modem configured from remote." And this time they actually did it. I was at least somewhat impressed that they didn't just throw up their hands and say "we don't support you."
As far as Firefox goes -- yes, those stupid install CDs require IE 5.5 or later. They will not work on ANY box that doesn't have IE 5.5, not even a Windows 98 box with IE 5.0 on it. The Comcast start page *does* work okay with Firefox, however, provided you have the latest Flash player installed. There are a few minor rendering difficulties at times, however.
There is a fix for this flaw. It's called 'groups.'
This is distro-dependant. On Ubuntu, scanner access is controlled by groups. Want a user to be able to scan? You add them to the scanner group. You want someone to have access to burn CDs/DVDs? You add them to the cdrom group. If the scanner device is owned by any user, and owned by the group scanner, the permissions on the scanning device are set to group read/write, and both you and your wife are in the scanner group, then you both have access to the scanner. Try it yourself. Problem solved.
BTW--with SANE, the best way to have two people access the same scanner is via the saned network sharing mechanism, which allows other systems using xsane (or other sane front-end) to access the scanner over the network without having to remote login.
Who me? Anti-MS-bent? Just because I called MS on their bullshit about their ODF? Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that I dared MS' chief counsel to sue me and other open source developers, knowing full well that they are just spreading FUD about the number of supposed Microsoft patents that are allegedly violated in most common Linux distros? Or perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I've never given Microsoft a dime of money for their software and likely never will? (Full disclosure: I do own a Microsoft Intellimouse trackball. Call me a hypocrite.) Or perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I'm posting on Slashdot?
Or maybe it has something to do with my incessant mimics of Steve Ballmer's "I'M GONNA FSCKING *KILL* GOOGLE!" *throws chair*.
Nah. I'm not anti-MS-bent. Call up Eric Raymond. Now he's really anti-MS bent.
Hmph. I respectfully disagree. I use OOCalc even when I have Excel available to me sometimes because it has features that are not found in any version of Excel, such as additional formulas, automatic column resizing on import of CSV files, better conditional formatting, export as PDF built-in... I could go on. Also OOCalc will often open Excel documents that Excel won't open -- so it's handy to fix broken XLS files!
Yep. You read my mind. It would be nothing but good for us and for Microsoft. It would be dirty, yes, but I seem to remember a quote somewhere along the lines of "If you have rats to get rid of, sometimes what you need is a snake."
And, um, exactly when has this stopped them (or any other tech company *cough*Amazon*cough*) from obtaining a patent before?
Yes. "We don't like it when governments or businesses make policies that exclude the use of our format. We'll support ODF as long no one makes it so it's the only format. That way, when our products produce an inferior ODF file that can't be read flawlessly by the competition due to our 'extensions', people will blame it on limitations in the format and they'll stop using it and stick to our proprietary formats, which is right where we want them. After all, that way they'll have to keep paying us for updates forever! Muahahahahahah!"
I'm not a Google fanboi. Check my posts. I'm as quick to criticize them for their negative actions as anybody. And I'm just as quick to praise them for bringing useful tools to the Internet. If Microsoft is out to screw Google, it's no skin off my nose -- it's not like I own any Google stock. But Microsoft does have a history of using patents to threaten and beat potential competitors into submission, and I'm very much against that, no matter which of their competitors they're playing dirty pool with.
Oh, and screwing Google over probably (via Google Desktop Search, which would violate the patent), probably doesn't seem so bad to Microsoft, either.
I think you guys are all getting the wrong idea. Microsoft isn't likely to be so much as implementing, as much as being in the patent license business. IOW, the plan is to sue adware producers for patent infringement, driving them away from producing the adware that plagues their operating system products. They might license it to a select few companies who do adware that doesn't screw up someone's entire OS, but I think the general goal is to get rid of adware through brute force rather than fixing the technological problems that allow it to proliferate.
Be careful. This is Slashdot, after all. Unless they start making bionic penises
Actually, according to TFA, it was $73 million, but what's $4 million between friends?
And the answer is obviously "no." But, the real question is will the company continuously sustain losses in the millions? And the answer again, is "no." That's because the ratio of their net losses to total revenue dropped last year. It was 0.89 in 2004, 0.98 in 2005, but last year it dropped 0.52. See for yourself. It means that they've been losing less money. (Comparing the actual net loss figures doesn't make sense because the total revenue for each year grew exponentially, so you really need to compare their losses as a ratio to the total revenue). It also means that they are likely to continue losing less money as they add more subscribers.
So, based on what I know about business economics, I would say that it's most likely that Vonage will continue to be around, so long as they don't lose their pending litigation against Verizon.
IOW, just as in the opearting system business, their office suite business is hampered by backwards compatibility with everything else they've ever produced?
Wow! I am shocked! *gasp*
3 billion human lives ended on July 17, 2007. The survivors of the nuclear fire called the war Judgment Day. They lived only to face a new nightmare: the war against the machines.
In English, with background:
"We need people to think that OpenOffice.org and other programs that use ODF are inferior products. So, we will constantly position our product and our formats as being more flexible, having more features. So, without saying it, what we are saying is that ODF sucks and OOXML is much, much better, but we'll support ODF anyway because other people seem to want to use it. Maybe we'll do another 'embrace, extend, extinguish' thing like we did with so many other standardds."
I agree 100%! I won't ever get my service from Verizon or AT&T. They can suck it. If it comes down to it, and the telcos succeed in killing Vonage and everyone else in their industry, I'll probably either suck it up and get my VOIP service from Bright House, or just go back to having a cell phone as my primary line (which is also not from Verizon or AT&T).
:)
I'd call for boycott against Verizon and AT&T, but all those people who just signed up for a 2-year contract when they bought their iPhone would for sure not be following me.
I'm guessing the SunRocket customers will be moved to Vonage.
I wouldn't worry about Vonage so much. They have 2.4 million subscribers already. Plus, it's not as if the cable company or telcos offering VOIP service have that much more control over the quality of their service either. They're still stuck with the same problems everyone else is in regard to Internet traffic.
For not having control over their traffic, I've been using Vonage for almost 3 years now over Comcast in Michigan and now Bright House Networks' Road Runner service in the Tampa Bay area and I have to say, the quality of service has never sucked so long as my Internet connection is working right.
With HP backing Red Hat and IBM backing SuSE and Red Hat, why did Mark Shuttleworth start a new Linux distro, Ubuntu?
Answer: because if other projects didn't fill the bill, the easiest way to get what you want is to start new one, rather than trying to wrangle with the politics of the existing ones.