I'll agree with you straight up on Firefox addons as well as Flash and Acrobat which are in the repos. However my experience (ymmv) with users on Linux is that if your smart enough to Sudo install software your smart enough to protect yourself and verify your sources. The average home user won't use the command line to install software, if its not in the repositories.
If I remember correctly, Ubuntu by default is set to pop up the update manager daily. I think they do some updates automatically in the background as well, but I couldn't swear to it.
As I said, I'm not claiming Linux to be unhackable... just that there are some legitimate areas where it is by default more secure. I'll also admit that MS is making great progress with their newer systems and we can hope that this trend continues.
Most people probably use the central repositories which mean that they aren't running random code, but rather only code that has been admitted into the repostitory. In addition use of the Linux repositories means that ALL your programs get updated as the updates are available, compared to windows where individual software either has to install its own update, or wait for the user to manually check for an update.
Its also worthy to note that until Vista/7 users pretty much had to run as admin to actually use their computers. This left the entire system open to attack rather than just the user account. Making this a habit among Windows users has led to lots of users disabling UAC in 7.
This is not to say that Linux is not succeptable to virus/malware/idiot user, but you did ask for specifics and those were the first 2 I thought of.
Not to mention that NOBODY uses a stolen credit card to pirate music even if they liked it. They'd hop on the P2P of their choice and download it. Any song with that many "Sales" would be on all of them.
Aye the ease of installing is great... almost enough to offset the pain of figuring out what you need to install.
Granted once you've found the correct package everything usually works great.
I am not a power user, nor have I been using Linux that long. So if there are GUI workarounds for any of these you have my apologies.
Just of the top of my head that would be:
1. Anything to do with ODBC. Yea I know but some programs do still use it.
2. 50/50 chance of getting dual monitors setup without command line.
3. Every backup program I have tried.
4. Setting up a samba share for my wife/coworkers.
5. VNC server for remote control.
6. Various hacks to make your WIFI work.
7. Getting any diagnostic info so that you have a hope in hell of getting help on the various forums.
I love my linux and have no intentions of going back to windows ever. There are some truely awesome F/OSS stuff out there, with more stability and less bullshit to use. But the command line is still needed for some basic things IMHO.
Oh bull, if they can afford the computer they could have afforded to get the OEM preload instead of the pirate version from the neighborhood screwdriver shop.
Your assuming new hardware with this argument and I'm sure that there are many who fall into this category. There is however another category of people, namely those who get decommissioned hardware from government/school/business. Many of these machines have had the hard drive wiped before being auctioned and sell for almost nothing. If your a single mom who is able to pick up a computer for almost nothing and a friend offers to install XP for you.....
Your argument is still valid, but please realize that it doesn't apply to all pirated versions.
I am an avid reader. I read 3 or 4 novels a week. I prefer them in ebook for the convenience of it. I take my palm with me everywhere and can read whenever, smoke breaks at work, doctors office, standing in line at starbucks, etc. I have downloaded scanned copies of many books that I have in print so that I can reread them easier. Ebooks are more than viable to me.
That being said, there is no way in hell I'd pay for a dedicated device to do this thats crippled with DRM. For that matter, why pay twice as much as my palm cost to do less?
IANAL, but I fail to see how this will have any meaningful impact either way. As far as I know you only get awarded attorney fee's if you win your case. How many cases has the MAFIAA actually lost? Hell how many even make it to court for that matter. Unless the RIAA start getting more cases taken to court and starts losing them, this only affects this one case. Good for her for getting her money back, but lets not start celebrating a major victory just yet.
Actually there are a few companies out there doing this. http://www.simplir.com/ has a full Blade appliance center that runs on an embedded linux kernal. Linux is out there and in some major applications, just not always advertised as such. The nice thing about that Simplir products, is that they allow you access to a command prompt via SSH. You can make any custom modifications as needed.
+4 Insightful??? 1 opinion - no details - no facts - no links - not even an attempt to explain the basis for the opinion. How in the hell did this get moderated +4 insightful?
I currently have all non-work related internet access shut off in my company. This is not because I wish to, or because management is paranoid or whatnot. It's becuase of the Payment Card Industry Cardholder Information Security Program. It states that if any company that accepts/processes/stores/handles credit card information HAS to lock down interent access. Failure to comply with this program could lead to losing your merchant account or fines of up to %$500,000 per instance of fraudulent credit card use. I would love to let my employee's check the news/e-mail/slashdot, but unless this regulation is modified or done away with completely, I can't afford to take the chance. For more info on this see www.visa.com/cisp.
BTW, my company actually does enough credit card volume that we have to have security audits, even though we've never had an instance of fraud. Open internet access would fail me on the audits.
I use my palm daily to read ebooks. Yes there are the issues of the palm being expensive, not waterproof etc. But for me the real issue is lack of availablity, price, DRM of ebooks. In my personal collection, I have hard copies of my favorite books, and have downloaded or scanned in copies for my palm. I won't use a crippled DRM'd anything. The good and the bad for me are as follow.
Bad:
1. Price. An ebook should not cost as much as a hard back book. period.
2. DRM. An ebook should work on all devices I want to read it on. If I upgrade my PDA, I shouldn't
have to worry about whether my books will still work.
3. The publisher has the book in an electronic format somewhere. There is no reason that I can
conceive, that they can't sell electronic copies of all books. If its not available, I can't
buy it.
4. Due to screen size/resolution they suck for technical books.
Good:
1. Extremely portable. Goes everywhere, taking up much less space and weight than the same number
of hard copy books. Great for doctors office, bus, etc.
2. Keeps my place. No more "what page was I on" cause the bookmark slipped out, or got misplaced
while I was reading.
3. Backlit. I can read at night without keeping my wife awake with the lights on.
4. Instant referrence library. Quickly find the data to support your arguement, find syntax, etc.
5. Since I don't use DRM'd materials, if someone want to borrow one, it takes very little time to
beam it to them. Who know's if they like it, they might buy it.
On the whole I prefer ebooks, but there needs to be some work done on getting a good selection of quality, DRM-less books. Until the industry gets these some of these issues resolved, e-books will only be adopted by hardcore readers such as myself, and then only from sources without DRM. IMHO of course.
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I'll agree with you straight up on Firefox addons as well as Flash and Acrobat which are in the repos. However my experience (ymmv) with users on Linux is that if your smart enough to Sudo install software your smart enough to protect yourself and verify your sources. The average home user won't use the command line to install software, if its not in the repositories. If I remember correctly, Ubuntu by default is set to pop up the update manager daily. I think they do some updates automatically in the background as well, but I couldn't swear to it. As I said, I'm not claiming Linux to be unhackable... just that there are some legitimate areas where it is by default more secure. I'll also admit that MS is making great progress with their newer systems and we can hope that this trend continues.
Most people probably use the central repositories which mean that they aren't running random code, but rather only code that has been admitted into the repostitory. In addition use of the Linux repositories means that ALL your programs get updated as the updates are available, compared to windows where individual software either has to install its own update, or wait for the user to manually check for an update. Its also worthy to note that until Vista/7 users pretty much had to run as admin to actually use their computers. This left the entire system open to attack rather than just the user account. Making this a habit among Windows users has led to lots of users disabling UAC in 7. This is not to say that Linux is not succeptable to virus/malware/idiot user, but you did ask for specifics and those were the first 2 I thought of.
Not to mention that NOBODY uses a stolen credit card to pirate music even if they liked it. They'd hop on the P2P of their choice and download it. Any song with that many "Sales" would be on all of them.
Aye the ease of installing is great... almost enough to offset the pain of figuring out what you need to install. Granted once you've found the correct package everything usually works great.
I am not a power user, nor have I been using Linux that long. So if there are GUI workarounds for any of these you have my apologies.
Just of the top of my head that would be:
1. Anything to do with ODBC. Yea I know but some programs do still use it.
2. 50/50 chance of getting dual monitors setup without command line.
3. Every backup program I have tried.
4. Setting up a samba share for my wife/coworkers.
5. VNC server for remote control.
6. Various hacks to make your WIFI work.
7. Getting any diagnostic info so that you have a hope in hell of getting help on the various forums.
I love my linux and have no intentions of going back to windows ever. There are some truely awesome F/OSS stuff out there, with more stability and less bullshit to use. But the command line is still needed for some basic things IMHO.
Oh bull, if they can afford the computer they could have afforded to get the OEM preload instead of the pirate version from the neighborhood screwdriver shop.
Your assuming new hardware with this argument and I'm sure that there are many who fall into this category. There is however another category of people, namely those who get decommissioned hardware from government/school/business. Many of these machines have had the hard drive wiped before being auctioned and sell for almost nothing. If your a single mom who is able to pick up a computer for almost nothing and a friend offers to install XP for you..... Your argument is still valid, but please realize that it doesn't apply to all pirated versions.
I am an avid reader. I read 3 or 4 novels a week. I prefer them in ebook for the convenience of it. I take my palm with me everywhere and can read whenever, smoke breaks at work, doctors office, standing in line at starbucks, etc. I have downloaded scanned copies of many books that I have in print so that I can reread them easier. Ebooks are more than viable to me. That being said, there is no way in hell I'd pay for a dedicated device to do this thats crippled with DRM. For that matter, why pay twice as much as my palm cost to do less?
IANAL, but I fail to see how this will have any meaningful impact either way. As far as I know you only get awarded attorney fee's if you win your case. How many cases has the MAFIAA actually lost? Hell how many even make it to court for that matter. Unless the RIAA start getting more cases taken to court and starts losing them, this only affects this one case. Good for her for getting her money back, but lets not start celebrating a major victory just yet.
Actually there are a few companies out there doing this. http://www.simplir.com/ has a full Blade appliance center that runs on an embedded linux kernal. Linux is out there and in some major applications, just not always advertised as such. The nice thing about that Simplir products, is that they allow you access to a command prompt via SSH. You can make any custom modifications as needed.
+4 Insightful??? 1 opinion - no details - no facts - no links - not even an attempt to explain the basis for the opinion. How in the hell did this get moderated +4 insightful?
I currently have all non-work related internet access shut off in my company. This is not because I wish to, or because management is paranoid or whatnot. It's becuase of the Payment Card Industry Cardholder Information Security Program. It states that if any company that accepts/processes/stores/handles credit card information HAS to lock down interent access. Failure to comply with this program could lead to losing your merchant account or fines of up to %$500,000 per instance of fraudulent credit card use. I would love to let my employee's check the news/e-mail/slashdot, but unless this regulation is modified or done away with completely, I can't afford to take the chance. For more info on this see www.visa.com/cisp. BTW, my company actually does enough credit card volume that we have to have security audits, even though we've never had an instance of fraud. Open internet access would fail me on the audits.
I use my palm daily to read ebooks. Yes there are the issues of the palm being expensive, not waterproof etc. But for me the real issue is lack of availablity, price, DRM of ebooks. In my personal collection, I have hard copies of my favorite books, and have downloaded or scanned in copies for my palm. I won't use a crippled DRM'd anything. The good and the bad for me are as follow.
Bad:
1. Price. An ebook should not cost as much as a hard back book. period.
2. DRM. An ebook should work on all devices I want to read it on. If I upgrade my PDA, I shouldn't
have to worry about whether my books will still work.
3. The publisher has the book in an electronic format somewhere. There is no reason that I can
conceive, that they can't sell electronic copies of all books. If its not available, I can't
buy it.
4. Due to screen size/resolution they suck for technical books.
Good:
1. Extremely portable. Goes everywhere, taking up much less space and weight than the same number
of hard copy books. Great for doctors office, bus, etc.
2. Keeps my place. No more "what page was I on" cause the bookmark slipped out, or got misplaced
while I was reading.
3. Backlit. I can read at night without keeping my wife awake with the lights on.
4. Instant referrence library. Quickly find the data to support your arguement, find syntax, etc.
5. Since I don't use DRM'd materials, if someone want to borrow one, it takes very little time to
beam it to them. Who know's if they like it, they might buy it.
On the whole I prefer ebooks, but there needs to be some work done on getting a good selection of quality, DRM-less books. Until the industry gets these some of these issues resolved, e-books will only be adopted by hardcore readers such as myself, and then only from sources without DRM. IMHO of course.