I've never had a single problem (spy/mal-ware, virii, etc) on this computer that's running Vista, without so much as an AV prog or firewall.
If you don't have anti-virus, how could you know that you are clean? Some (most?) viruses do not throw up giant announcements like "We are proud to announce that you are now infected with the latest XYZ/Win32 Virus". They could just sit there, silently sending your keystrokes to their creator.
All the bot needs to do is find out what the user's SMTP server is and use that. That way it doesn't care which outbound ports are open and which are blocked.
There are ways to block that behaviour. You could use SMTP AUTH to authenticate connections to the SMTP server and SSL/TLS to encrypt the connection. That way the bots won't be able to use the SMTP server to send their spam.
GPL sofware is hardly "free" by some dictionary definitions: "not controlled by the will of others"
Just like the United States and most other countries are hardly free countries by the same definition. They all impose restrictions on your freedom to harm other people as you wish.
A bit ironic that the "Free Software Foundation" (who supposedly push freedom) feel they have the right to dictate
It's funny, I strongly recall Dubya marketing the Iraq invasion as a project to make the Iraqi people free, but they hardly seem to be free at all according to your definition of the word.
Isn't imposing your will on others anti-freedom?
Agreeing on a common terminology where everyone is using the same definitions of the words in that terminology is pretty necessary to have any meaningful discussion.
And before I am branded as an anti-OSS guy, I've written, and continue to write, heaps too - much of that released under GPL.
I love it when trolls try to deflect criticism by vaguely claiming that they also write F/OSS code.
It certainly does. It requires you to write the code yourself or buy someone else's code (possibly costing you a lot of money) instead of stealing this free code that is tantalizingly available on the internet. How unfair!
This might have been intended as a joke, but anyway: Liberated Software clearly implies that the software was shackled in chains before, and that it has now been released from captivity. Clearly, that does not apply to software that was born and has lived its entire life in liberty.
The only way to have a truly 'free as in every sense of the word' society would be to allow anyone do do anything they want with no restrictions whatsoever. In other words, to have no laws that restrict the freedom of any individual (such as from going on a killing spree). Those restrictions, no matter what idealism inspired them, no matter how subtle, take away freedoms, and thusly, senses of the term 'free' when provided without context.
There, fixed it for you.
Maybe you feel like it is a good idea to let anyone have their own Virginia Tech massacres whenever they wake up on the wrongs side. I don't. Certain restrictions have to be implemented to ensure maximum freedom for society as a whole, even if they slightly impact your own personal freedom do do whatever you like.
Now it has to be compatible with the GPL to use that module you happen to include with your project, no matter how insignificant it may be.
If the GPL-covered module is so insignificant, you could probably have written something equivalent yourself in ten minutes. Or maybe it isn't that insignificant...
To have a meaningful discussion, it is necessary to use a terminology that everyone can agree upon. May I ask what word you suggest we use instead of free when we refer to freedom and not the absence of a price? Your language is somewhat deficient in this aspect, since the word free has two quite different meanings. There is the word gratis for the no cost meaning of free, but it seems like nobody is using that in common parlance.
isn't there something a little creepy about advocates of "freedom" crowing about forcing someone to use their terminology? Score one for freedom!
How could you get any useful work done if everyone had their own definition of the words used? How could you have a meaningful discussion about software freedom with someone who defines free software to mean proprietary software? The whole reason why people do not speak their own personal language is so that other people can understand what they say.
I think the next jump in network filesystems will probably come from the need for clustered/distributed filesystems.
I suggest that you take a look at AFS, it might have the featureset that you want. It may not be the easiest system to setup, but it is powerful and feature-rich.
If Red Hat can get more money for support by making things more complex or more likely to break they will
That would make sense if they charged per incident or per hour, but not with a yearly subscription fee. The more time they spend actually doing support, the less money do they make. In addition, support includes much more than a helpdesk line. It can include customization, integration, etc, not to mention the effort in staying binary compatible throughout the lifetime of a product.
we have the tech to make gas core nuclear rockets right now.
With nuclear rockets, you would have to solve vast PR problems though. Just consider the demands by the greens to close nuclear power stations, which are firmly on the ground. A nuclear-powered rocket, with the significant risk of an accident and its fuel being released into the environment, could face much more severe problems than nuclear power stations.
Even to me, who is usually pro-nuclear, it isn't clear that nuclear rockets launching from the surface of the earth is a good idea. Considering the history of modern rocketry, we've had quite a number of accidents with ordinary chemical rockets, and it would be naive to assume that accidents wouldn't happen to those nuclear rockets. Nuclear rockets launching from orbit. such as on interplanetary missions, is a very different matter, which is do not oppose at all. There is a problem though: How do we get the nuclear fuel to orbit without the risk of a serious accident?
a lot of the real world much prefers the Windows system where you go get the CD or download the exe for your installations
But then we all know where all the spyware/adware/viruses/etc is. People like downloading an exe from a random website, but since they never verify that the file is what it claims to be, they get hit with malware that some redistributor in the chain chose to add to the package.
I love how USB devices in Windows are tied to the port you plug them into. Plug your mouse into a different port on the laptop? "OMG IT'S A NEW DEVICE BRAIN HEMORRHAGE" says Windows. Reinstall yet another copy of the same driver... somewhere, then it eventually works. Seriously... how stupid is that?
I agree. I also remember plugging my iPod into one of the USB ports, getting a message that "Windows does not recognize this device, please contact your dealer", even though it worked the day before. So, I tried to put it in another USB port, and there it worked fine.
nor could it without the package format being updated
Bzzt, wrong! As described in another of my replies to your posts, the package could simply add its own repository configuration file and you would be set.
Actually, there are some pretty effective registration/validation systems out there, some of which are way more intrusive than I am comfortable with. Part of the benefit to having an official registration service is to remove the motivation for companies who think they need to install a rootkit on your machine to stop you from pirating their game. The main point of registration systems is to stop casual piracy, and I've seen some fairly convincing evidence that they do stop enough people to motivate more sales.
Registration, serial key validation and other anti-piracy systems are effectively a type of DRM, and DRM is fundamentally incompatible with F/OSS. If you can examine the source of a registration key validation system, it can be more easily broken. This is because they often (always?) depend on the fact that people don't know how they work. If you could find out how a key is validated, it is highly probable that you could generate a fake key that passes validation.
DRM is a way for content and software producers to make your computer work for them and not you, which is kind of the opposite of the F/OSS mentality. Thus, I cannot see such mechanisms being integrated into the official packaging systems anytime soon.
All of this is rooted in the fact that Linux and the package managers are built on the preconception that software is open source and freely re-distributable, when that is simply not the case in the mainstream commercial software world. If Linux wants to join that world, it needs to adapt.
I guess you never heard about Linspire's Click 'n Run (CNR) system. It is a package management system designed with commercial payware in mind. It is supposed to be available for most of the major distros soon.
The synaptic package manager supports multiple repositories. All that needs to be done to support decentralized package management is to include a repository URL in the package format itself and adjust the package manager to automatically add repositories that are in a package and not yet added.
Now why would you want to do that? You don't need to alter the package format to install new repository definitions on the system. With Yum (on Red Hat systems, such as Fedora, RHEL and CentOS), you can add your own repository definition file to/etc/yum.repos.d/, and it will automatically be used. Just include such a file into the package and you are set. No altering of the package format necessary.
Trees are good. That's hard to dispute. I like trees.
This is really orthogonal to the question of recycling, assuming the cut down trees are replaced with new saplings.
Waste paper... not all of it is burned in incinerators.
We mostly incinerate our trash, and only use landfills for trash that cannot be incinerated.
A good deal of them produce natural gas, for instance.
I guess you mean methane or biogas, since natural gas is by definition a fossil fuel (that contains methane). If generated by decomposition of organic matter in a landfill or water treatment plant, it is usually called biogas. Anyway, I hope that this gas is collected, as methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
Any carbon and oxygen that is in that paper was captured from the tree the paper was made from. Thus when you burn it, there is neither a net gain or loss of CO2 in the atmosphere.
I know. It was supposedly implied by the mentioning of the increased demand of trees.
You know, we need O2 to live. Burying it into the ground doesn't sound like such a great idea, does it?
The oxygen content of all CO2 in the atmosphere is extremely small compared to the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere. There amount of oxygen in the atmosphere is more than 500 times the amount of CO2 (21% vs 0.038%). Burying or releasing the oxygen contained in CO2 wouldn't make the slightest difference.
I don't have any actual data, but I have a feeling that the only reason there is so little CO2 is that plants are very good at removing nearly all of it
Don't forget that the oceans act like a buffer solution. They absorb a significant amount of the CO2 released, so the numbers of atmospheric CO2 that are shown in statistics do not account for all CO2 being released by human activities. It is estimated that as much as a third of all CO2 goes into the oceans, with unknown consequences for marine lifeforms.
With numbers like these it amazes me that humans can make the slightest dent.
The amount of freons put into the atmosphere were far smaller than the amount of CO2 emitted, but they still had a significant impact on the ozone layer. So humans can certainly make a dent, even with comparably small quantities.
Slashdot Mirror
If you don't have anti-virus, how could you know that you are clean? Some (most?) viruses do not throw up giant announcements like "We are proud to announce that you are now infected with the latest XYZ/Win32 Virus". They could just sit there, silently sending your keystrokes to their creator.
There are ways to block that behaviour. You could use SMTP AUTH to authenticate connections to the SMTP server and SSL/TLS to encrypt the connection. That way the bots won't be able to use the SMTP server to send their spam.
Just like the United States and most other countries are hardly free countries by the same definition. They all impose restrictions on your freedom to harm other people as you wish.
A bit ironic that the "Free Software Foundation" (who supposedly push freedom) feel they have the right to dictateIt's funny, I strongly recall Dubya marketing the Iraq invasion as a project to make the Iraqi people free, but they hardly seem to be free at all according to your definition of the word.
Isn't imposing your will on others anti-freedom?Agreeing on a common terminology where everyone is using the same definitions of the words in that terminology is pretty necessary to have any meaningful discussion.
And before I am branded as an anti-OSS guy, I've written, and continue to write, heaps too - much of that released under GPL.I love it when trolls try to deflect criticism by vaguely claiming that they also write F/OSS code.
It certainly does. It requires you to write the code yourself or buy someone else's code (possibly costing you a lot of money) instead of stealing this free code that is tantalizingly available on the internet. How unfair!
This might have been intended as a joke, but anyway: Liberated Software clearly implies that the software was shackled in chains before, and that it has now been released from captivity. Clearly, that does not apply to software that was born and has lived its entire life in liberty.
Maybe the GP thinks that there are no other languages than English. :)
There, fixed it for you.
Maybe you feel like it is a good idea to let anyone have their own Virginia Tech massacres whenever they wake up on the wrongs side. I don't. Certain restrictions have to be implemented to ensure maximum freedom for society as a whole, even if they slightly impact your own personal freedom do do whatever you like.
Now it has to be compatible with the GPL to use that module you happen to include with your project, no matter how insignificant it may be.If the GPL-covered module is so insignificant, you could probably have written something equivalent yourself in ten minutes. Or maybe it isn't that insignificant...
To have a meaningful discussion, it is necessary to use a terminology that everyone can agree upon. May I ask what word you suggest we use instead of free when we refer to freedom and not the absence of a price? Your language is somewhat deficient in this aspect, since the word free has two quite different meanings. There is the word gratis for the no cost meaning of free, but it seems like nobody is using that in common parlance.
How could you get any useful work done if everyone had their own definition of the words used? How could you have a meaningful discussion about software freedom with someone who defines free software to mean proprietary software? The whole reason why people do not speak their own personal language is so that other people can understand what they say.
Wouldn't this be tantamount to a bribe? I thought those were illegal.
I suggest that you take a look at AFS, it might have the featureset that you want. It may not be the easiest system to setup, but it is powerful and feature-rich.
That would make sense if they charged per incident or per hour, but not with a yearly subscription fee. The more time they spend actually doing support, the less money do they make. In addition, support includes much more than a helpdesk line. It can include customization, integration, etc, not to mention the effort in staying binary compatible throughout the lifetime of a product.
With nuclear rockets, you would have to solve vast PR problems though. Just consider the demands by the greens to close nuclear power stations, which are firmly on the ground. A nuclear-powered rocket, with the significant risk of an accident and its fuel being released into the environment, could face much more severe problems than nuclear power stations.
Even to me, who is usually pro-nuclear, it isn't clear that nuclear rockets launching from the surface of the earth is a good idea. Considering the history of modern rocketry, we've had quite a number of accidents with ordinary chemical rockets, and it would be naive to assume that accidents wouldn't happen to those nuclear rockets. Nuclear rockets launching from orbit. such as on interplanetary missions, is a very different matter, which is do not oppose at all. There is a problem though: How do we get the nuclear fuel to orbit without the risk of a serious accident?
But then we all know where all the spyware/adware/viruses/etc is. People like downloading an exe from a random website, but since they never verify that the file is what it claims to be, they get hit with malware that some redistributor in the chain chose to add to the package.
Actually, I'd prefer not having a driver over having a buggy driver that can cause my system to randomly BSoD/freeze/reboot.
I agree. I also remember plugging my iPod into one of the USB ports, getting a message that "Windows does not recognize this device, please contact your dealer", even though it worked the day before. So, I tried to put it in another USB port, and there it worked fine.
Bzzt, wrong! As described in another of my replies to your posts, the package could simply add its own repository configuration file and you would be set.
Registration, serial key validation and other anti-piracy systems are effectively a type of DRM, and DRM is fundamentally incompatible with F/OSS. If you can examine the source of a registration key validation system, it can be more easily broken. This is because they often (always?) depend on the fact that people don't know how they work. If you could find out how a key is validated, it is highly probable that you could generate a fake key that passes validation.
DRM is a way for content and software producers to make your computer work for them and not you, which is kind of the opposite of the F/OSS mentality. Thus, I cannot see such mechanisms being integrated into the official packaging systems anytime soon.
I guess you never heard about Linspire's Click 'n Run (CNR) system. It is a package management system designed with commercial payware in mind. It is supposed to be available for most of the major distros soon.
Now why would you want to do that? You don't need to alter the package format to install new repository definitions on the system. With Yum (on Red Hat systems, such as Fedora, RHEL and CentOS), you can add your own repository definition file to /etc/yum.repos.d/, and it will automatically be used. Just include such a file into the package and you are set. No altering of the package format necessary.
This is really orthogonal to the question of recycling, assuming the cut down trees are replaced with new saplings.
Waste paper... not all of it is burned in incinerators.We mostly incinerate our trash, and only use landfills for trash that cannot be incinerated.
A good deal of them produce natural gas, for instance.I guess you mean methane or biogas, since natural gas is by definition a fossil fuel (that contains methane). If generated by decomposition of organic matter in a landfill or water treatment plant, it is usually called biogas. Anyway, I hope that this gas is collected, as methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
Any carbon and oxygen that is in that paper was captured from the tree the paper was made from. Thus when you burn it, there is neither a net gain or loss of CO2 in the atmosphere.I know. It was supposedly implied by the mentioning of the increased demand of trees.
He probably refers to the days of Linux 2.4.x, not the time taken to configure and build the kernel.
The oxygen content of all CO2 in the atmosphere is extremely small compared to the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere. There amount of oxygen in the atmosphere is more than 500 times the amount of CO2 (21% vs 0.038%). Burying or releasing the oxygen contained in CO2 wouldn't make the slightest difference.
Don't forget that the oceans act like a buffer solution. They absorb a significant amount of the CO2 released, so the numbers of atmospheric CO2 that are shown in statistics do not account for all CO2 being released by human activities. It is estimated that as much as a third of all CO2 goes into the oceans, with unknown consequences for marine lifeforms.
The amount of freons put into the atmosphere were far smaller than the amount of CO2 emitted, but they still had a significant impact on the ozone layer. So humans can certainly make a dent, even with comparably small quantities.