Slashdot Mirror

Click this link.

Here's a few links to other and may be more objective reviews

Zdnet
Gamespy
Gamespot
FiringSquad
TeamXBox
Yahoo 2 3

--
"Can I run a linux cluster of those?"

Here's some other links in case you guys want some more balanced takes on the xbox.

Firing Squad's coverage

Game Spot's coverage

ZDNet's stuff

Providing a little balance to the Michael's rantings and ravings.

Those of you using Windows boxen may wish to use InCtrl5, which monitors the registry and various directories for any and all changes.

You can then go through its list and ferret out the shite that Cydoor has installed.

Anyone know of an uninstaller that can use InCtrl files? It'd be a snap to replace Windows' rather piss-poor uninstaller.

Let me be clear, Windows .NET Server is the single biggest Windows server release of all time. I have been blessed to have seen a Release Candidate for Beta 3 and it is truly awesome!!! I cannot believe that I can now use IM to talk to my coworkers without going through a firewall. We are now free to collaborate and communicate. I have been pounding away with Visual Studio.NET RC1 since the PDC and now with this new server code, my mind is swimming with possibilities. I am churning out code and UML documents like there is no tommorow, all based on .NET. I wish to thank Bill GAtes for the .NET vision and the MS legal team for making it a reality.

MSN and Microsoft rock!

Let me be clear, Windows .NET Server is the single biggest Windows server release of all time. I have been blessed to have seen a Release Candidate for Beta 3 and it is truly awesome!!! I cannot believe that I can now use IM to talk to my coworkers without going through a firewall. We are now free to collaborate and communicate. I have been pounding away with Visual Studio.NET RC1 since the PDC and now with this new server code, my mind is swimming with possibilities. I am churning out code and UML documents like there is no tommorow, all based on .NET. I wish to thank Bill GAtes for the .NET vision and the MS legal team for making it a reality.

Let me be clear, Windows .NET Server is the single biggest Windows server release of all time. I have been blessed to have seen a Release Candidate for Beta 3 and it is truly awesome!!! I cannot believe that I can now use IM to talk to my coworkers without going through a firewall. We are now free to collaborate and communicate. I have been pounding away with Visual Studio.NET RC1 since the PDC and now with this new server code, my mind is swimming with possibilities. I am churning out code and UML documents like there is no tommorow, all based on .NET. I wish to thank Bill GAtes for the .NET vision and the MS legal team for making it a reality.

Let me be clear, Windows .NET Server is the single biggest Windows server release of all time. I have been blessed to have seen a Release Candidate for Beta 3 and it is truly awesome!!! I cannot believe that I can now use IM to talk to my coworkers without going through a firewall. We are now free to collaborate and communicate. I have been pounding away with Visual Studio.NET RC1 since the PDC and now with this new server code, my mind is swimming with possibilities. I am churning out code and UML documents like there is no tommorow, all based on .NET. I wish to thank Bill GAtes for the .NET vision and the MS legal team for making it a reality. Messages passing is the future and at least hurd has some vision. Linux is old and not integrated into the internet like Windows will be with .NET.

That was Machrone's Law.

It's probably still relevant, but the price point has changed.

First and foremost I respect and admire the work Mr. Cox does. And just as I am allowed to respect and admire his work I freely choose to disagree with his overt political opinions regarding the changelogs and the withholding of them from US citizens based on a law he is interpreting to include those changelogs.

Secondly I admit I am not an expert on the DMCA but from what I have read and studied so far his camparison of publishing changelogs -vs- circumvention devices/reverse engineering of document protection is the equivalent to comparing apples -vs- oranges.

In the Skylarov case for example,Mr. Skylarov wrote code to circumvent Adobes ebook encryption scheme.. correct? Then Adobe complained to authorities prompting an investigation and subsequently withdrew its complaint. After investigating it was determined by the FBI that he (Skylarov) violated US law by writing and distributing a "crack", code to circumvent Adobes encryption scheme so that people would not have to purchase content in Adobe ebook format. With his "crack" one could gain the content without paying for it. Whether or not you agree with proprietary formats or not, "stealing" it by way of circumvention is still petty theft in my opinion.

Back to how Cox fits in... Why would Mr. Cox fear his publishing of changelogs would be in violation? I have yet to see on Slashdot or his diary pages or from the main pages at that website a detailed explanation of exactly WHY he feels he needed to do this.

And if I am right it would take a whole lot more than simply publishing the changelogs to violate the DMCA. Correct me if I am wrong, but please show me proof (from sources that are legitamate). Would "NOT" publishing the changelogs feed into the premise that the DMCA is legitamite? Wouldn't the owner of the code have to actually submit a complaint to the authorities to be charged with a violation of the DMCA, similar to what Adobe did to Mr. Skylarov? BTW, since the linux kernel is open source and licensed under the GPL doesn't that in effect offer protection against a DMCA violation for publishing changelogs? I mean does Mr. Cox think Linus or someone else is going to complain to the FBI that he has somehow violated the DMCA by publishing changes he made to the Linux kernel? Why does he NOT worry about the changes to the kernel itself then? The kernel is obviously published all over the world includeing the US and it has his changes in it already doesn't it? That kinda seems oxymoronic in my opinion.

Lastly, the irony is that I have read some comments in this artice and on a previous Slashdot article that suggest the US laws are squashing freedom and the US government is oppressing its people, while Mr. Cox nor anyone else has mentioned anything about the UK's own RIP (Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act of 2000) from the Crown itself, which is a quite scary peice of legislation and comparable to the DMCA only it has a broader, less defined scope about it. Some links on the RIP are here: World Socialist Website , SiliconValley.com , ZDNet , The Register.

In summary, withholding changelogs sounds like just a little more "America bashing". While I typically choose not to be anti-anyone else my feelings of patriotism are quite high due to recent events in America. My personal view of a non-US citizen withholding information from US citizens/developers is counter productive in repealing the DMCA. Should he feel so strongly about the DMCA then I would invite him to become a US citizen and VOTE to repeal this ignorant law instead of bitching about it from some other place in the world that has its own share of ignorant laws and regulations. Yes, do something...anything but legitimizing the DMCA by withholding changelogs!

Zoom

There's no MMU, so it can't do virtual memory, and Intel never added an MMU in later versions. On the other hand, prices start at $7. There's a ucLinux port.

So it's a real CPU, first offered about ten years ago and still sold. But it's a niche product.

I was very surprised a while back to read these articles on a big companies actually saving a lot of money, and one of them is none other then Intel! The article details about how Intel was inspired by Napster and switched some stuff to linux. From the article:

"Free operating system Linux was another unexpected result from ad hoc Internet collaboration embraced by Intel, saving the chipmaker $200 million," Busch said. The company ditched expensive Unix servers with proprietary Unix software and replaced them with cheaper servers equipped with Intel's own chips that run Linux software.

Amazon also made the switch In some ways, this is even better.

Online retailer Amazon.com shaved millions of dollars from its technology costs last quarter by switching to the Linux operating system, a disclosure that could provide some guidance for other companies seeking to cut expenses in a stagnant economy.

Provide guidance for other companies? And the title, "Linux saved us millions." Sounds great to me. At least some corporations finally seem to be learning that OSS does have advantages, and they can in many cases be spelled out in nice, crisp greenbacks.

I was very surprised a while back to read these articles on a big companies actually saving a lot of money, and one of them is none other then Intel! The article details about how Intel was inspired by Napster and switched some stuff to linux. From the article:

"Free operating system Linux was another unexpected result from ad hoc Internet collaboration embraced by Intel, saving the chipmaker $200 million," Busch said. The company ditched expensive Unix servers with proprietary Unix software and replaced them with cheaper servers equipped with Intel's own chips that run Linux software.

Amazon also made the switch In some ways, this is even better.

Online retailer Amazon.com shaved millions of dollars from its technology costs last quarter by switching to the Linux operating system, a disclosure that could provide some guidance for other companies seeking to cut expenses in a stagnant economy.

Provide guidance for other companies? And the title, "Linux saved us millions." Sounds great to me. At least some corporations finally seem to be learning that OSS does have advantages, and they can in many cases be spelled out in nice, crisp greenbacks.

Read this: http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,5094 508,00.html

Flamebait, though it is, there is a kernel of truth there.

Here is the most absurd claim.

I think it's funny that so much attention is paid to your origin (i.e. location and language) in advertising engines, and the fact that it's an article about Linux is ignored. I got a random Windows advert here. Check it out.

Gobe Productive is a nice suite including plain old word processing, spreadsheet, graphics, illustration, and presentation.

If you remember it was originally planned for BeOS 3.2 on Intel architecture.

A few beta versions were released for Be.

My question is why would they come out with Gobe only for Windows? It is pretty obvious that Microsoft Office DOMINATES in all the things Gobe does and (argueably) does these things better.

It seems that it would be a better choice if they released this software on platforms like Mac, Linux, Unix, BSD etc. first and maybe Windows later.

It is an alternative at the least to MS Office.

It is going to cost less ($124) than Office but it is going to be hard to get users to change to Gobe.

The good thing is that the $124 allows you to install it at home and at work without fearing liscensing issues.

Hopefully the Linux version of Gobe will do better than the Windows version. Somehow I just don't think it will sell at all on the Windows platform except to a few ex-BeOS users.

Saw this on zdnet...

The cat is out of the bag. Linus Torvalds was recently seen living under a freeway overpass. When asked about his current living conditions, he remarked "well, Transmeta had to lay me off, and they kept it quiet because they didn't want to enrage their only customers -- Linux geeks." What will this mean for the God of Linux? All the Linux companies are showing cash shortfalls, and none appear to be hiring. A spokesman for Red Hat commented, "We're just tapped out of money. We wish Linus well, but what can we say? We got what we wanted out of him, and know he's going to have to get a real job like the rest of us will have to sooner than later."

Linus appears to be taking it in stride. "Well, I've always said that I wasn't interested in making money off Linux. And heck, this overpass is not so bad. It's still better than Finland."

Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda of Slashdot, often thought of a spiritual leader of Linux, commented that "Hey, he's welcome to crash at my house, except that my house is due to be repo'ed any day know due to the VA Linux stock price crash."

Oh yeah, $150 million meant a *whole lot* to a $6 BILLION dollar company with $1.2 BILLION CASH.

(Yeah, yeah, yeah -- IHBT TFP HAND...)

good for Mass to do that. I read that Sun was considering their own civil suit against MS if the current proposed settlement became reality. Not that that would do anything useful, IMO. Of course, MS still has to face Europe, and we all know how rough and tough they are gonna be.

Well, if ZDNet doesn't qualify as a "big news organization," then maybe CNN does. Of course, they did "bury" it on the front page of the Sci-Tech section. Publicity isn't the problem, it's getting people to listen.
--

I found some interesting eclipse links via google:

http://www.new-age.nl/eclipse/main.php?res=Links
http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/eclipse4c
http://www.theserverside.com/home/thread.jsp?threa d_id=8561#27782
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2430 054,00.html

- No GUI or mouse, but real and good keyboard.
- No movable parts inside: solid state HD, no fans on CPU.
- Minimum spec: CPU 20MHz, RAM 32MB, HD 5GB
- Form factor: something similar to Sony C1 or Francklin eBook with foldable keyboard. Keyboard should be full size (C1 - 95%)
- Minimum IO: built in modem, 1x PCMCIA, 1x USB.
- Screen: Linux FB. LCD can be black/white if it will save power and price ( but hi-res).
- Manufacture should not make any attempts to develop custom apps. It should of cause have full open specs, and shipped with basic Linux (at list initially). More friendly non-slashdot type user environment, including non-X11 GUI, can be provided with ISVs (in dipandant software vendor).

Optional:
- USB mouse.
- ether, IR, 801.2b, CF/SM slot, GPS, and so on.

Something similar was already made:
Cidco MailStation . B/W LCD, pseudo graphics, $100, 1.9 pounds. Cidco decided that it will be much more usefull if they will make it proprietary and put only one application on it :(
Psions have too small keyboards for productive work.

I believe it can be done under $300, 1.5 pounds, battery life 24h+

Target market:
- slashdot types (developers, admins).
- WP,
- Mail

The idea of patents started back in the industrial revolution. It was applied to *MECHANICAL CONTRAPTIONS* and it worked. The problem with the US PTO (Patenting The Obvious) is that they're allowing patents on software algorithms, business methods, etc. Ban patents on anything except physical stuff, and you solve the current problem.

In the old days, Edison would spend years to come up with a lightbulb whose filament would last longer than a few hours. The stuff that really has people in an anti-patent mood is where a lawyer writes several pages of mumbo-jumbo, *WITH NO PHYSICAL DEVICE MANUFACTURED*, files it, and comes back several years later to sue everybody in site. Examples...

- The "one-click" patent

- The GIF algorithm patent

- BT (British Telecomm) filed some mumbo-jumbo in the late 1970's about data referencing other data, and claimed that HTTP urls infringed on that patent, and sued Prodigy for their website.

- check out this ZD item about a 1985 patent on downloading software. Like, how many years has FTP been around fer-cryin-outloud ?

ZDnet reports more about it. Check it out here.

Thought I'd post this link, since nobody else has:

The windows.com version is here: Lab Report: Windows XP Outperforms Earlier Versions.

And the msn version. See the links "benchmark" and "performance". Notice the msn.zdnet.com link. Can somebody clear what the relationship between ZD and MS for me?

• If you've been using Windows 2000, the performance you'll get with XP is virtually identical; if you've been using Windows Me, 98 or 98 SE, or 95, your system is going to feel like it has a whole new lease on life.

• We ... found that XP and 2000 outperformed Windows 98 and ran neck and neck with each other.

So performance-wise, it's really nothing new. Get it because you like the application support, or the fast boot times, or the config restore, or... But don't buy it for the performance.

• If you've been using Windows 2000, the performance you'll get with XP is virtually identical; if you've been using Windows Me, 98 or 98 SE, or 95, your system is going to feel like it has a whole new lease on life.

• We ... found that XP and 2000 outperformed Windows 98 and ran neck and neck with each other.

So performance-wise, it's really nothing new. Get it because you like the application support, or the fast boot times, or the config restore, or... But don't buy it for the performance.

(not!) Apparently operating and promoting a criminal monopoly in the United States does not incur much penalty.

The terms of this antitrust agreement (at C|Net) stike me as more of a blowjob than a slap on the wrist. The terms of this agreement do nothing to address the core issues of punitive damages in this "penalty" phase of the trial. Hasn't Microsoft been found to be an illegal monopolist? And even so there is no penalty forthcoming, only what can be described as minor conduct tweaking? Wow.

This deal is also weaker than what was on the table before MS was found guilty. Armed with a 7-0 judge appeals ruling that MS is an illegal monopolist, the DoJ now settles for something even less? [sarcasm] If I didn't have such a high confidence in the current administration, I'd have thought they'd been paid off or something; good thing we know that that can't be the case. [/sarcasm]

We can all be sure that more of the same will now continue. After all, were not similar minor conduct remedies ordered by courts in 1994, etc, only to be ignored by Microsoft? Now these conduct remedies will be... ignored again! And with that scary extension... yet again! Justice prevails in America. So do the undead apparently.

The idea, as is sometimes heard now, that the DoJ should go easy on Microsoft because of the current financial uncertainty does not hold water either. So we should suspend penalties to laws, just so that the economic boat doesn't get rocked? Even if the previous penalty of breaking the company into 2 was applied, this would not substantially change the immediate economic situation. Everyone would still use Windows, it would still come with your Dell, it would still be the de facto stadard for years; it's just that slowly other system choices would gradually appear. How would this be an economic calamity? Even this breakup scenario is now unlikely, after the DoJ unilaterally pulled the IE bundling claim off the table (for what reason, no-one really knows).

I am apalled at what amounts to a near toal capitulation by the Bush Administration's new DoJ attorneys. Mostly, it is the lack of justice that bothers me. I'm glad I'm not a US citizen otherwise I'd also be angry about the millions of taxpayers dollars put into this case over many years, and not even the most minor financial penalty to cover the costs of the case recuperated. If they want any kind of justice, Americans should write their state representatives and attorneys general to make known they do not support the Sates' signing on to this toothless deal. Barring that, it's up to the European Union to reign in the beast now.

This should have been obvious to anyone who actually read the story.
"HP has been working with Amazon since October 1999, Balma said, but the big contract win came in May 2000, when HP announced its systems would replace Unix servers from Sun Microsystems."
-- excerpt from story at http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0%2C4586%2C 5098989%2C00.html

In other, slightly unrelated chip news, ZDNet reports that motherboards with the new nVidia nForce chipset will hit the market next week. Boy howdy do I want me some of that!

Here's a link that discusses the losses on the X-Box. It is not the norm in the industry to lose money on the hardware. Nintendo has never lost money on hardware. With GameCube, they are probably breaking even. Some companies have gone that route, to gain market share and sell more games, which provide a higher profit.

Sega Dreamcast, PS2, and particularly the X-Box have gone this way. I don't know when this started to be considered the "norm." Atari didn't lose money on the 2600. Nintendo didn't lose money on the N64. I think this may be a more prevelant practice with companies that don't have huge market share, and are trying to break into the game.

*sigh*. I love it when people write conspiracy theories when it's really just a standard Dynamic DNS client that is poking around on the network.

Once again, this is a cool idea that Microsoft has implemented if your corporation uses nothing but Microsoft servers. (Note: this is the same dynamic DNS that is used by many websites to give you your own domain name, so you don't have to have a Microsoft server to support it. However, most regular DNS servers do not have this option enabled.) The dynamic DNS option is enabled by default, however, in Windows 2000, and it causes a waste of network services (to the point of becoming a DOS attack on a company's DNS servers) when those DNS servers do not support it. Here is more information (that I wrote when researching it for my company):

Windows 2000 supports something called Dynamic DNS (DDNS), which lets clients automatically update their own A records. This means that a DNS server supporting Dynamic DNS would be almost completely self-maintained, as whenever the computer connects or disconnects from the network, it adds/removes its own records. It basically completely eliminates the need for static IPs (except for things like web servers and such that touch the outside world.)

Unfortunately, Microsoft, in its blind Microsoft-only world, made Dynamic DNS registration turned on by default on all Windows 2000 clients, even in companies without a dynamic DNS server. This creates a lot of unnecessary traffic on the network as every time the computer connects or disconnects, it sends a little message to the DNS server. I've even been told (without proof) that it sends a request to every DNS server on its list, possibly upgrading the request all the way to the root server if it doesn't get its way with the first server on its list.

This had a lot of UNIX admins frightened about job security (my take: if you're sitting there all day updating DNS records, you better find some new job skills anyway) and it has evolved into a fascinating topic of research for me. Some pretty good takes on it can be found here:

(Yale: Making UNIX DNS servers and Windows 2000 play nice)
(eWeek article from 1999 discussing Windows 2000 DDNS and the impact it has on UNIX DNS servers)

This is really interesting because it's one small facet of the many ways Microsoft is subtly pushing UNIX around. ("Hey! We have this cool thing implemented in Windows now! Fire your UNIX sysadmins and throw away your UNIX servers, because our servers are so much easier to maintain!")

I don't like Flash ads, and I don't imagine you do, either. Check out the ZDNet story here.

what kind of outfit does Mr. Bill wear when he's not in the office?

If you really want to know, you could check out this story about how Gates influences Korean fashion. Apparently, he is a "fashion god" over there. There's no accounting for tastes, eh?

I skimmed more than 100 listing on Google and only managed to find two Microsoft patent lawsuits here and here. Amazingly both appear to be defensive counter suits!

Before you start to feel too safe, take a look here where they discuss microsoft's "range of software patents that the company can potentially use down the line to attack and try to restrict the development and distribution of open-source software". It mentions at least one known patent Microsoft can use to attack Linux. Bruce Perens, Hewlett-Packard Co.'s open-source and Linux strategist theorizes that "They are going to hold onto these patents until they see what happens with the antitrust case against them. Once that is resolved, they will then use them against the open-source industry."

Like this one?

Have you ever played Homeworld? It's one of my favorite games, and seems to have taken a great deal of inspiration from the Eros simulator from Ender's Game. Granted, you only get to be a commander (you never get to control specific ships), and you must harvest resources, build ships, etc. But, as a commander, you control the ships in far different methods. In many games, (Starcraft, for example), when you command a unit, you essentially commandeer it for a moment. You 'order' it to move somewhere, but it does so fanatically. There is no initiative.
In Homeworld, you can only *order* units. You tell them to move somewhere, they do so within their squadron (which you design), according to their formation, and depending on which tactics you have selected for those ships, will follow the orders more or less closely. They will attack enemy ships and ignore orders when set to more aggressive tactics. Get a demo of it. Here is one location of the demo. The single player from the demo is sorta boring, so I'd try out the skirmish, too.

Ok, sherman, set the time machine to 97. We're going back to the pre-launch days of windows 98 today. Now, I'm a young guy, I was MS-DOS and Norton Commander for years...up until I bought my own win98 system (athlon 500, still have to smile). I don't remember the win98 release, I just remember a bunch of idiots running to get on the bandwagon. you remember that? Remember the crouds? I hope you do. I did, and i was...14 then? yeah. i know it makes me young.
Point is: MS hyped it up..internet, the killer app was a browser, email integration, yadda yadda yadda...but guess what? people bought the idea, and the product. Win98 was revolutionary. It was buggy, it crashed, yes...but it was set up as being great and the latest thing and everything. And people bought it.
Flash back to the present day. Read the news. People aren't thrilled. I believe it was The Reg that talkd about IT people who weren't thrilled with MS's subscriptions, activations, and too few new features (over Win2K) to upgrade...they were happy and the cost was too high.
But it was ZDNet that talked about the IT guys looking at Linux as an alternative for new pc's and servers. It just isn't worth it for them. Linux still has a place, and WinXP isn't a Linux-killer, by any means. Free and stable and the nerd-appeal will never go away.
This is just another MS release. It is over-hyped. It will most likely have its own bugs, problems, and complaints. People already can guess what they might be... security and compatibility issues perhaps? Just wait...

Microsoft is boldly saying "We want to run the Internet. Standards mean nothing except when its our standard."

I think all CS and IT people should strongly oppose this company both from the standpoint of the quality of it's engineering, and it's abysmal ethics and vision. Unix represents the best way (including Linux, *BSD and MacOS X) to fight back, and there are excellent rationales for doing so.

This is probably the best chance alternatives will ever have...let's hope they make the most of it. The reviews of RH 7.2 are an encouraging start at least!

299,792,458 m/s...not just a good idea, its the law!

Spending more money.

Revealing personal information about yourself, so that they can get you to spend more money.

I contrast this with my recent experience installing Redhat 7.2 with KDE on a new system. I started using Konqueror and KMail. I was stunned to find Konqueror recommending to me that I could accept and reject easily whole classes of cookies. Bye-bye doubleclick, bye-bye aol. KMail even will let you refuse at a relatively fine-grained level features of html that may allow people to track you.

Now, those are what I call *consumer* features. Microsoft is not giving me a better consumer experience. They are giving me a better pick-pocket experience.

So, why hasn't the home user stormed to linux (and KDE; maybe gnome and nautilus, but for me the performance with the latter is just not there yet). There may be many reasons. Let me offer what I think is one part of the puzzle. It's a question of ease-of-system install and maintenance. For instance, until the most recent install of redhat, I had always gone through hell getting both gnome and kde to work in a reasonable way. Further, with earlier versions of KDE, the tools were just immature. When I updated, I was frequently told I could not because of incompatibilities that could take a long time to track down (I am an advanced end-user who came to system administration to improve my end-user experience).

I really think redhat and other distros have a case to be made as the true promoters of end-users. With easier to install and maintain distros, they might be able to make a market of this.

Note: I purposely left out the office suite thing. Alot of people just use their home computers for fun and attempt to leave the office at work. Sure, office suites are probably still important. I just wanted to point out something that I don't think many people have seen (or at least exclaimed loudly) the benefit of.

Spending more money.

Revealing personal information about yourself, so that they can get you to spend more money.

I contrast this with my recent experience installing Redhat 7.2 with KDE on a new system. I started using Konqueror and KMail. I was stunned to find Konqueror recommending to me that I could accept and reject easily whole classes of cookies. Bye-bye doubleclick, bye-bye aol. KMail even will let you refuse at a relatively fine-grained level features of html that may allow people to track you.

Now, those are what I call *consumer* features. Microsoft is not giving me a better consumer experience. They are giving me a better pick-pocket experience.

So, why hasn't the home user stormed to linux (and KDE; maybe gnome and nautilus, but for me the performance with the latter is just not there yet). There may be many reasons. Let me offer what I think is one part of the puzzle. It's a question of ease-of-system install and maintenance. For instance, until the most recent install of redhat, I had always gone through hell getting both gnome and kde to work in a reasonable way. Further, with earlier versions of KDE, the tools were just immature. When I updated, I was frequently told I could not because of incompatibilities that could take a long time to track down (I am an advanced end-user who came to system administration to improve my end-user experience).

I really think redhat and other distros have a case to be made as the true promoters of end-users. With easier to install and maintain distros, they might be able to make a market of this.

Note: I purposely left out the office suite thing. Alot of people just use their home computers for fun and attempt to leave the office at work. Sure, office suites are probably still important. I just wanted to point out something that I don't think many people have seen (or at least exclaimed loudly) the benefit of.

for most businesses, already in the Win2000 migration, XP is not a good choice

I'd be interested to know what proportion of MS OS license income comes from business Vs consumer. From a business perspective, why the hell should we re-train 10 support people and 1000 users on a n.0 MS OS? OK, so this one might be different and work properly before SP1, but we know the drivers aren't there and we aint gonna replace half our hardware just to get the Fischer Price look on the desktop.

What the advertising campaign is doing to causing (l)users to constantly question why we aren't upgrading. This causes a lot of pressure on senior (ie stupid) management and that is a PITA. We must resist.

Instead of trying to use the latest, most trendy technologies (e.g. using web based controls and XML to create the Joint Battlespace Infosphere Infrastructure) or opting for the cheapest method of getting things done, we should think about how these things might be attacked and design them to be infrastructure, and should design them to be resistant to attacks.

Earlier steps in the multi-CPU direction included the 8-way DEC Alpha (killed in the merger with HP?) and a little National Semiconductor product for embedded systems with two very modest CPUs on a chip.

AMD licenses the x86 instruction set from Intel.

part 1 was posted in June and doesn't seem to be available in ZDNet's archives

Do you mean this? :)

Part 2 links back to it.

-Justin

...was ZDnet columnist David Coursey, and it was Office XP that was demanding insertion of its install CD so it could re-activate itself on his laptop. Unfortunately, Coursey was just starting out on a lengthy business trip (during which he would presumably need to use Word to write his articles) and had left his Office CD at home. (The link attached to his name goes to part 2 of the article, part 1 was posted in June and doesn't seem to be available in ZDNet's archives).

~Philly

...was ZDnet columnist David Coursey, and it was Office XP that was demanding insertion of its install CD so it could re-activate itself on his laptop. Unfortunately, Coursey was just starting out on a lengthy business trip (during which he would presumably need to use Word to write his articles) and had left his Office CD at home. (The link attached to his name goes to part 2 of the article, part 1 was posted in June and doesn't seem to be available in ZDNet's archives).

~Philly

Do you think for a minute Napster will survive as a subscription service? No way!

That's because they probably won't do it the right way, charging 5 or 10 cents per downloaded song, which I and many others would happily pay.

Back on topic, I think it's just completely laughable that Microsoft now expects us to trust them to hold onto our personal data for convenience. Especially when they can't even keep their own sites from belching up passwords sometimes.

Personally, I wouldn't trust Microsoft to carry a still-usable tissue I've already blown my nose in, much less my vital financial information. Microsoft knows there are a lot of people like me who won't be swayed by their marketing bullshit. To take care of us, they'll simply attempt to co-opt as many 'net merchants as possible, until they make it virtually impossible to make a purchase on the 'net without using their service for authentication. And if it comes down to switch-or-do-without, I'll simply do without.

~Philly