Every US Citizen is protected by the Constitution, even those citizens that are terrorists. What you may not fully understand is that when you become a terrorist and you commit terrorists acts against your own government then you are considered an unlawful enemy combatant. Due to the fact that there's a war going on we can't have enemy combatants released back to attack the US and in particular those with less than virtuous desires to commit acts of terrorism against our civilian population.
So, every citizen is entitled to protections of the Constitution unless they are deemed unlawful enemy combatants. They may be enemy combatants and be lawful, such as a soldier on the enemy's side. But we still don't release those combatants unless the war is over or some other conditions are met such as a prisoner exchange--which will never happen with terrorists.
One could claim that the person that was a citizen that joined the enemy is a traitor and/or gave up their rights to protections of the Constitution upon their very first act. Much of what an unlawful enemy combatant is has yet to be really challenged.
I do understand what you mean when you say that someone, at some future time, might be considered by the government as a terrorist by simply participating in an act of protest, and thus potentially not be covered, but currently we are not there. Hopefully, those in charge of our government will be long lost memories when and if that were to occur.
It is those that are willing to give up control of their personal private lives that will propel us to that point in time. Luckily that will occur far down the road and we will know who to blame--those today demeaning and belittling the civilized covenant of Privacy.
We've all, every one of us, absolutely every single solitary soul on this planet, has done something wrong that we are not proud of. Whether it is important enough to desire privacy so that others may not find out and/or misuse it is a matter of conscious or even law.
Look at Bill Clinton getting a blow job in the White House? Did he have something to hide? Does he wish his act was kept private? Why would any person believe they have less to hide than the President of the United States of America? It is, after all, the highest office one can achieve.
It isn't called the Nothing To Hide Policy and we have a policy of privacy for a reason. Not everyone maintains the same sensibilities as every other person. We are not all made the same and we don't all react the same.
To give up your privacy is to weaken the privacy of others. By virtue of allowing your privacy to be violated you are allowing them to violate someone else's privacy that may not desire it because you embolden them while demeaning and belittling the wishes of others. As I said, all people have something to hide, whether it is a crime or what might be considered an unethical act or an act of perversion (being gay is considered by most religions to be an act of perversion.) Even the Bible doesn't permit homosexual acts. So, if you don't believe in religion and you think being gay is OK, then you decide to open that up about someone in public or even to the law enforcement agencies, then you are subjecting someone who feels they may (or do) have something to hide (and desire privacy because of how they feel).
You can't get around saying you don't need privacy because you have nothing to hide, primarily because that is based upon your own value system; due to the fact that you don't value things the same way as others. We have court documents that are sealed? Why? We have documents about the Kennedy Assassination that are sealed and no one can read those documents for some time to come, why? We have people that have medical conditions they don't wish to disclose and desire privacy. Why?
Once you give up privacy you give potential abusers of power the ability to abuse you and everyone else. What you think about privacy may not be what your family members desire about privacy. Even your children wish they could lock their door to their room and ask that you knock before entering because even a child has common sense and understands the need for privacy.
In the Chicadillo case (the first admitted serial killer case in the former USSR) the law enforcement agencies used the pretense of gay men have to be the culprit because of their lifestyle. They invaded their homes, their domain, their lifestyle in order to find out who and what and then arrested them and subjected them to horrific interrogations. It wasn't a gay person that committed the serial murders. It was a man with a wife and children.
Anyone that believes they have no desire of privacy or need of privacy are damaging the future for everyone else. You diminish my rights, you diminish my beliefs, you diminish my feelings and emotions when you say I should not have any rights because only those that commit crimes desire privacy.
It just doesn't work. Privacy should be maintained at all costs and should be predominant in most everything you do. If we undo privacy we undo a lot of the protections that have been in place within our legal system for the past couple centuries. Even the special relationship between the husband and wife come into question because then, due to "no" privacy, the husband or wife can be compelled to testify against their spouse. Even though this law was established to protect that relationship it plays predominantly into the the realm of privacy. Because if there is no need for privacy then the husband or wife can be compelled to disclose what happens in private with each other.
Without privacy we will be in a position of allowing the government, religious organizations, lawyers, and other non-polic
I'd equate it more to a ball and chain. What's worse is that MS is trying to hamstring the industry by injecting cheap severely cut drugs (cut with potentially harmful chemicals) into the veins of the open source industry.
I don't care about any of those companies that signed an agreement. I would rather have not had anyone sign, especially since the OSS industry has been so set against it from the beginning.
Now I'm hoping they all just shrivel up and die, including Linspire.
There are enough distros and enough reward to have others fill the small cut when they do finally drop dead.
I'm sorry pal, but Linux is a success on the desktop. Through open and legitimate customer distribution of information Linux has gained a huge forward momentum. There are things that Linux does on the desktop that Microsoft can't hope to even come close to, even with the best hardware.
The problems with the guys that wrote the article are simply spreading FUD. Nothing more. Of course you can count and those counts are being done. As I stated there are approximately 100 million installs world-wide. That number will probably double to triple by the end of 2008. That's no failure.
You are just as miserable as they are. You see your future being put asunder by a superior product. Time will tell. I've been in this business for over 20 years and I know a success when I see it. Windows is on the slide. Linux is progressive. Windows will do nothing but loose share. Linux will do nothing but gain.
The more people know Linux is out there winning on desktops all over the world the more will understand that Linux is an winner overall. With a superior kernel, with hundreds of thousands of minds participating (world-wide), with superior minds coming up with superior products at a significantly faster rate of development, Linux can do nothing but win and win in a big way.
Microsoft is a convicted monopolist. They are being held to task on that every day. People all over the world are letting others know how and what Microsoft did and what they continue to do today by spying on you, by extorting legitimate users, by creating lock-in mechanisms in order to further their monopoly--you name it, they are doing it and it is bad.
You pal, are just strange. Don't post responses to my posts because you sound cowardly.
The count downloads all the time. But I didn't say strickly downloads. What I was saying is get estimates from the likes of the Distros. For instance, they can tell how many IPs with the Linux OS, or how many have provided info for support, etc. It isn't going to be exact. Neither is a count of windows. For instance, there has been more than a few people that have gone from windows to linux. Are you counting them in the count of Microsoft's products?
With browsers we look at how many page hits by any given browser but it really is just an estimation because some people with those same browsers never hit those pages and thus go uncounted.
This is just more MS FUD masquerading. The number of F/OSS users is very important. Incredibly important and no where near impossible to count. You can get a good estimation simply by looking at the popular distros. Which ones have a tally of how many users they support. You can bet the numbers are incredibly high. Ubuntu estimations are nearly 20 million. You can simply extrapolate from the other distros that are in use world wide and come up with at least 5 times that. That's nearly 100 million users world wide. That's a conservative estimate.
To encourage developers, commercial and otherwise, you need to provide them with numbers. The more you can verify the better off we'll be as users. You want quality games ported to OpenGL? You want applications from developers such as Photoshop? You need to provide numbers. Who out there is willing to kill the hopes of others because you think you should have all FOSS. I want these other products under Linux. Stop messing about and get it together so we all can do that with our computers that we want to do. It sucks that you will take your ideas and limit mine because you think your ideas are pure.
Get them legitimate numbers. Get more numbers. Count all you can. Publish those numbers. Make those numbers known to every segment of society (from mom and pop to big corporate). This is a must. Tell the world the numbers. They are incredibly important to know. The larger the number the better off everyone will be.
You know Microsoft is counting, but the hell with them. We should know our own position so we know where to push, when to push, and how hard. Pushing into markets, into segments, into the home, into schools, everywhere is important. Everyone needs to tell everyone else, their friends, family, acquaintances, the poor, the rich, everyone. Get the numbers out, get the ideas out. Make it happen. Make it happen now. Keep pushing it fast.
A violation of privacy is a violation of privacy whether they steal the content by copying it to some other device or by examining it to begin with. If you had a picture of your wife in your wallet you would not want others going through your wallet to look at those pictures without your *explicit* permission, even if all they were to do is look.
I don't condone what the Geek Squad guys did. But it is more important to hold the big companies to task, to really make them pay for those privacy violations. The reason is that when you get that big and you begin to disregard the privacy of others and you believe you can do what you want and that no one has the right to challenge you, then you're bound to find that more than your privacy is missing next time. You can see that by looking at the WGA/WGN utilities and then look at the 47+ other programs found in Vista that spy on you and report back to Microsoft.
There is no valid reason for the guys at Seagate to be examining the contents of a drive unless it states under warranty that it is a pertinent part of the process of determining the actual cause of the defect. Data on the drive is almost never the cause for a failed or defective drive. It is bad circuitry, bad power connectors, bad motor, defective heads, damage to the platters, etc. There very little reason for these guy at Seagate to be looking at the content of those drives. Those guys are also prone to steal too.
If you care about your identity you should be considering the seriousness of the folks at companies like Seagate even peering at your personal data. You have to trust them when you return the drive because NO one knows exactly what is on the drives and where it is all located so it is not fair to expect them to give up the rights to any of it.
Must be stealing articles from digg.com. This is yesterday's news there.
Anyway, complain about the big guys. The little guy is always tempted, but when the big guy does this shit you shut up.
Remember when the CEO of Seagate said something about regretting making all these high capacity HDDs only to find that they are being used to store all this pirated content?
Well, how on earth do you think he knew the content was there? His people are violating customer privacy by examining the contents of the drives. Can you imagine finding racy pictures of your wife or girl friend on the internet from these guys stealing your photos off crashed hard drives?
You should be seriously considering the big guys not some geek that steals some porn. Talk about a tempting situation. That's like putting a steak on the floor in front of a dog and expecting the dog to have self control and not eat it.
I will never purchase a game with ingame adverting. No one should. You bought the game, paid good money for it, and now you have to pay again by looking at banal advertising. The sherlock that thought this up should be taken out and shot, regardless of the amount of revenue.
What I'm curious about is if there is a way to block ingame advertisements with some program or filtering mechanism. Ad companies are responsible for the funding of malware to a large degree. If it weren't for the ads these adware makers wouldn't have an income. We should be suing the advertisers directly instead of letting our kids become bombarded with constant ads.
A computer game is immersive. We don't need to be bothered by advertisers trying to sell us something. These people are the falling off edge of stupidity. They all should be barred from anything computers.
As far as I can tell there is no Google desktop for Linux. What I see is their indexing and searching portion. That's a far cry from the windows version.
I can't tell yet if it is just a "wine" implementation of whether it is actually a solid Linux native application.
I don't care if it is proprietary. I want an OS that runs programs regardless of who writes them. I just don't want the underpinnings of the OS to be controlled by one company especially one that is a known convicted monopolist that threatens competition with lawsuits instead of competing on their own merits.
X11 systems support 3d hardware acceleration and with Beryl/compiz you have full 3d rendering of hte desktop. So, your point about X11 not being up to snuff is incorrect.
Your point about OSX not having the hardware previously is also false. Macintosh computers, even those based on X11 have had 3d accelerated hardware for just about as long as the PC has. The reason is that it uses the hardware that the PC uses.
As far as WDDM goes it is a gimmick and unnecessary done for the reason of making microsoft money. Initially it was to improve development but by now those that do that sort of development are much better than Microsoft is at software--heh, proven by the likes of how Vista is programmed.
Re:Cost?
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That OEM version of Vista is now tied to your motherboard. If you had a retail version it would not be tied. If your motherboard goes and you do not replace it with exactly the same motherboard you have to pay Microsoft again for another copy of Vista probably running you another $240.00
Yes, Microsoft changed their licensing on how many times that could be installed on a new motherboard and it relented, but they have never relented about OEM copies. You bought an OEM then you are stuck with it on that board. There are no options unless you lie...and who knows how much more effort MS put into ensuring you don't try to lie about moving that OEM license to another board.
Re:XP is _still_ better then linux and it's 7 year
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Mark Shuttleworth estimates that there are 20 million Ubuntu users. If I recall Fedora Core 6 had 1 million downloads in under a week. They are on Fedora 7 now.
The other distributions are known to have sizable numbers also. Worldwide there's estimated to be over 100 million installs. That is a significant number of installations and users. Of course this covers desktop an servers. This does not count the number of devices with the OS embedded.
So, when you state how low a percentage Linux has you really should consider that percentage adds up to a serious number of users worldwide.
Re:XP is _still_ better then linux and it's 7 year
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What he's stated is false. Linux is ready for your desktop and more. It is a cool operating system that is extremely stable and outstandingly developed. It is perfect for anything you want to do with it including some gaming. Quake 3 and 4 have native clients if you want to play them but there are other games out there too.
The issue with a lack of games isn't a big deal for 90% of the average Joes out there. It is only the gamer/enthusiast that expects gaming support from their rigs.
If you are an average Joe you can quite easily install Linux and use it without one word being typed in the terminal or at any sort of character prompt. You can, if you want. That's the beauty of Linux. You can do it if you want to. You aren't required though. Sometimes it is just easier to type a command. If you aren't good at typing you won't be doing much forum posting, chatting, or emails either. I know, the command structure can be archaic. But if you don't understand them then just use the graphical equivalents.
What he's pointing out is one flaw that I do agree with. A universal applications distro installer is highly important and it must operate offline.
Gaming is an issue but the major problem has to do with the monopoly powers that be. They have locked you into direct x so you can't play on other platforms. If developers were smart they'd be developing for OpenGL. But considering that Microsoft discontinued OpenGL in Vista and that they own a good number of game development houses you can begin to see how they are using their monopoly to use directx to be a locking mechanism to keep you on their OS platform.
Essentially, nothing this guys says is really valid. He is exaggerating problems of 2 years ago--exaggerations then, they are super exaggerations now.
He'll never know. He'll never understand that Windows, even Vista, is a drm nightmare and Microsoft's own spyware is a huge violation of your privacy.
Linux can be configured to your hearts content. It is a great OS that does what you want. It doesn't cost an arm and a leg and can be made to look beautiful while operating fantastically.
That's the truth and I used to be someone that complained about everything in Linux. Now I see the Linux industry listened and fix most of my concerns.
Re:Vista Install speed
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depends on whether you do an upgrade or new. also, in addition, if you come at the install with a blank hdd using an upgrade version of vista you must do 2 installs. one for the initial and one for the upgrade. that upgrade part is very long. if you don't have sata drivers (as an example) you could extend that install time greatly.
because of the drm, spyware from microsoft, and the desire to never pay more money to threat-monger that steals ip itself and is a criminally convicted monopolist.
What's amazing is that Linux is so much powerful than the toy OS one would have to classify say "Windows" as. Linux is much better designed, more secure, has faster development, and will give more knowledge to you than any other OS. Windows is sort of toyish. It has been that way from the first time I used it back in 1984 (I think that was when I saw it first). I ran it off one floppy drive and had to swap out floppies to use it as I went. It was incredibly slow, almost incompetently slow.
I've watched Window from then and watched the industry leaders and trend setters. If you carefully follow what has happened in the industry you'll note that Windows really was quite rinky dink for a long time. Only under Windows 95 did it start to flesh out, but there was a lot of toyishness to it then too. Unfortunately that toyishness is still there.
I've watched the Linux community now for the past 4 years and I have been very impressed at the speed of their advancement and the sheer quality of the work on the kernel and interface. Granted there are still some toyish aspects to it but my educated opinion tells me that it has exceeded that of Windows.
Vista, today, isn't much more than a bigger pigish toy with a bit of lipstick. I have no desire to see anyone waste their time on a closed source environment that is only documented as well as Microsoft permits it to be, and only permits it to the extent that it doesn't allow another company to produce a product that competes with its own.
I think generally, and mostly overall, few would consider Linux to be a toy, at least moreso than Windows is. Even the term Windows is toyish. Vista is just a theft term with misleading connotations. Heh, that's how I perceive it. I remember windows meant windows on the screen. Now Vista is supposed to mean expansive view but it has nothing to do with windows on the screen. On top of that it's not even expansive as Microsoft has done so much to inhibit our free and open use of our computers.
It is better than stealing everyone's IP, claiming everyone is stealing yours, getting street cred, and having press in all the trades and regular news media.
The reason is they want hardware manufacturer complying with their driver signing model, not for the money made certifying it but for the fact that they are implementing DRM at the driver level. They have "drafted" the hardware manufacturers into complying with their DRM (Draconian Restrictions Management). Essentially trusted computing without the trust. Trusted computing allows for us to trust them and them to trust us. Now it is that they have no trust in us and we have to question whether we really trust them.
Sudo is not runas. Never was. UAC is simply an elevation tool for rights which certifies only a small portion of functionality in Windows Vista.
Essentially UAC is an under implemented runas tool.
The developers weren't used to writing for a secure OS because of a design philosophy that let everyone down--the developers of software and the users, as well as administrators.
The losses due to this are staggering. Probably more than it costs to develop Vista by many orders of magnitude.
That's a question of morals and ethics. I must ask myself whether you are a lawyer. Just joking...joking about the lawyer thing...the ethics and morals things has nothing to do with the joke. You don't joke about bait and switch on customers.
Admittedly it is hard to displace a monopoly that used illegal tactics to get to where they are and did it over a 20 year period. It isn't hard to understand that. But over the next 10-15 years expect to see that market share drop, a notable drop. What looks like 90+ percent now in 5 years could by 80% or even less. In 10 years 70%. In 15 years 50%.
Windows isn't superior. It has been the relatively brain dead approach consumers (business, techies, and the average Joe) have taken to adopting technologies over the past 2 decades that has put us in this position. Also, many of Microsoft's tactics weren't out in the open so we weren't aware of them and couldn't react to offset them.
Now we know about how Microsoft has used it's power, and we have viable alternatives to using those products, and we have fleshed out what the average Joe and Jane will do with their units and have alternatives to those as well so we can work forward from there. A few killer apps on an alternative platform and you can bit into that market share pretty quickly.
Microsoft has diversified. They make money from a lot of things now. At least Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and most certainly Paul Allen do. Paul Allen I believe has very little connection with Microsoft these days. Gates' portfolio is rife with investments in the bio-medics field and other scientific areas. In the event of a collapse, the collapse at MS will start slow and build up momentum and then there'll be a big drop. But Gates, Ballmer, and Allen will be sufficiently divested to shield themselves. When they do drop they will loose more than just market share. They'll loose the ability to compete because their employees will be jumping ship like rats from a sinking ship, not to mention they are not innovators, they are copiers of technology.
This is inevitable. To say that bringing down a monopoly is not possible, well, look at Standard Oil. They are no longer the monopoly they were once, if they even exist today. They are not even a name most of the current generation know.
So, to say that Apple won't supplant Microsoft is sort of moot, as we all agree that right now it won't happen, but what will happen is that at some point they'll be whittled away at and then you can be sure that some of the tactics they used years ago to illegally establish their monopoly will be tried again and they'll get caught, much sooner, because we have learned about their tactics--as they have been disclosed to the public record and companies can find out about that.
Linux has an estimated 100 million users. Those didn't come from no where. They took a part of that market share. It isn't a tiny--a 100 million anything isn't small--it is significant. It has tremendous potential to impact any company. Even with the fragmented Linux community (all the different distros, projects, etc.) the community still managed to get 5 times the number of Macintosh boxes running Linux. Due to recent ease of use and consumer level focus on products you are going to see much greater adoption of Linux in the next 2 years. I'd estimate significantly large number of people will adopt it.
I know a lot of people that bought XP because it looked better than win2k, just as those people bought win95 because it looked better than Win 3.x. Granted there are other major updates in each of those products, but all of those updates were to help consumers get what they want. Vista's is an update that helps content creators and Microsoft control your computer, essentially nullifying what was accomplished with win2k and XP.
This is an opportunity that Linux should not and will not miss. It has already started taking advantage of that and that has greatly impacted Microsoft's public persona--with all their threats of lawsuits over IP violation. Microsoft is going to be hurting in a few years, and they'll never have the growth potential they had in the past two decades. If you are not improving you are declining. You plead for adoption because your situat
I have the action pack subscription and that gives me 10 licenses to Vista Business.
I also run a computer repair shop where I encounter computers with problems day in and day out, with a few having Vista.
I also read constantly and have had to do so to learn as much as possible in order to protect my customers. For instance, I read a ton about malware and malware removal tools.
I also have read extensively on the WGN and WGA tools and how Microsoft has implemented DRM and other privacy violating technologies into XP and Vista (Vista is much much worse and much more aggressive).
So, I have Vista, though I have it installed on two machines at work I do not use it any more, any more that is other than to learn and diagnose issues with it. I do not wish to support Microsoft any longer so when my action pack subscription expires I'll be moving all my computers from those licenses to my own (I've been converting my licenses for some time so I have very few reliant on licenses from the action pack subscription), or moving more of my machines to Linux.
I am not an advocate of technologies that spy. Microsoft's WGA/WGN is a spyware tool disguised as something else. In WA state (and I believe CA) they were sued over implementing it as the distribution method was done in the same manner as much of the malware tools are distributed.
Vista has some of the same spying technology and more. This was implemented and done so without the knowledge of the consumer. They did not know that Microsoft put technology that spies on them. You steal, you get convicted, you pay the penalty. But you also need to go through due process. Microsoft decides you are no longer entitled you can still use the product until they get the court to rule against you. You are not in violation of a law until you are proven to be in violation in a court of law. Only then can you be denied.
You don't like these facilities then you make that known. You bring it out. You let others know what is happening. You spread the word. Then you find an alternative or refuse to upgrade to much more offensive spying system (such as that in Vista, vs what's in XP.)
Linux is a great desktop alternative. There are estimated to be nearly 100 million Linux users world wide. 100 million is a significant target audience for anyone trying to produce a product for sale. I don't believe in "only" free software or even disagree with proprietary software. I disagree with proprietary standards that force users and lock them into certain platforms. I am all for commercial gaming on Linux with closed source development. I do not think those closed source products should use ANY code from the open source community, but I do think they should be able to operate their software on an open source platform. You use source code from the open source community and you redistribute it then you should be required to pass your changes back to the community. No stealing open source code.
This should not deter us from staying in the community and discussing the threats by Microsoft of IP violations and royalty payments and law suits. Hopefully this is not just an attempt by them to change the subject. Get you arguing over a lesser problem and push ahead with the more egregious issue. It isn't beyond them to try something like that.
ONLY OEM versions require a new license. But on each OEM hardware case from the likes of HP, Gateway, Dell, etc there's a sticker. That code is not the code used to activate that current OEM copy. That installed copy is a "royals" oem and doesn't require activation.
What does this little tidbit mean?
It means that the royal cd that you received (or the restore partition files) looks at your mobo and determines if it needs activation. If the motherboard bios says it is from that royal OEM you need not activate. So, you can buy another used board and keep that active for some time. OR
You can buy a new replacement motherboard for that computer and use the code on the sticker on the outside of the case and activate that.
BUT.
If you have a retail copy of XP you can continue to use that forever as long as you only have it installed on one machine at a time, no matter how many times you replace that motherboard.
SO.
Let's not mislead others into thinking they are loosing their license when their machine's motherboard goes tits up.
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Every US Citizen is protected by the Constitution, even those citizens that are terrorists. What you may not fully understand is that when you become a terrorist and you commit terrorists acts against your own government then you are considered an unlawful enemy combatant. Due to the fact that there's a war going on we can't have enemy combatants released back to attack the US and in particular those with less than virtuous desires to commit acts of terrorism against our civilian population.
So, every citizen is entitled to protections of the Constitution unless they are deemed unlawful enemy combatants. They may be enemy combatants and be lawful, such as a soldier on the enemy's side. But we still don't release those combatants unless the war is over or some other conditions are met such as a prisoner exchange--which will never happen with terrorists.
One could claim that the person that was a citizen that joined the enemy is a traitor and/or gave up their rights to protections of the Constitution upon their very first act. Much of what an unlawful enemy combatant is has yet to be really challenged.
I do understand what you mean when you say that someone, at some future time, might be considered by the government as a terrorist by simply participating in an act of protest, and thus potentially not be covered, but currently we are not there. Hopefully, those in charge of our government will be long lost memories when and if that were to occur.
It is those that are willing to give up control of their personal private lives that will propel us to that point in time. Luckily that will occur far down the road and we will know who to blame--those today demeaning and belittling the civilized covenant of Privacy.
We've all, every one of us, absolutely every single solitary soul on this planet, has done something wrong that we are not proud of. Whether it is important enough to desire privacy so that others may not find out and/or misuse it is a matter of conscious or even law.
Look at Bill Clinton getting a blow job in the White House? Did he have something to hide? Does he wish his act was kept private? Why would any person believe they have less to hide than the President of the United States of America? It is, after all, the highest office one can achieve.
It isn't called the Nothing To Hide Policy and we have a policy of privacy for a reason. Not everyone maintains the same sensibilities as every other person. We are not all made the same and we don't all react the same.
To give up your privacy is to weaken the privacy of others. By virtue of allowing your privacy to be violated you are allowing them to violate someone else's privacy that may not desire it because you embolden them while demeaning and belittling the wishes of others. As I said, all people have something to hide, whether it is a crime or what might be considered an unethical act or an act of perversion (being gay is considered by most religions to be an act of perversion.) Even the Bible doesn't permit homosexual acts. So, if you don't believe in religion and you think being gay is OK, then you decide to open that up about someone in public or even to the law enforcement agencies, then you are subjecting someone who feels they may (or do) have something to hide (and desire privacy because of how they feel).
You can't get around saying you don't need privacy because you have nothing to hide, primarily because that is based upon your own value system; due to the fact that you don't value things the same way as others. We have court documents that are sealed? Why? We have documents about the Kennedy Assassination that are sealed and no one can read those documents for some time to come, why? We have people that have medical conditions they don't wish to disclose and desire privacy. Why?
Once you give up privacy you give potential abusers of power the ability to abuse you and everyone else. What you think about privacy may not be what your family members desire about privacy. Even your children wish they could lock their door to their room and ask that you knock before entering because even a child has common sense and understands the need for privacy.
In the Chicadillo case (the first admitted serial killer case in the former USSR) the law enforcement agencies used the pretense of gay men have to be the culprit because of their lifestyle. They invaded their homes, their domain, their lifestyle in order to find out who and what and then arrested them and subjected them to horrific interrogations. It wasn't a gay person that committed the serial murders. It was a man with a wife and children.
Anyone that believes they have no desire of privacy or need of privacy are damaging the future for everyone else. You diminish my rights, you diminish my beliefs, you diminish my feelings and emotions when you say I should not have any rights because only those that commit crimes desire privacy.
It just doesn't work. Privacy should be maintained at all costs and should be predominant in most everything you do. If we undo privacy we undo a lot of the protections that have been in place within our legal system for the past couple centuries. Even the special relationship between the husband and wife come into question because then, due to "no" privacy, the husband or wife can be compelled to testify against their spouse. Even though this law was established to protect that relationship it plays predominantly into the the realm of privacy. Because if there is no need for privacy then the husband or wife can be compelled to disclose what happens in private with each other.
Without privacy we will be in a position of allowing the government, religious organizations, lawyers, and other non-polic
I'd equate it more to a ball and chain. What's worse is that MS is trying to hamstring the industry by injecting cheap severely cut drugs (cut with potentially harmful chemicals) into the veins of the open source industry.
I don't care about any of those companies that signed an agreement. I would rather have not had anyone sign, especially since the OSS industry has been so set against it from the beginning.
Now I'm hoping they all just shrivel up and die, including Linspire.
There are enough distros and enough reward to have others fill the small cut when they do finally drop dead.
I'm sorry pal, but Linux is a success on the desktop. Through open and legitimate customer distribution of information Linux has gained a huge forward momentum. There are things that Linux does on the desktop that Microsoft can't hope to even come close to, even with the best hardware.
The problems with the guys that wrote the article are simply spreading FUD. Nothing more. Of course you can count and those counts are being done. As I stated there are approximately 100 million installs world-wide. That number will probably double to triple by the end of 2008. That's no failure.
You are just as miserable as they are. You see your future being put asunder by a superior product. Time will tell. I've been in this business for over 20 years and I know a success when I see it. Windows is on the slide. Linux is progressive. Windows will do nothing but loose share. Linux will do nothing but gain.
The more people know Linux is out there winning on desktops all over the world the more will understand that Linux is an winner overall. With a superior kernel, with hundreds of thousands of minds participating (world-wide), with superior minds coming up with superior products at a significantly faster rate of development, Linux can do nothing but win and win in a big way.
Microsoft is a convicted monopolist. They are being held to task on that every day. People all over the world are letting others know how and what Microsoft did and what they continue to do today by spying on you, by extorting legitimate users, by creating lock-in mechanisms in order to further their monopoly--you name it, they are doing it and it is bad.
You pal, are just strange. Don't post responses to my posts because you sound cowardly.
The count downloads all the time. But I didn't say strickly downloads. What I was saying is get estimates from the likes of the Distros. For instance, they can tell how many IPs with the Linux OS, or how many have provided info for support, etc. It isn't going to be exact. Neither is a count of windows. For instance, there has been more than a few people that have gone from windows to linux. Are you counting them in the count of Microsoft's products?
With browsers we look at how many page hits by any given browser but it really is just an estimation because some people with those same browsers never hit those pages and thus go uncounted.
This is just more MS FUD masquerading. The number of F/OSS users is very important. Incredibly important and no where near impossible to count. You can get a good estimation simply by looking at the popular distros. Which ones have a tally of how many users they support. You can bet the numbers are incredibly high. Ubuntu estimations are nearly 20 million. You can simply extrapolate from the other distros that are in use world wide and come up with at least 5 times that. That's nearly 100 million users world wide. That's a conservative estimate.
To encourage developers, commercial and otherwise, you need to provide them with numbers. The more you can verify the better off we'll be as users. You want quality games ported to OpenGL? You want applications from developers such as Photoshop? You need to provide numbers. Who out there is willing to kill the hopes of others because you think you should have all FOSS. I want these other products under Linux. Stop messing about and get it together so we all can do that with our computers that we want to do. It sucks that you will take your ideas and limit mine because you think your ideas are pure.
Get them legitimate numbers. Get more numbers. Count all you can. Publish those numbers. Make those numbers known to every segment of society (from mom and pop to big corporate). This is a must. Tell the world the numbers. They are incredibly important to know. The larger the number the better off everyone will be.
You know Microsoft is counting, but the hell with them. We should know our own position so we know where to push, when to push, and how hard. Pushing into markets, into segments, into the home, into schools, everywhere is important. Everyone needs to tell everyone else, their friends, family, acquaintances, the poor, the rich, everyone. Get the numbers out, get the ideas out. Make it happen. Make it happen now. Keep pushing it fast.
A violation of privacy is a violation of privacy whether they steal the content by copying it to some other device or by examining it to begin with. If you had a picture of your wife in your wallet you would not want others going through your wallet to look at those pictures without your *explicit* permission, even if all they were to do is look.
I don't condone what the Geek Squad guys did. But it is more important to hold the big companies to task, to really make them pay for those privacy violations. The reason is that when you get that big and you begin to disregard the privacy of others and you believe you can do what you want and that no one has the right to challenge you, then you're bound to find that more than your privacy is missing next time. You can see that by looking at the WGA/WGN utilities and then look at the 47+ other programs found in Vista that spy on you and report back to Microsoft.
There is no valid reason for the guys at Seagate to be examining the contents of a drive unless it states under warranty that it is a pertinent part of the process of determining the actual cause of the defect. Data on the drive is almost never the cause for a failed or defective drive. It is bad circuitry, bad power connectors, bad motor, defective heads, damage to the platters, etc. There very little reason for these guy at Seagate to be looking at the content of those drives. Those guys are also prone to steal too.
If you care about your identity you should be considering the seriousness of the folks at companies like Seagate even peering at your personal data. You have to trust them when you return the drive because NO one knows exactly what is on the drives and where it is all located so it is not fair to expect them to give up the rights to any of it.
Must be stealing articles from digg.com. This is yesterday's news there.
Anyway, complain about the big guys. The little guy is always tempted, but when the big guy does this shit you shut up.
Remember when the CEO of Seagate said something about regretting making all these high capacity HDDs only to find that they are being used to store all this pirated content?
Well, how on earth do you think he knew the content was there? His people are violating customer privacy by examining the contents of the drives. Can you imagine finding racy pictures of your wife or girl friend on the internet from these guys stealing your photos off crashed hard drives?
You should be seriously considering the big guys not some geek that steals some porn. Talk about a tempting situation. That's like putting a steak on the floor in front of a dog and expecting the dog to have self control and not eat it.
I will never purchase a game with ingame adverting. No one should. You bought the game, paid good money for it, and now you have to pay again by looking at banal advertising. The sherlock that thought this up should be taken out and shot, regardless of the amount of revenue.
What I'm curious about is if there is a way to block ingame advertisements with some program or filtering mechanism. Ad companies are responsible for the funding of malware to a large degree. If it weren't for the ads these adware makers wouldn't have an income. We should be suing the advertisers directly instead of letting our kids become bombarded with constant ads.
A computer game is immersive. We don't need to be bothered by advertisers trying to sell us something. These people are the falling off edge of stupidity. They all should be barred from anything computers.
As far as I can tell there is no Google desktop for Linux. What I see is their indexing and searching portion. That's a far cry from the windows version.
I can't tell yet if it is just a "wine" implementation of whether it is actually a solid Linux native application.
I don't care if it is proprietary. I want an OS that runs programs regardless of who writes them. I just don't want the underpinnings of the OS to be controlled by one company especially one that is a known convicted monopolist that threatens competition with lawsuits instead of competing on their own merits.
X11 systems support 3d hardware acceleration and with Beryl/compiz you have full 3d rendering of hte desktop. So, your point about X11 not being up to snuff is incorrect.
Your point about OSX not having the hardware previously is also false. Macintosh computers, even those based on X11 have had 3d accelerated hardware for just about as long as the PC has. The reason is that it uses the hardware that the PC uses.
As far as WDDM goes it is a gimmick and unnecessary done for the reason of making microsoft money. Initially it was to improve development but by now those that do that sort of development are much better than Microsoft is at software--heh, proven by the likes of how Vista is programmed.
That OEM version of Vista is now tied to your motherboard. If you had a retail version it would not be tied. If your motherboard goes and you do not replace it with exactly the same motherboard you have to pay Microsoft again for another copy of Vista probably running you another $240.00
Yes, Microsoft changed their licensing on how many times that could be installed on a new motherboard and it relented, but they have never relented about OEM copies. You bought an OEM then you are stuck with it on that board. There are no options unless you lie...and who knows how much more effort MS put into ensuring you don't try to lie about moving that OEM license to another board.
Mark Shuttleworth estimates that there are 20 million Ubuntu users. If I recall Fedora Core 6 had 1 million downloads in under a week. They are on Fedora 7 now.
The other distributions are known to have sizable numbers also. Worldwide there's estimated to be over 100 million installs. That is a significant number of installations and users. Of course this covers desktop an servers. This does not count the number of devices with the OS embedded.
So, when you state how low a percentage Linux has you really should consider that percentage adds up to a serious number of users worldwide.
What he's stated is false. Linux is ready for your desktop and more. It is a cool operating system that is extremely stable and outstandingly developed. It is perfect for anything you want to do with it including some gaming. Quake 3 and 4 have native clients if you want to play them but there are other games out there too.
The issue with a lack of games isn't a big deal for 90% of the average Joes out there. It is only the gamer/enthusiast that expects gaming support from their rigs.
If you are an average Joe you can quite easily install Linux and use it without one word being typed in the terminal or at any sort of character prompt. You can, if you want. That's the beauty of Linux. You can do it if you want to. You aren't required though. Sometimes it is just easier to type a command. If you aren't good at typing you won't be doing much forum posting, chatting, or emails either. I know, the command structure can be archaic. But if you don't understand them then just use the graphical equivalents.
What he's pointing out is one flaw that I do agree with. A universal applications distro installer is highly important and it must operate offline.
Gaming is an issue but the major problem has to do with the monopoly powers that be. They have locked you into direct x so you can't play on other platforms. If developers were smart they'd be developing for OpenGL. But considering that Microsoft discontinued OpenGL in Vista and that they own a good number of game development houses you can begin to see how they are using their monopoly to use directx to be a locking mechanism to keep you on their OS platform.
Essentially, nothing this guys says is really valid. He is exaggerating problems of 2 years ago--exaggerations then, they are super exaggerations now.
He'll never know. He'll never understand that Windows, even Vista, is a drm nightmare and Microsoft's own spyware is a huge violation of your privacy.
Linux can be configured to your hearts content. It is a great OS that does what you want. It doesn't cost an arm and a leg and can be made to look beautiful while operating fantastically.
That's the truth and I used to be someone that complained about everything in Linux. Now I see the Linux industry listened and fix most of my concerns.
depends on whether you do an upgrade or new. also, in addition, if you come at the install with a blank hdd using an upgrade version of vista you must do 2 installs. one for the initial and one for the upgrade. that upgrade part is very long. if you don't have sata drivers (as an example) you could extend that install time greatly.
worldwide it comes to approximately 3100 copies a day per country. not remarkable.
because of the drm, spyware from microsoft, and the desire to never pay more money to threat-monger that steals ip itself and is a criminally convicted monopolist.
What's amazing is that Linux is so much powerful than the toy OS one would have to classify say "Windows" as. Linux is much better designed, more secure, has faster development, and will give more knowledge to you than any other OS. Windows is sort of toyish. It has been that way from the first time I used it back in 1984 (I think that was when I saw it first). I ran it off one floppy drive and had to swap out floppies to use it as I went. It was incredibly slow, almost incompetently slow.
I've watched Window from then and watched the industry leaders and trend setters. If you carefully follow what has happened in the industry you'll note that Windows really was quite rinky dink for a long time. Only under Windows 95 did it start to flesh out, but there was a lot of toyishness to it then too. Unfortunately that toyishness is still there.
I've watched the Linux community now for the past 4 years and I have been very impressed at the speed of their advancement and the sheer quality of the work on the kernel and interface. Granted there are still some toyish aspects to it but my educated opinion tells me that it has exceeded that of Windows.
Vista, today, isn't much more than a bigger pigish toy with a bit of lipstick. I have no desire to see anyone waste their time on a closed source environment that is only documented as well as Microsoft permits it to be, and only permits it to the extent that it doesn't allow another company to produce a product that competes with its own.
I think generally, and mostly overall, few would consider Linux to be a toy, at least moreso than Windows is. Even the term Windows is toyish. Vista is just a theft term with misleading connotations. Heh, that's how I perceive it. I remember windows meant windows on the screen. Now Vista is supposed to mean expansive view but it has nothing to do with windows on the screen. On top of that it's not even expansive as Microsoft has done so much to inhibit our free and open use of our computers.
It is better than stealing everyone's IP, claiming everyone is stealing yours, getting street cred, and having press in all the trades and regular news media.
The reason is they want hardware manufacturer complying with their driver signing model, not for the money made certifying it but for the fact that they are implementing DRM at the driver level. They have "drafted" the hardware manufacturers into complying with their DRM (Draconian Restrictions Management). Essentially trusted computing without the trust. Trusted computing allows for us to trust them and them to trust us. Now it is that they have no trust in us and we have to question whether we really trust them.
Sudo is not runas. Never was. UAC is simply an elevation tool for rights which certifies only a small portion of functionality in Windows Vista.
Essentially UAC is an under implemented runas tool.
The developers weren't used to writing for a secure OS because of a design philosophy that let everyone down--the developers of software and the users, as well as administrators.
The losses due to this are staggering. Probably more than it costs to develop Vista by many orders of magnitude.
That's a question of morals and ethics. I must ask myself whether you are a lawyer. Just joking...joking about the lawyer thing...the ethics and morals things has nothing to do with the joke. You don't joke about bait and switch on customers.
Admittedly it is hard to displace a monopoly that used illegal tactics to get to where they are and did it over a 20 year period. It isn't hard to understand that. But over the next 10-15 years expect to see that market share drop, a notable drop. What looks like 90+ percent now in 5 years could by 80% or even less. In 10 years 70%. In 15 years 50%.
Windows isn't superior. It has been the relatively brain dead approach consumers (business, techies, and the average Joe) have taken to adopting technologies over the past 2 decades that has put us in this position. Also, many of Microsoft's tactics weren't out in the open so we weren't aware of them and couldn't react to offset them.
Now we know about how Microsoft has used it's power, and we have viable alternatives to using those products, and we have fleshed out what the average Joe and Jane will do with their units and have alternatives to those as well so we can work forward from there. A few killer apps on an alternative platform and you can bit into that market share pretty quickly.
Microsoft has diversified. They make money from a lot of things now. At least Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and most certainly Paul Allen do. Paul Allen I believe has very little connection with Microsoft these days. Gates' portfolio is rife with investments in the bio-medics field and other scientific areas. In the event of a collapse, the collapse at MS will start slow and build up momentum and then there'll be a big drop. But Gates, Ballmer, and Allen will be sufficiently divested to shield themselves. When they do drop they will loose more than just market share. They'll loose the ability to compete because their employees will be jumping ship like rats from a sinking ship, not to mention they are not innovators, they are copiers of technology.
This is inevitable. To say that bringing down a monopoly is not possible, well, look at Standard Oil. They are no longer the monopoly they were once, if they even exist today. They are not even a name most of the current generation know.
So, to say that Apple won't supplant Microsoft is sort of moot, as we all agree that right now it won't happen, but what will happen is that at some point they'll be whittled away at and then you can be sure that some of the tactics they used years ago to illegally establish their monopoly will be tried again and they'll get caught, much sooner, because we have learned about their tactics--as they have been disclosed to the public record and companies can find out about that.
Linux has an estimated 100 million users. Those didn't come from no where. They took a part of that market share. It isn't a tiny--a 100 million anything isn't small--it is significant. It has tremendous potential to impact any company. Even with the fragmented Linux community (all the different distros, projects, etc.) the community still managed to get 5 times the number of Macintosh boxes running Linux. Due to recent ease of use and consumer level focus on products you are going to see much greater adoption of Linux in the next 2 years. I'd estimate significantly large number of people will adopt it.
I know a lot of people that bought XP because it looked better than win2k, just as those people bought win95 because it looked better than Win 3.x. Granted there are other major updates in each of those products, but all of those updates were to help consumers get what they want. Vista's is an update that helps content creators and Microsoft control your computer, essentially nullifying what was accomplished with win2k and XP.
This is an opportunity that Linux should not and will not miss. It has already started taking advantage of that and that has greatly impacted Microsoft's public persona--with all their threats of lawsuits over IP violation. Microsoft is going to be hurting in a few years, and they'll never have the growth potential they had in the past two decades. If you are not improving you are declining. You plead for adoption because your situat
I have the action pack subscription and that gives me 10 licenses to Vista Business.
I also run a computer repair shop where I encounter computers with problems day in and day out, with a few having Vista.
I also read constantly and have had to do so to learn as much as possible in order to protect my customers. For instance, I read a ton about malware and malware removal tools.
I also have read extensively on the WGN and WGA tools and how Microsoft has implemented DRM and other privacy violating technologies into XP and Vista (Vista is much much worse and much more aggressive).
So, I have Vista, though I have it installed on two machines at work I do not use it any more, any more that is other than to learn and diagnose issues with it. I do not wish to support Microsoft any longer so when my action pack subscription expires I'll be moving all my computers from those licenses to my own (I've been converting my licenses for some time so I have very few reliant on licenses from the action pack subscription), or moving more of my machines to Linux.
I am not an advocate of technologies that spy. Microsoft's WGA/WGN is a spyware tool disguised as something else. In WA state (and I believe CA) they were sued over implementing it as the distribution method was done in the same manner as much of the malware tools are distributed.
Vista has some of the same spying technology and more. This was implemented and done so without the knowledge of the consumer. They did not know that Microsoft put technology that spies on them. You steal, you get convicted, you pay the penalty. But you also need to go through due process. Microsoft decides you are no longer entitled you can still use the product until they get the court to rule against you. You are not in violation of a law until you are proven to be in violation in a court of law. Only then can you be denied.
You don't like these facilities then you make that known. You bring it out. You let others know what is happening. You spread the word. Then you find an alternative or refuse to upgrade to much more offensive spying system (such as that in Vista, vs what's in XP.)
Linux is a great desktop alternative. There are estimated to be nearly 100 million Linux users world wide. 100 million is a significant target audience for anyone trying to produce a product for sale. I don't believe in "only" free software or even disagree with proprietary software. I disagree with proprietary standards that force users and lock them into certain platforms. I am all for commercial gaming on Linux with closed source development. I do not think those closed source products should use ANY code from the open source community, but I do think they should be able to operate their software on an open source platform. You use source code from the open source community and you redistribute it then you should be required to pass your changes back to the community. No stealing open source code.
This should not deter us from staying in the community and discussing the threats by Microsoft of IP violations and royalty payments and law suits. Hopefully this is not just an attempt by them to change the subject. Get you arguing over a lesser problem and push ahead with the more egregious issue. It isn't beyond them to try something like that.
ONLY OEM versions require a new license. But on each OEM hardware case from the likes of HP, Gateway, Dell, etc there's a sticker. That code is not the code used to activate that current OEM copy. That installed copy is a "royals" oem and doesn't require activation.
What does this little tidbit mean?
It means that the royal cd that you received (or the restore partition files) looks at your mobo and determines if it needs activation. If the motherboard bios says it is from that royal OEM you need not activate. So, you can buy another used board and keep that active for some time. OR
You can buy a new replacement motherboard for that computer and use the code on the sticker on the outside of the case and activate that.
BUT.
If you have a retail copy of XP you can continue to use that forever as long as you only have it installed on one machine at a time, no matter how many times you replace that motherboard.
SO.
Let's not mislead others into thinking they are loosing their license when their machine's motherboard goes tits up.