Okay you should know something of your subject before posting. WAFL (or ZFS features) is and has been an integral part of NetApp storage for many years now. Before ZFS development was even started NetApp was basing its business off of WAFL on storage devices. In fact a few weeks ago NetApp was honored at an industry event for their innovation in developing WAFL (funny part is that Sun helped sponsor the event!). Sun comes along, and maybe not maliciously, copies the features of WAFL because of the value, sees the similarity, and quickly open sources it to be the "good guy". The patent system sucks--already had that discussion many times, but it seems pretty cut and dried. And on top of all this Dave Hitz from NetApp says he doesn't want to take ZFS away from the open source community, he just doesn't want Sun (it isn't capitalized!) to build their business on copied features to compete with them. Bottom line....NetApp is NOT a patent troll. Sun got their hand caught in the cookie jar.
Want it all you want. It won't happen. The regulatory charges and taxes vary depending on your location. It will seriously foul up advertising to even attempt it. Everytime I sign up for service my provider can tell me exactly what I will be paying, but the TV ads certainly can't.
You don't NEED to sign a contract.There has never been an absolute need to sign a contract to get cell service with ANY company. The reason contracts have become so common place is the need for Americans to have everything as CHEAP as possible.
During college I worked selling cell phones for most of the big telecom players and with any of them you could purchase any of their phones at retail price and start service without a contract. Occasionally there were promotional deals you could not get under a month-to-month plan, but largely they didn't care.
The reason for the contract is they simply need to recoup the price of the phone. Of course they add some extra time beyond getting the money back for their handset in order to profit, but that's the deal people accept. You don't have the cash to buy a house? Well you get screwed with interest in order to buy it on loan. You want a free phone? Well you get screwed with a two year contract. QUIT BEING CHEAP AMERICA!
Every compiler I have ever used has a pretty good spell checker built right in--in fact, not only does it spelling matter, but the syntax must be correct too. A spell check for programming seems like a waste of time.
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Okay you should know something of your subject before posting. WAFL (or ZFS features) is and has been an integral part of NetApp storage for many years now. Before ZFS development was even started NetApp was basing its business off of WAFL on storage devices. In fact a few weeks ago NetApp was honored at an industry event for their innovation in developing WAFL (funny part is that Sun helped sponsor the event!). Sun comes along, and maybe not maliciously, copies the features of WAFL because of the value, sees the similarity, and quickly open sources it to be the "good guy". The patent system sucks--already had that discussion many times, but it seems pretty cut and dried. And on top of all this Dave Hitz from NetApp says he doesn't want to take ZFS away from the open source community, he just doesn't want Sun (it isn't capitalized!) to build their business on copied features to compete with them. Bottom line....NetApp is NOT a patent troll. Sun got their hand caught in the cookie jar.
Want it all you want. It won't happen. The regulatory charges and taxes vary depending on your location. It will seriously foul up advertising to even attempt it. Everytime I sign up for service my provider can tell me exactly what I will be paying, but the TV ads certainly can't.
You don't NEED to sign a contract.There has never been an absolute need to sign a contract to get cell service with ANY company. The reason contracts have become so common place is the need for Americans to have everything as CHEAP as possible. During college I worked selling cell phones for most of the big telecom players and with any of them you could purchase any of their phones at retail price and start service without a contract. Occasionally there were promotional deals you could not get under a month-to-month plan, but largely they didn't care. The reason for the contract is they simply need to recoup the price of the phone. Of course they add some extra time beyond getting the money back for their handset in order to profit, but that's the deal people accept. You don't have the cash to buy a house? Well you get screwed with interest in order to buy it on loan. You want a free phone? Well you get screwed with a two year contract. QUIT BEING CHEAP AMERICA!
Every compiler I have ever used has a pretty good spell checker built right in--in fact, not only does it spelling matter, but the syntax must be correct too. A spell check for programming seems like a waste of time.