Slashback: Courseware, Towers, Drives

Slashback with more on ridiculously equipped PCs, Telstra's ambivalent stance on equipping its thousands of desktops, California's state-sponsored Oracle oversell, and more -- read on for the details.

Your school or mine? Francis Esmonde-White writes "Dr. Joe Schwarcz (aka 'Dr. Joe' on the discovery channel & Montreal radio station CJAD), Dr. Ariel Fenster, and Dr. David Harpp at McGill have been running the OCS (Office for Chemistry and Society) for some time now. Their view is that it is academia's responsibility to communicate science to the public. One such facet of this has been to put up a series of lectures available freely through the internet.

I thought this may be interesting in light of MIT's OpenCourseWare, and that there are other major online university education projects around... even if they aren't on the same scale. In any case, here is your chance to learn about all the neat stuff you were interested in, but never learned in your introductory chem class. My first class (world of chemistry) with 'Dr. Joe' included topics like medications, plastics, explosives and pollution, so it isn't the boring chemistry you may have been tortured with in high school!"

Put this in your drive and smoke it. Linuxfr.org says (translated from French):

' GNU Generation, a student association at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne, proudly announces the release of GNUWin-II, a collection of free and open source software for Windows, which luckily contains most of the software that was proposed some days ago on slashdot.'

It comes on a CD with more than 50 applications, articles, and a four-language (yes it's Swiss) html based interface to help newcomers discover Free Software. The complete GNUWin-II can be browsed online. The ISO image of the CD can be downloaded here or better on Swiss SunSITE mirror ftp or http.

But who can fit the most soundcards in one machine? An anonymous reader writes "As a follow up to the 37 operating systems, 1 PC you should check out this site http://fileserver.coleskingdom.com 24 hard drives in one PC. And he managed it under Windows 95."

Maybe it was the Zip factor. generic-man writes "Dataplay, a company built around creating a new miniature optical disc format, has announced that all employees have been put on leave as the company tries to come up with the $50 million it needs to stay afloat. The future of Dataplay is still up in the air."

Recursive trailers. A lot of readers were disappointed in the viewing options for the Two Towers trailer posted yesterday anakin876 writes "The TTT Hi-Res trailer is out, but still semi-hidden. The Apple Quicktime Page doesn't have the trailer listed (yet) but it does exist."

Harm, foul. Boone^ writes "You'll remember when California signed a huge deal with state consultant and Oracle reseller Logicon Inc. only to have it blow up in their face [1,2,3]. Gov. Gray Davis finally signed legislation ending the exemption for the state's information technology purchases from California's conflict-of-interest laws. Similar bills have come across the Governor's desk, but Pete Wilson and Davis both vetoed them in the past. Apparently the policy of 'no harm, no foul' reigns out west, since it takes a fiasco to produce change."

That many licenses must be worth some jetlag. In August, we mentioned the possibility (floated by Telstra itself) that the Australian phone company was considering rolling out Linux on as many as 45,000 desktops; an anonymous reader notes that Microsoft is not sitting by for that, and has dispatched Steve Ballmer to convince Telstra otherwise.

Comments

dispatched Steve Ballmer...

[homer_ca]

shouting and doing the monkey dance with Kylie Minogue

GIVE IT UP FOR ME!!!

Windows?

[joyoflinux]

Well, I guess this Windows box is complete from "A-Z"!

Boy I wonder...

[Anonvmous Coward]

"n August, we mentioned the possibility (floated by Telstra itself) that the Australian phone company was considering rolling out Linux on as many as 45,000 desktops... "

Assuming they're running RedHat, where are they going to keep their 135,000 system discs?

Ballmer vs. the jetlag

[Anonymous Coward]

"Microsoft is not sitting by for that, and has dispatched Steve Ballmer to convince Telstra otherwise. "

I think I see a pattern here -- announce move to linux on day 1, on day 2 sign a deeeeeply discounted deal with Microsoft.

Hmmm...

Re:Ballmer vs. the jetlag

[pyman]

I think I see a pattern here -- announce move to linux on day 1, on day 2 sign a deeeeeply discounted deal with Microsoft.

Or more likely: day 2 MS threatens to audit, sending telstra scrambling for 45000 WinNT4 licenses... day 3: telstra signs standard subscription deal for next X years to avoid lawsuit.

Re:Ballmer vs. the jetlag

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I see a pattern here -- announce move to linux on day 1, on day 2 sign a deeeeeply discounted deal with Microsoft.

My company uses thousands and thousands of servers in rackmounts, and up until XP, we had a site license for all M$ products. When XP came around, they said, "Nope, no more... you have to individually track every computer." Now, since 80% of the systems are totally indentical hardware-wise, the product activation might be fooled, but there there was the issue of lawsuits should they find out, and as big as we are, M$ is far bigger. This was insane, there was no way in hell we could track all these systems without hiring a team just for that purpose.

So we partnered with Sun, made a deal with HP, burned a few Red Hat disks and if you HAVE to have an M$ machine, you get and old Windows 2000 box. M$ said they didn't care. We found Linux ran faster and cheaper, with more options on older hardware. We could now literally run a system until its hardware failed; before we were throwing out systems because M$ kept upgrading the hardware requirements. Now we can use a 486 for a LAN manager, a router, or just a smart terminal.

That was last year. A few weeks ago, while talking about drive image backups, one of the managers told us that M$ had given us "special" XP disks that require no PA... now, these disks are supposedly "un-reburnable" but I bet someone could figure out how to do this, and if WE have a copy, I bet someone in Hong Kong has a stack of them in his house, selling them through eBay or something.

M$ knows their product. It's a drug. That's why we're called "users." For many years, they gave the drug "for free," it was insanely easy to copy an M$ OS. It's what made them #1, just like they did with Windows Media player and MSIE. They waited until we got "hooked," and then they charge an arm and a leg. $200 for XP pro? One machine only? Yep, time to pay the dealer for your OSmack, it ain't free no more, kid, I gotta make a living somehow. Dealers don't care about their users, they only care about their money, and will do what it takes to get that money any way they can.

But then came Linux. Linux is a slippery beast because they don't need a profit margin. It's a superior OS that never crashes, is free, a lot more secure, and a thousand times more versitile than Windows ever was. It was a system built by people sick of bad systems. It is not designed to make money, so M$ tactics to drive it out of "business" can't work.

My guess is that M$ will back off the PA and cut prices eventually. I think in 5-10 years, they will be the AOL of OS's, for granny and Mr. Need-it-for-pr0n-browsing, but students and business people will be on Linux.

Go Aussies!

Only 24?

[CaptainCarrot]

Presumably the two missing letters here are for his floppy and CD-ROM. He should try it with some OS that doesn't insist on using single letters of the alphabet to designate partitions. Like VMS, better known as the Operating System of the Gods, where you can find such euphonious device names as DKA0: Real VMS gurus know without being told that any device so bold as to be called DVA0: had damned well better be a floppy drive!

Which one's my CD-ROM? Ummmm....

Re:Only 24?

[doublem]

Sorry, no Dice. The drive will go unused and unmounted, unless it takes the place of another drive.

There is no AA: in Windows

Two floppies and 24 other mounted partitions is the max.

Now, more than one physical drive can be used as a single drive letter via RAID, but that's another story.

DOWNLOADS! *kick ass*

[autopr0n]

ah, it's so much nicer to be able to actualy *download* something, rather then trying to 'stream' it, and then not being able to watch it again. Quicktime files can usualy be dug out of the cache, but still.

The weird part is that it's as a .zip file. I still find it very strange that quicktime files can be further compressed with pkzip, but whatever. (Or maybe they just did it so it wouldn't automaticaly be played in the browsers of the not-so-smart...)

California Gov. & law

[CodeMunch]

for more info, visit EGray

My View On Dataplay

[MBCook]

Here is my view of Dataplay. First off the technology is very good. And it's perfect for MP3s. The cost per meg (if you only count the disks) is very cheap (compared to other removable media that size). I recently saw the play and disks in person at a Best Buy and I've gotta say it looks really cool. The problem is that it's out too late. If it came out back when MP3 players were pretty new (origional Nomad and whatnot) it would have been amazing. But these days, if I'm going to plop down $400 for a MP3 player, I'm going with a 20gig iPod (those rock), not a little 500meg thing.

Maybe if I could use it to do other things like buy music for it like I can on CDs. They even say you can! But wait! Can you find any? I doubt it. Can't find a player either (unless the MP3 player does it too). You wanna use it as a tiny CD-RW? Cool! So would I, it's small (and rules compared to Click! drives (or Zip Pocket as they're known now)) and holds alot. But wait! You can't get a drive. You could use the MP3 player as one but, should I have to buy a $400 MP3 player if all I want is something to backup a few files to? How 'bout a PCMCIA type 3 card that could read them and such? Nope. Despite all the drives that they have promised, nothing is really going on. The only thing that's new is it's no longer vaporware, it's just unwanted.

Once again, we see a good technology that could have done great just a few years ago, but they just took too long. This is what hapened to 3Dfx (my opnion, let's not get off topic), BitBoys (the ultimate in vapor), and many other things. Excessive delays can seriously hurt you in the market. How many of you are enjoying you're Segway HTs right now? That's what I though. They should be careful too.

FINE PRINT: This is all my opinion, blah blah blah.

Insider perspective

[pyman]

My brother manages construction projects for Telstra in Western Australia. Over the last few weeks I have been helping him create a damage expense reporting system.

He said that telstra's annual IT expenses account for a third of the total expenses; and because of this the new CIO/CTO is cutting back radically on IT expenses... that means no new software development... therefore he is developing the expense system himself!

Either way, it's a good thing

[Goonie]

Whilst I'd love for Telstra to start using Linux across all their desktops, it's a pretty good second best for us Aussies even if they're only using it as a negotiating tool to beat down Microsoft's pricing.

Why? Because it's going to be millions of dollars that gets distributed back to the Australian economy either in the form of lower pricing of Telstra's products or as profits to shareholders (and as the government is still a 51% shareholder that means all of us).

The next point is that once a few more CEOs see that you can screw Microsoft in this manner, they're going to try it for themselves. At least some (and more as time goes on and Linux apps continue to improve) are going to decide that the Linux option is viable regardless of what deals MS offers, and the others will save a packet. Net result? Less money floating across the Pacific to the money vault in Redmond and more in local customers and shareholders' pockets, and a growing Linux user community who will spend money and use their buying power to get the features they want.

Now, if only Telstra could be levered out of their monopoly or quasi-monopoly positions, then we'd *really* be in good shape :)

many many drives..

[morcheeba]

I had a friend that got a deal on some small-capacity scsi drives and bought 6 with the intent of installing them on one computer. I suggested that he should mount every other one upside down - otherwise when he turned the computer, the momentum of all the drives simultanously spinning would would cause and equal/opposite reaction, causing his computer to spin in the opposite direction on his desk.

I guess that kind of geeky humor is unavoidable when you get a whole mess of satellite attitude control system geeks.

Re:many many drives..

[Neon Spiral Injector]

When you start to have that many drives you should stagger the spin ups (most SCSI drives have a jumper to delay spin up for a number of seconds multiplied by their SCSI ID). Not for the reason you suggest, but because the most current is drawn during spin up. Spinning all the drives up at once can actually put a lot of strain on a power supply. Even if it can provide enough power once the drives are spinning the extra load at start may be enough to cause a sag in the power going to the mother board. It isn't just over voltage conditions that are bad for computers, low voltages can also be harmful.

Re:Hardware List for the Slashdot Possibility

[shogun]

Comeone, its called THE BEAST there can't possibly be any way we can slashdot it, its even running Windows 95 to boot!

dictionary.com sez

[cosyne]

dispatch
tr.v. dispatched, dispatching, dispatches
1. To relegate to a specific destination or send on specific business. See Synonyms at send1.
2.
1. To complete, transact, or dispose of promptly.
2. To eat up (food); finish off (a dish or meal).
3. To put to death summarily.

insert clever punchline here, such as "stop teasing."

Not a dispatch of Ballmer

[m00nun1t]

More /. half truths...

The Ballmer visit has been planned for quite a few months, and coincides with an event in Asia. Whenever a senior exec like Steve Ballmer or Bill Gates travel, they always meet with a few top customers. It's just a convenient coincidence that one of their top customers happens to need some extra attention at the time Steve is here, so it all worked out nicely.

Telstra doesn't intimidate easily

[Goonie]

To sue Telstra, it would have to take on Telstra on its home turf (ie Australia), and Telstra is Australia's second-biggest company, very profitable, dominates the local telecommunications industry, and 51% of it is owned by the government (which the government is looking to sell so it would not be pleased by any developments that reduce the potential value of the selloff).

So, let's see, Microsoft sues Telstra. Not only does Telstra decide to go non-MS in the future, it starts promoting non-MS alternatives through its extensive ISP business (for instance designing its pages to work best with Mozilla/NS rather than IE, having their installation install NS by default, start streaming content in non-MS formats and thus preventing the usual Linux lockout, and so on), the publicity that such a trial would produce would surely encourage other businesses to look for alternatives to a company that sues its best customers.

That's not to mention what a hostile federal government could do to MS's business here if it so chose.

No they couldn't

[Goonie]

At the moment, the government owns 51% of Telstra and needs parliamentary approval to sell the rest. It's going to struggle to get it with the present composition of the Senate.

But let's assume the rest of Telstra is sold. To obtain a controlling stake in a public company, Microsoft, as a foriegn-owned company, would have to obtain permission from a government body called the Foriegn Investment Review Board. 99.9% of the time such approval is given, but every so often the government knocks back some politically contentious ones (for instance, they knocked back Shell's attempt to buy the rest of a major gas project because it was widely argued that Shell may choose to promote other projects in Indonesia and elsewhere over the Australian one).

Given one of the major arguments advanced by the government for not splitting Telstra up into seperate companies has been that it is one of a very few Australian companies big enough to be a major player in a global market, the idea of approving a foriegn takeover of it seems unlikely.