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Slashback: Tenacity, Freedomware, Lem
Honest, I'm not dead. Again. silvaran writes "A clarification on CNet News indicates that IBM will not stop supporting or selling OS/2 as mentioned previously. Says IBM spokesman Steve Eisenstadt, 'As long as our customers want OS/2, we will support them... We don't have plans to withdraw OS/2.' The withdrawal notice lists several hundred components or software packages that will no longer be available, but OS/2 itself will still be offered."
Like Marshall MacLuhan in Annie Hall. tree writes "The Boston Globe has a really interesting interview with Stanislaw Lem, author of the 1961 novel "Solaris": he is a bit baffled about the latest movie adaptation. In any event, it's a great read for fans of Lem."
They win, GNU Win, we all win. Shwag writes "Last week I downloaded TheOpenCD after it was on Slashdot. I learned about all kinds of great free (as in speech) software. I then searched for more and found out about GNU Win which is a win32 free software cd but it has way more software! Yay! This is a really great way to show people the benefits of free software and get them ready for transitioning to linux."
A platform built from an Acorn. An anonymous reader writes "The (London) Guardian's Online section reports today on the new Ionix PC earlier Slashdotted for being the first desktop to run Intel's XScale processor. The Guardian concentrates on how the new machine may revive the fading fortunes of the once-pioneering Risc OS, but also makes mention of the fact it is ditching old proprietary Acorn subsystems."
Woe to the boonie dwellers, until enough balloons are in place. Avenger writes "Another DSL provider is getting out of the market. Hughes Electronics has announced that they will no longer be providing high-speed Internet services. Over 160,000 users will be affected. As it stands right now, they still will be providing connectivity via DirecPC."
But it seemed like such a great do-it-yourself idea! adagioforstrings writes "You may recall last year Home Depot announced they were deploying Linux at 90,000 point-of-sale terminals across the nation. Well, time went by and no more was heard about it...until now, when Home Depot announced they would be upgrading their POS systems with technology from NCR Corp., and 360 Commerce Inc. and ... Microsoft Corp."
What happened to Home Depot and the Dark Side?
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
It used to be a no-brainer - Home Depot in Vancouver was open 24 hours, great selection, and a little bit closer to me than the nearest comparably sized Revy store.
Sure, a little bit of me didn't like shopping at a US firm when there was a Canadian firm, but at 2 AM, you don't have much choice, and for some reason I always seem to end up going and getting lumber and crap for things I'm working on at 2 AM.
Then one day, HD announced they were going stock only from 2 AM to 5 AM. Fine, I thought. No biggie. I'll just try to get there earlier.
Then it was midnight to six.
Then ten to six it was closed. Now it's the same hours as Revy.
Then they "expanded their aisles to make shopping better". Nice doublespeak for "we dropped twenty percent of our stock"!
Creature of habit that I am, I kept going there. I'm uncomfortably reminded of "how to boil a frog"... but one day, I wander into Revy on a quest for the holy rivet.
OK, not that holy. I just needed some damn copper rivets. HD had nothing. I go into Revy, and they have not just one or two but dozens of types of rivets. I realized then how bad I'd been getting it at HD. Never going back there again!
Another case when corporate HQ's "We're considering transitioning to Linux..." turns out to be biz-speak for "Gimme a discount, Ballmer!"
We'll know Linux has won this battle when the shoe's on the other foot and HQ mulls over "transitioning to Windows" until, I dunno, some widget-manufacturer agrees to release open-source drivers that work on the latest RedHat release... or something.
-renard
Let's think about this for a moment. If you are deploying thousands of systems, you can set a standard and deploy a standard that is compliant with Linux. As for attached hardware, I guarantee you that any POS hardware shop would bend over backwards to make a massive sale to home depot. They are one of the 800 lb gorillas in retail so you'd think that they get a little flexibility from their vendors.
So now they get to pay licensing fees on all of those POS systems forever. What happens when Microsoft no longer supports the OS on your registers? Now you HAVE to upgrade, and outlay even more in support costs.
Good thinking... really...
In reality, I guarantee that this decision is the old, "nobody lost their job choosing microsoft", the more modern version of the same phrase that was applied to IBM originally. IF they went with Linux and it was a failure for whatever reason, the person who made the decision is SCREWED. IF they go with windows and it's a failure, they won't take the heat because they went with Microsoft.
Granted, if the Linux option succeeds they have the potential to look really good, but oh well...
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Someone has to nitpick... There is no "interview", it's just a nice short article on Stanislaw Lem, using the last movie as an excuse to call attention on an immensely underrated author.
The "interview" part consists of a single quote, taken from the public statement he published elsewhere about the criticisms to the North American version of Solaris.
The article is pretty good, though. I was unaware of some of the details of PKD's involvement in the SFWA debacle.
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...