What "DNS services" does Linux offer (and Vista does not) that I might want to make use of?
firewalling
Vista has this, as does XP for that matter. XP's was kind of flaky until Service Pack 2, admittedly, but the SP2 firewall is great.
true security,
Vista runs IE in a sandbox specifically to increase security, does any Linux distro do the same with its web browser? (Note: of course you *can* configure them to, but it won't by default?) I don't see any difference in "true security" between Vista and Linux, at least from a home user's point of view.
Note, that I still think both OSes completely and utterly miss the point on security: the valuable data in my computer is my documents. The OS/applications *are not valuable*, they can be reinstalled in a couple hours. My income tax returns for the last 8 years can't be reconstructed without considerable expense in time and labor. Vista misses the point less than Linux, because at least the Ultimate version of it offers Shadow Copy. (OS X also misses the point less than Linux for the same reason, except they call it Time Machine.)
And again, I know you *can* configure this stuff on Linux, but Vista and OS X do it by default, on install.
granular permissions
More so than Windows ACLs/Group Policy? I need a citation on this one, buddy. All I've seen for permissions on Linux is a very basic "read/write/execute" with groups.
true file permissions
In what way are Linux file permissions more "true" than Windows XP/Vista NTFS file permissions? I'm gonna need a cite here, also.
multi user environments
Windows has had this since Windows 2000. In addition, Windows XP added Fast User Switching *before* both Linux and OS X. (Both of which decided it was good enough to copy.) So that's a bad example for Windows being behind the technology curve.
portable desktops
What's a "portable desktop?" I can't comment on this. (Unless you mean roaming profiles? Maybe? Or an iMac?)
networking
I'll hand you this one, I guess, not that it matters when even the dumbest OS has mature, stable networking capabilities. I will mention that Windows (and/or Novell) definitely lead the charge when it comes to resource sharing, networking printers and drives.
online service integration
Example? How did Linux "integrate" with online services better than Windows Vista? This point is so vague I can't even really comment on it.
shell scripting
Everything in the Windows Vista shell is scriptable using the old "cmd.exe" method (and always has been) and in Vista, the new Monad scripting environment.
fixing code problems in less than several years
Everyone prioritizes bugs. Want me to show you some very nasty Firefox bugs that have been alive for "several years?" I could dig up at least two, just from the top of my head. Of course, this is where you argue "OMG LINUX IS JUST A KERNEL!!!"
open API's
Linux was ahead of this, but.net has removed these arguments from the table.
modularity
Again, very vague, but the core kernel seems to be modular enough to run on my desktop, my Xbox and in a bunch of luxury cars I can't afford. Maybe Linux could do this earlier, but frankly it doesn't matter for my needs.
If you have some magic technique to find sockpuppets I'm sure we'd all like to hear it.
Yeah: Don't.
"Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit."
Hell, I don't even know what a "sock puppet" is, but trying to find them and ban them certainly goes against that cute little slogan on the homepage. Maybe you should modify it to be "the free encyclopedia that anyone but sock puppets can edit", which a link to the definition of sock puppet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sockpuppet_(Internet)
(BTW, I'm not going to edit Wikipedia out of principle, but saying that the word "alt" is universally considered "a false identity through which a member of an Internet community speaks while pretending not to" among all online services is simply wrong. In World of Warcraft, for example, the word "alt" has no negative connotations at all, it's just an alternate character you play sometimes. Despite its obvious importance to Wikipedia editors, I've never heard the term "sockpuppet" heard anywhere except in connection to Wikipedia.)
Secondly, unless you have tried dealing with the numerous trolls, nasty editors or those who are trying to convert Wikipedia into Wikicruft then you can't possibly know how hard it is to be an admin who tries to stick to core principles.
Ah, sounded good until you got to the part about Wikicruft.
Here's a simple guideline for all Wikipedia editors:
STOP DELETING TOPICS THAT PEOPLE CARE ABOUT AND SPENT HOURS WRITING ABOUT!
GIMP costs less, but also doesn't work as well as Photoshop Elements.
Honestly, on Windows, I'd recommend Paint.NET which is just as free as GIMP and works much, much better. It is missing some features that GIMP has, but the UI is tremendously better, and those features aren't anything the casual GIMP/Elements/PaintShopPro user is going to miss much anyway.
You'd be able to go into the history and see what they originally contained? Right now, there is no way whatsoever for the non-admin user to see what was deleted. Even if I go and blank a page, you can click the "History" link clearly labeled at the top of the screen and see what I deleted. You can't do that when the entire article is deleted.
The problem sums up to, as with almost everything in life, it's a hell of a lot easier to delete than it is to create.
Wikipedia can solve this by making it nearly impossible to actually delete an article. What I'd like to see if some kind of "notability" flag these "editors" can turn on, and the user would be able to select whether they want to see non-notable articles or not when browsing. (Even if it defaults to off.)
Of course as part of this change, deletion would be made near-impossible. I'd even like to see previously-deleted articles come back automatically with their "notability" flag set. As an added benefit, it gives users some incentive to log in (so Wikipedia would save their notability preference.)
This all assumes the deletions are for anal editors. If Wikipedia is actually running out of disk space, they should roll-up old changelogs for articles. (So instead of tracking every single individual change, you just track the changes made for each week as one item.)
Just shows how weak of a showing Vista really is. Microsoft will continue selling vaporware and releasing catchup versions of their OS (that are only 10 years or so behind their vaporware) as they always have.
Behind the vaporware, maybe.
But what is Microsoft catching up to exactly? They're on-par with Apple, and significantly ahead of Linux (IMO at least-- sure Linux has sparkly features, but Windows has working copy-and-paste and much superior GUI design/consistency.)
Vista feature I discovered yesterday: It has an application-level sound mixer. Finally I can tell my IM client to shut up while keeping iTunes at full volume! That's a nice feature. There's a lot of little nice touches like that in Vista, things that I'd been waiting for in other OSes for ages.
How is Nero's failure to update their product (after two YEARS of betas) Microsoft's fault? The reason it doesn't work in the first place is because it's doing something that was technically 'against the rules' in Windows NT as well, the only difference being that Vista actually enforces the rules. (Rules like 'don't write to the Program Files folder'.)
So I buy my copy of Adobe Photoshop Elements from CompUSA or somewhere, shove it in my DVD drive, then type "sudo apt-get" into the notepad application? And it magically installs it?
Yeah, I'm being purposefully dense, but anybody who truly believes that "sudo apt-get" is the end-all and be-all of software installation is simply out-of-touch with the rest of the industry and the intended non-technical users of the product.
Just FYI, I'm using Vista on a day-to-day basis and I'm not having any significant problems. (Although, admittedly, I've had games behave flaky-- Dark Messiah of M&M being the last example, but it's not a deal-breaker for me since my Xbox works just fine.)
First of all, the Register is the only news source carrying this? I'd rather trust the Weekly World News.
Secondly, this goes to show that any project, no matter its aims, no matter its implementation, no matter how 'open', will naturally end up developing political systems. Kind of an interesting social experiment.
Re:Windows UAP is a bolted on afterward system....
on
Security in Ten Years
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· Score: 1
That's called "backwards compatibility." Unfortunately, there's not a lot Microsoft can do as long as so much "professionally-developed" software writes directly to the/Program Files folder, doesn't work correctly with limited permissions, opens ports for no reason, etc.
Dude, you've never seen Wargames? That's NORAD's master control room, at least as depicted in Wargames.
If you listen to the DVD commentary, the director says he talked to an actual officer who did a stint at NORAD who told him that the movie version was actually very close to the actual version, with the exception that he got the DEFCON colors backwards. (In actual NORAD, DEFCON 5 is peace and 1 is war.) At the time the movie was made, that equipment was all classified. They were allowed to film the NORAD entrance, but not any further in.
Out of curiosity, how have you gotten your copy of WMP to play MP4 files? I have a crapload of movies on MP4 from Handbrake on my old Mac G5, and I'd like to stream them to my Xbox 360 to play, but WMP doesn't seem to be able to play them, unless there's some obvious thing I'm missing. (I'm on Vista Ultimate, if that helps.)
Windows Media Center/Extender didn't recognize my MP4s either.
I used it exactly once, because an open source software product I was trying to get working listed it as the only support option. If you're going to list IRC as a support option, don't get upset when people connect to the channel asking for support. Christ.
When the operator picks up, they don't (generally, Comcast is an exception of course) tell you you're stupid and calling the wrong number and to stop wasting everyone's 'not chatting' time.
Look, if you're supposed to leave a message and wait 4 hours for a response don't sell it as a chat room. That's all I'm saying. Call it IRLeaveAMessage, not IRC. You can't expect people to magically know that when they come in; if I'm in a room that lists 50 people and nobody's talking, I just assume something's technically broken.
So you come to a room with a whole bunch of people and you have no way, whatsoever, of knowing who's actually there or not? And this is considered normal?
If they're asleep, why don't they log out? Like a normal person?
Maybe because sometimes logging in a channel is just a way to signal your presence and that no one is chatting on this specific room anymore?
Then why does the room even exist? If they didn't log in and do nothing, there'd be no room, and then people like me wouldn't get confused as hell seeing a huge list of people NOT typing.
Nowadays, IRC is mostly a social forum and each well-established room as its own, sometimes peculiar, rules.
That's fine, but I still don't get why (regardless of what peculiar rules it has) you'd be logged on if you're not prepared to chat. Or not even at the keyboard.
It's unfortunate that I'm currently in a room with 1049 users that is currently scrolling at a mile a minute, otherwise that joke might have been funny.
No, you need a sense of humor for things to be funny. Since you took my posting so literally, it's obvious that you don't have the pre-requisites in place.
It wasn't my *choice* (I didn't even have an IRC client on my computer.) The product's documentation said to go into that IRC channel for help. If IRC is the worst place to go for support, why would the documentation point me there? And assuming that IRC is the best place to go for support... well, that open source product just had really crummy support, I guess is what it comes down to either way.
For what it's worth I much, much prefer web forums to mailing lists and to IRC. I don't want to subscribe to a 500 message a week mailing list to ask a single question (then have to unsubscribe-- what a huge pain!) I don't want to have to download an IRC client and figure out how the damned thing works. If you can't do support over a bog-standard web browser, then don't bother.
Here's the greater point, why do people even go INTO channels if they're not going to chat? There were 50+ people in the channel I was in, and only one of them typed *anything* in 5 entire minutes. If I didn't know better, I'd just assume that IRC was a buggy POS that didn't work. (Look it says 50+ people are here but I can't see what any of them are typing!)
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DNS services
.net has removed these arguments from the table.
What "DNS services" does Linux offer (and Vista does not) that I might want to make use of?
firewalling
Vista has this, as does XP for that matter. XP's was kind of flaky until Service Pack 2, admittedly, but the SP2 firewall is great.
true security,
Vista runs IE in a sandbox specifically to increase security, does any Linux distro do the same with its web browser? (Note: of course you *can* configure them to, but it won't by default?) I don't see any difference in "true security" between Vista and Linux, at least from a home user's point of view.
Note, that I still think both OSes completely and utterly miss the point on security: the valuable data in my computer is my documents. The OS/applications *are not valuable*, they can be reinstalled in a couple hours. My income tax returns for the last 8 years can't be reconstructed without considerable expense in time and labor. Vista misses the point less than Linux, because at least the Ultimate version of it offers Shadow Copy. (OS X also misses the point less than Linux for the same reason, except they call it Time Machine.)
And again, I know you *can* configure this stuff on Linux, but Vista and OS X do it by default, on install.
granular permissions
More so than Windows ACLs/Group Policy? I need a citation on this one, buddy. All I've seen for permissions on Linux is a very basic "read/write/execute" with groups.
true file permissions
In what way are Linux file permissions more "true" than Windows XP/Vista NTFS file permissions? I'm gonna need a cite here, also.
multi user environments
Windows has had this since Windows 2000. In addition, Windows XP added Fast User Switching *before* both Linux and OS X. (Both of which decided it was good enough to copy.) So that's a bad example for Windows being behind the technology curve.
portable desktops
What's a "portable desktop?" I can't comment on this. (Unless you mean roaming profiles? Maybe? Or an iMac?)
networking
I'll hand you this one, I guess, not that it matters when even the dumbest OS has mature, stable networking capabilities. I will mention that Windows (and/or Novell) definitely lead the charge when it comes to resource sharing, networking printers and drives.
online service integration
Example? How did Linux "integrate" with online services better than Windows Vista? This point is so vague I can't even really comment on it.
shell scripting
Everything in the Windows Vista shell is scriptable using the old "cmd.exe" method (and always has been) and in Vista, the new Monad scripting environment.
fixing code problems in less than several years
Everyone prioritizes bugs. Want me to show you some very nasty Firefox bugs that have been alive for "several years?" I could dig up at least two, just from the top of my head. Of course, this is where you argue "OMG LINUX IS JUST A KERNEL!!!"
open API's
Linux was ahead of this, but
modularity
Again, very vague, but the core kernel seems to be modular enough to run on my desktop, my Xbox and in a bunch of luxury cars I can't afford. Maybe Linux could do this earlier, but frankly it doesn't matter for my needs.
If you have some magic technique to find sockpuppets I'm sure we'd all like to hear it.
Yeah: Don't.
"Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit."
Hell, I don't even know what a "sock puppet" is, but trying to find them and ban them certainly goes against that cute little slogan on the homepage. Maybe you should modify it to be "the free encyclopedia that anyone but sock puppets can edit", which a link to the definition of sock puppet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sockpuppet_(Internet)
(BTW, I'm not going to edit Wikipedia out of principle, but saying that the word "alt" is universally considered "a false identity through which a member of an Internet community speaks while pretending not to" among all online services is simply wrong. In World of Warcraft, for example, the word "alt" has no negative connotations at all, it's just an alternate character you play sometimes. Despite its obvious importance to Wikipedia editors, I've never heard the term "sockpuppet" heard anywhere except in connection to Wikipedia.)
Secondly, unless you have tried dealing with the numerous trolls, nasty editors or those who are trying to convert Wikipedia into Wikicruft then you can't possibly know how hard it is to be an admin who tries to stick to core principles.
Ah, sounded good until you got to the part about Wikicruft.
Here's a simple guideline for all Wikipedia editors:
STOP DELETING TOPICS THAT PEOPLE CARE ABOUT AND SPENT HOURS WRITING ABOUT!
That's all, that's it. Live and let live.
GIMP costs less, but also doesn't work as well as Photoshop Elements.
Honestly, on Windows, I'd recommend Paint.NET which is just as free as GIMP and works much, much better. It is missing some features that GIMP has, but the UI is tremendously better, and those features aren't anything the casual GIMP/Elements/PaintShopPro user is going to miss much anyway.
You'd be able to go into the history and see what they originally contained? Right now, there is no way whatsoever for the non-admin user to see what was deleted. Even if I go and blank a page, you can click the "History" link clearly labeled at the top of the screen and see what I deleted. You can't do that when the entire article is deleted.
The problem sums up to, as with almost everything in life, it's a hell of a lot easier to delete than it is to create.
Wikipedia can solve this by making it nearly impossible to actually delete an article. What I'd like to see if some kind of "notability" flag these "editors" can turn on, and the user would be able to select whether they want to see non-notable articles or not when browsing. (Even if it defaults to off.)
Of course as part of this change, deletion would be made near-impossible. I'd even like to see previously-deleted articles come back automatically with their "notability" flag set. As an added benefit, it gives users some incentive to log in (so Wikipedia would save their notability preference.)
This all assumes the deletions are for anal editors. If Wikipedia is actually running out of disk space, they should roll-up old changelogs for articles. (So instead of tracking every single individual change, you just track the changes made for each week as one item.)
Just shows how weak of a showing Vista really is. Microsoft will continue selling vaporware and releasing catchup versions of their OS (that are only 10 years or so behind their vaporware) as they always have.
Behind the vaporware, maybe.
But what is Microsoft catching up to exactly? They're on-par with Apple, and significantly ahead of Linux (IMO at least-- sure Linux has sparkly features, but Windows has working copy-and-paste and much superior GUI design/consistency.)
Vista feature I discovered yesterday: It has an application-level sound mixer. Finally I can tell my IM client to shut up while keeping iTunes at full volume! That's a nice feature. There's a lot of little nice touches like that in Vista, things that I'd been waiting for in other OSes for ages.
How is Nero's failure to update their product (after two YEARS of betas) Microsoft's fault? The reason it doesn't work in the first place is because it's doing something that was technically 'against the rules' in Windows NT as well, the only difference being that Vista actually enforces the rules. (Rules like 'don't write to the Program Files folder'.)
So I buy my copy of Adobe Photoshop Elements from CompUSA or somewhere, shove it in my DVD drive, then type "sudo apt-get" into the notepad application? And it magically installs it?
Yeah, I'm being purposefully dense, but anybody who truly believes that "sudo apt-get" is the end-all and be-all of software installation is simply out-of-touch with the rest of the industry and the intended non-technical users of the product.
Just FYI, I'm using Vista on a day-to-day basis and I'm not having any significant problems. (Although, admittedly, I've had games behave flaky-- Dark Messiah of M&M being the last example, but it's not a deal-breaker for me since my Xbox works just fine.)
First of all, the Register is the only news source carrying this? I'd rather trust the Weekly World News.
Secondly, this goes to show that any project, no matter its aims, no matter its implementation, no matter how 'open', will naturally end up developing political systems. Kind of an interesting social experiment.
That's called "backwards compatibility." Unfortunately, there's not a lot Microsoft can do as long as so much "professionally-developed" software writes directly to the /Program Files folder, doesn't work correctly with limited permissions, opens ports for no reason, etc.
With MS you have to pay for EVERY new version which is released.
Of IE? I've never paid for any new version of IE in my entire career. What are you doing wrong?
Why do I get a vision of Jack Bauer taking orders from Bill Gates to wipe some Chinese online terrorists off the map from some CTU-like complex?
Because you watch too much TV?
Dude, you've never seen Wargames? That's NORAD's master control room, at least as depicted in Wargames.
If you listen to the DVD commentary, the director says he talked to an actual officer who did a stint at NORAD who told him that the movie version was actually very close to the actual version, with the exception that he got the DEFCON colors backwards. (In actual NORAD, DEFCON 5 is peace and 1 is war.) At the time the movie was made, that equipment was all classified. They were allowed to film the NORAD entrance, but not any further in.
Out of curiosity, how have you gotten your copy of WMP to play MP4 files? I have a crapload of movies on MP4 from Handbrake on my old Mac G5, and I'd like to stream them to my Xbox 360 to play, but WMP doesn't seem to be able to play them, unless there's some obvious thing I'm missing. (I'm on Vista Ultimate, if that helps.)
Windows Media Center/Extender didn't recognize my MP4s either.
I used it exactly once, because an open source software product I was trying to get working listed it as the only support option. If you're going to list IRC as a support option, don't get upset when people connect to the channel asking for support. Christ.
When the operator picks up, they don't (generally, Comcast is an exception of course) tell you you're stupid and calling the wrong number and to stop wasting everyone's 'not chatting' time.
Look, if you're supposed to leave a message and wait 4 hours for a response don't sell it as a chat room. That's all I'm saying. Call it IRLeaveAMessage, not IRC. You can't expect people to magically know that when they come in; if I'm in a room that lists 50 people and nobody's talking, I just assume something's technically broken.
So you come to a room with a whole bunch of people and you have no way, whatsoever, of knowing who's actually there or not? And this is considered normal?
Maybe because they are in a different timezone?
If they're asleep, why don't they log out? Like a normal person?
Maybe because sometimes logging in a channel is just a way to signal your presence and that no one is chatting on this specific room anymore?
Then why does the room even exist? If they didn't log in and do nothing, there'd be no room, and then people like me wouldn't get confused as hell seeing a huge list of people NOT typing.
Nowadays, IRC is mostly a social forum and each well-established room as its own, sometimes peculiar, rules.
That's fine, but I still don't get why (regardless of what peculiar rules it has) you'd be logged on if you're not prepared to chat. Or not even at the keyboard.
It's unfortunate that I'm currently in a room with 1049 users that is currently scrolling at a mile a minute, otherwise that joke might have been funny.
No, you need a sense of humor for things to be funny. Since you took my posting so literally, it's obvious that you don't have the pre-requisites in place.
It wasn't my *choice* (I didn't even have an IRC client on my computer.) The product's documentation said to go into that IRC channel for help. If IRC is the worst place to go for support, why would the documentation point me there? And assuming that IRC is the best place to go for support... well, that open source product just had really crummy support, I guess is what it comes down to either way.
For what it's worth I much, much prefer web forums to mailing lists and to IRC. I don't want to subscribe to a 500 message a week mailing list to ask a single question (then have to unsubscribe-- what a huge pain!) I don't want to have to download an IRC client and figure out how the damned thing works. If you can't do support over a bog-standard web browser, then don't bother.
Here's the greater point, why do people even go INTO channels if they're not going to chat? There were 50+ people in the channel I was in, and only one of them typed *anything* in 5 entire minutes. If I didn't know better, I'd just assume that IRC was a buggy POS that didn't work. (Look it says 50+ people are here but I can't see what any of them are typing!)