Well allow me to enlighten then. Working retail selling, building, and repairing PCs I can tell you the Yahoo portal that geeks can't stand because it is so "cluttered"? Yeah that damned thing is THE #1 home page for those that aren't geeks by such a large margin it isn't even funny.
I've sat and watched users (including my GF who insists on having a profile on my PC set to "her place" AKA Yahoo Portal) and basically what it boils down to is this: They use the site like a giant starting off point before they go onto the big wide Internet, that is if they even leave it at all. They check their mail, peruse the headlines, see what is gonna be on TV that night, and as another poster pointed out Yahoo Sports is THE number 1# most checked sports site.
So for them Yahoo has taken the place of the morning newspaper. I even picked my dad up a netbook so he could "read the paper" as he called it and chat while watching TV in his living room. As much as geeks may think it is a cluttered mess (and I personally use search.yahoo.com instead) for the average Joe it is the home page by a HUGE margin. In fact it is so popular that when someone comes in that doesn't have it set to Yahoo Portal is when I take notice.
Not really. Last I checked the average IQ is around 104 which means for everyone that actually bothered to learn about an issue and to weigh its merits you'd have a HS football field full of knuckle draggers that would believe anything the TV told them to which would pretty much torpedo your "power to the people" idea pretty quick. I mean just look how many without health insurance rallied against any kind of reform at all because its "socialist" without even knowing what that word means, they just knew Beck told them it was bad.
That is why I think the ONLY way a more direct democracy could work would be to bring back poll tests to weed out the most stupid. This would also be more fair to those that actually cared and participated because they cared by keeping their vote from being negated because "the TV told me to". I mean if you can't even answer the most basic of questions like "what are the three branches of government" or "what is the difference between a state law and a federal law" then why should you have the right to screw things up for everyone else?
And I believe this would help with one of the biggest problems we are facing ATM, the crooked but smooth talking politician. Nowadays it is all about sound bytes designed to manipulate the masses. But if the stupid couldn't vote (and just hearing they had to take a test would cause probably a good 70% to not even attempt voting) then politicians would actually have to be able to talk about what they were for/against and back it up instead of just whipping some sound bytes off that appealed to whatever group they wanted to hit this week. This might also allow us to have a real multi-party system since the incredible power of the MSM would be shot to hell. And I'm not even talking about basing it on IQ or test taking which some smart people freeze up on, we are talking about just being asked some basic questions about the process.
After all to use the all powerful/. car analogy: We don't let anyone operate a motor vehicle without proving they understand the basics so why in the hell should we let them vote which risks impacting a hell of a lot more lives than any car wreck?
But how many are gonna actually want to spend any time staring at these things? Most of us here have tried that VERY old trick and found out the insidious truth...that most of these things are about as exciting as watching paint dry. Just for the hell of it when I saw TFA I did the usual old tricks and out of 30 or so cams I checked out the most exciting thing I saw was a guy turn his snowmobile around in a parking lot. Woo hoo!
Frankly there isn't a point in securing 99.999% of these things because they are just another boring connection. And for those that talk about "man in the middle attacks"? Oh please, you watch too much CSI. I have had to set a few cams up for businesses and what you catch on them is crackheads looking for anything that ain't nailed down, and as anyone who has ever encountered a crackhead knows they ain't exactly intelligent creatures. Hell most would be lucky to figure out how to even use a PC because their first instinct when handed one would be to pawn it.
So lets not make this out to be some big failure of IT when its not. Cameras pointed at places that actually require security have security on the cams for the most part while all these cams you'll find on the net are ones like the cam watching Bob's tire hut to keep the crackheads from trying to steal the compressors. So if watching the parking lot of Bill's pawn shop excites you, hey who am I to judge, but it isn't like these things are a big secret or even need security. After all how many are gonna want to spend any time at all watching a gravel driveway or some fence?
Or you could just use different tools for different jobs instead of trying to do everything with one. I use Xubuntu (or Wary Puppy if the machines is more than 2 years old) as a "Use this if you break your PC until you can get it to me" for those customers that can tear up a Sherman tank with a toothbrush, and it works just fine. I have also set up several older machines with Edubuntu for kids and any old 1.5GHz and up with 512Mb of RAM makes a great "my first PC" for the kiddies while giving them plenty of learning tools that are fun to use.
But to try to switch the masses to using Linux daily? Or interacting with businesses and government? You'd really have more luck pissing in the wind. There is always one app and unlike what many FOSS advocates think it is NEVER Windows or Office that ends up biting you in the ass, like Photoshop, Quickbooks, that app they need to run from work, etc that there NEVER seems to be even a halfass solution that will work on Linux, and of course all those proprietary data formats takes a big old bite out of your ass when dealing with businesses.
So don't try to build a house with just a screwdriver, use the right tools at the right times. If you want to use Linux at home just set up a dual boot or use a cheap KVM switch and have a dedicated Linux box. That way that "Windows only" app can't bite you in the ass and you can still play/surf/do whatever in Linux without consequences. I tried selling Linux boxes alongside Windows and quickly found out unless the customer was an ubergeek (in which case they wouldn't be buying B&M, they'd be DIY) there was simply too many gotchas involved. Now I simply hand out a Linux live CD with the PC and if they break their PC on a weekend it'll get them through until they can bring her in. But even then I found I never had a customer go "I want to keep that live CD thing, can you install it?" but instead got "I was able to check my mail okay but it won't run (insert Windows app) so I need my real PC fixed." I've found it is just better to accept it and move on and leave the evangelism for the militants.
Oh please! Linux has had 15 years and you STILL can't give away enough of the thing even at a cost of $0 to get beyond 1% You think MSFT pays guys like me hidden checks to sell Windows boxes? Nope to paraphrase an old campaign slogan its the apps and ease of use stupid which thanks to some bad design choices royally suck in Linux.
My Win2K drivers work perfectly in WinXP, that is 11 years right there (and since XP will be supported until 2014 those that bought XP in 01 will have had 13 years of support) and the same goes for Vista drivers and Windows 7 (which I'm using about 50/50 Win Vista and 7 drivers ATM) whereas with Linux trying to get even 4 year old drivers to work without recompile is frankly a PITA if you can even pull it off and every upgrade often comes with "update foo broke my drivers" issues. I have several apps from the late 90s that I am running on Win 7 X64, no tweaks, no hoops, it "just works" whereas you're lucky to get even a two year old app to work on Linux thanks to new apps being tied to new kernels, old apps to old which is frankly shitty design.
So while your argument may have mad merit during the days of DOS and "Windows isn't done until DR DOS don't run" kinda shit when old Bill ran the show, the simple fact is time and time again retailers have offered your product and nobody wants it, no matter how many times you type M$ or yell "free as in freedom!". Walmart tried it, found out they were looking at 80%+ returns and quit, MSI and the other netbook OEMs tried it, and found the same and quit. Me and the other little shops tried it, same effect. The simple fact is you just don't make a product that people want to buy and that isn't some "global conspiracy" it is reality.
And finally before anyone trots out that "but but but...Dell sells Linux" BS, not only does Dell hide Linux at the back and practically hit you in the face with "WARNING" signs, if you have actually held one in your hands you would notice there is something....funny...about them. Specifically that ALL Dell machines have the Canonical repos disabled and you know why that is? Because Canonical does such piss poor QA even with them having the lead in users and just having a tiny subset of machines to support, that if you actually use the Canonical repos it breaks shit like sound and networking! What a wonderful product! Meanwhile I can count the number of times I've seen Windows break drivers on update with one hand and have fingers left over.
The reason Windows owns the desktop is that MSFT will allow proprietary companies to write software for their OS and Linux will not and most likely never will. if you don't give up all your code to the devs and pray they take over support thanks to Linus and Co breaking shit constantly in their quest for the perfect kernel you end up having to "pull an Nvidia" and pay a team of developers to update your software for life. And since Quicken/Quickbooks, PhotoShop/PS Pro, and the bazillion other proprietary apps will never give you their code it means they can write for Windows once and use for years or even decades thanks to backwards compatibility, while if they tried that in Linux they would be lucky if they even got the CDs printed before the app didn't work anymore. So I'm sorry but the reason why MSFT won comes down to philosophies: MSFT allowed proprietary code and keeps things working with BC, Linux refuses proprietary code and breaks shit constantly.
Hey at least the pope got a catchy song out of it! The closest thing old Bill got to a catchy song was the Ballmer Monkey going "WOOOO!" and bouncing around the stage yelling developers like a silverback on crack. Does anyone else miss old Bill? I miss old Bill, he had that "evil uber nerd" thing down pat. I always pictured him muttering to himself when he crushed a competitor "Yeah! That's what you get for stuffing me in those lockers in junior high school! Who's the shrimp now huh?" while his flunkies tried to blend into the wallpaper to avoid his wrath.
Now that old Bill is gone and Steve is probably in his last days it just isn't the same. In the old days you had such great arguments, with the Apple guys sneering down their noses at the beige boxes while the PC guys made fun of the crazy Apple prices...sigh. Google VS Windows VS Linux just doesn't have the same zing. Google is data mining so much info their knowledge of everyone's business and personal lives makes Ballmer look like a sweaty Care Bear, but you have to give them credit for pulling the wool over the FOSSies by saying they are FOSS friendly while simultaneously keeping Android GPL V2 so the corps can TiVo the hell out of it. Then finally you have Linux which is just...meh. Sure it gets a little better every year, but without a Jobs or Gates to really hog the spotlight and drive sales it is pretty much flat as far as growth.
We just don't have the great figures of evil in tech anymore. Ballmer is the lite beer of evil, half the calories and a total buzz killer, I doubt Jobs will be coming back and Cook just doesn't have the "I am God" attitude that made Jobs great, and RMS going to Cuba and hanging out in South America with Chavez just comes across as a naive hippie. Where is the great evil CEOs of the tech world? Where are those that inspire great loyalty and hatred? Larry Ellison? bah, he comes off as more batshit insane than anything else. Those that come after us simply won't have the great uber evil CEOs of the tech world, instead it'll be get rich quick and get out flash in the pans like Mark Zuckerberg. Bah, it just ain't fun anymore.
Or they can sell games at "impulse buy" prices to get folks through the door and then hope they can also sell them something more expensive, like I've seen my local Gamestop do a time or two. That is one of the things I like about Good Old Games, pretty much everything on the site is at impulse buy purchases, but hell wandering around retail you never know what you'll find.
Just this weekend I popped into Fred's with my GF to pick up some compressed air I perused through their disc stack while she was looking at housewares and found Mercenaries II for $6. Since I had seen Yahtzee's review which stated while braindead it was still mindless fun I figured what the hell. I gave it to my nephew who is having quite a blast hijacking tanks and blowing up buildings.
So while I have no doubt eventually online will beat retail for PC (especially thanks to all the stores only carrying console games for the most part) as long as there are cheap games to be had folks will still shop at B&M. With consoles I don't see retail going away until the game companies finish fucking everyone with first use killing keys tied to consoles, which frankly will be suicidally dumb. Most folks I know with consoles trade the games they are bored with for discounts on new titles and thus buy more new games, but frankly it wouldn't be the first time greed destroyed a market.
Why would you want to buy this? I'll tell you why: Because that first week or so the sheep will cause the price to shoot like a rocket (because they have heard of FB and know it is big) before it crashes hard when reality sets in. Kinda like how you can make a mint on a "pump and dump" if you get in at the bottom and drop them right before it starts to freefall.
But frankly when I hear the words "evil corporation" I automatically think GS. They are the kind of slime that ruin everything they touch while engorging themselves at the same time. Look at their history and you'll see bubbles as far as the eye can see going back almost to its foundation. Frankly the best thing we here in the US could do for the world is dissolve GS and throw as many of those swindlers under a jail as possible, but sadly our government is riddled with GS "alumni" that make sure their beloved GS ALWAYS comes out ahead. GS is living proof that even after 200 years the words of the great Thomas Jefferson still ring true. How sad that all those years ago he could see the truth when so many today simply bury their heads in the sand and scream "free market!" as the answer to all of the USA's ills.
Nooooo...I would say that YOU are missing MY point! Look at every single new smartphone out there, what is it brazenly trying to rip off? The iShiny of course. You have to give Jobs credit (may he be okay after this latest medical leave) because he took a company that was practically DOA after the Pepsi guy and turned it into THE company everyone tries to rip off.
So unless old Steve retires and the next guy does a 180 degree turn (which is doubtful Steve would pick a successor that would be THAT different from himself) then you are looking at 2 plus years of the iDevices and their ripoffs in the phone and pad spaces being #1. Then as I said you have the 2 years lead time between an idea on the drawing board and an actual chip on the PCB, every test I've run with WebM using a non hardware accelerated PC shows WebM using on average 30-40% more CPU to decode than H.264 which of course even with a hardware decoder will add up to more power/more heat/less battery life, the fact that when placed side by side H.264 looks better than WebM unless you seriously crank up the bitrate which equals more bandwidth used per viewer, and finally the fact that Google refuses to indemnify even though I'm sure their lawyers have looked at the codec which makes me believe that it probably falls afoul of an MPEG-LA patent or two.
So I have just listed about a half a dozen reasons why H.264 is better than WebM yet the ONLY real argument in favor of WebM is it is "free as in freedom man, yeah!" which as we saw with both Vorbis and Theora (both of which had better odds than WebM because they had communities and weren't controlled by a singe entity) means exactly nothing to a good 90%+ of the planet. After all if "free as in freedom" meant anything to the public at large they would be using Linux or BSD instead of Windows, wouldn't they?
Finally as to the HTML V5 standard, frankly I believe the HTML V5 committee shot themselves firmly in the foot by not simply specifying Theora as a minimum. Now I firmly believe it is simply too late and would be as pointless as specifying Vorbis as the default audio at this late date. The OEMs have invested millions in hardware accelerated H.26x chips, the support on every device from CCC (Cheapo Chinese Crap) to the latest top o' the line smartphone is VERY good, I simply don't foresee any scenario where Google can bully the world into accepting WebM as the defacto standard this late in the game. If this was 5 years ago I'd be in firm agreement with you friend, I just don't see it happening now. Sorry FOSS advocates, but like Vorbis I believe WebM will ultimately end up a tiny niche with practically NO hardware support by anyone. Sorry.
But with WebM VS H.264 everyone seems to be happily ignoring the elephant in the room...WebM sucks. I'm sorry, but it does. You are pretty much gonna have to toss every mobile device or watch the battery go dead so fast you might as well just drag a very long extension cord with you and call that mobile. H.264 hardware acceleration is built into just about EVERYTHING, desktops, laptops, pads, phones, TVs, PMPs, etc. Are we gonna throw every single one of those devices out now? Wow that will do wonders for the environment.
The facts are these: Even if everyone started work right this second you are probably looking at around 2 years before WebM support trickles down to the chips in our everyday devices. And of course every device already out built in the last four years or so, plus everything coming down the pipe for the 2 years it will take to add support for WebM? They will all run H.264 great and WebM like ass. So I really hate to burst Google's bubble but it's a little too little, a little too late when it comes to WebM. Like Vorbis by the time it got to the party the world had decided on something else (in that case a likewise encumbered MP3) but you know what? It is only geeks and FOSS advocates that give a flying crap about "free as in freedom man, yeah!" and the rest of the world just throws a few pennies to MPEG-LA or whomever and doesn't give a fuck.
So if Google wants to pull a MSFT and shoot itself in the foot, go right ahead! it still won't make flash or H.264 go anywhere, as a matter of fact I predict this will further entrench flash as one will only have to leave a "raw" H.264 file for iDevice users and drop the same file in a flash container for everybody else, thus making their lives easier. What Google is attempting is to make another tower of Babble like we had with RMV VS WMV VS QT back in the 90s, but the common man just isn't gonna put up with that shit anymore. If Youtube doesn't work on their iDevice or it sucks their new Droid deader than Dixie when they use it? Well screw Youtube then, it isn't like there aren't a bazillion sites where they can see funny cat videos out there and they sure as hell ain't giving up their new iShiny toys for stupid Youtube clips, now are they?
What does that have to do with banned x360s being cheap and plentiful? What does that have to do with the fact that counting used and refurbs you are probably looking at 3 to 1 on x360 VS PS3 in the marketplace, thus helping to drive used units even cheaper? What does that have to do with MSFT's ban hammer creating a huge pile of pre hacked x360s that you can simply drop your "back up" games on? What does that have to do with DVDs being much easier then BDs to download?
Oh right, absolutely nothing, you just wanted to wave your "I have a PS3" fanboy flag. Well good for you, here is a prize. Of course it doesn't change the fact that part of what I do for a living is help to wire people's homes so they can get the most out of their equipment, therefor have probably a little more experience than you in this area, and have found more than a few PS3s being used almost exclusively* as high end BD players. So enjoy your console and feel free to ring in when you actually have something to say other than "PS3 Roxorz!"
*- Almost exclusively in that with the exception of God of War and a few other first party titles the PS3 just plays BDs. If given a choice between the same game on both platforms I've noticed they will nearly always pick the x360 due to the much nicer multiplayer experience on XBL.
If you need a good free AV for a place with over 10 (or hell anyplace for that matter) might I suggest Comodo AV or Internet Security? As you can see from this chart they will have all the major features and will only be lacking in having the live tech support, which frankly if they just stick to the defaults (or have you or someone knowledgeable do the tweaking if they want it customized) they will be just fine.
I have given both Comodo IS and MSFT SE to clients and the only real differences I've found are these: Comodo will take about a week to learn their apps, whereas MSE will "just launch" without question. Comodo by default uses a sandbox on all apps (unless told otherwise) which means if they use one or two heavy resources apps you'll want to tell Comodo not to sandbox those, whereas MSE doesn't sandbox anything.
So in conclusion Comodo IMHO has a little better security, while MSE never asks questions of the user. But considering most questions will be asked by Comodo in the first week, and consist of "did you just launch (name of app)?" it doesn't put undue strain upon the user and if you know what software they run frequently even that can be taken care of by you beforehand. And since it doesn't have a business user limit for poor companies it can be a lifesaver. They do have services that even a poor business might want to look into though, such as their server AV or the SSL certs for websites. Overall I've been using this for a couple of years now and have had no complaints and so far not a single PC I've installed Comodo on has come back infected, nor has there been any of those "oops we blocked schost" kinds of screwups like we've seen from certain other vendors. Try it, its free, and I bet you'll like it.
I have to agree with ya 110%. And I have NO problem in cutting down pollution in ALL forms, but what I DO have a problem with is plans that are NOTHING but a combination of wealth distribution and a "get to offshore for free" combo.
Because lets be honest and cut the BS man, that is ALL the past pollution and taxes added to protect the environment has been...a "hey lets just send the jobs overseas!" bonus check while they make it ever harder for An American to compete. I say lets add HEAVY tariffs to those products that come from polluting countries, the higher they pollute the higher the tax. Because I have watched with my own eyes as companies have closed here and went 300 miles to Mexico and been handsomely rewarded for simply moving the pollution 300 miles. That shit has GOT to end!
Look at the ones pushing AGW...Al Gore, Goldman Sachs, what do these people have in common? They will all profit handsomely from "cap&tax" while the corps will get rewarded for firing Americans by being allowed to poison China and get to sell with NO penalties in our markets. Tell me, is this right? Does this make sense to anyone but CEOs that don't care if they work 6 year olds in sweatshops as long as they make the quarterly earnings? I do not care which side of AGW you are on, the current "plans" are just a tax on the 97% to give to the top 3% while doing exactly dick about pollution. How does this help anything?
Hear hear! And hasn't the entire argument of the pro AGW side been "if we don't stop greenhouses gases(by using something like cap & Trade) right now then things are gonna get significantly hotter"?
Well last I checked nobody is stopping, the third world is sure as hell not gonna give up industrialization, so here is their chance to end the argument and shut up those that don't believe. Hell I'm sure he'd be willing to even give them a spread, like between x & y degrees hotter since he believes it will get cooler, so they don't even have to try to get on the nose.
While I believe in cutting down pollution, but if and ONLY if we put tariffs in place so we don't just give corporations yet another excuse to offshore, I haven't actually seen a single pro AGW spokesman for that. I have so far ONLY seen a "screw the west" with cap & trade and carbon taxes plan pushed forth, and by those like Al Gore that have the most to gain. So this is their chance to prove this isn't just a wealth distribution scheme. Because if they can't even take on a single weatherman, why in the hell should we give up a significant portion of our money (in the form of taxes and cap & trade) to these people?
I have to agree with ya Pope and lets be honest folks, people are killed every single day for a hell of a lot less money than what a botnet herder gets. And with the guy being in Bulgaria? Well it ain't really that far from there to botnet central AKA Russia. It would be like me being within an easy drive of the Mexican border and stirring up shit for the narcos. Would anybody be surprised if I just "went missing"?
So while I truly hope as you do he is just tying one on somewhere from what I've seen most folks just don't generally walk away from their life, certainly not for 5+ months. And if this guy was big into cyber crimefighting I doubt that theory even more, as it takes some dedication to do that kind of thing successfully and those with that skill set usually don't just "walk away" from it all.
And what are the odds that if he was snatched they would EVER find anything? Europe is a hell of a big place, I'm sure there are plenty of places to lose someone forever that wouldn't leave a trace, just as there is a rumor here a local snitch that "went missing" a couple of years back got "done a Fargo" (chipper shredder) right into the local river after costing one person too many serious money on a methlab getting busted. And from what I understand a good botnet can make as much money as a methlab and is certainly less risky.
Well by your logic then running as root isn't "punching a hole in your security" and therefor FUD because you aren't doing anything dangerous, you just aren't being as careful as you could be. NOW do you see the problem in your logic? And one shouldn't complain about being pissy when one whips out their Johnson. Your first post claimed FUD without anything to back it up whereas I provided links backing up my position..
Either running with high permissions is GOOD or it is BAD there is NO in between with these concepts. Considering what Vista and more importantly 7 use is a UAC administered "hybrid user" which has some of the powers of Admin and some of a regular user combined this is why low rights mode exists in the first place. This is especially true of Windows 7 because of the irritation caused by legacy apps and UAC on Vista which caused many to just kill it.
And can we both agree the browser is the closest one gets to the bare Internetbarring running your own email server? Because after all ALL drive by malware, JavaScript hijacks, malicious downloads, they ALL start in the same place...in the browser.
So your entire argument boils down to having the most risky piece of software on your system running in a hybrid admin mode is good because...why? You were quick to yell FUD yet I see now real explanation about why running in a higher mode is better for the system just that you don't see a harm in it.
Question: Why would you bother to hack YOUR x360? Already banned X360s can be had for quite cheap on craigslist, hell many of them with "back up" games already loaded. So why would you risk boning your XBL account and go to the trouble of hacking your console when you could just have a second one for pirated content?
I would say this is one area where the advantage will be to Sony. The market simply isn't nearly as flooded with PS3s as it is with X360s and MSFT's ban hammer has made pirated consoles a dime a dozen. While there is also the issue of downloading BD rips VS DVDs which will add up quick if you have any caps, and most folks don't have BD drives in their PCs to rip rented games (although that can be gotten around for less than $100 now).
Of course what I would say is the biggest advantage over the X360 is something I bet Sony isn't really happy about, and that is that most folks I've met with a PS3 don't actually game on the PS3 hardly at all. They buy the few PS3 exclusives like God of War and most of the time they are just using their PS3 as a BD player. Now to be fair from what I've been told the PS3 is still the best BD player bar none, but I kinda doubt that was what Sony had in mind when they put the BD into the PS3. Maybe it is just me but everyone I've met with a PS3 also had an X360 and THAT was what they did all their gaming on, preferring XBL over PSN.
In any case I think we can all agree killing OtherOS painted a big red bullseye on the PS3 and it looks like that dumb move is gonna take a big old bite out of Sony's bottom line regardless.
HI MR AC, or may I call you coward? Apparently I know more than you do coward, or you wouldn't think 1+1=3. Allow me to explain in a way you may be able to understand. You have three browsers on Linux, we'll call them Web 1 2 and 3. Now Web 1 and 2 run as a normal user with normal user rights, whereas web 3 demands root to run and the ONLY work around offered is to make root look like a normal user would you HONESTLY use web 3 over web 1 and 2?
Because that is EXACTLY what you are advocating cow, because both IE and webkit are running and much lower permissions which thus minimize ANY possible damage that could be caused by any drive by malware when compared to Firefox. Since you obviously don't know anything about the subject, allow me to point youtowards somereading material on the subject.
As for everyone else, please don't be as uneducated as cow here. Running an application directly exposed to the Internet while having to run third party code like a browser does everyday in a higher level of permissions than necessary is an EXTREMELY BAD idea and yes it IS punching a hole when you have a choice of running in low permissions or high permissions and choose high, because you are purposely exposing yourself to needless risk. If you really don't think that is the case cow, then why don't you explain to us here at/. why running as root is a good idea, hmmm?
Okay, how about I give everyone a nice new topic to get PO'ed over and argue about? My Theory: While these 1 second boots are a cute trick and all, Embedded Linux is gonna quickly end up the Useful Idiot of the megacorps, where a community works their collective asses off and at the end of the day have nothing for all their hard work except the fattening of some megacorp's bottom line.
Why is that? This sentence: GPL V2 and TiVoization. Hell even the most basic rules of the GPL like providing source is apparently too much bother for many of the Android pad manufacturers, but in the end it will be for naught thanks to things like signing kernels and hardware DRM.
I mean everyone here rushed to trip over themselves to say how wonderful Google was for Android, yet nobody seemed to notice or care that all of Android is GPL V2 and it didn't occur to anyone to ask why? Or is it because we all know why, it is because Google only cares about Google and not about FOSS.
Lets be honest folks: The ONLY reason why everyone is using embedded Linux and not BSD is thanks to TiVo showing the corporate world the GPL V2 loophole, that magically lets them turn all the hard work the embedded Linux guys have done (which is frankly pretty far ahead of BSD in embedded tools and design) and with a wave of the wand poof! Its suddenly BSD for all the good the GPL did. I mean who gives a crap if they give you the source if the machine won't let you run it without the corp's permission?
So while I'm glad that all the hard work those guys put in have paid off with 1 second booting, if they are releasing under GPL V2 they may as well have not bothered. If they want to release under BSD then do so, but if they want the protections that GPL offers they damned well better be under GPL V3, because otherwise this is just a license for the megacorps to shamelessly rip away. So let the arguing commence!
Uhhh you DO know that/. is an American site yes? it even says so in their TOS! So basically what you do doing is no different than me going to a Japanese site and saying "Speak fucking English!"
As for TFA, who in their right mind hasn't figured every single thing an ISP says should be replaced by little word balloons that say "Bullshit" "lie" and "OMFG you actually BELIEVED that? LOL!". Hell their TOS might as well say "We'll do what we like, sell your data to anybody who'll give us a buck, fuck you every single way in every position we can think of, and if you don't like it please feel free to write us a nasty note and then burn it because we don't read those things anyway. Oh and we made deals with the other ISPs so you're fucked either way. Have a nice day!"
You know, I thought politicians were bad, but ISPs have made bullshit and lies into an artform. Hell they would take the gold if BS ever becomes an Olympic sport. For those that bought those Mifi routers maybe you can find a sucker on eBay. But anybody who didn't know ISPs were kings of lie haven't seen any of the recent Hughes sat Internet commercials. Man those guys lie like champs!
Thanks for the link, which just proves what I've been saying (and been modded down for daring to point out) but more and more RMS with his radical beliefs is falling right into the role of useful idiot that the dictators just love to their faces and then LMAO when their back is turned. Does RMS REALLY think Cuba or Chavez-land is gonna suddenly hold his hand and dance through the flowers while embracing the 4 freedoms, when their people don't even have the right to speak? Can he REALLY be that stupid?
In the end I don't think it is possible for even a drop out of MIT to be that dumb. No he knows EXACTLY what he is doing and frankly doesn't care because as long as it pushed his ultra left agenda (go to his website and look at the causes) he will happily put blinders on to the evil being done with FOSS software or the fact his "4 freedoms" don't mean shit there. And to me that makes RMS WORSE than Gates, Jobs, and Ellison by a LONG shot. Because at least they aren't hypocrites. RMS will talk a good game about his "4 freedoms" but when some communist or dictator run country comes a calling he will happily let that freedom thing slide as long as they claim to be ultra left. that makes him no different in my eyes than the useful idiots of the 30s who were happy to ignore the purges and other evils Stalin did simply because he was communist. It should be about freedom and NOT left or right ideology, but apparently somebody forgot to tell RMS that.
Have you tried Comodo Dragon yet? Based on Chromium so any Chrome extensions you like work fine, has all the Google "phone home" crap cut out, and is designed around security, such as better Domain Validation and optional access to the Comodo secure DNS which helps protect against DNS cache poisoning.
Since FF has so far refused to support low rights mode which means FF is a LOT less secure than webkit based browsers or even the latest IE I have been running the Dragon pretty much 24/7 testing it to see if it is right for my customers and I have to say I'm impressed. No crashes, solid as a rock, seems to catch hinky certs quicker and better than FF, runs ABP and ForecastFox perfectly, REALLY fast, it is just a damn good browser.
So until FF starts supporting modern security features I've switched to the Dragon and have started handing it out to customers, even those still on XP (so I don't have to support dual browsers) and so far not a single complaint. If you want the speed of Chrome without all the "phone home" junk and would like a little extra security conscious browser, try it. Its free and will happily copy your FF bookmarks over so switching is easy peasy.
It isn't just "possible" it has already happened! How many years has China been running "Red Flag Linux" yet I don't see RHEL suddenly gaining from all the work the Chinese did, do you? Hell they even ripped off the WinXP interface and tacked it on so the average Joe there wouldn't know what they were using!
And considering China is pushing RFL for Internet cafes and their history of political repression you just know this has all kinds of monitoring software built in, yet I don't see source for any of that either. The simple facts are these: Repressive governments want control, and they don't want to spend money they don't have to to exercise that control. In this case Open Source makes a perfect useful idiot in that they can get all those millions of man hours of labor for $0 while at the same time being able to ignore any and all license requirements, no different than how they ignore the Windows Vendors on the corner selling how MSFT software. But of course having source gives them an advantage they don't have with MSFT, it lets them look for backdoors and insert all the nastiness they want. So I don't see how this can be seen as anything but a giant loss for FOSS and the 4 freedoms.
I didn't think it became bloated, as a matter of fact they seemed to fix the memory leak that had been plaguing the 2.x series which was a real improvement. What I do hope they fix is the ability to run FireFox in low rights mode on the OSes that support it. Right now ALL the webkit based browsers seem to support it OOTB as does IE. The only work around I've seen is basically crippling low rights mode to deal with the fact that FF demands higher rights and on previous forums the developers seem to have had a "not cross platform = don't care" which is just stupid and ignorant. I mean if Linux or OSX came out with a great new security feature would they ignore it because Windows didn't have it?
So while I'll be happy to try it and really do hope they add low rights mode until they do having the browser punch a needless hole in the OS security is kinda a deal breaker for me. I have too many customers and family that depend on me to make sure their PC is as safe as it can possibly be and with the browser being the one app that everyone uses that is so close to being "bare metal" against the wild and risky Internet it just seems irresponsible not to use the new security features built into Vista and 7. So I'm typing this on Comodo Dragon and have managed to find replacements for my most important extensions like ABP and ForecastFox. While I would have preferred to keep handing out and recommending FF until they fix their being unable to use modern security features it is just too risky. The Dragon handles low rights mode OOTB, and the extra security features like the optional secure DNS that protects the user from cache poisoning is a nice touch.
So come on FF Devs, I've been using your browser since the old days and would really hate to give up NoScript, even if it is too complex for my customers. But with low rights mode isolating the browser in a sandbox where it simply doesn't have access to anything important NoScript isn't really needed and ABP and ForecastFox work fine. But I miss the FF way of doing things, so c'mon devs make FF 4 more secure!
That is why I personally believe America WILL fall, the only question is when. We have gone from "Ask not what your country can do for you" to "Where's mine bitch?" in just two generations. Our corporations see NOTHING wrong with completely crippling this country's ability to defend itself if it makes them a couple of cents on the dollar, we have hemorrhaged so much of our manufacturing and now our IT and more and more our educated jobs that many of the populace simply can't survive without government handouts, just read this and tell me it doesn't make you want to puke.
All these senators fucking NASA and our space program to "bring home the bacon" are just a symptom of a much larger and fatal disease: the "right now" disease that is frankly killing the USA. Nobody cares if the long term effect is destruction, as long as they get their money "right now". Nobody cares if their actions are ultimately not only horribly harmful but cause untold suffering on their fellow citizens as long as they get theirs "right now". Meanwhile you have China and India that aren't pulling that kind of crap because they are "nationalistic" which is apparently a code word for "not offshoring the entire economy".
Ultimately I believe it will spell the end of the USA as we know it. The only thing keeping the peasants from revolting is the payouts from mommy government, but the presses can't run forever, eventually the shit WILL hit the fan. When it does I think to give the huge masses of poor "bread and jobs" the USA will do to South America what the little German did to Poland, but even then I believe the corruption to be too deep to be stopped and it will all collapse. Afterward like the old USSR we will probably break up into several "regional co-ops" like the Midwest belt and the eastern alliance. Because things as they are simply can't continue, you simply have too many poor on the bottom and too few with money at the top.
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Well allow me to enlighten then. Working retail selling, building, and repairing PCs I can tell you the Yahoo portal that geeks can't stand because it is so "cluttered"? Yeah that damned thing is THE #1 home page for those that aren't geeks by such a large margin it isn't even funny.
I've sat and watched users (including my GF who insists on having a profile on my PC set to "her place" AKA Yahoo Portal) and basically what it boils down to is this: They use the site like a giant starting off point before they go onto the big wide Internet, that is if they even leave it at all. They check their mail, peruse the headlines, see what is gonna be on TV that night, and as another poster pointed out Yahoo Sports is THE number 1# most checked sports site.
So for them Yahoo has taken the place of the morning newspaper. I even picked my dad up a netbook so he could "read the paper" as he called it and chat while watching TV in his living room. As much as geeks may think it is a cluttered mess (and I personally use search.yahoo.com instead) for the average Joe it is the home page by a HUGE margin. In fact it is so popular that when someone comes in that doesn't have it set to Yahoo Portal is when I take notice.
Not really. Last I checked the average IQ is around 104 which means for everyone that actually bothered to learn about an issue and to weigh its merits you'd have a HS football field full of knuckle draggers that would believe anything the TV told them to which would pretty much torpedo your "power to the people" idea pretty quick. I mean just look how many without health insurance rallied against any kind of reform at all because its "socialist" without even knowing what that word means, they just knew Beck told them it was bad.
That is why I think the ONLY way a more direct democracy could work would be to bring back poll tests to weed out the most stupid. This would also be more fair to those that actually cared and participated because they cared by keeping their vote from being negated because "the TV told me to". I mean if you can't even answer the most basic of questions like "what are the three branches of government" or "what is the difference between a state law and a federal law" then why should you have the right to screw things up for everyone else?
And I believe this would help with one of the biggest problems we are facing ATM, the crooked but smooth talking politician. Nowadays it is all about sound bytes designed to manipulate the masses. But if the stupid couldn't vote (and just hearing they had to take a test would cause probably a good 70% to not even attempt voting) then politicians would actually have to be able to talk about what they were for/against and back it up instead of just whipping some sound bytes off that appealed to whatever group they wanted to hit this week. This might also allow us to have a real multi-party system since the incredible power of the MSM would be shot to hell. And I'm not even talking about basing it on IQ or test taking which some smart people freeze up on, we are talking about just being asked some basic questions about the process.
After all to use the all powerful /. car analogy: We don't let anyone operate a motor vehicle without proving they understand the basics so why in the hell should we let them vote which risks impacting a hell of a lot more lives than any car wreck?
But how many are gonna actually want to spend any time staring at these things? Most of us here have tried that VERY old trick and found out the insidious truth...that most of these things are about as exciting as watching paint dry. Just for the hell of it when I saw TFA I did the usual old tricks and out of 30 or so cams I checked out the most exciting thing I saw was a guy turn his snowmobile around in a parking lot. Woo hoo!
Frankly there isn't a point in securing 99.999% of these things because they are just another boring connection. And for those that talk about "man in the middle attacks"? Oh please, you watch too much CSI. I have had to set a few cams up for businesses and what you catch on them is crackheads looking for anything that ain't nailed down, and as anyone who has ever encountered a crackhead knows they ain't exactly intelligent creatures. Hell most would be lucky to figure out how to even use a PC because their first instinct when handed one would be to pawn it.
So lets not make this out to be some big failure of IT when its not. Cameras pointed at places that actually require security have security on the cams for the most part while all these cams you'll find on the net are ones like the cam watching Bob's tire hut to keep the crackheads from trying to steal the compressors. So if watching the parking lot of Bill's pawn shop excites you, hey who am I to judge, but it isn't like these things are a big secret or even need security. After all how many are gonna want to spend any time at all watching a gravel driveway or some fence?
Or you could just use different tools for different jobs instead of trying to do everything with one. I use Xubuntu (or Wary Puppy if the machines is more than 2 years old) as a "Use this if you break your PC until you can get it to me" for those customers that can tear up a Sherman tank with a toothbrush, and it works just fine. I have also set up several older machines with Edubuntu for kids and any old 1.5GHz and up with 512Mb of RAM makes a great "my first PC" for the kiddies while giving them plenty of learning tools that are fun to use.
But to try to switch the masses to using Linux daily? Or interacting with businesses and government? You'd really have more luck pissing in the wind. There is always one app and unlike what many FOSS advocates think it is NEVER Windows or Office that ends up biting you in the ass, like Photoshop, Quickbooks, that app they need to run from work, etc that there NEVER seems to be even a halfass solution that will work on Linux, and of course all those proprietary data formats takes a big old bite out of your ass when dealing with businesses.
So don't try to build a house with just a screwdriver, use the right tools at the right times. If you want to use Linux at home just set up a dual boot or use a cheap KVM switch and have a dedicated Linux box. That way that "Windows only" app can't bite you in the ass and you can still play/surf/do whatever in Linux without consequences. I tried selling Linux boxes alongside Windows and quickly found out unless the customer was an ubergeek (in which case they wouldn't be buying B&M, they'd be DIY) there was simply too many gotchas involved. Now I simply hand out a Linux live CD with the PC and if they break their PC on a weekend it'll get them through until they can bring her in. But even then I found I never had a customer go "I want to keep that live CD thing, can you install it?" but instead got "I was able to check my mail okay but it won't run (insert Windows app) so I need my real PC fixed." I've found it is just better to accept it and move on and leave the evangelism for the militants.
Oh please! Linux has had 15 years and you STILL can't give away enough of the thing even at a cost of $0 to get beyond 1% You think MSFT pays guys like me hidden checks to sell Windows boxes? Nope to paraphrase an old campaign slogan its the apps and ease of use stupid which thanks to some bad design choices royally suck in Linux.
My Win2K drivers work perfectly in WinXP, that is 11 years right there (and since XP will be supported until 2014 those that bought XP in 01 will have had 13 years of support) and the same goes for Vista drivers and Windows 7 (which I'm using about 50/50 Win Vista and 7 drivers ATM) whereas with Linux trying to get even 4 year old drivers to work without recompile is frankly a PITA if you can even pull it off and every upgrade often comes with "update foo broke my drivers" issues. I have several apps from the late 90s that I am running on Win 7 X64, no tweaks, no hoops, it "just works" whereas you're lucky to get even a two year old app to work on Linux thanks to new apps being tied to new kernels, old apps to old which is frankly shitty design.
So while your argument may have mad merit during the days of DOS and "Windows isn't done until DR DOS don't run" kinda shit when old Bill ran the show, the simple fact is time and time again retailers have offered your product and nobody wants it, no matter how many times you type M$ or yell "free as in freedom!". Walmart tried it, found out they were looking at 80%+ returns and quit, MSI and the other netbook OEMs tried it, and found the same and quit. Me and the other little shops tried it, same effect. The simple fact is you just don't make a product that people want to buy and that isn't some "global conspiracy" it is reality.
And finally before anyone trots out that "but but but...Dell sells Linux" BS, not only does Dell hide Linux at the back and practically hit you in the face with "WARNING" signs, if you have actually held one in your hands you would notice there is something....funny...about them. Specifically that ALL Dell machines have the Canonical repos disabled and you know why that is? Because Canonical does such piss poor QA even with them having the lead in users and just having a tiny subset of machines to support, that if you actually use the Canonical repos it breaks shit like sound and networking! What a wonderful product! Meanwhile I can count the number of times I've seen Windows break drivers on update with one hand and have fingers left over.
The reason Windows owns the desktop is that MSFT will allow proprietary companies to write software for their OS and Linux will not and most likely never will. if you don't give up all your code to the devs and pray they take over support thanks to Linus and Co breaking shit constantly in their quest for the perfect kernel you end up having to "pull an Nvidia" and pay a team of developers to update your software for life. And since Quicken/Quickbooks, PhotoShop/PS Pro, and the bazillion other proprietary apps will never give you their code it means they can write for Windows once and use for years or even decades thanks to backwards compatibility, while if they tried that in Linux they would be lucky if they even got the CDs printed before the app didn't work anymore. So I'm sorry but the reason why MSFT won comes down to philosophies: MSFT allowed proprietary code and keeps things working with BC, Linux refuses proprietary code and breaks shit constantly.
Hey at least the pope got a catchy song out of it! The closest thing old Bill got to a catchy song was the Ballmer Monkey going "WOOOO!" and bouncing around the stage yelling developers like a silverback on crack. Does anyone else miss old Bill? I miss old Bill, he had that "evil uber nerd" thing down pat. I always pictured him muttering to himself when he crushed a competitor "Yeah! That's what you get for stuffing me in those lockers in junior high school! Who's the shrimp now huh?" while his flunkies tried to blend into the wallpaper to avoid his wrath.
Now that old Bill is gone and Steve is probably in his last days it just isn't the same. In the old days you had such great arguments, with the Apple guys sneering down their noses at the beige boxes while the PC guys made fun of the crazy Apple prices...sigh. Google VS Windows VS Linux just doesn't have the same zing. Google is data mining so much info their knowledge of everyone's business and personal lives makes Ballmer look like a sweaty Care Bear, but you have to give them credit for pulling the wool over the FOSSies by saying they are FOSS friendly while simultaneously keeping Android GPL V2 so the corps can TiVo the hell out of it. Then finally you have Linux which is just...meh. Sure it gets a little better every year, but without a Jobs or Gates to really hog the spotlight and drive sales it is pretty much flat as far as growth.
We just don't have the great figures of evil in tech anymore. Ballmer is the lite beer of evil, half the calories and a total buzz killer, I doubt Jobs will be coming back and Cook just doesn't have the "I am God" attitude that made Jobs great, and RMS going to Cuba and hanging out in South America with Chavez just comes across as a naive hippie. Where is the great evil CEOs of the tech world? Where are those that inspire great loyalty and hatred? Larry Ellison? bah, he comes off as more batshit insane than anything else. Those that come after us simply won't have the great uber evil CEOs of the tech world, instead it'll be get rich quick and get out flash in the pans like Mark Zuckerberg. Bah, it just ain't fun anymore.
Or they can sell games at "impulse buy" prices to get folks through the door and then hope they can also sell them something more expensive, like I've seen my local Gamestop do a time or two. That is one of the things I like about Good Old Games, pretty much everything on the site is at impulse buy purchases, but hell wandering around retail you never know what you'll find.
Just this weekend I popped into Fred's with my GF to pick up some compressed air I perused through their disc stack while she was looking at housewares and found Mercenaries II for $6. Since I had seen Yahtzee's review which stated while braindead it was still mindless fun I figured what the hell. I gave it to my nephew who is having quite a blast hijacking tanks and blowing up buildings.
So while I have no doubt eventually online will beat retail for PC (especially thanks to all the stores only carrying console games for the most part) as long as there are cheap games to be had folks will still shop at B&M. With consoles I don't see retail going away until the game companies finish fucking everyone with first use killing keys tied to consoles, which frankly will be suicidally dumb. Most folks I know with consoles trade the games they are bored with for discounts on new titles and thus buy more new games, but frankly it wouldn't be the first time greed destroyed a market.
Why would you want to buy this? I'll tell you why: Because that first week or so the sheep will cause the price to shoot like a rocket (because they have heard of FB and know it is big) before it crashes hard when reality sets in. Kinda like how you can make a mint on a "pump and dump" if you get in at the bottom and drop them right before it starts to freefall.
But frankly when I hear the words "evil corporation" I automatically think GS. They are the kind of slime that ruin everything they touch while engorging themselves at the same time. Look at their history and you'll see bubbles as far as the eye can see going back almost to its foundation. Frankly the best thing we here in the US could do for the world is dissolve GS and throw as many of those swindlers under a jail as possible, but sadly our government is riddled with GS "alumni" that make sure their beloved GS ALWAYS comes out ahead. GS is living proof that even after 200 years the words of the great Thomas Jefferson still ring true. How sad that all those years ago he could see the truth when so many today simply bury their heads in the sand and scream "free market!" as the answer to all of the USA's ills.
Nooooo...I would say that YOU are missing MY point! Look at every single new smartphone out there, what is it brazenly trying to rip off? The iShiny of course. You have to give Jobs credit (may he be okay after this latest medical leave) because he took a company that was practically DOA after the Pepsi guy and turned it into THE company everyone tries to rip off.
So unless old Steve retires and the next guy does a 180 degree turn (which is doubtful Steve would pick a successor that would be THAT different from himself) then you are looking at 2 plus years of the iDevices and their ripoffs in the phone and pad spaces being #1. Then as I said you have the 2 years lead time between an idea on the drawing board and an actual chip on the PCB, every test I've run with WebM using a non hardware accelerated PC shows WebM using on average 30-40% more CPU to decode than H.264 which of course even with a hardware decoder will add up to more power/more heat/less battery life, the fact that when placed side by side H.264 looks better than WebM unless you seriously crank up the bitrate which equals more bandwidth used per viewer, and finally the fact that Google refuses to indemnify even though I'm sure their lawyers have looked at the codec which makes me believe that it probably falls afoul of an MPEG-LA patent or two.
So I have just listed about a half a dozen reasons why H.264 is better than WebM yet the ONLY real argument in favor of WebM is it is "free as in freedom man, yeah!" which as we saw with both Vorbis and Theora (both of which had better odds than WebM because they had communities and weren't controlled by a singe entity) means exactly nothing to a good 90%+ of the planet. After all if "free as in freedom" meant anything to the public at large they would be using Linux or BSD instead of Windows, wouldn't they?
Finally as to the HTML V5 standard, frankly I believe the HTML V5 committee shot themselves firmly in the foot by not simply specifying Theora as a minimum. Now I firmly believe it is simply too late and would be as pointless as specifying Vorbis as the default audio at this late date. The OEMs have invested millions in hardware accelerated H.26x chips, the support on every device from CCC (Cheapo Chinese Crap) to the latest top o' the line smartphone is VERY good, I simply don't foresee any scenario where Google can bully the world into accepting WebM as the defacto standard this late in the game. If this was 5 years ago I'd be in firm agreement with you friend, I just don't see it happening now. Sorry FOSS advocates, but like Vorbis I believe WebM will ultimately end up a tiny niche with practically NO hardware support by anyone. Sorry.
But with WebM VS H.264 everyone seems to be happily ignoring the elephant in the room...WebM sucks. I'm sorry, but it does. You are pretty much gonna have to toss every mobile device or watch the battery go dead so fast you might as well just drag a very long extension cord with you and call that mobile. H.264 hardware acceleration is built into just about EVERYTHING, desktops, laptops, pads, phones, TVs, PMPs, etc. Are we gonna throw every single one of those devices out now? Wow that will do wonders for the environment.
The facts are these: Even if everyone started work right this second you are probably looking at around 2 years before WebM support trickles down to the chips in our everyday devices. And of course every device already out built in the last four years or so, plus everything coming down the pipe for the 2 years it will take to add support for WebM? They will all run H.264 great and WebM like ass. So I really hate to burst Google's bubble but it's a little too little, a little too late when it comes to WebM. Like Vorbis by the time it got to the party the world had decided on something else (in that case a likewise encumbered MP3) but you know what? It is only geeks and FOSS advocates that give a flying crap about "free as in freedom man, yeah!" and the rest of the world just throws a few pennies to MPEG-LA or whomever and doesn't give a fuck.
So if Google wants to pull a MSFT and shoot itself in the foot, go right ahead! it still won't make flash or H.264 go anywhere, as a matter of fact I predict this will further entrench flash as one will only have to leave a "raw" H.264 file for iDevice users and drop the same file in a flash container for everybody else, thus making their lives easier. What Google is attempting is to make another tower of Babble like we had with RMV VS WMV VS QT back in the 90s, but the common man just isn't gonna put up with that shit anymore. If Youtube doesn't work on their iDevice or it sucks their new Droid deader than Dixie when they use it? Well screw Youtube then, it isn't like there aren't a bazillion sites where they can see funny cat videos out there and they sure as hell ain't giving up their new iShiny toys for stupid Youtube clips, now are they?
What does that have to do with banned x360s being cheap and plentiful? What does that have to do with the fact that counting used and refurbs you are probably looking at 3 to 1 on x360 VS PS3 in the marketplace, thus helping to drive used units even cheaper? What does that have to do with MSFT's ban hammer creating a huge pile of pre hacked x360s that you can simply drop your "back up" games on? What does that have to do with DVDs being much easier then BDs to download?
Oh right, absolutely nothing, you just wanted to wave your "I have a PS3" fanboy flag. Well good for you, here is a prize. Of course it doesn't change the fact that part of what I do for a living is help to wire people's homes so they can get the most out of their equipment, therefor have probably a little more experience than you in this area, and have found more than a few PS3s being used almost exclusively* as high end BD players. So enjoy your console and feel free to ring in when you actually have something to say other than "PS3 Roxorz!"
*- Almost exclusively in that with the exception of God of War and a few other first party titles the PS3 just plays BDs. If given a choice between the same game on both platforms I've noticed they will nearly always pick the x360 due to the much nicer multiplayer experience on XBL.
If you need a good free AV for a place with over 10 (or hell anyplace for that matter) might I suggest Comodo AV or Internet Security? As you can see from this chart they will have all the major features and will only be lacking in having the live tech support, which frankly if they just stick to the defaults (or have you or someone knowledgeable do the tweaking if they want it customized) they will be just fine.
I have given both Comodo IS and MSFT SE to clients and the only real differences I've found are these: Comodo will take about a week to learn their apps, whereas MSE will "just launch" without question. Comodo by default uses a sandbox on all apps (unless told otherwise) which means if they use one or two heavy resources apps you'll want to tell Comodo not to sandbox those, whereas MSE doesn't sandbox anything.
So in conclusion Comodo IMHO has a little better security, while MSE never asks questions of the user. But considering most questions will be asked by Comodo in the first week, and consist of "did you just launch (name of app)?" it doesn't put undue strain upon the user and if you know what software they run frequently even that can be taken care of by you beforehand. And since it doesn't have a business user limit for poor companies it can be a lifesaver. They do have services that even a poor business might want to look into though, such as their server AV or the SSL certs for websites. Overall I've been using this for a couple of years now and have had no complaints and so far not a single PC I've installed Comodo on has come back infected, nor has there been any of those "oops we blocked schost" kinds of screwups like we've seen from certain other vendors. Try it, its free, and I bet you'll like it.
I have to agree with ya 110%. And I have NO problem in cutting down pollution in ALL forms, but what I DO have a problem with is plans that are NOTHING but a combination of wealth distribution and a "get to offshore for free" combo.
Because lets be honest and cut the BS man, that is ALL the past pollution and taxes added to protect the environment has been...a "hey lets just send the jobs overseas!" bonus check while they make it ever harder for An American to compete. I say lets add HEAVY tariffs to those products that come from polluting countries, the higher they pollute the higher the tax. Because I have watched with my own eyes as companies have closed here and went 300 miles to Mexico and been handsomely rewarded for simply moving the pollution 300 miles. That shit has GOT to end!
Look at the ones pushing AGW...Al Gore, Goldman Sachs, what do these people have in common? They will all profit handsomely from "cap&tax" while the corps will get rewarded for firing Americans by being allowed to poison China and get to sell with NO penalties in our markets. Tell me, is this right? Does this make sense to anyone but CEOs that don't care if they work 6 year olds in sweatshops as long as they make the quarterly earnings? I do not care which side of AGW you are on, the current "plans" are just a tax on the 97% to give to the top 3% while doing exactly dick about pollution. How does this help anything?
Hear hear! And hasn't the entire argument of the pro AGW side been "if we don't stop greenhouses gases(by using something like cap & Trade) right now then things are gonna get significantly hotter"?
Well last I checked nobody is stopping, the third world is sure as hell not gonna give up industrialization, so here is their chance to end the argument and shut up those that don't believe. Hell I'm sure he'd be willing to even give them a spread, like between x & y degrees hotter since he believes it will get cooler, so they don't even have to try to get on the nose.
While I believe in cutting down pollution, but if and ONLY if we put tariffs in place so we don't just give corporations yet another excuse to offshore, I haven't actually seen a single pro AGW spokesman for that. I have so far ONLY seen a "screw the west" with cap & trade and carbon taxes plan pushed forth, and by those like Al Gore that have the most to gain. So this is their chance to prove this isn't just a wealth distribution scheme. Because if they can't even take on a single weatherman, why in the hell should we give up a significant portion of our money (in the form of taxes and cap & trade) to these people?
I have to agree with ya Pope and lets be honest folks, people are killed every single day for a hell of a lot less money than what a botnet herder gets. And with the guy being in Bulgaria? Well it ain't really that far from there to botnet central AKA Russia. It would be like me being within an easy drive of the Mexican border and stirring up shit for the narcos. Would anybody be surprised if I just "went missing"?
So while I truly hope as you do he is just tying one on somewhere from what I've seen most folks just don't generally walk away from their life, certainly not for 5+ months. And if this guy was big into cyber crimefighting I doubt that theory even more, as it takes some dedication to do that kind of thing successfully and those with that skill set usually don't just "walk away" from it all.
And what are the odds that if he was snatched they would EVER find anything? Europe is a hell of a big place, I'm sure there are plenty of places to lose someone forever that wouldn't leave a trace, just as there is a rumor here a local snitch that "went missing" a couple of years back got "done a Fargo" (chipper shredder) right into the local river after costing one person too many serious money on a methlab getting busted. And from what I understand a good botnet can make as much money as a methlab and is certainly less risky.
Well by your logic then running as root isn't "punching a hole in your security" and therefor FUD because you aren't doing anything dangerous, you just aren't being as careful as you could be. NOW do you see the problem in your logic? And one shouldn't complain about being pissy when one whips out their Johnson. Your first post claimed FUD without anything to back it up whereas I provided links backing up my position..
Either running with high permissions is GOOD or it is BAD there is NO in between with these concepts. Considering what Vista and more importantly 7 use is a UAC administered "hybrid user" which has some of the powers of Admin and some of a regular user combined this is why low rights mode exists in the first place. This is especially true of Windows 7 because of the irritation caused by legacy apps and UAC on Vista which caused many to just kill it.
And can we both agree the browser is the closest one gets to the bare Internetbarring running your own email server? Because after all ALL drive by malware, JavaScript hijacks, malicious downloads, they ALL start in the same place...in the browser.
So your entire argument boils down to having the most risky piece of software on your system running in a hybrid admin mode is good because...why? You were quick to yell FUD yet I see now real explanation about why running in a higher mode is better for the system just that you don't see a harm in it.
Question: Why would you bother to hack YOUR x360? Already banned X360s can be had for quite cheap on craigslist, hell many of them with "back up" games already loaded. So why would you risk boning your XBL account and go to the trouble of hacking your console when you could just have a second one for pirated content?
I would say this is one area where the advantage will be to Sony. The market simply isn't nearly as flooded with PS3s as it is with X360s and MSFT's ban hammer has made pirated consoles a dime a dozen. While there is also the issue of downloading BD rips VS DVDs which will add up quick if you have any caps, and most folks don't have BD drives in their PCs to rip rented games (although that can be gotten around for less than $100 now).
Of course what I would say is the biggest advantage over the X360 is something I bet Sony isn't really happy about, and that is that most folks I've met with a PS3 don't actually game on the PS3 hardly at all. They buy the few PS3 exclusives like God of War and most of the time they are just using their PS3 as a BD player. Now to be fair from what I've been told the PS3 is still the best BD player bar none, but I kinda doubt that was what Sony had in mind when they put the BD into the PS3. Maybe it is just me but everyone I've met with a PS3 also had an X360 and THAT was what they did all their gaming on, preferring XBL over PSN.
In any case I think we can all agree killing OtherOS painted a big red bullseye on the PS3 and it looks like that dumb move is gonna take a big old bite out of Sony's bottom line regardless.
HI MR AC, or may I call you coward? Apparently I know more than you do coward, or you wouldn't think 1+1=3. Allow me to explain in a way you may be able to understand. You have three browsers on Linux, we'll call them Web 1 2 and 3. Now Web 1 and 2 run as a normal user with normal user rights, whereas web 3 demands root to run and the ONLY work around offered is to make root look like a normal user would you HONESTLY use web 3 over web 1 and 2?
Because that is EXACTLY what you are advocating cow, because both IE and webkit are running and much lower permissions which thus minimize ANY possible damage that could be caused by any drive by malware when compared to Firefox. Since you obviously don't know anything about the subject, allow me to point you towards some reading material on the subject.
As for everyone else, please don't be as uneducated as cow here. Running an application directly exposed to the Internet while having to run third party code like a browser does everyday in a higher level of permissions than necessary is an EXTREMELY BAD idea and yes it IS punching a hole when you have a choice of running in low permissions or high permissions and choose high, because you are purposely exposing yourself to needless risk. If you really don't think that is the case cow, then why don't you explain to us here at /. why running as root is a good idea, hmmm?
Okay, how about I give everyone a nice new topic to get PO'ed over and argue about? My Theory: While these 1 second boots are a cute trick and all, Embedded Linux is gonna quickly end up the Useful Idiot of the megacorps, where a community works their collective asses off and at the end of the day have nothing for all their hard work except the fattening of some megacorp's bottom line.
Why is that? This sentence: GPL V2 and TiVoization. Hell even the most basic rules of the GPL like providing source is apparently too much bother for many of the Android pad manufacturers, but in the end it will be for naught thanks to things like signing kernels and hardware DRM.
I mean everyone here rushed to trip over themselves to say how wonderful Google was for Android, yet nobody seemed to notice or care that all of Android is GPL V2 and it didn't occur to anyone to ask why? Or is it because we all know why, it is because Google only cares about Google and not about FOSS.
Lets be honest folks: The ONLY reason why everyone is using embedded Linux and not BSD is thanks to TiVo showing the corporate world the GPL V2 loophole, that magically lets them turn all the hard work the embedded Linux guys have done (which is frankly pretty far ahead of BSD in embedded tools and design) and with a wave of the wand poof! Its suddenly BSD for all the good the GPL did. I mean who gives a crap if they give you the source if the machine won't let you run it without the corp's permission?
So while I'm glad that all the hard work those guys put in have paid off with 1 second booting, if they are releasing under GPL V2 they may as well have not bothered. If they want to release under BSD then do so, but if they want the protections that GPL offers they damned well better be under GPL V3, because otherwise this is just a license for the megacorps to shamelessly rip away. So let the arguing commence!
Uhhh you DO know that /. is an American site yes? it even says so in their TOS! So basically what you do doing is no different than me going to a Japanese site and saying "Speak fucking English!"
As for TFA, who in their right mind hasn't figured every single thing an ISP says should be replaced by little word balloons that say "Bullshit" "lie" and "OMFG you actually BELIEVED that? LOL!". Hell their TOS might as well say "We'll do what we like, sell your data to anybody who'll give us a buck, fuck you every single way in every position we can think of, and if you don't like it please feel free to write us a nasty note and then burn it because we don't read those things anyway. Oh and we made deals with the other ISPs so you're fucked either way. Have a nice day!"
You know, I thought politicians were bad, but ISPs have made bullshit and lies into an artform. Hell they would take the gold if BS ever becomes an Olympic sport. For those that bought those Mifi routers maybe you can find a sucker on eBay. But anybody who didn't know ISPs were kings of lie haven't seen any of the recent Hughes sat Internet commercials. Man those guys lie like champs!
Thanks for the link, which just proves what I've been saying (and been modded down for daring to point out) but more and more RMS with his radical beliefs is falling right into the role of useful idiot that the dictators just love to their faces and then LMAO when their back is turned. Does RMS REALLY think Cuba or Chavez-land is gonna suddenly hold his hand and dance through the flowers while embracing the 4 freedoms, when their people don't even have the right to speak? Can he REALLY be that stupid?
In the end I don't think it is possible for even a drop out of MIT to be that dumb. No he knows EXACTLY what he is doing and frankly doesn't care because as long as it pushed his ultra left agenda (go to his website and look at the causes) he will happily put blinders on to the evil being done with FOSS software or the fact his "4 freedoms" don't mean shit there. And to me that makes RMS WORSE than Gates, Jobs, and Ellison by a LONG shot. Because at least they aren't hypocrites. RMS will talk a good game about his "4 freedoms" but when some communist or dictator run country comes a calling he will happily let that freedom thing slide as long as they claim to be ultra left. that makes him no different in my eyes than the useful idiots of the 30s who were happy to ignore the purges and other evils Stalin did simply because he was communist. It should be about freedom and NOT left or right ideology, but apparently somebody forgot to tell RMS that.
Have you tried Comodo Dragon yet? Based on Chromium so any Chrome extensions you like work fine, has all the Google "phone home" crap cut out, and is designed around security, such as better Domain Validation and optional access to the Comodo secure DNS which helps protect against DNS cache poisoning.
Since FF has so far refused to support low rights mode which means FF is a LOT less secure than webkit based browsers or even the latest IE I have been running the Dragon pretty much 24/7 testing it to see if it is right for my customers and I have to say I'm impressed. No crashes, solid as a rock, seems to catch hinky certs quicker and better than FF, runs ABP and ForecastFox perfectly, REALLY fast, it is just a damn good browser.
So until FF starts supporting modern security features I've switched to the Dragon and have started handing it out to customers, even those still on XP (so I don't have to support dual browsers) and so far not a single complaint. If you want the speed of Chrome without all the "phone home" junk and would like a little extra security conscious browser, try it. Its free and will happily copy your FF bookmarks over so switching is easy peasy.
It isn't just "possible" it has already happened! How many years has China been running "Red Flag Linux" yet I don't see RHEL suddenly gaining from all the work the Chinese did, do you? Hell they even ripped off the WinXP interface and tacked it on so the average Joe there wouldn't know what they were using!
And considering China is pushing RFL for Internet cafes and their history of political repression you just know this has all kinds of monitoring software built in, yet I don't see source for any of that either. The simple facts are these: Repressive governments want control, and they don't want to spend money they don't have to to exercise that control. In this case Open Source makes a perfect useful idiot in that they can get all those millions of man hours of labor for $0 while at the same time being able to ignore any and all license requirements, no different than how they ignore the Windows Vendors on the corner selling how MSFT software. But of course having source gives them an advantage they don't have with MSFT, it lets them look for backdoors and insert all the nastiness they want. So I don't see how this can be seen as anything but a giant loss for FOSS and the 4 freedoms.
I didn't think it became bloated, as a matter of fact they seemed to fix the memory leak that had been plaguing the 2.x series which was a real improvement. What I do hope they fix is the ability to run FireFox in low rights mode on the OSes that support it. Right now ALL the webkit based browsers seem to support it OOTB as does IE. The only work around I've seen is basically crippling low rights mode to deal with the fact that FF demands higher rights and on previous forums the developers seem to have had a "not cross platform = don't care" which is just stupid and ignorant. I mean if Linux or OSX came out with a great new security feature would they ignore it because Windows didn't have it?
So while I'll be happy to try it and really do hope they add low rights mode until they do having the browser punch a needless hole in the OS security is kinda a deal breaker for me. I have too many customers and family that depend on me to make sure their PC is as safe as it can possibly be and with the browser being the one app that everyone uses that is so close to being "bare metal" against the wild and risky Internet it just seems irresponsible not to use the new security features built into Vista and 7. So I'm typing this on Comodo Dragon and have managed to find replacements for my most important extensions like ABP and ForecastFox. While I would have preferred to keep handing out and recommending FF until they fix their being unable to use modern security features it is just too risky. The Dragon handles low rights mode OOTB, and the extra security features like the optional secure DNS that protects the user from cache poisoning is a nice touch.
So come on FF Devs, I've been using your browser since the old days and would really hate to give up NoScript, even if it is too complex for my customers. But with low rights mode isolating the browser in a sandbox where it simply doesn't have access to anything important NoScript isn't really needed and ABP and ForecastFox work fine. But I miss the FF way of doing things, so c'mon devs make FF 4 more secure!
That is why I personally believe America WILL fall, the only question is when. We have gone from "Ask not what your country can do for you" to "Where's mine bitch?" in just two generations. Our corporations see NOTHING wrong with completely crippling this country's ability to defend itself if it makes them a couple of cents on the dollar, we have hemorrhaged so much of our manufacturing and now our IT and more and more our educated jobs that many of the populace simply can't survive without government handouts, just read this and tell me it doesn't make you want to puke.
All these senators fucking NASA and our space program to "bring home the bacon" are just a symptom of a much larger and fatal disease: the "right now" disease that is frankly killing the USA. Nobody cares if the long term effect is destruction, as long as they get their money "right now". Nobody cares if their actions are ultimately not only horribly harmful but cause untold suffering on their fellow citizens as long as they get theirs "right now". Meanwhile you have China and India that aren't pulling that kind of crap because they are "nationalistic" which is apparently a code word for "not offshoring the entire economy".
Ultimately I believe it will spell the end of the USA as we know it. The only thing keeping the peasants from revolting is the payouts from mommy government, but the presses can't run forever, eventually the shit WILL hit the fan. When it does I think to give the huge masses of poor "bread and jobs" the USA will do to South America what the little German did to Poland, but even then I believe the corruption to be too deep to be stopped and it will all collapse. Afterward like the old USSR we will probably break up into several "regional co-ops" like the Midwest belt and the eastern alliance. Because things as they are simply can't continue, you simply have too many poor on the bottom and too few with money at the top.