And with open source drivers you have to pray a handful of guys can keep literally dozens if not hundreds of drivers working so its a trade off there as well. I'd urge Linux fans to read this article by one of the developers at Red hat where he says the current system is totally broken simply because you have an ecosystem where a handful of devs are trying to own and maintain 20,000 packages AND the drivers AND keep it all updated and its just impossible. Not only does he recommend a hardware ABI so the companies can just write their own drivers without having to dump them on the kernel devs, but he recommends more of an Android market approach with a sandbox for apps and the devs focused on maintaining the core system and improving it there. its a good read and he makes a lot of good points.
As for AMD/ATI, it works for my customers and me and that is what matters. the odds you'd get AAA gaming to work on system wide ASLR is probably zip anyway, the stuff is just too buggy. Like it or not Nvidia seems to be focusing more on workstations and HPC than gaming as the Fermi cards are hot as hell and power hungry. not a problem if you are putting it in server tower with plenty of fans but that IS a problem with most desktops being midtower cases. So as long as the drivers don't crash, the games run, and the heat and power usage stay reasonable like the price is I think I'll just stick with AMD thanks anyway. I don't see how system wide ASLR is supposed to stop a bug when the biggest attack vector is the browser which Win 7 has sandboxed in low rights more if you use IE or Chromium based, and on top of that the good free AVs like Avast and Comodo also sandbox so I just don't see any nasties getting through all of that yet being magically stopped by system wide ASLR. if they cook up a bug that gets through low rights mode and two sandboxes? i don't think ASLR is gonna stop 'em.
I'm sorry friend but it IS a corpse, you've just been lied to. look up the REAL numbers on unemployment, not the crap the POTUS gives but the ones counting those that have given up and you'll see we are getting close to 25% unemployment. And a LOT of our "wealth" is nothing but fakery, financial corps shifting money and doing micro-second transactions on the market to skim a little more out of the system. did you know we make LESS computer tech now than we did in 1975?
Here friend why don't you start with some real numbers and not the horseshit the media has been feeding you, but don't look at it on a full stomach as it'll make you sick. I've traveled all over the south, you know, the place that supposed to be doing better because it don't have unions? Go to the business districts in the small towns and even most of the large ones all over the south and you'll see abandoned factories as far as they eye can see, just as the boarded up stores and homes are everywhere.
I'm sorry but they are lying to you friend, because they know that if you and your fellow Americans knew the truth there would be trouble. instead they just keep printing money to hand out in the hope they can keep you docile while their friends steal as much as they can but they know its gonna collapse. wish i still had the figures but something like 18% of or fortune 100 have quietly sold their US holdings and moved overseas. they see what is coming and don't want to be here when it hits, but its gonna be REAL nasty friend, best be prepared.
But in the case of Apple the ENTIRE REASON they went to shit is they fired the one guy there that had the skills and replaced him with a cola salesman, with predictable results. And i don't know how you could put intel on that list since they basically bribed their way out of failure by making the POS netburst arch the bigger seller over a clearly better product by simply locking the competition out of the market. intel was NEVER behind as far as money because they simply used their large cash hoard to ensure a lock on the OEMs, similar to what MSFT did back in the day when they had to worry about BeOS.
As for Nokia the problem has NEVER been the hardware, they can make damned good hardware, the problem was before Elop threw the Hail Mary they had no less than THREE Operating Systems, Nokia had become Apple with Copeland, a fractured mess with everyone fighting to make sure THEIR project wasn't the one that got cut. You had Symbian, Maemo, and the Java based OS they used on dumbphones so you had three different groups, all tearing into each other and trying to snatch the best talent, anyone could see looking at a situation like that they were screwed. Elop may get hate for going MSFT but frankly his ass was against the wall, the OSes they had weren't ready or capable of competing, Android had so many already doing it better that their more expensive hardware wouldn't have went anywhere, and at the time HP had palm, so that pretty much left him out of options.
In the end though I'd say it was RIM and NOT Nokia that should have went with MSFT, Blackberry was THE business phone and tying it even tighter with Exchange and other MS Business tech would have been a smart move, instead they rested on their laurels and let Apple steal their thunder. And if Nokia would have had anybody with vision, someone who would have simply crafted a Symbian emulator into Maemo from the start and forced all three groups to work on a single platform they could have had something really great, but again they hesitated and waffled and ended up stuck with no choice but take the check from MSFT and hope the OS wouldn't bomb which of course it did and it is.
so I'd say both companies dead or sold in 4, just depends on how long they can ride on what they have in the bank, I'm guessing RIM dies first and nokia slowly dries up along with the dumb phone market. damned shame because both had good offerings back in the day, but if you don't stay on top of the ball in tech then the ball will run you over.
But you are missing the other part of that equation which is all the insider bullshit and the prestige the name dropping can bring you. I've known guys that have landed 6 figure salary jobs straight out of college with frankly mediocre grades, how? because the one in charge of hires was a guy that went to the same frat. My oldest is doing pre-med at the local college and just because he's done charity work with one of the local churches where the pastor is a big alumni he is gonna go through pre-med with practically no debt at all and has even got a local doctor sponsoring him for all of his text books and a $2500 a quarter stipend.
A LOT of what you get out of these colleges is about networking and name dropping more than it is simply the education itself. Go to an Ivy League college and join one of the frats and it'll be damned hard for you to fail anyway but up, all because of the connections you end up with. While i don't personally think that is worth the frankly insane prices that higher ed is charging it certainly isn't worthless either.
First of all, you might as well drop the sports games as I know sports nuts and they wouldn't give a shit if you put out the same game every year just as long as you have the updated rosters. hell i know one with a standing order at gamestop, they charge his CC and have the latest Madden and MLB games delivered to his door on release day, he never even bothers with reviews because ALL he cares about are the rosters.
The same could probably said for the Call of Honor: Gears of Killzone as again that is a niche that doesn't care about anything but the latest MP maps, again you can just crank out the same product as long as it has new MP maps they'd be just as happy. try logging into any of the older versions when a new one comes out and they quickly become ghost towns, its strictly about new MP maps.
The thing you have to give valve credit for is they are one of the few developers where their games actually have legs. Just for shits and giggles i logged into HL 1 DM and was dodging rockets in a fully loaded server in seconds, whereas I did the same thing with Bioshock II which isn't even half as old and gave up after 20 minutes because there were only 2 people in the entire game.
So to me a lot of that list is like fast food, sure it sells but how many will even remember it in a year? off that list i'd say Skyrim, Batman aaaand...that's about it. Ubisoft has gotten so nasty with the DRM that after the buzz wears off they have a hard time selling them while the dancing games, at least from what I've seen, are only played until the next new thing comes out. i have to wonder if like the music games that it won't be a fad that suddenly dies hard. Valve can sell there games year after year because they have real legs so I have to wonder who makes more money overall. Personally I'd love to see the figures on how many copies of HL1 and 2 they have sold since release, i bet the money they are getting on them even now is just crazy for older games.
As far as Kinect goes I don't own an X360 so i can't say for sure but the one thing i hear4 reviewers bitching about over and over is how inconsistent it is, that one time a move works perfectly and the next time the same move fails horribly. For an example of what i'm talking about check outthese reviews from Angry Joe where it pretty much comes down to Kinect problems ruining the games. Personally other than the dancing games i really don't see what the problem with controllers was that the Kinect was supposed to solve, other than "We need something like the Wii!" which is ironic because most folks i know with a Wii break it out a couple of times a year when a big Nintendo release hits and then back into the closet it goes.
And here's Alex, resident FOSSie whackjob. First of the month, out of your meds already? Sadly you should take them as then you might be able to actually use logic because all of that is documented in the UEFI spec. It says that if you have physical control, then guess what? YOU are the owner! I know, what a concept, right?
You see this is why I enjoy laughing at FOSSies, just like the religious nutters even the tiniest bit of logic blows away your arguments. Your "talking points" are nothing but the classic circle of loon, in fact every argument you've EVER presented here can be covered in the top 10 TM repos because THAT is how predictable they are.
So go back to your circular logic and your magicalmysticalall powerfulOS oh and DO be sure to ask MSFT for a check, because frankly your kind of batshit does more to sell Windows than a dozen powerpoints or even a lecture from RMS because it is YOU sir that make the entire Linux community look about as sane as the guys talking about the lizard people on Above Top Secret. Way to go there Sparky, way to make FOSS look like a bunch of crackpots and conspiracy theorists.
Which is why Tim Cook is CEO of Apple. You gotta give the man credit, he went out and signed up deals before mobile became hot locking them into multiyear contracts to ensure they got the parts they needed at a set price. As we can see it was a damned smart move and has helped Apple keep their supply lines humming while everyone else had to scramble. just a damned smart business decision on his part.
As for Palm that's simple, because HP could snatch defeat from the jaws of victory thanks to bad management and a crappy board, that's why. We've seen similar totally dumbshit moves from plenty of big corps, like MSFT killing playsforsure which had become a very successful and growing market which gave people a reason to use their OS, all so Ballmer could pretend he was CEO of Apple by rebranding a Toshiba Gigabeat and making it shit brown to boot.
Palm like many corps rested on its laurels until it was damned near too late, hell one could argue it already WAS too late, and then when they finally had a decent product sold to a lumbering corp that was being run by PHBs and thought like Ballmer with Zune that simply slapping their name on someone else's product would back up the money truck, well it didn't.
The only reason Apple could pull it off was they had a dynamic CEO with good taste that thought like a consumer, most of these corps are so up to their ass with market studies and powerpoints and focus groups they couldn't spot a trend if someone drew them a picture with giant arrows pointing towards it. Whether Cook will be able to spot new markets like Jobs did is the big question mark but if Palm would have kept innovating instead of repackaging the same old crap once they got on top they would probably still be here today. I have a feeling RIM and Nokia will be joining them soon enough as both have fallen behind the curve and in the fast paced world of tech once you are behind its hell to catch up, much less get back ahead of everyone else. That was the problem with palm in a nutshell, by the time they realized they couldn't just keep reselling the old OS the mobile world had passed them by.
Yeah PBS and Nova rock. I have an engineering buddy that saves me a copy of good Nova and PBS documentaries and they never fail to be engaging. I recently watched "Absolute Zero" which went from the first experiments to understand what cold was all the way up to making the first Bose Einstein Condensate and it was really REALLY good. They give you a good starting out point if you wish to learn more without piling on so much technobabble that those without a degree in the field they are talking about can't keep up, just really good stuff.
Sadly we are up to our asses in reality TV because throwing some trashy people in a room and filming them acting like asses is dirt cheap. A couple of cameras, some trashy folks with huge egos, cheap as dirt and just as common. I tried to watch one of those things just to see WTF a Snooki was and i felt like my IQ was dropping by the second, it was like a retard ray attacking my brain.
Now frankly I watch more Youtube and Hulu than anything, not because i'm snobby but because between all the retarded TV and even more retarded commercials I feel like watching most TV is like one long episode of "Ow my balls!" whereas at least Hulu has shows like Night Gallery and Youtube has excellent documentaries like Battle Stations,20th Century Battlefields and lectures by engaging thinkers like Neil Degrasse Tyson. Commercial TV has just gotten too painful for me to watch, even the non reality TV seems so predictable and formulaic its not even interesting to me.
Because they could just revoke the key, just as they revoked the keys last week that were used for Flame, duh. And I'm sure that not just anyone can walk in off the street and buy a key, you most likely need to be an established business (like Red Hat most certainly is) and go through the usual cert checks before they will sell you one.
Again the whole thing is total horseshit and FUD from the FOSS camp because there is no simpler way to put it other than to just highlight it the owner of the X86 machine is allowed to install his own keys or bypass completely at his/her discretion. So while I'm sure a few distros with looong tail support (because the kernel changes too quickly for keys to make sense with most distros) will buy a key most will simply publish a simple little "how to" if they even bother because as I've said before if you are 1.-Knowledgeable enough to know what Linux is and install it and 2.-Knowledgeable enough to download and burn an ISO then 3.-You are knowledgeable enough to flip a single switch in the BIOS. Which FYI you'll have to go into ANYWAY since I haven't seen a machine come from the factory set to boot to CD first in 10 years.
So frankly this is more irrational FUD, just like all the "ZOMFG Vista will lock Linux out of watching videos ZOMFG!" FUD we got when protected path was first announced. Just as protected path didn't affect the majority doing shit so too will this not affect the majority doing shit, it will help keep Windows grandmas from getting rooted when they click on that link from their "friend" in chat and get a nasty, Linux users will take a whole extra 4 seconds to flip off the switch before they install, its much ado about nothing.
And there is nothing preventing you from growing wings out your ass and flying south for the winter but I sincerely doubt the FAA needs to be looking for your ass on their scopes now, do they?
MSFT CAN lock ARM because they are NOT a serious competitor, they have less than 5% of the ARM market last i looked and its SOP for several other vendors, including Motorola and Apple to lock these devices down. that is because frankly the consumer does NOT look at these devices as general use computers its "A big cell phone that I can push the screen and play games on" and so having them easily rooted would NOT be a good idea. I can tell you as a retailer that my customers call on for general IT advice that shit we haven't seen work since the Eternal September is happening all over again simply because they do not like at these things as computers but like consoles and they EXPECT to be protected from nasties just like consoles.
MSFT can NOT lock X86 because not only is there several other OSes that are used on the same hardware, not only does MSFT themselves have three (and soon to be four) OSes that run on this hardware, but since they have 90%+ of the market THEN AND ONLY THEN would they run afoul of antitrust.
Its simple friend, People DO expect X86 to be general use and DO NOT expect ARM to be, now you may not like that but that is reality and not liking reality won't change it. Shit i haven't seen in a decade on Windows, people just running programs from anywhere (like links in SMS), not giving it a second thought, hell I've even had to warn several about spam SMS that if you put in an email wouldn't even get 1000 people to fall for it, why? Because people treat cell phones and tablets as devices and NOT computers. They not only WANT but damned well EXPECT the device to work like a console, to be a locked down sandbox they can play in all they want without having to think about things like an AV or practicing careful computing.
Now if you want to argue that's stupid, that it is a general use computer? You won't get an argument from me, but then again I've always hated how consoles have this killer hardware that is so locked down i can't do a damned thing with it that isn't approved by the corps without breaking out a soldering iron and a modchip. But that doesn't change reality and that is reality. Don't take my word for it, talk to the people in front of you in line somewhere and see what THEY say, they'll tell you "Its a phone" or "Its a tablet" which to them means its a device NOT a computer. that's just the way it is friend, and paranoid crazy talk like yours only makes the community look like nutters.
And the difference between them and Apple IS....what? I didn't hear the FOSS crowd screaming bloody murder when Apple did it so frankly you have no right to complain when Ballmer just apes Apple, especially since as CEO he has shown time and time again aping is the only thing he knows how to do.
And don't pull that monopoly horseshit, because MSFT has less than 5% of the ARM market which is as opposite as one can get from a monopoly. Again if anything that word should be directed at Apple as they own the PMP market and have enough clout with the appstore to affect the prices COMPETITORS get when it comes to eBooks. Remember one doesn't have to have 100% to be considered a monopoly, only to be able to use your power in one market to unduly influence another, which Apple has been doing lately in the eBook arena. MSFT's desktop power don't mean jack shit in mobile which is why WinPhone 7 went absolutely nowhere, as power in the X86 market don't mean shit when we are talking ARM.
And finally WHO THE FUCK CARES as its not like FOSS guys are gonna buy the damned thing anyway! it would be like complaining about where the ashtray is on an SUV you have ZERO intention to buy, it doesn't affect you in the slightest so get over it. There are a bazillion ARM devices out there that aren't locked down, hell in ARM because anybody can license and build their own CPUs you have everything from little home grown projects like the Pi to big companies cranking out Android tabs, the market as far as hardware is wide open.
So even if it was a hit it wouldn't do shit about changing the market, the absolute BEST they can hope for is 20%-25% simply because of how much competition there is already out there. In X86 it would matter as there is only 2 companies that make X86 units (Via is supposedly still making chips but you never seem 'em) but since secure boot is REQUIRED to be easy to bypass the entire question of lock in there is moot. So seriously, get over it. if you don't like it build a better mousetrap, make a tablet that kicks Apple's ass and kick back and enjoy your rewards. MSFT has never been and most likely never will be a major player in ARM so its pointless to get your panties in a wad over a niche device that hasn't even been released yet and will be lucky if it gets double digit sales.
My mom used to read to me from Bradbury and Asimov, and by doing so sparked a lifetime love of science and sci/fi. RIP Mr. Bradbury, you truly earned your place at the top.
I have NO problem with niche software, i have to support some engineers running Solidworks so i know all about software that is niche. If I were running an ISP? damned straight my backbone would be running BSD.
But what we are talking about is the loons that think Linux is NOT a niche OS and is instead a competitor to OSX and Windows which is frankly not only stupid but more than a little crazy. More than 90% of the progress made in Linux is made by corps for the SERVER space, they don't give a rat's ass about the desktop because unlike the FOSSies they use what works best for a given job and Windows plus a WinServer to manage them is a simple turn key solution.
So it doesn't change the fact that using just basic logic you can totally demolish their arguments in favor of a Linux desktop in minutes. Oh if you want to LYAO go over to Linux insider and read any of Noyes articles, look for anything quoted from Pogson. He's a classic FOSSie and shows the mindset of their kind, he even has "Voldemort Syndrome" where me can't type MSFT or Microsoft or MS, he MUST type "That other OS" or M$ when he is feeling brave. its funny as hell!
In the end Linux desktops has become a niche religion to these people, like waiting for their savior to float down on a fluffy cloud and deliver the true believers to the head of the table. it won't ever actually happen of course, but just as you had batshit people that thought a UFO behind a comet was gonna take them to paradise so too do you have the FOSSies thinking a CLI (which is simply a crude USER interface, the computer doesn't actually understand what is typed into bash anymore than it does poetry but to hear them tell it that is the magical way of talking "directly" to the computer when all it is is an API) has mystical powers and that "If only the world would try our crap they'd see its GREAT crap!" while ignoring the whole "crap" part.
Nobody gives a shit about ZFS but server admins. Just to make this clear, pathetic as it may be that I have to spell this out for FOSSies but apparently they are too clueless to understand this, that or they know they can't win on the subject at hand so they move the goalposts so here goes: We are NOT talking about your LAMP, your cell phone OR your toaster. the majority does NOT care about these things and are NOT the subject at hand which is DESKTOPS. Go run your benches on your LAMP and post them to "Nobodygivesafuck.com" thanks.
As for repos if you are TRULY not smart enough to go to the site of the person that makes the software and download it? Then you should stay on Linux because you are too retarded to run anything else. But if downloading Adobe Flash is soooo damned difficult for you there is Ninite which is "check box, push button" and I might remind you your much touted repo system? yeah they were serving malware in the form of an infected Quake 3 for over a year and a half, sorry. And that's just one we KNOW about, not telling how many we don't because if you honestly think a handful of guys can check a revolving door of 20,000+ packages and understand even what 25% of them are doing I have some magic beans you might be interested in.
It doesn't change the fact that Linux? completely pointless on the desktop. this is why no B&Ms carry it, why both Walmart and Asus dropped it, its just pointless. The only REAL legitimate gripe, which was Windows requiring one to run as admin, was fixed half a decade ago. Even one of the Red hat engineers admits the Linux desktop model is broken but of course since that goes against your RELIGIOUS DOGMA you will probably say he's a M$ Ninja, sekretly working to attack RMS with fungicide on them nasty feets.
This is why i enjoy laughing at FOSSies, like Moonies or any other religious loonies the amount of hoop jumps they have to go through to justify their dogma in the face of logic is just as funny and entertaining. Just admit your logic follows the circle of loon already, otherwise please go back to compiling something as the vast majority of the world really DOES NOT CARE, it really really don't. Oh and guess what? Android shows what we have been saying all along, that as soon as Linux was a valuable target it would get fucked by the malware writers and surprise! android malware is all over the place. great security you have there chief, really makes it worth the bullshit and hassle. of course if you prefer that "security by obscurity" thing maybe you should go with haiku instead, that would make you REALLY leet, LOL!
This is why I've been saying for years the whole "cloud" bit is another dotbomb, because its ignoring how absolutely shitty the American ISPs truly are.
I can tell you that all over the south, big city and small, the ISP are not only gouging they are oversubscibing the fuck out of every line so during peak hours like you have seen they are practically useless for anything other than email, yet we are supposed to use the cloud? Give me a fucking break, I've seen the shit become barely better than dialup for huge patches of the day in large cities!
This is why I have been saying we HAVE to open up the last mile to competition and tell the duopoloy if they want a monopoly on an area they have to run FIOS, because otherwise they will just sit on ass and draw the big checks and not upgrade a fucking thing. Look at your situation, I'm sure being professionals there are MANY that would be paying them MORE MONEY for faster service, yet they are too fucking greedy to ever let go of a damned dime to upgrade shit, all they do is pocket the profits while the lines fall apart. In my area even though its a college town and the area has grown by over a third just in the city alone the prices in certain areas for rentals has gone through the roof, simply because there are now chunks of the city that honestly can't get better than dialup. the duopoly won't run a single fucking line because that would cut into profits, even though the lines would be paid off in less than 2 years and after that it would be even MORE profits, but that requires forward thinking which these CEOs are obviously incapable of.
But the whole damned thing comes down to an argument that doesn't make any damned sense! To install an OS you need to go into BIOS anyway because you have to select the boot order so the ONLY difference on a machine with secure boot is you change ONE more setting while you are there. that's it, that is all you do, you flip a setting setting from secure boot to no secure boot.
Lets face it IT WOULD NEVER WORK ON LINUX ANYWAY because the kernel changes too damned fast and the key would be tied to a particular kernel so for Linux the whole thing would be completely pointless. It is NOT pointless for Windows as Windows does NOT change its kernel so for THAT OS AND THAT OS ONLY it can be used to keep rootkits out of the kernel.
So the whole damned thing is just bitching for the sake of bitching, the ONLY way it would do a damned thing for a Linux OS is if you have a dumb as fuck PHB that wants a checkbox AND you have a Linux that never changes the kernel. Its been years since I looked at RHEL so maybe they never change the kernel and it would be worth it for them, I don't know, but I find it seriously hard to believe that someone would be smart enough to 1.-Know what Linux is and that they want it, 2.-download and burn an ISO but 3.-Too fucking stupid to flip a single switch in BIOS. I'm sorry folks but that just doesn't compute, if you are smart enough to download and burn ISOs you are smart enough to flip a damned BIOS switch.
And I'm sure if you are buying enough boxes that you need to flip the switch on multiples you will be able to buy them pre-flipped from the factory or if you are a lazy type just hire a damned college kid for a day or two to flip the damned switch. That is what i used to do when we had low level IT grunt work, its good for the economy and helps out a kid.
Take a look at how many patents the major corps have friend, you can invalidate one a day for the next hundred years and not make a fucking dent. hell MSFT and IBM file several EVERY DAY and both have high 4 to mid 5 digit warchests.
Its really simple friend, want to do something innovative? build in China and NOT THE USA, its just THAT simple. take the new MIPS chip that Loongson has cooked up. Since they know that one of the reasons people stick with X86 is there is always "one app" that they need that is X86 instead of trying to make a port they instead having been working with a FOSS VM (Bochs I think?) and building certain X86 micro ops into their new chips so that you will have hardware accelerated X86 emulation.
Now THAT is innovative...and could NEVER be built in the USA, simply because they would be buried in the patent minefield and sued for the next 20 years. I'm sure as the minefield gets ever nastier more companies will join native Chinese companies like loongson and simply move R&D to China to join manufacturing. Remember while our economy is a corpse both China and India has exploding economies. Frankly it is easy to foresee a time when companies will just skip selling to the USA entirely to keep from dealing with the legal bullshit.
BTW I'm sorry your OS is totally pointless on the desktop, but it is. Even a tiny bit of common sense keeps Windows running bug and hassle free, hell you don't even have to PERSONALLY have any common sense, just know someone who does who can set the first run up for you, and all the decent software that is FOSS? yeah its all got a Windows port, sorry. Your OS just doesn't have any reason to exist on the desktop, its just a waste of time.
Or maybe, just maybe, Comcast is like the cableco in my area and oversubscribing like mad while pocketing all the profits and not spending dick on upgrading squat?
Sadly I've found traveling around the south that most ISPs while making money hand over fist frankly have creaky as hell last miles and many are even ignoring places where they could make money simply because it would require spending a dime and they are too fucking greedy to do that. I know that when I was there in the mid 00s there were places in downtown nashville without cable OR DSL because they were both too fucking greedy to spend a dime on infrastructure while the places that did have it were oversubscibed horribly. One of the reasons i love my current apt is I'm the only one getting cable net in the whole building so i have the pipe pretty much to myself but I can tell you in many areas cablenet is so damned oversold it practically crawls between 9AM and 11PM.
So he may have just found out as i did that they will sell 100 people on a line that could reasonably take 30 and then stuff the money in their pocket instead of adding more pipes. Its sad but that's ISPs in America, too fucking greedy and shortsighted to see anything beyond the next quarter.
Yep and surprise! It ran just fine. I've seen one where the guy actually went from 1.0-Win 7 but I don't know if that should count because he had to use a VM since naturally hardware from 1985 wasn't gonna run even Win98.
But the bigger problem is support. Linux support is PISS POOR unless you buy the enterprise distros which cost hundreds yearly and thus again you'd be better off with Windows. They simply have NO compelling argument to use their product, none. Software? Windows runs FOSS as well as proprietary so no gain there, all the free software that anyone cares for on Linux has a Windows port. Hardware? I've installed Win 7 just for shits and giggles on a 1.6GHz P4 with a Gb of RAM and you know what? didn't even have to download a single driver, they all "just worked" right OOTB. Support? The BEST you can get if 5 year LTS and if you'll look closer that "support" means you can just run old shit with old bugs. WinXP still will run the majority of 2012 software OOTB, and finally cost? win 7 HP is $89 OEM, if you buy the family pack it comes out to $40. that is for THREE PCs with support until 2020, there is NO distro that even comes close for that price point. in fact at $35 an hour all it takes is a single boned driver for Linux to cost me as a retailer MORE than just using windows.
In the end there just is no damned point in Linux on the desktop, none at all. In the server space the high cost of the top tier versions along with the cost of user CALs means that if you are running a dozen servers then yes, Linux makes sense. although frankly every place I've seen with Linux servers also used a WinServer to manage the desktops as Linux has yet to come up with a product that equals WinDesktop+GPOs+AD=Exchange+Sharepoint for ease of use, but on the desktop? its completely fucking POINTLESS. It does NOT save you money if your time is worth anything at all, does NOT save you time, does NOT save you effort, it just doesn't have a point which is why every major B&M and retailer avoids it. Its just not good for that purpose, period.
Isn't it funny how all the Linux guys can't seem to keep Windows running and clean, while everybody else doesn't seem to have a bit o' trouble? I got an old Sempron 1.8Ghz running XP that I got from a customer in a trade in around 08, that thing is running with the same install and NO BUGS, no crashes, hell other than slapping another Gb of RAM into it I haven't done a damned thing except run it damned near 24/7 as a nettop and file server and it just purrs like a kitten. The box I'm typing this on has had the same Win 7 install since RTM in Oct 09, again perfect and hassle free.
So if you wanna go all batshit? hey, knock yourself out, who am i to judge. but frankly Linux is a hell of a lot more of a PITA than Windows on its worst day. Don't take my word for it, read this fine article from one of the Red hat devs who says what linux is going through now is its "death cries" from mistakes made in the design at its conception. he says the quality will continue to go downhill simply because there is no way to QA an entire repo and have any progress and he's right.
So if you want to spend your weekends fiddling with your PC like a 73 Dodge? hey whatever floats your boat. the rest of us just use a decent AV and a tiny bit of common sense and magically we don't have any problems. Oh and before anybody responds with the usual BS please go to TM Repo and make sure you're just not repeating memes, or if you are at least give us the TM to save time, thanks.
It ain't even religion that's the problem friend, its the fact you can get a guy with two degrees from India and pay him like you would a McDonald's worker, simple as that. If you want to know why kids aren't going for these degrees its because they aren't blind and see they would be forced to compete with some guy from Bombay that paid $10k for his degree while they paid $100K+
Its simple friend, global capitalism ONLY works for those that have enough capital to operate on a global scale, for everyone else its just importing or exporting misery. America's economy is a corpse, India and China are drowning in toxic waste, the only ones gaining from this are the ones at the top of the food chain, everyone else gets 'trickled down" aka pissed on. hell if i was a student today i'd stay the fuck away from any of the sciences other than medicine too, there just isn't any money in it when your degree costs 20 times what the guy you're competing against does.
Yeah and pull my left leg, it plays jingle bells. lets face it NOTHING will change one way or another by this or frankly any other case on the docket because THE CORPS LIKE IT THIS WAY as it lets them lock out the little guys and own good sized chunks of the market. As it is you either sell out to a big corp with a large patent warchest or they will fucking bury you in lawsuits until you go broke..THEN they'll buy out what you made for pennies on the dollar.
You can vote all you want, the corps simply cut a check to the winner, since FDR basically held a gun to the head of SCOTUS and turned the commerce clause into "anything you want it to be" the courts have been more and more worthless, and of course big business likes things the way they are because it gives them all the power.
I hate to say it but the whole damned system has just gotten too damned rotten to be affected by the little guy or common sense anymore. the corps will keep buying the laws and tilting it ever more in their favor until nobody will do shit in the USA for all the legal bullshit and then it'll all collapse. Maybe when the whole thing falls apart we can build something better from the ashes but I seriously doubt either the courts or congress are gonna do anything more than to continue tilting things in favor of the megacorps. We just have too much money in the hands of too few for anyone to fight them. No matter who wins oracle will keep raking in cash and suing, Lodsys will keep on trolling, SSDD.
While this is true i think the larger point is that their "big innovations" are just "me too!" copies of other's work.
What pisses me off is its pretty damned obvious that like a lot of FOSS projects the developers at Mozilla frankly don't give a shit what the users think. I don't know if its because its free software, if they think that gives them the right to just crap on the users, if its just bad attitudes or what, but I have noticed a lot of projects adopting this "We are going THIS way, get on board or go fuck yourself" attitude and it stinks. I think the numbers speak for themselves, FF was growing until they became all about the bling bling and ignoring the users and its been dropping steadily since.
Of course the sad part is this isn't a new thing for the Moz devs, it just wasn't as bad as it is now. Anybody remember how they swore up and down the memory leaks were all in the users heads, right up until they put out the release that basically said "Oh and we fixed the memory issues!"...wait, what? the memory issues you told us didn't exist, THOSE memory issues? And anybody whose taken a look at their roadmap lately...ugh...its fricking metro UI candy and appstores, yep, that's what we need, more candy coating and fricking appstores.
That is why I suggest those that don't want to go where Moz is heading to try Pale Moon if you wish to keep your FF extensions, as they have forked it as of V12 so they won't be going for the glossy bling bling of future FF, or if you're not wedded to FF extensions maybe try QTWeb which has support for flash and ABP and runs on all the major OSes, Linux, BSD, OSX, and Windows.
Because as someone who was a long time FF user and advocate I just don't like where Mozilla is going anymore. they used to seem to care about just making the best FF they could, but then Chrome came out and they seem to have lost their damned minds. But luckily for us there is a wealth of choices now, not only those above but opera, Safari, Chromium,Comodo Dragon which is becoming more and more my go to browser, just so many choices. Maybe if enough people choose something else Mozilla will start listening to their users again. I know its a long shot but I can dream, can't I?
No because that was the root cert revocation that MSFT released to cancel TFA. if you are truly worried about Windows update frankly there is NO reason to run it the old fashioned way, especially when you have more than one machine as it'll just be a waste of bandwidth.
Instead just use WSUS Offline which will get the updates directly from MSFT using WGET and drop them in the folder of your choice, all nice and neat and complete with a simple.exe launcher. It can also take care of.NET, MSE updates, and MS Office from 2K3 up if you have any of those that also need updating. Its great and takes the hassle out of updating, especially on a new build but works just as well for any Windows from XP-Win 7 X64. Combine this with Ninite for third party software and frankly anybody can have a Windows system fully patched and loaded with the basics with almost zero effort.
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And with open source drivers you have to pray a handful of guys can keep literally dozens if not hundreds of drivers working so its a trade off there as well. I'd urge Linux fans to read this article by one of the developers at Red hat where he says the current system is totally broken simply because you have an ecosystem where a handful of devs are trying to own and maintain 20,000 packages AND the drivers AND keep it all updated and its just impossible. Not only does he recommend a hardware ABI so the companies can just write their own drivers without having to dump them on the kernel devs, but he recommends more of an Android market approach with a sandbox for apps and the devs focused on maintaining the core system and improving it there. its a good read and he makes a lot of good points.
As for AMD/ATI, it works for my customers and me and that is what matters. the odds you'd get AAA gaming to work on system wide ASLR is probably zip anyway, the stuff is just too buggy. Like it or not Nvidia seems to be focusing more on workstations and HPC than gaming as the Fermi cards are hot as hell and power hungry. not a problem if you are putting it in server tower with plenty of fans but that IS a problem with most desktops being midtower cases. So as long as the drivers don't crash, the games run, and the heat and power usage stay reasonable like the price is I think I'll just stick with AMD thanks anyway. I don't see how system wide ASLR is supposed to stop a bug when the biggest attack vector is the browser which Win 7 has sandboxed in low rights more if you use IE or Chromium based, and on top of that the good free AVs like Avast and Comodo also sandbox so I just don't see any nasties getting through all of that yet being magically stopped by system wide ASLR. if they cook up a bug that gets through low rights mode and two sandboxes? i don't think ASLR is gonna stop 'em.
I'm sorry friend but it IS a corpse, you've just been lied to. look up the REAL numbers on unemployment, not the crap the POTUS gives but the ones counting those that have given up and you'll see we are getting close to 25% unemployment. And a LOT of our "wealth" is nothing but fakery, financial corps shifting money and doing micro-second transactions on the market to skim a little more out of the system. did you know we make LESS computer tech now than we did in 1975?
Here friend why don't you start with some real numbers and not the horseshit the media has been feeding you, but don't look at it on a full stomach as it'll make you sick. I've traveled all over the south, you know, the place that supposed to be doing better because it don't have unions? Go to the business districts in the small towns and even most of the large ones all over the south and you'll see abandoned factories as far as they eye can see, just as the boarded up stores and homes are everywhere.
I'm sorry but they are lying to you friend, because they know that if you and your fellow Americans knew the truth there would be trouble. instead they just keep printing money to hand out in the hope they can keep you docile while their friends steal as much as they can but they know its gonna collapse. wish i still had the figures but something like 18% of or fortune 100 have quietly sold their US holdings and moved overseas. they see what is coming and don't want to be here when it hits, but its gonna be REAL nasty friend, best be prepared.
But in the case of Apple the ENTIRE REASON they went to shit is they fired the one guy there that had the skills and replaced him with a cola salesman, with predictable results. And i don't know how you could put intel on that list since they basically bribed their way out of failure by making the POS netburst arch the bigger seller over a clearly better product by simply locking the competition out of the market. intel was NEVER behind as far as money because they simply used their large cash hoard to ensure a lock on the OEMs, similar to what MSFT did back in the day when they had to worry about BeOS.
As for Nokia the problem has NEVER been the hardware, they can make damned good hardware, the problem was before Elop threw the Hail Mary they had no less than THREE Operating Systems, Nokia had become Apple with Copeland, a fractured mess with everyone fighting to make sure THEIR project wasn't the one that got cut. You had Symbian, Maemo, and the Java based OS they used on dumbphones so you had three different groups, all tearing into each other and trying to snatch the best talent, anyone could see looking at a situation like that they were screwed. Elop may get hate for going MSFT but frankly his ass was against the wall, the OSes they had weren't ready or capable of competing, Android had so many already doing it better that their more expensive hardware wouldn't have went anywhere, and at the time HP had palm, so that pretty much left him out of options.
In the end though I'd say it was RIM and NOT Nokia that should have went with MSFT, Blackberry was THE business phone and tying it even tighter with Exchange and other MS Business tech would have been a smart move, instead they rested on their laurels and let Apple steal their thunder. And if Nokia would have had anybody with vision, someone who would have simply crafted a Symbian emulator into Maemo from the start and forced all three groups to work on a single platform they could have had something really great, but again they hesitated and waffled and ended up stuck with no choice but take the check from MSFT and hope the OS wouldn't bomb which of course it did and it is.
so I'd say both companies dead or sold in 4, just depends on how long they can ride on what they have in the bank, I'm guessing RIM dies first and nokia slowly dries up along with the dumb phone market. damned shame because both had good offerings back in the day, but if you don't stay on top of the ball in tech then the ball will run you over.
But you are missing the other part of that equation which is all the insider bullshit and the prestige the name dropping can bring you. I've known guys that have landed 6 figure salary jobs straight out of college with frankly mediocre grades, how? because the one in charge of hires was a guy that went to the same frat. My oldest is doing pre-med at the local college and just because he's done charity work with one of the local churches where the pastor is a big alumni he is gonna go through pre-med with practically no debt at all and has even got a local doctor sponsoring him for all of his text books and a $2500 a quarter stipend.
A LOT of what you get out of these colleges is about networking and name dropping more than it is simply the education itself. Go to an Ivy League college and join one of the frats and it'll be damned hard for you to fail anyway but up, all because of the connections you end up with. While i don't personally think that is worth the frankly insane prices that higher ed is charging it certainly isn't worthless either.
First of all, you might as well drop the sports games as I know sports nuts and they wouldn't give a shit if you put out the same game every year just as long as you have the updated rosters. hell i know one with a standing order at gamestop, they charge his CC and have the latest Madden and MLB games delivered to his door on release day, he never even bothers with reviews because ALL he cares about are the rosters.
The same could probably said for the Call of Honor: Gears of Killzone as again that is a niche that doesn't care about anything but the latest MP maps, again you can just crank out the same product as long as it has new MP maps they'd be just as happy. try logging into any of the older versions when a new one comes out and they quickly become ghost towns, its strictly about new MP maps.
The thing you have to give valve credit for is they are one of the few developers where their games actually have legs. Just for shits and giggles i logged into HL 1 DM and was dodging rockets in a fully loaded server in seconds, whereas I did the same thing with Bioshock II which isn't even half as old and gave up after 20 minutes because there were only 2 people in the entire game.
So to me a lot of that list is like fast food, sure it sells but how many will even remember it in a year? off that list i'd say Skyrim, Batman aaaand...that's about it. Ubisoft has gotten so nasty with the DRM that after the buzz wears off they have a hard time selling them while the dancing games, at least from what I've seen, are only played until the next new thing comes out. i have to wonder if like the music games that it won't be a fad that suddenly dies hard. Valve can sell there games year after year because they have real legs so I have to wonder who makes more money overall. Personally I'd love to see the figures on how many copies of HL1 and 2 they have sold since release, i bet the money they are getting on them even now is just crazy for older games.
As far as Kinect goes I don't own an X360 so i can't say for sure but the one thing i hear4 reviewers bitching about over and over is how inconsistent it is, that one time a move works perfectly and the next time the same move fails horribly. For an example of what i'm talking about check out these reviews from Angry Joe where it pretty much comes down to Kinect problems ruining the games. Personally other than the dancing games i really don't see what the problem with controllers was that the Kinect was supposed to solve, other than "We need something like the Wii!" which is ironic because most folks i know with a Wii break it out a couple of times a year when a big Nintendo release hits and then back into the closet it goes.
And here's Alex, resident FOSSie whackjob. First of the month, out of your meds already? Sadly you should take them as then you might be able to actually use logic because all of that is documented in the UEFI spec. It says that if you have physical control, then guess what? YOU are the owner! I know, what a concept, right?
You see this is why I enjoy laughing at FOSSies, just like the religious nutters even the tiniest bit of logic blows away your arguments. Your "talking points" are nothing but the classic circle of loon, in fact every argument you've EVER presented here can be covered in the top 10 TM repos because THAT is how predictable they are.
So go back to your circular logic and your magical mystical all powerful OS oh and DO be sure to ask MSFT for a check, because frankly your kind of batshit does more to sell Windows than a dozen powerpoints or even a lecture from RMS because it is YOU sir that make the entire Linux community look about as sane as the guys talking about the lizard people on Above Top Secret. Way to go there Sparky, way to make FOSS look like a bunch of crackpots and conspiracy theorists.
Which is why Tim Cook is CEO of Apple. You gotta give the man credit, he went out and signed up deals before mobile became hot locking them into multiyear contracts to ensure they got the parts they needed at a set price. As we can see it was a damned smart move and has helped Apple keep their supply lines humming while everyone else had to scramble. just a damned smart business decision on his part.
As for Palm that's simple, because HP could snatch defeat from the jaws of victory thanks to bad management and a crappy board, that's why. We've seen similar totally dumbshit moves from plenty of big corps, like MSFT killing playsforsure which had become a very successful and growing market which gave people a reason to use their OS, all so Ballmer could pretend he was CEO of Apple by rebranding a Toshiba Gigabeat and making it shit brown to boot.
Palm like many corps rested on its laurels until it was damned near too late, hell one could argue it already WAS too late, and then when they finally had a decent product sold to a lumbering corp that was being run by PHBs and thought like Ballmer with Zune that simply slapping their name on someone else's product would back up the money truck, well it didn't.
The only reason Apple could pull it off was they had a dynamic CEO with good taste that thought like a consumer, most of these corps are so up to their ass with market studies and powerpoints and focus groups they couldn't spot a trend if someone drew them a picture with giant arrows pointing towards it. Whether Cook will be able to spot new markets like Jobs did is the big question mark but if Palm would have kept innovating instead of repackaging the same old crap once they got on top they would probably still be here today. I have a feeling RIM and Nokia will be joining them soon enough as both have fallen behind the curve and in the fast paced world of tech once you are behind its hell to catch up, much less get back ahead of everyone else. That was the problem with palm in a nutshell, by the time they realized they couldn't just keep reselling the old OS the mobile world had passed them by.
Yeah PBS and Nova rock. I have an engineering buddy that saves me a copy of good Nova and PBS documentaries and they never fail to be engaging. I recently watched "Absolute Zero" which went from the first experiments to understand what cold was all the way up to making the first Bose Einstein Condensate and it was really REALLY good. They give you a good starting out point if you wish to learn more without piling on so much technobabble that those without a degree in the field they are talking about can't keep up, just really good stuff.
Sadly we are up to our asses in reality TV because throwing some trashy people in a room and filming them acting like asses is dirt cheap. A couple of cameras, some trashy folks with huge egos, cheap as dirt and just as common. I tried to watch one of those things just to see WTF a Snooki was and i felt like my IQ was dropping by the second, it was like a retard ray attacking my brain.
Now frankly I watch more Youtube and Hulu than anything, not because i'm snobby but because between all the retarded TV and even more retarded commercials I feel like watching most TV is like one long episode of "Ow my balls!" whereas at least Hulu has shows like Night Gallery and Youtube has excellent documentaries like Battle Stations,20th Century Battlefields and lectures by engaging thinkers like Neil Degrasse Tyson. Commercial TV has just gotten too painful for me to watch, even the non reality TV seems so predictable and formulaic its not even interesting to me.
Because they could just revoke the key, just as they revoked the keys last week that were used for Flame, duh. And I'm sure that not just anyone can walk in off the street and buy a key, you most likely need to be an established business (like Red Hat most certainly is) and go through the usual cert checks before they will sell you one.
Again the whole thing is total horseshit and FUD from the FOSS camp because there is no simpler way to put it other than to just highlight it the owner of the X86 machine is allowed to install his own keys or bypass completely at his/her discretion. So while I'm sure a few distros with looong tail support (because the kernel changes too quickly for keys to make sense with most distros) will buy a key most will simply publish a simple little "how to" if they even bother because as I've said before if you are 1.-Knowledgeable enough to know what Linux is and install it and 2.-Knowledgeable enough to download and burn an ISO then 3.-You are knowledgeable enough to flip a single switch in the BIOS. Which FYI you'll have to go into ANYWAY since I haven't seen a machine come from the factory set to boot to CD first in 10 years.
So frankly this is more irrational FUD, just like all the "ZOMFG Vista will lock Linux out of watching videos ZOMFG!" FUD we got when protected path was first announced. Just as protected path didn't affect the majority doing shit so too will this not affect the majority doing shit, it will help keep Windows grandmas from getting rooted when they click on that link from their "friend" in chat and get a nasty, Linux users will take a whole extra 4 seconds to flip off the switch before they install, its much ado about nothing.
And there is nothing preventing you from growing wings out your ass and flying south for the winter but I sincerely doubt the FAA needs to be looking for your ass on their scopes now, do they?
MSFT CAN lock ARM because they are NOT a serious competitor, they have less than 5% of the ARM market last i looked and its SOP for several other vendors, including Motorola and Apple to lock these devices down. that is because frankly the consumer does NOT look at these devices as general use computers its "A big cell phone that I can push the screen and play games on" and so having them easily rooted would NOT be a good idea. I can tell you as a retailer that my customers call on for general IT advice that shit we haven't seen work since the Eternal September is happening all over again simply because they do not like at these things as computers but like consoles and they EXPECT to be protected from nasties just like consoles.
MSFT can NOT lock X86 because not only is there several other OSes that are used on the same hardware, not only does MSFT themselves have three (and soon to be four) OSes that run on this hardware, but since they have 90%+ of the market THEN AND ONLY THEN would they run afoul of antitrust.
Its simple friend, People DO expect X86 to be general use and DO NOT expect ARM to be, now you may not like that but that is reality and not liking reality won't change it. Shit i haven't seen in a decade on Windows, people just running programs from anywhere (like links in SMS), not giving it a second thought, hell I've even had to warn several about spam SMS that if you put in an email wouldn't even get 1000 people to fall for it, why? Because people treat cell phones and tablets as devices and NOT computers. They not only WANT but damned well EXPECT the device to work like a console, to be a locked down sandbox they can play in all they want without having to think about things like an AV or practicing careful computing.
Now if you want to argue that's stupid, that it is a general use computer? You won't get an argument from me, but then again I've always hated how consoles have this killer hardware that is so locked down i can't do a damned thing with it that isn't approved by the corps without breaking out a soldering iron and a modchip. But that doesn't change reality and that is reality. Don't take my word for it, talk to the people in front of you in line somewhere and see what THEY say, they'll tell you "Its a phone" or "Its a tablet" which to them means its a device NOT a computer. that's just the way it is friend, and paranoid crazy talk like yours only makes the community look like nutters.
And the difference between them and Apple IS....what? I didn't hear the FOSS crowd screaming bloody murder when Apple did it so frankly you have no right to complain when Ballmer just apes Apple, especially since as CEO he has shown time and time again aping is the only thing he knows how to do.
And don't pull that monopoly horseshit, because MSFT has less than 5% of the ARM market which is as opposite as one can get from a monopoly. Again if anything that word should be directed at Apple as they own the PMP market and have enough clout with the appstore to affect the prices COMPETITORS get when it comes to eBooks. Remember one doesn't have to have 100% to be considered a monopoly, only to be able to use your power in one market to unduly influence another, which Apple has been doing lately in the eBook arena. MSFT's desktop power don't mean jack shit in mobile which is why WinPhone 7 went absolutely nowhere, as power in the X86 market don't mean shit when we are talking ARM.
And finally WHO THE FUCK CARES as its not like FOSS guys are gonna buy the damned thing anyway! it would be like complaining about where the ashtray is on an SUV you have ZERO intention to buy, it doesn't affect you in the slightest so get over it. There are a bazillion ARM devices out there that aren't locked down, hell in ARM because anybody can license and build their own CPUs you have everything from little home grown projects like the Pi to big companies cranking out Android tabs, the market as far as hardware is wide open.
So even if it was a hit it wouldn't do shit about changing the market, the absolute BEST they can hope for is 20%-25% simply because of how much competition there is already out there. In X86 it would matter as there is only 2 companies that make X86 units (Via is supposedly still making chips but you never seem 'em) but since secure boot is REQUIRED to be easy to bypass the entire question of lock in there is moot. So seriously, get over it. if you don't like it build a better mousetrap, make a tablet that kicks Apple's ass and kick back and enjoy your rewards. MSFT has never been and most likely never will be a major player in ARM so its pointless to get your panties in a wad over a niche device that hasn't even been released yet and will be lucky if it gets double digit sales.
My mom used to read to me from Bradbury and Asimov, and by doing so sparked a lifetime love of science and sci/fi. RIP Mr. Bradbury, you truly earned your place at the top.
I have NO problem with niche software, i have to support some engineers running Solidworks so i know all about software that is niche. If I were running an ISP? damned straight my backbone would be running BSD.
But what we are talking about is the loons that think Linux is NOT a niche OS and is instead a competitor to OSX and Windows which is frankly not only stupid but more than a little crazy. More than 90% of the progress made in Linux is made by corps for the SERVER space, they don't give a rat's ass about the desktop because unlike the FOSSies they use what works best for a given job and Windows plus a WinServer to manage them is a simple turn key solution.
So it doesn't change the fact that using just basic logic you can totally demolish their arguments in favor of a Linux desktop in minutes. Oh if you want to LYAO go over to Linux insider and read any of Noyes articles, look for anything quoted from Pogson. He's a classic FOSSie and shows the mindset of their kind, he even has "Voldemort Syndrome" where me can't type MSFT or Microsoft or MS, he MUST type "That other OS" or M$ when he is feeling brave. its funny as hell!
In the end Linux desktops has become a niche religion to these people, like waiting for their savior to float down on a fluffy cloud and deliver the true believers to the head of the table. it won't ever actually happen of course, but just as you had batshit people that thought a UFO behind a comet was gonna take them to paradise so too do you have the FOSSies thinking a CLI (which is simply a crude USER interface, the computer doesn't actually understand what is typed into bash anymore than it does poetry but to hear them tell it that is the magical way of talking "directly" to the computer when all it is is an API) has mystical powers and that "If only the world would try our crap they'd see its GREAT crap!" while ignoring the whole "crap" part.
Nobody gives a shit about ZFS but server admins. Just to make this clear, pathetic as it may be that I have to spell this out for FOSSies but apparently they are too clueless to understand this, that or they know they can't win on the subject at hand so they move the goalposts so here goes: We are NOT talking about your LAMP, your cell phone OR your toaster. the majority does NOT care about these things and are NOT the subject at hand which is DESKTOPS. Go run your benches on your LAMP and post them to "Nobodygivesafuck.com" thanks.
As for repos if you are TRULY not smart enough to go to the site of the person that makes the software and download it? Then you should stay on Linux because you are too retarded to run anything else. But if downloading Adobe Flash is soooo damned difficult for you there is Ninite which is "check box, push button" and I might remind you your much touted repo system? yeah they were serving malware in the form of an infected Quake 3 for over a year and a half, sorry. And that's just one we KNOW about, not telling how many we don't because if you honestly think a handful of guys can check a revolving door of 20,000+ packages and understand even what 25% of them are doing I have some magic beans you might be interested in.
It doesn't change the fact that Linux? completely pointless on the desktop. this is why no B&Ms carry it, why both Walmart and Asus dropped it, its just pointless. The only REAL legitimate gripe, which was Windows requiring one to run as admin, was fixed half a decade ago. Even one of the Red hat engineers admits the Linux desktop model is broken but of course since that goes against your RELIGIOUS DOGMA you will probably say he's a M$ Ninja, sekretly working to attack RMS with fungicide on them nasty feets.
This is why i enjoy laughing at FOSSies, like Moonies or any other religious loonies the amount of hoop jumps they have to go through to justify their dogma in the face of logic is just as funny and entertaining. Just admit your logic follows the circle of loon already, otherwise please go back to compiling something as the vast majority of the world really DOES NOT CARE, it really really don't. Oh and guess what? Android shows what we have been saying all along, that as soon as Linux was a valuable target it would get fucked by the malware writers and surprise! android malware is all over the place. great security you have there chief, really makes it worth the bullshit and hassle. of course if you prefer that "security by obscurity" thing maybe you should go with haiku instead, that would make you REALLY leet, LOL!
This is why I've been saying for years the whole "cloud" bit is another dotbomb, because its ignoring how absolutely shitty the American ISPs truly are.
I can tell you that all over the south, big city and small, the ISP are not only gouging they are oversubscibing the fuck out of every line so during peak hours like you have seen they are practically useless for anything other than email, yet we are supposed to use the cloud? Give me a fucking break, I've seen the shit become barely better than dialup for huge patches of the day in large cities!
This is why I have been saying we HAVE to open up the last mile to competition and tell the duopoloy if they want a monopoly on an area they have to run FIOS, because otherwise they will just sit on ass and draw the big checks and not upgrade a fucking thing. Look at your situation, I'm sure being professionals there are MANY that would be paying them MORE MONEY for faster service, yet they are too fucking greedy to ever let go of a damned dime to upgrade shit, all they do is pocket the profits while the lines fall apart. In my area even though its a college town and the area has grown by over a third just in the city alone the prices in certain areas for rentals has gone through the roof, simply because there are now chunks of the city that honestly can't get better than dialup. the duopoly won't run a single fucking line because that would cut into profits, even though the lines would be paid off in less than 2 years and after that it would be even MORE profits, but that requires forward thinking which these CEOs are obviously incapable of.
But the whole damned thing comes down to an argument that doesn't make any damned sense! To install an OS you need to go into BIOS anyway because you have to select the boot order so the ONLY difference on a machine with secure boot is you change ONE more setting while you are there. that's it, that is all you do, you flip a setting setting from secure boot to no secure boot.
Lets face it IT WOULD NEVER WORK ON LINUX ANYWAY because the kernel changes too damned fast and the key would be tied to a particular kernel so for Linux the whole thing would be completely pointless. It is NOT pointless for Windows as Windows does NOT change its kernel so for THAT OS AND THAT OS ONLY it can be used to keep rootkits out of the kernel.
So the whole damned thing is just bitching for the sake of bitching, the ONLY way it would do a damned thing for a Linux OS is if you have a dumb as fuck PHB that wants a checkbox AND you have a Linux that never changes the kernel. Its been years since I looked at RHEL so maybe they never change the kernel and it would be worth it for them, I don't know, but I find it seriously hard to believe that someone would be smart enough to 1.-Know what Linux is and that they want it, 2.-download and burn an ISO but 3.-Too fucking stupid to flip a single switch in BIOS. I'm sorry folks but that just doesn't compute, if you are smart enough to download and burn ISOs you are smart enough to flip a damned BIOS switch.
And I'm sure if you are buying enough boxes that you need to flip the switch on multiples you will be able to buy them pre-flipped from the factory or if you are a lazy type just hire a damned college kid for a day or two to flip the damned switch. That is what i used to do when we had low level IT grunt work, its good for the economy and helps out a kid.
Take a look at how many patents the major corps have friend, you can invalidate one a day for the next hundred years and not make a fucking dent. hell MSFT and IBM file several EVERY DAY and both have high 4 to mid 5 digit warchests.
Its really simple friend, want to do something innovative? build in China and NOT THE USA, its just THAT simple. take the new MIPS chip that Loongson has cooked up. Since they know that one of the reasons people stick with X86 is there is always "one app" that they need that is X86 instead of trying to make a port they instead having been working with a FOSS VM (Bochs I think?) and building certain X86 micro ops into their new chips so that you will have hardware accelerated X86 emulation.
Now THAT is innovative...and could NEVER be built in the USA, simply because they would be buried in the patent minefield and sued for the next 20 years. I'm sure as the minefield gets ever nastier more companies will join native Chinese companies like loongson and simply move R&D to China to join manufacturing. Remember while our economy is a corpse both China and India has exploding economies. Frankly it is easy to foresee a time when companies will just skip selling to the USA entirely to keep from dealing with the legal bullshit.
So which TM are you trying to invoke? is it imaginary problems kill Windows or people who "know" Linux love it or its great once you get "used" to it? If you are gonna spout the usual BS please choose the appropriate TM so we know which bullshit you are going for, thanks.
BTW I'm sorry your OS is totally pointless on the desktop, but it is. Even a tiny bit of common sense keeps Windows running bug and hassle free, hell you don't even have to PERSONALLY have any common sense, just know someone who does who can set the first run up for you, and all the decent software that is FOSS? yeah its all got a Windows port, sorry. Your OS just doesn't have any reason to exist on the desktop, its just a waste of time.
Or maybe, just maybe, Comcast is like the cableco in my area and oversubscribing like mad while pocketing all the profits and not spending dick on upgrading squat?
Sadly I've found traveling around the south that most ISPs while making money hand over fist frankly have creaky as hell last miles and many are even ignoring places where they could make money simply because it would require spending a dime and they are too fucking greedy to do that. I know that when I was there in the mid 00s there were places in downtown nashville without cable OR DSL because they were both too fucking greedy to spend a dime on infrastructure while the places that did have it were oversubscibed horribly. One of the reasons i love my current apt is I'm the only one getting cable net in the whole building so i have the pipe pretty much to myself but I can tell you in many areas cablenet is so damned oversold it practically crawls between 9AM and 11PM.
So he may have just found out as i did that they will sell 100 people on a line that could reasonably take 30 and then stuff the money in their pocket instead of adding more pipes. Its sad but that's ISPs in America, too fucking greedy and shortsighted to see anything beyond the next quarter.
Yep and surprise! It ran just fine. I've seen one where the guy actually went from 1.0-Win 7 but I don't know if that should count because he had to use a VM since naturally hardware from 1985 wasn't gonna run even Win98.
But the bigger problem is support. Linux support is PISS POOR unless you buy the enterprise distros which cost hundreds yearly and thus again you'd be better off with Windows. They simply have NO compelling argument to use their product, none. Software? Windows runs FOSS as well as proprietary so no gain there, all the free software that anyone cares for on Linux has a Windows port. Hardware? I've installed Win 7 just for shits and giggles on a 1.6GHz P4 with a Gb of RAM and you know what? didn't even have to download a single driver, they all "just worked" right OOTB. Support? The BEST you can get if 5 year LTS and if you'll look closer that "support" means you can just run old shit with old bugs. WinXP still will run the majority of 2012 software OOTB, and finally cost? win 7 HP is $89 OEM, if you buy the family pack it comes out to $40. that is for THREE PCs with support until 2020, there is NO distro that even comes close for that price point. in fact at $35 an hour all it takes is a single boned driver for Linux to cost me as a retailer MORE than just using windows.
In the end there just is no damned point in Linux on the desktop, none at all. In the server space the high cost of the top tier versions along with the cost of user CALs means that if you are running a dozen servers then yes, Linux makes sense. although frankly every place I've seen with Linux servers also used a WinServer to manage the desktops as Linux has yet to come up with a product that equals WinDesktop+GPOs+AD=Exchange+Sharepoint for ease of use, but on the desktop? its completely fucking POINTLESS. It does NOT save you money if your time is worth anything at all, does NOT save you time, does NOT save you effort, it just doesn't have a point which is why every major B&M and retailer avoids it. Its just not good for that purpose, period.
Isn't it funny how all the Linux guys can't seem to keep Windows running and clean, while everybody else doesn't seem to have a bit o' trouble? I got an old Sempron 1.8Ghz running XP that I got from a customer in a trade in around 08, that thing is running with the same install and NO BUGS, no crashes, hell other than slapping another Gb of RAM into it I haven't done a damned thing except run it damned near 24/7 as a nettop and file server and it just purrs like a kitten. The box I'm typing this on has had the same Win 7 install since RTM in Oct 09, again perfect and hassle free.
So if you wanna go all batshit? hey, knock yourself out, who am i to judge. but frankly Linux is a hell of a lot more of a PITA than Windows on its worst day. Don't take my word for it, read this fine article from one of the Red hat devs who says what linux is going through now is its "death cries" from mistakes made in the design at its conception. he says the quality will continue to go downhill simply because there is no way to QA an entire repo and have any progress and he's right.
So if you want to spend your weekends fiddling with your PC like a 73 Dodge? hey whatever floats your boat. the rest of us just use a decent AV and a tiny bit of common sense and magically we don't have any problems. Oh and before anybody responds with the usual BS please go to TM Repo and make sure you're just not repeating memes, or if you are at least give us the TM to save time, thanks.
It ain't even religion that's the problem friend, its the fact you can get a guy with two degrees from India and pay him like you would a McDonald's worker, simple as that. If you want to know why kids aren't going for these degrees its because they aren't blind and see they would be forced to compete with some guy from Bombay that paid $10k for his degree while they paid $100K+
Its simple friend, global capitalism ONLY works for those that have enough capital to operate on a global scale, for everyone else its just importing or exporting misery. America's economy is a corpse, India and China are drowning in toxic waste, the only ones gaining from this are the ones at the top of the food chain, everyone else gets 'trickled down" aka pissed on. hell if i was a student today i'd stay the fuck away from any of the sciences other than medicine too, there just isn't any money in it when your degree costs 20 times what the guy you're competing against does.
Yeah and pull my left leg, it plays jingle bells. lets face it NOTHING will change one way or another by this or frankly any other case on the docket because THE CORPS LIKE IT THIS WAY as it lets them lock out the little guys and own good sized chunks of the market. As it is you either sell out to a big corp with a large patent warchest or they will fucking bury you in lawsuits until you go broke..THEN they'll buy out what you made for pennies on the dollar.
You can vote all you want, the corps simply cut a check to the winner, since FDR basically held a gun to the head of SCOTUS and turned the commerce clause into "anything you want it to be" the courts have been more and more worthless, and of course big business likes things the way they are because it gives them all the power.
I hate to say it but the whole damned system has just gotten too damned rotten to be affected by the little guy or common sense anymore. the corps will keep buying the laws and tilting it ever more in their favor until nobody will do shit in the USA for all the legal bullshit and then it'll all collapse. Maybe when the whole thing falls apart we can build something better from the ashes but I seriously doubt either the courts or congress are gonna do anything more than to continue tilting things in favor of the megacorps. We just have too much money in the hands of too few for anyone to fight them. No matter who wins oracle will keep raking in cash and suing, Lodsys will keep on trolling, SSDD.
While this is true i think the larger point is that their "big innovations" are just "me too!" copies of other's work.
What pisses me off is its pretty damned obvious that like a lot of FOSS projects the developers at Mozilla frankly don't give a shit what the users think. I don't know if its because its free software, if they think that gives them the right to just crap on the users, if its just bad attitudes or what, but I have noticed a lot of projects adopting this "We are going THIS way, get on board or go fuck yourself" attitude and it stinks. I think the numbers speak for themselves, FF was growing until they became all about the bling bling and ignoring the users and its been dropping steadily since.
Of course the sad part is this isn't a new thing for the Moz devs, it just wasn't as bad as it is now. Anybody remember how they swore up and down the memory leaks were all in the users heads, right up until they put out the release that basically said "Oh and we fixed the memory issues!"...wait, what? the memory issues you told us didn't exist, THOSE memory issues? And anybody whose taken a look at their roadmap lately...ugh...its fricking metro UI candy and appstores, yep, that's what we need, more candy coating and fricking appstores.
That is why I suggest those that don't want to go where Moz is heading to try Pale Moon if you wish to keep your FF extensions, as they have forked it as of V12 so they won't be going for the glossy bling bling of future FF, or if you're not wedded to FF extensions maybe try QTWeb which has support for flash and ABP and runs on all the major OSes, Linux, BSD, OSX, and Windows.
Because as someone who was a long time FF user and advocate I just don't like where Mozilla is going anymore. they used to seem to care about just making the best FF they could, but then Chrome came out and they seem to have lost their damned minds. But luckily for us there is a wealth of choices now, not only those above but opera, Safari, Chromium,Comodo Dragon which is becoming more and more my go to browser, just so many choices. Maybe if enough people choose something else Mozilla will start listening to their users again. I know its a long shot but I can dream, can't I?
No because that was the root cert revocation that MSFT released to cancel TFA. if you are truly worried about Windows update frankly there is NO reason to run it the old fashioned way, especially when you have more than one machine as it'll just be a waste of bandwidth.
Instead just use WSUS Offline which will get the updates directly from MSFT using WGET and drop them in the folder of your choice, all nice and neat and complete with a simple .exe launcher. It can also take care of .NET, MSE updates, and MS Office from 2K3 up if you have any of those that also need updating. Its great and takes the hassle out of updating, especially on a new build but works just as well for any Windows from XP-Win 7 X64. Combine this with Ninite for third party software and frankly anybody can have a Windows system fully patched and loaded with the basics with almost zero effort.