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You can go with a high-end business-class email hosting provider, such as usa.net

They specialize in just business email hosting.

Companies have been offering this service for years, USA.net is one example. It is not good for everyone but there are a lot of businesses where this solution seems much cheaper and easier then maintaining their own email system (at least on paper it looks that way). In general, the more spread out your employees or offices are, the more advantage you get by outsourcing your email. I worked at a company with roughly 100K employees spread throughout the world that switched over. I left before it was completed but they are up and running on it now.

Are you sure they'll eventually reduce the rates? Sometimes providers start you off with low-cost or free services to hook you in only to raise prices later. Like all these formerly free e-mail providers have recently done.

Granted, cost of long distance has gone down in recent years, but cost of home service has increased. Cell phone charges have also spiked up lately for per minute charges when you exceed your monthly quota. With the 200 anytime, 2000 weekend plan, for instance, how many times do you manage to stay within the limits? If you exceed those limits, what are you really paying per minute? And you're somewhat locked into it since cell plans usually involve at least a one-year contract agreement. Buying out of those is never worth it no matter how schweeet of a deal you can get elsewhere.

Which brings up an interesting point; Here is what the Vonage website has to say about the term of the agreement...

"b. Term
The term of this Agreement depends on the plan, feature or promotion you select and is described in separate subscription or calling plan ("Calling Plan") materials provided by Vonage."

Ok, I'd like to know what that really means. I couldn't find any calling plan details anywhere on their site, and I would be very interested to know how long I'm locked into something like this and if there's a way out if I end up not liking what I've signed up for. I'm sure this information is available to you before you sign the agreement, but they really should state the terms clearly up front. Makes for better PR, IMHO.

LinuxToday has a link to a C|Net article which says the same thing (verbatim).
The discussion in the LinuxToday forum has probably everything that'll be said here.
One item that stuck out was that MS would not be charging for client licenses. As Tim Wasson pointed out, client licenses are a good revenue source, and MS probably cut a deal with Maxtor so that MS could say "Hey, even with Linux/BSD available, major companies are still choosing our software."
Looks like MS has realized (on some level) that they can't get away with their current pricing scheme.

Surely you meant to say "justinalexander@usa.net". I don't think the mailto: tag got put into your original justinalexander@usa.net address. But if I was justinalexander@usa.net I'd get mad because I'm sure that putting his email address (justinalexander@usa.net) up on Slashdot will generate a lot of unwanted mail to him (justinalexander@usa.net).

Have a nice day, justinalexander@usa.net

Surely you meant to say "justinalexander@usa.net". I don't think the mailto: tag got put into your original justinalexander@usa.net address. But if I was justinalexander@usa.net I'd get mad because I'm sure that putting his email address (justinalexander@usa.net) up on Slashdot will generate a lot of unwanted mail to him (justinalexander@usa.net).

Have a nice day, justinalexander@usa.net

Surely you meant to say "justinalexander@usa.net". I don't think the mailto: tag got put into your original justinalexander@usa.net address. But if I was justinalexander@usa.net I'd get mad because I'm sure that putting his email address (justinalexander@usa.net) up on Slashdot will generate a lot of unwanted mail to him (justinalexander@usa.net).

Have a nice day, justinalexander@usa.net

Surely you meant to say "justinalexander@usa.net". I don't think the mailto: tag got put into your original justinalexander@usa.net address. But if I was justinalexander@usa.net I'd get mad because I'm sure that putting his email address (justinalexander@usa.net) up on Slashdot will generate a lot of unwanted mail to him (justinalexander@usa.net).

Have a nice day, justinalexander@usa.net

Surely you meant to say "justinalexander@usa.net". I don't think the mailto: tag got put into your original justinalexander@usa.net address. But if I was justinalexander@usa.net I'd get mad because I'm sure that putting his email address (justinalexander@usa.net) up on Slashdot will generate a lot of unwanted mail to him (justinalexander@usa.net).

Have a nice day, justinalexander@usa.net

Surely you meant to say "justinalexander@usa.net". I don't think the mailto: tag got put into your original justinalexander@usa.net address. But if I was justinalexander@usa.net I'd get mad because I'm sure that putting his email address (justinalexander@usa.net) up on Slashdot will generate a lot of unwanted mail to him (justinalexander@usa.net).

Have a nice day, justinalexander@usa.net

What? Over a relatively uninteresting topic submitted by an AC? I think not....
Now you've ruined my streak..... =P
- Cosmos 7
Why don't we tell Mr.Cosmos what we think of him...

I also can't stress enough how important it is that we GET AWAY FROM THE KEYBOARD AND GET OUT INTO THE STREETS, particularly in the United States. We need to make some noise about this. Get flyers printed and distributed!

Let me know at findcss@usa.net if you plan a flyer drop or other public demonstration in the near future. I'm making a list of demonstrations and flyer drops. Please let me know - every voice counts right now.

46
findcss@usa.net
46's DVD News

BOTS CLICK HERE. Q MEANS QUEER - WHICH IS YOU. I AM EREETO.

bite me

...email me. (y'all be kind and don't spam me 'k?)


Who am I?
Why am here?
Where is the chocolate?

Right! We use it a lot on our servers.. Also I wanted to make note of how late they are in doing this I mean look at NetAddress(USA.net) they have had it since.. Well as long as I can remember.. and that's a long time over 3 years.
------------------------------------------ -

Also compare this to Dragon-Raid, (interested parties: ftp) the Christian role-playing game. Which, as a game system is more than a lot stupid. (Amongst other flaws, you are more likely to communicate with a badger than a blacksmith. All that time in the forge, I guess...)

There's an added similarity in that both include a moral trap/lesson. Choose Dark, and burn. I realize that it might be counter-productive to make the demon's role ultimately productive, but I've always hated long build ups to failure when I play a game. Just a personal issue.

I disagree. Web sites can be pretty, but if you're trying to sell something, you want people to find the information that they need to in order to buy your product.

Some sites are really quite good at integrating the two (prettiness and usefulness), but it's impossible to find out what's what on the chair company's page.

Come on guys, this is a great chance that Red Hat is offering. If anyone got e-mailed a username/password and is not intending on using it, please send it to me. joemayfair@usa.net. We should be supporting things like this, not labelling it spam.

Posted by Nericus (nericus@usa.net):

I totally agree... I myself am a scarred geek, and I'm considering taking a VERY large chunk of bandwidth and distribute these messages to every teacher and school official I can get my paws on the e-mail addresses of....starting with my own hellhole Lamphere High School. The only thing that kept me from snapping was a female took interest in me as a human (a friend) and pulled me from the brink, I had gone to the extent that I was getting close to Littleton myself, except I'm much more creative. :) I've since mellowed now, comforted in the fact that Junior High & High School put enough emotional damage on me that I no longer feel pain, hurt and guilt. Usefull in this day and age, but the downside is that without guilt, there is no remorse...

Hmm... so I guess you like RMS so much that everything he says is an order in your eyes, although it's meant as a suggestion ?

>I assume that you want to give the GNU project credit, otherwise this discussion is just silly.
Of course, gcc was essential to the development of Linux, and the rest of the tools are extremely useful. The question is how is this credit to be given.

IMHO, a good way to give credit to something is calling it by its name... so call that system "GNU", don't call it "Linux"... BTW, I don't like that past form ("gcc was essential")... it still is one of the most essential parts of the system

>So when you then call a system "Linux", you assume that all users will automatically pick up on and understand that there are quite a few GNU utilities they are using.
Don't be absurd.

Now this is a reply I really don't understand. You're actually saying this perfect reasoning is "absurd" ?

When I say Linux, people who have never heard of it before don't instantly think of GNU. Nor do they think of Linus, Alan Cox, the X project, BSD, etc. It's a name, not a list of credits. Yes, the name is derived from Linus's name, but that seems more an accident of history, not an attempt by Mr. Torvalds to usurp all the credit.

Well... that's exactly why you shouldn't call it "Linux"... The name "GNU" covers the entire system, and people will instantly know what they're using. It might be interesting to add "/Linux" to the name, so the name of the kernel is known too. After all, the kernel is an important part of the system, maybe the most important piece of it.

The GNU/Hurd project has been assisted greatly by the existence of Linux (at least if the FSF goal of using free software rather than proprietary is being followed). Yet there is no insistence that it be called Linux/GNU/Hurd, nor will there be.

The number of users of the GNU system has increased a lot because of the Linux kernel. That's a fact. There are no legal reasons why the system should still be called "GNU". After all, the General Public License implies that distributions can use software of the GNU project without annoying forced credits or copyright messages such as you can see in the BSD license.

However, I do think that the people who wrote the software can choose how it's called. And I mean the people who wrote the essential things, not just everybody who wrote some application. XFree86 isn't essential. Netscape isn't essential. Even Gnome isn't essential =).

Linus doesn't care. His point of view is that the name doesn't matter. A lot of hackers do care however. They want to add "GNU" to the name. I'm tired of these boring discussions, but I just don't understand why you want to call it "Linux" without the "GNU/"... The only real reason to call it "Linux" it because that's shorter. However, you can pronounce "GNU" as "gnoo" instead of "G - N - U" so i don't think it's a real problem. After all, what's the most difficult thing to say : "Mi - cro - soft Win - dows nine - ty - fi - ve" or "gnoo / li - nux"...

WildeBeast [wilde_beast@usa.net
aka Jon Sneyers

GNU/Linux, (>) Copyleft 1999 - All Rights Reversed.

1. OS = The core system software (kernel, compiler, shell, file utils, ...) In the old days (everything before let's say QP-DOS) this was the usual meaning of "OS". Microsoft also seems to use this definition.

FSF/GNU wrote most of the OS in this view. Except for the kernel, there's almost no core software that is NOT written by GNU. It would be logical to call this system "GNU". However, the kernel is very essential, so "GNU/Linux" might be a good name too.

2. OS = the kernel only

This is the definition used in e.g. Q-DOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System, which resulted in MS-DOS). If you're using this definition it's clear that the name of the OS should be "Linux".

Now, the question is : what's the definition of OS ?
Well, IMHO the first one is the best. I know the kernel is EXTREMELY essential, but with just a kernel you can't do that much. There are some things that are very important too : a shell, a compiler, file utilities, applications, ... In my opinion, when you describe the system you're using, you should include both "GNU" and "Linux". There are lots of examples of this principle. There's SunOS, the kernel, but the system that uses SunOS is called Solaris. "Unix" isn't the name of the kernel, it's the name of the SYSTEM. I'm the first one to say that the kernel is the most important part of the system. But look at M$-DOS... do you call it MSDOS.SYS/IO.SYS ? I don't... I'm not saying you have to mention each important piece of software in the name of the system. Please don't call my system "X/Linux" or something... X might be important, but it's not essential. There are lots of people that don't use X. You can do a LOT of thing without a GUI. You can do a LOT of things without Netscape, or without KDE, ... But you can't do a thing without a compiler, gcc. I don't know anyone that doesn't use a shell, bash. Try using your system without cp,rm,mv,ls,make,...

But there's more. Let's not just look at the number of lines of code. Let's take a look at the philosophy of things. "GNU" is a good way to describe the hacker-spirit, the copyleft/GPL way of creating software, as opposed to proprietary software. After all, GNU invented the GPL. GNU is an attitude. I'm calling my system a "GNU/Linux" system. The GNU stands for the community spirit, the essential utilities and a lot of user-space non-essential things, like Gnome, Gimp, mc, .... Linux is the name of the kernel, which is of course the most important part of the system, the core.

If you want to call it "Linux", no problem for me. But you seem to miss the point. It's not about giving a name to the kernel. The kernel already has a name. It's "Linux". It's about giving a name to what you're using. And I hope you're using more than just the kernel.

BTW, don't be so ignorant and stop calling RMS a neo-hippie who needs to get a life. He's got a life. He created gcc, gdb, emacs and a lot of other ESSENTIAL (well, emacs isn't that essential... but it IS the queen of the editors =)) things. He also invented the GPL. He's the one who reminds us of our roots. Don't bash RMS.

wb [WildeBeast]

wow... this is REAL bad math... let's say there are 40 unique chars, and a domain name can't be longer than 25 chars... The total number of combinations for 25-char domain names is 40^25, the total number of combinations for 24-char domain names is 40^24, etc. So that's about 4.619E41 if you count 'em all... Which is LESS then 40!... And that's also quite easy to explain : 40! is the amount of combinations of _40_ DIFFERENT chars, using 40 different chars. You probably tried to calculate the amount of combinations of different 25 chars, using 40 different chars, which is something like 40!/(40-25)!, about 6.239E35. The right result, 4.619E41, is higher, because you can use each char more than just once.

I really don't think the amount of domain names is not enough... 4E41 is quite a lot... And then the 25 / 40 limits aren't even the real ones... I don't know, but maybe a domain name of 40 chars is allowed, which brings the total number of domain names to about 5E65... Let's say there will be 6E12 people on the world/universe in one century, which is about 1000 times the current population of the earth. Then there will still be more than 6E28 domain names per person (counting with the 25 / 40 limits). The number of IPv4 addresses is a much bigger problem, because there are only (2^8)^4 possibilities, being about 4.2E9, which is actually LESS than the amount of people NOW on the world...

Final remark, 8.159E47 isn't almost a "google"... It's almost the square root of it... that's an important difference =)... 10E100 / 2 != 10E50 hehe...

Hmm... quite a lot of numbers in this comment =)

wb [WildeBeast]

If I may quote the author, "Certainly, Microsoft holds scores of patents and copyrights but we'd like to know which products or basic technologies we use can be credited to the big brains in Redmond. This is a prime opportunity for Microsoft defenders to provide some evidence for the company's original contributions to the industry, because frankly, we're at a loss to think of a single one."

Currently the only nominations that have cleared the debunking process are :

• Microsoft BOB
• The Talking Paper Clip

• The Tabbed Window View
• ClearType
• VFAT Filing System
• Hypertext Help
• Word for DOS
• CD-ROM Autorun
• Auto/hiding taskbar
• Excel/Multiplan
• QBASIC engine

For more details on why a nomination was rejected, and/or if you can suggest any nominations or rebuttals for TMHOI, please submit them to Hall of Innovation.

Quote Du Jour
"We have increased our prices over the last 10 years [while] other component prices have come down and continue to come down."
JOACHIM KEMPIN, Microsoft Senior Vice President

For the consumer who really does not know much about things like the difference between VRAM and SDRAM, what ``cash memory'' is, and a DDC monitor, then what they really care about is (1) will it be easy to use for them and not break after a week? The Mac helps in that department (at least for the consumer =) and (2) will I like its ``feel''? Some people prefer pink to blue, so why not give them their choice? I never see my computer since I always use it via X, so I don't care how ugly it is. (My X server's hardware is hidden behind the table; it runs from diskettes and NFS.) But, to the consumer who probably isn't using X , then a choice of colors is something nice to have.

Joshua jerodd@usa.net (who is still morning for Monolith)

Do not waste your time or your money with the 'Kosmic Free Music Foundation.' Since the KLF became the KFMF, their goal has been to make money, plain and simple; this is despite their deceptive name. Accordingly, the quality of this organization has dropped steadily, since the people with the talent worth talking about have all quietly left. Kosmic's ranks have grown by leaps and bounds, but with substandard artists producing substandard music. Let me head the flames off at the pass here; I am not saying that these people should not have their music heard. I am saying that there is better stuff out there.

Where out there? Many places. The biggest module collection in the world,the Hornet Archive, is one of them. Where HA now? In the midst of a slow shutdown process that will leave us all lacking. Although much of the music on the Hornet Archive was also substandard, a little involvement and a little support would have engendered a new rating system, in the works at the time of the Archive's demise, into reenergizing the contributors and the staff, thus keeping the Archive alive and healthy.

The Hornet Archive never begged for support of any kind. They never cried for money or for bandwidth or even for kind letters. So they didn't get them.

Maelcum, on the other hand, who has done nothing for anybody except take and take, begs for yet more and more.

Hornet and Kosmic aren't the only places to get music on the web.

Scene.org (which is down at the moment) poses to take the place of the Hornet Archive, and more. Scene.org needs and deserves your support.

Of course, this is the web. Not everybody releases into a conglomerate such as these. Some other groups of interest are Analogue Music, Noise, Process Five, Five Musicians, and many more.

For those who care to contribute, Impulse Tracker is arguably the most popular module creation program in use to date. (Note that it is a DOS program which will -not- work under DOSEmu.)

Kevin Hutter
Team Tropicana