First of all, for those who aren't in the biotech industry, it should be mentioned that the NIH has an agenda to push just as much as private for-profit industry. Never believe that 'the good of the public' is the only thing driving non-profits, especially when a government (ANY government!) is involved.
Still, this issue isn't quite as cut and dried as many would like to believe. If it was, then everyone would gang up on one side, and the other side would wither and die. Consider some of the following points:
1) Celera's efforts most likely DID force the HGP to speed up.
2) Celera's "whole genome" approach appears to be a bust. Before they did it, we could only guess at how well (or poorly) it might work. In other words, we learned something valuable for future research from Celera!
3) There is a lot of grumbling about Science imposing a restrictive agreement on access to the Celera data. I agree--this isn't how science works! However, it's like book publishing. They "borrowed" publicly available information (preliminary work from the HGP), added their own stuff, and can impose whatever restrictions they want. Don't like it? Go to the HGP. They (Celera) are entirely within their rights, but I don't think that Science should have agreed to publish with those restrictions.
4) Here's a biggie. Science costs a LOT of money--the only two groups that can afford it are governments, and expensive biotech companies. The former can't afford to fund all science research, and the latter can't afford to not make a profit. Incidentally, biotech is an area where on the whole, the patent system works quite well.
At any rate, it's an impasse. Either you cut research by about 60%, or you deal with companies that need to make a profit on their research. Flip a coin and make your choice.
Even inside a good vacuum insulator, the stuff IS going to boil off. Trying to maintain a sealed system will just create a bomb.
Undoubtedly, the stuff will vent to the air around it, and an appropriate amount of circulation will be ensured. I suspect there are fans down there already, so they probably don't need to change anything significantly.
Has ANYONE (ok, I know at least one person has) considered the possiblity that Sunonwealth has actually patented new and significant technology, and that's what they're trying to protect? Is it just SLIGHTLY possible that ADDA, who has a really big black mark in the patent law courts already, might have infringed a valid and worthwhile patent again?
Come on people, at least find out what the patent is about before damning a company to the lowest depths of hell for defending it.
Small company of 100 people, open 250 days/year.
Annual GROSS income $5 million.
$5m/250days/8hours = $2500/hr.
Virus comes in, hits 24 people.
Sysadmin can fix a machine in 15 minutes, making for six hours of work. That's $15000 in lost revenue!!! Then add on the salary for the sysadmin and the staff when they're not working, and you've got 12hr at $50/hr (average salary,
including the CEO, who makes $2million in stock options), or another $600. Wow, almost $16k for a small company!!! (interesting aside: $16000/24 people comes to $666/person:-> )
Now, let's look at this rationally. The sysadmin (a) can probably do several machines simultaneously, and (b) is already getting paid for this sort of thing. It's his job! Then there's the staff, who for their 15 minutes of downtime might take their allotted coffee break, or maybe even do some (gasp!) paperwork!
For non-destructive viruses, I would guess the average cost to be about $5/seat infected. A far cry from the $666/seat calculated above. Here are some of the flaws that lead to this discrepancy:
1) All work time is computer time for all staff infected.
2) Time spent repairing the damage is outside of normal duties for the admin.
3) All staff work at 100% efficiency all of the time.
4) Time spent repairing the damage can't be done when the staff aren't around.
In other words, the numbers quoted are nothing more than so much bullshit.
On the one hand, google is (or at least has been so far) an excellent example of a small techie company that's grown huge and NOT lost their focus or sold out. The google home page still is ad free and fast, and their search engine is still the best going.
That said, I agree--things really and truly suck right now. They'd better get their shit together FAST, or they'll find themselves bereft of customers.
While playing with google's new usenet "interface," I keep repeating, "It's only a beta, only a beta." It's not helping much.
My account is gone, except for email; and doesn't look like it'll be coming back. ('no new accounts will be created' sounds like posting will be explicitly anonymous.) The way search results are displayed is really bad. I can't post at all. The only stuff available is from August 2000 onwards!
Google REALLY jumped the gun on this one. They should have announced the buyout, put some stuff up on the deja.com page, and then left well enough alone until they were ready to go 'live.' They should know better than to give us this shoddy beta WHILE ELIMINATING the old deja.
Re:Will Google's philosophy survive the merger?
on
Google Acquires Deja
·
· Score: 4
Deja hasn't always been a bloated "portal." When they were DejaNews, they were fairly sleek. Then after selling off their non-usenet bit to ebay, they got moderately sleek again.
At any rate, Google has already stated they'll bring back the archives ASAP (maybe already have?). Furthermore, this wasn't a merger--it was a BUYOUT. Google owns Deja now, and they'll be able to set it up however they want.
Your post sounds well reasoned and carefully thought out. However, it doesn't have any basis in reality. There are still anonymous usenet services available, not to mention ways of hacking an NNTP server. Usenet is in general by FAR the most anonymous service on the net, and always has been. Web pages are less anonymous than even the old DejaNews posting service.
Also, let's not forget the purpose of usenet (and the web for that matter)--to _publish_ information. Simple distribution can be achieved via FTP, unindexed web sites, UUCP, P2P, and even mailing CDROMs.
This might facilitate the _re_production of child porn (although I doubt it), but even that will give the authorities more information to catch the perpetrators. I don't see that this would increase the _production_ of child porn, which is the real crime.
First of all, as others have pointed out, you've already subsidised the RIAA if you've bought blank audio tapes.
Secondly, the government intervention on CD-R in Canada took a strange twist at the last moment. It's only in force on "CDR-Audio" blanks, which no one buys anyways.
OK, I can understand and respect (and maybe agree with) your opinions on genetic engineering. But do you honestly not see what the problems are? Or do you just not think they'll come to pass.
BIG difference, and I'm noping for one over the other.
Why? What's so wonderful about Linus that his homepage should be the de facto standard for HTML? Sure he's done lots of great things in computing, but he's hardly an authority on HTML and web authoring standards.
A little less hero worship, I think, would serve well.
Why not? What means is there to legally prevent company A from talking to company B about employee Z, product Q, or the weather?
As long as the companies don't slander or libel the employee, they can say whatever they want, to whoever they want. You can disagree, but that's the way the law is. Unless the companies involved are explicitly violating his rights, they're not restricted at all.
Yep, you're wrong. Many of the posts so far are wrong on one crucial point.
THE COMMENTS WERE PUBLISHED ON A PUBLIC BOARD, AND THE COMPANIES INVOLVED ARE FREE TO DISCUSS WHATEVER THEY WANT!
Why do so many people this morning seem to think that messages published publicly can't be held against the author? This isn't defamation (or diffamation?!:-), nor is it invasion of privacy. It's called ACCOUNTABILITY.
I can hold against YOU anything you say on/.. So can anyone else, including present and past employers. If you say it, and say it in a public forum of any sort, you are accountable for those statements. Period!
There are a lot of reasons that the former employer is entirely within their right to do many of these things.
1) Did the employee sign a nondisclosure agreement which precludes discussing such things?
2) Did the information he made public qualify as insider information? Was he trying to artificially manipulate the stock price? (doesn't sound like it, but the possibility is there)
3) Did the employee's initial contract preclude discussing the company for a given period after termination? (this is entirely legal and legally binding, folks!)
4) Was the material libelous?
5) Even if none of the above are true, freedom of speech goes both ways. If he's within his rights to post such things publicly, then the company is within their rights to pass the information on to whoever they want, including the new employer.
None of this should be taken as a justification for the former employer, but there's no sense in getting wound up in moral outrage over it.
Oops! I should have said storage systems, rather than computing. Quite right about communication channels--I stand corrected.
As for the BPS/KBPS/MBPS notation, they predate ASCII, and mixed case digital notation in general. I haven't seen them used except by the old guy shuffling off to retirement, for at least a decade. Ethernet, token ring, and modem communications all seem to use mixed case notation now.
You glossed over one point, and overemphasised another in my mind.
The overemphasis was k vs. K. It's not an extreme mistake to use K instead of k, because K has no meaning of its own. It _is_ still wrong, but it's not as egregious a mistake as confusing b/B or m/M.
The second point isn't one of SI notation, but strictly computer notation. When talking about computers, counting is ALWAYS done in powers of two! So...
k is 2^10 = 1024 NOT 1000!
M is 2^20 = 1024^2 = 1048576 NOT 1000000!
The reason this confusion came about was that drive manufacturers found they could up the advertised size of their disks by nearly five percent, and sell more of an identically sized drive than the competition. The lie of k=1000, M=1000000 in computing was pure and sleazy marketing. No more.
OK for the record, I live in Canada. I realise things are different (generally worse) south of the border. You have my sympathy.
Secondly, I'd ask for one careful distinction: You said, "...people seem to assume that everyone is straight, or should be straight..." Those are two VERY different assumptions, and shouldn't be casually lumped together.
Now, "When me and my bf hold hands or display affection in public, we get stared at like freaks..." I know. This is just wrong, and it bugs the hell out of me. Personally, I cheer quietly when I see a gay or lesbian couple holding hands in public, not showing off but just not caring. It makes me think that we're getting closer to a just society. I don't, however, cheer at seeing bumper stickers on work cubicles that say, "A queer works here!" It would be just as inappropriate for me to put up a sign saying, "Ain't it great to be straight?"
So I'll accuse THOSE people (and only them) of flaunting it, but not those who simply try to ignore the stupidity of homophobic society. Deal?
:-)
OK, you've got WWF-types pretending to play something like football. If they could play, then they'd be playing for real teams and real money.
WHY would anyone want to either watch or listen to a bunch of third-rate hacks trip over their shoelaces or burn out their synapses trying to come up with pithy statements? It was destined to be terrible from the beginning. They've made it perfectly clear that the cheerleaders are the main source of revenue, and even they can't dance. Oh well, at least we have the crotchcams.
"Actually, if security is your #1 concern, OpenBSD is your best candidate. Speed appears to be the FreeBSD specialty."
Gah! Brain fart on my part. I meant OpenBSD, I typed FreeBSD. I can't believe I did that...
"Always try new things; the OS world is richer now than it has been in years thanks to the free software movement. Don't become a zealot if you can help it; it stops you from being open-minded."
Absolutely! Always be willing to dive into the unknown, and come up with more insight than you had before.
"When you stare at a pretty woman (I'm assuming you're a straight guy) you're advertising that you're straight."
Most likely. Not necessarily, though. There are more reasons to stare at a woman than wanting to jump her.
"When you file for a wedding license you're telling your local govt that you're straight."
Not around here. They're fighting hard for--and winning--the right for gay couples to legally marry.
"When you wear a wedding ring in public, you're advertising that you're straight."
Utter nonsense! With a wedding ring, you're advertising nothing more than the fact that you're married--in your own heart and mind. I know of a bunch of gay couples that wear each other's rings. In fact, most of my gay friends do. Hmmm, must mean we're all getting old and settling down.:-)
At any rate, these points (even if they were true, which they're not) do not address the original poster's point. Wearing a ring is not the same as parading down a street, carrying a sign. Holding hands is not the same as starting every post to a technical forum with, "as a monogamous gay man..." Yes, I've seen it, although thankfully not on/.
The point is that while I don't hide my sexuality, and don't think that anyone should have to, I also don't push my sexuality as an issue on every topic I discuss. I strongly suspect (can't assume for sure) that the original poster is annoyed by these people, rather than all gays. As a point of fact, it's not just gays that suffer this failing. There are leather fetishists who push their agenda just as hard in just as inappropriate places, and even straight vanilla types who do the same. Usually they're the redneck jerks or the nymphomaniacs who come to work and tell you all about the great sex they had last night.
The point is that I don't give a rat's ass about whether you're gay or not. If you are (and again, if you're not), then introduce me to your partner. Don't presume that it's crucial to your abilities and insights as a computer geek (my field--this is presuming you'd be a coworker), and has to be hammered home at every possible juncture.
Well now! This is one of the more preposterous things I've read on/. in a while, but I'm willing to ask WHY you feel this way.
For instance, what does this say to those people who have found the person they want to spend the rest of their lives with, but aren't interested in having children? Clearly they shouldn't get married, by your idea, but does this mean that they should stay away from each other? Should they have unwanted children and put them up for adoption?
Of course, If our only reason for getting married is to raise children, then given the increasing population pressures, we should consider banning marriage altogether, or very seriously restricting it.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's the story, along with (sigh!) a (pretty cool) BEOWOLF CLUSTER!
I hate to do it, but it's actually on topic. :-)
First of all, for those who aren't in the biotech industry, it should be mentioned that the NIH has an agenda to push just as much as private for-profit industry. Never believe that 'the good of the public' is the only thing driving non-profits, especially when a government (ANY government!) is involved.
Still, this issue isn't quite as cut and dried as many would like to believe. If it was, then everyone would gang up on one side, and the other side would wither and die. Consider some of the following points:
1) Celera's efforts most likely DID force the HGP to speed up.
2) Celera's "whole genome" approach appears to be a bust. Before they did it, we could only guess at how well (or poorly) it might work. In other words, we learned something valuable for future research from Celera!
3) There is a lot of grumbling about Science imposing a restrictive agreement on access to the Celera data. I agree--this isn't how science works! However, it's like book publishing. They "borrowed" publicly available information (preliminary work from the HGP), added their own stuff, and can impose whatever restrictions they want. Don't like it? Go to the HGP. They (Celera) are entirely within their rights, but I don't think that Science should have agreed to publish with those restrictions.
4) Here's a biggie. Science costs a LOT of money--the only two groups that can afford it are governments, and expensive biotech companies. The former can't afford to fund all science research, and the latter can't afford to not make a profit. Incidentally, biotech is an area where on the whole, the patent system works quite well.
At any rate, it's an impasse. Either you cut research by about 60%, or you deal with companies that need to make a profit on their research. Flip a coin and make your choice.
Nah, that's not how LN2 is normally dealt with.
Even inside a good vacuum insulator, the stuff IS going to boil off. Trying to maintain a sealed system will just create a bomb.
Undoubtedly, the stuff will vent to the air around it, and an appropriate amount of circulation will be ensured. I suspect there are fans down there already, so they probably don't need to change anything significantly.
Has ANYONE (ok, I know at least one person has) considered the possiblity that Sunonwealth has actually patented new and significant technology, and that's what they're trying to protect? Is it just SLIGHTLY possible that ADDA, who has a really big black mark in the patent law courts already, might have infringed a valid and worthwhile patent again?
Come on people, at least find out what the patent is about before damning a company to the lowest depths of hell for defending it.
Here's an example.
:-> )
Small company of 100 people, open 250 days/year.
Annual GROSS income $5 million.
$5m/250days/8hours = $2500/hr.
Virus comes in, hits 24 people.
Sysadmin can fix a machine in 15 minutes, making for six hours of work. That's $15000 in lost revenue!!! Then add on the salary for the sysadmin and the staff when they're not working, and you've got 12hr at $50/hr (average salary,
including the CEO, who makes $2million in stock options), or another $600. Wow, almost $16k for a small company!!! (interesting aside: $16000/24 people comes to $666/person
Now, let's look at this rationally. The sysadmin (a) can probably do several machines simultaneously, and (b) is already getting paid for this sort of thing. It's his job! Then there's the staff, who for their 15 minutes of downtime might take their allotted coffee break, or maybe even do some (gasp!) paperwork!
For non-destructive viruses, I would guess the average cost to be about $5/seat infected. A far cry from the $666/seat calculated above. Here are some of the flaws that lead to this discrepancy:
1) All work time is computer time for all staff infected.
2) Time spent repairing the damage is outside of normal duties for the admin.
3) All staff work at 100% efficiency all of the time.
4) Time spent repairing the damage can't be done when the staff aren't around.
In other words, the numbers quoted are nothing more than so much bullshit.
There is invariably a lot of flamage about bad
/.?
grammar, bad reporting, incorrect facts, and occasionally even completely untrue stories.
Have you considered (or would you) getting an editor and fact checker for new stories before they get posted? How would you see that affecting
On the one hand, google is (or at least has been so far) an excellent example of a small techie company that's grown huge and NOT lost their focus or sold out. The google home page still is ad free and fast, and their search engine is still the best going.
That said, I agree--things really and truly suck right now. They'd better get their shit together FAST, or they'll find themselves bereft of customers.
While playing with google's new usenet "interface," I keep repeating, "It's only a beta, only a beta." It's not helping much.
My account is gone, except for email; and doesn't look like it'll be coming back. ('no new accounts will be created' sounds like posting will be explicitly anonymous.) The way search results are displayed is really bad. I can't post at all. The only stuff available is from August 2000 onwards!
Google REALLY jumped the gun on this one. They should have announced the buyout, put some stuff up on the deja.com page, and then left well enough alone until they were ready to go 'live.' They should know better than to give us this shoddy beta WHILE ELIMINATING the old deja.
Deja hasn't always been a bloated "portal." When they were DejaNews, they were fairly sleek. Then after selling off their non-usenet bit to ebay, they got moderately sleek again.
At any rate, Google has already stated they'll bring back the archives ASAP (maybe already have?). Furthermore, this wasn't a merger--it was a BUYOUT. Google owns Deja now, and they'll be able to set it up however they want.
Your post sounds well reasoned and carefully thought out. However, it doesn't have any basis in reality. There are still anonymous usenet services available, not to mention ways of hacking an NNTP server. Usenet is in general by FAR the most anonymous service on the net, and always has been. Web pages are less anonymous than even the old DejaNews posting service.
Also, let's not forget the purpose of usenet (and the web for that matter)--to _publish_ information. Simple distribution can be achieved via FTP, unindexed web sites, UUCP, P2P, and even mailing CDROMs.
This might facilitate the _re_production of child porn (although I doubt it), but even that will give the authorities more information to catch the perpetrators. I don't see that this would increase the _production_ of child porn, which is the real crime.
First of all, as others have pointed out, you've already subsidised the RIAA if you've bought blank audio tapes.
Secondly, the government intervention on CD-R in Canada took a strange twist at the last moment. It's only in force on "CDR-Audio" blanks, which no one buys anyways.
OK, I can understand and respect (and maybe agree with) your opinions on genetic engineering. But do you honestly not see what the problems are? Or do you just not think they'll come to pass.
BIG difference, and I'm noping for one over the other.
Why? What's so wonderful about Linus that his homepage should be the de facto standard for HTML? Sure he's done lots of great things in computing, but he's hardly an authority on HTML and web authoring standards.
A little less hero worship, I think, would serve well.
Yep, probably true, but they're certainly allowed to (try to) do so.
Why not? What means is there to legally prevent company A from talking to company B about employee Z, product Q, or the weather?
As long as the companies don't slander or libel the employee, they can say whatever they want, to whoever they want. You can disagree, but that's the way the law is. Unless the companies involved are explicitly violating his rights, they're not restricted at all.
Yep, you're wrong. Many of the posts so far are wrong on one crucial point.
:-), nor is it invasion of privacy. It's called ACCOUNTABILITY.
/.. So can anyone else, including present and past employers. If you say it, and say it in a public forum of any sort, you are accountable for those statements. Period!
THE COMMENTS WERE PUBLISHED ON A PUBLIC BOARD, AND THE COMPANIES INVOLVED ARE FREE TO DISCUSS WHATEVER THEY WANT!
Why do so many people this morning seem to think that messages published publicly can't be held against the author? This isn't defamation (or diffamation?!
I can hold against YOU anything you say on
There are a lot of reasons that the former employer is entirely within their right to do many of these things.
1) Did the employee sign a nondisclosure agreement which precludes discussing such things?
2) Did the information he made public qualify as insider information? Was he trying to artificially manipulate the stock price? (doesn't sound like it, but the possibility is there)
3) Did the employee's initial contract preclude discussing the company for a given period after termination? (this is entirely legal and legally binding, folks!)
4) Was the material libelous?
5) Even if none of the above are true, freedom of speech goes both ways. If he's within his rights to post such things publicly, then the company is within their rights to pass the information on to whoever they want, including the new employer.
None of this should be taken as a justification for the former employer, but there's no sense in getting wound up in moral outrage over it.
Oops! I should have said storage systems, rather than computing. Quite right about communication channels--I stand corrected.
As for the BPS/KBPS/MBPS notation, they predate ASCII, and mixed case digital notation in general. I haven't seen them used except by the old guy shuffling off to retirement, for at least a decade. Ethernet, token ring, and modem communications all seem to use mixed case notation now.
You glossed over one point, and overemphasised another in my mind.
The overemphasis was k vs. K. It's not an extreme mistake to use K instead of k, because K has no meaning of its own. It _is_ still wrong, but it's not as egregious a mistake as confusing b/B or m/M.
The second point isn't one of SI notation, but strictly computer notation. When talking about computers, counting is ALWAYS done in powers of two! So...
k is 2^10 = 1024 NOT 1000!
M is 2^20 = 1024^2 = 1048576 NOT 1000000!
The reason this confusion came about was that drive manufacturers found they could up the advertised size of their disks by nearly five percent, and sell more of an identically sized drive than the competition. The lie of k=1000, M=1000000 in computing was pure and sleazy marketing. No more.
OK for the record, I live in Canada. I realise things are different (generally worse) south of the border. You have my sympathy.
Secondly, I'd ask for one careful distinction: You said, "...people seem to assume that everyone is straight, or should be straight..." Those are two VERY different assumptions, and shouldn't be casually lumped together.
Now, "When me and my bf hold hands or display affection in public, we get stared at like freaks..." I know. This is just wrong, and it bugs the hell out of me. Personally, I cheer quietly when I see a gay or lesbian couple holding hands in public, not showing off but just not caring. It makes me think that we're getting closer to a just society. I don't, however, cheer at seeing bumper stickers on work cubicles that say, "A queer works here!" It would be just as inappropriate for me to put up a sign saying, "Ain't it great to be straight?"
So I'll accuse THOSE people (and only them) of flaunting it, but not those who simply try to ignore the stupidity of homophobic society. Deal?
:-)
OK, you've got WWF-types pretending to play something like football. If they could play, then they'd be playing for real teams and real money.
WHY would anyone want to either watch or listen to a bunch of third-rate hacks trip over their shoelaces or burn out their synapses trying to come up with pithy statements? It was destined to be terrible from the beginning. They've made it perfectly clear that the cheerleaders are the main source of revenue, and even they can't dance. Oh well, at least we have the crotchcams.
"Actually, if security is your #1 concern, OpenBSD is your best candidate. Speed appears to be the FreeBSD specialty."
Gah! Brain fart on my part. I meant OpenBSD, I typed FreeBSD. I can't believe I did that...
"Always try new things; the OS world is richer now than it has been in years thanks to the free software movement. Don't become a zealot if you can help it; it stops you from being open-minded."
Absolutely! Always be willing to dive into the unknown, and come up with more insight than you had before.
"When you stare at a pretty woman (I'm assuming you're a straight guy) you're advertising that you're straight."
Most likely. Not necessarily, though. There are more reasons to stare at a woman than wanting to jump her.
"When you file for a wedding license you're telling your local govt that you're straight."
Not around here. They're fighting hard for--and winning--the right for gay couples to legally marry.
"When you wear a wedding ring in public, you're advertising that you're straight."
Utter nonsense! With a wedding ring, you're advertising nothing more than the fact that you're married--in your own heart and mind. I know of a bunch of gay couples that wear each other's rings. In fact, most of my gay friends do. Hmmm, must mean we're all getting old and settling down. :-)
At any rate, these points (even if they were true, which they're not) do not address the original poster's point. Wearing a ring is not the same as parading down a street, carrying a sign. Holding hands is not the same as starting every post to a technical forum with, "as a monogamous gay man..." Yes, I've seen it, although thankfully not on /.
The point is that while I don't hide my sexuality, and don't think that anyone should have to, I also don't push my sexuality as an issue on every topic I discuss. I strongly suspect (can't assume for sure) that the original poster is annoyed by these people, rather than all gays. As a point of fact, it's not just gays that suffer this failing. There are leather fetishists who push their agenda just as hard in just as inappropriate places, and even straight vanilla types who do the same. Usually they're the redneck jerks or the nymphomaniacs who come to work and tell you all about the great sex they had last night.
The point is that I don't give a rat's ass about whether you're gay or not. If you are (and again, if you're not), then introduce me to your partner. Don't presume that it's crucial to your abilities and insights as a computer geek (my field--this is presuming you'd be a coworker), and has to be hammered home at every possible juncture.
Well now! This is one of the more preposterous things I've read on /. in a while, but I'm willing to ask WHY you feel this way.
For instance, what does this say to those people who have found the person they want to spend the rest of their lives with, but aren't interested in having children? Clearly they shouldn't get married, by your idea, but does this mean that they should stay away from each other? Should they have unwanted children and put them up for adoption?
Of course, If our only reason for getting married is to raise children, then given the increasing population pressures, we should consider banning marriage altogether, or very seriously restricting it.
Same old question as OS decisions ALWAYS come down to.
What do you want it to do?
Do you want to run the latest open source programs on the latest hardware? Linux has better hardware support than anyone.
Do you want a support stream that you're willing to pay for, and need to run Unix on Intel? Sun's support is remarkably good.
Do you want the fastest and most cleanly written OS that's being developed? *BSD is your candidate.
If security is your #1 concern, FreeBSD specifically is the beast for you.
If you want to deploy a corporate desktop environment, WinNT is probably the only option you'll be given. (and may be the best!)
If all you want to do is play games, get Win98SE.
In other words, GET THE BEST TOOL FOR THE TASK AT HAND.