It is not fair to consider cylinder disabling equally dumb... The car user (and environment as well) may gain A LOT by reduced gas consumption and oxide emissions. This is also why the expensive hybrid cars are sold as well. It is a model that will save you money on the long run, so you may want to invest on it.
On the other hand, the rent-a-core model is perhaps the most stupid thing a paper was ever written about....
However, I strongly believe that Mandriva got the deal WITHOUT bribing anybody... If sb has contradicting evidence, let's hear it. Perhaps this also explains why the Nigeria gvmt intervened (no money for them here)...
And we should NEVER forget the fact that Mandriva would come with FREE OpenOffice, FREE Gimp, FREE calendar/mail/etc, FREE video/music/multimedia players, FREE antivirus/security applications, FREE servers (DB, web, etc)... It is understandable M$ policy to prevent Low-income Nigerians (especially their next generation) from never touching this stuff.
"Hiser said he suspects that the nearly $2 billion payout Sun received from Microsoft as part of a 2004 legal settlement aimed at improving interoperability between the two vendors' products may have something to do with what he sees as Sun's apparent disinterest in making ODF work with Open XML."
I couldn't agree more, too. The motto "It's not a bug, it's a feature" seems to be widely used among web developers. However, is there a good lightweight rendering app that actually DOES this thing (= simply fail on errors)? Just for comparison....
Is the market really wising up? Reading/. makes me believe that there is a strong front against MS and their patents and that MS is going down and... But I am quite certain that approx. 99.9% of MS users do not even know or care or even want to know about these press releases, the same way 99.9% of the users do not even know it is possible (or do consider stupid) to have a PC without Windows and Office. I look around in my office and know that all other (engineering nonetheless) staff still think: "It is free and open-source because it is not worth paying for" (despite their extensive use of Ethereal:-) )
But I am wondering... If it is SO difficult for an FSF team to search through M$ patents, then it should be even more more more difficult for M$ employees to do the exact opposite search and come down with the infringing patterns (they should search through millions of FSF LOC AND their own 10e1000 patents), or not? How did they do it after all?
That's why toolkits like wxWindows, and scripting languages like python are so valuable. The claims for uniformity are certainly right (this is proven after all), but:
- There are several wrappers ( yes, not a single one:-( ) that can simplify GUI things
- Large portions of win32 software is written in ports of scripting and/or cross-platform systems like Python, Java, etc.
- The time for open standards like ODF is coming...
I love choices and do not want them to be limited. Only one thing should be considered THOROUGHLY, before creating a new F/OSS choice: What does it do BETTER from existing ones? What does it do WORSE? Define that, and you have my full support.
Congrats to M$, they managed to transmute FUD into a package with very valuable things:
- a constant revenue in the near future,
- a precedent (many will certainly follow, each time the precedent is larger: Novell
- tainting of the OSS community (see Novell contributions)
- a FUD avalanche, but this time even stronger with contracts and signatures
The plan is very, very intelligent. M$ approaches with a Sale-of-Indulgences offer: "We both hate paying lawyers for patent wars, BUT we are bigger and we will prevail. Sign this and you will be forgiven... Oh, yes, I will be forgiven too (ha ha ha)."
The thing is: what can a single (no matter how large) industry do? IMHO it is narrow-minded to consider Samsung weak and stupid for believing that. I am not (and don't wanna be) a Samsung executive with a threat from M$ in my hands. One must think:
- Nobody wants to be the reason his company goes into patent wars with M$
- Nobody gives a damn about the spirit of F/OSS and the GPL, they just use the things because they are better...
- There is no actual support for doing the right thing (actual = money + legal);/. does not pay lawyers...
When they come, you obey... Does anybody have a real counter-proposition? Forming a defensive consortium is not a bad idea, but it's too late now... I can't think of anything, they are too strong (and smarter than their counterparts) in this. Right now this does not actually affect much. Let's just hope that OSS has the proper defense when M$ takes it to the next level. The course of action should be planned yesterday.
Speaking of firmware updates, why do all M/B manufacturers tempt you into using their new BIOS, when they NEVER, EVER offer some kind of warranty for the results? Even if the new version actually fixes a problem, would you use it, when it voids your warranty (the system might always become utterly unusable)?
Now, concerning the tech support issue, IMHO GNU/Linux (any flavor) is much easier to troubleshoot, since most pertinent functionalities are available in command line by well-known (and I think rarely if never changed) tools-commands, etc. It doesn't seem so difficult to have a Linux-guy take care of such things...
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Indeed. If it becomes a technical matter of Power Management, I cannot agree more. But from a business plan perspective, I simply don't get it.
It is not fair to consider cylinder disabling equally dumb... The car user (and environment as well) may gain A LOT by reduced gas consumption and oxide emissions. This is also why the expensive hybrid cars are sold as well. It is a model that will save you money on the long run, so you may want to invest on it. On the other hand, the rent-a-core model is perhaps the most stupid thing a paper was ever written about....
However, I strongly believe that Mandriva got the deal WITHOUT bribing anybody... If sb has contradicting evidence, let's hear it. Perhaps this also explains why the Nigeria gvmt intervened (no money for them here)...
And we should NEVER forget the fact that Mandriva would come with FREE OpenOffice, FREE Gimp, FREE calendar/mail/etc, FREE video/music/multimedia players, FREE antivirus/security applications, FREE servers (DB, web, etc)... It is understandable M$ policy to prevent Low-income Nigerians (especially their next generation) from never touching this stuff.
"Hiser said he suspects that the nearly $2 billion payout Sun received from Microsoft as part of a 2004 legal settlement aimed at improving interoperability between the two vendors' products may have something to do with what he sees as Sun's apparent disinterest in making ODF work with Open XML."
while (tmp != free_list || (tmp=NULL));
/* Kids, don't try THIS at home ^^^^^. Magic */
I couldn't agree more, too. The motto "It's not a bug, it's a feature" seems to be widely used among web developers. However, is there a good lightweight rendering app that actually DOES this thing (= simply fail on errors)? Just for comparison....
Is the market really wising up? Reading /. makes me believe that there is a strong front against MS and their patents and that MS is going down and ... But I am quite certain that approx. 99.9% of MS users do not even know or care or even want to know about these press releases, the same way 99.9% of the users do not even know it is possible (or do consider stupid) to have a PC without Windows and Office. I look around in my office and know that all other (engineering nonetheless) staff still think: "It is free and open-source because it is not worth paying for" (despite their extensive use of Ethereal :-) )
But I am wondering... If it is SO difficult for an FSF team to search through M$ patents, then it should be even more more more difficult for M$ employees to do the exact opposite search and come down with the infringing patterns (they should search through millions of FSF LOC AND their own 10e1000 patents), or not? How did they do it after all?
Google, Open Source Program Office, Boston: http://rlove.org/log/.
- There are several wrappers ( yes, not a single one :-( ) that can simplify GUI things
- Large portions of win32 software is written in ports of scripting and/or cross-platform systems like Python, Java, etc.
- The time for open standards like ODF is coming...
I love choices and do not want them to be limited. Only one thing should be considered THOROUGHLY, before creating a new F/OSS choice: What does it do BETTER from existing ones? What does it do WORSE? Define that, and you have my full support.
- a constant revenue in the near future,
- a precedent (many will certainly follow, each time the precedent is larger: Novell
- tainting of the OSS community (see Novell contributions)
- a FUD avalanche, but this time even stronger with contracts and signatures
The plan is very, very intelligent. M$ approaches with a Sale-of-Indulgences offer: "We both hate paying lawyers for patent wars, BUT we are bigger and we will prevail. Sign this and you will be forgiven... Oh, yes, I will be forgiven too (ha ha ha)."
The thing is: what can a single (no matter how large) industry do? IMHO it is narrow-minded to consider Samsung weak and stupid for believing that. I am not (and don't wanna be) a Samsung executive with a threat from M$ in my hands. One must think:
- Nobody wants to be the reason his company goes into patent wars with M$
- Nobody gives a damn about the spirit of F/OSS and the GPL, they just use the things because they are better...
- There is no actual support for doing the right thing (actual = money + legal); /. does not pay lawyers...
When they come, you obey... Does anybody have a real counter-proposition? Forming a defensive consortium is not a bad idea, but it's too late now... I can't think of anything, they are too strong (and smarter than their counterparts) in this. Right now this does not actually affect much. Let's just hope that OSS has the proper defense when M$ takes it to the next level. The course of action should be planned yesterday.
Perhaps this is what Slurm Queen was thinking about, huh?
Speaking of firmware updates, why do all M/B manufacturers tempt you into using their new BIOS, when they NEVER, EVER offer some kind of warranty for the results? Even if the new version actually fixes a problem, would you use it, when it voids your warranty (the system might always become utterly unusable)?
Now, concerning the tech support issue, IMHO GNU/Linux (any flavor) is much easier to troubleshoot, since most pertinent functionalities are available in command line by well-known (and I think rarely if never changed) tools-commands, etc. It doesn't seem so difficult to have a Linux-guy take care of such things...
... or the writer's brand new Swiss checking account?