Slashdot Mirror

Is it pr0n compatible?

http://surf.to/gaynazisexads

More importantly, in terms of realism regarding UK broadband connectivity:

ADSL-For-Ipswich | Barnt Green, Birmingham | Edenbridge, Kent | Brinscall, Lancashire | Chafford Hundred, Grays | Broxburn/Uphall, Scotland | New Mills, Stockport | Bradford-on-Avon | Antrim, Northern Ireland | Paddock Wood, Kent | Mossley, Greater Manchester | Maltby, Rotherham | Cudworth, South Yorkshire | Pembury, Kent | Telford, Shropshire | Totnes, Devon | Caister on Sea, Great Yarmouth | Broadband in the East of England | Wargrave, Berkshire | Alton, Hampshire #1 | Alton, Hampshire #2 | Frodsham, Cheshire | Atherstone, Warwickshire | Sleaford, Lincolnshire | Neston, South Wirral | Blackpool/Fleetwood, Lancashire | Colwyn Bay, Wales | Whitby, Yorkshire | Saltcoats/Ardossan/Stevenston, Strathclyde | Thornbury, South Gloucestershire | Dinnington, Sheffield | Irby, Wirral | Colwyn Bay/Old Colwyn/Rhos-On-Sea, North Wales | Hednesford, Staffs | Connahs Quay/Flint/Mold/Sealand/Queensferry, North Wales | Eastham/Wirrall, Cheshire | Worle, North Somerset | Dereham, Norfolk | Leicester Kirby Muxloe, Leicestershire | Bolton Westhoughton, Lancashire | Leek, Staffordshire | Ivybridge, Devon | Attleborough, Norfolk | Whaley Bridge, Derbyshire | Montrose, Angus, Scotland | Hurstpierpoint, West Sussex | Worcester/St Johns/Fernhill Heath, Worcester | Allerton, Liverpool (and surrounding exchanges) | Buntingford, North Hertfordshire | Glastonbury, Somerset | St Budeaux, Devon | Fenland towns of Ramsey, Yaxley, Whittlesey, Chatteris, Ely and Soham | Grimsby, North East Lincolnshire | Pershore, Worcs | Yarmouth, Norfolk | Great Oakley, Corby, Northants | South Woodham Ferrers, Essex | Goring & South Stoke, South Oxfordshire and Streatley & Lower Basildon, West Berkshire | Kinross & Milnathort, Perthshire | Bolsover, Derbyshire | Elton, Ince and Helsby in Cheshire | Hanwell/Horley/Wroxton/Balscote/North Newington/Drayton, Oxfordshire | Tonyrefail/Gilfach Goch and surrounding area, Mid Glamorgan | Rotherfield Greys/Rotherfield Peppard/Shepherds Green, Oxfordshire | Heath Hayes, Staffordshire | Hednesford, Staffordshire | Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire | Adderbury (Nr. Banbury), Oxfordshire | Lydney, Gloucestershire | Knaresborough, North Yorkshire | Saltburn-By-The-Sea, Cleveland | Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire | Churchdown, Gloucestershire

Rygar is an awesome arcade game. My dorm in college owned it, meaning it got a lot of drunken abuse. Plus, there was the whole "cat living in it for two weeks" which probably didn't help its survival either.

In any case, you left out progressive rock.

... And progressive trance...

Ahhh trolling :)

Dancing all night on trancy sounds, ingesting advanced mind-altering substances. How could one not like electronic dance music (please note: != techno).

It there , it's open ( more or less ) it's cross-platfrom compatible etc..

It is used by sun , apple-ppc and motorola-ppc machines.

David Balazic , http://surf.to/stein

But it was /Hungarian/, not Bulgarian.

"I wheel not by zis tobacconist, it is scratched!"

"Please föööndle my buttocks."
"Ah, yes. Two blocks down, and left at the light."

And so on...

No! Don't click me!

Other possibility: you could try getting in touch with Groupe Bull or Motorola Computer Group (at http://www.mcg.mot.com/) about that. Both make PowerPC-based boards and computers, though AFAIK they only sell to vendors and not to little saps like us. ;-)

For that matter, if you wait a little, IBM's open hardware specs ought to also generate some interest amoung hardware manufacturers.

Last recommendation: Get in touch with Yellow Dog Linux or LinuxPPC about it. They'd be happy to help you out in finding something, I'm sure. Both are pretty quick in supporting new hardware, as well; though AltiVec is not yet supported (the code has to be "vectorized" first), meaning only that its advantages won't yet make a difference in Linux, that development is already starting to get underway.

Oh, and if you're looking for news and info about Linux for PowerPC Macs, check out my site at http://linux.macnews.de/. :-)

Ethelred

---

Conflict over "Linux" put aside
Wiesbane/Offene Systeme, 17 September 1997

On 17 September 1999, an open discussion about the registration of the trademark "Linux" took place at the annual congress of the Open Systems/German Unix Users Group (GUUG).

Those present:
Wolfgang Dreyer, Linux International
Achim Cloer, LIVE Linux-Verband / Delta Internet
Edmund Humenberger, Owner of the Trademark "Linux" in Germany
Rainer Feldkamp, Patent Attorney
Christian Hüttermann, Owner/operator of the domain linux.de

Moderated by:
Martin Schulte, GUUG e.V.

Mr. Humenberger, owner of the German trademark "Linux", sent a license agreement in mid-July 1997 to Christian Hüttermann, owner/operator of Linux.de, in which Mr. Humenberger guaranteed 10 years' use of the trademark "Linux" in return for an agreement not to resort to legal recourse.

In response, Mr. Hütterman referred the matter to the Linux Verband LIVE, Linux International and the GUUG.

The first contact regarding this situation came in a telephone converstaion between Achim Cloer and Mr. Humenberger, in which no agreement was reached.

Further process was placed in the hands of Mr. Feldkamp, a patent attorney and Linux user, in coordination with the various associations and with an American patent attorney.

In the course of the meeting, the representatives of the involved groups reviewed the current events.

Wolfgang Dreyer, as representative of Linux International, announced that, at a metting between patent attorney Feldkamp and Mr. Humenberger shortly before, an agreement had been reached. During the open discussion, Mr. Humenberger transferred his rights to the name "Linux" to Linus Torvalds in full.

At the end of the meeting, Mr. Humenberger made the following statement with regards to his actions:

Mr. Humenberger had followed a discussion in newsgroups regarding the registration of the name "Linux" since 1993. As no interest group in the Linux community existed at that time, Mr. Humenberger reigstered the name himself to protect it on behalf of the Linux community.

Herewith is the controversy about the German trademark "Linux" and the related registered marque "Linux" resolved. ---

One would hope that ChannelOne would have similar intentions. I do know that they have been involved in Linux for some time, so let's hope they are benevolent enough to give Linus the rights...

Ethelred

Someone once made the comparison of the Internet to the Wild West. I forget who it was--I believe it was Nicholas Negroponte of Wired and MIT--but with things like this, it seems ever more apt than ever.

The premise of the comparison was that the Wild West of the USA was once wild, untamed, mob rule--yet still on the whole tranquil, at least for the first Europeans who arrived (Davy Crockett types) who also got along with the local Indians. Then the later settlers came in, who promptly began trying to "civilize" everything--imposing rules, laws, institutions and so on, both on the earler settlers and on the Indians living with them. The previous occupants resented this and tried to fight back, but ultimately the settlers--and especially the corporations who followed them--won out through force of numbers and money (and, in the case of the Indians, through guns and disease). This is exactly what is happening here: a large, multinational company--hand in hand with other "interest groups" recently become interested in the Net--are trying to impose their value system on the wild, untamed Internet. I'm as angry as anyone here about it, but let's face it, there is little to be done: money (and power and influence) talks.

Furthermore, those suggesting a free Internet Jr. to run parallel to the current one ignore that, eventually, it too would be swamped by corporate interests--someone would begin using it for profit, and as soon as that day arrives, it's the beginning of the end for Internet Jr. as others begin elbowing their way in. Nevermind the logistics: who would set up the backbones? Where would the bandwidth come from?

The crazy part is that the Internet is already being Balkanized anyway, as China, Singapore, and others are in effect building parallel Internets that only have limited access to the greater Internet--precisely to screen content for political purposes. Censorship is already taking place on a massive scale, and self-censorship--i.e. by not seeking or clicking on subversive or unacceptable content for fear of prosecution or persecution--already takes place as well.

I wish I knew of a solution, and hate being such a pessimist, but my gut feeling tells me we just have to get used to it--or go out and vote for liberal/libertarian parties up the yin-yang, then pray.

Ethelred

When I do a project, I certainly intend to be there for the long haul, and intend to keep my clients as long as I can. It's to my benefit to do so, since my clients will be happier with me, and my name gets spread around as being someone who does good work--meaning I can charge more later when demand picks up, plus I can choose my projects.

I consider myself to be the specialist who does an excellent job and is at the peak of his field, and I am more flexible in my time planning and production than most (if not all) employees. I'm also not afraid to say my opinion of how the job should best be done--no simple "yes, sir" from me, but rather I'll help my client make sure that he/she gets what they need, not just what they want.

Anyone who slags a contractor as being the shlep who skulks in the door only to collect his/her paycheck needs to think harder about. A contractor always knows that he/she can be fired in an instant, with no severance pay or other lasting benefits. The only benefit a contractor gets is to simply do a good job and get paid--because there will always be a day when there is no work to do at all, and no money.

Best regards,

Ethelred

There's a simple reason: AOL's only _real_ advantage is content. They have special AOL-only chat, forums, and so on, and (you have to give them credit) make the Net simpler (some would say *too* simple).

But what about MS? Suppose they brought all their content to bear. They have _tons_ that they can marshal: MSNBC, ZDnet, Bloomberg, and so on, since MS has been investing in other companies like crazy. Add to that the fact that MS has broadband access coming up (where AOL is lagging), and you have a serious threat where MSN failed before--especially if they are serious about offering it for free. Imagine--preinstalled on all Windows computers, and free...can anyone say "Explorer vs. Netscape"?

Of course, MS could still fall flat--like by having the whole thing run on NT, in which case it's MS-Offline--but they could really hurt AOL, since they _can_ go on forever losing money on MSN Junior--remember, this is the company that scratches its armpit and earns another billion on the stock market.

I'm no fan of AOL, but they are the only real hope of taking down MS in the near future IMHO (Linux is getting there in the server market, but has some ways to go in the desktop market). Even AOL's putative alliances with Sun, Netscape and Apple probably won't help--none of them have the financial clout that MS does.

Sad story...I'll continue using my Mac and Linux until I get run over by a dump truck, but there are lots of PHBs and know-nothing users willing to go along with MS's garbage virtually in perpetuity...*sigh*

Anyone is free to prove me wrong. I'd be _delighted_ to be wrong on this one. :-)

Ethelred

<nitpick>
Actually, it's "LinuxPPC" (without the slash).
</nitpick>

Ethelred

I'm wondering when the Gerald Holmes movie is coming out.

"Who is...Gerald Holmes?"
Masked croosader for windos oh boy. Well buddy see this moovie cos gerald homes is in it an he tells you about how great windows is oh boy. Yeah so Gerlad is gonna tell you who he reely is. The hole movvie was filmed with a quickkam whihc was invented by bill gates Cause hes relly smart bcause he founded Mircosoft which was realy realy smart. No pinko commy linus users can come or else ill send my lawyers. Oh boy!!!!

Somebody call Paramount. I think I have an idea. :-)

Ethelred

Sure, there are mirrors--they are listed on Loki's site, which keeps getting /.'ed like crazy. But here are the FTP sites listed:

ftp://ftp.linuxberg.com/pub/Loki/

ftp://happypenguin.org/pub/loki/myth2/

ftp://download.linuxlords.com/pub/de mos/myth2/

Loki is going to be adding more as time goes by. If you have a good connection free, e-mail them and let 'em know...and if you have a spare Origin2, send it to 'em, too--their server needs a break... :-/

Kinda sucks, too. Spent all that effort redoing the Loki site, and nobody gets to see it. *sigh*

Ethelred

I really hate to say it, but I'm forced to think of a cartoon from "Bloom County" some years back, where Opus the penguin is trying to book a flight to Cleveland or some such, and the person on the phone from Megacorp Airways (something like that) is extremely rude and demands $2000 for the ticket. So Opus gets steamed, calls a competitor, and the same person answers the phone...'cos Megacorp bought 'em all out. And btw the price is now $3000. And say "please", poophead.

I can't help but think that once one ISP starts doing this, they all will follow, just because of the old lemming instinct--they would perceive their competitors using this Cisco garbage as having an "advantage" and would want it also. Even though AT&T claims they won't use it, it's probably only a matter of time.

*sigh*

Ethelred

Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death! - Patrick Henry (1736-1799) Speech in the Virginia Convention, March 1775

Now, there's the small problem that Patrick Henry was a monarchist...kinda odd when you think that the Yoo Ess of Ay coulda had a Prussian prince as King of America (he was invited but turned the offer down). And if Ben Franklin had had his way, we'd have had a turkey as our mascot instead of a bald eagle...and we came close to choosing German as our national language after the Revolution.

Just think. A German speaking, Prussian-monarch-ruled nation with a turkey for its emblem. Imagine your dollars (sorry, guess it woulda been "taler") with a big honkin' turkey on the back, with "EINS" in huge letters. And a picture of König Friedrich Wilhelm IX on the front. Odd...

Ethelred

Interesting to see companies getting in on the act. In Germany, there was a court ruling about a year ago stating that it was forbidden to link to hate sites or sites containing illegal material under German law. Thus, if you are in Germany and link to a site containing, say, pictures of Nazi leaders (regardless of where that site is), you could be in trouble with the law in Germany (pro-Nazi material and political parties are strictly forbidden), even though you may think you bear no responsibility for what is on the other site.

Unfortuntately, I can't remember exactly when or where that ruling was, but I certainly remember the impact it had on my mind: utter disbelief.

ISTR that this ruling was linked to the prosecution of a CompuServe Germany exec for supposedly facilitating access to illegal pornography. Obviously, he had nothing to do with it, but he was held responsible anyway on behalf of CompuServer by a Bavarian court. Go figure.

Ethelred

That's not the point. At least you're only giving it to AOL, which "knows" it anyway. Why give it to someone else? AOL is (so they say) only trying to limit the potential number of people who can find it out.

Ethelred

OTOH ESR is dead-on when he chastises AOL for their tactics--this was a stupid move on their part. I'd love to play Case & Co. in a game of chess... they'd probably fall for the four-move checkmate every time.

AOL could have been a lot more subtle about it, like MS was with their fake warnings and so on (cf. QuickTime, DR-DOS)--maybe by spiking their protocol to limit use only to "registered" users, or by deliberately bringing out a new, more invincible version with weak encryption or whatever. But no, they made a public fuss and openly tried to yank the carpet from under MS while ignoring the banana peel under their feet.

Case: Aha, I got your queen! (giggles)
Gates: Fine. Checkmate.

Boneheads...

Ethelred

Embedded tables are "bad" for the reason that they slow down the rendering speed of the page dramatically. Try it sometime--do the same design with and without embedded tables (i.e. use tables with ALIGN="LEFT" and ALIGN="RIGHT" instead of having them all inside of other tables). It's much faster having each table separate. Sometimes there is no other way, but one should try to avoid it if possible.

Slashdot uses them to excess. Just look at their code and you'll see what I mean.

Hope that makes sense...

Ethelred

I beg to differ. It has *everything* to do with it. The problem is having things like the logo, logotype, global typography, etc. visible (even dominant) and legible on the page at any resolution, and also preserving things like column widths to maintain legibility (as someone else touched on). But the most important thing is CONSISTENCY. You can't guarantee the customer that the site will look even remotely the same on all browsers (or the imporant ones, at least) if the tables are all totally flexible--or if there are none at all. It's a tradeoff, pure and simple.

Again, look at slashdot, it looks good and consistent most everywhere

Slashdot is not exactly a paragon of virtue in regards to web design--it's got its strong points (good use of contrast, consistent positioning of navigation, etc.) and weaknesses (smallish type in some spots, addiction to embedded tables...bad Slashdot, no cookie...and lack of polish on the graphics).

and it doesn't use Flash

The reason I referred to Flash is because of scalability. At least with Flash you can guarantee a layout is going to work in practically any size. Too bad it's proprietary...and you can't search or index the text in it...and body copy is damned near illegible in some cases. *sigh*

I myself don't use Flash unless I have to, mainly because I avoid all plugins and Java if at all possible. I sometimes use JavaScript, but never make it central to the interface--i.e. the site should work with JS or without it.

Anyways, enough ranting for t'day... :-)

Ethelred

You have inadvertently hit the nail on the head as to why you _must_ often use a fixed width in designing a webpage: fixed-width pixmaps. 99.99% of customers (this is a verifiable statistic, really it is, I swear, really, honest) want their websites to have a consistent look across all platforms and browsers, and they also insist (rightly) that their corporate identity system be preserved. This means following guidelines for positioning logos, type, etc., and in most cases this is only to be done using pixmaps (until Flash becomes a *real* standard...where the hell's Flash for Linux?).

So you are forced to use fixed-width pixmaps and tables for positioning...which, by extension, forces you to resort to using things like "columns" (like Red Hat does) and fixed widths.

Admittedly, Red Hat did it in a particularly crappy way...no flexibility at all. But you can't assume that all pages can be made to fit your 4096 pixel screen. It just ain't in the cards.

Trust me, as a web designer, I can tell you that that ain't gonna work, at least not within reason.

Ethelred

Yes, Linux.com does a good job already. Yes, there are other portals. But c'mon. Isn't that what Open Source is all about? Don't trust any service of block of information to only a single provider. Hell, that's what Slashdot's all about, if you ask me.

That's not what I was criticizing; I was mainly worried at the apparent "demotion" of /. on their site. It used to have a much more prominent place.

The idea of a portal is to have _one_ central place where you get a sampling of info that you can customize to suit you. The "old" Red Hat site (which, oddly, wasn't *that* old) came closer to that goal; now, I have to hunt for the /. link (which is pretty tiny) and don't get any other real info on the same page. Just a huge mass of links.

And for a while, at least, I *was* using it as a portal, until I realized you could customize /. a lot more. :-)

Ethelred

Seems like Red Hat is trying to cut their moorings from the open source/geek/Linux community at large. What's this? No more headlines from Slashdot? Huh?

I also think the new site is one great big yawn. CmdrTaco may think that it's more simple and elegant, but to me it just looks cheap (sloppy design here and there IMO--what's with the cheesy flags?--and there is such a thing as TOO simple).

Only advantage I can see to the new site is that it loads hellaciously faster, but I'd like at least a _little_ eye candy.

Yawn...

Ethelred

Would we put up the source code for Photoshop?" Warnock said. "Not in a million years. ... Well, maybe sometime in the future. But something like that is so horrendously complex, it is just not feasible...

Um, GIMP, anyone? TIFFany? As if open source developers are somehow too stupid to figure out a graphics program...besides, don'tcha think those very same developers could actually clean up the mess that Photoshop is?

"I think organizations like Quark, who are fiercely proprietary, will suffer at the hands of those who use open standards and invite help from the open source community."

Exactomundo, mon cher suit-o-rama. And not releasing the code of your products means you are just as proprietary as Quark.

"I want to pay for an operating system from a vendor with a contractual relationship that gives me recourse if things go wrong," Warnock said.

So...in other words, you believe open source is good, but not good enough for Adobe to actually use. Linux not good enough? Just because it's FREE? Besides, all you have to do is get Linux from Red Hat, SuSE, TurboLinux or whatever, and voila, you have someone to scream at. If you're desperate, maybe you can drop Linus a line on Usenet.

I have grown to despise Quark--way too expensive, and when was the last time we say a truly *significant* upgrade?--but Adobe just went down about 1000 notches on my scale.

If you're going to be proprietary, at least be honest about it. Don't try act like you're a big fan of open source...and then slam one of its crown jewels.

Ethelred

Your link seems to be deader than the proverbial steel entryway affixation unit...can you check it and try again?

Thanks for the other info, though! :-)

TIA,

Ethelred

I'm wondering partly because I use PHP a lot, but know just about zilch about mod_perl and don't know if it's worth it to try using it. FWIW I use PHP mainly to make a global, dynamic template for a website, which then reacts to the browser type to generate code. Anybody know how PHP and mod_perl compare for that kind of use?

Ethelred

Damn, IBM really pulled out the stops for this, didn't they? Interesting to see our very own CmdrTaco show up there, too. (Congrats, Rob.)

I, for one, am pleased pink about this. It's high time that someone did a tightly organized, professional and concise developer support site for Linux. Looks to be tons of info there...I'm jealous. ;-)

Add this to SmartBeak, and things are looking up in Linuxland.

Funny to note that ten to twenty years ago, IBM was The Great Enemy(TM), at least for us Mac fans. Now they've turned 180 degrees in my book.

So when is IBM gonna start selling Aptivas only with Linux? ;-)

Ethelred

function post() { if ($ethelred) { $post = 'First';} echo $post.' :-) '; }

Seems some people have missed a big issue as to why IPv6 is a Really Big Thing(TM): ubiquitous computing. Imagine that your cellphone, pager, wristwatch, PC, PalmPilot, laptop, etc. all have chips in them that each are interconnected to the Net. Each would get its own IP address to make things easier--dynamic assignment for such things would be a nightmare.

Now imagine the idea of having your milk carton have a chip embedded in it, which is monitored by your fridge. If the milk is going bad or getting low, it'll "tell" the fridge and the supermarket (maybe even you) that you need a new carton. Both the milk carton (and the millions of other milk cartons) and fridge would theoretically also need unique IPs for such a function.

As it is, there are literally millions (billions?) of microprocessor chips produced a year. Processors are also dirt-cheap--the ones we hear of, like PowerPCs, Pentia and Alphas, are enormously expensive compared to the "average" chip. (Think of all those annoying singing greeting cards.) If each new chip were to have a unique, embedded IP, even IPv6 would run out eventually. They're already everywhere--in your car (dozens of 'em, if not hundreds), in your TV, maybe even in your toothbrush, for all I know. The idea of interconnectivity and ubiquitous computing screams for billions upon billions of unique IPs to have it all work.

And, of course, the milk carton would be running Linux. ;-)

Mind you, the idea of somebody being able to hack into my milk is a little, er, worrisome...

Ethelred

I already have a copy of Civilization: Call to Power for LinuxPPC, and it runs great. (You can read a review of it that I wrote at http://linux.macn ews.de/articles/29061999.loki.shtml?lang=english.) Even the sound works, and it was a thrill to see movies in the thing that actually both looked nice and worked. ('Course, I cheated a little and went through and looked at all the movies on the CD. Damn, they're cool.)

The game was a little slowish at times, but on the other hand I have yet to get 100% real genuine accelerated X going (on a beige G3), so it's probably more my fault than anything. :-/

It's especially ironic that Mac users who want to play Civ:CTP have to install Linux to do it. :-)

Can't wait for Myth II...

Ethelred

Suppose LinuxCare, which does not have its own distribution, were to choke off Red Hat's supply line by killing off RH's support. Where does that leave Red Hat? Where does that leave Linux in general? We'd be left with Debian, Slackware, et. al., all of which are highly advanced distros, but none of which can really set foot in the enterprise or home market (cf. PHB, MomTest).

In the end, only Red Hat and SuSE are in a position to spread Linux beyond its current "market" and seriously challenge Microsoft. If one or both of them dies off (or at least only limps along), Linux will not get anywhere. _Some_ kind of corporate or organized backing is needed.

I'm not suggesting that anyone boycott LinuxCare for the sake of Red Hat--far from it. I wish them well. Rather, I suggest that Red Hat and LinuxCare merge, cooperate, or that LinuxCare offers its own polished distro, for the sake of the greater good. A rivalry between the two--as things are now--is a Very Bad Thing(TM).

Just my thoughts...

cya

Ethelred

1. Linux for the masses will be consistent across all platforms. No multiple distributions or window managers. One and only one of each.
2. Users will never need to know Unix to use Linux for the masses. Unix is a very complex operating system and the less users need to know it the more they will use it.
3. Common system tasks will be automated. Users need not know Linux system administration to use it.

I don't know about you all, but to me, this flies in the face of much of the logic about what makes open source great--competition (or "coopetition"), like between GNOME and KDE. So long as the two don't diverge too greatly, I see no problem with having both (or others, if they are well-developed). The key is not consistency, but interoperability--i.e. so long as I can use a GNOME app under KDE and vice versa, I see no real problem.

As for point 2, I agree that at some point as much of the CLI needs to be hidden as possible--with the caveat that it should still be easily available if needed. Linux should remain user-friendly for those "Dilbert T-shirt" types *as well as* for their moms.

cya

Ethelred

The "cloaking device" had to be one of the most pointless "inventions" of Star Trek. Think about it. You have two warships, both cloaked, trying to fight each other.

The battle ends when someone says, "What's this button do?", or both sides get bored to death.

Ethelred

As such you ought to know that how to spell "liquor"...

Sorry.

Ethelred

The story goes that an English visitor to Germany in the 19th century went to see a political debate with Otto von Bismarck, with her translator in tow. The debate went on, with Bismarck himself saying nothing, until finally he rose to speak at length about some minutely detailed point of law. The visitor craned forward to hear her translator, who for quite some time said nary a word--until the visitor became impatient and asked what Bismarck was saying, to which the translator replied, "Please, madam, I am waiting for the verb!"

QED.

Ethelred

Not if you pronounce it "ATMachine" and "PINumber" like most people do. :-)

Pet peeve.

Really? What breed? :-)

cya

Ye Olde Webdesigner

They did it in a particularly brutal way--they supposedly stole the President's retina scan and made a fake eyeball that they implanted in the Air Force officer's eye socket. The officer--who had security clearance, which is why SPECTRE chose him--then went to a control room, where he duly placed his face into a rather fearful-looking device for scanning, and he apparently had to do some kind of tuning (I remember him being nervous and having to practice for some reason).

But that wouldn't be necessary in the "real world". Somewhere, a digital copy of your iris scan data would have to exist, which could then be copied without anyone's knowledge; using some way of patching the interface to the iris scanner, one could bypass the need for an eyeball and just feed the data into the scanner.

Oh, and the movie was "Thunderball", not "From Russia with Love". :-)

cya

Ye Olde Webdesigner

1. The "mugger" doesn't need your eyes. He just needs to nab you *after* getting your money...or do it like in Central America, where they kidnap you and drive you off to a series of ATMs until your account is empty or they get bored and just shoot you.
2. In the future, there will certainly also be technological workarounds to fool such scanners. It would be a difficult problem, but not unsolvable--scan the person's eye (or steal a previous scan) and replicate it.
3. In the future, you have more to fear from the crackpot behind his modem (be he from the government or a criminal) than you do from the mugger on the street.

Anyway. Food for thought.

cya

Ye Olde Webdesigner

You're wrong. What constitutes a monoploy is not formally defined in law;

You have missed totally missed the point of the court cases: Microsoft is not being sued for being a monopoly, but for abusing its position, which is quite a separate issue.

Your counterargument also does not refute the fact that there is no such thing as retroactive law in the United States. It is *not allowed*.

The Sherman Act is deliberately vague like this. While the letter of the law cannot act retroactively, the spirit can, and that's what drives the verdict.

So mere interpretation of the law is suddenly an application of ex post facto jurisdiction? Come on! Don't be ridiculous! Come be to the real world before you come with another counterargument...

Just because some things become convention and some don't, that does not constitute coercion.

Yes, they do, if they threaten my livelihood. If I am unable to earn money without resorting to using Microsoft products, AND all options to use other products are closed through the actions of Microsoft, that is as good a case of coercion as there can be. This is what we call...an abuse of monopoly.

Having a monopoly is not illegal in the US. Abusing one is.

cya

Ye Olde Webdesigner

Fine for you. You most likely only have to read through some file, in which case your method is all fine and dandy.

But suppose you're a consultant who is supposed to collaborate with a client who uses pretty much only Microsoft products--say, financial data, or graphic design work, or whatever. So long as you only want to "view" the work, your method is fine.

But if you want to *edit* and *collaborate* on it, you're stuck with either a larger hassle--converting the file back and forth--or something simply undoable. Which results in a frustrated customer who will go somewhere else...where they use Microsoft products.

The exact some process is why high-end graphics users are moving to NT away from Macs. Not because NT is better than a Mac for graphics, but just because they are more "compatible" with what clients are using (at least that is one of the more compelling reasons).

Let's face it--NT is such junk that this is the only explanation for why anyone would be so insane as to want to use it. You want a _real_ high-end workstation or server? Fine, use Unix/Linux/Solaris/IRIX. You want a _really_ decent desktop computer? Get an iMac with NetBoot.

Anyway...

cya

Ye Olde Webdesigner

Yeah! Let's ALL sue 'em! ;-)))

Reasons to Sue Microsoft

1. Bad hair day (MS-BlowDryer didn't work)
2. Bank account empty (due to NT "security" at the bank)
3. Bad coffee (since Java is being polluted)
4. Disturbance of the peace (due to screaming MS users after yet another crash)
5. Loss of productivity and medical costs (due to migraines of suffering users)
6. And whatever else we can come up with

cya

Ye Olde Webdesigner

This is flat-out false. Read the U.S. Constitution, bub. Article 1, Section 9, Clause 3: "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed." In other words, ain't no such thing as retroactive law.

This means that there is no way to tell if you are breaking the law when you do something, because the law doesn't exist yet!

You been reading Kafka too much?

Microsoft's phalanx of corporate lawyers would never have broken existing laws, Bill is too smart for that.

Ridiculous. Bill just interprets the law the way it suits him--until he gets caught bending the rules just a little too far. Reminds me of another Bill we all know.

If you were to take a straw poll on /. you'd find many people who believe that all software should only come from the open source community by divine right.

Does open source hold a monopoly? By definition, no. Open source is not a monolith--it's a process. Microsoft IS a monolith, and a monopoly. You simply can't compare the two.

Bill's simply more successful than anyone else because he was the first to realise the truth: There is no such thing as a software project, there are only business projects with a software element.

No one blames Microsoft for being successful. We do blame them for abusing their position. That's where they broke the law.

Force is the sole monopoly of governments.

Ah. A card-carrying member of the Libertarian Party, I see. Mmmm-hmmm...

Repeat that statement while someone is pointing a .357 Magnum at your head and demanding your wallet.

The only force here is that applied by the DOJ.

Baloney. Microsoft also forced numerous companies to either be subsumed by them or be forced out of the game (WebTV, Hotmail, DR-DOS, Netscape, etc. etc. etc.). My Lord, they even had Intel majorly worried, incredibly enough. If you try to claim Microsoft doesn't use "moral force" (to use that giddy Libertarian term), then your credibility is at around null.

Just because someone is in government does not make them inherently an abuser of "moral force"--and, conversely, just because someone is NOT in government does not make them incapable or unwilling to do so, either.

Microsoft has no guns and no laws to compel people to obey, only the free judgement of the rational individuals who freely trade with them, everyone from the home PC user to megacorporations like Compaq and IBM. No-one has ever compelled you to trade with MS, you have always done do freely - it is a central fact that no-one has the right to buy whatever they want, only what they are offered for sale.

Right. Uh-huh. Now just TRY and get along WITHOUT using Microsoft products in the corporate workplace. Just TRY to see how far you make it. Your customers will abandon you, because you're incapable of opening even the simplest MS-Works document when they communicate with you. If things get worse, soon your Mac/Linux/Sun box will be unable to communicate with the other computers because they're using MS-TCP...thus cutting you off from the 90% of desktop computers in the workplace that are running Windows.

This is why we HAVE antitrust law!

Jeez...

cya

Ye Olde Webdesigner

I'd say it's fascinating to look at variance in OS use, period. Look at Macs, for example: they have something like 30%-40% of the market in Switzerland still, but are clinging to their position in Germany and Austria (something like 2%-3% of the markets there). Go figure.

cya

Ye Olde Webdesigner

So what? Think about it. Most people outside of the Linux world (and outside of Europe) have pretty much only heard of Red Hat. SuSE isn't too well known outside of Europe, where it already has a strong presence. If anything, I think it's pretty clever on their part--steal some thunder from RH. I don't think that they are trying to deliberately harm RH's IPO, just trying to make it known that there are viable (semi-)commercial alternatives.

In a way, it's pretty ironic (no, not in the Alanis Morrisette sense) to hear people moaning about RH getting slammed by SuSE. It wasn't too long ago that everyone slammed RH for being the "Microsoft of Linux"...

cya

Ye Olde Webdesigner

bEcoz itz reel kewl d00d. :-)

Seriously, it's an abbreviation. Stands for "Gesellschaft für Software- und Systementwicklung mbH", which means "Company for Software and Systems Developemt, Inc." or something like that.

cya

Ye Olde Webdesigner

ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/6.1/
SuSE's FTP server in Germany (SuSE 6.1)

Otherwise look at http://www.suse.de/e/ftp.html for mirrors, etc.

Enjoy. :-)

Ye Olde Webdesigner

Simple. Pronounce it like this:

zoo- zah

At least that's how it's done in German. You can also say "Susie", if you want, since "Suse" is just a German nickname for "Susanne" (that's the literal translation of the name).

cya

Ye Olde Webdesigner

zoo -zah

At least that's the German pronunciation. I'm sure you can get away with calling it "Susie", since that's what the name means in German anyway (Suse is a nickname for "Susanne").

cya

Ye Olde Webdesigner

Interesting. I have lived in Germany now for almost six years, and not long after I arrived I heard about Linux for the first time (1994) via Usenet. It wasn't too long after that SuSE started pushing SuSE Linux, which took root pretty fast. Every company I've worked for or with (six of 'em) have used SuSE Linux in some capacity; my current company uses it for all servers, both intra- and Internet, for ourselves and our clients (we do web design, sometimes also setting up the server as well).

I didn't hear about Red Hat until much later. Odd. Even then I basically heard of it through my interest in MkLinux DR2.

It's also interesting that Linux took root so fast in Germany. Lots of Debian developers, for example, are German (or at least European). By the same token, other 'alternative' OSes were big in Europe but bombed in the US: Atari and above all Amiga (let's hope that they don't set a precedent for Linux).

So in many ways it's not a surprise to see that SuSE is doing so well, in contrast to Red Hat or Caldera--they've been bigger longer. But as the article states, SuSE's and Red Hat's growth curves are about the same--just Red Hat is a step behind. I wish 'em both luck...

cya

Ye Olde Webdesigner