Novell was punished by its salesforce for doing exactly what its customers wanted.
I think, these days, there is a growing awareness that the cash hemmorage of maintaining a Windows environment is not the only way to run an IT department. As departments grow wiser, they'll begin looking for solutions that are more like what Novell (and Linux) has always provided and less like what Microsoft is offering. After all, isn't Novell's style of product maintenance what everyone has been clamoring for lately, and incidentally almost exactly the same thing Linux provides by its very nature? It seems like a perfect match to me, especially with IBM thrown into the mix.
Oh, don't overlook the fact that Novell has a grudge against Microsoft for trying to crush them for all these years... and so does IBM for the backstabbing Microsoft gave them long ago... oh and so do most Linux camps for various other reasons. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, especially when he's no real threat to my own business structure. This is a big deal, folks. I hear the sound of an army gathering its forces.
There was a window for capitalizing on stupid users, techies, and managers, and while that will never completely go away, I think we're nearing the time when IT shops, in general, are finally beginning to wise up a little. Novell and Linux are on the radar.
Honestly, it ain't gonna happen. The next time Microsoft says "Hey, it's time to pay the Windoze tax and upgrade!" I think they'll find everyone is switching to Linux instead. Same hassle, half the price. If you want to make some good money in the not too distant future, I suggest you hone your skills at migrating IT shops from Windows to Linux. That's going to be a nice little boom market for a few years, starting right about the time Microsoft tries to ram Longhorn down our throats. All cliches aside, I will most definitely welcome our new penguin overlords.
I think this article sums it all up rather nicely.
Oh, and once they lose the corporate market, they'll lose the home market shortly afterwards. Think about it. If Joe Blow uses Linux at work and likes it, imagine his reaction when he asks the IT guy where to get it and the IT guy hands him a copy of it on disc because it's "free." Microsoft got into the server space by winning the home user first. Linux is going the other way.
That's rather beside the point. I'd much rather put the grand into doubling my available space, and filling that up as well./chuckle
I guess what peeves me is having to build a dupilcate system to back up my data. Wasn't backup supposed to be a way to *cheaply* and *efficiently* archive your data off to another medium? What does it say if your cheapest and most efficient alternative is to duplicate your disk system? We can do better than that, can't we? I thought only governments did everything cheap at twice the price.
I'm kind of surprised people seem to think paying for twice the disk space is an acceptable way to back up data. That just strikes me as friggin' ridiculous, and indicates a real need for a better backup solution. I think these dual layer burners are going to have quite a market just for their potential to fill this gap alone.
I mean, 300 comments and nobody mentioned it yet? Maybe I have a grossly inflated opinion of them, and someone can clue me in as to if they suck, and why.
The magazine is short, to the point, has a truckload of awesome tips and tricks sections (most of which would be of interest to even advanced computer users), has phenomenally accurate hardware and software reviews (to the point where I'm almost inclined to take their reviews as gospel) and it has a good geeky attitude that makes it an entertaining read. I've been a subscriber since they were called Boot magazine in the mid-1990s, and to this day I've never seen anything to make me doubt their integrity or make me want to cancel my subscription. It's also a damn cheap mag, renewals are usually $12 for the year.
Basically if you give a damn about computer hardware, you should have a subscription. Very highly recommended.
I doubt most geeks' personal data collections could pay for themselves (at least with legal activities, anyway).
No, you're quite right, it's a collection of many kinds of things, mostly old, rare, unknown, and hard to find. I would be seriously peeved to lose it because it represents a very significant investment of my time, but it would not be the end of the world if I lost it. My real data (the kind of thing I can't live without) gets backed up to DVD, sits on my HDD at work, sits on my Archos, sits on friend's computers... heck it could probably survive a nuclear attack I've got it so dispersed.
What's peeved me is that there has been a void here for a long time, and I've been watching it waiting for a technology to fill it... namely cheap, convenient offline backups. This blue ray burner would fill that niche nicely. I get to be a lazy, cheap bastard and still get my desires met. That's the kind of technology that makes me happy. It's taking a remarkably long time for storage/backup technology to become easily affordable and catch up with modern hard drive technology.
Who said good backups had to cost $1000s (or 10's of $1000s) of dollars, anyway?
I have about 750GB of data, it's in a RAID5 for redundancy, with no backup other than that. I'd like very much to have offline storage for it that isn't based on buying more hard drives or the 166 DVDs (and time invested burning them) that would be my only viable options for backing it up now. This is home use, not corporate... at work I just throw money at the problem (AIT tape libraries and SAN backup solutions); at home I'd rather throw money at car payments or retirement investments. The backup solution for work cost as much as my car.
This looks like a great solution to the problem that fits within my budget (cheap mother f'er) and time constraints (no more than a day of my time to back it all up).
To answer some of the other replies... yes, I do have that much data, the pr0n is only about 10GB of it (and it'll be the first to go if I run out of space), and I'm not really worried about DVD rot because I keep any data I actually need on the array (the backup is just a CYA in case the array blows out, if it lasts a year I'll replace it with a new backup).
4.5GB DVDs just weren't big enough to back up my data (well, unless I wanted to burn 166 DVDs every 8 months or so). Until something like this I'd had nothing I could use but hard drives... tapes were just too expensive and unreliable (and slow). This will still be slow, I'm sure, but at least it'll make for a good backup medium. It's about f'ing time. Sign me up for one, at least once media prices for it become reasonable. I wonder what the shelf life on their dual-layer media is...
In other news, SpaceShipOne's second flight out of the atmosphere failed catastrophically today... investigators are currently looking into reports that melted M&M's may have shorted out critical guidance systems.
Not that I know enough about it to make any conclusion myself. The whole thing just sounds suspiciously like Douglas Adam's infinite probability engine to me.:P
KIRK: Your timing is excellent, Mr.Scott. You've fixed the barn door after the horse has come home. How much refit time till we can take her out again?
SCOTTY: Eight weeks, sir.(as Kirk opens his mouth) But you don't have eight weeks so I'll do it for ya in two.
KIRK: (considers) Mr. Scott. Have you always multiplied your repair estimates by a factor of four?
SCOTTY: Certainly, sir. How else can I keep my reputation as a miracle worker?
KIRK: Your reputation is secure, Scotty.
Hey, I've used this as a rule of thumb for computer work time estimates, and while a factor of four is usually excessive (unless dealing with a real asshole), two is always a good idea, and three is good if you're a bit unsure of the situation. If you've worked in computers you know how unpredictable a troubleshooting situation can be. I can only imagine how much more complex it is in the engineering world.
A friend of mine had a fella he knows ask us to build him a computer about three years ago... this was back when you'd easily be able to save 2/3 the cost of hardware by building it yourself. The guy offered to pay us in alcohol. Turns out he was a truck driver who delivers alcohol to liquor stores. There's apparently some obscure NY law that states you can't sell bottles with damaged labels. The guy had accumulated a basement full of stacks of liquor, and he doesn't even drink.
We put him together a screamer for about $700. He paid us in what was easily $3000 of alcohol. It was enough to fill up a large storage closet, and nearly every bottle was unique, although he did give us 10 bottles of Bacardi 151. We got most of our liquor education from the stash he gave us. Even now, after splitting it 3 ways with former roomates and consuming half of it, there's still enough left to fill up a large rack in my closet. Good trade in my book.
Well, it's probably a matter of the maturity of the piracy in the two different industries.
Computer software vendors have gotten used to the idea that no matter what copy protection schemes they use, a cracked/pirated version of their software will be all over the internet within days of release. They've been getting used to this idea since sometime in 1970 when it first became an issue. I'd also say that all parties involved have just about given up on the idea that they have a chance in hell of stopping it, and have accepted it as a cost of doing business. After all, the legitimate users of the software still make them a profit. No one has ever proven that one download of a program is equal to one loss of a sale, because it isn't, and never will be. For some, it's like trading baseball cards.
The RIAA/MPAA and other entertainment providers have not gotten used to this idea yet, because to them this piracy problem (at least the internet one-to-many part of it) is completely new. It'll take decade or two of every copy protection scheme they invent being craked overnight, and every release appearing on the internet the instant it hits the theaters before they end up giving up the same fight and accepting it as the cost of doing business. In the meantime, we will see these kinds of raids from time to time just like we did with the FBI raiding the warez scene during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
It'll probably be a lot worse for the media industry. They've got more to lose, and their product is popular with everyone, everywhere, unlike software which is only popular with computer users. Computer use is a lot more widespread today than it was when this was happening in the software world, as well, and that is surely a contributing factor. Add to this the moral and legal ambiguity of the entire problem, and you end up with a lot more users who are willing to engage in this behaviour. After all, how can recording a copy of a song from the radio be legal, while downloading it from the internet is not? TV shows from a TiVo that are shared and downloaded are somehow different from TV shows recorded on a VHS tape and dubbed? Are they really? Fundamentally, they are the exact same activity. The big difference is that one is distributed through a channel controlled by the Big Money(tm), and one is not. That difference, to many, is no basis for a law regulating the trade of human culture, since government has no business and no right to pass laws to ensure the continuance of corporate profits.
It's a losing battle, and everyone knows it except the corporations. The ones that figure it out and adapt will survive, the ones that don't, won't. Same goes for countries... those that allow the freedom will have a major advantage over the ones that don't. Sadly, it looks these days as if the USA is going to be one of the least free in this area. Fundamentally this is a battle over who has the right to control and distribute human culture. The existing control structure is being severely eroded by a new distribution mechanism that is controlled by no one and answerable to no one, and it is as titanic in implications as any social change in human history, make no mistake. This is about your right to broadcast, your right to be heard.
Bottom line is, as always, to do as your conscience demands. What the law demands is negotiable, because law has seldom followed conscience in letter or enforcement, especially these days. The more unconscionable laws that pass, the less respect people will have for the law itself, and the more eroded the base of society becomes. Someday it'll end in a revolution, as always, and when we pick up the pieces we can build something better from the mess. It'll sort itself out in a few decades just like all other major societal changes do, and the world will end up a better place because of it.
So, when they do detect the impending collision of a Death Star size object, I want to know: What will we be able to do about it? Somehow I don't think an umbrella is going to cut it.
You do realize the circumstances it's going to take for Microsoft to lose the desktop, yes?
1) Critical mass of easy to use linux desktop alternatives 2) A reason to make users look at non-MS alternatives
We can provide number one, no problem. We're not there yet imo but we're no more than a year, maybe two years, off from the target right now. I'd say linux will meet my desktop needs by 2006. Microsoft will be kind enough to provide us with a number two on their own, given time. Sooner or later it'll cost too much, be too insecure, have license agreements that are too restrictive, or pull the rug out from under a customer and tick them off. If Microsoft pulled a support cut like that to attempt to force Longhorn migration, all they would be doing is killing their own momentum and pushing their users right into linux.
I'd take any "year of the desktop" predictions with a grain of salt. The real year of the linux desktop is almost certainly going to coincide with either a fresh release of their operating system or the expiration of support for an older version. I'm thinking 2007, myself, as that's when Longhorn will be out of its initial "don't touch it until after SP1" phase and Win2K/2K3 users will be getting pressured to upgrade. Win2K users will be facing discontinuation of support as well. The SCO crap will be over by then, and the GPL will have been tested in court, so the indemnification and other issues surrounding linux at the moment will be a matter of court record and not pie-in-the-sky as they are now. Linux will have reached mainstream consciousness by then as well thanks to the large number of companies promoting it recently. It'll make for an interesting year.
Yes, Blex made quite a name for himself. His old URL turns up nothing these days (http://www.cybrzn.com/~blex/mp3/) and I don't find him in the waybackmachine either. Too bad. That site was legend.
Tyan Tiger MP Mainboard, 1GB DDR266 Dual AMD Athlon MP 2200+ CPUs old Matrox Millenium AGP card I had lying around 20GB OS drive, backed up to the array occasionally
3Ware 4-port Escalade card (w RAID-5 setup) 4x WDC 250GB Special Edition drives (gotta have that 3-year warranty)
And a Cremax ICYDock 5-in-3 Hotswap Cage, because you really do want to keep these things properly cooled, and the hotswap cages just aren't expensive anymore.
This setup was so successful at home that I've duplicated it (with greater capacity of course) for some of our company backup servers. Oh, and God Bless 3Ware. That is some top notch hardware. They've restored my faith in RAID after DPT destroyed it.
Open source might not die, but if corporate level support for it dies or the price skyrockets, it's going to get kicked out of a lot of datacenters. We'll always have linux for home use, but without someone providing enterprise support it will never succeed in business.
I don't think Linux is ever going to win at home until it wins in the office. If people end up using it at work, they'll start using it at home as well.
Not quite. What concerns me is Novell taking a chainsaw to SuSE's distro and turing it into Novell Linux 1.0, then forcing their technologies and choices on everyone. Meaning if you want to use SuSE for something in Novell's arena you use [insert any Novell technology] or take a walk. If Novell merely wants SuSE to add another 100 packages of Novell goodies to the installer, fine, so long as they don't start making my choices for me. That's one of the good things about SuSE... it's the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink distro, much like Debian but without all the setup and testing hassle (which can be fun, but not when you need to set up dozens of servers with enterprise support).
SuSE's whole distro is currently set up like a massive warehouse of goodies, and you just tag the ones you want during install and that's it. The packages are all fairly current (even bleeding edge for some of KDE), and they've all been tested to work together, and there are precious few things that aren't included. The documentation included with the packages is also excellent. I don't mind Novell adding things to the warehouse, I'm concerned they'll want to change the whole warehouse concept into something worse, or excise any competeing technology that's already in the warehouse.
SuSE's got a damn good thing going. Don't muck it up. It's one thing if you want to bring enterprise level functionality and a slew of awesome new features to Linux (and to SuSE Linux in particular), but it's quite another thing to buy out a linux company and force them to take their linux distro in a different direction. I hope you choose the former and not the latter. SuSE is doing a dynamite job, so stay out of their way. Help, don't hinder.
I've been using SuSE in the office since v7, and for my money it's the only distro I'll touch because it's easily the most advanced one on the market and I can get excellent technical support for it any time I need it (which isn't often, but in business you absolutely must have the security blanket). I'm going to be quite pissed off (and switching vendors) if this changes because of Novell's influence.
Don't be dense and stop offering it for free like Redhat did, either (Fedora is not RedHat, different discussion entirely, see Redhat thread for discussion ad nauseum about this). It's a boneheaded move on so many levels. Nobody's saying you need to support the downloaded version (or even host it for free, people will mirror it after all), as long as you continue to release it so folks can get their hands dirty and get comfortable on the product without having to pay for it first. Using it for free for a time was the only way I could convince folks here to pay for it, and they did gladly once they saw how good SuSE is at doing its job.
Keep the Novell-ized components optional, please. Some of us aren't using Novell technology, and it's going to be very annoying if we have to install NDS and Novell client software even though we have no intention of using them. Keep the Novell additions optional, not mandatory. You'll need to lure us into using them by quality. I still remember the days when Novell had a good product. Hopefully that can happen again.
First Redhat... now SuSE. Tomorrow, Debian and Slackware will anounce a merger citing similar goals. I'm sure Thursday Mandrake will be bought out by Microsoft, followed by Linus selling the Linux trademark to SCO on Friday. Saturday we'll see Apple acquire all the rights to FreeBSD, and Sunday the world will simply end. After a week like that, most of us probably wouldn't mind.;)
I wonder where they got the name anyway. Does it stand for something? (other than a kickass linux distro of course)
For those asking about Art House cinema...
on
Review: 'Bubba Ho-Tep'
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Art House cinema is a term reserved for theaters that run their business by showing movies that are usually not in the mainstream, or foreign films. There are a hell of a lot of movies out there that people never even hear of (most of the best ones, sadly). The more successful Art House flicks sometimes end up taking a trip through the main cinema chain after having a smashing success on the art circuit (Spirited Away and My Big Fat Greek Wedding are two recent ones to do this). Bubba Ho-Tep looks to be on target to do the same thing, hopefully. Word of mouth like this article on slashdot are often the only things these movies have to recommend them.
If you're getting sick of the majority of the mainstream hollywood fare, chances are you've been going to the wrong theater. Give a real theater a try for a change and see the difference. Most art house theaters are local affairs run by film lovers, and they differ greatly from commercial theaters. Typically they offer a lounge, bar, dinner, and live bands, as well as frequent film festivals and a variety of film clubs and club activities. They cater to people who love film as an art form and enjoy seeing films and discussing them with others.
The most well known art house is probably The Alamo Drafthouse, mostly through their association with Harry Knowles from AICN.
The best way to find one of these in your area is to check the newspapers for the local movie listings. They need your support, so if you've got the option of seeing a film there please do so.
Set up a firewall on some old P166, build your own subnet, and lock them out. It's not hard. Mandrake MNF or Astaro are great for this sort of thing. Run a VPN between you and your friends in the dorm. Heck there's lots of fun to be had there.
Slashdot Mirror
*BAM* Home run.
Novell was punished by its salesforce for doing exactly what its customers wanted.
I think, these days, there is a growing awareness that the cash hemmorage of maintaining a Windows environment is not the only way to run an IT department. As departments grow wiser, they'll begin looking for solutions that are more like what Novell (and Linux) has always provided and less like what Microsoft is offering. After all, isn't Novell's style of product maintenance what everyone has been clamoring for lately, and incidentally almost exactly the same thing Linux provides by its very nature? It seems like a perfect match to me, especially with IBM thrown into the mix.
Oh, don't overlook the fact that Novell has a grudge against Microsoft for trying to crush them for all these years... and so does IBM for the backstabbing Microsoft gave them long ago... oh and so do most Linux camps for various other reasons. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, especially when he's no real threat to my own business structure. This is a big deal, folks. I hear the sound of an army gathering its forces.
There was a window for capitalizing on stupid users, techies, and managers, and while that will never completely go away, I think we're nearing the time when IT shops, in general, are finally beginning to wise up a little. Novell and Linux are on the radar.
Honestly, it ain't gonna happen. The next time Microsoft says "Hey, it's time to pay the Windoze tax and upgrade!" I think they'll find everyone is switching to Linux instead. Same hassle, half the price. If you want to make some good money in the not too distant future, I suggest you hone your skills at migrating IT shops from Windows to Linux. That's going to be a nice little boom market for a few years, starting right about the time Microsoft tries to ram Longhorn down our throats. All cliches aside, I will most definitely welcome our new penguin overlords.
I think this article sums it all up rather nicely.
Oh, and once they lose the corporate market, they'll lose the home market shortly afterwards. Think about it. If Joe Blow uses Linux at work and likes it, imagine his reaction when he asks the IT guy where to get it and the IT guy hands him a copy of it on disc because it's "free." Microsoft got into the server space by winning the home user first. Linux is going the other way.
That's rather beside the point. I'd much rather put the grand into doubling my available space, and filling that up as well. /chuckle
I guess what peeves me is having to build a dupilcate system to back up my data. Wasn't backup supposed to be a way to *cheaply* and *efficiently* archive your data off to another medium? What does it say if your cheapest and most efficient alternative is to duplicate your disk system? We can do better than that, can't we? I thought only governments did everything cheap at twice the price.
I'm kind of surprised people seem to think paying for twice the disk space is an acceptable way to back up data. That just strikes me as friggin' ridiculous, and indicates a real need for a better backup solution. I think these dual layer burners are going to have quite a market just for their potential to fill this gap alone.
I mean, 300 comments and nobody mentioned it yet? Maybe I have a grossly inflated opinion of them, and someone can clue me in as to if they suck, and why.
The magazine is short, to the point, has a truckload of awesome tips and tricks sections (most of which would be of interest to even advanced computer users), has phenomenally accurate hardware and software reviews (to the point where I'm almost inclined to take their reviews as gospel) and it has a good geeky attitude that makes it an entertaining read. I've been a subscriber since they were called Boot magazine in the mid-1990s, and to this day I've never seen anything to make me doubt their integrity or make me want to cancel my subscription. It's also a damn cheap mag, renewals are usually $12 for the year.
Basically if you give a damn about computer hardware, you should have a subscription. Very highly recommended.
I doubt most geeks' personal data collections could pay for themselves (at least with legal activities, anyway).
No, you're quite right, it's a collection of many kinds of things, mostly old, rare, unknown, and hard to find. I would be seriously peeved to lose it because it represents a very significant investment of my time, but it would not be the end of the world if I lost it. My real data (the kind of thing I can't live without) gets backed up to DVD, sits on my HDD at work, sits on my Archos, sits on friend's computers... heck it could probably survive a nuclear attack I've got it so dispersed.
What's peeved me is that there has been a void here for a long time, and I've been watching it waiting for a technology to fill it... namely cheap, convenient offline backups. This blue ray burner would fill that niche nicely. I get to be a lazy, cheap bastard and still get my desires met. That's the kind of technology that makes me happy. It's taking a remarkably long time for storage/backup technology to become easily affordable and catch up with modern hard drive technology.
Who said good backups had to cost $1000s (or 10's of $1000s) of dollars, anyway?
Let's see you carry a copy offsite!
I have about 750GB of data, it's in a RAID5 for redundancy, with no backup other than that. I'd like very much to have offline storage for it that isn't based on buying more hard drives or the 166 DVDs (and time invested burning them) that would be my only viable options for backing it up now. This is home use, not corporate... at work I just throw money at the problem (AIT tape libraries and SAN backup solutions); at home I'd rather throw money at car payments or retirement investments. The backup solution for work cost as much as my car.
This looks like a great solution to the problem that fits within my budget (cheap mother f'er) and time constraints (no more than a day of my time to back it all up).
To answer some of the other replies... yes, I do have that much data, the pr0n is only about 10GB of it (and it'll be the first to go if I run out of space), and I'm not really worried about DVD rot because I keep any data I actually need on the array (the backup is just a CYA in case the array blows out, if it lasts a year I'll replace it with a new backup).
4.5GB DVDs just weren't big enough to back up my data (well, unless I wanted to burn 166 DVDs every 8 months or so). Until something like this I'd had nothing I could use but hard drives... tapes were just too expensive and unreliable (and slow). This will still be slow, I'm sure, but at least it'll make for a good backup medium. It's about f'ing time. Sign me up for one, at least once media prices for it become reasonable. I wonder what the shelf life on their dual-layer media is...
In other news, SpaceShipOne's second flight out of the atmosphere failed catastrophically today... investigators are currently looking into reports that melted M&M's may have shorted out critical guidance systems.
Well, some folks at IBM have a theory at least.
:P
Not that I know enough about it to make any conclusion myself. The whole thing just sounds suspiciously like Douglas Adam's infinite probability engine to me.
I believe this is the quote you are looking for.
KIRK: Your timing is excellent, Mr.Scott. You've fixed the barn door after the horse has come home. How much refit time till we can take her out again?
SCOTTY: Eight weeks, sir.(as Kirk opens his mouth) But you don't have eight weeks so I'll do it for ya in two.
KIRK: (considers) Mr. Scott. Have you always multiplied your repair estimates by a factor of four?
SCOTTY: Certainly, sir. How else can I keep my reputation as a miracle worker?
KIRK: Your reputation is secure, Scotty.
Hey, I've used this as a rule of thumb for computer work time estimates, and while a factor of four is usually excessive (unless dealing with a real asshole), two is always a good idea, and three is good if you're a bit unsure of the situation. If you've worked in computers you know how unpredictable a troubleshooting situation can be. I can only imagine how much more complex it is in the engineering world.
A friend of mine had a fella he knows ask us to build him a computer about three years ago... this was back when you'd easily be able to save 2/3 the cost of hardware by building it yourself. The guy offered to pay us in alcohol. Turns out he was a truck driver who delivers alcohol to liquor stores. There's apparently some obscure NY law that states you can't sell bottles with damaged labels. The guy had accumulated a basement full of stacks of liquor, and he doesn't even drink.
We put him together a screamer for about $700. He paid us in what was easily $3000 of alcohol. It was enough to fill up a large storage closet, and nearly every bottle was unique, although he did give us 10 bottles of Bacardi 151. We got most of our liquor education from the stash he gave us. Even now, after splitting it 3 ways with former roomates and consuming half of it, there's still enough left to fill up a large rack in my closet. Good trade in my book.
Well, it's probably a matter of the maturity of the piracy in the two different industries.
Computer software vendors have gotten used to the idea that no matter what copy protection schemes they use, a cracked/pirated version of their software will be all over the internet within days of release. They've been getting used to this idea since sometime in 1970 when it first became an issue. I'd also say that all parties involved have just about given up on the idea that they have a chance in hell of stopping it, and have accepted it as a cost of doing business. After all, the legitimate users of the software still make them a profit. No one has ever proven that one download of a program is equal to one loss of a sale, because it isn't, and never will be. For some, it's like trading baseball cards.
The RIAA/MPAA and other entertainment providers have not gotten used to this idea yet, because to them this piracy problem (at least the internet one-to-many part of it) is completely new. It'll take decade or two of every copy protection scheme they invent being craked overnight, and every release appearing on the internet the instant it hits the theaters before they end up giving up the same fight and accepting it as the cost of doing business. In the meantime, we will see these kinds of raids from time to time just like we did with the FBI raiding the warez scene during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
It'll probably be a lot worse for the media industry. They've got more to lose, and their product is popular with everyone, everywhere, unlike software which is only popular with computer users. Computer use is a lot more widespread today than it was when this was happening in the software world, as well, and that is surely a contributing factor. Add to this the moral and legal ambiguity of the entire problem, and you end up with a lot more users who are willing to engage in this behaviour. After all, how can recording a copy of a song from the radio be legal, while downloading it from the internet is not? TV shows from a TiVo that are shared and downloaded are somehow different from TV shows recorded on a VHS tape and dubbed? Are they really? Fundamentally, they are the exact same activity. The big difference is that one is distributed through a channel controlled by the Big Money(tm), and one is not. That difference, to many, is no basis for a law regulating the trade of human culture, since government has no business and no right to pass laws to ensure the continuance of corporate profits.
It's a losing battle, and everyone knows it except the corporations. The ones that figure it out and adapt will survive, the ones that don't, won't. Same goes for countries... those that allow the freedom will have a major advantage over the ones that don't. Sadly, it looks these days as if the USA is going to be one of the least free in this area. Fundamentally this is a battle over who has the right to control and distribute human culture. The existing control structure is being severely eroded by a new distribution mechanism that is controlled by no one and answerable to no one, and it is as titanic in implications as any social change in human history, make no mistake. This is about your right to broadcast, your right to be heard.
Bottom line is, as always, to do as your conscience demands. What the law demands is negotiable, because law has seldom followed conscience in letter or enforcement, especially these days. The more unconscionable laws that pass, the less respect people will have for the law itself, and the more eroded the base of society becomes. Someday it'll end in a revolution, as always, and when we pick up the pieces we can build something better from the mess. It'll sort itself out in a few decades just like all other major societal changes do, and the world will end up a better place because of it.
All Novell has to do here is load up a big truck with tuna and catnip and drive North. The cats will follow eventually.
So, when they do detect the impending collision of a Death Star size object, I want to know: What will we be able to do about it? Somehow I don't think an umbrella is going to cut it.
Heh. We should be so lucky.
You do realize the circumstances it's going to take for Microsoft to lose the desktop, yes?
1) Critical mass of easy to use linux desktop alternatives
2) A reason to make users look at non-MS alternatives
We can provide number one, no problem. We're not there yet imo but we're no more than a year, maybe two years, off from the target right now. I'd say linux will meet my desktop needs by 2006. Microsoft will be kind enough to provide us with a number two on their own, given time. Sooner or later it'll cost too much, be too insecure, have license agreements that are too restrictive, or pull the rug out from under a customer and tick them off. If Microsoft pulled a support cut like that to attempt to force Longhorn migration, all they would be doing is killing their own momentum and pushing their users right into linux.
I'd take any "year of the desktop" predictions with a grain of salt. The real year of the linux desktop is almost certainly going to coincide with either a fresh release of their operating system or the expiration of support for an older version. I'm thinking 2007, myself, as that's when Longhorn will be out of its initial "don't touch it until after SP1" phase and Win2K/2K3 users will be getting pressured to upgrade. Win2K users will be facing discontinuation of support as well. The SCO crap will be over by then, and the GPL will have been tested in court, so the indemnification and other issues surrounding linux at the moment will be a matter of court record and not pie-in-the-sky as they are now. Linux will have reached mainstream consciousness by then as well thanks to the large number of companies promoting it recently. It'll make for an interesting year.
Yes, Blex made quite a name for himself. His old URL turns up nothing these days (http://www.cybrzn.com/~blex/mp3/) and I don't find him in the waybackmachine either. Too bad. That site was legend.
Silimar setup here.
Tyan Tiger MP Mainboard, 1GB DDR266
Dual AMD Athlon MP 2200+ CPUs
old Matrox Millenium AGP card I had lying around
20GB OS drive, backed up to the array occasionally
3Ware 4-port Escalade card (w RAID-5 setup)
4x WDC 250GB Special Edition drives (gotta have that 3-year warranty)
And a Cremax ICYDock 5-in-3 Hotswap Cage, because you really do want to keep these things properly cooled, and the hotswap cages just aren't expensive anymore.
This setup was so successful at home that I've duplicated it (with greater capacity of course) for some of our company backup servers. Oh, and God Bless 3Ware. That is some top notch hardware. They've restored my faith in RAID after DPT destroyed it.
It does keep my room quite warm in the winter.
Open source might not die, but if corporate level support for it dies or the price skyrockets, it's going to get kicked out of a lot of datacenters. We'll always have linux for home use, but without someone providing enterprise support it will never succeed in business.
I don't think Linux is ever going to win at home until it wins in the office. If people end up using it at work, they'll start using it at home as well.
I'd start here.
Not quite. What concerns me is Novell taking a chainsaw to SuSE's distro and turing it into Novell Linux 1.0, then forcing their technologies and choices on everyone. Meaning if you want to use SuSE for something in Novell's arena you use [insert any Novell technology] or take a walk. If Novell merely wants SuSE to add another 100 packages of Novell goodies to the installer, fine, so long as they don't start making my choices for me. That's one of the good things about SuSE... it's the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink distro, much like Debian but without all the setup and testing hassle (which can be fun, but not when you need to set up dozens of servers with enterprise support).
SuSE's whole distro is currently set up like a massive warehouse of goodies, and you just tag the ones you want during install and that's it. The packages are all fairly current (even bleeding edge for some of KDE), and they've all been tested to work together, and there are precious few things that aren't included. The documentation included with the packages is also excellent. I don't mind Novell adding things to the warehouse, I'm concerned they'll want to change the whole warehouse concept into something worse, or excise any competeing technology that's already in the warehouse.
SuSE's got a damn good thing going. Don't muck it up. It's one thing if you want to bring enterprise level functionality and a slew of awesome new features to Linux (and to SuSE Linux in particular), but it's quite another thing to buy out a linux company and force them to take their linux distro in a different direction. I hope you choose the former and not the latter. SuSE is doing a dynamite job, so stay out of their way. Help, don't hinder.
;)
I've been using SuSE in the office since v7, and for my money it's the only distro I'll touch because it's easily the most advanced one on the market and I can get excellent technical support for it any time I need it (which isn't often, but in business you absolutely must have the security blanket). I'm going to be quite pissed off (and switching vendors) if this changes because of Novell's influence.
Don't be dense and stop offering it for free like Redhat did, either (Fedora is not RedHat, different discussion entirely, see Redhat thread for discussion ad nauseum about this). It's a boneheaded move on so many levels. Nobody's saying you need to support the downloaded version (or even host it for free, people will mirror it after all), as long as you continue to release it so folks can get their hands dirty and get comfortable on the product without having to pay for it first. Using it for free for a time was the only way I could convince folks here to pay for it, and they did gladly once they saw how good SuSE is at doing its job.
Keep the Novell-ized components optional, please. Some of us aren't using Novell technology, and it's going to be very annoying if we have to install NDS and Novell client software even though we have no intention of using them. Keep the Novell additions optional, not mandatory. You'll need to lure us into using them by quality. I still remember the days when Novell had a good product. Hopefully that can happen again.
First Redhat... now SuSE. Tomorrow, Debian and Slackware will anounce a merger citing similar goals. I'm sure Thursday Mandrake will be bought out by Microsoft, followed by Linus selling the Linux trademark to SCO on Friday. Saturday we'll see Apple acquire all the rights to FreeBSD, and Sunday the world will simply end. After a week like that, most of us probably wouldn't mind.
I've always heard it said like "Sue C".
I wonder where they got the name anyway. Does it stand for something? (other than a kickass linux distro of course)
Art House cinema is a term reserved for theaters that run their business by showing movies that are usually not in the mainstream, or foreign films. There are a hell of a lot of movies out there that people never even hear of (most of the best ones, sadly). The more successful Art House flicks sometimes end up taking a trip through the main cinema chain after having a smashing success on the art circuit (Spirited Away and My Big Fat Greek Wedding are two recent ones to do this). Bubba Ho-Tep looks to be on target to do the same thing, hopefully. Word of mouth like this article on slashdot are often the only things these movies have to recommend them.
If you're getting sick of the majority of the mainstream hollywood fare, chances are you've been going to the wrong theater. Give a real theater a try for a change and see the difference. Most art house theaters are local affairs run by film lovers, and they differ greatly from commercial theaters. Typically they offer a lounge, bar, dinner, and live bands, as well as frequent film festivals and a variety of film clubs and club activities. They cater to people who love film as an art form and enjoy seeing films and discussing them with others.
The most well known art house is probably The Alamo Drafthouse, mostly through their association with Harry Knowles from AICN.
The art house in my area is The Little Theatre.
The best way to find one of these in your area is to check the newspapers for the local movie listings. They need your support, so if you've got the option of seeing a film there please do so.
Set up a firewall on some old P166, build your own subnet, and lock them out. It's not hard. Mandrake MNF or Astaro are great for this sort of thing. Run a VPN between you and your friends in the dorm. Heck there's lots of fun to be had there.