if you want to believe, you should visit a church. It's most likely not coded in java, as java would be even slower.
Plus, StarOffice *is* truly resource-intensive. It runs usably on a P5-MMX-266 system with 96 MB RAM, but for it to fly, it really takes a bigger system to run it the way it should, it runs just fine on a 600-MHz Duron with 256 MB ram. That's OK by me, because the kind of computers people are buying to use MS Office are even more powerful than that.
Finally, it *is* unstable, and that's a major hurdle. The preview functionality is nice, browsing filenames while looking at a preview on a window pane, but it's near useless if it crashes every 5 documents.
Desktop environments like KDE or GNOME are notoriously resource-hungry. I wouldn't try to run GNOME on anything less than a 128MB system.
Instead of using one of these, you should probably look into using *just* a window manager (meaning, without the whole desktop/panel/libraries/file manager shebang). This will give at least usable performance on your laptop (I used to use WindowMaker on a 32-MB laptop and it ran acceptably).
It looks like since Hotmail was taken over by Microsoft these incidents have multiplied. Perhaps some hotmail old-timers can tell stories of how it was before Microsoft? this would be good to know, whether hotmail has always been insecure, whether the incidents started when Microsoft took over, or maybe it's just because hotmail has too many users, or maybe, yes, because the new owners (Microsoft) are simply incompetent regarding security (given their track record I don't think this is too far-fetched).
I would never use hotmail in a regular basis. I only have an account in order to use MSN messenger (I use Everybuddy, not the damn MS client), because there are people i can't convince to use something better. Yet, I'd qualify hotmail as unusable; it's slow, bloated, ugly, gets in your way with so many damned little messages (it's so microsoft), and to top it off, the account receives an average of 50 spams a day. And NOBODY has that address. The only explanation: those mofos sell their addresses to spammers.
um. First, if RMS (Richard Stallman) heard you saying Debian "adheres to his definition of open source", you'd be in for the argument of your life. RMS has nothing to do with open source, he will tell you so if you ask him about open source, instead letting you know that he crafted the definition of "free software" and it applies to all GNU software. Debian, which could be called the "FSF-sponsored Linux distribution", uses exclusively free software. A program could qualify as "open source", but not as "free software", in which case it won't be in Debian (well, it might be found under the non-free section).
Second, who told you Red Hat is based on Mandrake? its completely the other way around, and actually, Mandrake has been the target of many comments stating how they are just a Red Hat ripoff adding nothing except a lot of cutting-edge but unproven software.
Finally, the BSD license might not be of RMS's liking, but it's a free software license (at least the version without the advertising clause), and altough it's not recommended by free software advocates, because it gives up some of the GPL's protection against appropriation of your work, it's certainly more free (freer?) than a lot of licenses that are OSI-approved, but which won't qualify as free under the FSF's definition.
Perhaps you were thinking ESR (Eric Raymond) when you wrote RMS (Richard Stallman)??
OK take this as a lesson, next time you find a security hole, to hell with being a nice person and alerting the victims. Just do as much damage as you can and take anything you can. I mean, if you're gonna get caught anyway, why not at least have a good reason to get caught.
Sadly, it looks like a good policy to follow these days is to NOT help people until they come begging for your help, and then, charge them handsomely for it.
well I dunno, but I opened a hotmail account just so that I could use msn messenger (altough with an alternative client, everybuddy). I didn't give my hotmail address to anyone. And still, it gets an average of 80 spams a week. Now, that's what I call privacy. Luckily, since I don't get anything important on that account, I can just delete everything every week. heh.
Great. Now, just because these people are more used to Windows, gnome is going to get turned into an idiot-proof lame gui that's going to get in my way at every step.
I just hope the gnome people live up to their initial design principles and provide a way to tune the system's behavior; something like "i'm not mentally retarded" checkbox that would inhibit all this annoying and useless behavior.
I'm sure these people don't complain that their car doesn't freeze time and pops up a dialog saying "you're about to have an accident, do you want to stop?". There's a brain inside your skull, so use it!
he's probably not opposed to using open source software, but he has never been seen advocating it. He's not an enemy but not a friend either; i think it would fit more in the category of those who think free(speech) software gives them a free (beer) ride.
worldwide information exchange was possible before the internet boom. Let's go back to a fidonet or uucp-based scheme. This can't be stopped, short of banning modems everywhere:)
For those of us willing to give it a try, despite its "beta" status, Mozilla is a wonderful product. After using 0.9.1 there's hardly any reason to look back (to either Netscape 4.x or internet exploder).
I'd hope the Ogg people would wait until they have a solid, proven project before calling it out of beta. It's what Mozilla is doing and it certainly looks like the result is going to be worth the wait.
Hopefully (altough admittedly a bit too hopeful), people will flock to Mozilla when it's done; hopefully, too, they will flock to vorbis when it's done.
I had a customer who used the damned hardest passwords for his system I've ever seen; an unmemorizable hodgepodge of numbers and mixed-case letters that even he had trouble remembering; in fact, he didn't, and he kept them stored on a windows application which used a global password to protect all the others. Working on his systems was a nightmare because the passwords were a true mess to remember.
As it turns out, his strategy was useless, because he *did* get cracked, but the attacker got in through a service vulnerability (the portmap bug in Red Hat Linux a few months ago).
So always remember that a security strategy is only as strong as its weakest part; and if you're going to use strong passwords (strong enough that even you have problems remembering them), you also have to make sure the rest of your security is as strong as that. Otherwise, just don't bother; use your own name as your password.:)
Man, if you think IE doesn't require 128 megs of ram to run, then you're way, way more patient than me. I wouldn't even go near Windows without at least 128 MB RAM; I have 256 and it crawls compared to Linux.
have you really *really* tried doing what you say? does setting up a Windows client take 3-4 days? how long does it take for you to set up a linux client? I can do it in minutes (around 50). And unless your hardware configuration is truly exotic, there's no need to recompile and fiddle; things usually work right out of the box.
I also contend your implications that Win2k is more stable than Linux. Back that fact up with some hard data; give me a Win2k server that can match my record 400-day uptime under linux. Also, a default Linux installation is far more secure than a Win2k one this day.
The comment that Alphas are "dead" is worthy of a true troll so we're not even going to get there.
When was the last time you actually used a Linux system? a "prompt"? did you get the news that Linux has graphical logins these days? Anyway, any user with a clue is smart enough to follow the instructions "give login and password, and then type startx at the prompt". I mean, your users *Can* type, can't they?
Finally, trying to diss Linux as a server system is plain dumb. Say what you will, but every statistic available on server operating systems proves you wrong regardins Linux as a server.
You know what? I *refuse* to give Linux as dead for the desktop and go back to Windows just because some dude thinks "nothing under Linux works as well as MS office". I wonder if he ever used StarOffice?
I see a lot of people whining about how Linux is "different" and how they just want to use a particular application, and not some linux equivalent that does the same task. Well, if they don't *WANT* to change, then by all means, don't. There are lots of us who want to change because I'd rather cope with a learning curve for a new app than waste my time watching office crash and Windows blue-screen all day long. I have better things to do with my time.
If fear of change was the issue, we'd all still be using MS-DOS and WordPerfect 5.1.
People who refuse to give Linux a try as a desktop system, just because it's "different", are like people who live in a shack and won't move to a newly built mansion because it's "different" and they need to learn the house's layout, paint the walls and buy furniture. But guess what: people actually *do* that.
I think the article is a bit too pessimistic. And I, for one, will also take a stand and refuse to listen to any arguments. But the stand I choose to take (cuz it's really all about choice) is to stick to Linux. I've stopped needing Windows to do any actual work a long time ago.
better *hardware* not better wince
on
Palm In Trouble?
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· Score: 1
Unless WinCE has been recently and heavily overhauled, it doesn't hold a candle to PalmOS as far as handheld computers go. WinCE is a dumbed-down version of windows, and as such it has all the disadvantages, PLUS that of being run on a small screen it just wasn't designed for.
PalmOS is very "unixy" in its philosophy, it aims to be a great handheld computer operating system, and assumes its role since the beginning, never trying to be too pretentious. It's perfectly suited for the handheld paradigm, trying to be a personal digital assistant, just that, not a reduced PC. That's what WinCE tries (and fails) to do.
Now, admittedly, prolly most WinCE machines have better *hardware* than most PalmOS systems. I'm still impressed over Compaq's iPAQ which can run Linux and has 64 MB RAM. Notice, however, that this is *NOT* a microsoft product. They just provide the (Crappy) operating system. Still, I've yet to see any *ANY* handheld running WinCE that's as small and light as my Palm V. That counts for me, because i'm really lazy and there's a limit to how big and heavy a device I'll carry. Heck, if I want a PC, I'll take my Portege 3010 which is the size of a standard paper notebook. That's not too big. But I am *that* lazy:)
we have crisis fridays. Basically, all our customers realize that things which don't get done on friday won't get done till monday, so they freak out and start asking us for things to be done that same day, on friday. This creates wonderfully stressful situations.
We even thought of not working on fridays but the plan never worked:)
There *are* companies that can't afford new computers. Maybe not where you live, but think of other countries, and small towns within those countries, and shops that are big enough to merit having POS systems but not big enough to merit buying the latest whizzbang pentium 4 systems. I've seen plenty of those, and I'm talking about shops that still run a Netware 3.x server, using floppy-based DOS terminals to run some app written in dBase or FoxPro.
Think of how nice it would be for them to be able to update their apps to something more modern, running on a Linux server which is far more interoperable than a Netware server. Cuz yes, while they might want to cut costs with their computers, it might make sense to have the *server* networked with some central location and sharing information with them.
With this sort of situation in mind, they can keep their old terminals, and either boot with DOS, launch a TCP/IP stack and telnet application, and connect to the server, running console applications from there (remember dumb terminals?), or maybe, if the computers are fast enough (small 386's will do), do a diskless linux boot from the server and have a much neater and less archaic solution.
However, the question arises, if all is working well under the current Novell setup, why change? well, the answer is: it's getting harder to find someone who knows Novell, and easier to find someone who knows Linux. AND yes, after all those years, the Novell boxes are starting to crap out.
off the top of my head, i can think of two companies I know which could (or do) benefit from having a way to develop a modern app in text-mode. One of them is a freight company which has a centralized system on a DEC Alpha server and has all the branch offices connect via frame relay. Had they needed to upgrade the 386 terminals in the branch offices, it would have meant they couldnt afford to link all the offices together. And i can tell you those 386's WONT run any graphical environment but work in textmode just fine.
The other is a hardware shop with at least 4 locations, running Novell based setups and requiring constant attention because the Novell servers are crapping out, and Novell admins are scarce in that town. A Linux text-based solution would be interesting, because they can more easily find Linux people, plus, at least in my experience, Linux is more stable; i've had Linux servers working without flaws for so long, when they actually needed me to go down there, i'd forgotten how to get there:)
We installed Red Hat 7.1 on a system which previously had 6.2 with a custom kernel, because this system has 2 Sangoma WanPipe cards and one Cyclades PC300 card.
The Cyclades patch applied without problems (it being an additive patch rather than one with modifications). However the Sangoma patch failed to apply and the kernel refused to compile.
We removed the patched kernel, installed a fresh kernel source from the RPMs, and patched *only* for the Cyclades card. The kernel source already had drivers for the Sangoma card so we tried to compile those instead.
Imagine our surprise when this freshly installed kernel source also refused to compile. It had errors all over the place. I assumed the Red Hat kernel had some patches so we got our SRPM to recover the "pristine source" kernel that was there. Still i was worried that this kernel didn't even compile.
After extracting all the files from the source RPM, I was baffled when I realized the Red Hat kernel had over 200 patches applied to it! no wonder the Sangoma patch barfed, as this beast could hardly be considered a 2.4.2 kernel anymore.
Finally we did extract the sources from the source RPM (despite all the mess that this operation was, it's nice to see that the RPM concept of "pristine source plus patches" really saved the day). Both the Sangoma and Cyclades patches applied without a hitch and 25 minutes later we had our system back up and running the way it was supposed to be.
One last rant, it seems that for some reason the Sangoma drivers which have been included in the kernel for quite some time never work fine. We always have to patch from the Sangoma releases. I wonder why haven't the updated drivers made it into the kernel. hrmm.
minidiscs are pretty tough when it comes to resisting magnetic fields due to use of magneto-optical technology. In any case, i'd bet your tapes would die first, then standard magnetic discs (floppies, hard disks) and the minidisc would last the longest against your "big speaker magnet". So which one would you prefer?
Looks to me like the issue here is not so much about software (We've all had to put up with hardware vendors saying "you can install linux if you want, but we won't support you" so it stands to reason that VA refuses to support all Linux distributions), but about hardware. From what we can see in the story, the hardware itself was faulty, and VA was both slow and unable to replace it with working hardware.
If people are going to use software other than what the vendor supports, they should be prepared and skilled enough to manage their software and troubleshoot to a point they can be certain the software is not the cause. If after this point the vendor can't provide proper support for a piece of hardware (unless they are openly blaming Mandrake for causing the problem), then the vendor is to be blamed.
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Plus, StarOffice *is* truly resource-intensive. It runs usably on a P5-MMX-266 system with 96 MB RAM, but for it to fly, it really takes a bigger system to run it the way it should, it runs just fine on a 600-MHz Duron with 256 MB ram. That's OK by me, because the kind of computers people are buying to use MS Office are even more powerful than that.
Finally, it *is* unstable, and that's a major hurdle. The preview functionality is nice, browsing filenames while looking at a preview on a window pane, but it's near useless if it crashes every 5 documents.
Instead of using one of these, you should probably look into using *just* a window manager (meaning, without the whole desktop/panel/libraries/file manager shebang). This will give at least usable performance on your laptop (I used to use WindowMaker on a 32-MB laptop and it ran acceptably).
I would never use hotmail in a regular basis. I only have an account in order to use MSN messenger (I use Everybuddy, not the damn MS client), because there are people i can't convince to use something better. Yet, I'd qualify hotmail as unusable; it's slow, bloated, ugly, gets in your way with so many damned little messages (it's so microsoft), and to top it off, the account receives an average of 50 spams a day. And NOBODY has that address. The only explanation: those mofos sell their addresses to spammers.
um. First, if RMS (Richard Stallman) heard you saying Debian "adheres to his definition of open source", you'd be in for the argument of your life. RMS has nothing to do with open source, he will tell you so if you ask him about open source, instead letting you know that he crafted the definition of "free software" and it applies to all GNU software. Debian, which could be called the "FSF-sponsored Linux distribution", uses exclusively free software. A program could qualify as "open source", but not as "free software", in which case it won't be in Debian (well, it might be found under the non-free section).
Second, who told you Red Hat is based on Mandrake? its completely the other way around, and actually, Mandrake has been the target of many comments stating how they are just a Red Hat ripoff adding nothing except a lot of cutting-edge but unproven software.
Finally, the BSD license might not be of RMS's liking, but it's a free software license (at least the version without the advertising clause), and altough it's not recommended by free software advocates, because it gives up some of the GPL's protection against appropriation of your work, it's certainly more free (freer?) than a lot of licenses that are OSI-approved, but which won't qualify as free under the FSF's definition.
Perhaps you were thinking ESR (Eric Raymond) when you wrote RMS (Richard Stallman)??
OK take this as a lesson, next time you find a security hole, to hell with being a nice person and alerting the victims. Just do as much damage as you can and take anything you can. I mean, if you're gonna get caught anyway, why not at least have a good reason to get caught.
Sadly, it looks like a good policy to follow these days is to NOT help people until they come begging for your help, and then, charge them handsomely for it.
yet, if you were to save your bible in MS word format, it would probably take up 2 or 3 CDs. :)
Ah, the wonders of word
all your banjo are belong to us.
All your license are belong to us
well I dunno, but I opened a hotmail account just so that I could use msn messenger (altough with an alternative client, everybuddy). I didn't give my hotmail address to anyone. And still, it gets an average of 80 spams a week. Now, that's what I call privacy. Luckily, since I don't get anything important on that account, I can just delete everything every week. heh.
I just hope the gnome people live up to their initial design principles and provide a way to tune the system's behavior; something like "i'm not mentally retarded" checkbox that would inhibit all this annoying and useless behavior.
I'm sure these people don't complain that their car doesn't freeze time and pops up a dialog saying "you're about to have an accident, do you want to stop?". There's a brain inside your skull, so use it!
he's probably not opposed to using open source software, but he has never been seen advocating it. He's not an enemy but not a friend either; i think it would fit more in the category of those who think free(speech) software gives them a free (beer) ride.
worldwide information exchange was possible before the internet boom. Let's go back to a fidonet or uucp-based scheme. This can't be stopped, short of banning modems everywhere :)
I'd hope the Ogg people would wait until they have a solid, proven project before calling it out of beta. It's what Mozilla is doing and it certainly looks like the result is going to be worth the wait.
Hopefully (altough admittedly a bit too hopeful), people will flock to Mozilla when it's done; hopefully, too, they will flock to vorbis when it's done.
As it turns out, his strategy was useless, because he *did* get cracked, but the attacker got in through a service vulnerability (the portmap bug in Red Hat Linux a few months ago).
So always remember that a security strategy is only as strong as its weakest part; and if you're going to use strong passwords (strong enough that even you have problems remembering them), you also have to make sure the rest of your security is as strong as that. Otherwise, just don't bother; use your own name as your password. :)
Man, if you think IE doesn't require 128 megs of ram to run, then you're way, way more patient than me. I wouldn't even go near Windows without at least 128 MB RAM; I have 256 and it crawls compared to Linux.
I also contend your implications that Win2k is more stable than Linux. Back that fact up with some hard data; give me a Win2k server that can match my record 400-day uptime under linux. Also, a default Linux installation is far more secure than a Win2k one this day.
The comment that Alphas are "dead" is worthy of a true troll so we're not even going to get there.
When was the last time you actually used a Linux system? a "prompt"? did you get the news that Linux has graphical logins these days? Anyway, any user with a clue is smart enough to follow the instructions "give login and password, and then type startx at the prompt". I mean, your users *Can* type, can't they?
Finally, trying to diss Linux as a server system is plain dumb. Say what you will, but every statistic available on server operating systems proves you wrong regardins Linux as a server.
I see a lot of people whining about how Linux is "different" and how they just want to use a particular application, and not some linux equivalent that does the same task. Well, if they don't *WANT* to change, then by all means, don't. There are lots of us who want to change because I'd rather cope with a learning curve for a new app than waste my time watching office crash and Windows blue-screen all day long. I have better things to do with my time.
If fear of change was the issue, we'd all still be using MS-DOS and WordPerfect 5.1.
People who refuse to give Linux a try as a desktop system, just because it's "different", are like people who live in a shack and won't move to a newly built mansion because it's "different" and they need to learn the house's layout, paint the walls and buy furniture. But guess what: people actually *do* that.
I think the article is a bit too pessimistic. And I, for one, will also take a stand and refuse to listen to any arguments. But the stand I choose to take (cuz it's really all about choice) is to stick to Linux. I've stopped needing Windows to do any actual work a long time ago.
PalmOS is very "unixy" in its philosophy, it aims to be a great handheld computer operating system, and assumes its role since the beginning, never trying to be too pretentious. It's perfectly suited for the handheld paradigm, trying to be a personal digital assistant, just that, not a reduced PC. That's what WinCE tries (and fails) to do.
Now, admittedly, prolly most WinCE machines have better *hardware* than most PalmOS systems. I'm still impressed over Compaq's iPAQ which can run Linux and has 64 MB RAM. Notice, however, that this is *NOT* a microsoft product. They just provide the (Crappy) operating system. Still, I've yet to see any *ANY* handheld running WinCE that's as small and light as my Palm V. That counts for me, because i'm really lazy and there's a limit to how big and heavy a device I'll carry. Heck, if I want a PC, I'll take my Portege 3010 which is the size of a standard paper notebook. That's not too big. But I am *that* lazy :)
We even thought of not working on fridays but the plan never worked :)
Think of how nice it would be for them to be able to update their apps to something more modern, running on a Linux server which is far more interoperable than a Netware server. Cuz yes, while they might want to cut costs with their computers, it might make sense to have the *server* networked with some central location and sharing information with them.
With this sort of situation in mind, they can keep their old terminals, and either boot with DOS, launch a TCP/IP stack and telnet application, and connect to the server, running console applications from there (remember dumb terminals?), or maybe, if the computers are fast enough (small 386's will do), do a diskless linux boot from the server and have a much neater and less archaic solution.
However, the question arises, if all is working well under the current Novell setup, why change? well, the answer is: it's getting harder to find someone who knows Novell, and easier to find someone who knows Linux. AND yes, after all those years, the Novell boxes are starting to crap out.
off the top of my head, i can think of two companies I know which could (or do) benefit from having a way to develop a modern app in text-mode. One of them is a freight company which has a centralized system on a DEC Alpha server and has all the branch offices connect via frame relay. Had they needed to upgrade the 386 terminals in the branch offices, it would have meant they couldnt afford to link all the offices together. And i can tell you those 386's WONT run any graphical environment but work in textmode just fine.
The other is a hardware shop with at least 4 locations, running Novell based setups and requiring constant attention because the Novell servers are crapping out, and Novell admins are scarce in that town. A Linux text-based solution would be interesting, because they can more easily find Linux people, plus, at least in my experience, Linux is more stable; i've had Linux servers working without flaws for so long, when they actually needed me to go down there, i'd forgotten how to get there :)
I'll stop ranting now. :)
The Cyclades patch applied without problems (it being an additive patch rather than one with modifications). However the Sangoma patch failed to apply and the kernel refused to compile.
We removed the patched kernel, installed a fresh kernel source from the RPMs, and patched *only* for the Cyclades card. The kernel source already had drivers for the Sangoma card so we tried to compile those instead.
Imagine our surprise when this freshly installed kernel source also refused to compile. It had errors all over the place. I assumed the Red Hat kernel had some patches so we got our SRPM to recover the "pristine source" kernel that was there. Still i was worried that this kernel didn't even compile.
After extracting all the files from the source RPM, I was baffled when I realized the Red Hat kernel had over 200 patches applied to it! no wonder the Sangoma patch barfed, as this beast could hardly be considered a 2.4.2 kernel anymore.
Finally we did extract the sources from the source RPM (despite all the mess that this operation was, it's nice to see that the RPM concept of "pristine source plus patches" really saved the day). Both the Sangoma and Cyclades patches applied without a hitch and 25 minutes later we had our system back up and running the way it was supposed to be.
One last rant, it seems that for some reason the Sangoma drivers which have been included in the kernel for quite some time never work fine. We always have to patch from the Sangoma releases. I wonder why haven't the updated drivers made it into the kernel. hrmm.
heey but top cat did have a quarter with a string so it could be "reused" ... now only if encryption were so easy to break :)
minidiscs are pretty tough when it comes to resisting magnetic fields due to use of magneto-optical technology. In any case, i'd bet your tapes would die first, then standard magnetic discs (floppies, hard disks) and the minidisc would last the longest against your "big speaker magnet". So which one would you prefer?
Of course, for those into collecting, it's a quick way to get your hands on a lot of games.
If people are going to use software other than what the vendor supports, they should be prepared and skilled enough to manage their software and troubleshoot to a point they can be certain the software is not the cause. If after this point the vendor can't provide proper support for a piece of hardware (unless they are openly blaming Mandrake for causing the problem), then the vendor is to be blamed.