If BeOS would be distributed in an OpenSource or GPL license I think it would cause little impact on Linux. What really would cause it may be a boom on multimedia, together with all *NIX.
BeOS is clearly superior to any other OS in terms of multimedia. The fact it is free for the masses is already a big +. However I suspect that this hampers some threads of development. Specially integration with other OSes. If this barrier would be overturned then I believe we could see BeOS suddenly appearing as a *NIX visual interface. There are lots of things on *NIX that demand good quality graphics and sound. And *NIX is surely not the best for that job. Even Linux still looses a lot here. Having the BeOS sources. people could try to overcome these limitations by combining tasks between *NIX computers and BeOS. BeOS is probably the nearest OS to *NIX in this field so that integration could be quite powerful. Imagine a powerful Beowulf cluster calculating 3D virtual worlds and BeOS stations showing it... Yes it is possible now. But still I believe that open source would make a much better job. Specially on what concerns kernel interaction. Clusters could be more tightly integrated for example. Maybe BeOS would be not a station but a cluster member with different tasks.
This situation will mean only one thing. That soon we may find only bloatness and stagnation in this market.
NVidia's is surely a winner here. And the quality of their cards much better than 3Dfx's. But how many of this quality was made under the market presence of 3Dfx?
Let's note one thing. 3Dfx was never a real market dominator. It had a golden time with its 3D accelerator cards. But when it came into the video market it was already a looser, much like the big old gamers here. NVidia made a great move by combining 2D+3D into one card and beat everyone else on this. Meanwhile, it should be noted that this was done having a huge concurrence from two parties 3Dfx and the 2D market. Now they are nearly gone...
Yes, NVidia did a big job. Their technology is just great! But is everything so cool? No. The 2D is worser than many of its concurrents. I'm sure of this because I did a lot of design and noted that some features on NVidia are even buggy. Specially irritating are some features with colours. Even an old S3Virge manages to produce a much cleaner pallete than NVidia. It is funny but I still keep an old Diamond exactly for this case.
On 3D everything seems quite cool. Yes everything does seem very good. They do beat all concurrents. But... Bloatness is already in its way. I can't understand NVidia's sticking to make "it's own drivers for X". Yeah cool, it is great but it suxx quite a lot sometimes. For game players, this may seem strange and weird. However OpenGL does not start or end with an X interface. In fact we don't need X to produce 3D. And in scientific work this is BLOATNESS. I need something more than a X driver. I know that the card can shoot more and better than 3Dfx. But it is DAMN slow and buggy when i get out of the game play. Because it sticks too much to present things in a X+games environment and everything else is less cared. and I can't use Windows for such stuff. One file on Windows is enough to overkill the machine, even a Win2000 based. So I have to stick to a 3Dfx V3 to do my work. Now 3Dfx is no more...
If after acquiring 3Dfx these guys kill Glide and 3Dfx's almost Open Source policies then this will make a huge blow. Yeah you windowsers will be happy. Quakers, Starcrafters, Counterstrikers will surely be happy for some time longer than us. but the fact is that having a company sticking into one trend (games) and not releasing specs will immediately have a blowing effect on *NIX world.
However this is not the worst. the worst will be to see this company sticking to its own rules and disregarding everyone else. Even a 5% 3Dfx presence on the market was enough to push NVidia further. 3Dfx were the forefathers of 3D acceleration, a standard to overcome. Now there are no lights around. A few concurrents and a market that looks more as a bunch of play-hunger users + some irritating Open Source hackers. NVidia will surely turn over the first. But it will have no clear incentives to do something more than 3D gaming. Later it may not have any incentive to improve 3D gaming itself.
Yes, they sent robots AND people. There was even a huge construction tractor being operated from distance. However there were also people risking their damn lives. And some knowing that they wouldn't make it. One of them, the helicopter pilot that risked his life by filming the core. He got so many radiation that he died a few hours later. That was a needed job as no one could get a hint of what was going on, inside. And the only way was to get there in the heli. No robot or person would manage to reach it by land. It was damn too hot and radiation was bubbling everywhere.
Yesterday, I saw an interview of some "liquidators" who live in my town. I will try to translate what he said. For some paranoid and ecologist dodos here.
He said that, yeap Chernobyl was a Hell. But shutting down the third reactor is maybe a bigger error. As Ukraine is cash stripped. And this reactor is the critical point that turns Ukraine from electricity "donor" to "user". If they shut it down, they will need to get the stuff from their neighbors. Now, he didn't say this, but everyone knows how Ukraine uses Russian gas and doesn't pay for it. Where they will get the money to pay for electricity?
The only way is to use the money people are giving for the shut down and build another station. But that will mean two things. In the state of shamble economy Ukraine is, there are chances they may build another "Chernobyl". And nuclear station construction does not allow errors or cash stripped projects.
Meanwhile money for Chernobyl will clearly be diverted for such projects. That will be natural. So what will happen with Chernobyl itself? There is work still to be done and sarcophagus needs lots of it to avoid crumbling from radiation.
One thing I saw in this "liquidator". A guy with clear traces of suffering some hell of a desease. His skin and hair are quite weird in some places. But damn tough eyes, strong voice, weighted statements and a very clear mind.
Your own statement shows a contradiction. The Geiger shows high levels of radiation and he is not allowe to reach the building. First, if they wanted to hide something they would care about this little instrument correct? Second it is natural they wouldn't allow to have him near the building if that thing is deadly radioactive.
And "safe" does not mean "not radioactive". The sarcophagus is deadly radioactive and its walls are crumbling little by little. However many experts say that the stuff will hold most radiation inside for a few years. That maybe the meaning they were telling him that the stuf was safe.
You're a damn STUPID troll. That's what you are. I managed to be in Kiev for some time a year after the accident. And my accounts don't give any picture near your stupid xenophobic babbling. People were evacuated from nearby regions and from Pripyat city in promptu. However radiation seem to have caught some. There were abortions and mutations among some of these people after the accident. Some caught cancer.
However the government decided to not create panic over Kiev, a city nearby Chernobyl. And Hell there are a lot of places in Kiev that caught radioactivity. Once I got caught in one near Kiev. For nearly 6 months I had a good time, together with a few colleagues.
That's what I saw. HUGE irresponsability. Hiding of facts. A damn confusion. People suffering and not being cared at propper level. Suspected KGB officers saying the HELL of their bosses and burrocritters for being cowards and lazy on dealing with this critical stuff. And I saw Russians and Ukranians saying "we passed October, we passed civil war and we passed the World Wars. We pass this one".
If you don't get the point let me tell you one thing. There is nothing tougher than Russians. Their society is based in a sometimes ingenuous but strong collectivism and voluntarism. And they are a Hell when things get hot. I saw people running 100km/h on trucks under blizzard conditions at -45 to hope to get a near airfield. I saw people carrying by hand 18 tons of products through an airfield at running speed. Hands freezing like hell, wind blowing through your face, the airplane cargo door completely stuck and 10 guys carrying the whole damn shit through the small side door. And why this? Because the jerks in Moscow didn't do their FUCKING job and did everything up-side-down. Now no one gets sit and waits that the Sun comes shiny in Moscow and the boss gets a fresh morning. there is a job to do, and damn we do it! And besides, the supplies were not for us but for another site. We had enough food to hold a month more...
Btw -I got several burns and knocked my spine in this stuff. However I did what I should do.
My neighbor was a soldier when he got his dose. In a military experiment. Soemthing went wrong and only he survived the Hell. He lived in a town like anyone else. Truly it was a damn picture to see him.
I met a few "Chernobyl liquidators", yes they have a lot of damn stories about the accident and what happened later. But no one has ever told such BS that KGB forced them down. What they told was that the government jerks didn't told all about at the beginning, but that anyway many realized that things were deadly and there is a job to be done no matter the risks.
Not all plants are breeder plants. Go to FAS (www.fas.org) if you trust only american sources.
Chelyabinsk? Aren't your doctor messing something. Yes there is a "living graveyard" and guarded by military. But not to hold people but to hold a deadly nature. There is a dump that broke and radiation entered sorrounding waters and a lake. Everyone knows about that place, TV, newspapers talk about it, and it is known as the "living graveyard".
Your damn doctor should be more careful getting sources. He talks a whole BS about things we know. Chernobyl liquidators live in towns and die in them. Yes the were underpaid and the government is a bastard. The same way US gorvernment is a bastard for shutting down stories about soldiers getting high doses in Nevada, during the 50's, or hidding the whole picture of Agent Orange, or the consequences of Desert Storm. Here both governments don't make a great difference.
And today the Russian government is not KGB in suits. That ended. We are living in a bad but real democracy. Even the ultra-secret Novaya Zemlya and Semipalatinsk are relatively known. There are even photos in journals and newspapers of the greatest "OOOPS" of all History of Mankind. Lake Death - something several orders bigger than Chernobyl, Bikini or TMI.
Sorry but your point starts with a seriously erroneous assumption. You cannot compare software and physical objects. A piece of software is much more abstract and universal than any possible physical object. I can use one and the same algorithm in a sound app, a video app, on the processement of an image of a star or on the electronic eye of the robot fixing the door to your future new car. So here we get a serious problem. An algorithm, by itself, is a combination of math and logic, something very near to a formula. In its own nature it is useless. I cannot pick an algorithm and do something directly from it. Now if I apply it that's another question. i can use it to produce a combination of commands that come into a more concrete result. However here we also fall in one problem. Do you click mice? How do mice react on it? Click, click?
The problem is that software is, by itself, abstraction. And today, most of what it produces is also an abstraction, that only we are capable to understand. This whole evergrowing pyramid with a weight of air is the base for what software should be the most opened possible. Closing a critical door of development or claiming fees for a particular algorithm may stop the development of a critical sector per se. And we are still monkeys here. We just came out of the trees and started building the first wheel. If we are going to hamper the paths of development, we may stop in such a creative swamp that things will smell worser than a Middle Age street.
No you are absolutely incorrect. The original purpose of libraries was to use the same piece of code through several programs, what is a huge economy of work. I myself created whole libraries to avoid using one and the same piece of source code in several programs. To use this code I only need a reference to the code. That's what the headers were for.
Those programs were made by me and mostly used only by me. So why I would close the source out of myself? Besides, while this is a cost in performance, it is much more economical in terms of disk space and memory.
Later, in the mass advent of computers, this was also used as a way to close source from the eyes of developers. In the long run this came into a mania. One example of this, I met situations when I fought bugs very well inside DLL's and which didn't have any one reference on the SDKs. Debugging it, you come into stuff that was nearly like what was written on the SDK but SLIGHTLY different (one paramater more, one less, a different call order, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.). Frankly it seemed something like running over the Labyrint. I drop programming on Windows, somewhere in 97-98 because it was getting too hard to do some bug-fighting. 90% of the problems were coming of different DLL versions or well-hidden bugs inside Windows code.
The fact that now people mainly meet libraries and headers for them is not a rule of the thumb for the creation of such stuff. Back in the 80's there were companies, like Borland, that offered a large bunch of this stuff together with the source code.
I only see a danger if we don't take care of the "Occam's knife" hidden here. In one point closed source is here and will not go anywhere. On the other side we cannot allow closed source to overrule the freedom of open and/or free source. These are the two sides of the knife. And we have to care of both. I understand the reasons RMS points to call for a too restrictive license. Yes, we have several clear cases of people or companies undermining a whole software structure by setting or changing the rules of the game. I think that people at freshmeat could show a few of these examples.
However we cannot put things in the way "whites pass here, niggers pass there". Such Apartheid is exactly what many corporations will wait to kick the free software into a ghetto. One of the main points why these guys got their monopolies crashing is exactly the fact that developers started to develope free apps, based in their software. For example, the case of MPEG4. We linuxists now have a chance to see high quality video due to one tool based in a closed source DLL. And these moments are fundamental. It is less probable that someone will ever give you the MPEG4 specs. It is highly improbable that some corps behind this stuff will ever produce even a priced product in Linux. And we cannot close doors and say "good, be happy with your crap, I don't need it!" This is child's play, no more. It will take monthes to produce a free standard. And it will take years to have it accepted. Oggvorbis is an example of this.
So, while I may agree that we should harshly restrict some possible escapades from closed source partisans, we should also not fully close the door. Anyway a developer should always have the right to choose a licensing that fits best his needs and desires. Frankly, here I would prefer that we study the matter with more care and avoid stupid hurry-ups.
Ok people. Calm down... Deep breath...
Let's forget Alice. Anyway a child's tale.
Let's think someone does this with the Bible!
ey I'm not a christian but I do respect any feelings people may have to it. And in way or the other, the vast majority of Earth's population has some cultural relation to it. Yeah, you may be a jewish but you have something yours there anyway. You may be a muslim but Isa was the one before the Prophet. You may not be christian, jewish, muslim but somehow have something related with such book. Good or bad, it stilll is a piece of Mankind's History
So if this goes this way... You cannot speak the words of God?
If people go over this... Yeah, UCITA. The New Electronic Inquisition! Bring the electric chair, the modern way to roast all these heretics... The Road Ahead for the new Bible. But remember, you cannot read it aloud...
Even if it is what you can do with that stupid viewer, Alice in Wonderland cannot fall under its terms. Alice belongs to a group of literature works that is considered something like "Mankind's wealth". Such books like The Bible, Al-Coran, Odisseia, Iliada, Eneiada, Dante's works, Gothe's Faust and many, many others cannot be restricted in no way. Even having Alice under such "electronic" restrictions is a clear violation of these rights. And probably a extremely serious one.
Well some people are expressing their doubts about the validity of this story. Unfortunately I'm a Linux-only old stubborn sysadmin and they still don't have the reader available. Anyway...
If this story is true, then someone is getting into serious trouble. Carrol is not here to claim his rights. But a book, after several years becomes automatically public domain and no one has rights to revoke its free distribution. Not even republishers like Adobe. I may buy the book for their work on printing, editing it. They may be woners of pictures or draws (if they are not the original ones). But they don't have a damn right on any piece of its text. Besides, such significative works of Art, and Alice is surely one of them, are protected by international laws and it seems that UN has a big play here. So such claims are a damn HELL! If they are real. I wonder if some lawyers are not already pushing their calculators to hand...
Because we all have a natural tendency to take parties. It's in our blood. And besides life gives a lot of weight to you advocay opinions. So you can't get out with it...
For example M$. Let me give a try...
Well Microsoft is a company like any other. It does OSes programs and other stuff. And has done this with relative quality.
Well almost... I remembered that first PC with that d... d.... Well with an experimental BASIC...
And windows 1.0. Yeah it was just buggy. First start anyway...
Yeah and there was that one with DOS 4.0. Yeah, a new step for Mankind, a good crash for the computer... Well, it happens...
Oooooh. Windows 3.0, 3.1, 3.11. How many work went into the... Well, how many things I lost...
And that surprise... "DOS will not be supported anymore". Yeah that one was great!..
And Windows95? Yeah good surprise. Couldn't have done it less buggy?
And that whoppla on NT? OOOOOOHHHHH MYYYYY!!! I remember when I administered a whole network. DAMN!
And the support... THAT DAMN user's support!!!! DAAAAAMNN!!!
And how many lost partitions, lost data, hours in the installation/revival/maintenance...
AND HOW MANY PROGRAMS GO TO LIMBO AFTER THE NEXT M$ UPDATE!!!!! THAT ONE WAS DAMN GREAT!
And how it wiped clean my OS/2 and Linux disks... YEAH GOOODDD!!!
And always eating, eating, eating, eating memory, disk space...
And the TAX!!!!! YEAH THE TAX. I ASKED FOR NT4 ONLY!!!!! WHY THE HELL I HAVE TO PAY FOR WIN95 ALSO?????
At beginning:
"No, no, nooooooo. Not Katz again!.."
At end:
I should have done this Part I. And really stop here. You made some points. They are discussable but real. Yes, in fact games give a good push. But that also depends on what games kids play. And at what level. And it also depends on many things sorrounding them. Even Quake has its positive points not matter the raw violence of the subject. I saw teenagers developing real good skills with this game. They become aware of decision making tasks. Under the stressful conditions of the game this produces a series of interesting moments. For example, a 16 year old kid commanding a whole bunch of sysadmins. They are older, more experienced in real life, they feel superior to this guy who just learned to tie his boots. But in the virtuality of the game, this youngster was marvelous. Specially on things like CTF or Arena. He was somehow authoritarian and maximalist. However, this was seen more as a secondary drawback, as he managed to divide team's tasks, take decisions in the appropriate moment, measure the risks. Somehow his authoritarism was useful with some kamikadze "frag" hotheads. There was always the problem of getting weaponery, ammunitions, health and other stuff and he managed all this quite well.
Later at his 18-19 he started to show in real life some of these qualities (and defects also!). But the fact is that the boy, overall got a good push commanding the most anarchic team I ever knew. In fact it his a HELL to hold up anyone of us... We are all natural born deathmatchers
The advisory notifiction format we are using has about the same amount of
information as the paraphrased advisories that Elias posted for the latest
Microsoft advisories and the same amount of information that some other
researchers post in their advisories. This is more than enough information
to decide if the issue at hand effects you and you need to dive deeper into
our analysis.
Now pick up their controversial post and see what is there. There is not a single hint about the exploit. Only that there is one exploit and that AOL fixed "thank you"... The only detail:
"We initially contacted AOL on 11/22/2000 regarding this issue. They have a
fixed version, 4.3.2229, dated 12/6/2000 available now. We appreciate
their timely response."
That's the only detail in the whole post! Everything else is so general that I could say ICQ with the same success...
Now if we pick the Weld's citation we see one thing. He justifies his moves. But not in the point on how and why they feel they are right. They justify its amount as:
"same amount of
information as the paraphrased advisories that Elias posted for the latest
Microsoft advisories and the same amount of information that some other
researchers post in their advisories"
So they step themselves in the same side of Microsoft. M$ does this, we also do. Good point.
No matter the yellowness of some/. editors, here,/. made the point.
It's a study based on the court case. Too many juridical verbosity but still understandable
In resume:
Microsoft licensed Apple's interface to make Windows 1.0
Later it made Windows 2 and Apple considered it an infrigement.
Due to several issues, the court decided in favor of Microsoft. One of the main was the nebulous content of the agreement that allowed M$ to use the general design of the interface. The court decided that the agreement concerned only individual elements
Flamebait? Where is any flame on this post? Oh, oh, oh. Overrated? Maybe. Redundant? Possible. But FLAMEBAIT? Better to stamp "Troll" if you wanna take this down.
If my considerations about response time are considered as "flame", then I ask this moderator to take the guts and tell where and what I'm flaming here. You wanna tell me that these sites will hold up if someone posts the news in BugTraq,/. and two/three other news sites? What will happen if sysadmins and hackers will stand in "what the Hell is this about" seeing a site taken down and a Trojan roaming >10,000 mail servers? Yes, someone may issue an external warning with details. But that will take time. More time than a first warning case. And all this may make a whole mess. Specially if rumours are set up on the wild.
Ok flamebait again. Hope you hold enough moderator points. If not come up to the street man. Let's see how good you are...
Forged security bulletins - "You may follow this link to read a detailed description..."
On the other side - Trojans, diverted to other sites were either one gets a damn/. effect, a very bad joke, or some piece of trash that dessiminates panick over the community.
Panick generation. One launches an exploit nd warns the app maker. Later, on the issuing of the exploit he passes the news through several sites. The app maker gets/.-otted and panick is generated by some secondary actions of the "ineterrorist".
War Games - Pearl Harbor attacks. Several scenarios where either the security issuer is taken down or his links diverted. In resume, the main information center is taken down. Meanwhile the attackers make another attack in other direction, the real objective. Among panick, chaos and desinformation, they get into it before anyone gets the point.
I recomend you people to concretize these ideas and some evolution of them... There are much worser case scenarios... Depending on some other issues...
I always considered M$ a wanna-be-an-apple. And this one comfirms this. M$ never decided to take over the users likes, dislikes or hacks. Directly I mean. It had always turned around and fought in the sides.
Now Apple keeps being Czar of all Czars in this area. Why the Hell they decided to go that way? Because it hits their sales? No. Because someone should be more ethic and ask Apple for permission? Neither. Because Apple wants to figth the market? Naaaaa...
Because Apple thinks always this way - it's mine! it's mine and IT'S ALL MINE!!!! I don't give it anyone. I don't even give to its own partners or brothers. I will keep it only to myself. I'll even put screws that can only be open by my screwdriver. And I will not give it to anyone. And I will sell this to anyone. Like a can of Coke. Everything inside, don't worry for nothing I didn't miss a piece. If I did miss something then it's you who are wrong, not me. And even if I'm in the damn ****, my personell is hitting the streets, and I'm losing billions, I will not give anything to anyone. I'm cute and good. And in the end people will finally find I'm right...
To old timers. Did I miss anything here? I think the main resume is here...
"Also, the times I've seen Linux in use in the past two or three years, the GUI is looking more and more like the Windows front end - which, I clearly remember, was resoundingly slated by the Linux community when Windows 95 came out. Not afraid to take all the fruits of millions of dollars of research that Microsoft spent, are you?"
Part I
I'm on Linux and I'm not seeing that resemblance. I'm not really seeing it! And I LOVE the desktop I'm in... It does what I need and in a much better way than other wm or Windows GUI.
Part II
Before speaking about the millions of dollars, remember where M$ sent OS/2 & IBM + Xerox Palo Alto Labs, Apple and the X Consortium (MIT back then). Microsoft has also a good deal of taking ideas away (a big one, btw: cp/m, cp/m, cp/m, cp/m...).
One the rest I may agree on your opinion for not using Linux. It's your tastes, wishes and maybe possibilities.
However this does not mean I agree with the FUD running here in the talks. "Come on, people... Linux is still..." - COME ON TAKE A BIT OF FATNESS OUT OF YOUR BELLIES AND GIVE A DAMN TRY BEFORE TALKING FOR THE PEOPLE! COMMIES! That's what you are! One GUI, one library, one application suit, one OS. What this makes a difference from: One leader, one party, one country, one revolution. And this specially goes to the makers of Gnome/KDE wars. Those on Windows are too bolshevised too take this into attention.
From the Cold... Wanna a nuke? We have plenty here... Commies left a lot of them:)
Well I forgot to mention this on my previous post.
Can these guys, who care so much about their customers, hold up a/. effect on a top security issue. And how they will react if their servers get damn loaded? What measures will be taken then?
If they down the server and don't present the info somewhere else? And if some one drops some snake oil on a forum like/. or BuTraq after they do this?
Note - BugTraq is a list. So, no matter the critical level the situation, the information already manages to get critical mass. Besides BugTraq does not restrict information of being spread. Now we have here one point. One single Pearl Harbor. Oh, hey, Pentagon! How do YOU think about this stuff? It seems you talked about such things, well in somewhat different context, quite recently... How is the feel that suddenly Big Money Corp creates you a whole new Arizona right on your backs?
Have anyone noted the BIG security bug of this new approach? No? How about response time?
Let's think. L0pht or M$ find or get a new security exploit. Two ways go. One way is that the exploit is published ASAP. However links, bad communications, heavy traffic and this stupid copyright protection delay the spread of the news. In cases of serious and massive DoS or E-mail trojans this is a very serious possibility that some may exploit.
The second way. The notice is hold to avoid panic/bad publicity/exploits. Good if the bug came from inside. MAYDAY if the bug was found outside. RED ALERT if this is a crackers finding. Under such trend news will surely get quite slow. And meanwhile the underground may already attacking full arms somewhere. ut that's not the worst. Our good corps may try to force the white hats to shut their mouths on the basis of such copyrights and other things they may think. Then it will be a nightmare case. Imagine news roaming through the IRCs and underground chats and Bugtraq with a piece of material around its mouth. That will not be overkill. That will be the revival of Morrison's times.
Now L0pht may go the first way. M$ had already shown good examples of going the second way. Add the possibility of an UCITA on security issues and go get a cup of coffee. It may be the last you may calmly drink, without thinking too much about the work...
Lack of hardware and software support? What lack are you talking about? Serious lack? Cards absolutely not configurable in Linux? Show me that please. Show me a field that is fully not Linux supportable. That you don't have one single turnaround.
Unification. The HELL with that!!!!! I DON'T want unification and most Linux users DON'T want that. The Hell with these KDE/Gnome wars. Let them both live in the herd. I'm neutral to them as I neither use none of their desktop managers. And i don't need common users hanging on BlackBoxes or WindowMakers.
Developing Mac/Windows complex apps? What do you mean by this? I am an ex-Windows/DOS developer and I saw three years of my life going through the pipes due to M$ "permanent revolution' of their SDKs. I have not seen worser Hell then to support a Windows app. Every three/six months a new patch or debug to hold apps in place. And every one of it taking days to solve, because M$, once again, decided to make changes to its super-embedded system. So you have to dig up sometimes farer than their SDKs. And they forbid reverse engineering. Oh my!..
Command lines are throwback? Do you realise what are you talking about? You have an automatised app doing a very specific job of sending and receiving files. Why the HELL I need to bloat it with a GUI interface? WHY DO I NEED IT?? If I can do 90% of the administration by using a command with three/four options on it? Why do I need to slowdown things, bloat them and cut my chance of combining commands, do batch tasks and more complex stuff?
And what concerns my friends needing help on Linux does not mean Windows ones need less. For them we have two whole departments of FIFTEEN people! One for the STUPID questions, the other for the less dumb ones. The last group is three persons only. Besides they support Windows desktops ONLY. Windows servers are FORBIDDEN inside our ISP network for very OBVIOUS reasons.
Slashdot Mirror
If BeOS would be distributed in an OpenSource or GPL license I think it would cause little impact on Linux. What really would cause it may be a boom on multimedia, together with all *NIX.
BeOS is clearly superior to any other OS in terms of multimedia. The fact it is free for the masses is already a big +. However I suspect that this hampers some threads of development. Specially integration with other OSes. If this barrier would be overturned then I believe we could see BeOS suddenly appearing as a *NIX visual interface. There are lots of things on *NIX that demand good quality graphics and sound. And *NIX is surely not the best for that job. Even Linux still looses a lot here. Having the BeOS sources. people could try to overcome these limitations by combining tasks between *NIX computers and BeOS. BeOS is probably the nearest OS to *NIX in this field so that integration could be quite powerful. Imagine a powerful Beowulf cluster calculating 3D virtual worlds and BeOS stations showing it... Yes it is possible now. But still I believe that open source would make a much better job. Specially on what concerns kernel interaction. Clusters could be more tightly integrated for example. Maybe BeOS would be not a station but a cluster member with different tasks.
This situation will mean only one thing. That soon we may find only bloatness and stagnation in this market.
NVidia's is surely a winner here. And the quality of their cards much better than 3Dfx's. But how many of this quality was made under the market presence of 3Dfx?
Let's note one thing. 3Dfx was never a real market dominator. It had a golden time with its 3D accelerator cards. But when it came into the video market it was already a looser, much like the big old gamers here. NVidia made a great move by combining 2D+3D into one card and beat everyone else on this. Meanwhile, it should be noted that this was done having a huge concurrence from two parties 3Dfx and the 2D market. Now they are nearly gone...
Yes, NVidia did a big job. Their technology is just great! But is everything so cool? No. The 2D is worser than many of its concurrents. I'm sure of this because I did a lot of design and noted that some features on NVidia are even buggy. Specially irritating are some features with colours. Even an old S3Virge manages to produce a much cleaner pallete than NVidia. It is funny but I still keep an old Diamond exactly for this case.
On 3D everything seems quite cool. Yes everything does seem very good. They do beat all concurrents. But... Bloatness is already in its way. I can't understand NVidia's sticking to make "it's own drivers for X". Yeah cool, it is great but it suxx quite a lot sometimes. For game players, this may seem strange and weird. However OpenGL does not start or end with an X interface. In fact we don't need X to produce 3D. And in scientific work this is BLOATNESS. I need something more than a X driver. I know that the card can shoot more and better than 3Dfx. But it is DAMN slow and buggy when i get out of the game play. Because it sticks too much to present things in a X+games environment and everything else is less cared. and I can't use Windows for such stuff. One file on Windows is enough to overkill the machine, even a Win2000 based. So I have to stick to a 3Dfx V3 to do my work. Now 3Dfx is no more...
If after acquiring 3Dfx these guys kill Glide and 3Dfx's almost Open Source policies then this will make a huge blow. Yeah you windowsers will be happy. Quakers, Starcrafters, Counterstrikers will surely be happy for some time longer than us. but the fact is that having a company sticking into one trend (games) and not releasing specs will immediately have a blowing effect on *NIX world.
However this is not the worst. the worst will be to see this company sticking to its own rules and disregarding everyone else. Even a 5% 3Dfx presence on the market was enough to push NVidia further. 3Dfx were the forefathers of 3D acceleration, a standard to overcome. Now there are no lights around. A few concurrents and a market that looks more as a bunch of play-hunger users + some irritating Open Source hackers. NVidia will surely turn over the first. But it will have no clear incentives to do something more than 3D gaming. Later it may not have any incentive to improve 3D gaming itself.
Yes, they sent robots AND people. There was even a huge construction tractor being operated from distance. However there were also people risking their damn lives. And some knowing that they wouldn't make it. One of them, the helicopter pilot that risked his life by filming the core. He got so many radiation that he died a few hours later. That was a needed job as no one could get a hint of what was going on, inside. And the only way was to get there in the heli. No robot or person would manage to reach it by land. It was damn too hot and radiation was bubbling everywhere.
Yesterday, I saw an interview of some "liquidators" who live in my town. I will try to translate what he said. For some paranoid and ecologist dodos here.
He said that, yeap Chernobyl was a Hell. But shutting down the third reactor is maybe a bigger error. As Ukraine is cash stripped. And this reactor is the critical point that turns Ukraine from electricity "donor" to "user". If they shut it down, they will need to get the stuff from their neighbors. Now, he didn't say this, but everyone knows how Ukraine uses Russian gas and doesn't pay for it. Where they will get the money to pay for electricity?
The only way is to use the money people are giving for the shut down and build another station. But that will mean two things. In the state of shamble economy Ukraine is, there are chances they may build another "Chernobyl". And nuclear station construction does not allow errors or cash stripped projects.
Meanwhile money for Chernobyl will clearly be diverted for such projects. That will be natural. So what will happen with Chernobyl itself? There is work still to be done and sarcophagus needs lots of it to avoid crumbling from radiation.
One thing I saw in this "liquidator". A guy with clear traces of suffering some hell of a desease. His skin and hair are quite weird in some places. But damn tough eyes, strong voice, weighted statements and a very clear mind.
Your own statement shows a contradiction. The Geiger shows high levels of radiation and he is not allowe to reach the building. First, if they wanted to hide something they would care about this little instrument correct? Second it is natural they wouldn't allow to have him near the building if that thing is deadly radioactive.
And "safe" does not mean "not radioactive". The sarcophagus is deadly radioactive and its walls are crumbling little by little. However many experts say that the stuff will hold most radiation inside for a few years. That maybe the meaning they were telling him that the stuf was safe.
You're a damn STUPID troll. That's what you are. I managed to be in Kiev for some time a year after the accident. And my accounts don't give any picture near your stupid xenophobic babbling. People were evacuated from nearby regions and from Pripyat city in promptu. However radiation seem to have caught some. There were abortions and mutations among some of these people after the accident. Some caught cancer.
However the government decided to not create panic over Kiev, a city nearby Chernobyl. And Hell there are a lot of places in Kiev that caught radioactivity. Once I got caught in one near Kiev. For nearly 6 months I had a good time, together with a few colleagues.
That's what I saw. HUGE irresponsability. Hiding of facts. A damn confusion. People suffering and not being cared at propper level. Suspected KGB officers saying the HELL of their bosses and burrocritters for being cowards and lazy on dealing with this critical stuff. And I saw Russians and Ukranians saying "we passed October, we passed civil war and we passed the World Wars. We pass this one".
If you don't get the point let me tell you one thing. There is nothing tougher than Russians. Their society is based in a sometimes ingenuous but strong collectivism and voluntarism. And they are a Hell when things get hot. I saw people running 100km/h on trucks under blizzard conditions at -45 to hope to get a near airfield. I saw people carrying by hand 18 tons of products through an airfield at running speed. Hands freezing like hell, wind blowing through your face, the airplane cargo door completely stuck and 10 guys carrying the whole damn shit through the small side door. And why this? Because the jerks in Moscow didn't do their FUCKING job and did everything up-side-down. Now no one gets sit and waits that the Sun comes shiny in Moscow and the boss gets a fresh morning. there is a job to do, and damn we do it! And besides, the supplies were not for us but for another site. We had enough food to hold a month more...
Btw -I got several burns and knocked my spine in this stuff. However I did what I should do.
My neighbor was a soldier when he got his dose. In a military experiment. Soemthing went wrong and only he survived the Hell. He lived in a town like anyone else. Truly it was a damn picture to see him.
I met a few "Chernobyl liquidators", yes they have a lot of damn stories about the accident and what happened later. But no one has ever told such BS that KGB forced them down. What they told was that the government jerks didn't told all about at the beginning, but that anyway many realized that things were deadly and there is a job to be done no matter the risks.
Not all plants are breeder plants. Go to FAS (www.fas.org) if you trust only american sources.
Chelyabinsk? Aren't your doctor messing something. Yes there is a "living graveyard" and guarded by military. But not to hold people but to hold a deadly nature. There is a dump that broke and radiation entered sorrounding waters and a lake. Everyone knows about that place, TV, newspapers talk about it, and it is known as the "living graveyard".
Your damn doctor should be more careful getting sources. He talks a whole BS about things we know. Chernobyl liquidators live in towns and die in them. Yes the were underpaid and the government is a bastard. The same way US gorvernment is a bastard for shutting down stories about soldiers getting high doses in Nevada, during the 50's, or hidding the whole picture of Agent Orange, or the consequences of Desert Storm. Here both governments don't make a great difference.
And today the Russian government is not KGB in suits. That ended. We are living in a bad but real democracy. Even the ultra-secret Novaya Zemlya and Semipalatinsk are relatively known. There are even photos in journals and newspapers of the greatest "OOOPS" of all History of Mankind. Lake Death - something several orders bigger than Chernobyl, Bikini or TMI.
Sorry but your point starts with a seriously erroneous assumption. You cannot compare software and physical objects. A piece of software is much more abstract and universal than any possible physical object. I can use one and the same algorithm in a sound app, a video app, on the processement of an image of a star or on the electronic eye of the robot fixing the door to your future new car. So here we get a serious problem. An algorithm, by itself, is a combination of math and logic, something very near to a formula. In its own nature it is useless. I cannot pick an algorithm and do something directly from it. Now if I apply it that's another question. i can use it to produce a combination of commands that come into a more concrete result. However here we also fall in one problem. Do you click mice? How do mice react on it? Click, click?
The problem is that software is, by itself, abstraction. And today, most of what it produces is also an abstraction, that only we are capable to understand. This whole evergrowing pyramid with a weight of air is the base for what software should be the most opened possible. Closing a critical door of development or claiming fees for a particular algorithm may stop the development of a critical sector per se. And we are still monkeys here. We just came out of the trees and started building the first wheel. If we are going to hamper the paths of development, we may stop in such a creative swamp that things will smell worser than a Middle Age street.
No you are absolutely incorrect. The original purpose of libraries was to use the same piece of code through several programs, what is a huge economy of work. I myself created whole libraries to avoid using one and the same piece of source code in several programs. To use this code I only need a reference to the code. That's what the headers were for.
Those programs were made by me and mostly used only by me. So why I would close the source out of myself? Besides, while this is a cost in performance, it is much more economical in terms of disk space and memory.
Later, in the mass advent of computers, this was also used as a way to close source from the eyes of developers. In the long run this came into a mania. One example of this, I met situations when I fought bugs very well inside DLL's and which didn't have any one reference on the SDKs. Debugging it, you come into stuff that was nearly like what was written on the SDK but SLIGHTLY different (one paramater more, one less, a different call order, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.). Frankly it seemed something like running over the Labyrint. I drop programming on Windows, somewhere in 97-98 because it was getting too hard to do some bug-fighting. 90% of the problems were coming of different DLL versions or well-hidden bugs inside Windows code.
The fact that now people mainly meet libraries and headers for them is not a rule of the thumb for the creation of such stuff. Back in the 80's there were companies, like Borland, that offered a large bunch of this stuff together with the source code.
I only see a danger if we don't take care of the "Occam's knife" hidden here. In one point closed source is here and will not go anywhere. On the other side we cannot allow closed source to overrule the freedom of open and/or free source. These are the two sides of the knife. And we have to care of both. I understand the reasons RMS points to call for a too restrictive license. Yes, we have several clear cases of people or companies undermining a whole software structure by setting or changing the rules of the game. I think that people at freshmeat could show a few of these examples.
However we cannot put things in the way "whites pass here, niggers pass there". Such Apartheid is exactly what many corporations will wait to kick the free software into a ghetto. One of the main points why these guys got their monopolies crashing is exactly the fact that developers started to develope free apps, based in their software. For example, the case of MPEG4. We linuxists now have a chance to see high quality video due to one tool based in a closed source DLL. And these moments are fundamental. It is less probable that someone will ever give you the MPEG4 specs. It is highly improbable that some corps behind this stuff will ever produce even a priced product in Linux. And we cannot close doors and say "good, be happy with your crap, I don't need it!" This is child's play, no more. It will take monthes to produce a free standard. And it will take years to have it accepted. Oggvorbis is an example of this.
So, while I may agree that we should harshly restrict some possible escapades from closed source partisans, we should also not fully close the door. Anyway a developer should always have the right to choose a licensing that fits best his needs and desires. Frankly, here I would prefer that we study the matter with more care and avoid stupid hurry-ups.
Ok people. Calm down... Deep breath...
Let's forget Alice. Anyway a child's tale.
Let's think someone does this with the Bible!
ey I'm not a christian but I do respect any feelings people may have to it. And in way or the other, the vast majority of Earth's population has some cultural relation to it. Yeah, you may be a jewish but you have something yours there anyway. You may be a muslim but Isa was the one before the Prophet. You may not be christian, jewish, muslim but somehow have something related with such book. Good or bad, it stilll is a piece of Mankind's History
So if this goes this way... You cannot speak the words of God?
If people go over this... Yeah, UCITA. The New Electronic Inquisition! Bring the electric chair, the modern way to roast all these heretics... The Road Ahead for the new Bible. But remember, you cannot read it aloud...
It can claim anything for its viewer or books it owns but it cannot restrict the redistribution of Alice in absolutely no way.
Even if it is what you can do with that stupid viewer, Alice in Wonderland cannot fall under its terms. Alice belongs to a group of literature works that is considered something like "Mankind's wealth". Such books like The Bible, Al-Coran, Odisseia, Iliada, Eneiada, Dante's works, Gothe's Faust and many, many others cannot be restricted in no way. Even having Alice under such "electronic" restrictions is a clear violation of these rights. And probably a extremely serious one.
Well some people are expressing their doubts about the validity of this story. Unfortunately I'm a Linux-only old stubborn sysadmin and they still don't have the reader available. Anyway...
If this story is true, then someone is getting into serious trouble. Carrol is not here to claim his rights. But a book, after several years becomes automatically public domain and no one has rights to revoke its free distribution. Not even republishers like Adobe. I may buy the book for their work on printing, editing it. They may be woners of pictures or draws (if they are not the original ones). But they don't have a damn right on any piece of its text. Besides, such significative works of Art, and Alice is surely one of them, are protected by international laws and it seems that UN has a big play here. So such claims are a damn HELL! If they are real. I wonder if some lawyers are not already pushing their calculators to hand...
Because we all have a natural tendency to take parties. It's in our blood. And besides life gives a lot of weight to you advocay opinions. So you can't get out with it...
For example M$. Let me give a try...
Well Microsoft is a company like any other. It does OSes programs and other stuff. And has done this with relative quality.
Well almost... I remembered that first PC with that d... d.... Well with an experimental BASIC...
And windows 1.0. Yeah it was just buggy. First start anyway...
Yeah and there was that one with DOS 4.0. Yeah, a new step for Mankind, a good crash for the computer... Well, it happens...
Oooooh. Windows 3.0, 3.1, 3.11. How many work went into the... Well, how many things I lost...
And that surprise... "DOS will not be supported anymore". Yeah that one was great!..
And Windows95? Yeah good surprise. Couldn't have done it less buggy?
And that whoppla on NT? OOOOOOHHHHH MYYYYY!!! I remember when I administered a whole network. DAMN!
And the support... THAT DAMN user's support!!!! DAAAAAMNN!!!
And how many lost partitions, lost data, hours in the installation/revival/maintenance...
AND HOW MANY PROGRAMS GO TO LIMBO AFTER THE NEXT M$ UPDATE!!!!! THAT ONE WAS DAMN GREAT!
And how it wiped clean my OS/2 and Linux disks... YEAH GOOODDD!!!
And always eating, eating, eating, eating memory, disk space...
And the TAX!!!!! YEAH THE TAX. I ASKED FOR NT4 ONLY!!!!! WHY THE HELL I HAVE TO PAY FOR WIN95 ALSO?????
Oh? Ah? Microsoft advocacy? BASH IT! CRUNCH IT! FRAG IT! TERMINATE MAZDIEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!
At beginning:
"No, no, nooooooo. Not Katz again!.."
At end:
I should have done this Part I. And really stop here. You made some points. They are discussable but real. Yes, in fact games give a good push. But that also depends on what games kids play. And at what level. And it also depends on many things sorrounding them. Even Quake has its positive points not matter the raw violence of the subject. I saw teenagers developing real good skills with this game. They become aware of decision making tasks. Under the stressful conditions of the game this produces a series of interesting moments. For example, a 16 year old kid commanding a whole bunch of sysadmins. They are older, more experienced in real life, they feel superior to this guy who just learned to tie his boots. But in the virtuality of the game, this youngster was marvelous. Specially on things like CTF or Arena. He was somehow authoritarian and maximalist. However, this was seen more as a secondary drawback, as he managed to divide team's tasks, take decisions in the appropriate moment, measure the risks. Somehow his authoritarism was useful with some kamikadze "frag" hotheads. There was always the problem of getting weaponery, ammunitions, health and other stuff and he managed all this quite well.
Later at his 18-19 he started to show in real life some of these qualities (and defects also!). But the fact is that the boy, overall got a good push commanding the most anarchic team I ever knew. In fact it his a HELL to hold up anyone of us... We are all natural born deathmatchers
Not so insightful...
/. editors, here, /. made the point.
From Weld's post:
The advisory notifiction format we are using has about the same amount of
information as the paraphrased advisories that Elias posted for the latest
Microsoft advisories and the same amount of information that some other
researchers post in their advisories. This is more than enough information
to decide if the issue at hand effects you and you need to dive deeper into
our analysis.
Now pick up their controversial post and see what is there. There is not a single hint about the exploit. Only that there is one exploit and that AOL fixed "thank you"... The only detail:
"We initially contacted AOL on 11/22/2000 regarding this issue. They have a
fixed version, 4.3.2229, dated 12/6/2000 available now. We appreciate
their timely response."
That's the only detail in the whole post! Everything else is so general that I could say ICQ with the same success...
Now if we pick the Weld's citation we see one thing. He justifies his moves. But not in the point on how and why they feel they are right. They justify its amount as:
"same amount of
information as the paraphrased advisories that Elias posted for the latest
Microsoft advisories and the same amount of information that some other
researchers post in their advisories"
So they step themselves in the same side of Microsoft. M$ does this, we also do. Good point.
No matter the yellowness of some
You are deforming the reality of the issue...
I would recomend all to see this link
Apple vs Microsoft"
It's a study based on the court case. Too many juridical verbosity but still understandable
In resume:
Microsoft licensed Apple's interface to make Windows 1.0
Later it made Windows 2 and Apple considered it an infrigement.
Due to several issues, the court decided in favor of Microsoft. One of the main was the nebulous content of the agreement that allowed M$ to use the general design of the interface. The court decided that the agreement concerned only individual elements
And that's the reason of the "recycle bin" saga.
Flamebait? Where is any flame on this post? Oh, oh, oh. Overrated? Maybe. Redundant? Possible. But FLAMEBAIT? Better to stamp "Troll" if you wanna take this down.
/. and two/three other news sites? What will happen if sysadmins and hackers will stand in "what the Hell is this about" seeing a site taken down and a Trojan roaming >10,000 mail servers? Yes, someone may issue an external warning with details. But that will take time. More time than a first warning case. And all this may make a whole mess. Specially if rumours are set up on the wild.
If my considerations about response time are considered as "flame", then I ask this moderator to take the guts and tell where and what I'm flaming here. You wanna tell me that these sites will hold up if someone posts the news in BugTraq,
Ok flamebait again. Hope you hold enough moderator points. If not come up to the street man. Let's see how good you are...
Forged security bulletins - "You may follow this link to read a detailed description..." /. effect, a very bad joke, or some piece of trash that dessiminates panick over the community.
/.-otted and panick is generated by some secondary actions of the "ineterrorist".
On the other side - Trojans, diverted to other sites were either one gets a damn
Panick generation. One launches an exploit nd warns the app maker. Later, on the issuing of the exploit he passes the news through several sites. The app maker gets
War Games - Pearl Harbor attacks. Several scenarios where either the security issuer is taken down or his links diverted. In resume, the main information center is taken down. Meanwhile the attackers make another attack in other direction, the real objective. Among panick, chaos and desinformation, they get into it before anyone gets the point.
I recomend you people to concretize these ideas and some evolution of them... There are much worser case scenarios... Depending on some other issues...
I always considered M$ a wanna-be-an-apple. And this one comfirms this. M$ never decided to take over the users likes, dislikes or hacks. Directly I mean. It had always turned around and fought in the sides.
Now Apple keeps being Czar of all Czars in this area. Why the Hell they decided to go that way? Because it hits their sales? No. Because someone should be more ethic and ask Apple for permission? Neither. Because Apple wants to figth the market? Naaaaa...
Because Apple thinks always this way - it's mine! it's mine and IT'S ALL MINE!!!! I don't give it anyone. I don't even give to its own partners or brothers. I will keep it only to myself. I'll even put screws that can only be open by my screwdriver. And I will not give it to anyone. And I will sell this to anyone. Like a can of Coke. Everything inside, don't worry for nothing I didn't miss a piece. If I did miss something then it's you who are wrong, not me. And even if I'm in the damn ****, my personell is hitting the streets, and I'm losing billions, I will not give anything to anyone. I'm cute and good. And in the end people will finally find I'm right...
To old timers. Did I miss anything here? I think the main resume is here...
I may understand your opinions. Except one.
:)
"Also, the times I've seen Linux in use in the past two or three years, the GUI is looking more and more like the Windows front end - which, I clearly remember, was resoundingly slated by the Linux community when Windows 95 came out. Not afraid to take all the fruits of millions of dollars of research that Microsoft spent, are you?"
Part I
I'm on Linux and I'm not seeing that resemblance. I'm not really seeing it! And I LOVE the desktop I'm in... It does what I need and in a much better way than other wm or Windows GUI.
Part II
Before speaking about the millions of dollars, remember where M$ sent OS/2 & IBM + Xerox Palo Alto Labs, Apple and the X Consortium (MIT back then). Microsoft has also a good deal of taking ideas away (a big one, btw: cp/m, cp/m, cp/m, cp/m...).
One the rest I may agree on your opinion for not using Linux. It's your tastes, wishes and maybe possibilities.
However this does not mean I agree with the FUD running here in the talks. "Come on, people... Linux is still..." - COME ON TAKE A BIT OF FATNESS OUT OF YOUR BELLIES AND GIVE A DAMN TRY BEFORE TALKING FOR THE PEOPLE! COMMIES! That's what you are! One GUI, one library, one application suit, one OS. What this makes a difference from: One leader, one party, one country, one revolution. And this specially goes to the makers of Gnome/KDE wars. Those on Windows are too bolshevised too take this into attention.
From the Cold... Wanna a nuke? We have plenty here... Commies left a lot of them
Well I forgot to mention this on my previous post. /. effect on a top security issue. And how they will react if their servers get damn loaded? What measures will be taken then?
/. or BuTraq after they do this?
Can these guys, who care so much about their customers, hold up a
If they down the server and don't present the info somewhere else? And if some one drops some snake oil on a forum like
Note - BugTraq is a list. So, no matter the critical level the situation, the information already manages to get critical mass. Besides BugTraq does not restrict information of being spread. Now we have here one point. One single Pearl Harbor. Oh, hey, Pentagon! How do YOU think about this stuff? It seems you talked about such things, well in somewhat different context, quite recently... How is the feel that suddenly Big Money Corp creates you a whole new Arizona right on your backs?
Have anyone noted the BIG security bug of this new approach? No? How about response time?
Let's think. L0pht or M$ find or get a new security exploit. Two ways go. One way is that the exploit is published ASAP. However links, bad communications, heavy traffic and this stupid copyright protection delay the spread of the news. In cases of serious and massive DoS or E-mail trojans this is a very serious possibility that some may exploit.
The second way. The notice is hold to avoid panic/bad publicity/exploits. Good if the bug came from inside. MAYDAY if the bug was found outside. RED ALERT if this is a crackers finding. Under such trend news will surely get quite slow. And meanwhile the underground may already attacking full arms somewhere. ut that's not the worst. Our good corps may try to force the white hats to shut their mouths on the basis of such copyrights and other things they may think. Then it will be a nightmare case. Imagine news roaming through the IRCs and underground chats and Bugtraq with a piece of material around its mouth. That will not be overkill. That will be the revival of Morrison's times.
Now L0pht may go the first way. M$ had already shown good examples of going the second way. Add the possibility of an UCITA on security issues and go get a cup of coffee. It may be the last you may calmly drink, without thinking too much about the work...
Lack of hardware and software support? What lack are you talking about? Serious lack? Cards absolutely not configurable in Linux? Show me that please. Show me a field that is fully not Linux supportable. That you don't have one single turnaround.
Unification. The HELL with that!!!!! I DON'T want unification and most Linux users DON'T want that. The Hell with these KDE/Gnome wars. Let them both live in the herd. I'm neutral to them as I neither use none of their desktop managers. And i don't need common users hanging on BlackBoxes or WindowMakers.
Developing Mac/Windows complex apps? What do you mean by this? I am an ex-Windows/DOS developer and I saw three years of my life going through the pipes due to M$ "permanent revolution' of their SDKs. I have not seen worser Hell then to support a Windows app. Every three/six months a new patch or debug to hold apps in place. And every one of it taking days to solve, because M$, once again, decided to make changes to its super-embedded system. So you have to dig up sometimes farer than their SDKs. And they forbid reverse engineering. Oh my!..
Command lines are throwback? Do you realise what are you talking about? You have an automatised app doing a very specific job of sending and receiving files. Why the HELL I need to bloat it with a GUI interface? WHY DO I NEED IT?? If I can do 90% of the administration by using a command with three/four options on it? Why do I need to slowdown things, bloat them and cut my chance of combining commands, do batch tasks and more complex stuff?
And what concerns my friends needing help on Linux does not mean Windows ones need less. For them we have two whole departments of FIFTEEN people! One for the STUPID questions, the other for the less dumb ones. The last group is three persons only. Besides they support Windows desktops ONLY. Windows servers are FORBIDDEN inside our ISP network for very OBVIOUS reasons.