I gotta agree with you on the Sonics, every time i go there they have managed to squeeze more ice into the thing. But I don't know about you but when its 90+ outside i personally want my drink icy but luckily here in the south nearly every place offers sweet tea which not only is about half the calories of soda but also seems to hold up better to ice, especially with a nice twist of lemon.
Of course most of us in the summer is using that to wash down something grilled or some BBQ so the lower calorie drink don't really help much. Anybody that has been down this way knows we have truly awesome little mom & pop BBQ shacks that are damned hard to resist. About a mile from my house is this little place called Barb's, where they start slow cooking pork BBQ at 7AM and don't start selling it until noon...mmmm...dammit now I'm hungry!
But these kinds of bans are just retarded, you aren't gonna fix obesity like this, the reason we are fat is because many of us are stuck in jobs sitting on ass in front of PCs all day. If they want folks to lose weight a few pieces of exercise equipment at work and exercise breaks would do more than this. After all banning soda won't do squat if you go from sitting in your car to sitting at a desk to sitting in a car 5 days a week.
But servers don't have loads only during the day so going with panels would be stupid for servers. you may get away with it with an office but NOT servers.
If you wanted to power a datacenter off of renewables then a combo of wind and molten salt solar power generation would be a much more logical choice as you can use the salt like a battery to generate power at night and use the wind to also charge batteries to insure that on days without any sun you would still have power. it just seems kinda pointless to power servers off of solar panels, its just not the right job for the tech.
The sad part is nobody seems to remember we have been down this road before....show of hands, anybody remember the whole "thin client push" in the dot bomb days? I sure do, you had all these companies pushing "the net/server' would solve everything, all your IT needs and problems just poof! Gone. anybody else remember that? So what happened?
The exact same things that is gonna happen this time, worries about data security, having a whole office sitting on ass if the network ever goes down, lag and crappy hosted apps not being as good as rich desktop apps, which BTW none of these problems have been solved by replacing net or server with cloud. I guess history doomed repeat and all that.
Watch me get downmodded and see if I care...what format EXACTLY are you speaking of? its not ODT as I've seen it seriously crap on complicated layouts so its not that, PDF is a read only format so no go, what's left? RTF?
Its all nice to claim everyone should use "open standards' but if those standards don't do the job you need, what then? Does everyone expect the world to just stop doing whatever it is they need to do until someone comes up with one?
Like it or not for large complex documents MS Word seems to be the only one to handle the truly complex in a user friendly format. You can't honestly expect everyone to learn how to write in LaTeX, which is just SLIGHTLY more friendly than handing someone today a PC running DOS 2, although frankly with all the "perception bubbles" around here I honestly wouldn't be surprised if all the uber nerds here honestly expect everyone to jump through flaming hoops learning LaTeX rather than simply use what is easiest.
This is why we need a sarcasm tag folks, this right here. because honestly you are either doing a smashing job at sarcasm or sadly I've known bean counters that talk just like that so one never knows.
Just for the sake of argument I'm gonna answer like it is NOT sarcasm and use the same dialog I did right before I quit dealing with corp IT...How much work do you REALLY think will get done in this day and age without computers? Do you HONESTLY think that if half the systems take a big old dump that you are gonna be paying workers to work, or sit on ass? Because keeping those giant POS Smell PCs is causing the entire workforce to seriously drag ass for a good 30 minutes or more a day as they sit on ass waiting for all the corporate crap to load so they can do their damned job. Now YOU figure out how much having more than 70% of your workforce sitting on ass for 30 minutes a day on the clock is costing you, then you get back to me about "costs" because frankly IT is the best damned ROI any decent company has! It is WE that make sure when the workers flip the switch it just magically goes, it is WE that make sure the email that just landed the big contract gets to you quick enough for you to act, it is WE that have to do a constant juggling act to make sure all this stuff continues functioning and it is WE that have to do all the testing to make sure some Windows Update don't take a crap on a critical piece of software or the latest AV virus def doesn't flag SVHOSTS as a bug and turn the entire computer network into paperweights..yeah that would be US that does that.
Because then you'd just have a TiVo and not a general purpose OS like Windows and OSX? The reason one can have DRM on OSX and Windows is because of protected path, you have a proprietary kernel that feeds the input to proprietary drivers that is decoded by hardware protected by trade secrets which then feeds that signal to a monitor that also follows this proprietary spec and can thus read it.
Now do you see why it just can't work in Linux?All it takes is a single one of these things to be open for the entire system to fall apart. Believe me companies like netflix doesn't want to limit their potential customers but if something simply can't be done no matter how much money you spend it just can't be done. it would be like saying you can build a car that runs 200MPH on a teaspoon of gas, it is simply not possible. For protected path you need the entire stack, OS, drivers, I/O, A/V, all have to be onboard for the system to work. The fact that simply can't be changed is that the kernel is under GPL V2, even Linus can't change this because too many people have worked on it for him to ever be able to put that genie back in the bottle. and as i said the core of the problem is that ALL data ultimately is handled by the kernel which means one could recompile the kernel to simply lie to the DRM and its game over. Now with Windows and OSX that simply isn't possible because neither OS will run on any kernel but one built and approved by the parent corp but that simply isn't the case with Linux and simply can't be changed.
So i hope you can see this isn't any bias, on the contrary I think the GPL did exactly what RMS wanted it to do which was to keep companies from locking down the code after the fact. But you simply have to take the bad with the good and the bad is that as long as the content providers insist on DRM in simply can't be run on a Linux desktop. Sure you can buy boxes like TiVos and Boxxee boxes but those use hardware to enforce the DRM, not only could you not do that on Linux because hardware to enforce the kernel simply doesn't exist but legally even if you did manage to magically pull it off you'd run afoul of the TiVo clause of GPL V3. Remember that groups like TiVo have to be VERY careful to not include GPL V3 in their offerings or they would be forced to open the device and as far as i know nobody makes a purely GPL V2 Linux distro, hell if they did many packages would be so far behind it probably wouldn't be usable as a general purpose OS. In the end its a catch 22 in that Linux enforces freedom but for one to have the freedom to play DRM content you'd have to take away one of the four freedoms which you can't do because Linux enforces freedom.
Meh I don't give a shit about groupthink, anybody who has read any of my posts see i call it like it is and don't give a shit about moderation. So far I've been told i'm a sekret ninja for MSFT, Comodo, AMD, Apple (still haven't figured that one out yet, I don't even own an iPod) Oracle and pretty much any company that some basement dweller might not like. but I call a spade a spade and bullshit is bullshit.
And as for that article i'd say it gets right to the heart of the matter why linux sucks on a desktop. I mean you can't even do the biannual upgrade without drivers crapping on themselves, and we're not talking some weird drivers either, we're talking AMD, Intel, Realtek, SiS, the same bog standard hardware that is in more than 80% of the machines out there, why? because by trying to control EVERYTHING the devs have simply spread themselves so damned thin that QA has become a bad joke. you simply can't have a handful of guys do QA on 100,000 drivers, not to mention a couple of hundred thousand packages, its simply impossible.
So I have to agree with him, make an appstore style model for software with a sandbox so that its not "all or nothing" when it comes to software installs, have a hardware ABI (which to this day you see zealots scream about even though after 20 years the damned driver model in Linux is STILL crap, it would be like MSFT sticking with VXD drivers all this time) so that those that actually make the hardware can write the drivers, and instead of spreading themselves out so thin just concentrate on the core OS and making sure that its a rock solid foundation for everyone else to build on. As he points out it would make the platform even freer than it is now while at the same time increasing QA and improving quality.
THIS, this right here, is why I can't understand all the MS office hate. I give LO to my home users but would never think of giving it to my business customers or those with college students, why? because its simply not made for that use case!
Google docs and LO are fine and dandy if all you need to do is make some basic word docs. for that they are fine, great, not a problem in the least. But when you start messing with headers and footers and tables and embedded graphics and change tracking...they just suck! And why shouldn't they? Its not the use case it was designed for! it would be like bitching that economy car can't haul a boat, well duh! Its not made to! Oh and before someone pipes in with "herp derp use PDF" that is a good way to get an F in a class or have your work file 13ed friend, NOBODY takes PDF except printers.
So I honestly don't see why there is any argument here, its like arguing that a screwdriver and a wrench should be used interchangeably. if all you are doing is basic word processing with minimum formatting then frankly you shouldn't be using MS Office, you are just wasting your money when Google Docs or LO will do just as good. But if on the other hand you are dealing with large complex docs then you would be nuts NOT to use MS Office, because Google Docs and LO simply isn't designed for that use case. its really that simple.
Not to mention kids today simply can't delve in deeply like we could in the 80s. Hell I contacted Commodore and they gave me the full specs, diagrams, and opcodes for the CPU so I could pretty much do anything with that VIC. Today you are seeing the rise of these locked down pad style devices, tablets, cell phones, game handhelds and consoles, that while they have more power than we could have dreamed of when we were hacking Commodores and Trash 80s they simply can't do anything with these devices except consume media as the builders intended.
Kinda sad really, as most of the last gen consoles and handhelds have more than enough power to still do cool stuff but they are so locked down its just not worth messing with. Frankly as much as I enjoy this hexacore PC I built myself i don't think I'd trade my childhood experience for theirs, as theirs is just one walled garden after another.
To me the sad part is instead of the free market working as intended, which would be to raise salaries and lower worker abuse instead they'll just drag some poor bastards in from India that they can work like dogs and treat like dogshit.
I have NEVER in my life seen ANY branch of a corporation treated with such hatred and contempt as I've seen IT treated. they act like they are nothing but glorified Geek Squad workers and give them less respect than a checkout girl at the local Wally World. EVERY need for resources is treated as a waste, EVERY need for action treated as an undue expense, EVERY suggestion treated like its coming from the mouth of a retard, I wouldn't take that fucking job again for all the tea in China!
And as someone who actually donates his time refurbing PCs for the poor let me say....fuck them do gooders. Sure i know that a lot of what is gonna be done on these old P4s is gonna be time wasting, so fucking what? Like poor folks aren't allowed to have ANY fun now? This is the same kind of horseshit that has caused our education bubble which I'm sure will burst any day, because no matter how much the liberal elite scream "more education!" that doesn't change the fact that if the jobs aren't here they simply aren't here and for many that student loan will just be another boat anchor weighing them down that they will never pay off.
So let the poor have a little fucking fun, its not like theirs lives don't suck shit bad enough in this country. In my area DSL is the cheapest thing you can get, cheaper even than basic cable, so that old P4 gives them not only entertainment but news, weather (which when you live in Dixie alley can save your life), it allows them to stay in contact with distant relatives and friends, it can do a hell of a lot of good and bring happiness to someone's life which to me is worth more than some elitist being whiny about the way they use it.
As a final note let me just give everyone the profile of my last giveaway PC recipient so that you can see what I mean...72 year old woman, shut in thanks to a bad heart, until recently had her daughter and two grandkids living with her in a 3 bedroom single wide because her daughter's husband turned into a wife beater. Now its just her as the daughter finally found a job and was able to get state aid for child care (I gave her a PC too and good luck ever getting a dime from the husband because he sold everything that wasn't nailed down to support his new meth habit and skipped state) so its just her and her cat all alone out there in the middle of nowhere.
Now she chats daily with her old friends from HS, is learning how to quilt from online tutorials, gets to watch TV online (where she is at no signal for OTA) and generally has a hell of a lot happier life than she did when i first met her. And all of that is thanks to a P4 donated by a local business for me to refurb. So to hell with these whiners, if you are gonna be getting rid of some older hardware PLEASE donate it, there are plenty of guys like me that are happy to take a little time and refurb that for someone that really needs it. If you don't know anybody like me personally there is always the churches and freecycle, but those old machines can bring some happiness into a fellow human being's life, isn't that more important?.
Nooo..I'm asking you to give even the roughest idea of how such a system could possibly work, not just "say its possible". After all I can say that building a car that gets 500 miles on a tank of gas is possible, but if I don't give anyone even a rough idea of how one would do that I'm just pulling it out of my ass.
But I have a feeling that if you looked into even the basics of how Linux works and the way data is treated you'd see DRM simply can't work with that design, its too trivial to bypass. Remember that ALL CONTROL in an OS starts with the kernel PERIOD. The kernel controls ALL I/O so without control of the kernel you are screwed. Now with a non general device like a TiVo you can use hardware to enforce the integrity of the DRM, but we are talking about a general purpose Linux OS like say Ubuntu, this would simply not work as the code for the kernel is freely available and there is simply no hardware to enforce the DRM so it WOULD fail and fail quickly. Again the smart cow, all it takes is one and then the forums and flooded with how to tutorials.
So I'm sorry friend but you are saying you could throw money at the problem and fix it when this wouldn't help, the OS simply isn't designed for what you are wanting it to do. Everything from the kernel to the FS is fully documented and available so the only way it MIGHT be possible would be for the small subset that have TPM hardware which again is hardware backup for the DRM. This simply wouldn't work for the majority as they don't have TPM modules so again the DRM would be bypassed. It hasn't been done not because nobody ants to do it but because there is no practical way it CAN be done.
Bingo! This is why I quit doing corporate, I got so damned tired of being looked at as this money sucking leech and being expected to fix a bazillion wrong things with no damned money and little help. These bean counting pricks act like you can keep those POS PCs forever, that nothing ever breaks down, and that ANY money IT asks for is a waste. Now with work conditions like that, is it any damned wonder that nobody wants the fucking job?
Now I work with consumers and small business and while the pay isn't as good you know what? They are ACTUALLY GRATEFUL for the job you do! And they will actually LISTEN to your suggestions without looking at every damned thing as a way for you to "waste money", not to mention they don't call you 24/7 and expect your ass to jump like a frog on a hot plate. Fuck corporate IT, it is one of the shittiest jobs I have ever worked! Between the bad attitudes, the fighting for every penny, the long hours, the PHB bullshit, frankly I'd sit on a street corner with my acoustic and a tin cup rather that do that God damned job again!
Funnily enough I'm seeing the same old spam and phishing bullshit only with a new medium...SMS. I'm having to give out the same speeches i USED to give out for email years ago, and frankly hadn't needed thanks to excellent spam filters, because for some reason people that wouldn't fall for it in an email WILL fall for it with SMS. If anyone wants details please see my journal and be sure to warn your less tech savvy friends/relatives because this latest one looks to be as bad as the old blaster style crap back in the day. I'm just amazed how many are falling for it but I guess with each new medium you have to give out the lessons all over again.
Hell not only ain't it broke, I'd say its never been better. All the major webmails now have excellent spam filters, they all have AV scanning so one doesn't have to warn users about email attachments anymore, they work on just about any device, are fast with most email arriving across services in a few minutes...what is supposed to be busted?
The only thing I see "rising" is pointless bullshit quick posts like tweets which if those I've seen are any indication are about this level of sophistication so I don't see anything 'replacing" email, i just see other channels for bullshit that wouldn't be worth the time to even write an email over. hey if you just want to bullshit? I got no problem with that, I just see email as useful for things other than bullshitting which these "new things" seemed designed to do. Its like FB messaging, my GF gets stuff like who she knew in HS that broke their foot or had a kid, i get "Hey dude, what's a good heatsink?" in both cases not really worth an email for the quick BS that followed.
Well then you are supporting a company whose co-founder said "privacy is dead, get over it" but if you are cool with that? Fine and dandy. Unlike those that treat software as a religion I think you should use what works for you and if Google tracking everything (ever see how much shit Chrome collects?) is cool with you then far be it from me to judge.
That doesn't change the fact that NONE of the companies I named have clean hands, not one. No matter how much PR they spin the big multinationals are just that, multinationals and frankly if they could boost their profits by 15% by throwing you in a cage with a horny silverback you'd be getting gorilla loving before sunset. So maybe if others here would stop treating corps as ballclubs then maybe they too could make informed decisions.
The FOSSies can waste mod points going "La la la M$ Ninja!" all they want but that still doesn't change the fact you didn't even come close to answering the question which is HOW is it possible? The entire design of Linux is based on data being able to be piped from one interface to another and the kernel can't be locked down so HOW can one implement a DRM system when you could just recompile the kernel to say its outputting to a display when really its outputting to a file?
And that is of course ignoring the GPL which I'm sure if you tried the FSF would be happy to file suit. Like it or not RMS DESIGNED IT THAT WAY from the start, or did everyone magically forget the printer story? TINSTAAFL folks and the price you pay for openess is less content, simple as that. No DRM no content, like it or lump it. Or is everyone here saying that a Linux that locked the OS at the TPM level would be welcomed by the community and the FSF?
Makes sense and you probably made a few bucks on ad views to boot. if you need Windows cheap just talk to any friends or relatives that are in school as most students with a.edu address can get Win 7 cheap and if you don't know any students get the OEM as it isn't like you're gonna be moving it from machine to machine. Not that MSFT really gives a crap, i've got the OEM Win 7 and I've replaced every part in my machine but the case and had no complaints from MSFT or hassles when i had to reactivate when i switched out the board.
Isn't it funny though how anyone who doesn't rigidly follow the groupthink and drink the koolaid is modded down? Kinda sad when considering even one of the big cheeses at Red Hat says Linux is a failure of design and then goes on to say what we are witnessing is the "death cries" of the platform. But hey, I bet he's a super sekret M$ Ninja, right?
Yes because filling our dumps with a few more tons of working hardware is wonderful...for the Chinese that make the phones and the telecos that get to sell more contracts. Not so good for the environment though.
And Google says privacy is dead so not really seeing a difference there. One wants to make sure you use their product and the other...wants to make sure you use their product. the only difference i see is one is obvious (MSFT software and OSes) and the other is not (data mining) but both want you using their stuff. The ONLY reason Google is multiplatform is because the platform isn't the product YOU are and they don't care what you run as long as they have YOU. Its like those that scream "Google isn't an ad company" when you look at their SEC filings and over 95% of their profits are from...ads.
And funny you talk about lock in when MSFT can't even kill shit when it wants to, I mean did you know VB is either the third or fourth most popular business language? HOW many years have they been trying to kill it? How about IE 6? They've been trying to kill that devil spawn for ages and haven't had any luck.
So if all that matters to you is multiplatform and you don't mind Google knowing what you do on the web? Use Google. if you don't mind using only a couple of platforms controlled by MSFT? Then use them. Don't mind a walled garden and higher prices for slicker devices? Use Apple. But it just amazes me how some will treat these giant supercorps like they are ballclubs to root for. Watching their actions the past couple of years I'd say that all three of the big players, Apple, Google, and MSFT have their pluses and minuses and NONE of them have truly clean hands. Just to be clear though Apple isn't a bunch of hippies sitting around in tie dye, Google DOES do evil and MSFT...hell do they even have a slogan? if they do its so lame I don't even know what it is, but it probably sucks as bad as a shit brown Zune.
Excuse me, but HOW can it be done on a Linux PC? We'll ignore the legal mess and contracts and just look at the technical, which I'd say makes it impossible. Like it or not for the most part the security by obscurity model works on OSX and Windows because one can't simply recompile their own kernel to bypass the DRM or feed the decrypted output to a file but that kind of stuff CAN be done in Linux and of course then you are dealing with the "smart cow" problem where all it takes is one guy to cook up the bypass and then others can simply copy what he did. Again you just can't do that on Windows and OSX easily because you don't have the source to the files you'd need to alter but this is available on Linux. After all it all comes down to the kernel and if you can alter that anything above that can be manipulated by the kernel which is why IIRC Netflix HD is only available on devices that have locked boot loaders on ARM while with Windows and OSX they can use protected path.
So I honestly don't think this is any kind of "conspiracy" to make people use OSX or Windows, it is simply that Linux and the GPL aren't designed to allow what you would need to deploy DRM in a general use OS. Again this is ignoring the legal issues which I bet it'd be pretty damned hard to implement a functional DRM schema on general purpose X86 Linux without running afoul of the GPL and getting sued. In this case one could argue the GPL is doing exactly what it is supposed to do, which is keep things open and DRM out but you have to take the bad with the good and that means less content for Linux users.
Question: Why would you try to force your GF to use Linux when obviously the software she requires doesn't work and in fact you had to cook up a VM just BECAUSE it won't do what she needs natively?
I can totally understand using Linux on your laptop if you have a use case for it, such as i know several server admin where it makes more sense to run Linux on their laptop so they can easily interact with their servers, but why try to force it on someone who requires software it doesn't have? all that is doing is making one more person that will bad mouth Linux and causing bad feelings for no good reason.
So just give her a laptop with Windows 7, that is obviously what she needs. that way she can run what she wants, you can run what you want on yours, and everyone is happy. Hell its not like you have to run Win 7 as admin like you did XP, in fact with IE or Chromium based using low rights mode for browsing its never been safer, so I just don't get it. Do you not like your GF or something?
As for TFA when is this guy gonna learn? the forums were practically breaking out the pitchforks over Mono, did he think they'd treat Moonlight any differently? Whether he likes it or not no MSFT produced anything will be welcomed into the Linux fold period, the end. The only real selling point for Silverlight is DRM streaming, which doesn't work in Linux (and frankly I don't see how anyone could make a functional DRM in Linux without locking the whole OS which will never fly) so what would be the point? At least.NET is used a lot in enterprise settings so I can se a reason for Mono, but Silverlight just doesn't make much sense on Linux.
Uhhh...How EXACTLY would one implement DRM on Linux that couldn't be trivially bypassed? IIRC one can't hand out locked down kernels without source, and one can't put a bunch of kernel level hooks without running afoul of the GPL, so how EXACTLY are they supposed to have DRM on Linux? On Windows and Mac one can run kernel hooks with no problem which is how much of the DRM on those platforms work but short of locking the bootloader i don't see how one could actually create DRM that would work on Linux. After all one of the points of Linux is you can hack pretty much anything on it since the source is available, you can claim its "security through obscurity" but its pretty damned hard to make your own NT kernel but you can compile a custom Linux kernel quite easily.
So this is one case where you simply can't have your cake and eat it too, Linux was designed to be the ANTI-DRM OS and in that respect it works, but the flipside of that is there is tons of content one will have to pirate if you want to run it on Linux as no DRM, no content. that's just the way it is folks and I don't see how they are supposed to magically make DRM on an OS where everything can be compiled and altered any time by anybody.
And that is why I have said HTML V5 sucks and isn't the way to go, as so far there isn't any DRM specs that work in HTML V5 so the only way to have things like Netflix is lock down the whole OS. That is fine and dandy for Apple and MSFT, and I doubt Google will have much of a problem with it either, not so fine and dandy for the rest of us. No matter how much you may hate flash and silverlight at least one could avoid it without having to jailbreak your entire OS. I have a feeling all the jumping on HTML V5 is so that corps can just lock everything down and force everyone to go with the appstore model, where only approved apps get run. Fuck that!
You said and I quote "Just because some homosexuals were born that way doesn't mean they all are. Case in point: "bicurious". and I still respond...who the fuck cares? Why do YOU care what THEY are doing? How is it ANY of your business? What does it matter to YOU if some were born that way and some weren't?
Anyone that thinks sex is a B&W issue is simply retarded, there are as many places in the spectrum between straight and gay as there are variations in temp but in the end as long as its consenting adults who cares? And who says some can't be born bi? maybe they are simply wired that way, just as I'm as straight as a laser sight?
In the end I have yet to see ANY argument against someone having the right to be straight or gay or bi that didn't come down to religion, and since we are supposed to be intelligent thinking beings wouldn't it be better to base things on facts and not some sky bully that is supposed to come down and spank us if we don't jump through his hoops? if the sky bully exists then let HIM take care of it, I seriously doubt a Deity would need Cleetus to bash the queers for him.
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I gotta agree with you on the Sonics, every time i go there they have managed to squeeze more ice into the thing. But I don't know about you but when its 90+ outside i personally want my drink icy but luckily here in the south nearly every place offers sweet tea which not only is about half the calories of soda but also seems to hold up better to ice, especially with a nice twist of lemon.
Of course most of us in the summer is using that to wash down something grilled or some BBQ so the lower calorie drink don't really help much. Anybody that has been down this way knows we have truly awesome little mom & pop BBQ shacks that are damned hard to resist. About a mile from my house is this little place called Barb's, where they start slow cooking pork BBQ at 7AM and don't start selling it until noon...mmmm...dammit now I'm hungry!
But these kinds of bans are just retarded, you aren't gonna fix obesity like this, the reason we are fat is because many of us are stuck in jobs sitting on ass in front of PCs all day. If they want folks to lose weight a few pieces of exercise equipment at work and exercise breaks would do more than this. After all banning soda won't do squat if you go from sitting in your car to sitting at a desk to sitting in a car 5 days a week.
But servers don't have loads only during the day so going with panels would be stupid for servers. you may get away with it with an office but NOT servers.
If you wanted to power a datacenter off of renewables then a combo of wind and molten salt solar power generation would be a much more logical choice as you can use the salt like a battery to generate power at night and use the wind to also charge batteries to insure that on days without any sun you would still have power. it just seems kinda pointless to power servers off of solar panels, its just not the right job for the tech.
The sad part is nobody seems to remember we have been down this road before....show of hands, anybody remember the whole "thin client push" in the dot bomb days? I sure do, you had all these companies pushing "the net/server' would solve everything, all your IT needs and problems just poof! Gone. anybody else remember that? So what happened?
The exact same things that is gonna happen this time, worries about data security, having a whole office sitting on ass if the network ever goes down, lag and crappy hosted apps not being as good as rich desktop apps, which BTW none of these problems have been solved by replacing net or server with cloud. I guess history doomed repeat and all that.
Watch me get downmodded and see if I care...what format EXACTLY are you speaking of? its not ODT as I've seen it seriously crap on complicated layouts so its not that, PDF is a read only format so no go, what's left? RTF?
Its all nice to claim everyone should use "open standards' but if those standards don't do the job you need, what then? Does everyone expect the world to just stop doing whatever it is they need to do until someone comes up with one?
Like it or not for large complex documents MS Word seems to be the only one to handle the truly complex in a user friendly format. You can't honestly expect everyone to learn how to write in LaTeX, which is just SLIGHTLY more friendly than handing someone today a PC running DOS 2, although frankly with all the "perception bubbles" around here I honestly wouldn't be surprised if all the uber nerds here honestly expect everyone to jump through flaming hoops learning LaTeX rather than simply use what is easiest.
This is why we need a sarcasm tag folks, this right here. because honestly you are either doing a smashing job at sarcasm or sadly I've known bean counters that talk just like that so one never knows.
Just for the sake of argument I'm gonna answer like it is NOT sarcasm and use the same dialog I did right before I quit dealing with corp IT...How much work do you REALLY think will get done in this day and age without computers? Do you HONESTLY think that if half the systems take a big old dump that you are gonna be paying workers to work, or sit on ass? Because keeping those giant POS Smell PCs is causing the entire workforce to seriously drag ass for a good 30 minutes or more a day as they sit on ass waiting for all the corporate crap to load so they can do their damned job. Now YOU figure out how much having more than 70% of your workforce sitting on ass for 30 minutes a day on the clock is costing you, then you get back to me about "costs" because frankly IT is the best damned ROI any decent company has! It is WE that make sure when the workers flip the switch it just magically goes, it is WE that make sure the email that just landed the big contract gets to you quick enough for you to act, it is WE that have to do a constant juggling act to make sure all this stuff continues functioning and it is WE that have to do all the testing to make sure some Windows Update don't take a crap on a critical piece of software or the latest AV virus def doesn't flag SVHOSTS as a bug and turn the entire computer network into paperweights..yeah that would be US that does that.
Because then you'd just have a TiVo and not a general purpose OS like Windows and OSX? The reason one can have DRM on OSX and Windows is because of protected path, you have a proprietary kernel that feeds the input to proprietary drivers that is decoded by hardware protected by trade secrets which then feeds that signal to a monitor that also follows this proprietary spec and can thus read it.
Now do you see why it just can't work in Linux?All it takes is a single one of these things to be open for the entire system to fall apart. Believe me companies like netflix doesn't want to limit their potential customers but if something simply can't be done no matter how much money you spend it just can't be done. it would be like saying you can build a car that runs 200MPH on a teaspoon of gas, it is simply not possible. For protected path you need the entire stack, OS, drivers, I/O, A/V, all have to be onboard for the system to work. The fact that simply can't be changed is that the kernel is under GPL V2, even Linus can't change this because too many people have worked on it for him to ever be able to put that genie back in the bottle. and as i said the core of the problem is that ALL data ultimately is handled by the kernel which means one could recompile the kernel to simply lie to the DRM and its game over. Now with Windows and OSX that simply isn't possible because neither OS will run on any kernel but one built and approved by the parent corp but that simply isn't the case with Linux and simply can't be changed.
So i hope you can see this isn't any bias, on the contrary I think the GPL did exactly what RMS wanted it to do which was to keep companies from locking down the code after the fact. But you simply have to take the bad with the good and the bad is that as long as the content providers insist on DRM in simply can't be run on a Linux desktop. Sure you can buy boxes like TiVos and Boxxee boxes but those use hardware to enforce the DRM, not only could you not do that on Linux because hardware to enforce the kernel simply doesn't exist but legally even if you did manage to magically pull it off you'd run afoul of the TiVo clause of GPL V3. Remember that groups like TiVo have to be VERY careful to not include GPL V3 in their offerings or they would be forced to open the device and as far as i know nobody makes a purely GPL V2 Linux distro, hell if they did many packages would be so far behind it probably wouldn't be usable as a general purpose OS. In the end its a catch 22 in that Linux enforces freedom but for one to have the freedom to play DRM content you'd have to take away one of the four freedoms which you can't do because Linux enforces freedom.
Meh I don't give a shit about groupthink, anybody who has read any of my posts see i call it like it is and don't give a shit about moderation. So far I've been told i'm a sekret ninja for MSFT, Comodo, AMD, Apple (still haven't figured that one out yet, I don't even own an iPod) Oracle and pretty much any company that some basement dweller might not like. but I call a spade a spade and bullshit is bullshit.
And as for that article i'd say it gets right to the heart of the matter why linux sucks on a desktop. I mean you can't even do the biannual upgrade without drivers crapping on themselves, and we're not talking some weird drivers either, we're talking AMD, Intel, Realtek, SiS, the same bog standard hardware that is in more than 80% of the machines out there, why? because by trying to control EVERYTHING the devs have simply spread themselves so damned thin that QA has become a bad joke. you simply can't have a handful of guys do QA on 100,000 drivers, not to mention a couple of hundred thousand packages, its simply impossible.
So I have to agree with him, make an appstore style model for software with a sandbox so that its not "all or nothing" when it comes to software installs, have a hardware ABI (which to this day you see zealots scream about even though after 20 years the damned driver model in Linux is STILL crap, it would be like MSFT sticking with VXD drivers all this time) so that those that actually make the hardware can write the drivers, and instead of spreading themselves out so thin just concentrate on the core OS and making sure that its a rock solid foundation for everyone else to build on. As he points out it would make the platform even freer than it is now while at the same time increasing QA and improving quality.
THIS, this right here, is why I can't understand all the MS office hate. I give LO to my home users but would never think of giving it to my business customers or those with college students, why? because its simply not made for that use case!
Google docs and LO are fine and dandy if all you need to do is make some basic word docs. for that they are fine, great, not a problem in the least. But when you start messing with headers and footers and tables and embedded graphics and change tracking...they just suck! And why shouldn't they? Its not the use case it was designed for! it would be like bitching that economy car can't haul a boat, well duh! Its not made to! Oh and before someone pipes in with "herp derp use PDF" that is a good way to get an F in a class or have your work file 13ed friend, NOBODY takes PDF except printers.
So I honestly don't see why there is any argument here, its like arguing that a screwdriver and a wrench should be used interchangeably. if all you are doing is basic word processing with minimum formatting then frankly you shouldn't be using MS Office, you are just wasting your money when Google Docs or LO will do just as good. But if on the other hand you are dealing with large complex docs then you would be nuts NOT to use MS Office, because Google Docs and LO simply isn't designed for that use case. its really that simple.
Not to mention kids today simply can't delve in deeply like we could in the 80s. Hell I contacted Commodore and they gave me the full specs, diagrams, and opcodes for the CPU so I could pretty much do anything with that VIC. Today you are seeing the rise of these locked down pad style devices, tablets, cell phones, game handhelds and consoles, that while they have more power than we could have dreamed of when we were hacking Commodores and Trash 80s they simply can't do anything with these devices except consume media as the builders intended.
Kinda sad really, as most of the last gen consoles and handhelds have more than enough power to still do cool stuff but they are so locked down its just not worth messing with. Frankly as much as I enjoy this hexacore PC I built myself i don't think I'd trade my childhood experience for theirs, as theirs is just one walled garden after another.
To me the sad part is instead of the free market working as intended, which would be to raise salaries and lower worker abuse instead they'll just drag some poor bastards in from India that they can work like dogs and treat like dogshit.
I have NEVER in my life seen ANY branch of a corporation treated with such hatred and contempt as I've seen IT treated. they act like they are nothing but glorified Geek Squad workers and give them less respect than a checkout girl at the local Wally World. EVERY need for resources is treated as a waste, EVERY need for action treated as an undue expense, EVERY suggestion treated like its coming from the mouth of a retard, I wouldn't take that fucking job again for all the tea in China!
And as someone who actually donates his time refurbing PCs for the poor let me say....fuck them do gooders. Sure i know that a lot of what is gonna be done on these old P4s is gonna be time wasting, so fucking what? Like poor folks aren't allowed to have ANY fun now? This is the same kind of horseshit that has caused our education bubble which I'm sure will burst any day, because no matter how much the liberal elite scream "more education!" that doesn't change the fact that if the jobs aren't here they simply aren't here and for many that student loan will just be another boat anchor weighing them down that they will never pay off.
So let the poor have a little fucking fun, its not like theirs lives don't suck shit bad enough in this country. In my area DSL is the cheapest thing you can get, cheaper even than basic cable, so that old P4 gives them not only entertainment but news, weather (which when you live in Dixie alley can save your life), it allows them to stay in contact with distant relatives and friends, it can do a hell of a lot of good and bring happiness to someone's life which to me is worth more than some elitist being whiny about the way they use it.
As a final note let me just give everyone the profile of my last giveaway PC recipient so that you can see what I mean...72 year old woman, shut in thanks to a bad heart, until recently had her daughter and two grandkids living with her in a 3 bedroom single wide because her daughter's husband turned into a wife beater. Now its just her as the daughter finally found a job and was able to get state aid for child care (I gave her a PC too and good luck ever getting a dime from the husband because he sold everything that wasn't nailed down to support his new meth habit and skipped state) so its just her and her cat all alone out there in the middle of nowhere.
Now she chats daily with her old friends from HS, is learning how to quilt from online tutorials, gets to watch TV online (where she is at no signal for OTA) and generally has a hell of a lot happier life than she did when i first met her. And all of that is thanks to a P4 donated by a local business for me to refurb. So to hell with these whiners, if you are gonna be getting rid of some older hardware PLEASE donate it, there are plenty of guys like me that are happy to take a little time and refurb that for someone that really needs it. If you don't know anybody like me personally there is always the churches and freecycle, but those old machines can bring some happiness into a fellow human being's life, isn't that more important?.
Nooo..I'm asking you to give even the roughest idea of how such a system could possibly work, not just "say its possible". After all I can say that building a car that gets 500 miles on a tank of gas is possible, but if I don't give anyone even a rough idea of how one would do that I'm just pulling it out of my ass.
But I have a feeling that if you looked into even the basics of how Linux works and the way data is treated you'd see DRM simply can't work with that design, its too trivial to bypass. Remember that ALL CONTROL in an OS starts with the kernel PERIOD. The kernel controls ALL I/O so without control of the kernel you are screwed. Now with a non general device like a TiVo you can use hardware to enforce the integrity of the DRM, but we are talking about a general purpose Linux OS like say Ubuntu, this would simply not work as the code for the kernel is freely available and there is simply no hardware to enforce the DRM so it WOULD fail and fail quickly. Again the smart cow, all it takes is one and then the forums and flooded with how to tutorials.
So I'm sorry friend but you are saying you could throw money at the problem and fix it when this wouldn't help, the OS simply isn't designed for what you are wanting it to do. Everything from the kernel to the FS is fully documented and available so the only way it MIGHT be possible would be for the small subset that have TPM hardware which again is hardware backup for the DRM. This simply wouldn't work for the majority as they don't have TPM modules so again the DRM would be bypassed. It hasn't been done not because nobody ants to do it but because there is no practical way it CAN be done.
Bingo! This is why I quit doing corporate, I got so damned tired of being looked at as this money sucking leech and being expected to fix a bazillion wrong things with no damned money and little help. These bean counting pricks act like you can keep those POS PCs forever, that nothing ever breaks down, and that ANY money IT asks for is a waste. Now with work conditions like that, is it any damned wonder that nobody wants the fucking job?
Now I work with consumers and small business and while the pay isn't as good you know what? They are ACTUALLY GRATEFUL for the job you do! And they will actually LISTEN to your suggestions without looking at every damned thing as a way for you to "waste money", not to mention they don't call you 24/7 and expect your ass to jump like a frog on a hot plate. Fuck corporate IT, it is one of the shittiest jobs I have ever worked! Between the bad attitudes, the fighting for every penny, the long hours, the PHB bullshit, frankly I'd sit on a street corner with my acoustic and a tin cup rather that do that God damned job again!
Funnily enough I'm seeing the same old spam and phishing bullshit only with a new medium...SMS. I'm having to give out the same speeches i USED to give out for email years ago, and frankly hadn't needed thanks to excellent spam filters, because for some reason people that wouldn't fall for it in an email WILL fall for it with SMS. If anyone wants details please see my journal and be sure to warn your less tech savvy friends/relatives because this latest one looks to be as bad as the old blaster style crap back in the day. I'm just amazed how many are falling for it but I guess with each new medium you have to give out the lessons all over again.
Hell not only ain't it broke, I'd say its never been better. All the major webmails now have excellent spam filters, they all have AV scanning so one doesn't have to warn users about email attachments anymore, they work on just about any device, are fast with most email arriving across services in a few minutes...what is supposed to be busted?
The only thing I see "rising" is pointless bullshit quick posts like tweets which if those I've seen are any indication are about this level of sophistication so I don't see anything 'replacing" email, i just see other channels for bullshit that wouldn't be worth the time to even write an email over. hey if you just want to bullshit? I got no problem with that, I just see email as useful for things other than bullshitting which these "new things" seemed designed to do. Its like FB messaging, my GF gets stuff like who she knew in HS that broke their foot or had a kid, i get "Hey dude, what's a good heatsink?" in both cases not really worth an email for the quick BS that followed.
Well then you are supporting a company whose co-founder said "privacy is dead, get over it" but if you are cool with that? Fine and dandy. Unlike those that treat software as a religion I think you should use what works for you and if Google tracking everything (ever see how much shit Chrome collects?) is cool with you then far be it from me to judge.
That doesn't change the fact that NONE of the companies I named have clean hands, not one. No matter how much PR they spin the big multinationals are just that, multinationals and frankly if they could boost their profits by 15% by throwing you in a cage with a horny silverback you'd be getting gorilla loving before sunset. So maybe if others here would stop treating corps as ballclubs then maybe they too could make informed decisions.
The FOSSies can waste mod points going "La la la M$ Ninja!" all they want but that still doesn't change the fact you didn't even come close to answering the question which is HOW is it possible? The entire design of Linux is based on data being able to be piped from one interface to another and the kernel can't be locked down so HOW can one implement a DRM system when you could just recompile the kernel to say its outputting to a display when really its outputting to a file?
And that is of course ignoring the GPL which I'm sure if you tried the FSF would be happy to file suit. Like it or not RMS DESIGNED IT THAT WAY from the start, or did everyone magically forget the printer story? TINSTAAFL folks and the price you pay for openess is less content, simple as that. No DRM no content, like it or lump it. Or is everyone here saying that a Linux that locked the OS at the TPM level would be welcomed by the community and the FSF?
Makes sense and you probably made a few bucks on ad views to boot. if you need Windows cheap just talk to any friends or relatives that are in school as most students with a .edu address can get Win 7 cheap and if you don't know any students get the OEM as it isn't like you're gonna be moving it from machine to machine. Not that MSFT really gives a crap, i've got the OEM Win 7 and I've replaced every part in my machine but the case and had no complaints from MSFT or hassles when i had to reactivate when i switched out the board.
Isn't it funny though how anyone who doesn't rigidly follow the groupthink and drink the koolaid is modded down? Kinda sad when considering even one of the big cheeses at Red Hat says Linux is a failure of design and then goes on to say what we are witnessing is the "death cries" of the platform. But hey, I bet he's a super sekret M$ Ninja, right?
Yes because filling our dumps with a few more tons of working hardware is wonderful...for the Chinese that make the phones and the telecos that get to sell more contracts. Not so good for the environment though.
And Google says privacy is dead so not really seeing a difference there. One wants to make sure you use their product and the other...wants to make sure you use their product. the only difference i see is one is obvious (MSFT software and OSes) and the other is not (data mining) but both want you using their stuff. The ONLY reason Google is multiplatform is because the platform isn't the product YOU are and they don't care what you run as long as they have YOU. Its like those that scream "Google isn't an ad company" when you look at their SEC filings and over 95% of their profits are from...ads.
And funny you talk about lock in when MSFT can't even kill shit when it wants to, I mean did you know VB is either the third or fourth most popular business language? HOW many years have they been trying to kill it? How about IE 6? They've been trying to kill that devil spawn for ages and haven't had any luck.
So if all that matters to you is multiplatform and you don't mind Google knowing what you do on the web? Use Google. if you don't mind using only a couple of platforms controlled by MSFT? Then use them. Don't mind a walled garden and higher prices for slicker devices? Use Apple. But it just amazes me how some will treat these giant supercorps like they are ballclubs to root for. Watching their actions the past couple of years I'd say that all three of the big players, Apple, Google, and MSFT have their pluses and minuses and NONE of them have truly clean hands. Just to be clear though Apple isn't a bunch of hippies sitting around in tie dye, Google DOES do evil and MSFT...hell do they even have a slogan? if they do its so lame I don't even know what it is, but it probably sucks as bad as a shit brown Zune.
Excuse me, but HOW can it be done on a Linux PC? We'll ignore the legal mess and contracts and just look at the technical, which I'd say makes it impossible. Like it or not for the most part the security by obscurity model works on OSX and Windows because one can't simply recompile their own kernel to bypass the DRM or feed the decrypted output to a file but that kind of stuff CAN be done in Linux and of course then you are dealing with the "smart cow" problem where all it takes is one guy to cook up the bypass and then others can simply copy what he did. Again you just can't do that on Windows and OSX easily because you don't have the source to the files you'd need to alter but this is available on Linux. After all it all comes down to the kernel and if you can alter that anything above that can be manipulated by the kernel which is why IIRC Netflix HD is only available on devices that have locked boot loaders on ARM while with Windows and OSX they can use protected path.
So I honestly don't think this is any kind of "conspiracy" to make people use OSX or Windows, it is simply that Linux and the GPL aren't designed to allow what you would need to deploy DRM in a general use OS. Again this is ignoring the legal issues which I bet it'd be pretty damned hard to implement a functional DRM schema on general purpose X86 Linux without running afoul of the GPL and getting sued. In this case one could argue the GPL is doing exactly what it is supposed to do, which is keep things open and DRM out but you have to take the bad with the good and that means less content for Linux users.
Question: Why would you try to force your GF to use Linux when obviously the software she requires doesn't work and in fact you had to cook up a VM just BECAUSE it won't do what she needs natively?
I can totally understand using Linux on your laptop if you have a use case for it, such as i know several server admin where it makes more sense to run Linux on their laptop so they can easily interact with their servers, but why try to force it on someone who requires software it doesn't have? all that is doing is making one more person that will bad mouth Linux and causing bad feelings for no good reason.
So just give her a laptop with Windows 7, that is obviously what she needs. that way she can run what she wants, you can run what you want on yours, and everyone is happy. Hell its not like you have to run Win 7 as admin like you did XP, in fact with IE or Chromium based using low rights mode for browsing its never been safer, so I just don't get it. Do you not like your GF or something?
As for TFA when is this guy gonna learn? the forums were practically breaking out the pitchforks over Mono, did he think they'd treat Moonlight any differently? Whether he likes it or not no MSFT produced anything will be welcomed into the Linux fold period, the end. The only real selling point for Silverlight is DRM streaming, which doesn't work in Linux (and frankly I don't see how anyone could make a functional DRM in Linux without locking the whole OS which will never fly) so what would be the point? At least .NET is used a lot in enterprise settings so I can se a reason for Mono, but Silverlight just doesn't make much sense on Linux.
Uhhh...How EXACTLY would one implement DRM on Linux that couldn't be trivially bypassed? IIRC one can't hand out locked down kernels without source, and one can't put a bunch of kernel level hooks without running afoul of the GPL, so how EXACTLY are they supposed to have DRM on Linux? On Windows and Mac one can run kernel hooks with no problem which is how much of the DRM on those platforms work but short of locking the bootloader i don't see how one could actually create DRM that would work on Linux. After all one of the points of Linux is you can hack pretty much anything on it since the source is available, you can claim its "security through obscurity" but its pretty damned hard to make your own NT kernel but you can compile a custom Linux kernel quite easily.
So this is one case where you simply can't have your cake and eat it too, Linux was designed to be the ANTI-DRM OS and in that respect it works, but the flipside of that is there is tons of content one will have to pirate if you want to run it on Linux as no DRM, no content. that's just the way it is folks and I don't see how they are supposed to magically make DRM on an OS where everything can be compiled and altered any time by anybody.
And that is why I have said HTML V5 sucks and isn't the way to go, as so far there isn't any DRM specs that work in HTML V5 so the only way to have things like Netflix is lock down the whole OS. That is fine and dandy for Apple and MSFT, and I doubt Google will have much of a problem with it either, not so fine and dandy for the rest of us. No matter how much you may hate flash and silverlight at least one could avoid it without having to jailbreak your entire OS. I have a feeling all the jumping on HTML V5 is so that corps can just lock everything down and force everyone to go with the appstore model, where only approved apps get run. Fuck that!
You said and I quote "Just because some homosexuals were born that way doesn't mean they all are. Case in point: "bicurious". and I still respond...who the fuck cares? Why do YOU care what THEY are doing? How is it ANY of your business? What does it matter to YOU if some were born that way and some weren't?
Anyone that thinks sex is a B&W issue is simply retarded, there are as many places in the spectrum between straight and gay as there are variations in temp but in the end as long as its consenting adults who cares? And who says some can't be born bi? maybe they are simply wired that way, just as I'm as straight as a laser sight?
In the end I have yet to see ANY argument against someone having the right to be straight or gay or bi that didn't come down to religion, and since we are supposed to be intelligent thinking beings wouldn't it be better to base things on facts and not some sky bully that is supposed to come down and spank us if we don't jump through his hoops? if the sky bully exists then let HIM take care of it, I seriously doubt a Deity would need Cleetus to bash the queers for him.