Something like this is always good, if only to give students more choices. They should not be indoctrinated in a monoculture from the start.
Microsoft has been playing tough in many countries including Egypt.
Initially, Microsoft looked the other way when there was piracy. People still pirate software there, but for personal use, and not in businesses.
As part of playing tough, there has been an Intellectual Property Police for about 8 years now. They can check business for Windows licenses, and confiscate computers and/or issue fines. They can even drag you to court as well, with all the legal costs and headaches that this entails.
So, for people to know that there is a viable alternative that works in the local language, and is totally free, powerful, and open can only be a good thing.
I was watching the live feed, and saw the plane spin wildly before he cut off the engine.
The SpaceFlightNow status update page said "The craft is in a major tumble!". Several minutes after that, it was 'corrected' to : "The craft is in a major roll!"
I think they still have some issues with the aerodynamics at this speed.
Not that this will affect them in their bid in the race. They seem to be well poised to win.
I think that the article has been pretty much dissected and the motives, MS FUD, inaccuracies...etc. exposed enough in the above comments.
Some points that have not been mentioned:
Fit to customer
As good as Linux is, as cost effective it is, it may not be the best fit for every single situation out there. Some may have a large pool of experienced Windows developers and admins. Some may have a good site license deal. Some may have other reasons. There will always be exceptions to the rule, no matter how general the rule is.
Magnitude
The original article is so full of anecdotes, but it does not say anywhere what percentile this represents of IT spending this year, nor of those who switched operating systems. One can always list exceptions to gain the sound bite effect, but do not take your audience as complete idiots when doing so.
All these are good. However, when you think about offsite backup, only the external HDs are viable, but if you want multiple copies (this month, last month,...etc.) then it gets trickier.
Perhaps two disks then, backing up each week. The latest one is sent offsite (even if you take it home from work, or vice versa, depending on what you are backing up), and the other stays onsite.
For a home or small business, a robotic library is overkill.
However, decent tape drives run several hundred to a few thousand dollars, which is not cheap, but the most practical out there.
So, since the United States is a Superpower and there is the UN, that means the United States has to be held to a higher standard than, say the UK or Russia or China? I say bullshit.
No. All should be held to the same standard.
However, because a super power, by definition, has the means to act like one, and if it is the sole super power, its actions cannot be kept in check by others, then its actions are that much more important than others, just because they affect so many countries and people for generations to come.
If there are is to be monitoring of the US elections, then every nation in the United Nations, or a signatory to the ICJ should have them mandated, otherwise, there shouldn't be election inspections at all.
Would not be a bad idea in general. My argument is based partially on guessing why the EU decided to monitor elections in the USA. I may be right, I may be wrong. What I could see, is because of the implications of who wins on the next 4 years on the international scene. The others do not hold comparable influence.
France, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, India and Pakistan all openly have nuclear weapons along with the United States. Russia, the United States, France, the United Kingdom and China all also have the ability to project conventional forces into other theatres of operation, therefore, they are SuperPowers, by the old definition, so if it's good for the US, why not for China or Russia, France and the UK?
You have a point there.
But having nukes is just one facet of it, and not the entire picture. Neither Pakistan, France, and even the UK, do not have the internal politics, money, amries, economy,...etc. to do what the US does today (a few hundred thousand troops abroad with the largest military arsenal to support them fighting on multiple fronts).
If you have your own domain(s), then go with Zoneedit. First 5 domains are free, and they provide a whole lot more services than just dynamic DNS (mail forwarding, web forwarding,...etc.). Have been using it for years, and they are great.
If you don't have your own domains(s), then DynDNS is your friend. I have used it and recommended it to friends.
Mod parent -1 Troll, Flamebait, Ignorant anti-american sentiment.
Nice try AC! I leave it up to the mods to decide.
The USA did not have a preemptive war doctrine? Thats funny, because we attacked Mexico preemptively.
Back then, everyone who could struck preemptively. If they had the means, and calculated that the prey can be taken, and that the competition will not cause a big fuss, they will do it, the just did it.
This was the age of colonialism, where it was fashinable and even proper to invade others.
But now, there are treaties and laws.
Do what you want, because you can. No one will be able to stop you now. But you have to deal with the consequences, now or later.
Invade a sovereign country illegally? Bullshit claim because invading sovereign countries for no reason wasn't illegal back then.
Exactly my point. But it is illegal now. Even Kofy Anan, the UN Secretary, had the guts to say so last week! Where was he in March 2003?
But again, it was a different time. Just a little before that slavery was legal. Manifest destiny is another version of colonialism, and every nation who had the means (money, arms,...etc.) acted anyway it liked provided it did not incur the wrath of other powerful nations (who hate competition mainly).
Now is another time, with international treaties and internation laws, to which the US is a signatory.
I am under no illusion, we live in a practical world, where reality is not in sync with ethics or morals. Countries will break the laws they signed.
However, when you do so, at least do not underestimate the rest of the world, and take them as idiots, and try to preach to them that what you did is 'right', and 'good', and sell it to them as promoting freedom and democracy.
Why is it that super powers and rogue nations bring up the issue of sovereignty, as if being signatory to international treaties and laws undermines or opposes their sovereignty? This is an obvious fallacy: it is not an either/or situation.
The UN and international law are not intended to rule the world, nor meddle in internal affairs (although it sometimes does, and that should be corrected). Countries should run their internal affairs as they wish, but there has to be a set of rules governing international relations, from diplomacy and trade to war. This is why there are Geneva Conventions, and this is why so many unversities teach international law.
If countries sign the treaties and laws, then it is binding to them. If they do not, then it is not, but risk being shunned, criticized by others (like the land mine treaty, the nuclear proliferation, the international court,..etc.)
Remember that the Taliban, North Korea, and other 'rogue states' were/are always under the gun for not following international law.
If the US (or any other country) is a sovereign nation (which it is), it so follows that it should respect the sovereignty of other nations as well in its foreign and military policies, otherwise it is not being fair, and applies double standards, one for itself and another for others.
Then if the US is important and the elections should be monitored, why waste time monitoring elections where it's not important?
Good question. You got me there.
To attempt to explain: I guess that the average American participation in elections was not a concern before (turnout), as well as there was no allegations of rigging or at least improper things in the elections.
After Florida 2000, and the severe results to the rest of the world, the OSCE probably decided to monitor elections. Perhaps it is a pressure tactic, perhaps it is fact finding. I don't know.
What is evident now is that the US elections are no long US elections only, but have global implications. Think of it this way: the average American does not really know nor care about things that happen beyond their borders. What the US government does abroad is not known, nor important to the average voter. Voters vote on local issues. But, for better or worse, those elected affect (often adversely) the rest of the world.
Anyway, the United States did have a pre-emptive doctrine in the 19th century, look at the annexation of Hawaii to keep it from being annexed by the British, Germans or Japanese, or perhaps ask the Plains and Southwestern Indian tribes about a pre-emptive doctrines.
I am no expert on this area, but think of the era, and think of the relative importance of the annexed area.
The Indian tribes were not important to the British Empire nor to the French. So it was seen as a local issue. Think of how some consider Chechnya and Palestine as internal issues today to Russia and Israel. I would imagine they were viewed the same way then by outsiders.
Also, this was the colonial era, and there was a 'white man's burden' was in vogue. They had to 'civilize the savages', and 'save the heathen souls'. So it was seen as a good cause, actually as an obligation.
Now the world is different. There is international law, there is the UN, there are treaties galore.
Remember that the US was not a super power then, let alone the only super power.
Hawaii was not geopolitically strategic, did not hold a valuable commodity (Oil). Not until World War II did it become important.
One of the big problems now are the high cost of decent tape backup systems. The drives are expensive, and the media is expensive, but it is about the only choice out there.
Backup needs to be as large as, or close to, the size of disks. Backup media have to be cheap enough so multiple copies of the data can be made, and some of it stored offsite.
With disks growing far more than any other media, tape is barely catching up, and optical media (Rewritable CDs, and rewritable DVDs) is way behind.
What we need is to have a reasonably prices read/write medium as large as existing disks, so one can keep a daily backup (5 work days or 7 week days), and an offsite monthly backup.
So, we need a standard format Rewritable DVD media that is 40 or 80 GB, and the technology to grow quickly to keep up with 120 and 250 GB disks.
(Before you say USB 2.0 external hard drives, these are good and all, but you need many of those to have a daily backup and some of them offsite too).
Computer generated images and animations are improving all the time, however, they are not quite there yet.
Look for example at this image : it is almost natural, like a real photo. No CGI hints there.
However, look at that other image, and although the hair is done OK, the eyes and hands still look fake.
That same eery feeling
No, not all of us have the latest P4s
on
Less Might Be More
·
· Score: 1
No! Not all of us have the latest P4.
Granted, I have a Dell P4 3 MHz with 1 GB of RAM at work that was assigned to me last December. But I did not ask for it, nor complain about the one I had. It is part of the regular refresh cycle they do.
At home, all my PCs are PIIs (300 MHz to 450 MHz), except for the server which is a PIII 550MHz. There is a total of 6 PCs in the house in use.
All of these PCs have been bought used. I had to upgrade one from Celeron 300 to a PII-300 because the silly cachless Celeron ran like molasses. They work well with Mandrake 10.0, Open Office, Gaim,...etc.
Power consumption is high, considering the power supplies of these machines, but so are the new P4s as well. Unless one goes to the Mini-ITX form factor, power consumption will remain high for 'regular' home PCs.
No one at home does graphics work, nor heavy gaming. So the P4s are overkill, not to mention a serious amount of dough shelled out as well. Money better spent on other things.
I would love to see severe penalties on misbehaving corporations, if only as a deterrant to others from doing similar things.
However, the corporate death penalty will have a lot of fallout: the employees, the vast majority of which are not involved in the wrong doing. This collective punishment is not the solution.
Even in societies, when someone commits a crime and has to go in prison for life, or executed, his family suffers, his wife and kids lost a father and a provider of income if nothing else. The effect here is limited though, only a bunch of people are affected.
For corporations today, this could affect tens of thousands of earners, and by extension, their dependants. Too big an effect I think.
I use both Yahoo Messenger (and love it) and MSN Messenger (and loath it) on Windows.
I know I can get GAIM, or Trellis or any of a dozen all-in-one IM clients out there.
However, one of the reasons I keep using both of them is if someone half a planet away wants to talk to me in voice. I cannot dictate nor influence what client they like best nor have installed. I want to be able to talk to them when I want to.
Until gaim-vv is a reality, and works well with MSN and Yahoo IM networks, I have no choice but continue to use two IM clients on my machines.
I noticed what appears as a coordinated attack on Roland, and stood up and defended the guy. Not that I like him (I neither like nor dislike him), but because these attacks seem unwarranted, and all by Anonymous Cowards.
Slashdot Mirror
Something like this is always good, if only to give students more choices. They should not be indoctrinated in a monoculture from the start.
Microsoft has been playing tough in many countries including Egypt.
Initially, Microsoft looked the other way when there was piracy. People still pirate software there, but for personal use, and not in businesses.
As part of playing tough, there has been an Intellectual Property Police for about 8 years now. They can check business for Windows licenses, and confiscate computers and/or issue fines. They can even drag you to court as well, with all the legal costs and headaches that this entails.
So, for people to know that there is a viable alternative that works in the local language, and is totally free, powerful, and open can only be a good thing.
Google News is still valuable to Google, even if they cannot make money off it.
It is a free service provided for the public that give Google great publicity and a positive image. It does build their brand.
So, even if you consider it as a loss leader in marketingspeak, it is still valuable to them.
Now, as an alternate strategy, if they start providing ads for the news outlets themselves? Would the news outlets complain then?
You are right. I am no expert in rockets or engines by any stretch of imagination.
A colleague who is into amateur rockets told me: "It is still a plane. When you have no atmosphere, it loses stability".
Did anyone notice this?
I was watching the live feed, and saw the plane spin wildly before he cut off the engine.
The SpaceFlightNow status update page said "The craft is in a major tumble!". Several minutes after that, it was 'corrected' to : "The craft is in a major roll!"
I think they still have some issues with the aerodynamics at this speed.
Not that this will affect them in their bid in the race. They seem to be well poised to win.
I think that the article has been pretty much dissected and the motives, MS FUD, inaccuracies ...etc. exposed enough in the above comments.
Some points that have not been mentioned:
As good as Linux is, as cost effective it is, it may not be the best fit for every single situation out there. Some may have a large pool of experienced Windows developers and admins. Some may have a good site license deal. Some may have other reasons. There will always be exceptions to the rule, no matter how general the rule is.
The original article is so full of anecdotes, but it does not say anywhere what percentile this represents of IT spending this year, nor of those who switched operating systems. One can always list exceptions to gain the sound bite effect, but do not take your audience as complete idiots when doing so.
All these are good. However, when you think about offsite backup, only the external HDs are viable, but if you want multiple copies (this month, last month, ...etc.) then it gets trickier.
Perhaps two disks then, backing up each week. The latest one is sent offsite (even if you take it home from work, or vice versa, depending on what you are backing up), and the other stays onsite.
For a home or small business, a robotic library is overkill.
However, decent tape drives run several hundred to a few thousand dollars, which is not cheap, but the most practical out there.
So, since the United States is a Superpower and there is the UN, that means the United States has to be held to a higher standard than, say the UK or Russia or China? I say bullshit.
No. All should be held to the same standard.
However, because a super power, by definition, has the means to act like one, and if it is the sole super power, its actions cannot be kept in check by others, then its actions are that much more important than others, just because they affect so many countries and people for generations to come.
If there are is to be monitoring of the US elections, then every nation in the United Nations, or a signatory to the ICJ should have them mandated, otherwise, there shouldn't be election inspections at all.
Would not be a bad idea in general. My argument is based partially on guessing why the EU decided to monitor elections in the USA. I may be right, I may be wrong. What I could see, is because of the implications of who wins on the next 4 years on the international scene. The others do not hold comparable influence.
France, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, India and Pakistan all openly have nuclear weapons along with the United States. Russia, the United States, France, the United Kingdom and China all also have the ability to project conventional forces into other theatres of operation, therefore, they are SuperPowers, by the old definition, so if it's good for the US, why not for China or Russia, France and the UK?
You have a point there.
But having nukes is just one facet of it, and not the entire picture. Neither Pakistan, France, and even the UK, do not have the internal politics, money, amries, economy, ...etc. to do what the US does today (a few hundred thousand troops abroad with the largest military arsenal to support them fighting on multiple fronts).
If you have your own domain(s), then go with Zoneedit. First 5 domains are free, and they provide a whole lot more services than just dynamic DNS (mail forwarding, web forwarding, ...etc.). Have been using it for years, and they are great.
If you don't have your own domains(s), then DynDNS is your friend. I have used it and recommended it to friends.
Mod parent -1 Troll, Flamebait, Ignorant anti-american sentiment.
Nice try AC! I leave it up to the mods to decide.
The USA did not have a preemptive war doctrine? Thats funny, because we attacked Mexico preemptively.
Back then, everyone who could struck preemptively. If they had the means, and calculated that the prey can be taken, and that the competition will not cause a big fuss, they will do it, the just did it.
This was the age of colonialism, where it was fashinable and even proper to invade others.
But now, there are treaties and laws.
Do what you want, because you can. No one will be able to stop you now. But you have to deal with the consequences, now or later.
Invade a sovereign country illegally? Bullshit claim because invading sovereign countries for no reason wasn't illegal back then.
Exactly my point. But it is illegal now. Even Kofy Anan, the UN Secretary, had the guts to say so last week! Where was he in March 2003?
All good points for sure.
But again, it was a different time. Just a little before that slavery was legal. Manifest destiny is another version of colonialism, and every nation who had the means (money, arms, ...etc.) acted anyway it liked provided it did not incur the wrath of other powerful nations (who hate competition mainly).
Now is another time, with international treaties and internation laws, to which the US is a signatory.
I am under no illusion, we live in a practical world, where reality is not in sync with ethics or morals. Countries will break the laws they signed.
However, when you do so, at least do not underestimate the rest of the world, and take them as idiots, and try to preach to them that what you did is 'right', and 'good', and sell it to them as promoting freedom and democracy.
People are not that stupid.
So?
Why is it that super powers and rogue nations bring up the issue of sovereignty, as if being signatory to international treaties and laws undermines or opposes their sovereignty? This is an obvious fallacy: it is not an either/or situation.
The UN and international law are not intended to rule the world, nor meddle in internal affairs (although it sometimes does, and that should be corrected). Countries should run their internal affairs as they wish, but there has to be a set of rules governing international relations, from diplomacy and trade to war. This is why there are Geneva Conventions, and this is why so many unversities teach international law.
If countries sign the treaties and laws, then it is binding to them. If they do not, then it is not, but risk being shunned, criticized by others (like the land mine treaty, the nuclear proliferation, the international court, ..etc.)
Remember that the Taliban, North Korea, and other 'rogue states' were/are always under the gun for not following international law.
If the US (or any other country) is a sovereign nation (which it is), it so follows that it should respect the sovereignty of other nations as well in its foreign and military policies, otherwise it is not being fair, and applies double standards, one for itself and another for others.
Then if the US is important and the elections should be monitored, why waste time monitoring elections where it's not important?
Good question. You got me there.
To attempt to explain: I guess that the average American participation in elections was not a concern before (turnout), as well as there was no allegations of rigging or at least improper things in the elections.
After Florida 2000, and the severe results to the rest of the world, the OSCE probably decided to monitor elections. Perhaps it is a pressure tactic, perhaps it is fact finding. I don't know.
What is evident now is that the US elections are no long US elections only, but have global implications. Think of it this way: the average American does not really know nor care about things that happen beyond their borders. What the US government does abroad is not known, nor important to the average voter. Voters vote on local issues. But, for better or worse, those elected affect (often adversely) the rest of the world.
Anyway, the United States did have a pre-emptive doctrine in the 19th century, look at the annexation of Hawaii to keep it from being annexed by the British, Germans or Japanese, or perhaps ask the Plains and Southwestern Indian tribes about a pre-emptive doctrines.
I am no expert on this area, but think of the era, and think of the relative importance of the annexed area.
The Indian tribes were not important to the British Empire nor to the French. So it was seen as a local issue. Think of how some consider Chechnya and Palestine as internal issues today to Russia and Israel. I would imagine they were viewed the same way then by outsiders.
Also, this was the colonial era, and there was a 'white man's burden' was in vogue. They had to 'civilize the savages', and 'save the heathen souls'. So it was seen as a good cause, actually as an obligation.
Now the world is different. There is international law, there is the UN, there are treaties galore.
Remember that the US was not a super power then, let alone the only super power.
Hawaii was not geopolitically strategic, did not hold a valuable commodity (Oil). Not until World War II did it become important.
No one came over to monitor the 1880 election after the 1876 election so why are they "monitoring" the Presidental Election this time?
Several reasons:
I am sure there are more.
One of the big problems now are the high cost of decent tape backup systems. The drives are expensive, and the media is expensive, but it is about the only choice out there.
Backup needs to be as large as, or close to, the size of disks. Backup media have to be cheap enough so multiple copies of the data can be made, and some of it stored offsite.
With disks growing far more than any other media, tape is barely catching up, and optical media (Rewritable CDs, and rewritable DVDs) is way behind.
What we need is to have a reasonably prices read/write medium as large as existing disks, so one can keep a daily backup (5 work days or 7 week days), and an offsite monthly backup.
So, we need a standard format Rewritable DVD media that is 40 or 80 GB, and the technology to grow quickly to keep up with 120 and 250 GB disks.
(Before you say USB 2.0 external hard drives, these are good and all, but you need many of those to have a daily backup and some of them offsite too).
Here in Canada, some places have GIS data available on the internet.
The Region of Waterloo Locator web site is one such example.
The answer is here. Sorry about the error.
You are right. Here is the second image which looks fake.
Computer generated images and animations are improving all the time, however, they are not quite there yet.
Look for example at this image : it is almost natural, like a real photo. No CGI hints there.
However, look at that other image, and although the hair is done OK, the eyes and hands still look fake.
That same eery feeling
No! Not all of us have the latest P4.
Granted, I have a Dell P4 3 MHz with 1 GB of RAM at work that was assigned to me last December. But I did not ask for it, nor complain about the one I had. It is part of the regular refresh cycle they do.
At home, all my PCs are PIIs (300 MHz to 450 MHz), except for the server which is a PIII 550MHz. There is a total of 6 PCs in the house in use.
All of these PCs have been bought used. I had to upgrade one from Celeron 300 to a PII-300 because the silly cachless Celeron ran like molasses. They work well with Mandrake 10.0, Open Office, Gaim, ...etc.
Power consumption is high, considering the power supplies of these machines, but so are the new P4s as well. Unless one goes to the Mini-ITX form factor, power consumption will remain high for 'regular' home PCs.
No one at home does graphics work, nor heavy gaming. So the P4s are overkill, not to mention a serious amount of dough shelled out as well. Money better spent on other things.
VGA resolution and unreadable to anyone above 40.
Is it just me getting old, or are young people designing things for their age group only without considering those who are older?
a direct ancestor of Linux
Direct ancestor? Not by a long shot. Unless you consider that any multi user, multi tasking, time sharing operating system as a direct ancestor.
I would love to see severe penalties on misbehaving corporations, if only as a deterrant to others from doing similar things.
However, the corporate death penalty will have a lot of fallout: the employees, the vast majority of which are not involved in the wrong doing. This collective punishment is not the solution.
Even in societies, when someone commits a crime and has to go in prison for life, or executed, his family suffers, his wife and kids lost a father and a provider of income if nothing else. The effect here is limited though, only a bunch of people are affected.
For corporations today, this could affect tens of thousands of earners, and by extension, their dependants. Too big an effect I think.
I use both Yahoo Messenger (and love it) and MSN Messenger (and loath it) on Windows.
I know I can get GAIM, or Trellis or any of a dozen all-in-one IM clients out there.
However, one of the reasons I keep using both of them is if someone half a planet away wants to talk to me in voice. I cannot dictate nor influence what client they like best nor have installed. I want to be able to talk to them when I want to.
Until gaim-vv is a reality, and works well with MSN and Yahoo IM networks, I have no choice but continue to use two IM clients on my machines.
Sigh! Moronic moderators...
How is this a troll?
I noticed what appears as a coordinated attack on Roland, and stood up and defended the guy. Not that I like him (I neither like nor dislike him), but because these attacks seem unwarranted, and all by Anonymous Cowards.
Seems someone has an axe to grind against Roland P.
See this post.