You want to run third party applications on your XBox? Too damned bad. You shouldn't have bought one. You knew going in (or you should have) that the XBox was designed and built to do the following:
Play Microsoft licensed XBox game titles.
Play DVDs (with the DVD remote)
Play audio CDs.
That's it. That's all it does (without hacking it). You want to run Linux ion it? You really should have bought a PC and saved the money you just wasted.
XBoxes are NOT PCs (and I know it uses an Intel CPU, a nVidia GPU, an IDE HDD and DVD, that doesn't make it a PC, get over it). They come with very limited licesnses. You don't like the license, don't but the damned thing! Jebus!
You will get more signal loss than you expect. Remember, you are turning the signal from digital to analogue and back again. This will add more noise to the picture and amplify any MPEG atrifacts in the original encoding.
If you do not already own a TiVo, look into a ReplayTV. I can suck the files off of my ReplayTV via the ethernet port on the unit with no additional loss in image quality.
I setup a website for The Sims a few years ago called The Wage of Sim for fun. For the first six months I had it riding piggy-back on my main page. Then people found it. My bandwidth consumption went from 4GB a month to over 20. So I moved it. In the end the page was consuming 45GB a month and was costing me $400.00 (US) a month in bandwidth costs.
The page was always free. I tried to get advertising to reduce the burden on my pocketbook, but because my privacy policy said "I will never give out information about visitors" I couldn't get any. I asked for donations and I got some, but never more than $100.00 in any given month.
After a year of $400.00 a month bills I decided that I simply could not afford it and closed the site after turning all my work over to the Public Domain.
If bandwidth was free that site would still be there. But bandwidth isn't free. Nothing is ever free. Someone, somewhere, has paid for it.
The biggest difference is that your cable company has contracted with the content providers they carry. They pay a fee to CNN, ESPN, the local network affiliate, etc... in order to carry their content on the local cable system. If you want to watch a program transmitted on a different ABC affiliate than the one your cable company is contracted with you are SOL.
No such contracts exist on the Net. Due to the packet data system you can access almost any server on the Net (hidden, locked, and otherwise innaccessable servers exepmted, of course). How the hell will your ISP send payments to a server in Japan or Christmas Island?
With TV the burden of payment is on the cable company due to teh centralized nature of cable tv. On the net the burden of payment is on the indevidual user due to the extremely non-centralized nature of the Internet.
Kinux has come a long way since I first used it in 1993. But it still has a long way to go before it can be considered more than an also-ran in the desktop arena. There are a lot of things that need to be done. Some things the Open Source/Linux Community are going to be loathe to do:
Move Away From X-Windows.
The simple fact is that X-Windows was never intended to do what we expect it to do these days. It was not designed to be an end-user desktop. While it does have neat abilities, like being able to access workstations across a network, end users don't care about those. End users care about the desktop being fast and responsive. Two things that X-Windows is not. X-Windows also knocks the claim that Linux needs less processor power and RAM than MS Windows right into the dirt.
The Adoption Of A Single, Standardized Interface Design.
Before Joe Sixpack will use Linux there needs to be a standardization of the UI. A standard that ALL graphical programs adhere to. No if ands or buts. One standard. While the myriad of widgets and environments give power users and geeks the freedom to tweak their systems or programs enay way they want, all of this "choice" just confuses the hell out of the end user. While MS Windows might not be completely consistant, it is enough that the average user can get used to it. Almost every Windows program (save for those nightmares with skins) look and act like Windows, in a manner that most users expect.
Yes, this means that either KDE or Gnome will have to die. End users don't want to have to chose what UI they use. They want one interface they can learn and be done with it.
Make Graphical Setup "Wizards" For Everything.
No end user wants to edit text files. Nor should they EVER have to. This is 2003, not 1975. The days of rooting through a confusing mess of directories for boot scripts is (or should be) over.
Binary Distributions For Everything.
No end user wants to compile anything. Ever. Sure, power users and old-hand Linux users might enjoy it, but they are not the people we are concerned with. Until a MS Windows user can effortlessly install ANY program with just a few mouse clicks they are going to stay away.
Workstation Configurations With Dangerous Deamons (ftpd, httpd, etc...) Turned Off By Default.
End Users do not care about running FTP servers and web serves from their desktops. Why bog down a system with all these useless processes they are not ever going to use, and that leave these system more vulnerable than a Windows 2000 system?
Linux Evangelists Stop Insulting MS And Its Users.
Nothing, but nothing turns off a potential Linux convert than having to dig through piles of posts, to Usenet or forums like/., calling them M$ Luzors! If all they see is a comunity filled with abrasive and insulting children they are going to stay away.
My, aren't we all SUPAR COOL MENZ calling MicroSoft "Mickysoft"? You are my hero! Can I be just like you?
Do you know why Microsoft memos look like COS memos? Because L. Ron Hubbard wrote using standard business memo structure he leraned in the US NAvy. Al business memos look and talk like that. It's the nature of The Business Memo(TM).
But back to the topic at hand: Who cares? DOOM 3 is going to come out before DNF and 3DR is going to find themselves in the same spot they were with DN3D: using an already outdated engine while id's newest engine (Quake 1, at that time) whipes the floor with them.
This is no disrespect to Ken Silverman, who'se Build Engine was a damned impressive achievement for a SINGLE programmer of his age. 3DR could use a Ken Silverman or two right now to get things done.
Because The Man is keeping us down with his trade secrets! Because IP has no intrinsic value because it is not a physical object! Because it's not stealing if you copy something you do not have a legal right to copy! Because we all want your stuff for free! (Touch our stuff and we'll send in the GNU-Goons to break your kneecaps!)
24.) Scientists Sequence Genomes of Malarial Parasite and Mosquito - Big news for people in Africa... but I think they have a bigger problem... its called AIDS!
And scientists and medical researchers are already researching AIDS. The AIDS problem in Africa is not scientific, it's cultural and political.
19.) Meet the Oldest Member of the Human Family - This is depressing... this helps to further prove that you and I are nothing more than a chimp!
And? We are animals. Nothing more. We are not special. Deal with it. Yes, we are the top of the food chain for now and we are the most competent tool users and the most comunicative species ever to walk the earth, but we are still animals. You and I are special to our friends, family and loved ones. Is that not enough?
18.) Attacking Anthrax - Yea! Eat that bin Laden!! That idea won't work on the U.S.!
Bin Laden didn't have anything to do with the anthrax attacks. That was the work of home grown American nutjobs.
17.) Crafty Crow Rivals Primates in Toolmaking - Proves you can teach an old bird new tricks... nothing neat hear... move on
There is something "neat" here. Corvids (crows, ravens, magpies) are the smartest birds on the planet. The fact that they may be smarter (in some areas) that chimpanzees could radically change how we view animal intellegence.
14.) Element 118 Dropped from Periodic Table - I needed some of this stuff next week... again, nice to see how "real" some of these so called findings are, but even better to see that someone was honest enough to retract their false findings! Way to embarass the community!!
No. Being honest is not an embarrassment. The embarrassment would come from the scientists refusing to retract their work. I respect and trust a scientist who has the integrety to admit a mistake.
11.) Light's Information-Carrying Capacity Doubles - So now more senceless data from Microshaft can travel at "the speed of light"... great!
Please. Grow up. This kind of crap is cool if you are 14-years old.
4.) Physicists Create a New State of Matter - Sorry, call me short sighted, but I just don't see how this is useful
Many new discoveries are not useful at first. It was hundreds of years after Leonardo first thought up the helicopter before anyone could build one that actually worked. It took a better understanding of aerodynamics, better building materials and a lightweight, yet powerful engine in order to do it. Each piece of the puzzle found by someone else. Many inventions are made not by inventing the thing out of whole cloth, but by piecing together the discoveries of others into something new. Usually something never invisioned by those who discovered the pieces. That is the beauty of Abstract Knowledge: you never know what the pieces you've found will eventually make.
Between my ReplayTV and my DVD burner, I'm just burning my own. Too many of my favorite shows either do not end up on DVD at all, or are priced so high as to not be worth it. While season one and two of Futurama might be in the stores, how likely is season three or four? Then there are the shows that will never be released on DVD, like The Critic or Invader Zim.
Sure, I don't get the commentary or neat packaging, but I don't care about that. I care about the show.
And the NetBIOS exploit is well known and has a LONG hiistory of being used for all kinds of evil deeds.
But that's not what the article is about, is it?
To summerize: "Despite the tens of thousands of security holes and exploits reported, very few are ever exploited". That's it. No mention of how well the exploited holes are used. Just the fact that of the bazillions of them out there very few are ever used.
They pointed out the real problems, like KLEZ. But that wasn't the point. The point was that out of the thousands and thousands of supposed security holes very few are ever exploited. They said nothing of the destructive power of the holes that were exploited.
No, the scary part is that they want to breed people in order to harvest their bodies. They want to build "livestock" that will have their brains removed (thus killing the "person" that that clone was) in order to prolong the lives of those pathetic wankers.
Actually, cloning is the worste possible solution. You end up with a time-delayed twin of one "parent" that shares zero DNA with the other "parent.
No, a better way to deal with fertility issues (at least with male infertility) is an interesting technology being developed by a group of Australians that can use any cell in the body as an erzats sperm cell that can be used in traditional artificiial insemination techniques. They expose the doner cell to a particular hormone that causes it to spit out half of every chromozome pair, resulting in an erzats sperm cell. One unanticipated aspect of this research is that becuase ANY cell (with a nucleus) can be used the "father" cell can come from a female body just as easily as from a male. Making it possible for lesbian couples to have children with BOTH women being genetic parents of the resulting daughter.
I don't have the link to the article I read all this in anymore. A bit of searching and you might find it.
MY file server / interal web developement server has no ability to talk to the Internet. It has a hard-coded HOSTS file listing the machines on the LAN, it has no DNS server entry, no default route entry, and the server's IP addresses are blocked at the firewall. There iis no valid reason anyone outside my LAN would ever need to contact that machine and it has not valid reason to talk to the Internet. If I need patches or updates I downloadthem on a workstation, inspect them and then pipe them over to the server.
I know that you are biung a troll, but I'll bite. It's the duty of the parents to instil in their children what they consider "proper morals". It's not my job, nor anyone esles to teach your children values. It's not our job to make up for your mack of parenting skills.
Your post brings up a lot of valid points. I want to like Linux, and I've tried for nine years to find a reason to use it. My first distro was an old SLS (kernel 0.99) set I downloaded off a BBS in 1993. After a lot of fighting with it I finally got it working. Then I hit the "and now what?" point and ended up reformatting the partition and giving it back to DOS.
Over the years I've repeated that experience, with Slackware 3, Redhat 4,5 and 7.3, (FreeBSD), and a few others that I don't remember. I always get Linux installed, fight my system like mad to get X working, and always find myself at the same point at the end: "Okay, now what?"
And I look around and don't see a compelling reason to keep Linux on my system. There is almost nothing I can do with Linux that I can't already do with my Windows system, and there are a lot of things I can't do with Linux that I can with Windows. And some things that both systems can do are so hard to do on Linux that it is simply not worth my time to figure out haw to do them.
But there are other factors that limit Linux in my opinion, and in the opinions of others who already use Windows: 1: Inconsistant UI. Sure, KDE and GNOME are internally consistant, but any program that doesn't use one of those managers is a total crapshoot as far as UI goes. 2: Amatuere hour software. You know, the utilities that were written to fix the authors problem and then released into the world. Too bad the UI is crap and the documentation assumes you already know how to use the program. 3: Having to edit text based.rc files, or any config files. Windows users laugh at Linus users for having to put up with this. There shouldn't be a single file (save for HOSTS) that anyone should EVER have to edit. Period. This is 2002, not 1975!
Linux has made great strides, and it is easier and more uniform than it has ever been. But one of Linux's great strengths in the geek comunity, the freedom to tweak it any way you want, is its biggest weakness in the general consumer market. The lack of a single, unified UI (sorry, but KDE or Gnome has to die and leave the other in charge) and file structure kills Linux in the mind of the Average Joe.
You job is to make the system work. If your boss wants Photoshop that's his business, not yours.
I make my bosses aware of their options and I advise when they request it, and I try to stear them away from making bad choices (buying Kai Photo Goo instead of Photoshop, for example), but when push comes to shove, they make the puirchasing decisions and I make their purchases work.
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- Play Microsoft licensed XBox game titles.
- Play DVDs (with the DVD remote)
- Play audio CDs.
That's it. That's all it does (without hacking it). You want to run Linux ion it? You really should have bought a PC and saved the money you just wasted.XBoxes are NOT PCs (and I know it uses an Intel CPU, a nVidia GPU, an IDE HDD and DVD, that doesn't make it a PC, get over it). They come with very limited licesnses. You don't like the license, don't but the damned thing! Jebus!
Those Zalman flower coolers (the ones with the fan on a boom) are loud as hell! The one on my Athlon 2400+ drives me crazy!
They don't sell ReplayTVs where I live, either. I ordered my from SonicBlue's website.
You will get more signal loss than you expect. Remember, you are turning the signal from digital to analogue and back again. This will add more noise to the picture and amplify any MPEG atrifacts in the original encoding.
If you do not already own a TiVo, look into a ReplayTV. I can suck the files off of my ReplayTV via the ethernet port on the unit with no additional loss in image quality.
The page was always free. I tried to get advertising to reduce the burden on my pocketbook, but because my privacy policy said "I will never give out information about visitors" I couldn't get any. I asked for donations and I got some, but never more than $100.00 in any given month.
After a year of $400.00 a month bills I decided that I simply could not afford it and closed the site after turning all my work over to the Public Domain.
If bandwidth was free that site would still be there. But bandwidth isn't free. Nothing is ever free. Someone, somewhere, has paid for it.
The biggest difference is that your cable company has contracted with the content providers they carry. They pay a fee to CNN, ESPN, the local network affiliate, etc... in order to carry their content on the local cable system. If you want to watch a program transmitted on a different ABC affiliate than the one your cable company is contracted with you are SOL.
No such contracts exist on the Net. Due to the packet data system you can access almost any server on the Net (hidden, locked, and otherwise innaccessable servers exepmted, of course). How the hell will your ISP send payments to a server in Japan or Christmas Island?
With TV the burden of payment is on the cable company due to teh centralized nature of cable tv. On the net the burden of payment is on the indevidual user due to the extremely non-centralized nature of the Internet.
The simple fact is that X-Windows was never intended to do what we expect it to do these days. It was not designed to be an end-user desktop. While it does have neat abilities, like being able to access workstations across a network, end users don't care about those. End users care about the desktop being fast and responsive. Two things that X-Windows is not. X-Windows also knocks the claim that Linux needs less processor power and RAM than MS Windows right into the dirt.
Before Joe Sixpack will use Linux there needs to be a standardization of the UI. A standard that ALL graphical programs adhere to. No if ands or buts. One standard. While the myriad of widgets and environments give power users and geeks the freedom to tweak their systems or programs enay way they want, all of this "choice" just confuses the hell out of the end user. While MS Windows might not be completely consistant, it is enough that the average user can get used to it. Almost every Windows program (save for those nightmares with skins) look and act like Windows, in a manner that most users expect.
Yes, this means that either KDE or Gnome will have to die. End users don't want to have to chose what UI they use. They want one interface they can learn and be done with it.
No end user wants to edit text files. Nor should they EVER have to. This is 2003, not 1975. The days of rooting through a confusing mess of directories for boot scripts is (or should be) over.
No end user wants to compile anything. Ever. Sure, power users and old-hand Linux users might enjoy it, but they are not the people we are concerned with. Until a MS Windows user can effortlessly install ANY program with just a few mouse clicks they are going to stay away.
End Users do not care about running FTP servers and web serves from their desktops. Why bog down a system with all these useless processes they are not ever going to use, and that leave these system more vulnerable than a Windows 2000 system?
Nothing, but nothing turns off a potential Linux convert than having to dig through piles of posts, to Usenet or forums like
My, aren't we all SUPAR COOL MENZ calling MicroSoft "Mickysoft"? You are my hero! Can I be just like you?
Do you know why Microsoft memos look like COS memos? Because L. Ron Hubbard wrote using standard business memo structure he leraned in the US NAvy. Al business memos look and talk like that. It's the nature of The Business Memo(TM).
It's not "Here! Here!"! It's "Hear! Hear!".
But back to the topic at hand: Who cares? DOOM 3 is going to come out before DNF and 3DR is going to find themselves in the same spot they were with DN3D: using an already outdated engine while id's newest engine (Quake 1, at that time) whipes the floor with them.
This is no disrespect to Ken Silverman, who'se Build Engine was a damned impressive achievement for a SINGLE programmer of his age. 3DR could use a Ken Silverman or two right now to get things done.
Bit Boys. Last I heard they had a simulation of their chip running, but it wasn't anything to write home about.
Because The Man is keeping us down with his trade secrets! Because IP has no intrinsic value because it is not a physical object! Because it's not stealing if you copy something you do not have a legal right to copy! Because we all want your stuff for free! (Touch our stuff and we'll send in the GNU-Goons to break your kneecaps!)
I won't be online at midnight, GMT-9, so I'll just say it now: HAPPY NEW YEAR!
May we survive this one, too.
All of my receipts, no matter what kind, and anything else I don't want people to see, goes into the fireplace and is burned.
And scientists and medical researchers are already researching AIDS. The AIDS problem in Africa is not scientific, it's cultural and political.
19.) Meet the Oldest Member of the Human Family - This is depressing ... this helps to further prove that you and I are nothing more than a chimp!
And? We are animals. Nothing more. We are not special. Deal with it. Yes, we are the top of the food chain for now and we are the most competent tool users and the most comunicative species ever to walk the earth, but we are still animals. You and I are special to our friends, family and loved ones. Is that not enough?
18.) Attacking Anthrax - Yea! Eat that bin Laden!! That idea won't work on the U.S.!
Bin Laden didn't have anything to do with the anthrax attacks. That was the work of home grown American nutjobs.
17.) Crafty Crow Rivals Primates in Toolmaking - Proves you can teach an old bird new tricks ... nothing neat hear ... move on
There is something "neat" here. Corvids (crows, ravens, magpies) are the smartest birds on the planet. The fact that they may be smarter (in some areas) that chimpanzees could radically change how we view animal intellegence.
14.) Element 118 Dropped from Periodic Table - I needed some of this stuff next week ... again, nice to see how "real" some of these so called findings are, but even better to see that someone was honest enough to retract their false findings! Way to embarass the community!!
No. Being honest is not an embarrassment. The embarrassment would come from the scientists refusing to retract their work. I respect and trust a scientist who has the integrety to admit a mistake.
11.) Light's Information-Carrying Capacity Doubles - So now more senceless data from Microshaft can travel at "the speed of light" ... great!
Please. Grow up. This kind of crap is cool if you are 14-years old.
4.) Physicists Create a New State of Matter - Sorry, call me short sighted, but I just don't see how this is useful
Many new discoveries are not useful at first. It was hundreds of years after Leonardo first thought up the helicopter before anyone could build one that actually worked. It took a better understanding of aerodynamics, better building materials and a lightweight, yet powerful engine in order to do it. Each piece of the puzzle found by someone else. Many inventions are made not by inventing the thing out of whole cloth, but by piecing together the discoveries of others into something new. Usually something never invisioned by those who discovered the pieces. That is the beauty of Abstract Knowledge: you never know what the pieces you've found will eventually make.
Between my ReplayTV and my DVD burner, I'm just burning my own. Too many of my favorite shows either do not end up on DVD at all, or are priced so high as to not be worth it. While season one and two of Futurama might be in the stores, how likely is season three or four? Then there are the shows that will never be released on DVD, like The Critic or Invader Zim.
Sure, I don't get the commentary or neat packaging, but I don't care about that. I care about the show.
And the NetBIOS exploit is well known and has a LONG hiistory of being used for all kinds of evil deeds.
But that's not what the article is about, is it?
To summerize: "Despite the tens of thousands of security holes and exploits reported, very few are ever exploited". That's it. No mention of how well the exploited holes are used. Just the fact that of the bazillions of them out there very few are ever used.
They pointed out the real problems, like KLEZ. But that wasn't the point. The point was that out of the thousands and thousands of supposed security holes very few are ever exploited. They said nothing of the destructive power of the holes that were exploited.
An idea that would make Hitler puke.
Actually, cloning is the worste possible solution. You end up with a time-delayed twin of one "parent" that shares zero DNA with the other "parent.
No, a better way to deal with fertility issues (at least with male infertility) is an interesting technology being developed by a group of Australians that can use any cell in the body as an erzats sperm cell that can be used in traditional artificiial insemination techniques. They expose the doner cell to a particular hormone that causes it to spit out half of every chromozome pair, resulting in an erzats sperm cell. One unanticipated aspect of this research is that becuase ANY cell (with a nucleus) can be used the "father" cell can come from a female body just as easily as from a male. Making it possible for lesbian couples to have children with BOTH women being genetic parents of the resulting daughter.
I don't have the link to the article I read all this in anymore. A bit of searching and you might find it.
MY file server / interal web developement server has no ability to talk to the Internet. It has a hard-coded HOSTS file listing the machines on the LAN, it has no DNS server entry, no default route entry, and the server's IP addresses are blocked at the firewall. There iis no valid reason anyone outside my LAN would ever need to contact that machine and it has not valid reason to talk to the Internet. If I need patches or updates I downloadthem on a workstation, inspect them and then pipe them over to the server.
I know that you are biung a troll, but I'll bite. It's the duty of the parents to instil in their children what they consider "proper morals". It's not my job, nor anyone esles to teach your children values. It's not our job to make up for your mack of parenting skills.
I hope that post is a joke.
Your post brings up a lot of valid points. I want to like Linux, and I've tried for nine years to find a reason to use it. My first distro was an old SLS (kernel 0.99) set I downloaded off a BBS in 1993. After a lot of fighting with it I finally got it working. Then I hit the "and now what?" point and ended up reformatting the partition and giving it back to DOS.
.rc files, or any config files. Windows users laugh at Linus users for having to put up with this. There shouldn't be a single file (save for HOSTS) that anyone should EVER have to edit. Period. This is 2002, not 1975!
Over the years I've repeated that experience, with Slackware 3, Redhat 4,5 and 7.3, (FreeBSD), and a few others that I don't remember. I always get Linux installed, fight my system like mad to get X working, and always find myself at the same point at the end: "Okay, now what?"
And I look around and don't see a compelling reason to keep Linux on my system. There is almost nothing I can do with Linux that I can't already do with my Windows system, and there are a lot of things I can't do with Linux that I can with Windows. And some things that both systems can do are so hard to do on Linux that it is simply not worth my time to figure out haw to do them.
But there are other factors that limit Linux in my opinion, and in the opinions of others who already use Windows:
1: Inconsistant UI. Sure, KDE and GNOME are internally consistant, but any program that doesn't use one of those managers is a total crapshoot as far as UI goes.
2: Amatuere hour software. You know, the utilities that were written to fix the authors problem and then released into the world. Too bad the UI is crap and the documentation assumes you already know how to use the program.
3: Having to edit text based
Linux has made great strides, and it is easier and more uniform than it has ever been. But one of Linux's great strengths in the geek comunity, the freedom to tweak it any way you want, is its biggest weakness in the general consumer market. The lack of a single, unified UI (sorry, but KDE or Gnome has to die and leave the other in charge) and file structure kills Linux in the mind of the Average Joe.
You job is to make the system work. If your boss wants Photoshop that's his business, not yours.
I make my bosses aware of their options and I advise when they request it, and I try to stear them away from making bad choices (buying Kai Photo Goo instead of Photoshop, for example), but when push comes to shove, they make the puirchasing decisions and I make their purchases work.