That's nice as far as fixing bugs, but it has nothing to do with functionality, which is my primary gripe with Linux at this point.
You my friend, are very ignorant. I'm not trying to be offensive here, but I must say that you literally do not understand the concepts behind linux. It's a hacker's OS, you can change whatever you want about linux, provided you know how to represent that change in some kind of algorithm.
If by "functionality" you mean "works out of the box", then that's your view and I'm not gonna beat you with the linux stick cause it took me years to climb the learning curve, and (believe it or not), I hated linux the first time I came across it, I couldn't get X to start. My reaction... "This is a glorified DOS prompt", and proceeded to reinstall Win98. That was in 1999.
BUT, if you don't mean "works out of the box" then functionality in linux is almost unlimited. OK, there are some Windows specific things that don't work the Windows-way on linux, but you can write your own code and have it DO the same job. It's a matter of knowledge of what's out there to be utilized, and not how much is advertised on the outside of the box.
And to be truely fair, it's not either linux is better than windows or the converse. Because both OS's run on x86 architecture, so if you wanted to you could write a completely new OS from scratch that does all the crap windows and linux does, It wouldn't be easy though. And Finally, with Windows, if you know how to make your change in an algorithm, then it's possible to do whatever in windows aswell. THE DIFFERENCE is that linux is opensource, so you understand how part X works and you can write part Y to go in it's place and the system runs with it. Windows is not so open, you kinda have to guess as to what it does and how it works.
From a purely, hypothetically, technical view, Windows, Linux, OSX (intel), and the rest of the x86 gang, are all capable of doing the exact same things. You have to reach the upper limits of the hacker stratosphere to know how though. Which I don't, btw.
Maybe one weekend when you have some time, check out Ubuntu Linux (it has noob cushions installed:} but that does not mean it can't do more advanced stuff - I use Ubuntu for my desktop, and 2 webservers), and check out some howto's on setting up server stuff. (HTTP, FTP, SSH, IMAP, etc.) The linux today isn't as rough on the edges as it was in the previous millenium, but it is NOT a "No configuration or understanding needed!" OS. People on the Ubuntu forums will help you out, and if you would like, you can even click on my username and send me an email if you have some questions.
Maybe this is what Bill Gates is getting at when he criticizes the movement as being like communism. Maybe he's not talking about the collectivist aspect of the intellectual theory so much as the extremist aspect of the practical realisation.
Of course it's like communism. GPL'd code is released so that people who aren't good programmers can still benefit from the works of those who are.
It is the idea that maybe the Human Race might be better off, if instead of acting like neanderthals and hoarding stuff for ourselves, we share it and in return recieve good stuff from other people who are better at shit than you are - maybe that might speed things up a little bit in regards to the painfully slow innovation of humans who keep 'personally profitable' ideas all the fuck to themselves.
And one more thing... Moral extremism (in most cases) is detracting from practical solutions. But instead of denouncing ideas that are too enlightened, maybe you could try to think - if you could improve the lives of people, where could you start? On the periphery (like relief work, donnations, welfare) - or at the source (why the Human mind has not evolved from nomadic 'every man/animal for himself', to an actual group collaboration when there is no need to make life this hard for the people of the world). Because if you could focus on the source of a problem, then the result of fixing that are inconcievably more rewarding - than going after each manifestation that your source creates, yet leave the source intact to start the shit all over again.
Think of handgun related murders and think how much it would improve life for everyone if you could find a way to keep people from getting shot. 1.) make handguns illegal - which is great, if you don't mind chronically wasting resources trying to enforce that OR 2.)destratify society - take the assets of the absurdly rich (who, no, they don't need all that money to be happy) and use it to improve life for the poor and poverty striken - build quality houses and neighborhoods in the ghettos, provide plentiful and quality education for these areas - help stabilize the lives of those who live in poverty and ghettos, which will help reduce the anarchy and disorder, which will reduce the hostility and violence, which will reduce the huge concern over constantly watching your back to make sure you can live to see the next day, which believe or not will reduce handguns among the populace, which !!OMGdz!! will seriously cut back on handgun related murders.
Will it prevent all handgun murders? Probably not. Will it change the social psyche enough, to the point where people start to value life - especially the lives of others - Because "other Humans are now taking time out of their lives to come and rebuild my neighborhood, people I don't know, have never met, who don't know me at all, but trust that I will take this action as a sign of compassion, and of humanity, they put faith in me, they believe in my ability to do well" - will those people stop dealing drugs, stop beating their wives, stop stealing from their neighbors, stop supporting gangs, stop hating the police, stop fearing for their lives in this chaotic world? maybe.
But no, it's easier to view life in black and white.
Every man for himself.
Human stupidity - 33 Thousand years in the running the still going strong! Vote stupidity in '08!
OK, done ranting now. I fully admit, I do stupid things all the time, too. I try and avoid it when I can, but no, I'm not an elitist superhuman staring down upon society from my high throne of perfection. I fuck up too. But if we work together to discover society's real problems, and not just the symptoms that come from them, then we can mark our lifetimes as the diaspora when Humanity took its first step into a new eon of evolution. It's possible guys, difficult (YES!), but definately possible and I wouldn't mind spending the effort for a goal such as this.
I've been thinking of this actually, if you designed a filesystem based on a linked list system and had a HD technology that could write more than 50Tb then you would never need to delete anything.
Think tiny dots on a piece of paper, how many billions of dots do you think you could fit on a pad of legal fullscap?
HD tech is really slow, perhaps removing the nescessity to erase it would remove the limiting factor.
What am I missing here? (And I'm not being sarcastic with that, I genuinely don't understand why anyone would want to share the fundamentals of their creation in a way that would compromise any potential future earnings.)
Maybe people see the world falling to pieces in places here and there - and this person wants to change that. They create X and they help it spread freely not because they want to make money, but because they want to help society. Sometimes they feel so strongly about helping out other people, that they don't even care if they are rewarded or not.
I can't tell you how severely "If I can't exploit my creation for money, then I won't make it" has fucked the future of the Human Race. It severely impairs the advancement of this society.
Lets not number the years from the birth of christ, but instead start at around 12000 BC (the start of civilizations). So we live not in the year 2006, but approximately the year 14000 - does that give you some idea as to how slow our advancement has been? 14 Thousand years, and we still shoot outselves in the foot every chance we get.
Problem one with copyright as it is, is that it does not but should force the holder to keep supplying replacement copies of copyrighted software for as long as the copyright claims are maintained. When supports ends, or the company goes under then all copyrights should go to freeware at least.
Not providing copyrighted material at request ought to place the work into freeware status, the author is entitled to some minimal royalty, but the public is free to obtain the material from whomever will provide it.
Step two...all copyrighted work should be released as source code. Copyrights should not apply to concepts, only to the particular words or code. subject to reasonable plagirism protection.
That really sounds like it could be a radical change for society, and a welcome one at that.
And I'm not trying to sound sarcastic, I seriously think it would make many things better.
check out ubuntu linux, get version 6.06, it's the most stable. It has a live CD that has a harddrive installer included. So, start up live CD, then install, then restart from the harddrive. It has a nice GIU for the installer.
Should also be used in arguments like: "Ignorant and lazy people, who want things to be easy, are stopping the Human Race from advancing".
Because honestly, how are we as a society going to keep on progressing, striving to achieve an Utopian society even though we know it might not be possible to truely reach it -- when every advancement we make, we have to dumb it down, simplify it, reduce its reach -- in order for the masses to use it (and use it poorly at that)?
It's not lossless, it uses a reduced palette and other techniques to compress the image. But it's not good at compressing images like JPG's are; it's just not built for it. It is good for diagrams, line drawings, drawings with very little color depth, or small icons.
It is lossless.
JPEG discards data and saves what it needs to recreate the image based on how much quality loss you are willing to endure.
PNG does not discard any data, the bit-for-bit perfect copy of the original image can be recreated from the PNG file. It is good for storing images that you don't want to be diluted in any way.
Comparing PNG to JPEG is like comparing Vorbis to FLAC -- They serve entirely different purposes but deal with the same thing (audio).
Lets take a parallel example...
Suppose the DMV said that the current automobile wasn't "user-friendly" enough, and that some changes had to be made in order to appeal to the masses.
The DMV starts encouraging automobile makers to start adding "appealing, easy to use, no training required features", such as a built-in tanning booth, an new windshield with an lcd screen built right into the window (you can watch tv AND look through at traffic at the SAME TIME!!!!).
After all this, the DMV starts stressing the "ease of use" of operating an automobile, and therefore starts dumbing down the Driver's Liscense exams, because the current exams just make driving too "difficult" or "hard" or "complex". The DMV fully understands that the average driver wants driving his car to be easy, and therefore the DMV gets right of way laws repealed, because it's too complex to think "abstractly about such complex and difficult things".
Oh shit, I forgot...People are supposed to get their shit the fuck together and learn how to drive the fucking car, be responsible for the actions, pay the fuck attention to the road, not make "user-dumbfucking-friendly" for them.
If they can't use the car to navigate the road then, honestly, has the useful purpose and utility of the car been lost?
Now, not to tell people that they can't use the computer, seeing how cars can kill people is misused, computers...ehh not so dangerous -- but I think people should strive to learn how to utilize the computer, and take full advantage of the computational and mathematical power it really has, not push that aside in efforts to make it look pretty.
Not to say that we can't have a sleek GUI and retain full functionality, but we need not forget just how powerful a computer really is.
As for your comments on torture - a more mature and Christian inspiried attitude should be considered.
First off, I am not disagreeing with you on torture - but I think the simple humanitarian compassion we as a race can show would be enough. There's no need to throw Christian morals in the mix, when compassion would do the job just as well.
Not to be insulting towards Christians (or any other religion), but what we don't need to do, is to allow the separation of Church and State to crumble in the efforts of returning order to the Nation.
"The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation. "
-Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
It is incredibly scary to think about how true this quote is.
Mod parent up please!
For us to shoot ourselves in the foot in the 'hopes of protecting kids' (which will simply use their ingenuity to bypass the filter like the previous poster said), won't helpanything.
It will just set the stage for more useless, ill concieved legislation to make it's way into our lives and set us on the downward spiral to 1984.
On your Linux box unknown is allowed to load into the kernel - all it has to do is acquire root, which is not terribly difficult on a desktop machine, and then go ahead and start patching code. That is what you cannot (in theory) do on Windows.
Could you please explain to me how this is a vulnerability in Linux? I mean, just about any exploit that can screw the entire system needs root access. And what's the difference on a "desktop" linux machine, I use the same install of Ubuntu for my desktop as I do for my servers. Granted I don't have a lot of apps on the server as I do with my desktop (Amarok, OpenOffice, Tremulous, etc.), but it's still the same kernel, device manager, packaging system. The underlying structure is no different between my two computers.
On your Linux box unknown [code] is allowed to load into the kernel
Well once I have root access, then sure, Linux will let me run unknown code in the kernel. But, When I become root, Linux will also let me run `rm -rf/`. It won't fight or object, it is expected of the root user to know what it is they are doing to the system.
Giving root access to a person unfamiliar to Linux is a bad approach at security. Using the power of root to point out the vast destruction that could be done with the right commands, all in the attempt to throw a spotlight on the 'vulnerabilities' of Linux is also a bad approach to security.
If the user does not take care to safeguard their password, and they have sudo access, then yeah...you can screw the pooch. But having knowledge of good security practicies on computer systems is a much more effective step than say...Putting an AV scanner on your Linux Box.
Could you, perhaps, be suggesting that a person who uses Linux solely for their desktop use may not understand security as much as a SysOp would?
"How about installing a botnet that you use to target the computer systems of the bad guys?"
Unfortunately, the world does not work this way. These guys create botnets because they have a greater knowledge of computers than the average joe, and I'm willing to speculate, most or all of them know how to secure their own computers from hacking attempts.
Censorhip for the sake of keeping your kids from seeing highly disturbing content is one thing--and in many(not all) ways a good thing. I would think most parents would stop censoring internet access after their kids have matured significantly, i.e. like when they go off to live in a dorm in college, or something along those lines. But when the government effectively censors the content from you cause they don't want you to have and range of free thinking whatsoever, then I think the government has ultimately failed to serve its people.
This is a plea for uncensorship, however animal cruelty is far different from free speech and China needs to enact legislation to counter such horrific acts.
Slashdot Mirror
If by "functionality" you mean "works out of the box", then that's your view and I'm not gonna beat you with the linux stick cause it took me years to climb the learning curve, and (believe it or not), I hated linux the first time I came across it, I couldn't get X to start. My reaction... "This is a glorified DOS prompt", and proceeded to reinstall Win98. That was in 1999.
BUT, if you don't mean "works out of the box" then functionality in linux is almost unlimited. OK, there are some Windows specific things that don't work the Windows-way on linux, but you can write your own code and have it DO the same job. It's a matter of knowledge of what's out there to be utilized, and not how much is advertised on the outside of the box.
:} but that does not mean it can't do more advanced stuff - I use Ubuntu for my desktop, and 2 webservers), and check out some howto's on setting up server stuff. (HTTP, FTP, SSH, IMAP, etc.) The linux today isn't as rough on the edges as it was in the previous millenium, but it is NOT a "No configuration or understanding needed!" OS. People on the Ubuntu forums will help you out, and if you would like, you can even click on my username and send me an email if you have some questions.
And to be truely fair, it's not either linux is better than windows or the converse. Because both OS's run on x86 architecture, so if you wanted to you could write a completely new OS from scratch that does all the crap windows and linux does, It wouldn't be easy though. And Finally, with Windows, if you know how to make your change in an algorithm, then it's possible to do whatever in windows aswell. THE DIFFERENCE is that linux is opensource, so you understand how part X works and you can write part Y to go in it's place and the system runs with it. Windows is not so open, you kinda have to guess as to what it does and how it works. From a purely, hypothetically, technical view, Windows, Linux, OSX (intel), and the rest of the x86 gang, are all capable of doing the exact same things. You have to reach the upper limits of the hacker stratosphere to know how though. Which I don't, btw.
Maybe one weekend when you have some time, check out Ubuntu Linux (it has noob cushions installed
It is the idea that maybe the Human Race might be better off, if instead of acting like neanderthals and hoarding stuff for ourselves, we share it and in return recieve good stuff from other people who are better at shit than you are - maybe that might speed things up a little bit in regards to the painfully slow innovation of humans who keep 'personally profitable' ideas all the fuck to themselves.
And one more thing... Moral extremism (in most cases) is detracting from practical solutions. But instead of denouncing ideas that are too enlightened, maybe you could try to think - if you could improve the lives of people, where could you start? On the periphery (like relief work, donnations, welfare) - or at the source (why the Human mind has not evolved from nomadic 'every man/animal for himself', to an actual group collaboration when there is no need to make life this hard for the people of the world). Because if you could focus on the source of a problem, then the result of fixing that are inconcievably more rewarding - than going after each manifestation that your source creates, yet leave the source intact to start the shit all over again.
Think of handgun related murders and think how much it would improve life for everyone if you could find a way to keep people from getting shot. 1.) make handguns illegal - which is great, if you don't mind chronically wasting resources trying to enforce that OR 2.)destratify society - take the assets of the absurdly rich (who, no, they don't need all that money to be happy) and use it to improve life for the poor and poverty striken - build quality houses and neighborhoods in the ghettos, provide plentiful and quality education for these areas - help stabilize the lives of those who live in poverty and ghettos, which will help reduce the anarchy and disorder, which will reduce the hostility and violence, which will reduce the huge concern over constantly watching your back to make sure you can live to see the next day, which believe or not will reduce handguns among the populace, which !!OMGdz!! will seriously cut back on handgun related murders.
Will it prevent all handgun murders? Probably not. Will it change the social psyche enough, to the point where people start to value life - especially the lives of others - Because "other Humans are now taking time out of their lives to come and rebuild my neighborhood, people I don't know, have never met, who don't know me at all, but trust that I will take this action as a sign of compassion, and of humanity, they put faith in me, they believe in my ability to do well" - will those people stop dealing drugs, stop beating their wives, stop stealing from their neighbors, stop supporting gangs, stop hating the police, stop fearing for their lives in this chaotic world? maybe.
But no, it's easier to view life in black and white.
Every man for himself.
Human stupidity - 33 Thousand years in the running the still going strong! Vote stupidity in '08!
OK, done ranting now. I fully admit, I do stupid things all the time, too. I try and avoid it when I can, but no, I'm not an elitist superhuman staring down upon society from my high throne of perfection. I fuck up too. But if we work together to discover society's real problems, and not just the symptoms that come from them, then we can mark our lifetimes as the diaspora when Humanity took its first step into a new eon of evolution. It's possible guys, difficult (YES!), but definately possible and I wouldn't mind spending the effort for a goal such as this.
http://colossalstorage.net/home_diskdrive.htm
I can't tell you how severely "If I can't exploit my creation for money, then I won't make it" has fucked the future of the Human Race. It severely impairs the advancement of this society.
Lets not number the years from the birth of christ, but instead start at around 12000 BC (the start of civilizations). So we live not in the year 2006, but approximately the year 14000 - does that give you some idea as to how slow our advancement has been? 14 Thousand years, and we still shoot outselves in the foot every chance we get.
- From the Guiness commercials, "Brilliant!"
That was an excellent post, nicely constructed. mod parent up plz.
Mod parent up. He has an awesome point. Democracy sucks when everyone is lazy.
That really sounds like it could be a radical change for society, and a welcome one at that.
And I'm not trying to sound sarcastic, I seriously think it would make many things better.
check out ubuntu linux, get version 6.06, it's the most stable. It has a live CD that has a harddrive installer included. So, start up live CD, then install, then restart from the harddrive. It has a nice GIU for the installer.
Arguments such as these: "Linux is too hard"
Should also be used in arguments like: "Ignorant and lazy people, who want things to be easy, are stopping the Human Race from advancing".
Because honestly, how are we as a society going to keep on progressing, striving to achieve an Utopian society even though we know it might not be possible to truely reach it -- when every advancement we make, we have to dumb it down, simplify it, reduce its reach -- in order for the masses to use it (and use it poorly at that)?
When will this end?
It is lossless.
JPEG discards data and saves what it needs to recreate the image based on how much quality loss you are willing to endure.
PNG does not discard any data, the bit-for-bit perfect copy of the original image can be recreated from the PNG file. It is good for storing images that you don't want to be diluted in any way.
Comparing PNG to JPEG is like comparing Vorbis to FLAC -- They serve entirely different purposes but deal with the same thing (audio).
Lets take a parallel example...
Suppose the DMV said that the current automobile wasn't "user-friendly" enough, and that some changes had to be made in order to appeal to the masses.
The DMV starts encouraging automobile makers to start adding "appealing, easy to use, no training required features", such as a built-in tanning booth, an new windshield with an lcd screen built right into the window (you can watch tv AND look through at traffic at the SAME TIME!!!!).
After all this, the DMV starts stressing the "ease of use" of operating an automobile, and therefore starts dumbing down the Driver's Liscense exams, because the current exams just make driving too "difficult" or "hard" or "complex". The DMV fully understands that the average driver wants driving his car to be easy, and therefore the DMV gets right of way laws repealed, because it's too complex to think "abstractly about such complex and difficult things".
Oh shit, I forgot...People are supposed to get their shit the fuck together and learn how to drive the fucking car, be responsible for the actions, pay the fuck attention to the road, not make "user-dumbfucking-friendly" for them.
If they can't use the car to navigate the road then, honestly, has the useful purpose and utility of the car been lost?
Now, not to tell people that they can't use the computer, seeing how cars can kill people is misused, computers...ehh not so dangerous -- but I think people should strive to learn how to utilize the computer, and take full advantage of the computational and mathematical power it really has, not push that aside in efforts to make it look pretty.
Not to say that we can't have a sleek GUI and retain full functionality, but we need not forget just how powerful a computer really is.
First off, I am not disagreeing with you on torture - but I think the simple humanitarian compassion we as a race can show would be enough. There's no need to throw Christian morals in the mix, when compassion would do the job just as well.
Not to be insulting towards Christians (or any other religion), but what we don't need to do, is to allow the separation of Church and State to crumble in the efforts of returning order to the Nation.
It is incredibly scary to think about how true this quote is.
Mod parent up please! For us to shoot ourselves in the foot in the 'hopes of protecting kids' (which will simply use their ingenuity to bypass the filter like the previous poster said), won't help anything. It will just set the stage for more useless, ill concieved legislation to make it's way into our lives and set us on the downward spiral to 1984.
Ever heard of FLAC?
That comment has got to be one of the funniest posts I've seen on
Could you please explain to me how this is a vulnerability in Linux? I mean, just about any exploit that can screw the entire system needs root access. And what's the difference on a "desktop" linux machine, I use the same install of Ubuntu for my desktop as I do for my servers. Granted I don't have a lot of apps on the server as I do with my desktop (Amarok, OpenOffice, Tremulous, etc.), but it's still the same kernel, device manager, packaging system. The underlying structure is no different between my two computers.
Well once I have root access, then sure, Linux will let me run unknown code in the kernel. But, When I become root, Linux will also let me run `rm -rfGiving root access to a person unfamiliar to Linux is a bad approach at security. Using the power of root to point out the vast destruction that could be done with the right commands, all in the attempt to throw a spotlight on the 'vulnerabilities' of Linux is also a bad approach to security.
If the user does not take care to safeguard their password, and they have sudo access, then yeah...you can screw the pooch. But having knowledge of good security practicies on computer systems is a much more effective step than say...Putting an AV scanner on your Linux Box.
Could you, perhaps, be suggesting that a person who uses Linux solely for their desktop use may not understand security as much as a SysOp would?
"How about installing a botnet that you use to target the computer systems of the bad guys?"
Unfortunately, the world does not work this way. These guys create botnets because they have a greater knowledge of computers than the average joe, and I'm willing to speculate, most or all of them know how to secure their own computers from hacking attempts.
This is a plea for uncensorship, however animal cruelty is far different from free speech and China needs to enact legislation to counter such horrific acts.