I'm really really interested in this, with a kid on the way.... there's some ethical part of me that says I really shouldn't pirate learning games for a 2 year old, or what are they learning?
IRC has been around much longer than any modern p2p network. IRC was ancient when I started using it in 1999, when napster came out. IRC was what people used to suppliment their ftp downloading.
Of course now that many of the IRC operators have banned file xfers, it's a lot harder to find the things I liked
IRC ops can't ban file transfers, as far as I know. File transfers with clients such as mirc are direct client to client (DCC, also could be called p2p). That's why all the kiddie pr0n stuff is on IRC - it's sick, but no one stops it because no files ever actually transfer across an IRC network. The only thing IRC networks transfer is text.
Now, I know you're trolling, but at least be more subtle about it.
I have a wireless logitech keyboard, and it's been using the same set of duracel ultra double A's for over 1.5 years now. I use the thing every day, sometimes for games, including games like NWN, where I spend a good bit of the game holding down the "tab" key (illuminates objects you can interact with).
Short battery life is not a reason to not own one of these. I've also never noticed a difference in response time from it to a wired keyboard.
I'm not sure the details, but I am aware that some people are trying to hack this thing. Something about Phantasy Star Online allows the gamecube to load files off a computer on the network.
The catch is that the CD's are burned backwards, or read backwards, or spin backwards, or something. I don't remember the details, just that something's backwards. So, like, as far as I heard, "they" could stream a game from the gamecube to the hard drive, and burn it, and somehow swap it with the phantasy star online disc, but couldn't get it to work like that.
How about this: Don't release movie number 10 in a series of niche movies a weekend before one of the most anticipated movies of all time, which had been promoted for several years, comes out.
I didn't have a problem with nemesis. I actually liked it. Did I go see it in a theatre? No, i saved my $15 for Lord of the Rings. Duh.
If I were anywhere near you, I'd buy you a beer, and we could sit down and chat for hours.
This is exactly where my specialty of personal research tends to run.
Chick's contention is that the "pure" texts, the ones from asia minor / anatolia are the correct ones, cause they're from "god's church" in antioch. He claims that the textus receptus is the correct version because not only did it come from there, but there are more versions of it than any other version.
He claims that we should go with the majority and not with the oldest versions because the majority rules. He neglects to mention that the textus receptus didn't appear until at least XII. And that the christians in the later roman (byzantine) empire had a vested interest in making as many copies of their text as they could, in order to get it to the masses. And that they had an interest in making sure it said what they wanted it to say.
And he totally neglects that sinaiticus has any worth whatsoever.
Man, it's nice to meet someone who cares about this stuff.
Demon comes from the greek word diamon, or, more accurately delta-iota-alpha-mu-omicron-nu, depending on how it's declined. That's singular nominative (i think).
In helenistic greek, i.e. around the time of the peloponnesian wars, the word diamon meant sort of "guardian spirit", but implying that it could be either a mischievous spirit or a malevolent spirit. To blame things on a kakodiamon was to say that you had bad luck, and imply that you must be plagued by a mischievous diamon.
When the word was moved into other languages (i think it came to english via romance languages, stemming from latin), it changed to demon, and was christianized to mean "demon", i.e. servant of the dark lord (satan, not your boss, or bill gates, or $funny_guy_we_hate).
Yeah for me with my taking greek 1105. It was hard as crap, but wow, I learned a lot. For instance, this happened to a lot of words in greek. Take, for instance, the word that's used (at least in the new testamant in sinaiticus and the vatican codex) to mean "sin". In ancient greek, it meant "mistake" not "transgression". Although, I think that's one that the greeks had started to shift the meaning of before the christians got to it.
But, yeah, I've got this big thing for etymology, being 18 hours away from a history degree, and still eagerly taking every social sciences class I can fit in. For instance, when I see WindowsXP, I see windows, version christ. XP are the greek letters Chi Rho, which are the first letters of the word "christ", chi-rho-iota-sigma-tau-omicron-sigma. They're the letters constantine the great saw in the sky when he converted his army to christianity at the milvian bridge in 312(? i'm close, and i'm not looking it up).
Also, if you know a little greek, you know jack chick is full of shit in his Death Cookie tract, which says that IHS on the cookie that catholics eat at communion stand for Isis, Horus, and Seb, egyptian gods, and that it's pagan worship to be a catholic. Sorry, Chick, but IHS are the first three leters of jesus in greek, iota-eta-sigma-upsulon-sigma (remember, indiana jones and the last crusade? "Jehova starts with an I"? Yeah, there is no J in greek, it was Iota, in both jehova and jesus).
But, look, here, i've done rattled off my head for ever about nothing.
Just suffice it to say, when you see demon, you don't have to think servant of satan, from the pits of hell, sent to torment the true believing christians. It's just a spirit, who may have the attitude of a prankster.
I kinda do too. I mean, it sounds really great to be able to tell my kid (when it's born) that in it's lifetime, we might have put a man on mars, but it is pretty farfetched. It makes me go "wow" in a starrey-eyed, i-love-startrek kind of way, but in reality, we haven't run out of space or things to do to this planet yet.
GDP of America is about 4,000,000,000,000 dollars (i got this off of census.gov the other day - there are 289 million people in America, the average household size is 4, and the average household makes 42,490)
60 billion dollars is 1.5% of the GDP of america. 175 billion is 4.4% of the GDP.
Now, 4.4% is still a lot. Let's split that over 26 yers, so we can get to mars by 2030.
175/27=6.481... billion.
That means that, for the next 27 years, assuming income increases to match inflation, if people would pay an additional 0.162% more money above their taxes to NASA, we could raise 175 billion for the project.
Good point. The upgrade version was $99, the OEM was $99 or $109 w/ ms-plus, and the full version was $199. That's true.
Still, compare $199 to $179 for RHEL workstation. Except RHEL is $179/year, and the lifecycle is still expected at 5 years, even for redhat's current product.
My point is just that I'm amazed that redhat made an os in 2002 and dropped it in 2003, and made an OS in 2003 and is dropping it in 2004. That sucks. And MS made an os in 1998 and they're dropping it in 2006. That's amazing support, even if the OS does suck somewhat.
True enough. But, I do have to say, though, that you do get bug fixes from Microsoft for their products. You can't call redhat and ask for support from them on RH9, either, or ask that they fix a certain thing. They do release security updates and bug fixes as they can, just like MS.
It's true that you can get 3rd party support for linux. In fact, a lot of the stuff that redhat releases are bug/sec fixes for modules and programs that are not part of the main OS. They release security fixes for PHP, sendmail, evolution, mozilla, etc etc.
However, you can get the same kind of support for MS products, ya know? Cause the core OS is all they made, so it's all they support. But, people that made printer drivers, games, etc are under no obligation to support or stop supporting their windows 98 applications. Even stuff like neverwinter nights still runs on windows98.
My understanding of progeny is that they are essentially replacing the errata section of redhat for the abandoned os's.
'Windows is about choice - you can mix and match software and music player stuff. We believe you should have the same choice when it comes to music services.'
That was the sound of the mack truck hitting the customer wearing the antlers staring into the mezmorizing headlights.
What happened to DRM, and what happened to windows media player being everything you ever needed, and what happened to integrated music purchasing, and what happened to....
What happened to consistancy? My understanding of the world has been shattered.//need a tissue.
You didn't understand what Open Source means, and now you pay the price of your misunderstanding. Microsoft is a company and as such tries to defend *their* interests, not yours. Red Hat is a company and as such tries to defend *their* interests, not yours. Even worse, as Red Hat is quite a little company (at least when compared to the Redmond's giant) it has even less ability or desire to support anything that doesn't bring them fast bucks.
I understand perfectly what OpenSource means. What you seem to not understand is business. Our customers WANT redhat. Plesk runs on redhat, their cold fusion servers run on RedHat, chilisoft runs on redhat, cpanel runs on redhat, redhat is (used to be) the world's standard linux distro.
Would you choose Debian GNU/Linux over Red Hat Linux (or any other company-based Linux distribution for that matter) you and your clients would remain good and safe.
Debian is our main distro now. We've maintained a local, 100Mbit debian-stable mirror on our network for our customers for over a year now. We like debian. But it's hard to convince someone to switch when they're used to redhat, and their software runs on redhat.
Dude, I know what i'm talking about. I've beat my self up over this for a long time, wondering what I can do, wondering if the company should shoulder the cost of the progeny transition service for our customers, etc. There's so many ways I wish I could have prevented this, but every time I think about it, I come to this:
1.) Redhat announced this out of the blue. They gave very little warning. We all thought they were just in a race to get to RedHat version X, and that's why they quit the point releases.
2.) Even if we had told everyone that they should use something else, most of them would have still prefered redhat, because of the familiarity, the name recognition, and the ease of use. Not to mention the commercial software support from companies like plesk.
If you factor in the upgrade costs to the *current* version of a linux distribution ($0 if you are willing to put in a little effort) or the difference to upgrade to the current MS product (many $$$'s) the costs that *one* distribution charges arn't as over the top as they first seem. Of cource you could choose a distribution that is open & free but some people like their configurators:)
I like you, and you put a smiley at the end of your email, so please don't think i'm trying to flame you. I honestly just feel that I need to reply, though.
Upgrade to the current version of linux: well since we're comparing MS and RH, that would be the desktop version of redhat linux, and that's going to run you $179. For MS, you can get windows XP for $99, or $109. That's of course if you buy the OEM version, but they've dropped the requirement of buying a processor and a hard drive with the OS in order to get the cheaper price, so you can just buy a thumb screw and an OS.
But, seriously. To upgrade to the latest desktop redhat is $180. To keep it current is $180 PER YEAR.
MS is $110 at most, and that's with several years (perhaps 8 like windows98) of updates. Plus, you at least get a physical CD.
My company is now using debian as the default for customers who don't specifiy an OS that they want.
People like that would have continued to use their current windows 98 setups. Not everyone is on an upgrade schedule. If they desperately needed a bug fix, they'd consider upgrading. However, since a dentist instrument probably isn't on the internet, it's not likely that it would get hacked, and as long as you play nicely, it'll keep working.
Don't fix it if it ain't broke.
However, my server running redhat 7.3 is a different story. It's as secure as it can be, but what happens when YetAnotherSendmailVulnerability comes out? I can't just ignore that.
Desktop versus server, or accessable versus disconnected machine.
Try shutting your mouth and opening your mind just a wee bit, will ya?
Indeed.
There are already several companies that will offer support for older versions of RedHat Linux.
I KNOW progeny offers support for RedHat. I've even sent them an email congratulating them on the smartest business move ever, and telling them that I recomend their service to any one of my customers who asks.
HOWEVER.
Windows 98 is a desktop system. It's being supported for 7+ years. RedHat abandoned their software after 1 year. Granted, they're not making as much money on it, but, hell, it's not like they wrote it. Buggy as it is, windows 98 was written *by* microsoft. Plus, at $99 for the OS and 8 years worth of support.... that's a great freaking deal. To get 8 years worth of support out of redhat 9, you'd need to spend $60 per year times at least 6 more years on progeny's service, bringing the TCO of redhat 9 as a competing desktop to windows98 to $360. As much as I hate microsoft, and I do, that's an amazing value at $99.
There are already several companies that will offer support for older versions of RedHat Linux. The only reason these companies can offer this service is because the source code is available!
That's the reason the can offer it. The reason that they do offer it is because they see where another company has dropped the ball and there is a profit to be made picking up the pieces.
I don't buy a car because I know how to fix it, but I sure as hell want to be able to go to different mechanics across the country and have them be able to fix things!
But, see, what if you bought a car. And you figured that, based on both the previous actions of the company who manufactured the car, as well as the actions of other companies in the automobile industry, that you were getting a 5 year warranty. Then after a year, they cancelled your warranty, and told you that, not only was there no way to pay the company to fix your car, but they weren't even making new parts if old ones were found to be defective.
Then some intelligent businessman comes and tells you that he'll be willing to make new non-defective parts for your car, but you have to pay him $100/month.
You'd think what a smart business decision on the businessman's part, even though it sucks you have to fork over the cash.
Voila. There's the situation i'm in. I thought I'd get support, and I'd pay redhat for support if they wanted my money at a reasonable rate.
Well I think MS realizes that if they start a push towards upgrades there is the possibility that the fees involved might push the coporates to free alternatives... Maybe by pushing for upgrades only with Office and backend items they can leave 98 on the desktops and save themselves from companies going with a mass conversion to Linux?
:%s/MS/RedHat/g
How is it that the devil can decide to extend the end-of-life of a 6 year old operating system for another 2 years, and yet we blast them for not thinking of it earlier and point out how many would have been burned by this abandonment, yet Our Neighborhood Hero decides to end-of-life an operating system that's slightly more than a year old, which many people just adopted, and which they didn't even have to write, just published, and we forgive them their tresspasses and blame it on the economy or whatever?
I'd say that the end of life of redhat 7.3 and 9 is going to hit me much harder than the end of life of Windows98. My customers, too.
But, whatever, go ahead and tell me how extending the life of an essentially dead OS just barely saved them in the zero hour from a mass exodus to linux, even though the historically most-popular linux distro wants to charge people almost twice the amount - per year - that windows costs in a one time charge (that includes, appearantly, 6 years of updates). Oh, and that verson of linux only comes with... wait for it... zero hours of tech support, and.... quarterly updates and... in downloadable format, with no physical media!
Tell them what they've won, Bob! Well, Johnny, today's contestants will receive a lifetime supply of "Microsoft is not stupid", in addition to a chance to appear on the lightning round "Companies that can do no good versus companies that can do no evil". Runners up will receive Rice-A-Roni, the san francisco treat.
Slashdot Mirror
Where are there educational games for linux?!?
I'm really really interested in this, with a kid on the way.... there's some ethical part of me that says I really shouldn't pirate learning games for a 2 year old, or what are they learning?
...But... Why is the rum gone?!?
Don't be such a sourpuss. ...
ba-dum-ching!
~Will
...I found IRC.
IRC has been around much longer than any modern p2p network. IRC was ancient when I started using it in 1999, when napster came out. IRC was what people used to suppliment their ftp downloading.
Of course now that many of the IRC operators have banned file xfers, it's a lot harder to find the things I liked
IRC ops can't ban file transfers, as far as I know. File transfers with clients such as mirc are direct client to client (DCC, also could be called p2p). That's why all the kiddie pr0n stuff is on IRC - it's sick, but no one stops it because no files ever actually transfer across an IRC network. The only thing IRC networks transfer is text.
Now, I know you're trolling, but at least be more subtle about it.
~Will
I was gonna say...
I have a wireless logitech keyboard, and it's been using the same set of duracel ultra double A's for over 1.5 years now. I use the thing every day, sometimes for games, including games like NWN, where I spend a good bit of the game holding down the "tab" key (illuminates objects you can interact with).
Short battery life is not a reason to not own one of these. I've also never noticed a difference in response time from it to a wired keyboard.
~Will
Eh, gravel + snow is really what I'm worried about, but it's not a requirement. It would be nice to have 4wd, though.
I agree.
I used to hate the SUV.
Now that:
A.) I have a kid on the way
B.) I don't want to drive a minivan at 23.
C.) We plan on moving out of town a bit, and 4wd helps
I'm kind of looking for a (non-trendy, non-deathtrap) SUV.
~Will
I'm not sure the details, but I am aware that some people are trying to hack this thing. Something about Phantasy Star Online allows the gamecube to load files off a computer on the network.
The catch is that the CD's are burned backwards, or read backwards, or spin backwards, or something. I don't remember the details, just that something's backwards. So, like, as far as I heard, "they" could stream a game from the gamecube to the hard drive, and burn it, and somehow swap it with the phantasy star online disc, but couldn't get it to work like that.
I wonder how the xbox linux crew has solved this?
~Will
The "Flop of Nemesis"???
*smacks forhead*
How about this: Don't release movie number 10 in a series of niche movies a weekend before one of the most anticipated movies of all time, which had been promoted for several years, comes out.
I didn't have a problem with nemesis. I actually liked it. Did I go see it in a theatre? No, i saved my $15 for Lord of the Rings. Duh.
~Will
Sir:
If I were anywhere near you, I'd buy you a beer, and we could sit down and chat for hours.
This is exactly where my specialty of personal research tends to run.
Chick's contention is that the "pure" texts, the ones from asia minor / anatolia are the correct ones, cause they're from "god's church" in antioch. He claims that the textus receptus is the correct version because not only did it come from there, but there are more versions of it than any other version.
He claims that we should go with the majority and not with the oldest versions because the majority rules. He neglects to mention that the textus receptus didn't appear until at least XII. And that the christians in the later roman (byzantine) empire had a vested interest in making as many copies of their text as they could, in order to get it to the masses. And that they had an interest in making sure it said what they wanted it to say.
And he totally neglects that sinaiticus has any worth whatsoever.
Man, it's nice to meet someone who cares about this stuff.
~Will
OH, dude, I know. I know. In fact, this morning, i registered anti-chick.com, and I plan to set up a site showing how he's full of shit.
But, I've been a long time follower of jack chick's idocy.
Yeah, the flying thing with the blue mouth and the horns? Yeah, that was a cacodemon, probably a reference to a kakodaimon.
Yeah, my bad. It's still early. But, spelling errors aside, the etymology and meaning should be right.
Demon comes from the greek word diamon, or, more accurately delta-iota-alpha-mu-omicron-nu, depending on how it's declined. That's singular nominative (i think).
In helenistic greek, i.e. around the time of the peloponnesian wars, the word diamon meant sort of "guardian spirit", but implying that it could be either a mischievous spirit or a malevolent spirit. To blame things on a kakodiamon was to say that you had bad luck, and imply that you must be plagued by a mischievous diamon.
When the word was moved into other languages (i think it came to english via romance languages, stemming from latin), it changed to demon, and was christianized to mean "demon", i.e. servant of the dark lord (satan, not your boss, or bill gates, or $funny_guy_we_hate).
Yeah for me with my taking greek 1105. It was hard as crap, but wow, I learned a lot. For instance, this happened to a lot of words in greek. Take, for instance, the word that's used (at least in the new testamant in sinaiticus and the vatican codex) to mean "sin". In ancient greek, it meant "mistake" not "transgression". Although, I think that's one that the greeks had started to shift the meaning of before the christians got to it.
But, yeah, I've got this big thing for etymology, being 18 hours away from a history degree, and still eagerly taking every social sciences class I can fit in. For instance, when I see WindowsXP, I see windows, version christ. XP are the greek letters Chi Rho, which are the first letters of the word "christ", chi-rho-iota-sigma-tau-omicron-sigma. They're the letters constantine the great saw in the sky when he converted his army to christianity at the milvian bridge in 312(? i'm close, and i'm not looking it up).
Also, if you know a little greek, you know jack chick is full of shit in his Death Cookie tract, which says that IHS on the cookie that catholics eat at communion stand for Isis, Horus, and Seb, egyptian gods, and that it's pagan worship to be a catholic. Sorry, Chick, but IHS are the first three leters of jesus in greek, iota-eta-sigma-upsulon-sigma (remember, indiana jones and the last crusade? "Jehova starts with an I"? Yeah, there is no J in greek, it was Iota, in both jehova and jesus).
But, look, here, i've done rattled off my head for ever about nothing.
Just suffice it to say, when you see demon, you don't have to think servant of satan, from the pits of hell, sent to torment the true believing christians. It's just a spirit, who may have the attitude of a prankster.
~Will
I kinda do too. I mean, it sounds really great to be able to tell my kid (when it's born) that in it's lifetime, we might have put a man on mars, but it is pretty farfetched. It makes me go "wow" in a starrey-eyed, i-love-startrek kind of way, but in reality, we haven't run out of space or things to do to this planet yet.
~Will
Dude, that's $67/year if you make $42,490/year. It's 0.16% of your income. That means $1600 if you make a million, and $20 if you make $17,000.
It's a percentage, $67 was just a "for instance".
GDP of America is about 4,000,000,000,000 dollars (i got this off of census.gov the other day - there are 289 million people in America, the average household size is 4, and the average household makes 42,490)
60 billion dollars is 1.5% of the GDP of america.
175 billion is 4.4% of the GDP.
Now, 4.4% is still a lot. Let's split that over 26 yers, so we can get to mars by 2030.
175/27=6.481... billion.
That means that, for the next 27 years, assuming income increases to match inflation, if people would pay an additional 0.162% more money above their taxes to NASA, we could raise 175 billion for the project.
That's $67 a year, folks, at the median income.
It's not impossible.
Good point. The upgrade version was $99, the OEM was $99 or $109 w/ ms-plus, and the full version was $199. That's true.
Still, compare $199 to $179 for RHEL workstation. Except RHEL is $179/year, and the lifecycle is still expected at 5 years, even for redhat's current product.
My point is just that I'm amazed that redhat made an os in 2002 and dropped it in 2003, and made an OS in 2003 and is dropping it in 2004. That sucks. And MS made an os in 1998 and they're dropping it in 2006. That's amazing support, even if the OS does suck somewhat.
~Will
True enough. But, I do have to say, though, that you do get bug fixes from Microsoft for their products. You can't call redhat and ask for support from them on RH9, either, or ask that they fix a certain thing. They do release security updates and bug fixes as they can, just like MS.
It's true that you can get 3rd party support for linux. In fact, a lot of the stuff that redhat releases are bug/sec fixes for modules and programs that are not part of the main OS. They release security fixes for PHP, sendmail, evolution, mozilla, etc etc.
However, you can get the same kind of support for MS products, ya know? Cause the core OS is all they made, so it's all they support. But, people that made printer drivers, games, etc are under no obligation to support or stop supporting their windows 98 applications. Even stuff like neverwinter nights still runs on windows98.
My understanding of progeny is that they are essentially replacing the errata section of redhat for the abandoned os's.
'Windows is about choice - you can mix and match software and music player stuff. We believe you should have the same choice when it comes to music services.'
//need a tissue.
That was the sound of the mack truck hitting the customer wearing the antlers staring into the mezmorizing headlights.
What happened to DRM, and what happened to windows media player being everything you ever needed, and what happened to integrated music purchasing, and what happened to....
What happened to consistancy? My understanding of the world has been shattered.
~Wx
You didn't understand what Open Source means, and now you pay the price of your misunderstanding. Microsoft is a company and as such tries to defend *their* interests, not yours. Red Hat is a company and as such tries to defend *their* interests, not yours. Even worse, as Red Hat is quite a little company (at least when compared to the Redmond's giant) it has even less ability or desire to support anything that doesn't bring them fast bucks.
I understand perfectly what OpenSource means. What you seem to not understand is business. Our customers WANT redhat. Plesk runs on redhat, their cold fusion servers run on RedHat, chilisoft runs on redhat, cpanel runs on redhat, redhat is (used to be) the world's standard linux distro.
Would you choose Debian GNU/Linux over Red Hat Linux (or any other company-based Linux distribution for that matter) you and your clients would remain good and safe.
Debian is our main distro now. We've maintained a local, 100Mbit debian-stable mirror on our network for our customers for over a year now. We like debian. But it's hard to convince someone to switch when they're used to redhat, and their software runs on redhat.
Dude, I know what i'm talking about. I've beat my self up over this for a long time, wondering what I can do, wondering if the company should shoulder the cost of the progeny transition service for our customers, etc. There's so many ways I wish I could have prevented this, but every time I think about it, I come to this:
1.) Redhat announced this out of the blue. They gave very little warning. We all thought they were just in a race to get to RedHat version X, and that's why they quit the point releases.
2.) Even if we had told everyone that they should use something else, most of them would have still prefered redhat, because of the familiarity, the name recognition, and the ease of use. Not to mention the commercial software support from companies like plesk.
~Will
If you factor in the upgrade costs to the *current* version of a linux distribution ($0 if you are willing to put in a little effort) or the difference to upgrade to the current MS product (many $$$'s) the costs that *one* distribution charges arn't as over the top as they first seem. Of cource you could choose a distribution that is open & free but some people like their configurators :)
I like you, and you put a smiley at the end of your email, so please don't think i'm trying to flame you. I honestly just feel that I need to reply, though.
Upgrade to the current version of linux: well since we're comparing MS and RH, that would be the desktop version of redhat linux, and that's going to run you $179. For MS, you can get windows XP for $99, or $109. That's of course if you buy the OEM version, but they've dropped the requirement of buying a processor and a hard drive with the OS in order to get the cheaper price, so you can just buy a thumb screw and an OS.
But, seriously. To upgrade to the latest desktop redhat is $180. To keep it current is $180 PER YEAR.
MS is $110 at most, and that's with several years (perhaps 8 like windows98) of updates. Plus, you at least get a physical CD.
My company is now using debian as the default for customers who don't specifiy an OS that they want.
People like that would have continued to use their current windows 98 setups. Not everyone is on an upgrade schedule. If they desperately needed a bug fix, they'd consider upgrading. However, since a dentist instrument probably isn't on the internet, it's not likely that it would get hacked, and as long as you play nicely, it'll keep working.
Don't fix it if it ain't broke.
However, my server running redhat 7.3 is a different story. It's as secure as it can be, but what happens when YetAnotherSendmailVulnerability comes out? I can't just ignore that.
Desktop versus server, or accessable versus disconnected machine.
Try shutting your mouth and opening your mind just a wee bit, will ya?
Indeed.
There are already several companies that will offer support for older versions of RedHat Linux.
I KNOW progeny offers support for RedHat. I've even sent them an email congratulating them on the smartest business move ever, and telling them that I recomend their service to any one of my customers who asks.
HOWEVER.
Windows 98 is a desktop system. It's being supported for 7+ years. RedHat abandoned their software after 1 year. Granted, they're not making as much money on it, but, hell, it's not like they wrote it. Buggy as it is, windows 98 was written *by* microsoft. Plus, at $99 for the OS and 8 years worth of support.... that's a great freaking deal. To get 8 years worth of support out of redhat 9, you'd need to spend $60 per year times at least 6 more years on progeny's service, bringing the TCO of redhat 9 as a competing desktop to windows98 to $360. As much as I hate microsoft, and I do, that's an amazing value at $99.
There are already several companies that will offer support for older versions of RedHat Linux. The only reason these companies can offer this service is because the source code is available!
That's the reason the can offer it. The reason that they do offer it is because they see where another company has dropped the ball and there is a profit to be made picking up the pieces.
I don't buy a car because I know how to fix it, but I sure as hell want to be able to go to different mechanics across the country and have them be able to fix things!
But, see, what if you bought a car. And you figured that, based on both the previous actions of the company who manufactured the car, as well as the actions of other companies in the automobile industry, that you were getting a 5 year warranty. Then after a year, they cancelled your warranty, and told you that, not only was there no way to pay the company to fix your car, but they weren't even making new parts if old ones were found to be defective.
Then some intelligent businessman comes and tells you that he'll be willing to make new non-defective parts for your car, but you have to pay him $100/month.
You'd think what a smart business decision on the businessman's part, even though it sucks you have to fork over the cash.
Voila. There's the situation i'm in. I thought I'd get support, and I'd pay redhat for support if they wanted my money at a reasonable rate.
~Will
Well I think MS realizes that if they start a push towards upgrades there is the possibility that the fees involved might push the coporates to free alternatives... Maybe by pushing for upgrades only with Office and backend items they can leave 98 on the desktops and save themselves from companies going with a mass conversion to Linux?
:%s/MS/RedHat/g
How is it that the devil can decide to extend the end-of-life of a 6 year old operating system for another 2 years, and yet we blast them for not thinking of it earlier and point out how many would have been burned by this abandonment, yet Our Neighborhood Hero decides to end-of-life an operating system that's slightly more than a year old, which many people just adopted, and which they didn't even have to write, just published, and we forgive them their tresspasses and blame it on the economy or whatever?
I'd say that the end of life of redhat 7.3 and 9 is going to hit me much harder than the end of life of Windows98. My customers, too.
But, whatever, go ahead and tell me how extending the life of an essentially dead OS just barely saved them in the zero hour from a mass exodus to linux, even though the historically most-popular linux distro wants to charge people almost twice the amount - per year - that windows costs in a one time charge (that includes, appearantly, 6 years of updates). Oh, and that verson of linux only comes with... wait for it... zero hours of tech support, and.... quarterly updates and... in downloadable format, with no physical media!
Tell them what they've won, Bob!
Well, Johnny, today's contestants will receive a lifetime supply of "Microsoft is not stupid", in addition to a chance to appear on the lightning round "Companies that can do no good versus companies that can do no evil". Runners up will receive Rice-A-Roni, the san francisco treat.
~Will