"I bet 85% of the people responding haven't even read the article"
I stopped taking notice of Gartner and the like a long time ago..
"Linux is still not ready for widescale deployment on the desktop,
according to analyst firm Gartner"
"Would their respect for Gartner's advice change if they knew the firm is
indirectly owned by dozens of big-money investors who control some of
the same companies Gartner evaluates?"
".. the Gartner Group (Framingham, MA) estimates that the total cost
of ownership (TCO) for a networked Windows 95 PC is $9784 a year.."
"Gartner believes that most of the Linux shipments will eventually have
illegal copies of Windows installed--a fact that makes Linux's seeming
dominance of this market somewhat misleading,"
"Here we go, 500 comments about how management doesn't know anything"
I once worked for a company who kept the records in one giant table under a unique four digit job number. It was coming near the end of the year and they ran out of numbers. The solution sugested by management was to reuse 'old' numbers. Later management couldn't understand why the monthly reports didn't add up.
Ten of of ten for stating the blindingly obvious, reuse your code. I would have never thought of that until I read it in Gartner. Reminds me of when CASE, OOP, Agile methods, rapid application development (RAD), Component Based Development (CBD) methodology, flavor of the month, methodology were all the rage.
This kind of 'research' appeals to the CEO because it promises software development at no effort and using under trained and underpaid staff. IF the CEO wan't to know about software why don't he just go downstairs and ask his own people. Firms like Gartner remind me of theatre critics. They can describe how to do it, they just can't do it themselves.
I once worked for a multinational 'consultancy' who advised fortune 500 companies on how to improve. Well their entire Intellectual Property consisted of a Win2000 network with all the records kept on PowerPoint documents. A bunch of shared folders and a template for naming the document ppp.ddd.uuu.nnn.ppt. That is project, department, user and docname. Dowstairs they kept the accounts on a vax and a bunch of company reports on scanned pdf files.
What I couldn't figure out is how such ignorant people could advise anyone on anything. But then again I have worked in places where the department head sends his own software people on leave and then hires a 'consultant' to design something so he can present this to his boss and pretend he done it. Excuse me, I have to go upstairs as the CEO want's to read me stuff about 'agile methods' out of a magazine .
"Interestingly, the MS page includes a demo "oval with red background" which doesn't work in my Firefox browser
Interesting enough the page layout is displayed correctly if Firefox changes User Agent ID to Internet Explorer 6. Under default Firefox ID it displays as a drap one page layout. Why does Microsoft mangle its own pages if viewed under a non MS browser.
if ($browserid!=IEXP) { mangle.page(); else display.page(); }
was: Firefox not vulnerable because VML not supported?
Time Travel "is also a prevalent theme in science fiction, but that doesn't mean we'll be doing it in the foreseeable future"
Well actually it happens all the time, but you don't notice. For instance in the future you invent a time machine and travel into the present. The world splits into two alternative futures and you always end up in the one in which you didn't invent a time machine. In fact you don't even need to invent a time traveling machine, just send messages back using tachions.
For instance 'Trice Upon a Time' by James P. Hogan gives a good illustration of communication with the past. Unfortunaly you won't be able to find this one on Amazon as he experimented with just such a device, the writer accidentally wiped himself from existance.
See also 'Timescape' by Gregory Benford where the exact opposite happens and someone turns up alive although one of the characters remembers her dying. Have you ever been suprised when some celebrity turms up on television movies and you go 'isn't he dead' or remember the plot of a movie that's different than when it turms up on tv. Well someone's just been messing with the spacetime continuum.
What's the name of the one where they assemble a crack team of hackers and then drive a tank down the middle of the street and blow the doors of the bank.
Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: Host 'gareth.schostpro.com' is blocked because of many connection errors; unblock with 'mysqladmin flush-hosts' in/home/admin/domains/gideontech.com/public_html/con tent/includedb.php on line 2
Could not connect to the MySQL Server
"the root cause of buffer overflows (etc) is using a language that allows them"
Incorrect, remember the phishers and virus writers don't obay the rules. Design a Memory Management Unit that prevents exploits.
"It's not like Linux or other OSes would be able to fully prevent bugs that allow the execution of malicious code"
Even on the defective wintel design it provides better protection. Combined with the exec-shield that prevents stack exploits it would be even more secure. The Vista version NX has a feature to allow stack execution to be turned back on as otherwise JIT code won't work.
Can you provide an example of a Firefox patch that reduced reliability.
"No. But I am pretty sure that if you have a browser that runs on many million machines, testing the patch for 30 days makes problems less likely than testing it for 3 days..."
But 'if' doesn't equate to 'has done'. Unlike this real world example of a fully tested patch that did reduce reliability.
"alternative energy investments have been major failure and will continue to be major faliures as long as oil is cheap. Oil is getting cheaper as I write this" DarkOx
Not exactly true as the above comment points out. And if alternative energy is doomed to failure why did big oil get a tariff on ethanol being imported into the US and at the same time pushes to reduce domestic production. According to a number of impartial and reliable resources oil production has already peaked.
Oil is getting temperorly cheaper for the oil companies mainly because the US stole Iraqs entire oil supply and is currently selling it back to them. The value of the dollar is tied to the price of oil. Consequently the global markets are tied to oil. Anything to impact the price of oil would have disasterous consequences possibly leading to a total crash. Perhaps this is the real motive in big oils objection to alternative energy. These conditions can not be good for long term economic stability.
"a good energy investment for emotional reasons is just missing a good oppertunity.. emotions and morals have NO PLACE in the stock market"
According to this the disinformation comes chiefly from the other side.
"Nothing will teach stupid users how to use a computer like software with a man page that hasn't been updated in five years, has no written documentation, and responses to bug requests along the lines of "learn C and fix the problem yourself, noob!"
Quoted directly from the MS fast fud site. My experience installing Mpeg4ip was quite different. I directly emailed the lead developer, got a polite reply and was directed to the online forum. What kind of support do you get in closed source land, a phone call to Jameel in Bangalore who calls himself 'Dave' and speaks in a fake US accent.
"There is no superior technology or anything that would help to make Firefox inherently more secure"
Unlike IEXP Firefox is not welded to the OS. It runs in user space and under Linux is locked down to the users home directory. Of course the root cause of 'buffer overflows' ans stack attacks is the defective design of the wintel memory manager.
"The Mozilla guys may offer more frequent patches (which would increase security, but reduce reliability..)"
It might only appear that way because the patches are not bundled in one monthly collection. Can you provide an example of a Firefox patch that reduced reliability.
"Oh well done, copy and paste a few points other people have made, and pray you get modded up"
I was being a little sacastic. My point being that whenever Open Source is mentioned we invariably get the I like X except it lacks feeture Y type of comments.
"consider a UI that labels every potentially dangerous setting with a shield or some other icon"
Consider what happens if you select reverse while travelling forward. Does the automatic shift a) grinds the gearbox to sand or b) refuses to allow such action. Or a VHS recorder that in fast forward and you hit play. It halts the tape, repositions the tape and then engages play. It don't pop up a dialog box or grind the tape, Well it would if MS designed it.
"Microsoft's One Care suite.. it's simply another layer of security"
Security can't be tacked on after the fact. Security should be buried at the bottom most layer right into the kernel.
"Like many people here I'm sure, I get landed with fixing people's Windows PCs"
No I, many years ago I decided to get out of the business of fixing Bills OS for free. Buy a computer from DELL, pay Bill money, pay DELL money, sell it to customer, go back in four times a year to reinstall, reinstall, reinstall. Every two years pay Bill for a new OS as they can't open docs from the latest msOffice format. Reinstall, reinstall, reinstall. Unlike MS I don't have the brass neck to charge them money for selling them a broken OS. Reinstall, reinstall, reinstall, reinstall, reinstall, reinstall, reinstall, reinstall, reinstall..
"Vista really will be a lot more secure than past versions of Windows"
"There is a *LOT* to be said for consistency in UI design"
What has UI design got to do with security. Will my car go better because it has translucent wavey controls on the dashboard?
It is ironic that we get to pay MS for fixing defects in its own OS. Whether from Microsoft or Symantic these 'security' solutions are merely a plaster cast round a fractured system. The only difference is such revenues go to MS.
What is required is an OS that can't be compromised by opening email or clicking on a URL and that don't require any action on behalf of the user to work. For instance when a box pops up asking me to accept a 'certificate'. How the heck is the average Vista user supposed to tell that.
I like OO except for the lack of a good User Interface, the grey and cheep icons, no native SVG support, no keyboard shortcut for automatic sum in Calc, no propagate deleting of paragraphs, no visible page breaks, slow startup...
"I wish that they had got people to design a better UI for the main app though, it just looks so much like it was designed on the cheap in 1997"
You know something, when I read the opening comment I said to myself, standby for a mass of OO doesn't have 'feeture' comments that strangely get modded up. And straight off at number four is the above..
"I'd appreciate any tips you can give me on running a machine with low memory. My current work horse is a donated Toshiba Portege, which is ultralight, portable and just lovely, but only has 256MB RAM."
I basically followed lots of 'how to speed up Linux' tips on the web. A lot of which are mutually contradictory. Split the disk up into seperate partitions swap,/(boot),/(root),/usr/,/opt, and/var. Size them 2/3 times bigger that the default install size. Use the rest of the disk for/home. Put/tmp on hdb and the swap partition on hda at the outer tracks, that is at the beginning of the drive. Or put a swap partition on hda and hdb and/tmp on hdc. Use xfs for the partition types and switch off noatime. Tweak disk access with hdparm. Disable any unneeded Gnome or KDE processes.
"I realise this is completely off-topic, but it sounds like you've been battling the same monsters..."
I figure if I can get it running fairly ok on this slug I can then move it the the twin processor 1MB monster I have on the shelf. SuSE-config takes one and a half minute here. But then again this is hardly a development machine.
"CCEVS evaluation is really REALLY expensive and takes frickin' forever. Now, this is no barrier to Microsoft, which has had enough money and time to get Windows.. evaluated"
"Open source products tend to come with a list of disclaimers as long as your arm"
"Microsoft warrants that the Software will perform substantially in accordance with the accompanying materials for a period of ninety (90) days from the date of receipt" - XP EUAL
Microsoft.. provide the Software.. AS IS AND WITH ALL FAULTS, and hereby disclaim all other warranties.. of reliability.. of lack of viruses.. ALSO, THERE IS NO WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF TITLE, QUIET ENJOYMENT, QUIET POSSESSION, CORRESPONDENCE TO DESCRIPTION OR NON-INFRINGEMENT WITH REGARD TO THE SOFTWARE - XP EUAL
"The viral provisions of many open source licenses scare them off?"
On the contary Open Source is less 'viral' than many closed source licenses. For instance it prevents SCO suing AutoZone or DaimlerChrysler for producing derivitive works using Linux.
"From firsthand experience I can tel you that it does."
From first hand experience, can you produce any evidence as to this claim. Or did you have to sign a NDA agreement and are sworn to secrecy.
"Also, you have the anti-US, anti-DoD attitude of many "open source" developers and advocates"
"I can't quite describe the problem, but even after the tremendous improvements that have been made to the Linux desktop in the past few years, it still feels... slow"
On this dual boot Windows/SuSE box I find Linux to be just as fast as Windows. Unlike Windows I can run an intense graphical prog in one desktop and the other is still usable. Booting Windows give the impression of being faster as the desktop appears sooner. But you have to wait until it loads its bits in the backround. I tried a few tweaks that worked for me. Moving from Reiserfs, the default file system, to xfs. Splitting the system into partitions and moving/tmp to a second harddrive. The last made a big difference as I've noticed that KDE and certain apps are big on writing to/tmp. Tweaking X is reported to also give a speedup but I havn't got round to it. I forgot to mention the machine came with a wopping 312.57MB of memory.
Slashdot Mirror
"I bet 85% of the people responding haven't even read the article"
..
.."
I stopped taking notice of Gartner and the like a long time ago
"Linux is still not ready for widescale deployment on the desktop, according to analyst firm Gartner"
"Would their respect for Gartner's advice change if they knew the firm is indirectly owned by dozens of big-money investors who control some of the same companies Gartner evaluates?"
".. the Gartner Group (Framingham, MA) estimates that the total cost of ownership (TCO) for a networked Windows 95 PC is $9784 a year
"Gartner believes that most of the Linux shipments will eventually have illegal copies of Windows installed--a fact that makes Linux's seeming dominance of this market somewhat misleading,"
was Re:Feeling threatened?
"Here we go, 500 comments about how management doesn't know anything"
I once worked for a company who kept the records in one giant table under a unique four digit job number. It was coming near the end of the year and they ran out of numbers. The solution sugested by management was to reuse 'old' numbers. Later management couldn't understand why the monthly reports didn't add up.
Ten of of ten for stating the blindingly obvious, reuse your code. I would have never thought of that until I read it in Gartner. Reminds me of when CASE, OOP, Agile methods, rapid application development (RAD), Component Based Development (CBD) methodology, flavor of the month, methodology were all the rage.
This kind of 'research' appeals to the CEO because it promises software development at no effort and using under trained and underpaid staff. IF the CEO wan't to know about software why don't he just go downstairs and ask his own people. Firms like Gartner remind me of theatre critics. They can describe how to do it, they just can't do it themselves.
I once worked for a multinational 'consultancy' who advised fortune 500 companies on how to improve. Well their entire Intellectual Property consisted of a Win2000 network with all the records kept on PowerPoint documents. A bunch of shared folders and a template for naming the document ppp.ddd.uuu.nnn.ppt. That is project, department, user and docname. Dowstairs they kept the accounts on a vax and a bunch of company reports on scanned pdf files.
What I couldn't figure out is how such ignorant people could advise anyone on anything. But then again I have worked in places where the department head sends his own software people on leave and then hires a 'consultant' to design something so he can present this to his boss and pretend he done it. Excuse me, I have to go upstairs as the CEO want's to read me stuff about 'agile methods' out of a magazine .
"Interestingly, the MS page includes a demo "oval with red background" which doesn't work in my Firefox browser
Interesting enough the page layout is displayed correctly if Firefox changes User Agent ID to Internet Explorer 6. Under default Firefox ID it displays as a drap one page layout. Why does Microsoft mangle its own pages if viewed under a non MS browser.
if ($browserid!=IEXP) { mangle.page(); else display.page(); }
was: Firefox not vulnerable because VML not supported?
You don't remember when he joined his older brothers at the super BeeGee's reunion at Live Aid in '85?!
Interesting enough I also remember Andy Gibb dying of a drug overdose in 1982. How do you explain us remembering this alternate history.
Time Travel "is also a prevalent theme in science fiction, but that doesn't mean we'll be doing it in the foreseeable future"
Well actually it happens all the time, but you don't notice. For instance in the future you invent a time machine and travel into the present. The world splits into two alternative futures and you always end up in the one in which you didn't invent a time machine. In fact you don't even need to invent a time traveling machine, just send messages back using tachions.
For instance 'Trice Upon a Time' by James P. Hogan gives a good illustration of communication with the past. Unfortunaly you won't be able to find this one on Amazon as he experimented with just such a device, the writer accidentally wiped himself from existance.
See also 'Timescape' by Gregory Benford where the exact opposite happens and someone turns up alive although one of the characters remembers her dying. Have you ever been suprised when some celebrity turms up on television movies and you go 'isn't he dead' or remember the plot of a movie that's different than when it turms up on tv. Well someone's just been messing with the spacetime continuum.
was Re:Time Travel
What's the name of the one where they assemble a crack team of hackers and then drive a tank down the middle of the street and blow the doors of the bank.
Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: Host 'gareth.schostpro.com' is blocked because of many connection errors; unblock with 'mysqladmin flush-hosts' in /home/admin/domains/gideontech.com/public_html/con tent/includedb.php on line 2
Could not connect to the MySQL Server
Incorrect, remember the phishers and virus writers don't obay the rules. Design a Memory Management Unit that prevents exploits.
"It's not like Linux or other OSes would be able to fully prevent bugs that allow the execution of malicious code"
Even on the defective wintel design it provides better protection. Combined with the exec-shield that prevents stack exploits it would be even more secure. The Vista version NX has a feature to allow stack execution to be turned back on as otherwise JIT code won't work.
"No. But I am pretty sure that if you have a browser that runs on many million machines, testing the patch for 30 days makes problems less likely than testing it for 3 days..."
But 'if' doesn't equate to 'has done'. Unlike this real world example of a fully tested patch that did reduce reliability.
"alternative energy investments have been major failure and will continue to be major faliures as long as oil is cheap. Oil is getting cheaper as I write this" DarkOx
.. emotions and morals have NO PLACE in the stock market"
Not exactly true as the above comment points out. And if alternative energy is doomed to failure why did big oil get a tariff on ethanol being imported into the US and at the same time pushes to reduce domestic production. According to a number of impartial and reliable resources oil production has already peaked.
Oil is getting temperorly cheaper for the oil companies mainly because the US stole Iraqs entire oil supply and is currently selling it back to them. The value of the dollar is tied to the price of oil. Consequently the global markets are tied to oil. Anything to impact the price of oil would have disasterous consequences possibly leading to a total crash. Perhaps this is the real motive in big oils objection to alternative energy. These conditions can not be good for long term economic stability.
"a good energy investment for emotional reasons is just missing a good oppertunity
According to this the disinformation comes chiefly from the other side.
"Nothing will teach stupid users how to use a computer like software with a man page that hasn't been updated in five years, has no written documentation, and responses to bug requests along the lines of "learn C and fix the problem yourself, noob!"
Quoted directly from the MS fast fud site. My experience installing Mpeg4ip was quite different. I directly emailed the lead developer, got a polite reply and was directed to the online forum. What kind of support do you get in closed source land, a phone call to Jameel in Bangalore who calls himself 'Dave' and speaks in a fake US accent.
re Re:Well duh!
"There is no superior technology or anything that would help to make Firefox inherently more secure"
Unlike IEXP Firefox is not welded to the OS. It runs in user space and under Linux is locked down to the users home directory. Of course the root cause of 'buffer overflows' ans stack attacks is the defective design of the wintel memory manager.
"The Mozilla guys may offer more frequent patches (which would increase security, but reduce reliability..)"
It might only appear that way because the patches are not bundled in one monthly collection. Can you provide an example of a Firefox patch that reduced reliability.
was Re:Spyware Thursday
"Oh well done, copy and paste a few points other people have made, and pray you get modded up"
I was being a little sacastic. My point being that whenever Open Source is mentioned we invariably get the I like X except it lacks feeture Y type of comments.
"consider a UI that labels every potentially dangerous setting with a shield or some other icon"
.. it's simply another layer of security"
Consider what happens if you select reverse while travelling forward. Does the automatic shift a) grinds the gearbox to sand or b) refuses to allow such action. Or a VHS recorder that in fast forward and you hit play. It halts the tape, repositions the tape and then engages play. It don't pop up a dialog box or grind the tape, Well it would if MS designed it.
"Microsoft's One Care suite
Security can't be tacked on after the fact. Security should be buried at the bottom most layer right into the kernel.
"Like many people here I'm sure, I get landed with fixing people's Windows PCs"
..
No I, many years ago I decided to get out of the business of fixing Bills OS for free. Buy a computer from DELL, pay Bill money, pay DELL money, sell it to customer, go back in four times a year to reinstall, reinstall, reinstall. Every two years pay Bill for a new OS as they can't open docs from the latest msOffice format. Reinstall, reinstall, reinstall. Unlike MS I don't have the brass neck to charge them money for selling them a broken OS. Reinstall, reinstall, reinstall, reinstall, reinstall, reinstall, reinstall, reinstall, reinstall
was Re:Rather Microsoft than McAfee...
"Vista really will be a lot more secure than past versions of Windows"
"There is a *LOT* to be said for consistency in UI design"
What has UI design got to do with security. Will my car go better because it has translucent wavey controls on the dashboard?
It is ironic that we get to pay MS for fixing defects in its own OS. Whether from Microsoft or Symantic these 'security' solutions are merely a plaster cast round a fractured system. The only difference is such revenues go to MS.
What is required is an OS that can't be compromised by opening email or clicking on a URL and that don't require any action on behalf of the user to work. For instance when a box pops up asking me to accept a 'certificate'. How the heck is the average Vista user supposed to tell that.
was Re:More FUD From Scared Companies
I like OO except for the lack of a good User Interface, the grey and cheep icons, no native SVG support, no keyboard shortcut for automatic sum in Calc, no propagate deleting of paragraphs, no visible page breaks, slow startup ...
"as long as they don't support natively SVG"
Google on OO and feetures. Select random feeture. Post I like OO except it doesn't have 'X feeture' on Slashdot.
SVG-ready OpenOffice 2.0
was re Re:Openoffice doesn't deserve cliparts
"I wish that they had got people to design a better UI for the main app though, it just looks so much like it was designed on the cheap in 1997"
..
You know something, when I read the opening comment I said to myself, standby for a mass of OO doesn't have 'feeture' comments that strangely get modded up. And straight off at number four is the above
was Re:clip art...
"I've been running Firefox for four months with "Noscript" installed"
Flashblock doesn't work if Noscript is blocking a site.
was Re:Safe browsing
"I'd appreciate any tips you can give me on running a machine with low memory. My current work horse is a donated Toshiba Portege, which is ultralight, portable and just lovely, but only has 256MB RAM."
/(boot), /(root), /usr/, /opt, and /var. Size them 2/3 times bigger that the default install size. Use the rest of the disk for /home. Put /tmp on hdb and the swap partition on hda at the outer tracks, that is at the beginning of the drive. Or put a swap partition on hda and hdb and /tmp on hdc. Use xfs for the partition types and switch off noatime. Tweak disk access with hdparm. Disable any unneeded Gnome or KDE processes.
..."
I basically followed lots of 'how to speed up Linux' tips on the web. A lot of which are mutually contradictory. Split the disk up into seperate partitions swap,
"I realise this is completely off-topic, but it sounds like you've been battling the same monsters
I figure if I can get it running fairly ok on this slug I can then move it the the twin processor 1MB monster I have on the shelf. SuSE-config takes one and a half minute here. But then again this is hardly a development machine.
"it is a bit worrisome to use a product that is totally open for all the worlds eyes and ears to see"
Most of the worlds governments also have full access to the Windows source code including China.
"MS has worked quite well for most things that the military has needed in the past. At least it was when I was in"
Sunk by Windows NT
was Re:For one, fear of being too open.
"the DoD *really* doesn't like that they don't know who wrote the software, and they also don't like the lack of a central point of contact"
..
.. evaluated"
.. provide the Software .. AS IS AND WITH ALL FAULTS, and hereby disclaim all other warranties .. of reliability .. of lack of viruses .. ALSO, THERE IS NO WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF TITLE, QUIET ENJOYMENT, QUIET POSSESSION, CORRESPONDENCE TO DESCRIPTION OR NON-INFRINGEMENT WITH REGARD TO THE SOFTWARE - XP EUAL
To find out who wrote the software, just read the license agreement
Novell Software License Agreement
Red Hat Agreements
Cleversafe Commercial License
Digium End-User License Agreement
"CCEVS evaluation is really REALLY expensive and takes frickin' forever. Now, this is no barrier to Microsoft, which has had enough money and time to get Windows
"Open source products tend to come with a list of disclaimers as long as your arm"
"Microsoft warrants that the Software will perform substantially in accordance with the accompanying materials for a period of ninety (90) days from the date of receipt" - XP EUAL
Microsoft
was Re:What the DoD objects to
"The viral provisions of many open source licenses scare them off?"
.. right?
On the contary Open Source is less 'viral' than many closed source licenses. For instance it prevents SCO suing AutoZone or DaimlerChrysler for producing derivitive works using Linux.
"From firsthand experience I can tel you that it does."
From first hand experience, can you produce any evidence as to this claim. Or did you have to sign a NDA agreement and are sworn to secrecy.
"Also, you have the anti-US, anti-DoD attitude of many "open source" developers and advocates"
You're kidding
was Re:Could it be?
"I can't quite describe the problem, but even after the tremendous improvements that have been made to the Linux desktop in the past few years, it still feels... slow"
/tmp to a second harddrive. The last made a big difference as I've noticed that KDE and certain apps are big on writing to /tmp. Tweaking X is reported to also give a speedup but I havn't got round to it. I forgot to mention the machine came with a wopping 312.57MB of memory.
On this dual boot Windows/SuSE box I find Linux to be just as fast as Windows. Unlike Windows I can run an intense graphical prog in one desktop and the other is still usable. Booting Windows give the impression of being faster as the desktop appears sooner. But you have to wait until it loads its bits in the backround. I tried a few tweaks that worked for me. Moving from Reiserfs, the default file system, to xfs. Splitting the system into partitions and moving