I agree that the domain system is broken, but charging more money for an initial registration isn't good. The great thing at the moment is that anyone can register a domain for buying as opposed to leasing). Registrars and name registries (ICANN, Nominet, etc) should also have more power to immediately terminate scam domains.
Don't forget Apple makes (albeit a small amount of) money from OS X - and from iPods. No more Macs (highly unlikely)? The iPod will fill the gap in the profits, it seems.
It depends. Even if Psystar wins (which IMHO is highly unlikely) it could play in Apple's favour. If they are able to speedily prepare hardware support and marketing for an x86-compatible release of OS X (without the "Mac" prefix) it could well catalyse Microsoft's downfall. (This would depend, however, on Darwin's terrible ACPI support being fixed.)
Even if Psystar wins, the Mac business will almost certainly not be dead. True, it'll probably drop in value slightly, but there's still a demand for them because they (a) look pretty and (b) are very well made. A bit like Volkswagens, in a way - you can easily get a car that's got a similar spec on paper for around half the price, but the VW (and the Mac) looks nicer and will last for longer. Apple needs to play up this reputation in its marketing, in anticipation, just in case they lose the suit.
Yes: this was the concept for the Shimizu Mega-City Pyramid. The difference appears to be that this will be a rigid structure, whilst the MCP design is a framework of trusses on a pontoon, with plateaus suspended from the trusses (a la Sky City 1000).
It's difficult to tell without more information - for all we know it could be something impersonating GDM on a Linux system without SELinux or a firewall enabled.
'Best Western took immediate action to disable the compromised log-in account in question...
WHAT? In that case, they haven't lost the data due to carelessness (which I can just about forgive)- they've failed to secure their systems, which is criminally negligent.
It's not an old idea, either - take the 'exploding briefcase' as an example. Important papers could be inside but unless opened correctly (with a certain combination and movement of the lock with a long, thin object with the arming pin still in place), the case exploded, preventing anyone from reading the documents (and, for that matter, reading anything else). There are also cases with mobile phones that must be dialed in a certain manner - otherwise, the machine suspects unauthorised activity and throws the kill switch.
These systems are very simple in principle (one decoy key provides fake information and shreds the real information, the real key decrypting the real thing) and, I would imagine, not too difficult to implement.
The problem is not with authentication. The password is sent using SSL - however, after that, by default, it drops back to a normal http session, so everything from there on is sent in the clear.
It depends: if it's the ZFS specification that's CDDL licensed you're screwed as kernel space goes. However, if it's only Sun's software that writes a ZFS file system (the ZFS drivers and toolchain) it's possible that an alternative implementation of ZFS could be created. Sun have said they're 'investigating' a Linux port.
I've used Solaris (I ordered the DVD over the Internet) and I like it: it's no slower than, say, Kubuntu (KDE4), in VirtualBox, and I love ZFS. Unfortunately, I've misplaced the DVD, and additionally my only DVD burner happens to be playing up, so I'm stuck with the VirtualBox image until I get round to opening up the DVD drive and cleaning it.
I've used Flash on many distros, both on x86 and x64 platforms. I've never had much of a problem with it. Gnash, on the other hand, is slow, doesn't adhere to the Flash specification, and I've never got it to work properly. (It's a bit like WINE was five years ago - absolute crap when displaying anything other than "Hello World".)
The problem is that even though it's his/her work, the contract he/she signed at employment probably gives all the rights to the company, so in the law's eyes, it's the company's work. So it boils down, annoyingly, to your job or your morals.
In hindsight, a better option would have been to negotiate a contract with the company where you retain the rights to your idea and your code, but you agree to always license the software to them for free.
True, software patenting may be the most insane and outmoded concept since having bingo on primetime television, but the law is the law and US employment laws are very much laissez-faire with regard to morals and ethics. (Another problem is that the only law that seems to protect people from unfair dismissal with regard to morals and ethics is discrimination based on religion: if you're an atheist, basically, you're screwed. Sorry.)
Perhaps you could explain why on most *nix systems I've used, firefox lives in/usr/lib, and OpenTTD (which is still a userland application) lives in/usr/games? Also, there's no distinction between CLI apps or end-user apps like OpenOffice, and it also complicates application removal. Moreover, in my/usr/lib, I have several binaries,.so files, and configuration files. The inconsistency is ridiculous - my/usr directory is a pigsty. Put simply:
things like winbindd, dpkg-reconfigure etc live in/usr/sbin
wget, group and finger live in/usr/bin
banner, fortune and OpenTTD live in/usr/games, but the data directories for each of these apps are all in completely different places
X lives in its own/usr directory - why?
It would be less infuriating if the system was at least easy to implement properly, but this added to its pointless esotericity indicates to me that it's time to change. Things can be splayed around in completely the wrong places, and it's also stupidly impractical for users.
It doesn't. YouTube, for example, links to the Adobe jump page for Flash, which only offers download as an rpm or a tarball. The user doesn't realise he has to use synaptic/aptitude/whatever to get 'flash-nonfree' and 'flash-plugin'. This is partly Adobe's fault, but it should still be less complicated. It should be automatic.
The user will also want to be able to actually access the Internet to do all of this. If there's no driver for his WLAN card, he's screwed.
For your information, I own an Eee PC and am using it to type this. The thing is, however, that these machines are hidden away with the Macs and the XP machines (at the back of the shop) and the prospective Linux user is more likely to buy the £500 laptop on the end of the aisle.
It doesn't help that the weekend staff at PC World are clueless, but the user doesn't know about Linux, and will assume it'll 'just work'. And that's what it should do - just work, or work with very little effort.
I didn't single out the home directory in particular in Windows. Windows's home directory implementation sucks. However, the concept is there - everything else is where it should be.
OS X would be a better example. Dependencies go in/Library and ~/Library, system tools go in/System, apps go in/Applications, and the core toolchain is hidden out of sight where it can be found, if necessary, with a simple ls -a.
BECAUSE, the user DOESN'T WANT to have to do it. I find it a pain in the arse and I've worked with computers for aeons, practically. Meanwhile, poor Johnny User, who's just installed Ubuntu for the first time, might get scared by the terminal, and consider Linux to be 'too techie'. All that needed to be done was for it to be packaged as a Debian/RPM/Netpkg/whatever package file, and it would have worked instantly.
Remember we're talking about the end user here, who wants to work with Facebook and YouTube rather than xterm and make. They should not have to do it manually. It should be automatic.
For fuck's sake, that is completely irrelevant. I'm saying that all they'd have to do is package that Realtek WLAN driver into a simple.deb file, with no whining about GPL incompatibility, etc, and everything would have been fine and dandy. It wouldn't have been ideal, but it would have worked without Joe User having to drop to the terminal or even touch the make command.
This is part of two problems:
Simple tasks not being carried out - diligence is a must
Hostility towards the need of the end user, and programming with the developer's needs in mind
Stop buying crap non-"optimised" hardware and coming back to complain to us. As Anon said, did OSX install great on that Toshiba?
FYI, I live in the UK, where it is extraordinarily difficult to procure Linux-compatible hardware without sending a cheque overseas and then installing it manually. And if it's going to be computer friendly, it should just work on a consumer laptop which I could pick up, no fuss, from a computer store for £350ish.
Let me demonstrate an example scenario: Joe bought his new laptop 6 months ago, and is disappointed with Vista (he thinks it's crap, which it is.) Joe is not technical in any way, but a techie friend tells him about Ubuntu. He orders a CD and installs it on his laptop, and finds 'the Internet doesn't work' (in reality, his kernel has no support for his WLAN card). Even if this didn't put him off, he'd soon get pissed off to the core by the fact that searching for "ubuntu on brand x 1000 laptop" on Google turns up a few, vague, results, asking him to download a 'tarball' (sounds like a weird euphemism!), open up a terminal, and run make/make install. He writes to the Ubuntu support forums, and is met with either "run sudo apt-get build-essentials" or "don't buy incompatible hardware and come moaning to us". Joe is baffled, and rebuilds his laptop using the Windows recovery CD, wiping Ubuntu. He's left with a bad impression of Linux.
Put simply, the way in which drivers for Linux are documented and distributed is a shambles, and it's the attitude of people like you which puts people off Linux-based OSes.
I would like to propose an alternative solution. Drivers for the 1000-odd most popular peripherals and cards are stuck on a disk in packages (.debs, for example). This CD is distributed with the main distro CD when free CDs are ordered, and there's an ISO image and torrent alongside the distro image link. Alternatively, these drivers can be 'slipstreamed' straight into the install if using a system like Wubi which builds the system from within Windows.
The drivers throw up an EULA (which freetards are quite welcome to reject) and after that everything works perfectly. Simple as. It requires a bit of work - that's all.
Slashdot Mirror
The registries, yes. The registries have no financial interest (they're independent regulatory bodies).
I agree that the domain system is broken, but charging more money for an initial registration isn't good. The great thing at the moment is that anyone can register a domain for buying as opposed to leasing). Registrars and name registries (ICANN, Nominet, etc) should also have more power to immediately terminate scam domains.
But the word 'troll' now has two meanings. IMHO, 'hacker' does not.
The ASA is not a governmental body. It is independent.
Gumstix are tiny 386-compatible boards - although they're modular, they occupy less volume than a space cube.
Don't forget Apple makes (albeit a small amount of) money from OS X - and from iPods. No more Macs (highly unlikely)? The iPod will fill the gap in the profits, it seems.
It depends. Even if Psystar wins (which IMHO is highly unlikely) it could play in Apple's favour. If they are able to speedily prepare hardware support and marketing for an x86-compatible release of OS X (without the "Mac" prefix) it could well catalyse Microsoft's downfall. (This would depend, however, on Darwin's terrible ACPI support being fixed.)
Even if Psystar wins, the Mac business will almost certainly not be dead. True, it'll probably drop in value slightly, but there's still a demand for them because they (a) look pretty and (b) are very well made. A bit like Volkswagens, in a way - you can easily get a car that's got a similar spec on paper for around half the price, but the VW (and the Mac) looks nicer and will last for longer. Apple needs to play up this reputation in its marketing, in anticipation, just in case they lose the suit.
Yes: this was the concept for the Shimizu Mega-City Pyramid. The difference appears to be that this will be a rigid structure, whilst the MCP design is a framework of trusses on a pontoon, with plateaus suspended from the trusses (a la Sky City 1000).
You must be new-- oh, I see...
no, that was because the technician downloaded Smiley Central.
It's difficult to tell without more information - for all we know it could be something impersonating GDM on a Linux system without SELinux or a firewall enabled.
'Best Western took immediate action to disable the compromised log-in account in question...
WHAT? In that case, they haven't lost the data due to carelessness (which I can just about forgive)- they've failed to secure their systems, which is criminally negligent.
From a British newspaper, yes, 'continental' means 'European', as in a 'continental breakfast'.
It's not an old idea, either - take the 'exploding briefcase' as an example. Important papers could be inside but unless opened correctly (with a certain combination and movement of the lock with a long, thin object with the arming pin still in place), the case exploded, preventing anyone from reading the documents (and, for that matter, reading anything else). There are also cases with mobile phones that must be dialed in a certain manner - otherwise, the machine suspects unauthorised activity and throws the kill switch.
These systems are very simple in principle (one decoy key provides fake information and shreds the real information, the real key decrypting the real thing) and, I would imagine, not too difficult to implement.
The problem is not with authentication. The password is sent using SSL - however, after that, by default, it drops back to a normal http session, so everything from there on is sent in the clear.
Why this isn't on by default is a mystery to me.
It depends: if it's the ZFS specification that's CDDL licensed you're screwed as kernel space goes. However, if it's only Sun's software that writes a ZFS file system (the ZFS drivers and toolchain) it's possible that an alternative implementation of ZFS could be created. Sun have said they're 'investigating' a Linux port.
I've used Solaris (I ordered the DVD over the Internet) and I like it: it's no slower than, say, Kubuntu (KDE4), in VirtualBox, and I love ZFS. Unfortunately, I've misplaced the DVD, and additionally my only DVD burner happens to be playing up, so I'm stuck with the VirtualBox image until I get round to opening up the DVD drive and cleaning it.
I've used Flash on many distros, both on x86 and x64 platforms. I've never had much of a problem with it. Gnash, on the other hand, is slow, doesn't adhere to the Flash specification, and I've never got it to work properly. (It's a bit like WINE was five years ago - absolute crap when displaying anything other than "Hello World".)
your work
The problem is that even though it's his/her work, the contract he/she signed at employment probably gives all the rights to the company, so in the law's eyes, it's the company's work. So it boils down, annoyingly, to your job or your morals.
In hindsight, a better option would have been to negotiate a contract with the company where you retain the rights to your idea and your code, but you agree to always license the software to them for free.
True, software patenting may be the most insane and outmoded concept since having bingo on primetime television, but the law is the law and US employment laws are very much laissez-faire with regard to morals and ethics. (Another problem is that the only law that seems to protect people from unfair dismissal with regard to morals and ethics is discrimination based on religion: if you're an atheist, basically, you're screwed. Sorry.)
Perhaps you could explain why on most *nix systems I've used, firefox lives in /usr/lib, and OpenTTD (which is still a userland application) lives in /usr/games? Also, there's no distinction between CLI apps or end-user apps like OpenOffice, and it also complicates application removal. Moreover, in my /usr/lib, I have several binaries, .so files, and configuration files. The inconsistency is ridiculous - my /usr directory is a pigsty. Put simply:
It would be less infuriating if the system was at least easy to implement properly, but this added to its pointless esotericity indicates to me that it's time to change. Things can be splayed around in completely the wrong places, and it's also stupidly impractical for users.
It doesn't. YouTube, for example, links to the Adobe jump page for Flash, which only offers download as an rpm or a tarball. The user doesn't realise he has to use synaptic/aptitude/whatever to get 'flash-nonfree' and 'flash-plugin'. This is partly Adobe's fault, but it should still be less complicated. It should be automatic.
The user will also want to be able to actually access the Internet to do all of this. If there's no driver for his WLAN card, he's screwed.
For your information, I own an Eee PC and am using it to type this. The thing is, however, that these machines are hidden away with the Macs and the XP machines (at the back of the shop) and the prospective Linux user is more likely to buy the £500 laptop on the end of the aisle.
It doesn't help that the weekend staff at PC World are clueless, but the user doesn't know about Linux, and will assume it'll 'just work'. And that's what it should do - just work, or work with very little effort.
I didn't single out the home directory in particular in Windows. Windows's home directory implementation sucks. However, the concept is there - everything else is where it should be.
OS X would be a better example. Dependencies go in /Library and ~/Library, system tools go in /System, apps go in /Applications, and the core toolchain is hidden out of sight where it can be found, if necessary, with a simple ls -a.
BECAUSE, the user DOESN'T WANT to have to do it. I find it a pain in the arse and I've worked with computers for aeons, practically. Meanwhile, poor Johnny User, who's just installed Ubuntu for the first time, might get scared by the terminal, and consider Linux to be 'too techie'. All that needed to be done was for it to be packaged as a Debian/RPM/Netpkg/whatever package file, and it would have worked instantly.
Remember we're talking about the end user here, who wants to work with Facebook and YouTube rather than xterm and make. They should not have to do it manually. It should be automatic.
For fuck's sake, that is completely irrelevant. I'm saying that all they'd have to do is package that Realtek WLAN driver into a simple .deb file, with no whining about GPL incompatibility, etc, and everything would have been fine and dandy. It wouldn't have been ideal, but it would have worked without Joe User having to drop to the terminal or even touch the make command.
This is part of two problems:
Stop buying crap non-"optimised" hardware and coming back to complain to us. As Anon said, did OSX install great on that Toshiba?
FYI, I live in the UK, where it is extraordinarily difficult to procure Linux-compatible hardware without sending a cheque overseas and then installing it manually. And if it's going to be computer friendly, it should just work on a consumer laptop which I could pick up, no fuss, from a computer store for £350ish.
Let me demonstrate an example scenario: Joe bought his new laptop 6 months ago, and is disappointed with Vista (he thinks it's crap, which it is.) Joe is not technical in any way, but a techie friend tells him about Ubuntu. He orders a CD and installs it on his laptop, and finds 'the Internet doesn't work' (in reality, his kernel has no support for his WLAN card). Even if this didn't put him off, he'd soon get pissed off to the core by the fact that searching for "ubuntu on brand x 1000 laptop" on Google turns up a few, vague, results, asking him to download a 'tarball' (sounds like a weird euphemism!), open up a terminal, and run make/make install. He writes to the Ubuntu support forums, and is met with either "run sudo apt-get build-essentials" or "don't buy incompatible hardware and come moaning to us". Joe is baffled, and rebuilds his laptop using the Windows recovery CD, wiping Ubuntu. He's left with a bad impression of Linux.
Put simply, the way in which drivers for Linux are documented and distributed is a shambles, and it's the attitude of people like you which puts people off Linux-based OSes.
I would like to propose an alternative solution. Drivers for the 1000-odd most popular peripherals and cards are stuck on a disk in packages (.debs, for example). This CD is distributed with the main distro CD when free CDs are ordered, and there's an ISO image and torrent alongside the distro image link. Alternatively, these drivers can be 'slipstreamed' straight into the install if using a system like Wubi which builds the system from within Windows.
The drivers throw up an EULA (which freetards are quite welcome to reject) and after that everything works perfectly. Simple as. It requires a bit of work - that's all.