A "MikeRoweSoft" logo is worthless if you can't use it. Copy taking advantage of the pun is wasted copy if they take the name away.
So no, he can't really keep his content because it revolves around his name. At least as far as I can tell; I haven't been able to see the site in its pre-suit form.
I own the 2ghz dual processor G5, and it's a really sweet machine. In fact, I'm typing this on it right now.
I have it under my desk, and at this moment, it's just about noiseless. If I turn off my music, I can hear a slight whir and some HDD noise, but if I put the music back on or stop trying to hear it, it's totally inconspicuous.
But when I do rendering for my video projects, the fans turn up, and I can hear them clearly even over my music. I actually like the way they sound for the short time they're on; I guess it acts as some kind of reassurance that my computer is trying its best to get my render done quickly:-). Another factor, of course, is that it does in fact get my render done fast, so I never have to listen to it for very long.
Apple brand loyalty aside, I don't think it would be worth a $1,400 case to make my computer more quiet than the G5. On the other hand, I have no idea how much my G5 case would actually cost as a standalone unit. They're using some pretty pricey components in there.
My company owns one. It's sitting to the left of me right now.
It's much louder than my dual 2ghz G5 at home, except when the latter's fans are turned up all the way. Then it's about the same.
The difference is that there are no variable speed fans as in the G5.
This is the G4 Xserve, and they may have changed things in the G5 model. But I would doubt it since noise isn't an issue to rackmount server buyers; it is assumed.
How 'bout an iMac? I think the base is about a 9" circle, and you can swing the screen out of the way when you're not using it. The 15" LCD's no bigger than some stereo components I could name.
The Xserve is a monster with huge hissing fans; you wouldn't want it near your entertainment center.
The problem with this technology is that it blocks out the view, and it blocks out light at times when the light is desired. When I bought the house, it came with some extremely heavy curtains that were made of very nice material. Even when not in use, they hid the more interesting parts of the view, and made the room funeral-dark. It's possible that this has prejudged me too much against curtains.
The ideal is still to be able to look at the view, but to subdue the light. I don't think curtains can do that.
I just bought a house, and it has a beautiful living room with windows on each side. I like it because I can soak in the view from the windows. But I don't like it because the light from the windows can completely overwhelm the brightness of my screen.
It would be very cool to have my window turn partially transparent so I could still enjoy the view but not have it overwhelm the screen. Very cool idea.
I have a Canon XL1 3CCD MiniDV camcorder, and shoot an hour or so of video every month for various projects. A terabyte would let me have all my projects online for a long time to come. It's certainly something I would buy, so I wouldn't have to worry about space for a long time, and I could store all those little video fragmentts I don't know what to do with now...
After all, who would ever find them if they're hidden on little tapes and you forgot where you put them?
This is ideal for me, and I'm sure it would fill up within a year or so.
The MS flacks, including Dull, haven't yet noticed the next Apple hat-trick.
They're supporting Windows Media DRM on the iPod, thus making the iPod the only music player on the planet that offers total consumer choice in music stores and services.
IBM does have a patent on it, but it's appeared on Toshibas and others, so I don't think the terms are prohibitive.
I suspect the real reason we don't see more trackpoints is that the rubber eraser tip self-destructs after 6 months to a year of heavy use. Manufacturers probably don't want to explain the need for that kind of maintenance to irate customers who just see their mouse cursors start drifting bizarrely.
I know the first time I saw that happened, I thought there was something really expensive wrong with the system...
(The eraser points cost something like $0.50 each, but how was I to know then?)
The only thing I don't like about my conversion from ThinkPads to PowerBooks is the loss of the TrackPoint and the gain of the touchpad, which seems to send my cursor just about everywhere but the right place:-(.
But if people don't like your product because it's supported in India by clueless people who cannot speak comprehensible English, then they won't buy it again.
I don't always buy the most expensive product. But I rarely buy the cheapest, either. I buy what I think has the best balance between quality and price.
The other day someone telephoned me with a survey on behalf of HP. He was clearly Indian, and I could understand about every other word he said. If I had been able to understand him, I would have taken the survey. I hung up on him instead.
I will never buy another complex product from Netgear, since they outsourced their support to India. They had someone who understood little about the product, and who I could barely understand. He didn't manage to solve the problem, either.
Outsourcing is only smart if the products and people are good. HP and Netgear are well on their way to totally losing me as a customer.
This is a little silly since there is no way on this planet 18m people would pay $699 a license to use Linux. They'd switch to FreeBSD instead, or to a version of Linux with the tainted code removed.
SCO knows it won't get revenues from anyone other than Fortune 1000 corporations. They say explicitly in their FAQs that home users are not going to be asked to pay. Someone on Slashdot actually tried to buy a license, with the comic result that SCO admits the licenses are not being sold to the public at large.
If each Fortune 1000 corporation has 100 Linux systems scattered to and fro, that's about $70m. Each company would be asked to cough up $69,900 each. If SCO genuinely has a case, the Fortune 1000 companies will almost certainly cough up, since $69,900 is a tiny fraction of the legal bills they would have to confront from defending a lawsuit.
$70m in revenues for SCO is going to look pretty good, even as a one-time thing. Those are the real stakes they're playing for.
Intriguingly enough, this gives them a 17% chance of winning, or about 1 in 6.
The true cost of Windows 98 is whatever it costs to deal with the viruses, the worms, the spyware and the sluglike performance.
Unfortunately, as others have said, the big cost in money is new hardware. On the other hand, if you consider that only now - six years after Windows98 was born - are we removing support, it's really one new version and new hardware every six years. A cheap new PC with Windows XP is about $500, so you're talking about under $100 a year for everything.
Not so bad, all things considered.
But there are still viruses and worms and spyware and sluggish performance to think about.
I don't think Windows is unreasonably priced in terms of money. In terms of human misery, it's more expensive than any other computing solution.
I just bought a cheap house in an upper middle class area of Los Angeles for $428,000. I was very lucky; houses that inexpensive don't come around just every day, at least not in a civilized, livable part of LA.
This is an example of the horribly bloated costs associated with hiring American workers. Just because I bought, and can afford, a $428,000 house doesn't mean I'm a better high tech worker, or that I'll work better or harder for the company. It's just a matter of the crushing overhead of living here.
How does that make people more innovative?
Why can't Indians start their own software companies, write their own software and compete the heck out of us?
If I were starting a company that needed a lot of programmers, I think I'd leave the country to do it.
The thing would crash if you as much as looked at it funny. And when I mean crash, I mean every process and the system would need an immediate reboot, with no chance to save your work, anywhere.
I have to agree with this. I was truly shocked that Iridium was missing.
Actually, Iridium was bought out of bankruptcy for something like $25m (after some huge number of billions of dollars were spent), and is now running quite nicely. If my memory serves, they're even putting up more satellites to continue the network's operation for at least a decade.
As you say, the government's their biggest customer. Iridum is the best solution for countries with poor cell coverage, such as Iraq. Not many people need that kind of service, but those who need it REALLY need it, and the competition is a suitcase-sized phone with similar (very high) rates.
D
A major high point of my life ...
on
Best BBS Memories?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
was designing and running David's Amazing BBS, which existed in its best form from 1987-1991. As the "big fish in a small pond", I made a lot of friends and even got a couple of good relationships out of it.
I wrote my own software that ran on a Microport Unix system. I had an assistant named REM, and he kept on telling me SCO was better, but I could never afford it. Considering current developments, I thought that was worth noting.
My system was always crashing because I was running it on flaky hardware. Unfortunately, revenues from my rates ($7.50/month, $35/6months, $60/year) were enough to pay the phone bill and maybe give me a few bucks in spending money, but not nearly enough to replace the hardware.
I wrote the software myself, including a very nice WELL-like public board system. The boards would be intelligent one day and horrible flamewars the next. I never figured out how to balance free speech versus flames, a problem that I think was solved pretty well on Slashdot. Perhaps if I'd had the time to think things through instead of having a real job, I could have figured it out. But of course there were no revenues.
I had a fancy dating questionnaire system, which I still think was the best in the industry. It let you answer questions multiple choice and by writing essays, whichever you liked better. Unfortunately, with only five phone lines plus one "secret" one outside of the rotary, there weren't enough lines for a real chat board, and I didn't have the bucks to expand.
When the hardware finally died, so did the system. A few years later I became a minor-league ISP but things were never the same. The BBS world was a lot more fun.
I got spoiled by the local nature of the BBS, where everyone knew your name, and you could put together parties at local restaurants and the like. It was so much nicer then than the current, more anonymous and harder to crack, community. Even after 1,500-odd posts on Slashdot, I don't feel I really know anyone; it's just too big.
But on the BBS, I knew everyone.
My love life never recovered from dropping out of the BBS world:-(.
Slashdot Mirror
A "MikeRoweSoft" logo is worthless if you can't use it. Copy taking advantage of the pun is wasted copy if they take the name away.
So no, he can't really keep his content because it revolves around his name. At least as far as I can tell; I haven't been able to see the site in its pre-suit form.
D
We're fanatical because we care.
I'm willing to concede that Apple and Steve have plenty of faults. Unfortunately, the alternatives have far worse ones.
I'd rather be around a bunch of fanatics than The Resigned.
D
I own the 2ghz dual processor G5, and it's a really sweet machine. In fact, I'm typing this on it right now.
:-). Another factor, of course, is that it does in fact get my render done fast, so I never have to listen to it for very long.
I have it under my desk, and at this moment, it's just about noiseless. If I turn off my music, I can hear a slight whir and some HDD noise, but if I put the music back on or stop trying to hear it, it's totally inconspicuous.
But when I do rendering for my video projects, the fans turn up, and I can hear them clearly even over my music. I actually like the way they sound for the short time they're on; I guess it acts as some kind of reassurance that my computer is trying its best to get my render done quickly
Apple brand loyalty aside, I don't think it would be worth a $1,400 case to make my computer more quiet than the G5. On the other hand, I have no idea how much my G5 case would actually cost as a standalone unit. They're using some pretty pricey components in there.
D
Have you seen Windows XP "Media Center Edition" displayed on a TV?
:-(.
It looks truly ghastly, even though they put a lot of effort into making it allegedly TV-friendly.
I once tried hooking up my PowerBook to an external NTSC device - displaying anything other than raw video on it made even MacOS X look bad
Don't use a TV.
D
My company owns one. It's sitting to the left of me right now.
It's much louder than my dual 2ghz G5 at home, except when the latter's fans are turned up all the way. Then it's about the same.
The difference is that there are no variable speed fans as in the G5.
This is the G4 Xserve, and they may have changed things in the G5 model. But I would doubt it since noise isn't an issue to rackmount server buyers; it is assumed.
D
How 'bout an iMac? I think the base is about a 9" circle, and you can swing the screen out of the way when you're not using it. The 15" LCD's no bigger than some stereo components I could name.
The Xserve is a monster with huge hissing fans; you wouldn't want it near your entertainment center.
D
I suppose this is Karma-Whoring, but it really is a lot easier with a corrected link without the space.
D
But the story behind its demise would be a great Slashdot story.
Anyone have a link?
D
Okay, I laughed :-).
The problem with this technology is that it blocks out the view, and it blocks out light at times when the light is desired. When I bought the house, it came with some extremely heavy curtains that were made of very nice material. Even when not in use, they hid the more interesting parts of the view, and made the room funeral-dark. It's possible that this has prejudged me too much against curtains.
The ideal is still to be able to look at the view, but to subdue the light. I don't think curtains can do that.
D
This seems pretty cool to me.
I just bought a house, and it has a beautiful living room with windows on each side. I like it because I can soak in the view from the windows. But I don't like it because the light from the windows can completely overwhelm the brightness of my screen.
It would be very cool to have my window turn partially transparent so I could still enjoy the view but not have it overwhelm the screen. Very cool idea.
Anyone know how much this costs?
D
Isn't he in California now?
Moving back to Finland would be, well, a bit chilly and far away from his social circle of fellow Linux folk.
D
I have a Canon XL1 3CCD MiniDV camcorder, and shoot an hour or so of video every month for various projects. A terabyte would let me have all my projects online for a long time to come. It's certainly something I would buy, so I wouldn't have to worry about space for a long time, and I could store all those little video fragmentts I don't know what to do with now ...
After all, who would ever find them if they're hidden on little tapes and you forgot where you put them?
This is ideal for me, and I'm sure it would fill up within a year or so.
D
The MS flacks, including Dull, haven't yet noticed the next Apple hat-trick.
They're supporting Windows Media DRM on the iPod, thus making the iPod the only music player on the planet that offers total consumer choice in music stores and services.
What now, MS?
D
IBM does have a patent on it, but it's appeared on Toshibas and others, so I don't think the terms are prohibitive.
...
I suspect the real reason we don't see more trackpoints is that the rubber eraser tip self-destructs after 6 months to a year of heavy use. Manufacturers probably don't want to explain the need for that kind of maintenance to irate customers who just see their mouse cursors start drifting bizarrely.
I know the first time I saw that happened, I thought there was something really expensive wrong with the system
(The eraser points cost something like $0.50 each, but how was I to know then?)
D
Amen, brother.
:-(.
The only thing I don't like about my conversion from ThinkPads to PowerBooks is the loss of the TrackPoint and the gain of the touchpad, which seems to send my cursor just about everywhere but the right place
Would love Apple to see the trackpoint light.
D
True, as far as it goes.
But if people don't like your product because it's supported in India by clueless people who cannot speak comprehensible English, then they won't buy it again.
Thus, bad business.
Make sense?
D
I don't always buy the most expensive product. But I rarely buy the cheapest, either. I buy what I think has the best balance between quality and price.
The other day someone telephoned me with a survey on behalf of HP. He was clearly Indian, and I could understand about every other word he said. If I had been able to understand him, I would have taken the survey. I hung up on him instead.
I will never buy another complex product from Netgear, since they outsourced their support to India. They had someone who understood little about the product, and who I could barely understand. He didn't manage to solve the problem, either.
Outsourcing is only smart if the products and people are good. HP and Netgear are well on their way to totally losing me as a customer.
Is that smart business?
D
This is a little silly since there is no way on this planet 18m people would pay $699 a license to use Linux. They'd switch to FreeBSD instead, or to a version of Linux with the tainted code removed.
SCO knows it won't get revenues from anyone other than Fortune 1000 corporations. They say explicitly in their FAQs that home users are not going to be asked to pay. Someone on Slashdot actually tried to buy a license, with the comic result that SCO admits the licenses are not being sold to the public at large.
If each Fortune 1000 corporation has 100 Linux systems scattered to and fro, that's about $70m. Each company would be asked to cough up $69,900 each. If SCO genuinely has a case, the Fortune 1000 companies will almost certainly cough up, since $69,900 is a tiny fraction of the legal bills they would have to confront from defending a lawsuit.
$70m in revenues for SCO is going to look pretty good, even as a one-time thing. Those are the real stakes they're playing for.
Intriguingly enough, this gives them a 17% chance of winning, or about 1 in 6.
Thoughts?
D
The true cost of Windows 98 is whatever it costs to deal with the viruses, the worms, the spyware and the sluglike performance.
Unfortunately, as others have said, the big cost in money is new hardware. On the other hand, if you consider that only now - six years after Windows98 was born - are we removing support, it's really one new version and new hardware every six years. A cheap new PC with Windows XP is about $500, so you're talking about under $100 a year for everything.
Not so bad, all things considered.
But there are still viruses and worms and spyware and sluggish performance to think about.
I don't think Windows is unreasonably priced in terms of money. In terms of human misery, it's more expensive than any other computing solution.
Money's not the problem here.
D
I just bought a cheap house in an upper middle class area of Los Angeles for $428,000. I was very lucky; houses that inexpensive don't come around just every day, at least not in a civilized, livable part of LA.
This is an example of the horribly bloated costs associated with hiring American workers. Just because I bought, and can afford, a $428,000 house doesn't mean I'm a better high tech worker, or that I'll work better or harder for the company. It's just a matter of the crushing overhead of living here.
How does that make people more innovative?
Why can't Indians start their own software companies, write their own software and compete the heck out of us?
If I were starting a company that needed a lot of programmers, I think I'd leave the country to do it.
D
I used the Amiga through version 1.1 and then promised to never darken its door again, thus my experience.
Perhaps I underrated it as a result.
D
I'm a little skeptical about the Amiga.
The thing would crash if you as much as looked at it funny. And when I mean crash, I mean every process and the system would need an immediate reboot, with no chance to save your work, anywhere.
D
I have to agree with this. I was truly shocked that Iridium was missing.
Actually, Iridium was bought out of bankruptcy for something like $25m (after some huge number of billions of dollars were spent), and is now running quite nicely. If my memory serves, they're even putting up more satellites to continue the network's operation for at least a decade.
As you say, the government's their biggest customer. Iridum is the best solution for countries with poor cell coverage, such as Iraq. Not many people need that kind of service, but those who need it REALLY need it, and the competition is a suitcase-sized phone with similar (very high) rates.
D
was designing and running David's Amazing BBS, which existed in its best form from 1987-1991. As the "big fish in a small pond", I made a lot of friends and even got a couple of good relationships out of it.
:-(.
I wrote my own software that ran on a Microport Unix system. I had an assistant named REM, and he kept on telling me SCO was better, but I could never afford it. Considering current developments, I thought that was worth noting.
My system was always crashing because I was running it on flaky hardware. Unfortunately, revenues from my rates ($7.50/month, $35/6months, $60/year) were enough to pay the phone bill and maybe give me a few bucks in spending money, but not nearly enough to replace the hardware.
I wrote the software myself, including a very nice WELL-like public board system. The boards would be intelligent one day and horrible flamewars the next. I never figured out how to balance free speech versus flames, a problem that I think was solved pretty well on Slashdot. Perhaps if I'd had the time to think things through instead of having a real job, I could have figured it out. But of course there were no revenues.
I had a fancy dating questionnaire system, which I still think was the best in the industry. It let you answer questions multiple choice and by writing essays, whichever you liked better. Unfortunately, with only five phone lines plus one "secret" one outside of the rotary, there weren't enough lines for a real chat board, and I didn't have the bucks to expand.
When the hardware finally died, so did the system. A few years later I became a minor-league ISP but things were never the same. The BBS world was a lot more fun.
I got spoiled by the local nature of the BBS, where everyone knew your name, and you could put together parties at local restaurants and the like. It was so much nicer then than the current, more anonymous and harder to crack, community. Even after 1,500-odd posts on Slashdot, I don't feel I really know anyone; it's just too big.
But on the BBS, I knew everyone.
My love life never recovered from dropping out of the BBS world
D
I wouldn't mind owning this "dying" company.
It's profitable, and software developers continue to write software for it.
Therefore, it's not dying.
Sorry.
D