If you couldn't severely limit the ability to use an unauthorized boot device on your PC you don't deserve to be posting on Slashdot.
Of course just about anything can be bypassed with physical access, but it will usually leave a trail and require unusual and possible expensive tools. In my house I actually have to move furniture and take apart half of my desk to get inside my computer.
Many tablet styluses have buttons on the barrel that turn a normal click (tap) into a right click, or you can hold the point down and it turns into right click. It generally doesn't work very well.
You are the one trying to pull a con job. I see nothing in the article to indicate that he is in any way intimidated by linux on the desktop. But perhaps you are just making the mistake of thinking the title of the article has something to do with the content of the link. Indeed it appears he is still using it, but has given up on kernel development.
I don't think he really thinks it is bad, he simply sees how much better it could be, and has been frustrated by the kernel maintainers largely ignoring his attempts to improve desktop performance (and them implementing something similar themselves).
This is definitely one of the most misleading article titles ever to appear on Slashdot, and that's a shame because I found it to be a very interesting article. This really is the kind of article I come to Slashdot to find.
Considering how often I've recently had to figure out which of the thousand or so config files I needed to edit and where the heck it was hiding, I pretty much wish Linux did have a registry.
The windows registry could certainly be much better, especially from a security and compartmentalization stand point, but at least I can find the darn thing (and by the way, the registry is stored in files, theres nothing particularly magic about it)
One caveat, they may be using cheaper blanks than other companies. I bought a retail copy and the CD was bad, so I had to download it, but it's pretty awesome that they allow it. Admittedly, I'm just a random data point and could have just won the bad disk lottery.
It is a pretty awesome game, and it's largely because of the AI.
True, but to a certain extent, Google was also the bait for the lawsuit. YouTube didn't have enough money to really sue for, Google does. If they article is correct (and I think it may be) Google would have wanted to be involved at the very outset of the litigation.
Not necessarily. I tried DD-WRT and I couldn't get it to handle DNS right, I had to hard-set the DNS servers on the PCs. I installed OpenWRT yesterday, and it was pretty much just worked. Admittedly, I haven't bothered with the wireless at all yet.
Admittedly DD-WRT's interface is extremely nice, but OpenWRT's is quite usable. I've seen commercial Firmware's with worse interfaces then either of them.
The Windows Powershell is actually available for XP. What's truly amazing is that there are tasks in Exhange 2007 that can only be done from the shell. Considering that Exchange is probably one of Microsoft strongest footholds in corporate environments, I would say this indicates they are serious about getting more shell friendly. Vista server (or whatever they end up calling it) is supposed to have a no-GUI install option as well.
I'd have your friend send the thing back (if thats possible) and then turn around and pretend to be a Small Business by clicking Small Business solutions or whatever it's currently labeled. Dell still sells XP there (and for larger businesses of course).
I don't think it's teaching them what someone thinks they "need to know", it's teaching them what they might "want to know". And frankly, if the course is done halfway decent, they'll be able to search out any more information they could possibly want. I know very little about the linux kernel, but I do know there's tons of documentation out there for it, and compiling your own it is childs play now. I just wish there was as much documentation for xorg.conf!
What about openoffice.org surely its more secure than an internet app.
Your documents might be more secure wit OpenOffice, but is the desktop more secure? If you are using fully web-based tools, you can install next to nothing on the desktop and lock it down incredibly tight. You don't have to worry about helping people find their files, repairing corrupted installs, etc. I guess the management bonus is probably greater than the security bonus, but it really depends what aspect of security you are talking about. For example, you might actually be better protected from internal security problems, and we all know those are the biggest risk.
The main difference between us geeks and everyday users is that to us, its fun. Even when we are trying to untangle the thorniest of problems, we are secretly having some amount of fun. For some people, simply being in the same room as a computer drains their soul of all fun (okay, that's a little extreme).
Some people seem to think that reading Charles Dickens is fun and since I can check out his books from the library, why in the world wouldn't I want to read them for free? The answer is that I consider that to be torture. (sorry all you Dickens fans)
He obviously knows what's in it and how it works. He is trying to discover it's origins. You know, basic human curiousity. It might be nice to know how it's supposed to be pronounced. I've heard it pronounced "et setera" and as "et see". et setera would seem right to me, but if it's not supposed to stand for "all the rest" or whatever the Latin did, then it would make sense to pronounce it differently.
I'd ask you to RTFA, but TFA doesn't have much. The source link in the article gives you much more detail.
Basically, the program spits out a potential key now and then based on what it knows about valid keys. From the forum posts it seems to usually get one in around 30 mins to an hour. Then you have to try to validate it with Microsoft (at most trying to validate twice an hour). Most people seem get a valid key within a few hours.
From that description, it's going to be really hard for MS to stop this from their end.
It depends, what is the price of filtering versus the price of "lost" productivity? From what I'm reading in the other posts here, filtering is very expensive.
Frankly, that is the only thing that any business should really be thinking about anyway.
You haven't purchased a Dell laptop recently have you. For your average business class Latitude a Core 2 Duo at 1.66 Ghz is the default processor... I just confirmed it. A Latitude D620 (a very mainstream model) has that as it's default CPU. Ghz just doesn't mean much anymore.
And yet I have gotten a speeding ticket for going 65 in a 55 before, and the RIAA / MPAA is getting tons of money from those they are threatening with lawsuits. Sure, they can't get everybody, but that doesn't mean it's unenforceable, it just means it's less likely that it will be enforced for any given transgression. In fact, it is quite easy for them to enforce them when they choose to.
(IANAL) If it restricts actions which would otherwise be allowed, it's not a license. A license by its nature must grant you a right you do not otherwise have. The idea behind EULA's is that under some theories of copyright law you do not have the right to copy the software from the CD to your hard drive. The EULA grants you that right.
Well, I just did a clean install of Windows XP at home and it didn't recognize my ASUS motherboards ethernet and sound (it's about 2.5 years old now). Every Linux distro I've installed on that machine didn't have a problem with those.
> The fact that the editor has (almost UI transparent) states where keys behave differently throws off most people.
Yep, that's my big problem with vi. I just got a job where I'm in an AIX box frequently, and it's just plain vi, it doesn't even tell me what mode I'm in, so I really stumble through it. I think I would be reasonably happy if backspace and delete would work normally, but nope, gotta change modes to delete anything. I guess thats one way to encourage people to type it right the first time. I think if it would loosen up and let me use a few commands without switching modes I could really like it.
Believe me, it's still quite possible to have inconsistent ways of doing things in a console GUI. I've used one system where viewing the next page of results required different keys in almost every sub-section. Like anything else, you need to agree on some standards right from the start!
I believe that the current legal standard is that the government cannot make laws based on the ratings of a non-government agency. Basically, since the ESRB and MPAA are not government agencies, the government cannot make laws based on thier ratings. But then again, IANAL and I could be behind the times.
Scotland yard, that game brings back lots of fun memories. I think I've been afraid to try it again because I'm afraid it won't be as good as I remember. I just checked some reviews and it sounds like it's still just as fun. I don't know if I can find many people who will be interested in it though.
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If you couldn't severely limit the ability to use an unauthorized boot device on your PC you don't deserve to be posting on Slashdot.
Of course just about anything can be bypassed with physical access, but it will usually leave a trail and require unusual and possible expensive tools. In my house I actually have to move furniture and take apart half of my desk to get inside my computer.
We have to use password protected zip files occasionally because most of the world is clueless about GPG.
Many tablet styluses have buttons on the barrel that turn a normal click (tap) into a right click, or you can hold the point down and it turns into right click. It generally doesn't work very well.
You are the one trying to pull a con job. I see nothing in the article to indicate that he is in any way intimidated by linux on the desktop. But perhaps you are just making the mistake of thinking the title of the article has something to do with the content of the link. Indeed it appears he is still using it, but has given up on kernel development.
I don't think he really thinks it is bad, he simply sees how much better it could be, and has been frustrated by the kernel maintainers largely ignoring his attempts to improve desktop performance (and them implementing something similar themselves).
This is definitely one of the most misleading article titles ever to appear on Slashdot, and that's a shame because I found it to be a very interesting article. This really is the kind of article I come to Slashdot to find.
Considering how often I've recently had to figure out which of the thousand or so config files I needed to edit and where the heck it was hiding, I pretty much wish Linux did have a registry.
The windows registry could certainly be much better, especially from a security and compartmentalization stand point, but at least I can find the darn thing (and by the way, the registry is stored in files, theres nothing particularly magic about it)
One caveat, they may be using cheaper blanks than other companies. I bought a retail copy and the CD was bad, so I had to download it, but it's pretty awesome that they allow it. Admittedly, I'm just a random data point and could have just won the bad disk lottery.
It is a pretty awesome game, and it's largely because of the AI.
True, but to a certain extent, Google was also the bait for the lawsuit. YouTube didn't have enough money to really sue for, Google does. If they article is correct (and I think it may be) Google would have wanted to be involved at the very outset of the litigation.
Not necessarily. I tried DD-WRT and I couldn't get it to handle DNS right, I had to hard-set the DNS servers on the PCs. I installed OpenWRT yesterday, and it was pretty much just worked. Admittedly, I haven't bothered with the wireless at all yet.
Admittedly DD-WRT's interface is extremely nice, but OpenWRT's is quite usable. I've seen commercial Firmware's with worse interfaces then either of them.
The Windows Powershell is actually available for XP. What's truly amazing is that there are tasks in Exhange 2007 that can only be done from the shell. Considering that Exchange is probably one of Microsoft strongest footholds in corporate environments, I would say this indicates they are serious about getting more shell friendly. Vista server (or whatever they end up calling it) is supposed to have a no-GUI install option as well.
I'd have your friend send the thing back (if thats possible) and then turn around and pretend to be a Small Business by clicking Small Business solutions or whatever it's currently labeled. Dell still sells XP there (and for larger businesses of course).
I don't think it's teaching them what someone thinks they "need to know", it's teaching them what they might "want to know". And frankly, if the course is done halfway decent, they'll be able to search out any more information they could possibly want. I know very little about the linux kernel, but I do know there's tons of documentation out there for it, and compiling your own it is childs play now. I just wish there was as much documentation for xorg.conf!
What about openoffice.org surely its more secure than an internet app.
Your documents might be more secure wit OpenOffice, but is the desktop more secure? If you are using fully web-based tools, you can install next to nothing on the desktop and lock it down incredibly tight. You don't have to worry about helping people find their files, repairing corrupted installs, etc. I guess the management bonus is probably greater than the security bonus, but it really depends what aspect of security you are talking about. For example, you might actually be better protected from internal security problems, and we all know those are the biggest risk.
The main difference between us geeks and everyday users is that to us, its fun. Even when we are trying to untangle the thorniest of problems, we are secretly having some amount of fun. For some people, simply being in the same room as a computer drains their soul of all fun (okay, that's a little extreme).
Some people seem to think that reading Charles Dickens is fun and since I can check out his books from the library, why in the world wouldn't I want to read them for free? The answer is that I consider that to be torture. (sorry all you Dickens fans)
He obviously knows what's in it and how it works. He is trying to discover it's origins. You know, basic human curiousity. It might be nice to know how it's supposed to be pronounced. I've heard it pronounced "et setera" and as "et see". et setera would seem right to me, but if it's not supposed to stand for "all the rest" or whatever the Latin did, then it would make sense to pronounce it differently.
I'd ask you to RTFA, but TFA doesn't have much. The source link in the article gives you much more detail.
Basically, the program spits out a potential key now and then based on what it knows about valid keys. From the forum posts it seems to usually get one in around 30 mins to an hour. Then you have to try to validate it with Microsoft (at most trying to validate twice an hour). Most people seem get a valid key within a few hours.
From that description, it's going to be really hard for MS to stop this from their end.
It depends, what is the price of filtering versus the price of "lost" productivity? From what I'm reading in the other posts here, filtering is very expensive.
Frankly, that is the only thing that any business should really be thinking about anyway.
You haven't purchased a Dell laptop recently have you. For your average business class Latitude a Core 2 Duo at 1.66 Ghz is the default processor... I just confirmed it. A Latitude D620 (a very mainstream model) has that as it's default CPU. Ghz just doesn't mean much anymore.
And yet I have gotten a speeding ticket for going 65 in a 55 before, and the RIAA / MPAA is getting tons of money from those they are threatening with lawsuits. Sure, they can't get everybody, but that doesn't mean it's unenforceable, it just means it's less likely that it will be enforced for any given transgression. In fact, it is quite easy for them to enforce them when they choose to.
(IANAL) If it restricts actions which would otherwise be allowed, it's not a license. A license by its nature must grant you a right you do not otherwise have. The idea behind EULA's is that under some theories of copyright law you do not have the right to copy the software from the CD to your hard drive. The EULA grants you that right.
Well, I just did a clean install of Windows XP at home and it didn't recognize my ASUS motherboards ethernet and sound (it's about 2.5 years old now). Every Linux distro I've installed on that machine didn't have a problem with those.
> The fact that the editor has (almost UI transparent) states where keys behave differently throws off most people.
Yep, that's my big problem with vi. I just got a job where I'm in an AIX box frequently, and it's just plain vi, it doesn't even tell me what mode I'm in, so I really stumble through it. I think I would be reasonably happy if backspace and delete would work normally, but nope, gotta change modes to delete anything. I guess thats one way to encourage people to type it right the first time. I think if it would loosen up and let me use a few commands without switching modes I could really like it.
Believe me, it's still quite possible to have inconsistent ways of doing things in a console GUI. I've used one system where viewing the next page of results required different keys in almost every sub-section. Like anything else, you need to agree on some standards right from the start!
I believe that the current legal standard is that the government cannot make laws based on the ratings of a non-government agency. Basically, since the ESRB and MPAA are not government agencies, the government cannot make laws based on thier ratings. But then again, IANAL and I could be behind the times.
Have we forgotten that it's supposed to be solar powered?
Scotland yard, that game brings back lots of fun memories. I think I've been afraid to try it again because I'm afraid it won't be as good as I remember. I just checked some reviews and it sounds like it's still just as fun. I don't know if I can find many people who will be interested in it though.