When Apache first began, it was frequently patched because of its instability at the time. The developers took to calling it "a patch-y" web server, and the name stuck. "A patch-y" became "Apache". There's no sport team mascot mentally to it, it just became the name of the server. If they'd taken to calling it some name that sounded vaguely like "Egyptian", they would have named it that, too.
I wrote about this very same thing four or so years ago! If I knew it was a worthwhile idea then, I would have done something with it. Instead I thought, "hey, I'm just a little kid, what the fuck do I know?" Hell, when I was thirteen or so I told my parents I had this crazy idea for magnetically powered trains, only to be informed that some crackpot had beaten me to the punch by twenty years with MagLev. Ever since, I just assumed that whatever I come up with have been already discovered. Damnit damnit damnit to hell!
Oh, and to whoever was asking about the uses for this: data can be hidden with system files, where the information will not be moved. It can be used to conceal anything that needs concealing, preferably in conjuction with encryption. This provides both the benefit of additional security for the data, as well as making it less likely for someone to stumble upon the data and say, "hey, this is valid data!" Encryption is good for that sort of thing sometimes. So if Dear Old Bush's Bastards Enforcing the Right (D.O.B.B.E.R.) come after your essays concerning the effects that Bush's policies are having on our already horrid relationship with the rest of the world, those bungling bumpkins from the Three-Letter-Agencies will hopefully not be able to discover "Anti-American" things. Or you might not want your girlfriend to discover your dirty, dirty porn collection. Or you just might be one paranoid kinda guy. There's a lot of uses, really.
Here's the thing, though. DMCA or no, they're using the CD as it was intended: a medium for playing music. There's no difference between a boombox, a 10,000$ stereo system, or a CD-ROM drive and Winamp, as far as the CD is concerned.
So if CDFreaks has found a way to make the music playable on a computer, then more fucking power to them.
At least they're starting with something for targeted ads. This will hopefully bring up revenues, and (if implemented in that market) maybe save some of our favorite web sites.
At that same time, I fear for my privacy. =/
Using liquid nitrogen, while expensive, will certainly save money. Our current power grid can lose twenty percent or more power in transit. Keeping a constant flow of liquid nitrogen is pittances compared to the enormous savings of a 25% increase in power distribution. That's a LOT of power. Granted, we won't reap the benefits of this until after much of the United States has better power cabling, but this is just a start.
|JH|
Judge Jackson's disregard of Linux's viability in toppling Microsoft brings up an extremely important question: Is Linux really able to bring down Microsoft?
Judge Jackson is probably right in that Linux at this time does not have the capability to replace Microsoft. I don't see Linux or any other UN*X stealing Microsoft's market share, except in the server catagory. Why the exception? UN*X does very well as servers; this is well known.
Most Linux users, however, will also recognize that Linux and other Unices are not very user friendly. And unfortunately for Linux, the vast majority of computers are not servers. They are also not operated by knowledgeable, eager to learn users. Joe User wants a computer that is easy to use, operates on a DWIM basis, and generally make life easy for him. Linux does not operate this way. One of the most frequent complains I hear concerning Linux is the difficulty in installing it. If new users cannot get past installing Linux, what happens when they try to configure their systems?
Besides not being easy to use, Linux lacks a central repository for information. Freshmeat and others provide a way to find and download the latest patches, yes; but what/are/ those programs in the first place? Further, not every program is listed on Freshmeat. How is our friend, Joe User, to know what GNU and FSF is? How does Joe User figure out what the difference between X Windows and X11 is? Joe, of course, can read the documentation, but Joe has no clue where to begin. Linux does have plenty of documentation, but it is focused for those who know how to use Linux already.
Joe/could/ buy a fifty dollar manual on "How to Use Linux and the Advanced POSIX Environment" by F. Amos Hacker, but he wouldn't understand a word. Joe could also read "Linux for Dummies" but he still has to pay for this. And books like "Linux for Dummies" don't really put Joe in a great deal of control. He learns the basics, but now what?
Judge Jackson was right, Linux cannot yet compete against Microsoft. Linux is esoteric and difficult. Those who learn to use it love it, as I have. I may not be the greatest Linux user around. I am still unable to use Linux for day-to-day things, but I like it far more than Windows or MacOS. It's fast and powerful. It doesn't crash. Yeay.
Those three points, fast, crashproof, and powerful, are expounded upon far too frequently. If you have a car with a single, paddingless seat and a door that sticks, does it matter if the car pushes three hundred without breaking a sweat? If it can turn on a dime without flipping at two-fifty, does it matter when the interior sucks? Who wants to use such a car if getting in and out is difficult and sitting down causes bruises? "Oh yes," the common explanation is, "you can add padding to the interior! You can grease the door! If you expand the car, you can add another seat and door! This is wonderful!"
At this point, Joe User excuses himself to go play Quake on his Windows box. Unless Linux adds those features that draw people to learn Windows, no one will ever use Linux at home. Some hard-core Linux gurus might wince at a bit of babying, but we have to make it available for those less inclined to learn what "shutdown -h now" means. "But why can't I just turn it off?" the old DOS user whines. The Windows user merely glances at such a "stupid exercise in difficulty" and goes back to Start menu, as Joe User did.
If Linux is to ever compete on the desktop against Microsoft, 1) simple, free as water documentation must be made available, 2) things must be made more plain, less confusing, and 3) someone, somewhere, needs to start reviewing software, making it so that Joe User can decided what the difference between GNOME and KDE is.
Quick note before I end this: I don't mean get rid of the command line, or anything so extreme. Somewhere, an option for idiot_mode needs to be available, where Joe User can easily get to that simple documentation when he gets confused. CTRL+[some key] would be nice.
"Ok, Joe here's your computer. Just press CTRL and Key X if you get lost." "But what if..." "Just try it Joe." Joe diligently presses CTRL+Key X and exclaims, "Oh! I see now...so if I do this..." And off Joe goes. Without this, Joe would stare at the prompt, begin whining he doesn't get it, and run back to the Start menu he already knows.
People don't like change. Linux needs to make change easy, especially with all the attention it has been receiving lately.
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When Apache first began, it was frequently patched because of its instability at the time. The developers took to calling it "a patch-y" web server, and the name stuck. "A patch-y" became "Apache". There's no sport team mascot mentally to it, it just became the name of the server. If they'd taken to calling it some name that sounded vaguely like "Egyptian", they would have named it that, too.
You forget that BeOS is now, for all practical purposes, defunct. Hopefully it will be resurrected, but until that day BeOS really isn't an option.
Oh, and to whoever was asking about the uses for this: data can be hidden with system files, where the information will not be moved. It can be used to conceal anything that needs concealing, preferably in conjuction with encryption. This provides both the benefit of additional security for the data, as well as making it less likely for someone to stumble upon the data and say, "hey, this is valid data!" Encryption is good for that sort of thing sometimes. So if Dear Old Bush's Bastards Enforcing the Right (D.O.B.B.E.R.) come after your essays concerning the effects that Bush's policies are having on our already horrid relationship with the rest of the world, those bungling bumpkins from the Three-Letter-Agencies will hopefully not be able to discover "Anti-American" things. Or you might not want your girlfriend to discover your dirty, dirty porn collection. Or you just might be one paranoid kinda guy. There's a lot of uses, really.
So if CDFreaks has found a way to make the music playable on a computer, then more fucking power to them.
At least they're starting with something for targeted ads. This will hopefully bring up revenues, and (if implemented in that market) maybe save some of our favorite web sites. At that same time, I fear for my privacy. =/
Using liquid nitrogen, while expensive, will certainly save money. Our current power grid can lose twenty percent or more power in transit. Keeping a constant flow of liquid nitrogen is pittances compared to the enormous savings of a 25% increase in power distribution. That's a LOT of power. Granted, we won't reap the benefits of this until after much of the United States has better power cabling, but this is just a start. |JH|
Judge Jackson's disregard of Linux's viability in toppling Microsoft brings up an extremely important question: Is Linux really able to bring down Microsoft?
/are/ those programs in the first place? Further, not every program is listed on Freshmeat. How is our friend, Joe User, to know what GNU and FSF is? How does Joe User figure out what the difference between X Windows and X11 is? Joe, of course, can read the documentation, but Joe has no clue where to begin. Linux does have plenty of documentation, but it is focused for those who know how to use Linux already.
/could/ buy a fifty dollar manual on "How to Use Linux and the Advanced POSIX Environment" by F. Amos Hacker, but he wouldn't understand a word. Joe could also read "Linux for Dummies" but he still has to pay for this. And books like "Linux for Dummies" don't really put Joe in a great deal of control. He learns the basics, but now what?
Judge Jackson is probably right in that Linux at this time does not have the capability to replace Microsoft. I don't see Linux or any other UN*X stealing Microsoft's market share, except in the server catagory. Why the exception? UN*X does very well as servers; this is well known.
Most Linux users, however, will also recognize that Linux and other Unices are not very user friendly. And unfortunately for Linux, the vast majority of computers are not servers. They are also not operated by knowledgeable, eager to learn users. Joe User wants a computer that is easy to use, operates on a DWIM basis, and generally make life easy for him. Linux does not operate this way. One of the most frequent complains I hear concerning Linux is the difficulty in installing it. If new users cannot get past installing Linux, what happens when they try to configure their systems?
Besides not being easy to use, Linux lacks a central repository for information. Freshmeat and others provide a way to find and download the latest patches, yes; but what
Joe
Judge Jackson was right, Linux cannot yet compete against Microsoft. Linux is esoteric and difficult. Those who learn to use it love it, as I have. I may not be the greatest Linux user around. I am still unable to use Linux for day-to-day things, but I like it far more than Windows or MacOS. It's fast and powerful. It doesn't crash. Yeay.
Those three points, fast, crashproof, and powerful, are expounded upon far too frequently. If you have a car with a single, paddingless seat and a door that sticks, does it matter if the car pushes three hundred without breaking a sweat? If it can turn on a dime without flipping at two-fifty, does it matter when the interior sucks? Who wants to use such a car if getting in and out is difficult and sitting down causes bruises? "Oh yes," the common explanation is, "you can add padding to the interior! You can grease the door! If you expand the car, you can add another seat and door! This is wonderful!"
At this point, Joe User excuses himself to go play Quake on his Windows box. Unless Linux adds those features that draw people to learn Windows, no one will ever use Linux at home. Some hard-core Linux gurus might wince at a bit of babying, but we have to make it available for those less inclined to learn what "shutdown -h now" means. "But why can't I just turn it off?" the old DOS user whines. The Windows user merely glances at such a "stupid exercise in difficulty" and goes back to Start menu, as Joe User did.
If Linux is to ever compete on the desktop against Microsoft, 1) simple, free as water documentation must be made available, 2) things must be made more plain, less confusing, and 3) someone, somewhere, needs to start reviewing software, making it so that Joe User can decided what the difference between GNOME and KDE is.
Quick note before I end this: I don't mean get rid of the command line, or anything so extreme. Somewhere, an option for idiot_mode needs to be available, where Joe User can easily get to that simple documentation when he gets confused. CTRL+[some key] would be nice.
"Ok, Joe here's your computer. Just press CTRL and Key X if you get lost." "But what if..." "Just try it Joe." Joe diligently presses CTRL+Key X and exclaims, "Oh! I see now...so if I do this..." And off Joe goes. Without this, Joe would stare at the prompt, begin whining he doesn't get it, and run back to the Start menu he already knows.
People don't like change. Linux needs to make change easy, especially with all the attention it has been receiving lately.