* Posts by Will Hill

9 publicly visible posts • joined 27 May 2007

Firefox: freedom's just another word for 'kerching!'

Will Hill
FAIL

Silly Matt

You can take the man out of Novell, but you can't take Novell out of the man. I've have not seen so much mirepresentation and bullshit outside of a Microsoft mouthpiece. Anyone who wants to know what Egan Moglen thinks about being tracked on the internet should visit <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the freedom box</a>. I'm sure the Mozilla people feel similarly abused. What's more, thanks to software freedom, it does not matter.

If Mozilla lets me down with Firefox, I expect other people to take care of themselves with Icecat, Konqueror, Websurf, Epiphany, and so on and so forth. That's what <a href="http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html">software freedom</a> is all about. Advertisers can howl all they like, I'm not really interested and get my news and entertainment from others who agree. People who don't get that are not going to be making much money in the immediate future. The folks at Canonical need to watch out for people who think the way Matt does.

The Reg guide to Linux, part 1: Picking a distro

Will Hill
Pint

Difficult things.

You say, "it's a bit more work to get proprietary code such as graphics or wireless network drivers working, or the official versions of Java, Flash and so on. Good for servers if you know what you're doing, but not a great desktop choice unless you're already a guru."

That's a funny inversion. When something is hard in the Debian world, I think it is for gurus. If Flash, networking drivers and so on were free software they would be easy and a good candidate for desktop use. I've been using Debian as a desktop for more than ten years. With some care in hardware choice, there's nothing it can't do. Upgrades and cloning data for new computers has always been easy for me. That ends when I start to fool with non free software like Flash or Nvidia's drivers. Those things are not worth the trouble and make me feel like I'm running Windows or something - ICK.

Windows experiment meets the bottom line

Will Hill
Jobs Horns

Crediblity Zero

Some people say the same thing about Vista but reality is different. Getting the new Visual Studio on XP was a big mistake for a friend of mine. It trashed his system and he had to start all over again. What should have been a 5 minute compile became a two day ordeal.

Microsoft offers $300m for web-washing ad campaign

Will Hill
Jobs Horns

Slogan

M$ Live - The Interweb Searches You.

M$ Live - Because we will break everything else.

M$ Live - Extending the WORD.DOC monopoly again.

M$ Live - Because "Good Enough" is what we say it is.

Choice breeds complexity for Linux desktop

Will Hill
Stop

That's Silly Spin.

I'm always amazed when people turn good news into predictions of failure. The successful use of GNU/Linux in varied applications proves that it's easier to develop for, not that it's more complicated and doomed to fail. Everex's success with gOS proves that useful computers can be made more cheaply with free software than with non free. There will be more of this, not less.

Exploit Wednesday follows Patch Tuesday Word update

Will Hill
Jobs Horns

Throws out your work. What a feature!

"The good news is that the default configuration in Microsoft Office 2007 and Office 2003, Service Pack 3 will not allow you to open some older Office file formats, including Office for Macintosh documents," Symantec notes.

Wow, thanks. I wonder when their new ooxml will have features like that.

Why Microsoft vs Mankind still matters

Will Hill

Not Natural

You need to read your own news before you conclude there's anything natural about any software monopoly, especially the second rate one in Redmond. The ease with which free software is ported across hardware and software platforms proves that there's no inherent technical difficulty making computers and hardware works and can work better than M$ can ever dream. They are not smarter and hardware makers don't really want to keep secrets. When you read your own stories about forbiding music players from working with OGG, intentionally breaking ACPI power management, sabotaging competing software and other dirty tricks, you know that M$ is a monopoly of the old fashioned kind: "Do as I say of face my wrath". If that's not good enough for you, go dig through the court documents from the US anti-trust case. M$ is so blatant, even the US federal government noticed. M$ spends close to a billion dollars a month in advertising, PR and other BS to snow you under, but they need to be paying attention to their software. Vista does not work and people are not buying it, so the monopoly is failing, and that is final proof that nothing was natural about the Windoze monopoly.

Winning the (propaganda) war on cancer

Will Hill

When you need to know, you learn.

Cancer treatment is a depressing business but thing have improved in the last 30 years. Computer planning has drastically improved treatments and standard of life for many kinds of dissease. Staging is taken into account when people make summary statements and the summary is averaged over the most common kinds of cancer. Still, summaries can be misleading and the war is far from won. Lung cancer is steadily increasing as more women take up smoking and they don't have good prospects. Cancer is a life ender and the business is only bearable because you can give a few of your patients more life and reduce the suffering of the rest. Patients and relatives are gratefull for what little can be done.

The cynicism of this article can do some real harm. Early diagnosis is critical because people who are in better shape do better. If you let the dissease progress, there is little to be done. The end comes quickly and is just as miserable as the one that may come in five years. The jargon is complex, but doctors will give you reliable odds and statistics for your particular dissease if you ask for it. Indeed, many of the statistics and definitions are published on the web, which is how the author got the sad facts.

Gone phishing with eBay

Will Hill

Infection Detected.

The author claims, "So, it could be malicious code on the PC but both David and I would have to be infected in the same way; possible, but unlikely." but it's not true. He's already identified himself as a Windows user. The chances his friend is also a Windows user is about 80%.