Apple execs have put down their glasses of marketing Kool-Aid and joined the real world. They're obviously trying to get out ahead of the potential security holes in their OS, and they recognize that, despite what the fanbois will say, OSX is just as vulnerable as most other topics. Luckily for Mac users, none of the system crackers seem to care about gay porn or graphic design files.
A similar thing happened to my boss not too long ago. He was out on a weeknight and a couple of drinks at a restaurant. He has a car with headlights that automatically turn off when you take the key out of the ignition, so he always leaves them on. The valet turned them off before parking the car. He got into the car and didn't turn the headlights on. He got pulled over and the officer used the headlights being off as probable cause for the breathalyzer. He failed by a pretty small margin, and the police officer even said something to the effect of, "Even though you weren't driving erratically, the fact that your headlights were off are is sign that you might be drunk so I'm going to give you a breathalyzer now."
It seems like the author of the piece who went through the rough time has a big chip on his shoulder when dealing with figures in position of authority. As a self described anarchist, he obviously has a bone to pick with the system and will probably go out of his way to push the boundries of what he can get away with. People in those situations shouldn't be surprised when they get hassled and harassed for their behavior.
It is pretty weak that he got hassled for taking a picture. It wasn't a criminal offense and the Loomis staff didn't have any jurisdiction or authority to detain or question him.
On the other side of the equation, those Loomis guys have one of the most dangerous jobs in the nation. Anything involving the responsibility for large amounts of cash in exposed, uncontrolled areas comes with a high degree of risk. It would not at all surprise me if because of the picture being taken, Loomis decides to change the time of their ATM delivery, puts more guards on the drop for a period of time, or even authorizes their guards to unholster their weapons when servicing that ATM.
The actions of the poster have just made that small part of the world a lot more tense and slightly more dangerous for everyone in it for a while. A little bit of empathy with the guards and their situation would have gone a long way. It could have been as simple as saying, "I understand that you're stressed and that you are concerned by my actions. I'm not doing recon for a robbery. If you need to call the police to feel more secure, by all means, please do."
When you are in the right, you can treat others with respect and act nicely. To act any other way shows a real lack of self-esteem and a fragile ego.
I agree with just about everything that you said about the basis for progressive taxation and the need to prevent large imbalances in the benefits of being wealthy. However, I think you might be putting too much emphasis on the tax rates themselves adn missing the biggest cause of the economic problems we are having. The Federal Reserve destabilized the US economy. The tax rate does not matter anymore because the Fed can simply print as much money as they want. The low interest rates that put too much money into circulation, and put the burden of repaying that money in the hands of people unsuited (morally and fiscally) to handle it is what cratered the economy.
The "cure" for disease XYZ is a healthy immune system. Diseases pop up because the immune system gets compromised. Those people with longer life expectancies because they eat healthier and exercise more also have fewer diseases to cure. The idea of a "cure" for disease is a load of crap. The medical industry sells "treatments", not cures. The unfortunate fact of life is that being healthy requires a good diet and exercise, both in moderation. You can't get a pill or a treatment to make you healthy. Being healthy is a lifestyle choice. Unfortunately for us, it's a lot easier to be unhealthy than it is to be healthy.
What makes you believe that the conversation was adversarial at all? What if Intel simply presented it along the lines of, "The AMD processors don't do anything that an Intel processor can't. If you agree to xx% of Intel processors on your network, we will give you a big yy% price break."??
How hard would it be to setup the equivalent of a phone to phone VPN connection, and then use a VoIP application similar to Skype across it? Of course you'd have to have a mobile data plan, or access to a WiFi connection, but would such a setup provide an eavesdropping resistant communications channel?
most of them provide a private users area to store files, and then the groups themselves have public shared folders, both on the network.
That has been my experience just about everywhere I have worked and consulted. Users are given their own "home" directory, and then departments and working groups have common shared folders to facilitate information exchange among those units. Depending on the organization and how the permissions are delegated, sometimes there are administrators within departments or working groups who can modify file permissions on the share. That's why I suggested that perhaps bringing up the issue with the manager might get results. Other reason was because often times, the manager should be able to provide a reasonableness check to determine whether or not there is even a need for a private file storage area or directory for any given content. The OP wasn't making much sense. In a business context, there really isn't a need for completely private information. People are paid to work and do things for the company. That involves creating documents and information that needs to be shared, or at least backed up. Even the most paranoid director of HR understands the utility of a home directory and the importance of backing it up.
If you define works in terms of completely replacing an automobile then you are right, it does not work for me. On the other hand if you were to define works in terms of makes the commute more pleasurable, bearable or less expensive, then yes, it does work. If we were to take an opinion poll of people who commute on the freeway and ask them, "Would you rather the person in the car next to you was in the car next to you, or not there and riding the train." They would probably respond that they'd prefer not to have another car next to them, and they'd prefer that more people took the train. So not only does it work for me, it also works for everyone else who has one less car taking up space on the freeways every morning and evening.
Your post uses a logic that I see often here on/. but I am having a hard time understanding. The logic seems to be that if a way of doing things does not completely replace another way of doing things, then it is worthless. The logic shows up in discussions of alternative energy all the time. "Solar/wind can never completely replace X kind of power generation, therefore it is worthless." Do you apply the same logic to Linux? "Linux and OSS in it's currently incarnation cannot completely replace Windows. Therefore it's worthless?"
My understanding of how Time Machine works is akin to the Volume Shadow Copy service in Windows. Basically certain volumes will retain a pre-determined number of snap-shot backups of any particular file. If the user then accidentally erases a file or saves over it, they can revert to one of the previous copies. It isn't exactly the same functionality of being able to save anywhere in user space, but it is close. There are also third party backup utilities that will backup the entire workstation, or any subset of directories and/or files. To me those seem like a band-aid for bad administration, rather than a solution that you want to rely on. Why take a remote copy of a workstation if you can just put the files on the server, or SAN in the first place?
It depends on what part of SoCal you live in. I live in Long Beach and work in downtown LA. I drive my car to the train station and take the train into work. I basically skip the 710/5/101 commute. My boss used to live in Orange County (Santa Ana). He would pick up the Amtrak train at Anaheim Stadium and take it into Union Station. His commute was actually faster than if he drove. Mine is about 20 minutes longer than if I drove all the way. I could take the bus to the train station and completely skip the car commute, but that significantly increases the overall commute time.
I started taking the train to work about a year ago. I estimate that about 75% of my commute is on the train or public transportation (a short bus ride to/from the train on one end). I drive my own vehicle to the train station near my house. I initially took the bus from my house to the train station, but I found that driving myself to the station saves me about 30-45 minutes each way.
I have gone from using four tanks of gas a month to about a tank and a half. A full tank of gas costs me about $35-40 dollars (15 gallon tank, $2.50 a gallon here in CA). In gas alone I save over $50 a month, or $600 a year. I need fewer oil changes because I don't drive my car as much. I used to get an oil change about every two months. Now I get them about every four to five. Figure an oil change costs ~$50. So now I'm spending $150 a year on oil changes instead of $300 and that is a $150 savings. There is less wear and tear on the vehicle so I don't need brakes as often, etc. Parts like that aren't as significant, but there is a cost savings.
The one cost savings that can't be measured is my sanity. I love public transportation. My quality of life is much better because I am less stressed. There was a study I read a few years ago, I believe it was a Swedish study, and they determined that people who commute to work in traffic have a higher rate of heart disease due to the stress it causes. I'm not sure if the study is valid, but I believe it. Traffic is a stressor. It is wonderful to have two hours a day where I can sit and read and listen to music and not have to worry about red lights, using the brakes, maintaining safe following distance, maintaining speed, etc, etc.
I actually turned down a job the other day that would have paid $15,000 more per year, but would have required longer hours and commuting in the car again. I already make enough money to live a comfortable life, and the increased pay wouldn't offset the increased stress.
If you don't want them publically shared then you should ask IT to provide you with an ACL that limits the access to those files to you and whatever service runs the backup. If they really need to be private, your boss should back you up. Most times when I come across situations like yours, it's because the users want to run something IT doesn't want them running, or they have nothing to do with work (like their letter to their landlord about wanting their toilet fixed, or their pictures of their family vacation). You might be kind of irked by it, but your IT department is doing you a favor. You are never going to have to worry about losing unrecoverable data when your workstation hard drive take a crap.
The people who always seem to lose the data are the senior management types who should know better, yet some how are always shielded from their own stupidity. It doesn't matter that they employee handbook says to save everything to the network. It doesn't matter that the profiles are setup to save all files to the network. Sooner or later, some VP of something is going to save the project he has been working on for months to his local drive, the local drive is going to crash, and then it's going to be "IT's fault" because they didn't make sure the data was secure.
Windows Explorer is always in the same place no matter what version of Windows you are using. WindowsKey+E.
Standard best practice is to put everything in My Documents. My Documents can be redirected to a network file share. The network file share can be backed up. As long as data is stored in My Documents, it is safe. That approach presents a problem when users want to store gigs of music or photos in there, but for a typical work place environment, it works great. It sure beats the old method of having to manually adjust file storage locations for each individual program.
I haven't had time to run the release candidate yet. I have to admit that I'm a bit discouraged to read a lot of these posts where people are talking about it being slower than the beta. That isn't encouraging me to rush right out and wipe my system to run it.
The perception that I have gotten is that they are trying to make Vista right with Win7. Vista is the Windows Me of the 21st century. Vista sucked. I had to put up with it when I worked on some of my friends' computers, but I never installed it on any of my own hardware. We never installed it at work.
I have used Windows 7 and it works a lot better than Vista. I don't have to disable Aero to get a responsive UI. I don't have a bunch of pop-ups bothering me when I am making changes to the system. They have added some neat enhancements to the UI also. I like the fact that I can hover my mouse over a group of open programs (like Word documents for example), and the UI will bring up small copies of them that I can browse through without actually having to go all the way into the program. It makes finding what I'm working on more convenient. I'm sure that they "stole" the idea from OSX, or KDE or whatever. I don't care where it comes from or who invented it first, it's a productivity enhancer and I'm glad to see it in Win7.
I would never have rolled out Vista on my network. I might think about rolling out Win7. I probably won't because most of my clients are running integrated video and I haven't done any testing on those. However I'm confident that the OS itself will work and do what it needs to do... unlike Vista.
I understand what you are saying. However, where does that put Linux in the marketplace? Most users don't want complete control over their computers and could care less about it. They don't need access to the source code for the operating system. When drawing out a conclusion from what you've said, where does that lead us? Linux should focus on people who want complete control over the computing experience? That's a pretty small market to aim for.
I work in IT and deal with users all the time. They don't care what the operating system is. They care whether or not their applications work. They care when a Mac user sends them a graphics file without a file extension and they can't open it. They care when they get a RAR compressed archive instead of a ZIP archive. As an IT guy, it irks me that I have to give them 7zip to open archives when the OS has built-in support for ZIP. It irks me when the vendors send them files without extensions, knowing that they are sending them to PC users, but simply not caring because they're Apple fanbois and file extensions are a "Windows thing."
There are only so many things that a user needs a computer to do. Linux developers are presented with a few choices. Either they can port Win32 apps that do the job, or they can code something similar. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if the user can write their own application or tweak their own OS if they don't need to do that. The people who need and want to do that are a seriously small subset of computer users. As an IT guy, there are times when I would like more control over the computer, but I'm not a programmer. As the technical resource for my organization, I have never been presented with a request that I couldn't handle with the tools that I already have access to. I've never been in the position where I had to say, "If only I had a tool that does..." Every time I have been in that situation, a few minutes on Google has pointed the way.
I will take your antecdote and raise you one. The experience that convinced me to finally switch from Win2000 to WinXP was seeing XP load faster and run more quickly on a P3 processor than Win2000 did on the exact same hardware.
What does Shuttleworth mean? Linux can't be a different way to run Windows apps? Those Windows apps are out there because people need those applications. What is the alternative? Is he suggesting to completely reinvent the wheel? Is he suggesting that everything that is on Windows should stay on Windows, and Linux needs to something else entirely? Maybe Linux can be the social networking platform of choice? Maybe I should RTFA, but the entire premise seems stupid. There isn't anything that Linux can do that OSX or Windows can't. The three simply do what they do in different ways, with different quirks, strengths and weaknesses.
Where do you get that they are saying XP is more secure than Vista? Another angle to consider is the one that the Air Force has been running XP for a long time and all of their applications are coded to work with XP. Microsoft took the smart route and improved what the Air Force already had instead of forcing them into an upgrade. Vista very well may be more secure than XP, and Windows 7 might be more secure than both of them.
For as long as I've been using computers, I've hated the forced upgrade cycle that Microsoft imposes on their customers. It would be nice if they would just stick to a single OS and improve it. For a lot of people, XP is good enough. It gets the job done and there isn't any reason to upgrade. If NT weren't such an insecure piece of turd, it could serve the needs of most businesses out there (just like Linux + Samba and OpenLDAP can). Having said that, I understand that a single OS isn't exactly a viable business model, unless you force people into support contracts. Given that Microsoft and Apple both charge for OS updates, I don't think that business model is going away any time soon.
All medical devices have to go through a very stringent testing and approval process. The process is extremely costly. Even the slightest revision in a design spec can require a whole new series of retesting and recertification. Therefore what happens is that the manufacturers develop their devices using a certain piece of software and it stays on that piece of software. If you think about it, there isn't any need for a heart monitor to have internet access. The real problem is that the staff at the hospital obviously failed to follow the guidelines that were laid out for them by the manufacturer and/or their local IT department. I don't know about you, but I don't want my medical devices pulling down auto updates that might bork their functionality. As long as you're running Microsoft software on certified hardware with a known good set of drivers, the odds of a blue screen or other serious system problem are next to none. I'm not saying that you want to run your business on an NT4 server plugged into the internet. But for a medical device that should be stand alone, it isn't exactly a huge risk to be running Windows.
Google the Telecommunications Act of 1996. I believe that the details are in the first couple of sections. I don't have the time to sort through the legalesse.
If you follow the provisioning high enough, sooner or later you will run into a bottleneck. I'm willing to bet that the telcos and cable companies are approaching the point where they are going to have to get fatter pipes from their upstream providers. They are trying to sell it to the public by saying that they are running out of capacity. I'm not too concerned about that, and I'm willing to believe that they are full of crap. More likely, they are simply getting to the point where they don't want to pay for fatter pipes to the backbone. As soon as companies like Level3 and other Tier1 providers start talking about bandwidth shortages, then I will sit up and take note.
Reader beware, I am completely talking out of my ass here. For all I know, Charter, Time Warner and Comcast all have their own backbones. I doubt it, but it could happen. I'm pretty sure that AT&T, and probably Verizon (through their acquisition of MCI/UUNet) do have their own backbones. That is why we aren't hearing the telcos whine as much as the cable companies. Also, the telcos aren't offering the same sort of connectivity packages that the cable companies are offering. Except for limited markets with FiOS, telco circuits simply don't have the same speed that cable circuits do.
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Apple execs have put down their glasses of marketing Kool-Aid and joined the real world. They're obviously trying to get out ahead of the potential security holes in their OS, and they recognize that, despite what the fanbois will say, OSX is just as vulnerable as most other topics. Luckily for Mac users, none of the system crackers seem to care about gay porn or graphic design files.
A similar thing happened to my boss not too long ago. He was out on a weeknight and a couple of drinks at a restaurant. He has a car with headlights that automatically turn off when you take the key out of the ignition, so he always leaves them on. The valet turned them off before parking the car. He got into the car and didn't turn the headlights on. He got pulled over and the officer used the headlights being off as probable cause for the breathalyzer. He failed by a pretty small margin, and the police officer even said something to the effect of, "Even though you weren't driving erratically, the fact that your headlights were off are is sign that you might be drunk so I'm going to give you a breathalyzer now."
It seems like the author of the piece who went through the rough time has a big chip on his shoulder when dealing with figures in position of authority. As a self described anarchist, he obviously has a bone to pick with the system and will probably go out of his way to push the boundries of what he can get away with. People in those situations shouldn't be surprised when they get hassled and harassed for their behavior.
It is pretty weak that he got hassled for taking a picture. It wasn't a criminal offense and the Loomis staff didn't have any jurisdiction or authority to detain or question him.
On the other side of the equation, those Loomis guys have one of the most dangerous jobs in the nation. Anything involving the responsibility for large amounts of cash in exposed, uncontrolled areas comes with a high degree of risk. It would not at all surprise me if because of the picture being taken, Loomis decides to change the time of their ATM delivery, puts more guards on the drop for a period of time, or even authorizes their guards to unholster their weapons when servicing that ATM.
The actions of the poster have just made that small part of the world a lot more tense and slightly more dangerous for everyone in it for a while. A little bit of empathy with the guards and their situation would have gone a long way. It could have been as simple as saying, "I understand that you're stressed and that you are concerned by my actions. I'm not doing recon for a robbery. If you need to call the police to feel more secure, by all means, please do."
When you are in the right, you can treat others with respect and act nicely. To act any other way shows a real lack of self-esteem and a fragile ego.
I agree with just about everything that you said about the basis for progressive taxation and the need to prevent large imbalances in the benefits of being wealthy. However, I think you might be putting too much emphasis on the tax rates themselves adn missing the biggest cause of the economic problems we are having. The Federal Reserve destabilized the US economy. The tax rate does not matter anymore because the Fed can simply print as much money as they want. The low interest rates that put too much money into circulation, and put the burden of repaying that money in the hands of people unsuited (morally and fiscally) to handle it is what cratered the economy.
The "cure" for disease XYZ is a healthy immune system. Diseases pop up because the immune system gets compromised. Those people with longer life expectancies because they eat healthier and exercise more also have fewer diseases to cure. The idea of a "cure" for disease is a load of crap. The medical industry sells "treatments", not cures. The unfortunate fact of life is that being healthy requires a good diet and exercise, both in moderation. You can't get a pill or a treatment to make you healthy. Being healthy is a lifestyle choice. Unfortunately for us, it's a lot easier to be unhealthy than it is to be healthy.
What makes you believe that the conversation was adversarial at all? What if Intel simply presented it along the lines of, "The AMD processors don't do anything that an Intel processor can't. If you agree to xx% of Intel processors on your network, we will give you a big yy% price break."??
How hard would it be to setup the equivalent of a phone to phone VPN connection, and then use a VoIP application similar to Skype across it? Of course you'd have to have a mobile data plan, or access to a WiFi connection, but would such a setup provide an eavesdropping resistant communications channel?
That has been my experience just about everywhere I have worked and consulted. Users are given their own "home" directory, and then departments and working groups have common shared folders to facilitate information exchange among those units. Depending on the organization and how the permissions are delegated, sometimes there are administrators within departments or working groups who can modify file permissions on the share. That's why I suggested that perhaps bringing up the issue with the manager might get results. Other reason was because often times, the manager should be able to provide a reasonableness check to determine whether or not there is even a need for a private file storage area or directory for any given content. The OP wasn't making much sense. In a business context, there really isn't a need for completely private information. People are paid to work and do things for the company. That involves creating documents and information that needs to be shared, or at least backed up. Even the most paranoid director of HR understands the utility of a home directory and the importance of backing it up.
If you define works in terms of completely replacing an automobile then you are right, it does not work for me. On the other hand if you were to define works in terms of makes the commute more pleasurable, bearable or less expensive, then yes, it does work. If we were to take an opinion poll of people who commute on the freeway and ask them, "Would you rather the person in the car next to you was in the car next to you, or not there and riding the train." They would probably respond that they'd prefer not to have another car next to them, and they'd prefer that more people took the train. So not only does it work for me, it also works for everyone else who has one less car taking up space on the freeways every morning and evening.
Your post uses a logic that I see often here on /. but I am having a hard time understanding. The logic seems to be that if a way of doing things does not completely replace another way of doing things, then it is worthless. The logic shows up in discussions of alternative energy all the time. "Solar/wind can never completely replace X kind of power generation, therefore it is worthless." Do you apply the same logic to Linux? "Linux and OSS in it's currently incarnation cannot completely replace Windows. Therefore it's worthless?"
My understanding of how Time Machine works is akin to the Volume Shadow Copy service in Windows. Basically certain volumes will retain a pre-determined number of snap-shot backups of any particular file. If the user then accidentally erases a file or saves over it, they can revert to one of the previous copies. It isn't exactly the same functionality of being able to save anywhere in user space, but it is close. There are also third party backup utilities that will backup the entire workstation, or any subset of directories and/or files. To me those seem like a band-aid for bad administration, rather than a solution that you want to rely on. Why take a remote copy of a workstation if you can just put the files on the server, or SAN in the first place?
It depends on what part of SoCal you live in. I live in Long Beach and work in downtown LA. I drive my car to the train station and take the train into work. I basically skip the 710/5/101 commute. My boss used to live in Orange County (Santa Ana). He would pick up the Amtrak train at Anaheim Stadium and take it into Union Station. His commute was actually faster than if he drove. Mine is about 20 minutes longer than if I drove all the way. I could take the bus to the train station and completely skip the car commute, but that significantly increases the overall commute time.
I started taking the train to work about a year ago. I estimate that about 75% of my commute is on the train or public transportation (a short bus ride to/from the train on one end). I drive my own vehicle to the train station near my house. I initially took the bus from my house to the train station, but I found that driving myself to the station saves me about 30-45 minutes each way.
I have gone from using four tanks of gas a month to about a tank and a half. A full tank of gas costs me about $35-40 dollars (15 gallon tank, $2.50 a gallon here in CA). In gas alone I save over $50 a month, or $600 a year. I need fewer oil changes because I don't drive my car as much. I used to get an oil change about every two months. Now I get them about every four to five. Figure an oil change costs ~$50. So now I'm spending $150 a year on oil changes instead of $300 and that is a $150 savings. There is less wear and tear on the vehicle so I don't need brakes as often, etc. Parts like that aren't as significant, but there is a cost savings.
The one cost savings that can't be measured is my sanity. I love public transportation. My quality of life is much better because I am less stressed. There was a study I read a few years ago, I believe it was a Swedish study, and they determined that people who commute to work in traffic have a higher rate of heart disease due to the stress it causes. I'm not sure if the study is valid, but I believe it. Traffic is a stressor. It is wonderful to have two hours a day where I can sit and read and listen to music and not have to worry about red lights, using the brakes, maintaining safe following distance, maintaining speed, etc, etc.
I actually turned down a job the other day that would have paid $15,000 more per year, but would have required longer hours and commuting in the car again. I already make enough money to live a comfortable life, and the increased pay wouldn't offset the increased stress.
If you don't want them publically shared then you should ask IT to provide you with an ACL that limits the access to those files to you and whatever service runs the backup. If they really need to be private, your boss should back you up. Most times when I come across situations like yours, it's because the users want to run something IT doesn't want them running, or they have nothing to do with work (like their letter to their landlord about wanting their toilet fixed, or their pictures of their family vacation). You might be kind of irked by it, but your IT department is doing you a favor. You are never going to have to worry about losing unrecoverable data when your workstation hard drive take a crap.
The people who always seem to lose the data are the senior management types who should know better, yet some how are always shielded from their own stupidity. It doesn't matter that they employee handbook says to save everything to the network. It doesn't matter that the profiles are setup to save all files to the network. Sooner or later, some VP of something is going to save the project he has been working on for months to his local drive, the local drive is going to crash, and then it's going to be "IT's fault" because they didn't make sure the data was secure.
Windows Explorer is always in the same place no matter what version of Windows you are using. WindowsKey+E.
Standard best practice is to put everything in My Documents. My Documents can be redirected to a network file share. The network file share can be backed up. As long as data is stored in My Documents, it is safe. That approach presents a problem when users want to store gigs of music or photos in there, but for a typical work place environment, it works great. It sure beats the old method of having to manually adjust file storage locations for each individual program.
I haven't had time to run the release candidate yet. I have to admit that I'm a bit discouraged to read a lot of these posts where people are talking about it being slower than the beta. That isn't encouraging me to rush right out and wipe my system to run it.
The perception that I have gotten is that they are trying to make Vista right with Win7. Vista is the Windows Me of the 21st century. Vista sucked. I had to put up with it when I worked on some of my friends' computers, but I never installed it on any of my own hardware. We never installed it at work.
I have used Windows 7 and it works a lot better than Vista. I don't have to disable Aero to get a responsive UI. I don't have a bunch of pop-ups bothering me when I am making changes to the system. They have added some neat enhancements to the UI also. I like the fact that I can hover my mouse over a group of open programs (like Word documents for example), and the UI will bring up small copies of them that I can browse through without actually having to go all the way into the program. It makes finding what I'm working on more convenient. I'm sure that they "stole" the idea from OSX, or KDE or whatever. I don't care where it comes from or who invented it first, it's a productivity enhancer and I'm glad to see it in Win7.
I would never have rolled out Vista on my network. I might think about rolling out Win7. I probably won't because most of my clients are running integrated video and I haven't done any testing on those. However I'm confident that the OS itself will work and do what it needs to do... unlike Vista.
I am intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
I understand what you are saying. However, where does that put Linux in the marketplace? Most users don't want complete control over their computers and could care less about it. They don't need access to the source code for the operating system. When drawing out a conclusion from what you've said, where does that lead us? Linux should focus on people who want complete control over the computing experience? That's a pretty small market to aim for.
I work in IT and deal with users all the time. They don't care what the operating system is. They care whether or not their applications work. They care when a Mac user sends them a graphics file without a file extension and they can't open it. They care when they get a RAR compressed archive instead of a ZIP archive. As an IT guy, it irks me that I have to give them 7zip to open archives when the OS has built-in support for ZIP. It irks me when the vendors send them files without extensions, knowing that they are sending them to PC users, but simply not caring because they're Apple fanbois and file extensions are a "Windows thing."
There are only so many things that a user needs a computer to do. Linux developers are presented with a few choices. Either they can port Win32 apps that do the job, or they can code something similar. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if the user can write their own application or tweak their own OS if they don't need to do that. The people who need and want to do that are a seriously small subset of computer users. As an IT guy, there are times when I would like more control over the computer, but I'm not a programmer. As the technical resource for my organization, I have never been presented with a request that I couldn't handle with the tools that I already have access to. I've never been in the position where I had to say, "If only I had a tool that does..." Every time I have been in that situation, a few minutes on Google has pointed the way.
I will take your antecdote and raise you one. The experience that convinced me to finally switch from Win2000 to WinXP was seeing XP load faster and run more quickly on a P3 processor than Win2000 did on the exact same hardware.
What does Shuttleworth mean? Linux can't be a different way to run Windows apps? Those Windows apps are out there because people need those applications. What is the alternative? Is he suggesting to completely reinvent the wheel? Is he suggesting that everything that is on Windows should stay on Windows, and Linux needs to something else entirely? Maybe Linux can be the social networking platform of choice? Maybe I should RTFA, but the entire premise seems stupid. There isn't anything that Linux can do that OSX or Windows can't. The three simply do what they do in different ways, with different quirks, strengths and weaknesses.
Where do you get that they are saying XP is more secure than Vista? Another angle to consider is the one that the Air Force has been running XP for a long time and all of their applications are coded to work with XP. Microsoft took the smart route and improved what the Air Force already had instead of forcing them into an upgrade. Vista very well may be more secure than XP, and Windows 7 might be more secure than both of them.
For as long as I've been using computers, I've hated the forced upgrade cycle that Microsoft imposes on their customers. It would be nice if they would just stick to a single OS and improve it. For a lot of people, XP is good enough. It gets the job done and there isn't any reason to upgrade. If NT weren't such an insecure piece of turd, it could serve the needs of most businesses out there (just like Linux + Samba and OpenLDAP can). Having said that, I understand that a single OS isn't exactly a viable business model, unless you force people into support contracts. Given that Microsoft and Apple both charge for OS updates, I don't think that business model is going away any time soon.
All medical devices have to go through a very stringent testing and approval process. The process is extremely costly. Even the slightest revision in a design spec can require a whole new series of retesting and recertification. Therefore what happens is that the manufacturers develop their devices using a certain piece of software and it stays on that piece of software. If you think about it, there isn't any need for a heart monitor to have internet access. The real problem is that the staff at the hospital obviously failed to follow the guidelines that were laid out for them by the manufacturer and/or their local IT department. I don't know about you, but I don't want my medical devices pulling down auto updates that might bork their functionality. As long as you're running Microsoft software on certified hardware with a known good set of drivers, the odds of a blue screen or other serious system problem are next to none. I'm not saying that you want to run your business on an NT4 server plugged into the internet. But for a medical device that should be stand alone, it isn't exactly a huge risk to be running Windows.
After I made my post, I did some Googling and came across this information on Tier 1 networks. Time Warner isn't on there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network
Google the Telecommunications Act of 1996. I believe that the details are in the first couple of sections. I don't have the time to sort through the legalesse.
If you follow the provisioning high enough, sooner or later you will run into a bottleneck. I'm willing to bet that the telcos and cable companies are approaching the point where they are going to have to get fatter pipes from their upstream providers. They are trying to sell it to the public by saying that they are running out of capacity. I'm not too concerned about that, and I'm willing to believe that they are full of crap. More likely, they are simply getting to the point where they don't want to pay for fatter pipes to the backbone. As soon as companies like Level3 and other Tier1 providers start talking about bandwidth shortages, then I will sit up and take note.
Reader beware, I am completely talking out of my ass here. For all I know, Charter, Time Warner and Comcast all have their own backbones. I doubt it, but it could happen. I'm pretty sure that AT&T, and probably Verizon (through their acquisition of MCI/UUNet) do have their own backbones. That is why we aren't hearing the telcos whine as much as the cable companies. Also, the telcos aren't offering the same sort of connectivity packages that the cable companies are offering. Except for limited markets with FiOS, telco circuits simply don't have the same speed that cable circuits do.