I think the implication was that it would make it less difficult for someone to convert from windows to Linux.
But I think that, realistically, I think anyone who would want to run KDE on top of windows are people that are already running Linux w/kde and thinking "Hey, cool, KDE replacing explorer."
True, you have to jailbreak it, but that consists of going to a website and pressing a button, so it isn't too taxing. Then you just install the ebook reader package and you're all set to sftp whatever you want to read onto it.
Why aren't we embracing their changes and using the fact that they've changed it as a historical fact in and of itself?
Wikipedia isn't just the article at any given point in time. It's the article throughout it's whole history, changes and differences intact. By it's very nature as a (mostly) amatuer-penned encylopedia, any given article is going to be filled with bias one way or another. Assuming that references exist throughout the history of the article, then you should be able to mostly eliminate bias by reading through the whole thing, changes by both sides and all.
I have a Samba share visible on my network (although it doesn't broadcast, and you have to know to add//sambaslut/ to get to it). I enjoy using my ipod touch, which, unfortunately, doesn't support secure networks AFAIK. All kidding aside, my samba share contains mostly hentai and furry porn.
Why the hell is it/my fault/ if someone connects to my network, adds my samba share, and downloads my porn? Isn't it kind of, you know, their fault for downloading it?
While this may be true, "The Windows way" is what Grandpa Joe and Bob down the street now. Without having an intuitive knowledge of how to use a computer, they simply memorize "My Computer" > "Control Panel" > "Add/Remove Software" as the way to get stuff off their computer. To add software, they know to pick up the CD, put it in and wait for autorun, or may click setup.exe.
While "Applications > Add/Remove" makes a hell of a lot more sense, it's harder for people who only know "the Windows way."
Before I go any further, I'm a freshman at RIT, which is a pretty geek-heavy place I also reside on the Computer Science House, which is pretty nerdy as well. Right now we're developing a robot to bring us drinks from a networked vending machine to our room, if that helps you any.
Despite our extensive use of *NIX elsewhere, we use an Exchange server for email, which works fairly well. Most students just use the web frontend for it, or just forward it to their gmail account. Myself, I use IMAP with it, but it is frequently borked, and requires the installation of a security certificate for use off-campus.
That said, a lot of students here have trouble figuring out how to forward x11 traffic and a different username via ssh, much less use pine; our UNIX cluster does have it installed, but I have my doubts about how many people use it.
You're the first person I've heard that's ever had a good experience with DSL. The three places where I've lived have all oversold (my 1.5megabit connection pushed 90, 100, 120 on an extremely good day. I never saw 150 kilobytes per second let alone the 192 kilobytes per second that it should have had I was paying $49.95 for this in one location, $52.95 in another, and $45.95 in the last. I had a dynamic IP that changed about once a week, and my carrier blocked inbound port 80, 20, 21, and 22. We were so happy when Time Warner Cable moved in. It was like a godsend...I could ssh into my home network, download and upload files at the line speed I was paying for (still 1.5 megabit, but it was actually transferring at 1.5 megabits, and it was about ten dollars a month cheaper), and finally have apache running on port 80 rather than 8080.
I guess if all you use it for is basic file transfer, IM, web browsing and email, then you won't really notice the difference, but for someone who actually wants use out of their interwebz, cable has and continues to be a must for me. There's no FiOS in sight around here for quite some time...
You can't make DVDs play out of the box in Linux due to the state of copyright law in modern America. Mostly, you have the Digital Millenium to thank for this. However, if the DMCA doesn't happen to apply to you, or if you don't particularly care about the current incarnation of copyright law and want to stick it to the man, libcss is quite available for you to download out of the box.
Automatix should be able to help you with this, and is available with a few clicks over the intarwebz.
This would probably be a public relations nightmare if people cared more. Googling the term "Verizon Unlimited", the first page doesn't even contain Verizon's website itself, except in the sponsored links. What it does contain are things such as:
"Verizon Limits Its "Unlimited" Wireless Broadband Service"
"Who's a Bandwidth Bandit? - The Checkout"
"Verizons Unlimited Data Plan Not So Unlimited"
"Verizon: "Unlimited bandwidth means 5GBs or less or we cancel your service"
People aren't so much buying With Linux at it's current state, I wouldn't be too optimistic about that. While the idea is sound, the implementation that makes it works is far from perfect.
If my mother were to walk into best buy and buy a Pavilion dv9000 with Ubuntu preinstalled, she's going to have to go through what would have to be hell for her and back to get it running: boot options like "nokvm noapic noacpi", blacklisting bcm43xx, installing ndiswrapper over a wired connection, manually installing flash for their 64-bit system..
These are not things that your average non-geek is capable of doing. Until they don't need to do those things to go on facebook, download music and watch movies on youtube, Linux on the laptop is simply not going to happen.
They're right about Windows Update sending more intrusive information...but it's hardly applicable at all. Two main things separate the two (I can't believe I'm putting Windows Update on a pedestal here, but you have to admit...)
a) There's an option to turn it off.
b) It's off by default until you turn it on explicitly.
I read the majority of the thread in the linked article, and it's mostly a debate about whether or not they should be including functionality to deactivate the uploading functions; there's a brief discussion about the legality of sending personal information over the web without notifying users (they came to the conclusion that the URL isn't personal information since it's available on the interwebz anyway...no mention of the $_SERVER vars or PHP/MySQL Settings).
What disturbs me the most is the casual mentality they have towards it. I don't think that they realize the severity of what they're doing by having at least a privacy policy detailing what happens to the data. Mullenweg also posted to the mailing list about this mess being./ed, whining about how the interwebz are out to get WordPress.
Mark Shields wrote:
> This e-mail thread found it's way onto slashdot, by the way. As usual,
> there's a lot of spin.
> http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/25/1632246
It's shocking how inaccurate that is. If anyone has a few spare moments
to drop some sanity in that discussion it would be a big help. It was
obviously written by someone with malicious intent toward WordPress.
--
Matt Mullenweg
I don't know about you, but it seems pretty accurate to me. You wrote non-transparent (unless you happen to know PHP and regularly delve through the code of the software you're running, which the vast majority of people running WordPress don't) code that sends $_SERVER vars, Apache settings, URLs, plugin version numbers, and PHP/MySQL settings. There's no spin on anything, it's just a statement of fact, and there's really no way to justify not having this be an opt-in only thing. The excuse that they seem to be using in the mailing list runs mostly along the lines of "Well, 2.3 has been frozen for two weeks now, so it's too late."
The testers were able to penetrate the GEMS server system by exploiting vulnerabilities in the Windows operating system as delivered and installed by Diebold. Once this access was obtained, they were able to bypass the GEMS server to access the data directly.
Personally, I think that the level people are flipping out about these is ridiculous. From a software point of view, it should be relatively to do. You see applications where the userspace has no interaction with the OS all the time (i.e, public libraries). The other attacks that are discussed in the full article are things like this, would would be accomplished with--oh, I don't know, maybe locks?
Finally, with this level of access, the testers were able to manipulate several components networked to the GEMS server, including loading wireless drivers onto the GEMS server that could then be used to access a wireless device plugged surreptitiously into the back of the GEMS server.
I'm not really understanding this here.
The point is to introduce a version of firefox with no tabs, no history--basically no kind of advanced functionality other than the ability to display a web page. This is supposed to replace IE, which now supports all of those (with the exception of tabs, unless they're running IE7--which requires XP or higher) and could be run on an older PC.
And pray tell, how are we ever going to convince people to do that? In my experience, people trust their antivirus and antispyware stuff to protect them. They aren't going to switch browsers JUST for security reasons, ESPECIALLY if that browser has vastly less functionality than their previous one.
It creates disadvantaged offspring because they would no longer able to develop through natural selection. The whoel point of natural selection is that the more successful members of the species--presumably made successful because of their genetic makeup--produce more offspring. This way, any new mutations that are good for the species get introduced to the gene pool. With no new introductions to the gene pool, there will be no new adaptations. Resistance to disease isn't going to improve, but the viruses and bacteria sure will.
Even if you're in first place, if you stop running, you're going to do worse.
...much less monitor the entirety of internet for posting such as "x is a ho".
As a side note, "(Insert name here) sux" and other similar postings on myspace aren't bullying. If you don't want to see what's on myspace, don't go to it. It's an online community, and because of their anonymity, online communities can not be expected to conform to the same standards as a real community. You always have the option of just not caring what you see on myspace. I know I don't. If you want an account of what bullying is, I'll give you one.
My final year in middle school consisted mainly of me being called various insults to which I quickly developed an immunity, telling myself while they were carving their names and jersey numbers into the desk that they would be stuck working at Wal-Mart until they were age forty and suffered some kind of fatal heart problem from overworking. Once it entered the physical realm, however, and I started to miss school due to hospitalization, I had to protest. Since I had been told that I was various forms of 'gay', I briefly considered to use the zero tolerance policy to my advantage, knowing full well that it would only mean anything to them if I actually was gay, but I decided to keep that card in my hand until later, since I still had a little bit of a reputation, even if it was just with the other people who I played Warhammer with.
The principal, who was a woman, did absolutely nothing other than send one of the main offenders home for a week. I'm sure that was an incredibly effective punishment, sending him home where he had 9 hours to freely masturbate and look at porn with no family home. Nonetheless, the first day back, I was again beaten up, and told that I should leave the school "before something happened to me." At that point, I was genuinely scared, and started appealing to the superintendent, the administrative district, and eventually, with the help of my parents. Not one of them did anything...all of these people where star figures in various sports. I had to complete the rest of that year being homeschooled, which didn't look particularly good on an application to a private, selective high school. Thankfully, I was able to get out of there.
Imagine if you will, a world where your ideas and perhaps, even your own creative works became part of the OS of tomorrow.
Really? One's own creative works becoming part of an operating system? This writer is a more than a couple of years late to get that movement started. I'm sure someone's going to bring up the point that distributions have become complex enough for the user that they could be considered standardized, but your average user isn't going to be contributing much of his 'creative works' to part of an operating system anyway.
In order for AI to do anything like the writer is describing in TFA, it would have to build some massive catalog of a user's habits. A)That would probably become incredibly huge over time, B)Having so much information in a couple of files is like hanging a big sign in front of your computer saying "free data within a guaranteed path here", C)The AI itself would have to be coded like a rock, and given that there are even a few viruses out there for OSX, I wouldn't trust anything that high-level to run on my PC constantly.
I don't know about other/.ers, but I'd rather suffer doing the extra 3-5% of work that my computer could potentially do for me that doesn't require my input.
This happened to me once with my old Suse box. The really strange thing was that it's plugged into the same outlet as my other computer, and it didn't seem to have any problem at all.
After it started working again, I just wrote it off as one of those things beyond my comprehension.
Useless, I know, but at least you know it's happening to people on the residential end.
I agree.
While Google has thus far managed to maintain a good reputation among people, that generally tends to go away as a company becomes larger and larger. I mean, how many people are going to come out and say "Oh, yes, I love M$, they're pushing the envelope in the computer industry."?
If they continue with this, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if they start coming under pressure and mis-trust.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the implication was that it would make it less difficult for someone to convert from windows to Linux. But I think that, realistically, I think anyone who would want to run KDE on top of windows are people that are already running Linux w/kde and thinking "Hey, cool, KDE replacing explorer."
I use my iPod Touch as an ebook reader.
True, you have to jailbreak it, but that consists of going to a website and pressing a button, so it isn't too taxing. Then you just install the ebook reader package and you're all set to sftp whatever you want to read onto it.
Why aren't we embracing their changes and using the fact that they've changed it as a historical fact in and of itself?
Wikipedia isn't just the article at any given point in time. It's the article throughout it's whole history, changes and differences intact. By it's very nature as a (mostly) amatuer-penned encylopedia, any given article is going to be filled with bias one way or another. Assuming that references exist throughout the history of the article, then you should be able to mostly eliminate bias by reading through the whole thing, changes by both sides and all.
I have a Samba share visible on my network (although it doesn't broadcast, and you have to know to add //sambaslut/ to get to it). I enjoy using my ipod touch, which, unfortunately, doesn't support secure networks AFAIK. All kidding aside, my samba share contains mostly hentai and furry porn.
/my fault/ if someone connects to my network, adds my samba share, and downloads my porn? Isn't it kind of, you know, their fault for downloading it?
Why the hell is it
Libterror? I used to use that library ALL the time.
While this may be true, "The Windows way" is what Grandpa Joe and Bob down the street now. Without having an intuitive knowledge of how to use a computer, they simply memorize "My Computer" > "Control Panel" > "Add/Remove Software" as the way to get stuff off their computer. To add software, they know to pick up the CD, put it in and wait for autorun, or may click setup.exe.
While "Applications > Add/Remove" makes a hell of a lot more sense, it's harder for people who only know "the Windows way."
Before I go any further, I'm a freshman at RIT, which is a pretty geek-heavy place I also reside on the Computer Science House, which is pretty nerdy as well. Right now we're developing a robot to bring us drinks from a networked vending machine to our room, if that helps you any. Despite our extensive use of *NIX elsewhere, we use an Exchange server for email, which works fairly well. Most students just use the web frontend for it, or just forward it to their gmail account. Myself, I use IMAP with it, but it is frequently borked, and requires the installation of a security certificate for use off-campus. That said, a lot of students here have trouble figuring out how to forward x11 traffic and a different username via ssh, much less use pine; our UNIX cluster does have it installed, but I have my doubts about how many people use it.
In Soviet Russia, movies watch you!
Quick, the tubes are clogged! Call Senator Stevens so we can regulate it!
You're the first person I've heard that's ever had a good experience with DSL. The three places where I've lived have all oversold (my 1.5megabit connection pushed 90, 100, 120 on an extremely good day. I never saw 150 kilobytes per second let alone the 192 kilobytes per second that it should have had I was paying $49.95 for this in one location, $52.95 in another, and $45.95 in the last. I had a dynamic IP that changed about once a week, and my carrier blocked inbound port 80, 20, 21, and 22. We were so happy when Time Warner Cable moved in. It was like a godsend...I could ssh into my home network, download and upload files at the line speed I was paying for (still 1.5 megabit, but it was actually transferring at 1.5 megabits, and it was about ten dollars a month cheaper), and finally have apache running on port 80 rather than 8080.
I guess if all you use it for is basic file transfer, IM, web browsing and email, then you won't really notice the difference, but for someone who actually wants use out of their interwebz, cable has and continues to be a must for me. There's no FiOS in sight around here for quite some time...
I don't think those two numbers are that far from each other.
This isn't really relevant...
You can't make DVDs play out of the box in Linux due to the state of copyright law in modern America. Mostly, you have the Digital Millenium to thank for this. However, if the DMCA doesn't happen to apply to you, or if you don't particularly care about the current incarnation of copyright law and want to stick it to the man, libcss is quite available for you to download out of the box.
Automatix should be able to help you with this, and is available with a few clicks over the intarwebz.
Am I the only one who thinks the parent is talking about condoms?
That's too bad...
I've been trying to get FiOS for about eight months now, but they won't install it here. Can I have yours?
This would probably be a public relations nightmare if people cared more. Googling the term "Verizon Unlimited", the first page doesn't even contain Verizon's website itself, except in the sponsored links. What it does contain are things such as:
"Verizon Limits Its "Unlimited" Wireless Broadband Service"
"Who's a Bandwidth Bandit? - The Checkout"
"Verizons Unlimited Data Plan Not So Unlimited"
"Verizon: "Unlimited bandwidth means 5GBs or less or we cancel your service"
People aren't so much buying With Linux at it's current state, I wouldn't be too optimistic about that. While the idea is sound, the implementation that makes it works is far from perfect. If my mother were to walk into best buy and buy a Pavilion dv9000 with Ubuntu preinstalled, she's going to have to go through what would have to be hell for her and back to get it running: boot options like "nokvm noapic noacpi", blacklisting bcm43xx, installing ndiswrapper over a wired connection, manually installing flash for their 64-bit system.. These are not things that your average non-geek is capable of doing. Until they don't need to do those things to go on facebook, download music and watch movies on youtube, Linux on the laptop is simply not going to happen.
I'm not really understanding this here. The point is to introduce a version of firefox with no tabs, no history--basically no kind of advanced functionality other than the ability to display a web page. This is supposed to replace IE, which now supports all of those (with the exception of tabs, unless they're running IE7--which requires XP or higher) and could be run on an older PC. And pray tell, how are we ever going to convince people to do that? In my experience, people trust their antivirus and antispyware stuff to protect them. They aren't going to switch browsers JUST for security reasons, ESPECIALLY if that browser has vastly less functionality than their previous one.
It creates disadvantaged offspring because they would no longer able to develop through natural selection. The whoel point of natural selection is that the more successful members of the species--presumably made successful because of their genetic makeup--produce more offspring. This way, any new mutations that are good for the species get introduced to the gene pool. With no new introductions to the gene pool, there will be no new adaptations. Resistance to disease isn't going to improve, but the viruses and bacteria sure will.
Even if you're in first place, if you stop running, you're going to do worse.
...much less monitor the entirety of internet for posting such as "x is a ho".
As a side note, "(Insert name here) sux" and other similar postings on myspace aren't bullying. If you don't want to see what's on myspace, don't go to it. It's an online community, and because of their anonymity, online communities can not be expected to conform to the same standards as a real community. You always have the option of just not caring what you see on myspace. I know I don't. If you want an account of what bullying is, I'll give you one.
My final year in middle school consisted mainly of me being called various insults to which I quickly developed an immunity, telling myself while they were carving their names and jersey numbers into the desk that they would be stuck working at Wal-Mart until they were age forty and suffered some kind of fatal heart problem from overworking. Once it entered the physical realm, however, and I started to miss school due to hospitalization, I had to protest. Since I had been told that I was various forms of 'gay', I briefly considered to use the zero tolerance policy to my advantage, knowing full well that it would only mean anything to them if I actually was gay, but I decided to keep that card in my hand until later, since I still had a little bit of a reputation, even if it was just with the other people who I played Warhammer with.
The principal, who was a woman, did absolutely nothing other than send one of the main offenders home for a week. I'm sure that was an incredibly effective punishment, sending him home where he had 9 hours to freely masturbate and look at porn with no family home. Nonetheless, the first day back, I was again beaten up, and told that I should leave the school "before something happened to me." At that point, I was genuinely scared, and started appealing to the superintendent, the administrative district, and eventually, with the help of my parents. Not one of them did anything...all of these people where star figures in various sports. I had to complete the rest of that year being homeschooled, which didn't look particularly good on an application to a private, selective high school. Thankfully, I was able to get out of there.
This happened to me once with my old Suse box. The really strange thing was that it's plugged into the same outlet as my other computer, and it didn't seem to have any problem at all. After it started working again, I just wrote it off as one of those things beyond my comprehension. Useless, I know, but at least you know it's happening to people on the residential end.
I agree. While Google has thus far managed to maintain a good reputation among people, that generally tends to go away as a company becomes larger and larger. I mean, how many people are going to come out and say "Oh, yes, I love M$, they're pushing the envelope in the computer industry."? If they continue with this, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if they start coming under pressure and mis-trust.
I'd be very interested to see what the folks at Apple have to say about this.