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Slashback: NIC, Dastar, Defects
Was it ahead of its time or vice versa? BreadMan writes "After limping along for years, the New Internet Computer (NIC) company finally went under. Founded by Larry Ellison, NIC sold a diskless workstation running Linux targeted at home users that wanted internet access. From the spec sheet it looks like this would be fun as a hacking platform if you can get one on the cheap."
Way to GNU! xarium writes "Seems that in response to pressure from the FSF OpenTV has released the source code to all of its compilers. You can download the full package here (~18meg)."
Because a hard drive should not be a rhythm section.
Dynamoo writes "As previously noted in Slashdot, Fujitsu MPG3xx series hard drives have been failing in huge numbers. The U.S. law firm, Shepherd Finkelman Miller & Shah is currently conducting a class action against Fujitsu and HP for knowingly distributing faulty drives. According the this article in The Register, Gateway has now been lined up as a defendant.
The fault appears to impact MPG3102AT, MPG3204AT, MPG3307AT and MPG3409AT units manufactured in early 2001. If you have one of these, then it has probably failed already, if not you should replace it asap. If you're a customer of HP/Compaq you can visit the HP Hard Disk Drive Replacement Program site.
We had about 40 of these things fitted to Compaq DeskPro EXDs, and I can assure you the failure rate is pushing 100%."
In the public domain, no one knows you're a dog.
smiff writes "United Press International reports on Dastar v. Twentieth Century Fox. Reversing lower court rulings, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Dastar did not violate the origin-of-work provision of the Lanham act. Dastar had taken public domain video, made some modifications, and sold it as its own product. Twentieth Century Fox sued claiming they should have been given credit for the video. According to Antonin Scalia, Dastar would have violated the Lanham Act if it had simply repacked the material and sold it as its own. But since Dastar made some minor changes, the Lanham Act doesn't apply.
While Dastar has been cleared under the Lanham Act, the Supreme Court sent the case back for a rehearing. The Fox video entered the public domain in 1977, but the book it was based on is still protected by copyright."
... or get off the pot. Brazilian Joe writes "The LinuxTag folks, as you may know, are responsible for a restraining order against SCO's claims in Germany. As a result, SCO has shut down its Germany web site. Story here."
Larry Ellison has been preaching for nearly a decade that the PC is on the verge of death, and that it would soon be replaced by a number of small devices tailor made for certain tasks.
The NIC was part of this push... why use an expensive, power hungry computer system to accomplish what can be done with a much simpler system tailor made to the task?
Unfortunately, the flaw of this ideology is that resource consolidation that is provided by a computer is perhaps one of its biggest advantages. Not only does it let you browse the web, it lets you watch movies, listen to music, watch TV, play games, etc.
I don't see the PC losing out to single purpose devices any time in the near future.
I think I disagree.
... I don't know!
Maybe Ellison moved too early; maybe he failed in the mkt department; maybe the PC price drop was too steep; maybe M$ succeeded in delaying the thin-client wave; maybe
But I propose that the thin-client is not such a good idea by itself -- you get a lot of functionality for a reasonable increase in the price you pay for a full-fledged PC.
When you talk corporate lingo -- that's a whole different can of worms: a versatile PC is a major problem for a company (specially for routine-task-only machines).
Also, the savings accomplished by one machine can be multiplied hundreds or even thousands of times (not to mention the possibility of not using proprietary OSes in the clients themselves).
Thin clients are the only way for cash-strapped IT-dependent businesses in this era of M$ desktop domination.
I have great confidence that Mr. Ellsion tried to sell his product in the wrong place; the domestic user is not the right place to start, IMHO.
Statistics be damned.
Several years ago, I noticed hard drives failing in Compaq Deskpro 2000 machines at my employer on a regular basis. The hard drives were all Quantum Bigfoot drives. Nearly every single drive failed before the PCs themselves were four years old. Compaq gradually got more and more difficult to deal with until the PCs were out of warranty and we were stuck with dead drives. I was even quoted in a GripeLine column in InfoWorld about my experience (although the columnist redacted the specific drive brand and model information I emailed him).
While my observations were not statistically valid, I nevertheless knew a machine I had running based on one of those drives needed desperately to be replaced before the drive failed and took our vital services with it. I had just finished transferring the last services from the PC to real servers on my network, shut the PC down and moved it to my lab when I discovered I couldn't get the PC to reboot ever again. Chalk up another dead Bigfoot, and I took it out of service not a moment too soon.
The Quantum Bigfoot drive problems I encountered made any IBM Deskstar fiasco look like peanuts in comparison.
There are a number of exceptions to the First Amendment liberties (and their international equivalents). For instance, "fighting words", slander, libel, "yelling fire in a crowded theater," (some types of) pornography, and so forth.
Thus if SCO wishes to cast FUD upon the Linux community, without providing any concrete evidence in support of their accusations, thereby harming the commercial prospects of their competitors, then I think it is perfectly appropriate for them to be enjoined against such behavior by the courts.
It's a simple request, really: Either substantiate the accusation or withdraw it. The same could be required of a newspaper, tabloid, or political candidate that wished to claim, i.e., that some competing political candidate had been a member of a white supremacist movement in his youth.
-renard
The 34 samples you mention randomly distributed--which is very unlikely when drives are purchased in bulk. 40 bad drives in a row could only indicate poor quality control; it is not a sufficient sample to determine the statistics of the entire run.
No the class action system is broken because you have inordinately large payouts going to a few very wealthy law firms, I respect the risk they take, and think they should get fat fees, but this seems beyond excessive. At the same time the parties that were actually injured recieve tokens of defraudment, which usually must be partially applied to future purchases. Is microsoft really hurt by donating a few Windows licenses to some needy schools? Adding the retail value of the coupons, vouchers, and discounts, to the lawyer fees gives a pretty impressive total, but given that most of the injured parties are likely not to try the company's products again, was it really anything other than some real payoffs to the annoying lawyers, and a large sounding token to those who were really injured?
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Put it in a loop if you really want to hurt them:
Report back when the site's down.I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
OTOH, maybe he expected it and didn't give a f---, except to note it as a possible thing to mention about those evil, lawbreaking, Linux hackers, at the next press conference.
You're right, but for the wrong reason. And you're also wrong for an unrelated reason.
40 is an excellent sample for measuring a trend in a population of 10000, if there's no correlating factor between the data points.
In this case, it sounds like all the hardware was bought on one order. This means all of the hard drives could have come on the same palette (and were accidentally dropped by Big Mike in the warehouse, whoops).
So calm down, you don't need to invest in 4-leaf clovers.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
What I'd ask McBride is, "How could you own the copyright and still be paying 95% of the royalties to someone else?". Somebody got suckered.
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