Wouldn't you have to circumvent CSS encryption and violate the DMCA to do this?
That's true. In fact, just pointing to a DeCSS scheme violates the DMCA. Three days after the shutdown of 321 Studios, that should be perfectly clear. The discussion here itself violates DMCA. I'd like to see that worthless unAmerican law crushed because some moron decides to shut down this conversation.
And still have no menus. I love slashdot nonsolutions..."do more work for less value just to say you did it." I wish I could get that patriotic about technology.
I wish you would not be so quick with insults and flame. One piece builds on the other, and good things come out of it all. Sure, you might think it's funny to poke at people but it reflects badly on you. Why do you want to discrouage people who are having fun and might be learning something?
You may have not grasped the whole free software concept. All things are made in little pieces. Curious and energetic people do this for fun, others because they have to. Most of the time the pieces go nowhere and reward them with nothing but the fun of the project. Other times, when the piece is free, someone else crams it into something that works well. The free world is so large now that most things are already done and can be put together like tiner toys. Ohter times, when you make those pieces under a NDA in exchange for money, the pieces are turned into a single dinky program, with total duplication of effort or the purchase of eXPensive software.
Some software examples? Witness KDE and Gnome, two desktop enviornments that are better than comercial software in all ways. How about gphoto2 and gtkam, which now works cameras you thought died with windoze 95 and does it all through a single interface. Compare that to the hideous fragmented video world of Windoze, where every device demands a seperate program, viewers vie for "market share" and sabotage each other and all is hell. Each of the drivers for gphoto2 came from people who put a lot of time into something you would consider worthless because cameras are cheap. A programmer, such as yourself, should know this.
Ideas only grow when they are shared and worked on. Practical insights are often gained while working on silly projects, and serious projects are often boon-dogles. Anyone who's done things realizes this.
All balls, no brains, paid to be excited over the wrong kinds of things.
From Dog Food to Junk Food, M$ continues be as unpolitic as ever. Anyone can do a burger and fries better than McDonald's, there are all sorts of vendors ready to make it easier and cheaper. Only a 16 year old at a fast food joint thinks the "secret sauce" is special or makes the food taste any better. Anyone who tries to live off junk food will die bloated and stupid. I can't think of a worse analogy for him to have used.
Microsoft is in an untennable position, but lacks the brains to realize it. You can't make people who share their work for free look bad. You can't say that they work they produce is second rate and you can't say that Microsoft is worth the money anymore.
Microsoft is going to make plenty of enemies with this one:
Small-business customers only want one server, maybe two, and they might want a separate firewall. They don't want 10 servers all doing separate, desegregated workloads.
It's wrong from a security standpoint, a software standpoint and it's against the best interest of hardware vendors. The small business customer will only think they want to go this way if they remain totally ignorant. Notice that the weasle does not actually talk about what M$ software does for you, because he's outclassed in all catagories. Microsoft, but pushing such ignorant garbage, is going to make an enemy of everyone with a clue in the IT world.
From a security standpoint, it's good to not put your eggs in one basket. The typical "small business" with a "server" acting as an internet gateway is a security dissaster. Though free software is more robust and can deal with the internet much better, it's stupid network design. Distributing the load insures that you don't lose everything all at once.
Microsft's continued insistance on software and hardware asymetry is brain dead. Old office hardware is robust and more than powerful enough to handle the day to day demands of email, firewalling and web service. In the free world, all you have to do is add a few extra programs and you are set. While it is a good idea to spend money on a RAID server for file storage and sharing, there's no reason at all everyone's desktop machine should not perform similar file and work space sharing for collaborative prorjects. It spreads the workload so everything performs better.
The real killer is going to be from a hardware vendor perspective. We stand on the brink of networking deployment of a previously unimagined scale. It's so much easier to get things done with free software, that it's wide spread adoption will drive huge hardware sales. Micrsoft's legacy restrictions are holding those sales back and creating distrust in buyers. Hardware vendors are tired of seeing their excellent wares underutilized, trashed and undersold because of inadequate software. They are not going to take much more of it. There should be a computer on every desktop and it should do more than a gloified typewriter.
You are going to see more Computer Bob's reading free software for dummie books and they are going to do great things with it.
So in some ways, we've got a McDonald's No. 5 super-size offering that costs $2.99 and someone just wants a Diet Coke that costs 99 cents. So do we cut the entire super-size No. 5 down to 98 cents, or do we try to find a way to just give somebody the Diet Coke if that's what they want?
Perfect analogy. While fat, dumb and frustrated is bitching and moaning about cardboard burgers, the rest of us are enjoying a home made roast, potatoes and trimmings for less money and trouble.
I like this Taylor clown. He makes me laugh, but I don't want any of his greasy, downer dairy cow burgers software.
Of course it's nonsense, but you have to know a little about it to be able to refute it. Despite the author's contention that SCO is a "tiny company", their malice is what your boss reads in the Wintel trade rags like ZDNet. The same superficial and midless pap comes accross other more reputable publications when their journalists are confused by the noise being made. This particlular piece of "research", while disclosing no facts, does a good job of encapsulating the current M$, $CO FUD.
When your boss asks you why you don't need to be indemnified, from reading the above posts you can answer him. I like the simple fact that SCO released and published Linux under the GPL. You can also tell them that you don't ever have to resort to cult practices except when dealing with closed source junk like an NT server.
At least one person was bound to post something like this:
aking advantage of state benefits... it does show a lack of moral character.... Admittedly, you've been brainwashed along with everyone else into thinking that taxes aren't theft, but in reality, that's what they are
I'll let you know when the benefits reach an apreciable fraction of the taxes I actually paid the year before I was canned. Don't hold your breath, though, I exhausted them about six months ago. It slowed the rate of exhuastion of my savings but not much. It helped keep me from losing my house, but the drain goes on as I've yet to land a job that pays half of what my last one did.
Your three steps kind of fall apart when you have left your mom's house and have a family. The attitude is good, but your steps drastically change. They become:
Secure any and all benifits from your job or state. The state will pay you to find a job that does not waste your talent and experience. Unless you can find a job that pays substantially more and makes use of the resources society has already put into educating you, KEEP LOOKING. Take anyjob when the benifits run out.
Calculate how long your savings will hold out before you have to sell your house. Few people really have the recomended six months of salary saved. Know when you have to make those hard choices between the roof over your head and the children's education and make them in advance.
Hit the pavement for yourself first. The only kind of job you are going to get this way is a sales job at a small company. Everyone else posts their jobs on the web or on mailing lists. Work in a warehouse at a tech firm before you flip burgers. Sell before you sweat and sell yourself to small companies that can use what you know before you sell loans at the bank.
Volunteer work should be ongoing, work or no work, but you should intensify it when you have the time.
I'm ready to tell any interviewer exactly what I've done. There is NOTHING lazy about taking advantage of state benifits. It shows you knew where to look, took some of your tax money back the way it was supposed to be used and cared about your career. In fact, it's lazy and counterproductive to just take anyjob without first looking. It takes worlds of industry to fill out job applications, and cold call. By the time you are finished, everyone in the world should have seen your resume too. Many people will think I'm a pest, but no one can accuse me of being lazy.
Of course, sooner or later you *will* get the machine from hell with an intermediate fault that ends up locking windows for no damn good reason every so often.
There's always a good reason and your job is to find it.
If you run your #1 tool, Knoppix, and it does not experience those indeterminant faults, the fault is clearly software related. Just boot it and leave it running some silly task, like computing random numbers. When you get back, use uptime to see if the machine failed while you were gone.
The only problem Knoppix has is the inability to recognize worthless hardware like winmodems. Ripping junk like that out fixes lots of problems, even in the windoze world.
This article is from the Washington Post, not from Microsoft. Please adjust your conspiracy theories accordingly.
OK, Microsoft Dorks did not write this latest article maligning the service they can neither match nor purchase, they simply trumpeted it by republication to the place where M$ Windoze takes people who puch the default "news" buttons on their browser and desktop. What do I have to adjust exactly?
f Bill Gates is using the same SS # that was leaked in 1995, then he is a total moron. He is not a moron. Therefore he is not using the same SS # that was leaked in 1995. QED
f Bill Gates is using the same broswer that he pushed in 1995, then he is a total moron. He is not a moron. Therefore he is not using the same browser that he pushed in 1995,IE, QED
dumb, de-dumb, dumb.
Nice of MSNBC to malign the thing M$ can neither match nor buy.
Don't be so down on free software.
on
Dell's New Linux Blog
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Free software offers both technical and politicaly superior work. The things you describe are problems in the Windoze world too, despite the limited choice. Let me go through them:
For example, the kernel interface for drivers is just the pits. I mean, you either have to have open source drivers to build for your kernel release, or your equipment manufacturer has to have a binary for every possible kernel version and build!
This is true in the windoze world too. Your old 3.1 drivers won't work with NT, might work with 95, won't work with ME or XP. In the free world, drivers get compiled for everything and packaged by the distro maker or by yourself.
Now that the M$ extortion is over, more hardware makers are going to be releasing free drivers. Those that won't sucked anyway and already left you high and dry. That's not the fault of kernel developers. I've been there with a wireless card that promissed "Linux support" but came with a closed binary that was compiled with a specific Red Hat compiler for a specific kernel. It sucked, but that was the card maker's fault. They should have simply released their code GPL and let everyone mirror it. If they were under restraint from a chipmaker, then the chipmaker sucked. The kernel's system of insmod and rmmod is way better than any Windoze junk that makes you reboot for simply looking at it! Add to that Windoze's mindless need for a specific driver for each and every device, even if they have the same damn chipset and are essentially identical. Free software's drivers that easily handle hardware from donzens of branders shows just how needlessly clumsy the Windoze way is.
Linux has a very inconsistent UI, so that tech support for "Linux" is very difficult. For example, somebody can't "get online". Are you running Lindows? Mandrake? Red Hat? Suse? Slackware? Gentoo? KDE? Gnome? IceWM? Which version of each? What kernel build do you have installed?
Once again, the same pain works in the windoze world, despite the seemingly limited choice. Do you know the differences between all the versions of AOL and the hardware requirements with respect to each version of windoze, for example? I know some of them - but each time I have to figure the damn thing out for the user. It's a job each service provider should be doing.
It is easier to fix free software problems. Besides the fact that there are fewer problems to begin with, the remote tools superior - they work better.
Try walking somebody through setting up email over the phone sometime. And, sorry, if you disagree with me on this point, it's probably because you haven't done it with a Linux setup you didn't install yourself in the first place.
Sure, you have to know your set up. I think I pulled out a suitably horrible example of how bad this is in the Windoze world. I'd far rather help someone set up Mozilla, Kmail, Balsa or even evolution than AOL or M$N. The weird settings the weird ISPs themselves have are the source of half of those problems. How those things get translated onto the half dozen Windoze platforms is a true nightmare. When you add the insecurity complication into the equation, 75% of the time, the user has a hosed system that needs to be wiped and reloaded. This is not the case in the free software world where settings are made and stay put.
Think about how much less trouble you have with that Red Hat system than your clients have with their Windoze boxes. Tech support is broken windows, day in, day out. It is precisely this kind of mindless repeated Microsoft support that convinces me that EVERYONE would be better off with free and open software. A Mac would be better and it's hardly free! A really free system offers quality, reliability, flexiblity and freedom from lock-in.
In any case, I agree with you when you say that Windoze is doomed.
I feel isolated when I'm not connected to the net and don't have my wife, mom, brother, sister, information and frank opinion in easy reach. My cell phone augments the connection but is not as flexible.
$40,000,000,000 sounds like a lot of money, but it's not when you are spending about eight and a half billion each quarter. See this story about their last quarterly report. They could, in theory, bankrupt themselves in less than two years.
Why not simply post the link instead of the tinyurl redirection? Oh, because you are a troll, I see now. That's the last time I click on a tinyrul link on Slashdot. Next time it will be goat sex which is only half as offensive and pointless as your "joke".
I'm afraid Dell is tired of being screwed around by their buddy, Bill Gates. There's an alternative and Dell has grabbed onto it. No more one PC one OS charges, I presume. I also expect commerce.euro.dell.com to be run off a usefull OS soon. A few years ago, Dell recommended Win3.1, what they recommend tomorrow is clear for all to see.
BTW I would not buy a Dell labtop again my Inspiron is so poorly processed, if you press on the left side, it jiggles at the other....
If you want a nice new laptop, talk to your local AOpen dealer. They will be happy to sell you a solid customized laptop AND NOT CHARGE YOU FOR AN OS because they don't subscribe to the one computer one OS M$ rape. The dealer might even install the OS of your choice and will surely test out something like Knoppix at no charge.
Let your local reseller help you and your business out and ask for free software. You might pay a little more for the hardware, but he'll be there to answer questions and sell you his time for real solutions.
Six years ago, if you put your head to the ground, you could hear a rumble.
The largest seller of corporate desktops openly embracing and encouraging Linux and free software is about as subtle as a passing freight train. So much for the careful dance Dell was supposed to do to avoid the wrath of Microsoft. Do you think for one instant that Dell wants Microsoft's DRM future to happen and leave them even more in Microsoft's grip? No one does and they are all breaking free. Everyone will follow Dells lead and it's going to go everywhere, the desktop, portables the works.
This leaves Microsoft with very little. With the acceptance of an alternate platform, Microsoft's hardware and software incompatibility extortion is over. As that alternate platform is technically superior, there is little reason to shell out big bucks for legacy software. Why would any company trust it's record keeping to Microsoft formats when free alternatives have widespread comercial support? There is competition in the future and everyone knows it. Standardizing into the upgrade cycle will soon be a thing of the past. Microsoft will compete by improving their code and EULAs or die. Let's see how long it takes them to figure out that their current business model is dead.
The ABA Antitrust section has been pro-business, anti-enforcement forever, so this is really no big deal.
Fine, that may represent the priciples of those involved.
This move casts doubts on those priciples and the integrity of the organization in general. It proves that their volunteer professional organization can be taken over by a representative from a company and used to do that company's buisness. Moreover, it looks like you can do this at the last minute with little planning. They should avoid the appearance of such things, much more the fact.
Stinkers:
It's unusual for a corporate lawyer to chair the anti-trust section.
The pannel has already started to work against popular legislation that would be bad for Microsoft. In other words, before he's even there he's started to shield Microsoft from Judicial scrutiny.
The time frame could be as short as a week. That makes the ABA look as easy to use and discard as a paper towel from the men's room of a gas station.
They claim the usual stupid stuff. Linus was not able to check that contributor's code did not come from SCO's non published code, and amature coders could not possibly write anything good enough for "the enterprise", therfore all of Linux came from SCO. Never mind that journaling file systems and multi processing were never found in SCO Unix, they were in AIX, you see. They even stole the file names from IBM's AIX, inode.h, the dirty dogs! How dare they steal header files if they did! I count tens of lines of missaproriated deffinitions in table A alone. The shamelessness is amazing! It's like they adopted AIX as a general operating system for a non-IBM company! Every Linux user must pay for their use of AIX and now, damn tit! Tables B, C, and D are even more scandalous, even including a dozzen lines of supposedly infringing source from a real sourc file or two instead of a simple header. Everywhere, the innovative adoption of commonly know software techniques is claimed as more evidence of the gravity of IBM's supposed infractions. The document proves, better than I can, how well free sofware works.
Daryl you suck. Not one line of SCO code is held up in evidence. Everything comes from AIX and Sequent code, and there's not much of it either. It seems that SCO thinks they own AIX as well as Linux. The free software revolution of GNU, Linux and BSD was not a plot to keep SCO from being able to sell an operating system. Microsoft proves every day that you can sell inferior code to the ignorant so long as you market it and provide anything at all. SCO is dying because it has been taken over by a bunch of morons that and the fact that free software is much much better at doing the job.
Slashdot Mirror
That's true. In fact, just pointing to a DeCSS scheme violates the DMCA. Three days after the shutdown of 321 Studios, that should be perfectly clear. The discussion here itself violates DMCA. I'd like to see that worthless unAmerican law crushed because some moron decides to shut down this conversation.
I wish you would not be so quick with insults and flame. One piece builds on the other, and good things come out of it all. Sure, you might think it's funny to poke at people but it reflects badly on you. Why do you want to discrouage people who are having fun and might be learning something?
You may have not grasped the whole free software concept. All things are made in little pieces. Curious and energetic people do this for fun, others because they have to. Most of the time the pieces go nowhere and reward them with nothing but the fun of the project. Other times, when the piece is free, someone else crams it into something that works well. The free world is so large now that most things are already done and can be put together like tiner toys. Ohter times, when you make those pieces under a NDA in exchange for money, the pieces are turned into a single dinky program, with total duplication of effort or the purchase of eXPensive software.
Some software examples? Witness KDE and Gnome, two desktop enviornments that are better than comercial software in all ways. How about gphoto2 and gtkam, which now works cameras you thought died with windoze 95 and does it all through a single interface. Compare that to the hideous fragmented video world of Windoze, where every device demands a seperate program, viewers vie for "market share" and sabotage each other and all is hell. Each of the drivers for gphoto2 came from people who put a lot of time into something you would consider worthless because cameras are cheap. A programmer, such as yourself, should know this.
Ideas only grow when they are shared and worked on. Practical insights are often gained while working on silly projects, and serious projects are often boon-dogles. Anyone who's done things realizes this.
All balls, no brains, paid to be excited over the wrong kinds of things.
From Dog Food to Junk Food, M$ continues be as unpolitic as ever. Anyone can do a burger and fries better than McDonald's, there are all sorts of vendors ready to make it easier and cheaper. Only a 16 year old at a fast food joint thinks the "secret sauce" is special or makes the food taste any better. Anyone who tries to live off junk food will die bloated and stupid. I can't think of a worse analogy for him to have used.
Microsoft is in an untennable position, but lacks the brains to realize it. You can't make people who share their work for free look bad. You can't say that they work they produce is second rate and you can't say that Microsoft is worth the money anymore.
Small-business customers only want one server, maybe two, and they might want a separate firewall. They don't want 10 servers all doing separate, desegregated workloads.
It's wrong from a security standpoint, a software standpoint and it's against the best interest of hardware vendors. The small business customer will only think they want to go this way if they remain totally ignorant. Notice that the weasle does not actually talk about what M$ software does for you, because he's outclassed in all catagories. Microsoft, but pushing such ignorant garbage, is going to make an enemy of everyone with a clue in the IT world.
From a security standpoint, it's good to not put your eggs in one basket. The typical "small business" with a "server" acting as an internet gateway is a security dissaster. Though free software is more robust and can deal with the internet much better, it's stupid network design. Distributing the load insures that you don't lose everything all at once.
Microsft's continued insistance on software and hardware asymetry is brain dead. Old office hardware is robust and more than powerful enough to handle the day to day demands of email, firewalling and web service. In the free world, all you have to do is add a few extra programs and you are set. While it is a good idea to spend money on a RAID server for file storage and sharing, there's no reason at all everyone's desktop machine should not perform similar file and work space sharing for collaborative prorjects. It spreads the workload so everything performs better.
The real killer is going to be from a hardware vendor perspective. We stand on the brink of networking deployment of a previously unimagined scale. It's so much easier to get things done with free software, that it's wide spread adoption will drive huge hardware sales. Micrsoft's legacy restrictions are holding those sales back and creating distrust in buyers. Hardware vendors are tired of seeing their excellent wares underutilized, trashed and undersold because of inadequate software. They are not going to take much more of it. There should be a computer on every desktop and it should do more than a gloified typewriter.
You are going to see more Computer Bob's reading free software for dummie books and they are going to do great things with it.
Perfect analogy. While fat, dumb and frustrated is bitching and moaning about cardboard burgers, the rest of us are enjoying a home made roast, potatoes and trimmings for less money and trouble.
I like this Taylor clown. He makes me laugh, but I don't want any of his greasy, downer dairy cow burgers software.
When your boss asks you why you don't need to be indemnified, from reading the above posts you can answer him. I like the simple fact that SCO released and published Linux under the GPL. You can also tell them that you don't ever have to resort to cult practices except when dealing with closed source junk like an NT server.
No way! What you need is a flying surf board. Let's see you build one of those.
aking advantage of state benefits ... it does show a lack of moral character.... Admittedly, you've been brainwashed along with everyone else into thinking that taxes aren't theft, but in reality, that's what they are
I'll let you know when the benefits reach an apreciable fraction of the taxes I actually paid the year before I was canned. Don't hold your breath, though, I exhausted them about six months ago. It slowed the rate of exhuastion of my savings but not much. It helped keep me from losing my house, but the drain goes on as I've yet to land a job that pays half of what my last one did.
I'm ready to tell any interviewer exactly what I've done. There is NOTHING lazy about taking advantage of state benifits. It shows you knew where to look, took some of your tax money back the way it was supposed to be used and cared about your career. In fact, it's lazy and counterproductive to just take anyjob without first looking. It takes worlds of industry to fill out job applications, and cold call. By the time you are finished, everyone in the world should have seen your resume too. Many people will think I'm a pest, but no one can accuse me of being lazy.
There's always a good reason and your job is to find it.
If you run your #1 tool, Knoppix, and it does not experience those indeterminant faults, the fault is clearly software related. Just boot it and leave it running some silly task, like computing random numbers. When you get back, use uptime to see if the machine failed while you were gone.
The only problem Knoppix has is the inability to recognize worthless hardware like winmodems. Ripping junk like that out fixes lots of problems, even in the windoze world.
OK, Microsoft Dorks did not write this latest article maligning the service they can neither match nor purchase, they simply trumpeted it by republication to the place where M$ Windoze takes people who puch the default "news" buttons on their browser and desktop. What do I have to adjust exactly?
f Bill Gates is using the same broswer that he pushed in 1995, then he is a total moron. He is not a moron. Therefore he is not using the same browser that he pushed in 1995,IE, QED
dumb, de-dumb, dumb.
Nice of MSNBC to malign the thing M$ can neither match nor buy.
For example, the kernel interface for drivers is just the pits. I mean, you either have to have open source drivers to build for your kernel release, or your equipment manufacturer has to have a binary for every possible kernel version and build!
This is true in the windoze world too. Your old 3.1 drivers won't work with NT, might work with 95, won't work with ME or XP. In the free world, drivers get compiled for everything and packaged by the distro maker or by yourself.
Now that the M$ extortion is over, more hardware makers are going to be releasing free drivers. Those that won't sucked anyway and already left you high and dry. That's not the fault of kernel developers. I've been there with a wireless card that promissed "Linux support" but came with a closed binary that was compiled with a specific Red Hat compiler for a specific kernel. It sucked, but that was the card maker's fault. They should have simply released their code GPL and let everyone mirror it. If they were under restraint from a chipmaker, then the chipmaker sucked. The kernel's system of insmod and rmmod is way better than any Windoze junk that makes you reboot for simply looking at it! Add to that Windoze's mindless need for a specific driver for each and every device, even if they have the same damn chipset and are essentially identical. Free software's drivers that easily handle hardware from donzens of branders shows just how needlessly clumsy the Windoze way is.
Linux has a very inconsistent UI, so that tech support for "Linux" is very difficult. For example, somebody can't "get online". Are you running Lindows? Mandrake? Red Hat? Suse? Slackware? Gentoo? KDE? Gnome? IceWM? Which version of each? What kernel build do you have installed?
Once again, the same pain works in the windoze world, despite the seemingly limited choice. Do you know the differences between all the versions of AOL and the hardware requirements with respect to each version of windoze, for example? I know some of them - but each time I have to figure the damn thing out for the user. It's a job each service provider should be doing.
It is easier to fix free software problems. Besides the fact that there are fewer problems to begin with, the remote tools superior - they work better.
Try walking somebody through setting up email over the phone sometime. And, sorry, if you disagree with me on this point, it's probably because you haven't done it with a Linux setup you didn't install yourself in the first place.
Sure, you have to know your set up. I think I pulled out a suitably horrible example of how bad this is in the Windoze world. I'd far rather help someone set up Mozilla, Kmail, Balsa or even evolution than AOL or M$N. The weird settings the weird ISPs themselves have are the source of half of those problems. How those things get translated onto the half dozen Windoze platforms is a true nightmare. When you add the insecurity complication into the equation, 75% of the time, the user has a hosed system that needs to be wiped and reloaded. This is not the case in the free software world where settings are made and stay put.
Think about how much less trouble you have with that Red Hat system than your clients have with their Windoze boxes. Tech support is broken windows, day in, day out. It is precisely this kind of mindless repeated Microsoft support that convinces me that EVERYONE would be better off with free and open software. A Mac would be better and it's hardly free! A really free system offers quality, reliability, flexiblity and freedom from lock-in.
In any case, I agree with you when you say that Windoze is doomed.
I feel isolated when I'm not connected to the net and don't have my wife, mom, brother, sister, information and frank opinion in easy reach. My cell phone augments the connection but is not as flexible.
I'm afraid Dell is tired of being screwed around by their buddy, Bill Gates. There's an alternative and Dell has grabbed onto it. No more one PC one OS charges, I presume. I also expect commerce.euro.dell.com to be run off a usefull OS soon. A few years ago, Dell recommended Win3.1, what they recommend tomorrow is clear for all to see.
If you want a nice new laptop, talk to your local AOpen dealer. They will be happy to sell you a solid customized laptop AND NOT CHARGE YOU FOR AN OS because they don't subscribe to the one computer one OS M$ rape. The dealer might even install the OS of your choice and will surely test out something like Knoppix at no charge.
Let your local reseller help you and your business out and ask for free software. You might pay a little more for the hardware, but he'll be there to answer questions and sell you his time for real solutions.
Six years ago, if you put your head to the ground, you could hear a rumble.
The largest seller of corporate desktops openly embracing and encouraging Linux and free software is about as subtle as a passing freight train. So much for the careful dance Dell was supposed to do to avoid the wrath of Microsoft. Do you think for one instant that Dell wants Microsoft's DRM future to happen and leave them even more in Microsoft's grip? No one does and they are all breaking free. Everyone will follow Dells lead and it's going to go everywhere, the desktop, portables the works.
This leaves Microsoft with very little. With the acceptance of an alternate platform, Microsoft's hardware and software incompatibility extortion is over. As that alternate platform is technically superior, there is little reason to shell out big bucks for legacy software. Why would any company trust it's record keeping to Microsoft formats when free alternatives have widespread comercial support? There is competition in the future and everyone knows it. Standardizing into the upgrade cycle will soon be a thing of the past. Microsoft will compete by improving their code and EULAs or die. Let's see how long it takes them to figure out that their current business model is dead.
Fine, that may represent the priciples of those involved.
This move casts doubts on those priciples and the integrity of the organization in general. It proves that their volunteer professional organization can be taken over by a representative from a company and used to do that company's buisness. Moreover, it looks like you can do this at the last minute with little planning. They should avoid the appearance of such things, much more the fact.
Stinkers:
The time frame could be as short as a week. That makes the ABA look as easy to use and discard as a paper towel from the men's room of a gas station.
Daryl you suck. Not one line of SCO code is held up in evidence. Everything comes from AIX and Sequent code, and there's not much of it either. It seems that SCO thinks they own AIX as well as Linux. The free software revolution of GNU, Linux and BSD was not a plot to keep SCO from being able to sell an operating system. Microsoft proves every day that you can sell inferior code to the ignorant so long as you market it and provide anything at all. SCO is dying because it has been taken over by a bunch of morons that and the fact that free software is much much better at doing the job.
Don't give that idiot, Steve Baller, any more bright ideas.