I think you've missed the point. The pont is that he has installed linux into several machines and it hasn't increased the amount of Linux units that have been sold, therefore identifying a flaw in the study. He didn't say that everyone is doing that, but it's certainly possible.
Maybe there'll be a post for every single country/state that uses cellphone traffic to monitor roads. It'll end up like the monthly firefox userbase reports.
What if, say, UK, France, US, Germany, China, etc.. all set up their own root DNS servers. In some countries, they might make it law that ISPs must make DHCP inform the other computers about their DNS servers. Obviously the users can change that if they want to. Some countries might require that for a.com.country or whatever, you need to be a company. Some countries might even link.com's to.com.country.
Then we might get the more cooperative countries agreeing to link together their root DNS servers. There may be a surge in the amount of independent DNS servers, and there might be modifications to markup languages to allow specifying what root DNS servers this link definitely works on.
Maybe it'd prompt software developers to create easy software that general computer users can use to adjust what DNS servers their computer will try. It might turn out perfectly fine and possibly better than before.... however, as you say, it might also be chaos...
Better start writing down IP addresses, just in case...
A company has a choice about how it makes profit. Some of these ways might benefit the public, some might not affect the public, and some might make everyone's lives worse.
Google, for example, as a company want to make profit. They can do this through targetted advertising. Their advertising is more intelligent and reaches the people who might care enough to click it if they have a larger database of information and users to sort through, so they offer many services. Some people might be concerned about the privacy of it, but nearly all public webmail services and stuff keep the user's data on a computer they don't own. All their software does is scan your emails and display relevant adverts... it's not as though people sit there reading your emails. But if you don't like their stuff you can block the google cookie and get on with your life.
Microsoft usually do their business through monopoly and things that hinder others, specifically those who choose not to use their software and services. It's not usually a case of just migrating away from Windows, since you have to deal with other Windows users sending you things you can't open. However, if Microsoft do the right thing, (even for the "wrong" reasons.. like profit), then it's a good thing, and if they see this having a positive effect maybe they will do more good things. Microsoft have a hell of a lot of power and money, maybe we could prompt them to use it for things that will benefit us.
I agree. Open source stuff on a closed source platform is a little bit ironic, but is still respectable, but it's quite irritating when you need VisualStudio to compile the code.
However, I do wish the ATI fglrx driver was open... I had an issue with disabling the fastwrite (because my motherboard has broken support for it and will crash the OS), and just had to go back to using the standard "radeon" driver because no matter how much I tried to convince the driver, it wouldn't disable fastwrite. No idea why and there's nothing more I can do...
If it was opensource, I could take a look at the source or modify it to work, being limited only by time. It's not like it provides a significant advantage to their competitors if they release an opensource driver. That other r300 dri thing is supposed to be in the next X.org though...
Ah well. I should probably stop complaining and start contributing to the opensource community more, shouldn't I;)
My vision of technology doesn't include putting everything into one device, but rather making everything modular yet integrated.
"The supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience."
-- Albert Einstein
Also, "Make each program do one thing well" should apply to electronics too.
However, making all technology work together is difficult when you have businesses making their product incompatible with standards and other products for profit...
.. who thinks that this endless pushing of features onto our mobile phones are stupid?
Why turn our phones into games consoles, video cameras, mp3 players, computers and whatever else we can fit into it, if it doesn't do anything well? We've got digital cameras that can play mp3s badly, mp3 players that can take photos badly, phones that play mp3s and take photos badly. Most people I know who want to listen to mp3s will use an ipod or zen, since the quality is higher and they have more storage, and most people I know who actually take many photos carry round a digital camera. Most people I know who have a camera phone have used the camera only once or twice.
On my ideal phone it would have a phone book, ability to phone people, and the ability to function as a modem for my laptop. Just a plain old black and white screen would be fine though. Maybe there should be an ability to keep a small diary/timetable on it, since we carry it round and it could function as an alerting device.
NTFS to Reiser4 can be a confusing task, but it's not Windows' or Linux's fault as such. What I did is put all my documents onto another hdd (no point keeping system files...) then completely reformatted with reiserfs 3 (for posix acls and posix extended data). The installer can do that automatically with most distros.
If you're a console user in Windows, you'll be very satisfied with the terminal/console on Linux, since the commands are much more powerful and complete, and the basic ones aren't even a great deal different from DOS. There are also many sites with the equivelant commands listed.
Also, for the fun of it, there are several DOS emulators.
Writing quick programs in Linux (C, C#, C++, Bash, Python, Perl) has proved to be much much easier in Linux than Windows in my experience.. as well as more complicated ones. Then again, I have always been on a limited budget and could never use more than the likes of DevC++ on Windows.
English and Japanese is possible in Linux too (at least with Gnome). There is a keyboard layout switcher, and if you want to start a single application in a different locale and language, you just need to change an environment variable. GTK+ with Pango is often praised for it's unicode and multilingual support.
Linux was a bit difficult to start using (especially since I chose Gentoo, since I wanted to learn), but once I learned it, it was much faster to use. Of course, if you really want to stay on Windows it's your choice, but don't give up on Linux.
Yeah, you could do that, however they're more noticable, especially if the USB/Keyboard port on the computer is visible, which is done quite a lot in security aware installations.
You can get small wireless microphones that just look like them little rubber things that stop your keyboard from sliding around, which are a lot more hidden...
I don't really look at the bottom of my keyboard, but I do look at the back of my computer quite regularly.
Eventually, security aware people will probably start looking for obvious signs they've been bugged through this method, but it could be a lot harder to detect. These things would probably work if they were stuck to anywhere on the desk or the keyboard. RF signal detectors should detect wireless ones though.
I suppose it's about using the right tool for the job
Where will this "you don't own what you've bought" system end? Will it get to the point where OEMs like Microsoft can force manufacturers to have a shrinkwrap license, so that Windows may never be removed from these systems?
Is this virus on the software/driver CD or the actual device itself?
If it's on the device, how is it running on the zen, since I'd imagine the zen doesn't run windows, and how does it get from the zen to the operating system? (Wouldn't a zen be just like a bulk transfer device or something, and require the user to download and run the virus from it?)
Slashdot Mirror
I think you've missed the point. The pont is that he has installed linux into several machines and it hasn't increased the amount of Linux units that have been sold, therefore identifying a flaw in the study. He didn't say that everyone is doing that, but it's certainly possible.
What if they're thinking that it'll pay off in the long term to find the remote control now?
Hmm... there are also two other similar articles
4 7&mode=thread&tid=1262 9&mode=thread&tid=100
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/12/30/12432
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/06/13/04282
Maybe there'll be a post for every single country/state that uses cellphone traffic to monitor roads. It'll end up like the monthly firefox userbase reports.
Actually, this seems to have been posted four times now!
4 3247&tid=158&tid=215&tid=1937 45248&tid=126&tid=215&tid=158/ 01/159241&tid=1937 &tid=215&tid=126
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/19/1
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/19/0
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/16/07621
What if, say, UK, France, US, Germany, China, etc.. all set up their own root DNS servers. .com.country or whatever, you need to be a company. Some countries might even link .com's to .com.country.
In some countries, they might make it law that ISPs must make DHCP inform the other computers about their DNS servers. Obviously the users can change that if they want to. Some countries might require that for a
Then we might get the more cooperative countries agreeing to link together their root DNS servers. There may be a surge in the amount of independent DNS servers, and there might be modifications to markup languages to allow specifying what root DNS servers this link definitely works on.
Maybe it'd prompt software developers to create easy software that general computer users can use to adjust what DNS servers their computer will try. It might turn out perfectly fine and possibly better than before.... however, as you say, it might also be chaos...
Better start writing down IP addresses, just in case...
A company has a choice about how it makes profit. Some of these ways might benefit the public, some might not affect the public, and some might make everyone's lives worse.
Google, for example, as a company want to make profit. They can do this through targetted advertising. Their advertising is more intelligent and reaches the people who might care enough to click it if they have a larger database of information and users to sort through, so they offer many services. Some people might be concerned about the privacy of it, but nearly all public webmail services and stuff keep the user's data on a computer they don't own. All their software does is scan your emails and display relevant adverts... it's not as though people sit there reading your emails. But if you don't like their stuff you can block the google cookie and get on with your life.
Microsoft usually do their business through monopoly and things that hinder others, specifically those who choose not to use their software and services. It's not usually a case of just migrating away from Windows, since you have to deal with other Windows users sending you things you can't open. However, if Microsoft do the right thing, (even for the "wrong" reasons.. like profit), then it's a good thing, and if they see this having a positive effect maybe they will do more good things.
Microsoft have a hell of a lot of power and money, maybe we could prompt them to use it for things that will benefit us.
Large companies are strange bastards.
All the sections act like they're not connected. One section might support OSS, another might be anti-OSS.
Look at Sony for example...
I agree. Open source stuff on a closed source platform is a little bit ironic, but is still respectable, but it's quite irritating when you need VisualStudio to compile the code.
;)
However, I do wish the ATI fglrx driver was open... I had an issue with disabling the fastwrite (because my motherboard has broken support for it and will crash the OS), and just had to go back to using the standard "radeon" driver because no matter how much I tried to convince the driver, it wouldn't disable fastwrite. No idea why and there's nothing more I can do...
If it was opensource, I could take a look at the source or modify it to work, being limited only by time. It's not like it provides a significant advantage to their competitors if they release an opensource driver. That other r300 dri thing is supposed to be in the next X.org though...
Ah well. I should probably stop complaining and start contributing to the opensource community more, shouldn't I
Or, more importantly, will it run on linux?
they're great as long as you don't want to do something complicated Like Windows? *cough* ;)
had a college professor who was addicted to running and the "high" it gave him.
Doesn't running release endorphins which are addictive to some people? (aren't they like heroin or something?)
My vision of technology doesn't include putting everything into one device, but rather making everything modular yet integrated.
"The supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience."
-- Albert Einstein
Also, "Make each program do one thing well" should apply to electronics too.
However, making all technology work together is difficult when you have businesses making their product incompatible with standards and other products for profit...
.. who thinks that this endless pushing of features onto our mobile phones are stupid?
Why turn our phones into games consoles, video cameras, mp3 players, computers and whatever else we can fit into it, if it doesn't do anything well? We've got digital cameras that can play mp3s badly, mp3 players that can take photos badly, phones that play mp3s and take photos badly. Most people I know who want to listen to mp3s will use an ipod or zen, since the quality is higher and they have more storage, and most people I know who actually take many photos carry round a digital camera. Most people I know who have a camera phone have used the camera only once or twice.
On my ideal phone it would have a phone book, ability to phone people, and the ability to function as a modem for my laptop. Just a plain old black and white screen would be fine though. Maybe there should be an ability to keep a small diary/timetable on it, since we carry it round and it could function as an alerting device.
Most people that look at stuff like this are probably male, so best appeal to them ;)
nVidia are very big on their girls and virtual-girls too
NTFS to Reiser4 can be a confusing task, but it's not Windows' or Linux's fault as such.
What I did is put all my documents onto another hdd (no point keeping system files...) then completely reformatted with reiserfs 3 (for posix acls and posix extended data). The installer can do that automatically with most distros.
If you're a console user in Windows, you'll be very satisfied with the terminal/console on Linux, since the commands are much more powerful and complete, and the basic ones aren't even a great deal different from DOS.
There are also many sites with the equivelant commands listed.
Also, for the fun of it, there are several DOS emulators.
Writing quick programs in Linux (C, C#, C++, Bash, Python, Perl) has proved to be much much easier in Linux than Windows in my experience.. as well as more complicated ones. Then again, I have always been on a limited budget and could never use more than the likes of DevC++ on Windows.
English and Japanese is possible in Linux too (at least with Gnome). There is a keyboard layout switcher, and if you want to start a single application in a different locale and language, you just need to change an environment variable.
GTK+ with Pango is often praised for it's unicode and multilingual support.
Linux was a bit difficult to start using (especially since I chose Gentoo, since I wanted to learn), but once I learned it, it was much faster to use. Of course, if you really want to stay on Windows it's your choice, but don't give up on Linux.
I read my password out while typed it when I was showing someone how to do something on the computer.
;)
Thank God it wasn't an important password
Yeah, you could do that, however they're more noticable, especially if the USB/Keyboard port on the computer is visible, which is done quite a lot in security aware installations.
You can get small wireless microphones that just look like them little rubber things that stop your keyboard from sliding around, which are a lot more hidden...
I don't really look at the bottom of my keyboard, but I do look at the back of my computer quite regularly.
Eventually, security aware people will probably start looking for obvious signs they've been bugged through this method, but it could be a lot harder to detect. These things would probably work if they were stuck to anywhere on the desk or the keyboard. RF signal detectors should detect wireless ones though.
I suppose it's about using the right tool for the job
A tiny wireless microphone can be taped underneath the keyboard.
A camera would have to be given the right viewpoint, would likely be bigger, and the keyboard might move out of the camera's range.
We need to change our password every 12 days, and it can't be similar to the last 3 passwords.
Not as tough as the one you mentioned, but it still leads to most people either forgetting their passwords, or writing it down somewhere obvious.
Soon we'll have articles that are just links to previous slashdot articles!
Where will this "you don't own what you've bought" system end? Will it get to the point where OEMs like Microsoft can force manufacturers to have a shrinkwrap license, so that Windows may never be removed from these systems?
Sounds more to me like the distro you used isn't quite there yet
Is this virus on the software/driver CD or the actual device itself?
If it's on the device, how is it running on the zen, since I'd imagine the zen doesn't run windows, and how does it get from the zen to the operating system? (Wouldn't a zen be just like a bulk transfer device or something, and require the user to download and run the virus from it?)
Try http://www.openbios.info/project/
Hehe..
:D
;)
My laptop's the same age and it's at 800mAh, design capacity of 4400mAh. It lasts about 10 minutes
Even my camera battery has more charge