That is precisely my point. Win2k or XP are not true multi-user OS/es with proper division of privileges. Software writers encouraged by Microsoft are making use of the assumption that the user of the system will indeed be an Admin, which is completely dumb and at the root of most of the security problems Windows is facing today.
In contrast, Unix, Linux or MacOS/X simply don't have that problem, and there are plenty of complex business applications that work on all these O/Ses just fine. BTW this is not the "new" way to look at things, it's always been like that. Microsoft is 30 years behind on this issue, despite all the advances they might have anywhere else.
1. Everyone has the right to own, use, dispose of and bequeath his or her lawfully acquired possessions. No one may be deprived of his or her possessions, except in the public interest and in the cases and under the conditions provided for by law, subject to fair compensation being paid in good time for their loss. The use of property may be regulated by law insofar as is necessary for the general interest.
2. Intellectual property shall be protected.
Hardly something I'd say would be offensive.
The constitution is "on hold" because it's pretty much evident that today it would be defeated, at least in the UK, Sweden and Denmark, after the two "no". People have longer memories than individuals, I'm pretty sure the constitution will not pass in its present state.
Mind you I'm of the opinion that even the "old" constitution is many times better than what passes for rules in the present EU.
The main problem is that the constitution is for the most part unreadable. No one can understant what's in there, short of making this undertaking one's career.
Anyway, the old "new" constitution is dead in the water right now thanks to French and Dutch voters. ATM the EU is seriously annoying Microsoft over its overly militant use of IP to squash competition, whereas we all know how it worked out in the US.
Of course there is the slight problem of ammo for the AK47, which AFAIK is not yet US-Army standard issue, is it ?
Same pb with nice self-made home theater. What content are you going to play ?
Re:Mr. Thurrott forgives Microsoft
on
How Vista Disappoints
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Actually this was from win2k onwards. However the criticism is not so much that 2k/XP have a way to let a normal user run a program as an administrator, rather than the fact that mere users must actually run most applications (even games) as the Administrator. Whether this is achieved through actually login as the admin or through the "run as" feature is irrelevant.
"run as" and login as an Administrator should be reserved for administrative tasks like managing users and devices, not running standard applications.
In my opinion it would quite possible to write good quality F/OSS graphics drivers and get to the point where they work well enough relatively rapidly.
The problems are that (1) there is not enough incentive and (2) the GPU world is a moving target. Nvidia and ATI both provide drivers that work "well enough", and have done that for a long time. Who would be willing to test drive very alpha 3D graphics drivers when the proprietary ones work OK ?
Also with a lot of effort we would probably be able to use a F/OSS driver that would support the GeForce2 GPU and equivalent adequatly by now, but what of the newer ones ? What is required is reverse engineering on a huge scale that the F/OSS world cannot really afford. Instead developers are turning to more interesting questions.
The issue however is that those proprietary drivers aren't that great in reality. Sure the Nvidia ones are more or less on par with the Windows one, but is that really something that we should settle for? I can't get Linux to ACPI sleep correctly with the Nvidia driver loaded, for example. Sometimes my X server crashes spectacularly for no reason, something that never happens with the (much simpler, for sure) F/OSS "nv" driver.
I believe this issue will sort itself out in a few years. GPU innovation has been great but I'm not sure it will continue unabated for very long. When GPUs stabilize it will be a better time to write a truly Free driver. Also by then maybe the Nvidias and the ATIs of the world will finally see the light and OSS at least some of their work. Perhaps a third player (Intel, or Matrox ?) will come up with O/SS drivers and eventually force others to do the same ? Perhaps the era of the gaming PC is coming to an end and the GPU war will continue onto consoles, in which case nobody will care about up-to-date 3D on Linux/BSD, etc.
In the meantime Nvidia and ATI can't really change their policy on Linux/BSD/Solaris/etc, It would probably mean extra effort for them with little return. OTOH they can't drop their proprietary driver either. Doing this would provide a massive incentive for reverse-engineering, something I'm sure they are keen to avoid, at the smallest cost to them possible.
We are all stuck for the time being I think. Purists on either side maybe would like to change that but I don't see it coming soon.
1- Linux has become very easy to use (try Ubuntu some day), just as easy as Windows, if not easier. It is right now challenging OS/X IMHO. Ask my 5 yo daughter, no problem (and she can't even read). What happens is many people are trained to the way Windows does things, even when they don't make any sense (the whole "start" button business for example), so their opinion is biased. I'm trained to Linux, I don't think the way Windows does most thing is particularly simple or logical (lots and lots of mouse clicks for even the simplest tasks!)
2- Linux has way way *way* more drivers than Windows. Windows doesn't even boot on a PPC architecture, not to mention most of the 24 architectures supported by Linux. Windows will only boot your graphics card in VESA compatibility mode, it doesn't know the simplest thing about such devices. What happens is all PC manufacturers also provide Windows drivers (on x86). This is not at all the same thing as Windows (Microsoft) itself providing the drivers. At any rate these days Linux will support just about anything you can throw at it, with a few notable very proprietary exceptions that (a) refuse to publish specs and (b) refuse to provide drivers. Broadcomm comes to mind, but even that is being worked on.
Other example : have you tried to install Windows XP on a system with SATA disks only and no floppy ? There is absolutely No Way (actually you *can* put the drivers on a custom XP boot disk, if you know how and if you have access to another machine with CD burner. Otherwise no go)
Final example : have you tried running WinXP/64 on an Athlon64 or recent P-IV ? Noticed a little lack of drivers there, perhaps? Manufacturers are not interested in providing 64-bit drivers, and Microsoft is a little stuck there. OTOH there is no problem under Linux.
3- despite being a pretty heavy Linux user, the last time I recompiled a kernel was more than 3 years ago, and it turned out to be completely unnecessary. This is the only time I've felt the need to compile a 2.6.x series kernel. Before, yes, especially for sound support with ALSA, but those days are over.
In other words things are changing *quite* rapidly in the Linux world.
Actually Windows can hibernate to disk too (and recent versions of Linux), I can see a solution where dual-booting between OSes would take a few seconds either way, and you would keep your desktop organized, applications opened, games running etc no matter what.
It would make dual-booting a perfectly bearable experience. I don't think it would require that much work.
AFAIK, Apple only has a single kernel for each architecture (PPC or x86), that runs indifferently on 32-bit or 64-bit hardware. Clearly the kernel is then strictly 32-bit, however it allows some 64-bit applications to run.
ATM these 64-bit applications cannot call the GUI directly. You have to develop your interface separately as a 32-bit app, and then use IPC to communicate with the 64-bit backend. This is a little clunky to say the least.
This is one thing that Linux does very well. On a recent distribution like FC4, on x86_64 applications can be indifferently 32-bit or 64-bit, GUI or not GUI, there are no restrictions.
Yes, right, and Linux was pretty damn small too when it was only running on Linus' PC.
What these big guys are missing is that the largest part of the Linux kernel by far is simply a huge pile of drivers for just about any piece of computer hardware under the Sun.
I'm sorry to break it to Pr. Tannenbaum, whom I respect very much for his books, but if he wants to get Minix running on just about everything too, not to mention efficiently, he's going to have to get cracking and start writing these millons of LoC, because he's going to need each and every one of them.
In the latest (2.6.16.2) kernel, the total size is about 260MB, of which the proper architecture-independent kernel code takes 1.3MB, i.e 0.5%. If the figure of 3MLoC is to be believed, that puts the Linux kernel weight at only 16,000 LoC or thereabouts. The rest is a small portion for the 24 architectures that Linux supports, and drivers, drivers, drivers.
In other words, Linux is not that fat, and Prof A.T. is full of it quoting the numbers that make him look smart.
Re:Apple is going to make a killing...
on
Going To Boot Camp
·
· Score: 1
OK thanks, however even with the 20% discount for "laptop of the week" or somesuch from the page you give, with the options you listed I get $1723, down from $2150. Maybe you started from a different laptop, I started from the leftmost one, the supposedly best one.
So really, unless you hunt for those rare deals, the DELL is only slightly cheaper than the Mac, and the difference might be attributed to having to recoup more R&D + Dev of OS/X or whatnot.
Mind you, the DELL ships with 2y warranty to the Apple's 1y, and getting one like that DELL for the price you quote is one hell of a deal.
Yes, I basically agree with what you said. Knowing myself (I think), unwittingly hosting CP on my disk would cause me to try and do something about it. This is not a battle I'm prepared to face right now. I try to give time and money to other causes like third world education and hunger projects. From what I read not much can be done against CP on freenet anyway. If this is true I would probably simply lose sleep for little result.
On the other hand I think, maybe I'm wrong, that Freenet is overrated as a political/free speech tool. Maybe there are some interesting stuff on there, but right now I think there are other ways to get the information where it needs to be. In many poor countries access to electricity is a huge problem, I don't think any form of internet gets there.
In many countries, democratic or not, access to raw information is extremely important. How to fix a water pump? how to mend a roof? How to make water drinkable? It gets there by word of mouth. The world has other, more pressing problems to fix than free speech for people on the Internet.
According to Ms. Thatcher, who was I think in a good position to comment, the UK got a lot of help from the French on the Exocet and Super-etendard issues. Here is a relevant quote :
French president François Mitterrand gave full support to the UK in the Falklands war. As a large part of Argentina's military equipment was French-made, French support was crucial. France provided aircraft, identical to the ones it supplied to Argentina, for British pilots to train against. France provided intelligence to help sabotage the Exocet missiles it sold to Argentina. In her memoirs Margaret Thatcher says of Mitterrand that "I never forgot the debt we owed him for his personal support...throughout the Falklands crisis". Sir John Nott, who was Secretary of State for Defence during the conflict later acknowledged: "In so many ways Mitterrand and the French were our greatest allies".
In the same link you'll read that at the same time as the French were helping the UK, the US were trying to pressure Thatcher to accept a settlement with Argentina.
The UK also got a huge help from Chile (Pinochet was and remained a great friend of Thatcher), who started deploying troops in the south of the country, thereby tying up quite a few Argentinian soldiers there.
I'm a scientist, I go to international conference all the freaking time, in an IT-related field (image analysis/processing, computer vision, etc).
I have a Mac, and I am most definitely in a tiny minority. Usually us Mac users at conferences give ourselves a little nod and exchange pleasanteries, as members of a little coterie of adventurous and discerning computer hardware users. A little bit like bikers on the road.
Yet I estimate Macs are extremely popular amongst our little sect, easily 2 or 3 times the rate of the general population, i.e perhaps 5-6% of IT scientists are Mac users, if that.
With all due respect, get out of your bubble. Macs may be great and well-built, but also (up to now) slow, (still very) expensive and not compatible with Windows, and not great with Linux either. Apple seems to be fond of using suppliers who don't care about opening up their specs.
I can't face the idea of CP on my HD, even if I don't know it's CP. Hence no freenet for me. The buck stops here.
I'm not deluding myself as far as saying I'm doing something about the problem, but at least I'm not ignoring the issue, or tossing it aside in yet another bout of self delusion.
Slashdot Mirror
That is precisely my point. Win2k or XP are not true multi-user OS/es with proper division of privileges. Software writers encouraged by Microsoft are making use of the assumption that the user of the system will indeed be an Admin, which is completely dumb and at the root of most of the security problems Windows is facing today.
In contrast, Unix, Linux or MacOS/X simply don't have that problem, and there are plenty of complex business applications that work on all these O/Ses just fine. BTW this is not the "new" way to look at things, it's always been like that. Microsoft is 30 years behind on this issue, despite all the advances they might have anywhere else.
The article in question says :
Article II-77 Right to property
1. Everyone has the right to own, use, dispose of and bequeath his or her lawfully acquired possessions. No one may be deprived of his or her possessions, except in the public interest and in the cases and under the conditions provided for by law, subject to fair compensation being paid in good time for their loss. The use of property may be regulated by law insofar as is necessary for the general interest.
2. Intellectual property shall be protected.
Hardly something I'd say would be offensive.
The constitution is "on hold" because it's pretty much evident that today it would be defeated, at least in the UK, Sweden and Denmark, after the two "no". People have longer memories than individuals, I'm pretty sure the constitution will not pass in its present state.
Mind you I'm of the opinion that even the "old" constitution is many times better than what passes for rules in the present EU.
The main problem is that the constitution is for the most part unreadable. No one can understant what's in there, short of making this undertaking one's career.
Sorry, where did you get this "information" ?
Anyway, the old "new" constitution is dead in the water right now thanks to French and Dutch voters. ATM the EU is seriously annoying Microsoft over its overly militant use of IP to squash competition, whereas we all know how it worked out in the US.
I wouldn't count the old EU out just right now.
Of course there is the slight problem of ammo for the AK47, which AFAIK is not yet US-Army standard issue, is it ?
Same pb with nice self-made home theater. What content are you going to play ?
Actually this was from win2k onwards. However the criticism is not so much that 2k/XP have a way to let a normal user run a program as an administrator, rather than the fact that mere users must actually run most applications (even games) as the Administrator. Whether this is achieved through actually login as the admin or through the "run as" feature is irrelevant.
"run as" and login as an Administrator should be reserved for administrative tasks like managing users and devices, not running standard applications.
I'm sorry for you & your family.
These are terrible working conditions. I would understand from the POV of a start-up, but for a large company this is heartless.
Not on Linux, and reportedly not on OS/X either. Both have at least a respectable 64-bit backend that works.
Do your own benchmarks on your own code.
On mine I routinely get 15% better speed on 64-bit code vs. 32-bit on the Athlon64. There is no hype as far as I'm concerned.
In my opinion it would quite possible to write good quality F/OSS graphics drivers and get to the point where they work well enough relatively rapidly.
The problems are that (1) there is not enough incentive and (2) the GPU world is a moving target. Nvidia and ATI both provide drivers that work "well enough", and have done that for a long time. Who would be willing to test drive very alpha 3D graphics drivers when the proprietary ones work OK ?
Also with a lot of effort we would probably be able to use a F/OSS driver that would support the GeForce2 GPU and equivalent adequatly by now, but what of the newer ones ? What is required is reverse engineering on a huge scale that the F/OSS world cannot really afford. Instead developers are turning to more interesting questions.
The issue however is that those proprietary drivers aren't that great in reality. Sure the Nvidia ones are more or less on par with the Windows one, but is that really something that we should settle for? I can't get Linux to ACPI sleep correctly with the Nvidia driver loaded, for example. Sometimes my X server crashes spectacularly for no reason, something that never happens with the (much simpler, for sure) F/OSS "nv" driver.
I believe this issue will sort itself out in a few years. GPU innovation has been great but I'm not sure it will continue unabated for very long. When GPUs stabilize it will be a better time to write a truly Free driver. Also by then maybe the Nvidias and the ATIs of the world will finally see the light and OSS at least some of their work. Perhaps a third player (Intel, or Matrox ?) will come up with O/SS drivers and eventually force others to do the same ? Perhaps the era of the gaming PC is coming to an end and the GPU war will continue onto consoles, in which case nobody will care about up-to-date 3D on Linux/BSD, etc.
In the meantime Nvidia and ATI can't really change their policy on Linux/BSD/Solaris/etc, It would probably mean extra effort for them with little return. OTOH they can't drop their proprietary driver either. Doing this would provide a massive incentive for reverse-engineering, something I'm sure they are keen to avoid, at the smallest cost to them possible.
We are all stuck for the time being I think. Purists on either side maybe would like to change that but I don't see it coming soon.
You can turn off up2date, and FC doesn't come with Java at all. Besides you should use yum instead of up2date.
AFAIK win2k is not free. It costs exactly the same as XP.
Sorry, but you are supposed to preview....
False on all counts.
1- Linux has become very easy to use (try Ubuntu some day), just as easy as Windows, if not easier. It is right now challenging OS/X IMHO. Ask my 5 yo daughter, no problem (and she can't even read). What happens is many people are trained to the way Windows does things, even when they don't make any sense (the whole "start" button business for example), so their opinion is biased. I'm trained to Linux, I don't think the way Windows does most thing is particularly simple or logical (lots and lots of mouse clicks for even the simplest tasks!)
2- Linux has way way *way* more drivers than Windows. Windows doesn't even boot on a PPC architecture, not to mention most of the 24 architectures supported by Linux. Windows will only boot your graphics card in VESA compatibility mode, it doesn't know the simplest thing about such devices. What happens is all PC manufacturers also provide Windows drivers (on x86). This is not at all the same thing as Windows (Microsoft) itself providing the drivers. At any rate these days Linux will support just about anything you can throw at it, with a few notable very proprietary exceptions that (a) refuse to publish specs and (b) refuse to provide drivers. Broadcomm comes to mind, but even that is being worked on.
Other example : have you tried to install Windows XP on a system with SATA disks only and no floppy ? There is absolutely No Way (actually you *can* put the drivers on a custom XP boot disk, if you know how and if you have access to another machine with CD burner. Otherwise no go)
Final example : have you tried running WinXP/64 on an Athlon64 or recent P-IV ? Noticed a little lack of drivers there, perhaps? Manufacturers are not interested in providing 64-bit drivers, and Microsoft is a little stuck there. OTOH there is no problem under Linux.
3- despite being a pretty heavy Linux user, the last time I recompiled a kernel was more than 3 years ago, and it turned out to be completely unnecessary. This is the only time I've felt the need to compile a 2.6.x series kernel. Before, yes, especially for sound support with ALSA, but those days are over.
In other words things are changing *quite* rapidly in the Linux world.
Actually Windows can hibernate to disk too (and recent versions of Linux), I can see a solution where dual-booting between OSes would take a few seconds either way, and you would keep your desktop organized, applications opened, games running etc no matter what.
It would make dual-booting a perfectly bearable experience. I don't think it would require that much work.
Actually he was rich just like you describe *before* going to Disney.
AFAIK, Apple only has a single kernel for each architecture (PPC or x86), that runs indifferently on 32-bit or 64-bit hardware. Clearly the kernel is then strictly 32-bit, however it allows some 64-bit applications to run.
ATM these 64-bit applications cannot call the GUI directly. You have to develop your interface separately as a 32-bit app, and then use IPC to communicate with the 64-bit backend. This is a little clunky to say the least.
This is one thing that Linux does very well. On a recent distribution like FC4, on x86_64 applications can be indifferently 32-bit or 64-bit, GUI or not GUI, there are no restrictions.
Yes, right, and Linux was pretty damn small too when it was only running on Linus' PC.
What these big guys are missing is that the largest part of the Linux kernel by far is simply a huge pile of drivers for just about any piece of computer hardware under the Sun.
I'm sorry to break it to Pr. Tannenbaum, whom I respect very much for his books, but if he wants to get Minix running on just about everything too, not to mention efficiently, he's going to have to get cracking and start writing these millons of LoC, because he's going to need each and every one of them.
In the latest (2.6.16.2) kernel, the total size is about 260MB, of which the proper architecture-independent kernel code takes 1.3MB, i.e 0.5%. If the figure of 3MLoC is to be believed, that puts the Linux kernel weight at only 16,000 LoC or thereabouts. The rest is a small portion for the 24 architectures that Linux supports, and drivers, drivers, drivers.
In other words, Linux is not that fat, and Prof A.T. is full of it quoting the numbers that make him look smart.
OK thanks, however even with the 20% discount for "laptop of the week" or somesuch from the page you give, with the options you listed I get $1723, down from $2150. Maybe you started from a different laptop, I started from the leftmost one, the supposedly best one.
So really, unless you hunt for those rare deals, the DELL is only slightly cheaper than the Mac, and the difference might be attributed to having to recoup more R&D + Dev of OS/X or whatnot.
Mind you, the DELL ships with 2y warranty to the Apple's 1y, and getting one like that DELL for the price you quote is one hell of a deal.
Yes, but woosh nonetheless.
Sorry, I went to DELL's site and listed all the above and my final price was $1755. Not the same thing as yours. Where did you get the -$450 ?
Yes, I basically agree with what you said. Knowing myself (I think), unwittingly hosting CP on my disk would cause me to try and do something about it. This is not a battle I'm prepared to face right now. I try to give time and money to other causes like third world education and hunger projects. From what I read not much can be done against CP on freenet anyway. If this is true I would probably simply lose sleep for little result.
On the other hand I think, maybe I'm wrong, that Freenet is overrated as a political/free speech tool. Maybe there are some interesting stuff on there, but right now I think there are other ways to get the information where it needs to be. In many poor countries access to electricity is a huge problem, I don't think any form of internet gets there.
In many countries, democratic or not, access to raw information is extremely important. How to fix a water pump? how to mend a roof? How to make water drinkable? It gets there by word of mouth. The world has other, more pressing problems to fix than free speech for people on the Internet.
Hello, do you have any sources for that ?
According to Ms. Thatcher, who was I think in a good position to comment, the UK got a lot of help from the French on the Exocet and Super-etendard issues. Here is a relevant quote :
French president François Mitterrand gave full support to the UK in the Falklands war. As a large part of Argentina's military equipment was French-made, French support was crucial. France provided aircraft, identical to the ones it supplied to Argentina, for British pilots to train against. France provided intelligence to help sabotage the Exocet missiles it sold to Argentina. In her memoirs Margaret Thatcher says of Mitterrand that "I never forgot the debt we owed him for his personal support...throughout the Falklands crisis". Sir John Nott, who was Secretary of State for Defence during the conflict later acknowledged: "In so many ways Mitterrand and the French were our greatest allies".
And here is an interesting link
In the same link you'll read that at the same time as the French were helping the UK, the US were trying to pressure Thatcher to accept a settlement with Argentina.
The UK also got a huge help from Chile (Pinochet was and remained a great friend of Thatcher), who started deploying troops in the south of the country, thereby tying up quite a few Argentinian soldiers there.
I'm a scientist, I go to international conference all the freaking time, in an IT-related field (image analysis/processing, computer vision, etc).
I have a Mac, and I am most definitely in a tiny minority. Usually us Mac users at conferences give ourselves a little nod and exchange pleasanteries, as members of a little coterie of adventurous and discerning computer hardware users. A little bit like bikers on the road.
Yet I estimate Macs are extremely popular amongst our little sect, easily 2 or 3 times the rate of the general population, i.e perhaps 5-6% of IT scientists are Mac users, if that.
With all due respect, get out of your bubble. Macs may be great and well-built, but also (up to now) slow, (still very) expensive and not compatible with Windows, and not great with Linux either. Apple seems to be fond of using suppliers who don't care about opening up their specs.
I can't face the idea of CP on my HD, even if I don't know it's CP. Hence no freenet for me. The buck stops here.
I'm not deluding myself as far as saying I'm doing something about the problem, but at least I'm not ignoring the issue, or tossing it aside in yet another bout of self delusion.
Are you sure ?
As long as you don't mind a big lump of Plutonium in your pocket or backpack and the associated health issues, you can, at least in theory.