Don't waste days sitting around documenting your trip or organizing photos when you can be out enjoying where you are! Don't walk around with your brain plugged into an iPod when you can be meeting the locals and enjoying the sights and sounds of where ever you are (people rarely start conversations with people with headphones).
Travel light. Take as little as you can. I travel with a small backpack that carries a change of jeans, some clothes and a down jacket. When I get off the train, I can head straight for the mountains instead of dragging a big fat suitcase to a hotel.
Enjoy yourself! I (and nearly 400 other slashdotters) wish we were coming with you!:-)
> I'm also disappointed that yet another MMOG-focused magazine, Massive, will be ceasing publication as well. Why do you only hear about useful things when they go out of business.
> I just renewed my subscription today, not 3 hours before seeing this post. I hope I can get my money back.
No you didn't Mackil. I was passing through a chatroom (don't remember which one sorry) and some Russian hacker was boasting he'd used your credit card number. Maybe he was making it up, but if the charge appears on your bill you should mention this.
> Really, really shouldn't do. It's not done by dropping packets - at least in a decent ISP. Good to know. I may have been misinformed.
> A lot of Japanese 'net access is to Japanese sites. Local bandwidth is cheap. Was A$41 for 100Mbps unlimited. They may well assume the access is mostly within Japan, but it still rocks. J-Government offered breaks to business to build up the net and they did. Compare that to Australia.
> I do too, which is a hint:) Yes, Whirlpool.net.au and the Australian Army are the only thing keeping Telstra honest:-)
> More like 1.5c per MB. Still not pleasant. Oops. You're right of course. Hope they don't get any new ideas.:) Wonder how many people are caught by this every month?
> Try using a real ISP, which don't even offer plans of less than 8 GB For ADLS2, you're limited by who is in your exchange. Worst deals are the two duopoly players: Telstra and Optus. When I saw iPrimus advertising "We offer 500Mb a month, more than double Telstra" I laughed aloud.
> Other ISPs shape to 64 Kbps or 128 Kbps depending on plan. 128 Kbps is still slow, and shaping _seems_ to drop packets in a way that gives you severe end-to-end problems. Feels worse than an overloaded 5.6Kbps dial up connection. My perception anyway.
ObDisclaimer: I use an Australian ISP which is not Telstra or Optus. Was working in Japan recently. When I saw their net deals and prices, I wept.
BTW Highly recommended web site for people needing Australian Internet: whirlpool.net.au
Perhaps the dumbest example of this was run by Optus, one of two telecom duoplists in Australia.
Every month, they'd terminate the accounts of their top downloaders. There was no limit or actual number to this. You just had to be in the highest percentile. So, every month, you'd try and download as much as possible, desperately hoping there were enough people out there downloading more than you. And there was no way to check until the billing period ended. The dumbness of this was pointed out to Optus, who, unsurprisingly, were too dumb realize it was dumb.
Since then there is more competition in the Aussie ISP market and Optus eventually dropped the policy. Now they and every other Aussie ISP does what they call 'shaping'. When you exceed your quota (which can be 200Mb, 500Gb, 1Gb, 3Gb, 10Gb, 30Gb depending on your ISP and plan) they strangle your download rates. Optus cut it to a piddly 22Kbps(!!!) Their rival Telstra instead advertises cheap 200Mb quota accounts, and then charges customers $1.5 per Mb over that. If your kids discover bit torrent you're in for a big fat phonebill, and its your fault for not reading the fineprint.
So while the developed nations have speeds upto 100Mbps and no limit(** not withstanding this article), Australia has 22Mbps if you are really lucky, but more likely only 8Mbps or 1Mbps and shaping to deal with. Clever count, my arse!
On the bright side, at least Google aren't just cutting deals with totalitarian governments. They're now making political censorship deals with democratically-elected governments too! A Googlestroika, if you will.
> The most obvious [problem] is deciding which version of Linux to offer. > There are more than 100 distros, and everybody seems to want a different one > It costs Dell a small fortune to offer an operating system... so the lack of a standard is a real killer.
This article makes no sense. Dell can just do what every PC company has done since the dawn of the PC age: Pick one and go with it. The author paints a picture of a crowded meeting room in Dell full of Dell's resident geeks saying "Wow! I can't make up my mind! This is tooo confusing!" (something geeks never say)
Slow news day? No slower than the IAU (International Astronomical Union) who spend Lord knows how much time and publicly funded dollars for the world's biggest wankfest. Has the IAU ran out of things to do?
Maybe New Mexico can also declare the IAU not to be a real International Astronomical Union.
drsmithy writes: > Ignoring for a second his comments about Ubuntu weren't "completely negative" > (although your deceptive, selective, out-of-context quoting of his journal makes that unclear),
Huh? Here's 7of7's journal entry in full. Tell me how the middle part I left out of the quote makes it (in your words) "deceptive, selective, out-of-context":
7of7's journal: > Well, I've have the newest flight of Dapper for a while now. This time > I'm making a concerted effort to try and use it for an extended period of time. > They recommend that it not be used as a primary desktop and I can see why. > There are some serious problems. It has this great new window manager called Compiz. > It brings some eyecandy to the normally drab Gnome desktop. There are, however, > several problems with Compiz that are being worked over in the Ubuntu forums. > ATI users are having some troubles, but they're being ironed out quickly. > I've got an Nvidia card so Compiz is running great except for some annoying querks. > When I type I have a tendency to hold down shift and backspace at the same time, > which is set in my Xmodmap to terminate X. I set it to use Xmodmap.us on boot now, > so hopefully that irons out that problem. Another annoyance is with the screensaver. > It seems that if I use any OpenGL screensaver the system will just completely stop > all graphical output. It'll go black and no combination of keys will bring it back. > All I can do in that case is reboot. My sister recently got the Vundo bug on her XP machine, > but I can't imagine that she'd be any better off using Linux since it's such a pain to configure. > I'd say she might be a good candidate for an Apple, but I wouldn't want her to feed the beast. > The newest update to Dapper came with Gnome 2.14. I can't say I notice any real differences. > All the variants of Linux seem very promising at first, but they just keep coming up with ways to > disappoint. Someday I hope Linux will become a stable enough system to use on an everyday basis. > Until then I'll be more than happy to use XP or Vista."
Sounds entirely negative to me. Can't find a single laurel in all of that. If you're going to call me "deceptive, selective, out-of-context" back it up when you do.
drsmithy writes: > that would make 90% of the pro-Linux and anti-Microsoft content on Slashdot the > product of "advertising copywriters". I had no idea the OSS community had so much > money to throw around that they could waste it on that sort of thing...
In my experience any slashdotter, no matter what their camp, is shot down if there is a hole in their argument. Calling people names and not backing up your claims wastes everyone's time and convinces no one.
As one of the other posters said, nothing is perfect, yet 7of7's Vista comments were absolutely positive and their Ubuntu comments absolutely negative. Nobody but advertising copywriters speak in those sort of extremes.
Don't cringe, LiveWire. Stand Proud! Made-in-Seattle Astroturf *is* the best money can buy.:-) It can selling anything. You could wrap something small and brown that fits in the palm of your hand and eventually it'll sell in droves. (I'm not sure if I am thinking of the Zune or something else small and brown...;-)
> billboards are everywhere. Even in their home court, Microsoft is playing Defence in this quarter.
I don't understand why. Microsoft could stick up billboards calling me all sorts of nasty names and my next laptop will be Vista anyway. Maybe they think a hundred Seattle-based corporate buyers are going to arrive at work and mistakenly order Linux? "Sorry Boss, I didn't see any billboards this morning so I forgot the name of Microsoft's Flagship Product". If any Yes-men are reading this give Bill a good shoulder rub and remind him he won. Billboards for Microsoft are like Billboards for the Chinese Communist Party. "Who do you want to vote for today?"
> Since the modding is definatley pro-MS on/. today Even the devil deserves an easy day now and then.
> You forgot "Copywrite 2007, Microsoft Corporation Inc. All rights reserved"
I started to wonder about that, and checked 7of7's journal. All I found was this:
"Well, I've have the newest flight of Dapper for a while now. This time I'm making a concerted effort to try and use it for an extended period of time. They recommend that it not be used as a primary desktop and I can see why. There are some serious problems.... All the variants of Linux seem very promising at first, but they just keep coming up with ways to disappoint. Someday I hope Linux will become a stable enough system to use on an everyday basis. Until then I'll be more than happy to use XP or Vista." http://slashdot.org/~7of7/journal/
In isolation could be a fair comment, but given the unequivocal praise for Vista, I smell the polymers of thick green Made-in-Seattle Astroturf.
Re:Fraunhofer: The people who made piracy possible
on
How MP3 Was Born
·
· Score: 1
Here's the log entry from the one poking around inside eMule. Wonder if they were testing their DRM software or pirating.
Re:Fraunhofer: The people who made piracy possible
on
How MP3 Was Born
·
· Score: 1
MP3 is the world's pirated music format of choice, and everyone knows it. Including Fraunhofer. The lawyerspeak and public hand wringing on articles such as this will keep them out of RIAA suits, but we know, and they know, and the RIAA know too.
Don't *really* expect Fraunhofer scientists to be expert witnesses for the prosecution at the very same trial they're co-defendants. Nevertheless it'd be fun to see the lawyer for the next poor sap dragged before the RIAA to try it.;-)
Re:Fraunhofer: The people who made piracy possible
on
How MP3 Was Born
·
· Score: 1
There are several companies who have bounty contracts with the RIAA and MPAA to track piracy. BayTSP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BayTSP is one. I read that Fraunhofer is another and that they'd expanded into tracking movies on BitTorrent. They scrape your PC, look for checksums and watermarks on your media, then contact the RIAA or MPAA if they find anything.
Check the logs on that original link which has attempts by Fraunhofer recorded, or fire up BitTorrent yourself and watch Fraunhofer come to you. Try it! It *is* possible that there are rogue employees at Fraunhofer pirating movies, but to do it directly from the offices of Fraunhofer at the same time as Fraunhofer is selling DRM tech to media owners seems a little hard to swallow. Seems more likely this is their DRM effort.
Fraunhofer: The people who made piracy possible
on
How MP3 Was Born
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
What isn't mentioned in Herr Brandenburg's interview is that Fraunhofer have been playing both sides. If you've bought an MP3 capable player, you've paid Fraunhofer royalties. But Fraunhofer have been playing both sides: developing tools to track MP3s using watermarks so record companies crack down on piracy:
They've been expanding their IP business too: Next time you run BitTorrent or eMule (they do both), run it with a network tracker. You'll see computers from Fraunhofer affiliates all over the world taking a peek at what you're downloading.
We're using different definitions of Monopoly. Your definition is across operating systems. Mine is the workstations market. Your definition has only one provider. Mine allows others that aren't viable. Is Apple viable with a 3% share? Debatable. You'll never get a company with 100% domination, because there'll always be one guy in a garage somewhere 'completing'. If the breaks were with 50%/50% or 40%/40%/30% that'd seem an even market. Googling around I found estimates which said Microsoft 95%, Apple 3%, Linux That's the long, rational answer. The short, realistic answer is, of course, > "It costs too much to change our setup because we're locked into a Windows setup" Yep. And these days I just go with the flow. It's much easier.
> apathy and risk does NOT make the product a monopoly You're right. That's just a side benefit:-)
> it just makes the company short-sighted (assuming there are enought long-term financial benefits > to outweigh the cost/effort of redeployment). When it's government, those factors are inconsequential. Sloppy and wasteful they may be, but you still your taxes every year so they needn't worry about going out of business.
> Me? I choose to believe that as Linux is a viable alternative to Windows for certain uses,... > but not suitable for others (such as gamers; or Average Joe Desktop User, I agree, and probably many other Slashdotters do too. But I did think this guys story was interesting: http://news.com.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html?tag=l h
> Is it any wonder that I called you a Linux fanboi? Was I wrong? Well, yeah. When I wrote that stuff about Microsoft, I wasn't ranting and shaking my fists behind my Linux workstation. Situation isn't going to change, so why get upset about it? In other words, moralizing aside, I don't give a damn. I'm a Windows programmer. Windows sucks (its convoluted mess, they rearrange it in dumb and stupid ways, the API is a dog's breakfast, and what Windows does is defined by what it does rather than what is written down). Despite that, you can still turn out decent apps with, and people buy them. I'm typing this in a room with Windows PCs. My nearest Linux server is five hundred miles away.
My point was, don't confuse technology with religion and don't mistake an opinion for zealotry. I admire the Linux crowd for trying. An open source OS for the world would be a great thing. I hope they succeed.
I tried searching for "failure" in Google today. The #1 entry is now a skimpy page that lists "1. Mark Herpel and Congestive Heart Failure Part... 2. Judge Fudge: No one has claimed this blog 3. Dongs.dll: Dear Log, But [Wikipedia] has established a berth in the courtroom, despite concerns among some legal scholars about the dangers of relying on..."
Unless you wanted to know about "congestive heart failure" (in which case you wouldn't have just typed "failure"), that page is completely useless.
When Google promoted this to #1 over the mess in Iraq, a bit of Google died.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow. What a response. Guess a lot of Slashdotters are backpackers too.
6 79 http://www.fixup.net/tips/fiva/Casio%20Fiva%20and% 20Windows%202000.htm or http://www.edkeyes.org/obsolete/fiva.html. Don't bring an expensive, full-size PC. I did once; LCD screen was damaged, and it's a huge extra weight. Besides, If you're really backpacking, you'll find you have little time to use a PC.
:-)
You can get very small light but quite powerful PCs at around 1 kg with full blown Windows. If you're looking for something cheaper look for a second hand Casio Fiva on eBay: It's the smallest fully functional PC I've ever seen: Windows or Linux. http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=
Don't waste days sitting around documenting your trip or organizing photos when you can be out enjoying where you are! Don't walk around with your brain plugged into an iPod when you can be meeting the locals and enjoying the sights and sounds of where ever you are (people rarely start conversations with people with headphones).
Travel light. Take as little as you can. I travel with a small backpack that carries a change of jeans, some clothes and a down jacket. When I get off the train, I can head straight for the mountains instead of dragging a big fat suitcase to a hotel.
Enjoy yourself! I (and nearly 400 other slashdotters) wish we were coming with you!
> I'm also disappointed that yet another MMOG-focused magazine, Massive, will be ceasing publication as well.
Why do you only hear about useful things when they go out of business.
As a substitute, check out Terra Nova: http://terranova.blogs.com/
It's fairly academic, but good for a no-nonsense read on what's up with MMOGs. Koster, other MMOG bigwigs and academics post there.
> I just renewed my subscription today, not 3 hours before seeing this post. I hope I can get my money back.
No you didn't Mackil. I was passing through a chatroom (don't remember which one sorry) and some Russian hacker was boasting he'd used your credit card number. Maybe he was making it up, but if the charge appears on your bill you should mention this.
> Really, really shouldn't do. It's not done by dropping packets - at least in a decent ISP.
:) :-)
Good to know. I may have been misinformed.
> A lot of Japanese 'net access is to Japanese sites. Local bandwidth is cheap.
Was A$41 for 100Mbps unlimited. They may well assume the access is mostly within Japan, but it still rocks. J-Government offered breaks to business to build up the net and they did. Compare that to Australia.
> I do too, which is a hint
Yes, Whirlpool.net.au and the Australian Army are the only thing keeping Telstra honest
> More like 1.5c per MB. Still not pleasant. :) Wonder how many people are caught by this every month?
Oops. You're right of course. Hope they don't get any new ideas.
> Try using a real ISP, which don't even offer plans of less than 8 GB
For ADLS2, you're limited by who is in your exchange. Worst deals are the two duopoly players: Telstra and Optus. When I saw iPrimus advertising "We offer 500Mb a month, more than double Telstra" I laughed aloud.
> Other ISPs shape to 64 Kbps or 128 Kbps depending on plan.
128 Kbps is still slow, and shaping _seems_ to drop packets in a way that gives you severe end-to-end problems. Feels worse than an overloaded 5.6Kbps dial up connection. My perception anyway.
ObDisclaimer: I use an Australian ISP which is not Telstra or Optus. Was working in Japan recently. When I saw their net deals and prices, I wept.
BTW Highly recommended web site for people needing Australian Internet: whirlpool.net.au
Perhaps the dumbest example of this was run by Optus, one of two telecom duoplists in Australia.
Every month, they'd terminate the accounts of their top downloaders. There was no limit or actual number to this. You just had to be in the highest percentile. So, every month, you'd try and download as much as possible, desperately hoping there were enough people out there downloading more than you. And there was no way to check until the billing period ended. The dumbness of this was pointed out to Optus, who, unsurprisingly, were too dumb realize it was dumb.
Since then there is more competition in the Aussie ISP market and Optus eventually dropped the policy. Now they and every other Aussie ISP does what they call 'shaping'. When you exceed your quota (which can be 200Mb, 500Gb, 1Gb, 3Gb, 10Gb, 30Gb depending on your ISP and plan) they strangle your download rates. Optus cut it to a piddly 22Kbps(!!!) Their rival Telstra instead advertises cheap 200Mb quota accounts, and then charges customers $1.5 per Mb over that. If your kids discover bit torrent you're in for a big fat phonebill, and its your fault for not reading the fineprint.
So while the developed nations have speeds upto 100Mbps and no limit(** not withstanding this article), Australia has 22Mbps if you are really lucky, but more likely only 8Mbps or 1Mbps and shaping to deal with. Clever count, my arse!
What about Sergei's recent public hand wringing that Google's deal with the Chinese Communist Party was a mistake?
8 39238
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/27/1
Shows how disingenuous that hand wringing was.
On the bright side, at least Google aren't just cutting deals with totalitarian governments. They're now making political censorship deals with democratically-elected governments too! A Googlestroika, if you will.
Links make life easier. Thank *you* mastershake!
> The most obvious [problem] is deciding which version of Linux to offer.
> There are more than 100 distros, and everybody seems to want a different one
> It costs Dell a small fortune to offer an operating system... so the lack of a standard is a real killer.
This article makes no sense. Dell can just do what every PC company has done since the dawn of the PC age: Pick one and go with it. The author paints a picture of a crowded meeting room in Dell full of Dell's resident geeks saying "Wow! I can't make up my mind! This is tooo confusing!" (something geeks never say)
Slow news day? No slower than the IAU (International Astronomical Union) who spend Lord knows how much time and publicly funded dollars for the world's biggest wankfest. Has the IAU ran out of things to do?
Maybe New Mexico can also declare the IAU not to be a real International Astronomical Union.
I want to work for Google!
> While I'm sure that marketing agencies all over the world are rubbing their hands in glee at this news,
Let's mount our own subliminal ad campaign: "Ban Advertising" or better still "Ban Advertising Executives"
drsmithy writes:
> Ignoring for a second his comments about Ubuntu weren't "completely negative"
> (although your deceptive, selective, out-of-context quoting of his journal makes that unclear),
Huh? Here's 7of7's journal entry in full. Tell me how the middle part I left out of the quote makes it (in your words) "deceptive, selective, out-of-context":
7of7's journal:
> Well, I've have the newest flight of Dapper for a while now. This time
> I'm making a concerted effort to try and use it for an extended period of time.
> They recommend that it not be used as a primary desktop and I can see why.
> There are some serious problems. It has this great new window manager called Compiz.
> It brings some eyecandy to the normally drab Gnome desktop. There are, however,
> several problems with Compiz that are being worked over in the Ubuntu forums.
> ATI users are having some troubles, but they're being ironed out quickly.
> I've got an Nvidia card so Compiz is running great except for some annoying querks.
> When I type I have a tendency to hold down shift and backspace at the same time,
> which is set in my Xmodmap to terminate X. I set it to use Xmodmap.us on boot now,
> so hopefully that irons out that problem. Another annoyance is with the screensaver.
> It seems that if I use any OpenGL screensaver the system will just completely stop
> all graphical output. It'll go black and no combination of keys will bring it back.
> All I can do in that case is reboot. My sister recently got the Vundo bug on her XP machine,
> but I can't imagine that she'd be any better off using Linux since it's such a pain to configure.
> I'd say she might be a good candidate for an Apple, but I wouldn't want her to feed the beast.
> The newest update to Dapper came with Gnome 2.14. I can't say I notice any real differences.
> All the variants of Linux seem very promising at first, but they just keep coming up with ways to
> disappoint. Someday I hope Linux will become a stable enough system to use on an everyday basis.
> Until then I'll be more than happy to use XP or Vista."
Sounds entirely negative to me. Can't find a single laurel in all of that. If you're going to call me "deceptive, selective, out-of-context" back it up when you do.
drsmithy writes:
> that would make 90% of the pro-Linux and anti-Microsoft content on Slashdot the
> product of "advertising copywriters". I had no idea the OSS community had so much
> money to throw around that they could waste it on that sort of thing...
In my experience any slashdotter, no matter what their camp, is shot down if there is a hole in their argument. Calling people names and not backing up your claims wastes everyone's time and convinces no one.
As one of the other posters said, nothing is perfect, yet 7of7's Vista comments were absolutely positive and their Ubuntu comments absolutely negative. Nobody but advertising copywriters speak in those sort of extremes.
If it is "Ultimate" does that mean there will be no further releases?
Don't cringe, LiveWire. Stand Proud! Made-in-Seattle Astroturf *is* the best money can buy. :-) It can selling anything. You could wrap something small and brown that fits in the palm of your hand and eventually it'll sell in droves. (I'm not sure if I am thinking of the Zune or something else small and brown... ;-)
/. today
> billboards are everywhere. Even in their home court, Microsoft is playing Defence in this quarter.
I don't understand why. Microsoft could stick up billboards calling me all sorts of nasty names and my next laptop will be Vista anyway. Maybe they think a hundred Seattle-based corporate buyers are going to arrive at work and mistakenly order Linux? "Sorry Boss, I didn't see any billboards this morning so I forgot the name of Microsoft's Flagship Product". If any Yes-men are reading this give Bill a good shoulder rub and remind him he won. Billboards for Microsoft are like Billboards for the Chinese Communist Party. "Who do you want to vote for today?"
> Since the modding is definatley pro-MS on
Even the devil deserves an easy day now and then.
That's not a response. If you disagree with my logic, say why.
> You forgot "Copywrite 2007, Microsoft Corporation Inc. All rights reserved"
... All the variants of Linux seem very promising at first, but they just keep coming up with ways to disappoint. Someday I hope Linux will become a stable enough system to use on an everyday basis. Until then I'll be more than happy to use XP or Vista."
I started to wonder about that, and checked 7of7's journal. All I found was this:
"Well, I've have the newest flight of Dapper for a while now. This time I'm making a concerted effort to try and use it for an extended period of time. They recommend that it not be used as a primary desktop and I can see why. There are some serious problems.
http://slashdot.org/~7of7/journal/
In isolation could be a fair comment, but given the unequivocal praise for Vista, I smell the polymers of thick green Made-in-Seattle Astroturf.
Here's the log entry from the one poking around inside eMule. Wonder if they were testing their DRM software or pirating.
193.174.64.0 - 193.174.67.255 Hits=2 [L2]Fraunhofer-Institut
MP3 is the world's pirated music format of choice, and everyone knows it. Including Fraunhofer. The lawyerspeak and public hand wringing on articles such as this will keep them out of RIAA suits, but we know, and they know, and the RIAA know too.
;-)
Don't *really* expect Fraunhofer scientists to be expert witnesses for the prosecution at the very same trial they're co-defendants. Nevertheless it'd be fun to see the lawyer for the next poor sap dragged before the RIAA to try it.
There are several companies who have bounty contracts with the RIAA and MPAA to track piracy. BayTSP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BayTSP is one. I read that Fraunhofer is another and that they'd expanded into tracking movies on BitTorrent. They scrape your PC, look for checksums and watermarks on your media, then contact the RIAA or MPAA if they find anything.
Check the logs on that original link which has attempts by Fraunhofer recorded, or fire up BitTorrent yourself and watch Fraunhofer come to you. Try it! It *is* possible that there are rogue employees at Fraunhofer pirating movies, but to do it directly from the offices of Fraunhofer at the same time as Fraunhofer is selling DRM tech to media owners seems a little hard to swallow. Seems more likely this is their DRM effort.
What isn't mentioned in Herr Brandenburg's interview is that Fraunhofer have been playing both sides. If you've bought an MP3 capable player, you've paid Fraunhofer royalties. But Fraunhofer have been playing both sides: developing tools to track MP3s using watermarks so record companies crack down on piracy:
i ty/story/0,10801,108506,00.html
4 022006/
http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/secur
http://p2pnet.net/index.php?page=reply&story=878
They've been expanding their IP business too: Next time you run BitTorrent or eMule (they do both), run it with a network tracker. You'll see computers from Fraunhofer affiliates all over the world taking a peek at what you're downloading.
http://greatinca.net/blog/emule-ip-blocker-hits-0
Does this mean Fraunhofer's merry band of teutonic scientists can be both co-defendants and expert-witnesses in your case?
We're using different definitions of Monopoly. Your definition is across operating systems. Mine is the workstations market. Your definition has only one provider. Mine allows others that aren't viable. Is Apple viable with a 3% share? Debatable. You'll never get a company with 100% domination, because there'll always be one guy in a garage somewhere 'completing'. If the breaks were with 50%/50% or 40%/40%/30% that'd seem an even market. Googling around I found estimates which said Microsoft 95%, Apple 3%, Linux That's the long, rational answer. The short, realistic answer is, of course,
:-)
...l h
> "It costs too much to change our setup because we're locked into a Windows setup"
Yep. And these days I just go with the flow. It's much easier.
> apathy and risk does NOT make the product a monopoly
You're right. That's just a side benefit
> it just makes the company short-sighted (assuming there are enought long-term financial benefits
> to outweigh the cost/effort of redeployment).
When it's government, those factors are inconsequential. Sloppy and wasteful they may be, but you still your taxes every year so they needn't worry about going out of business.
> Me? I choose to believe that as Linux is a viable alternative to Windows for certain uses,
> but not suitable for others (such as gamers; or Average Joe Desktop User,
I agree, and probably many other Slashdotters do too. But I did think this guys story was interesting:
http://news.com.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html?tag=
> Is it any wonder that I called you a Linux fanboi? Was I wrong?
Well, yeah. When I wrote that stuff about Microsoft, I wasn't ranting and shaking my fists behind my Linux workstation. Situation isn't going to change, so why get upset about it? In other words, moralizing aside, I don't give a damn. I'm a Windows programmer. Windows sucks (its convoluted mess, they rearrange it in dumb and stupid ways, the API is a dog's breakfast, and what Windows does is defined by what it does rather than what is written down). Despite that, you can still turn out decent apps with, and people buy them. I'm typing this in a room with Windows PCs. My nearest Linux server is five hundred miles away.
My point was, don't confuse technology with religion and don't mistake an opinion for zealotry. I admire the Linux crowd for trying. An open source OS for the world would be a great thing. I hope they succeed.
I tried searching for "failure" in Google today. The #1 entry is now a skimpy page that lists "1. Mark Herpel and Congestive Heart Failure Part... 2. Judge Fudge: No one has claimed this blog 3. Dongs.dll: Dear Log, But [Wikipedia] has established a berth in the courtroom, despite concerns among some legal scholars about the dangers of relying on..."
Unless you wanted to know about "congestive heart failure" (in which case you wouldn't have just typed "failure"), that page is completely useless.
When Google promoted this to #1 over the mess in Iraq, a bit of Google died.
Correction: s/share reached 3% by 2004./Apple's share reached 3% by 2004/