As long as there is Unix, there will be Linux and BSD.
Why? Simple. Sun, IBM and HP all see Linux as a way to gain mind share. Let's look at two hypothetical:
A business builds a small web server and database server using NT or 2000. Their business grows and soon they realize they need more power. Microsoft promises to scale infinitely. A salesman from Sun shows up and offers a Solaris solution. Better stability, scales better, and Oracle is kicking MS-SQL's but in exactly the kind of business they're running. But running Solaris would require retraining of staff, replacing all their software and migrating their data to a new system. Sun looses the sale.
A business builds a small web server and database server using Linux. The business outgrows the memory model of Linux because the same memory optimizations that allow you to have a 4,000 hit per day web server running on a 386 cause some problems when you reach eight processors and 24 gigs of RAM. Solaris walks in and offers a solution that scales better, runs ports of all the software they're using and because they know how to run Linux, Solaris is a small skip and a jump away in IT skills.
The more people who run Linux or BSD on their home systems, the more sales the big Unix vendors will be able to make, because there will be more people who know how to operate the systems. This is exactly why NT has gained so much ground. People know how to run Windows, so they figure a web server running NT can't be that big a leap.
Oddly enough, optimizing the Kernel for massive systems with a plethora of processors and RAM could hurt Linux if the big Unix companies see it as a threat.
I can tell from your post that you don't spend much time in the US.
You clearly came from someplace where parents are involved in their children's lives, values are important and personal liberty and freedom has meaning. That is NOT the United States of America.
The USA is a nation of lazy couch potatoes who want everything fixed in a minute. Family conflict MUST be resolved in the sticom time frame of 22 minutes, or a daytime drama hour if it's really serious. Dinner should all but prepare itself (More than three steps and it doesn't sell) and children should be self raising.
No one wants the responsibility for anything. Parents don't want to raise their kids. They want the baseball trophies and class photos, but they don't want any of the heavy emotional messiness of a daughter's first period or explaining sex, violence and drugs to Little Jo. They want the schools and TV to raise the kids, and if something is wrong with the child they want a pill to make it go away by evening or they'll sue the doctors for incompetence.
Everyone is too busy with their empty, meaningless jobs to maintain relationships or family ties, children blame all their mistakes on poor parenting and spoiled baby boomers call their parents all sorts of terrible things just because they never smoked pot or dropped acid.
America has reached the state of lazy, degenerate opulence that Rome had shortly before it fell. Too lazy to do anything constructive, weekend extreme sports are considered somehow fulfilling, focusing on someone other than yourself is pathetic and whoever has fewer toys than you is pathetic and not worth the air they breathe.
Americans no longer understand real suffering or oppression, so the slow leaching of rights and liberties goes unnoticed. As long as the latest episode of Friends airs on time everything will be fine.
Of course Americans are allowing, even demanding Censorware into schools and libraries. Thinking is hard, and actually dealing with what's out there and teaching children values and ethics is too much to bother with, besides, talking to little Jessica about all the evil things on the Internet would mean you'd miss tonight's episode of Law and Order.
Only the young and the beautiful matter. Hollywood tells you so. Hollywood is the Church. More Americans believe in little Gray aliens kidnapping us and shoving probes up our arses than in any kind of a God. People are more worried about the new movie with the biggest special effects than in World Events.
How many Americans can name three world leaders? Two? One World Leader??? Many Americans don't even know who their own President is! From the reactions I've heard only 10% of the total population even knew the Electoral College even existed!
Americans don't care if Censorware blocks the important things. Just as long as the responsibility for raising the children is taken off their shoulders.
Yes, I am an American. There was a time I was proud of that. Of course that was when my age was still expressed with a single digit.
Censorship, oppression, loss of freedom, these are the things America is about. Fahrenheit 451 was not science fiction. It was a clear and detailed picture of what lies ahead. Get used to it.
Easiest way to find porn
on
Scour is Dead
·
· Score: 2
Newsgroups. Download Forte Free Agent if you're running Windows (If you're in Linux the software you'll need is already there) and set it up to use your ISP's news server.
Not that I do any of that sort of thing. I only use Newsgroups to keep up to date on Quake mods and the latest info on getting my USB Orb drive to run under Linux...
Personally, I gave up on Netscape itself a long time ago. I'm using Mozilla when I can but still end up falling back on IE 5 pretty often.
From the beginning of the Mozilla project, I've just seen Netscape as a "Real Browser Plus AOL advertizing" product, and can't for the life of me think of a single reason to even consider using full-blown Netscape instead of Mozilla.
The Netscape browser exists for the single purpose of selling something. If you just want a (relatively) clean, simple browser use Mozilla.
Of course the Netscape browser is full of ads and flashy eye candy, that's the whole point of not just calling Mozilla Netscape.
This article is not very different from complaining about a Ford logo on a Ford truck. Of COURSE Netscape's browser is full of links, it exists for advertizing purposes. IE doesn't have that extra fluff because IE isn't there to sell a browser, but claim market scare for Microsoft. IE isn't a product on it's own, it's a grab for market share.
Most WYSIWYG editors insert Untitled Document or something similar by default. I know Netscape Composer used to do this. I've been using Homesite for ages so I don't know if it still does.
It just means they never went to the menu item that set the title to something informative.
I have a gut feeling some putz charged them an arm and a leg to design that web site for them...
Details about their server:
on
Patent Warfare
·
· Score: 2
Ultimately, their "we used a default template" website resides on Verio, probably on a leased server. best.com either owns or leases the server on Verio and resells bandwidth to subscribers. I'd look up more but I'm too tired to bother with a reverse DNS lookup. Besides, I work in the morning.
WHOIS entry:
Registrant:
TechSearch LLC (TECHSEARCH-LLC-DOM)
500 Skokie Blvd
Northbrook, IL 90062
US
Domain Name: TECHSEARCH-LLC.COM
Administrative Contact, Billing Contact:
Webmaster, Robert (RS12741) webmaster@TECHSEARCH-LLC.COM
TechSearch LLC
500 Skokie Blvd
Northbrook, IL 60062
+1 847 509 0774
Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
Hostmaster, Best Internet (BIH2) hostmaster@BEST.COM
Best Internet Communications, Inc.
345 E. Middlefield Road
Mountain View, CA 94043
+1 650 964 2378 www.best.com
Record last updated on 27-Jul-2000.
Record expires on 19-May-2001.
Record created on 19-May-1998.
Database last updated on 31-Oct-2000 06:27:59 EST.
Domain Name.......... best.com
Creation Date........ 2000-03-23
Registration Date.... 2000-03-23
Expiry Date.......... 2001-08-29
Organisation Name.... Verio, Inc.
Organisation Address. 8005 South Chester Street
Organisation Address. Suite 200
Organisation Address. Englewood
Organisation Address. 80112
Organisation Address. CO
Organisation Address. UNITED STATES
Admin Name........... Verio Hostmaster
Admin Address........ 8005 S. Chester Street
Admin Address........ Suite 200
Admin Address........ Englewood
Admin Address........ 80112
Admin Address........ CO
Admin Address........ UNITED STATES
Admin Email.......... hostmaster@verio.net
Admin Phone.......... 214 290 8620
Admin Fax............ 214 745 1877
Tech Name............ Verio Hostmaster
Tech Address......... 8005 S. Chester Street
Tech Address......... Suite 200
Tech Address......... Englewood
Tech Address......... 80112
Tech Address......... CO
Tech Address......... UNITED STATES
Tech Email........... hostmaster@verio.net
Tech Phone........... 214 290 8620
Tech Fax............. 214 745 1877
Name Server.......... NS1.BEST.COM
Name Server.......... NS2.BEST.COM
Name Server.......... NS3.BEST.COM
The previous information has been obtained either directly from the
registrant or a registrar of the domain name other than Network Solutions.
Network Solutions, therefore, does not guarantee its accuracy or
completeness.
Open Letter to TechSearch
on
Patent Warfare
·
· Score: 2
To whom it may concern,
After seeing a story about your firm on the web site www.slashdot.org, a friend and I started a discussion about your site's design, and I was wondering if you could settle the issue for us.
I say someone's nephew slapped it together with FrontPage, and he says one of the lawyers did it using whatever "Web Site Creation Tools" your Virtual Hosting service offers for newbies.
Which is it?
PS, Please don't sue me for criticising your web site. I was just noticing how ironic it is a firm that claims to own the patent on emulating one processor with another (Will you be suing Transmeta next?) and pretty much claims the patent on any kind of graphics on the Internet can't pull together the skill to design a decent web site.
When will you file your lawsuites against Macromedia, Real, Microsoft and the guy who invented GIF? They violate your patents too.
How to reach these SOBs to complain
on
Patent Warfare
·
· Score: 2
Anyone else notice that http://www.techsearch-llc.com/ was put together by a moron?
No Title for any of the pages, and the "Contact Us" link goes straight to an AOL account?
The link on http://www.techsearch-llc.com/about.htm SAYS info@techsearch.com
but when you mouseover, you find out it's a link to mailto:brownao@aol.com
They claim patents on major portions of computer technology, yet don't have the skill to set up an MX entry in a DNS...
The trial isn't over yet. It will probably be drawn out for years to come. M$ will loose in some courts, the DOJ in others. No one will "Win" or "Loose" the trial until the Supreme Court hears or refuses to hear it, or one side gives up on further appeals.
Even if M$ were to loose, it would still take another three to ten years to split them up.
As for the whole "$$$ for the better lawyer" story, what do you think has been the major problem for the DECSS case? Judges who don't get it and lawyers who can talk circles around the truth.
There are plenty of cases where a criminal went free because of the quality of their lawyers. Standard Oil was bigger and badder than M$ can ever dream of being and made Bill Gates look like a Saint. It took years to even touch them, but not until JDR's personal fortune was 2% of the entire US Economy.
The "Teflon Don" escaped justice time and taime again, and OJ walked away a free man.
These are all because of lawyers and the US legal system. It has nothing to do with what is right and wrong, but who has the best legal team. Anyone who really thinks the "truth will set you free" or that anything other than money runs the nation is a sad individual with no concept of reality who might as well believe in Santa Calus.
Perhaps not Open Source in particular, but other projects as well. ANYONE who writes M$ compatible software could be attacked with this. While Linux, SAMBA, WINE and so on are the first examples that springs to my mind, this could also be used to attack BEos, MAC, Applix and any other software house that M$ doesn't want around. In the end it could be a HUGE boon to M$ by allowing then to use lawyers to destroy anyone who is a competitor, and since the destruction of each and every one of them would be legal, the Dept of Justice would be hard pressed to cry foul. "It's not my fault I'm the only game in town, everyone else was crooked and broke the law."
I remembered the story from a PBS documentary years ago. (Circa 1995) and must have messed up on the company name.
Of course, the point wasn't about the company, but the whole idea of having one team hack the product and the other design a new one based on what they learned.
Compaq was very worried about this when they cloned the IBM PC. They had one group pf hackers chip away at an IBM PC to build the specs for what it needed to do, and a separate "Clean Room" team to use the specs and create the cloned BIOS. The "Clean room" designers had to be able to prove they had never worked with an IBM PC to get the job.
And thus the IMB clone of the PC architecture was born.
If they hadn't taken these precautions they would have been sued into oblivion by IBM and all PCs would be IBM PCs to this very day.
It's very simple. Have some code "Stolen," then use the whole "intellectual Property" issue to destroy the Linux Vendors a few upgrades from now. Don't you remember the Halloween documents? The proposal that Trade Secret Laws could be used to destroy open source???
Six months from you you'll see the SAMBA and WINE teams being sued. M$ will win because the judges know nothing about computers and M$ money can buy the best lawyers.
Oh well. I've been meaning to look at BEos for a while now anyway.
Most radical ways to demonstrate your point about censorware
Go to Library. Use a black marker to "protect" everyone else from printed content that would be blocked by censorware the library uses
Do the same at school
In public places (Classroom of teacher who advocates censorware, floor of the house or Senate) use a loud air horn to "protect" everyone from anything that censorware would block. This means Dick Army never gets to speak. Ever.
There are a number of really good ways to beat censorware.
Lawsuits. Sue the people trying to keep your child from seeing dangerous things like the Writings of Rush Limbaugh
any trick found on 2600.com
Bootable BEOS CD reconfigured to use the school's or Library's internet connection
Bootable BSD CD reconfigured to use the school's or Library's internet connection
Bootable Linux CD reconfigured to use the school's or Library's internet connection
Bootable QNX CD reconfigured to use the school's or Library's internet connection
I'd say Do your web surfing from home but that is not an option for students who cannot afford a computer at home.
This is all an annoyance for people who have a home computer with an Internet connection, but a real disaster for people who do not.
Point 1. Most users don't know the difference between Word and the OS.
Point 2. Most users will NEVER know the difference between the OS and the Office products they use.
I don't have the programming skill to make this happen, but why not create a Linux Kernel that just loads up into a customized StarOffice (Now that it's open source?)
The Office Appliance. Give it the ability to log into Netware, Unik and other Servers and you'll have exactly what most desktop users actually want.
Why not? Heck, most/. ers could slap together a demo within 24 hours of reading this post!
I'm the MIS Director of an Internet firm. We went through a LOT of people in the department before I a) figured out how to find good people and b) learned how to manage them.
The books helped me the most:
How to Work for a Jerk: Your Success Is the Best Revenge teaches the different ways you can become a lousy manager and how to avoid them, while teaching you "suit" methods of dealing with those who outrank you. It also clues you in to the dirty tricks and false fronts those under you will use.
The One Minute Manager essentially tells you hot to avoid becoming a micromanager. It outlines the best practices for letting your staff be creative and do fulfilling work while keeping control of the situation.
Although published by the Borg. and obviously containing advice their OS division does not follow, the Software Project Survival Guide outlines how to run a software development project. It outlines the kinds of methods used by NASA. Propper up front planning, avoiding feature creep and a host of other plans to ensure that your programmers don't pull the heroic all night programming hauls but instead go home to play Quake and hunt for UnixChix after 5:00 comes around, while finishing the project on time and on budget with few bugs.
Last but not least is, believe it or not, Managing for Dummies . A lot of it falls under the "Well Duh" heading but if you have NO management experience it's a decent primer, but not as valuable as the first two books I mentioned.
Hasn't anyone been paying attention to the patent wars that have been going on? The patent will pass, do not doubt it. The US Patent Office is too stupid to catch it. "Oohh a way to make a computer pretend it's a different kind of computer. No one's ever done THAT before!"
The patent will remain until it is challenged in court and defeated, and it's almost impossible to overthrow a patent in court. The 800 lb gorillas can't start anything unless VOS tries to enforce the patent against them.
The end result? VOS gets the perfect weapon with which to kill off smaller competitors as long as they leave IBM and the like alone. The IBM bean counters won't authorize a legal battle over the patent just to keep a few Open Source projects alive. To them, it's not worth the expense. Plex86 is either killed off or developed only by people who live in countries that laugh at US patent laws. VMWare will probably be safe, but if VOS develops an attitude and gets some venture capital behind their legal department, VMWare will be toast.
Let's say I want to buy the parts to build a bar code scanner and hook it up to my computer. What should I do? Where do I start? Where online are there instructions? What software do I use? Can I get it to look up the ISBN of a book on Amazon?
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.420.cc/forum/DCForumID21 /10 0.html
www.matthewmiller.net
The Gathering??
"So, it's here at last. The Gathering. Time is catching up with us my friend."
"There can be only one!"
Sorry, someone had to say it.
www.matthewmiller.netMay she have her father's brains and her mother's looks,
The beauty of Venus and a love of Penguins,
The mind of Einstein and the fluency of Shakespere,
And may she be as loved and admired in the field she chooses as her own Papa.
May her parents have infinite patience,
The time to spend with her,
The wisdom to raise her
The courage to teach her that which she needs to know,
And may they be as proud of her accomplishments as if they were their own.
Congratulations Mr. Torvalds.
www.matthewmiller.net
As long as there is Unix, there will be Linux and BSD.
Why? Simple. Sun, IBM and HP all see Linux as a way to gain mind share. Let's look at two hypothetical:
A business builds a small web server and database server using NT or 2000. Their business grows and soon they realize they need more power. Microsoft promises to scale infinitely. A salesman from Sun shows up and offers a Solaris solution. Better stability, scales better, and Oracle is kicking MS-SQL's but in exactly the kind of business they're running. But running Solaris would require retraining of staff, replacing all their software and migrating their data to a new system. Sun looses the sale.
A business builds a small web server and database server using Linux. The business outgrows the memory model of Linux because the same memory optimizations that allow you to have a 4,000 hit per day web server running on a 386 cause some problems when you reach eight processors and 24 gigs of RAM. Solaris walks in and offers a solution that scales better, runs ports of all the software they're using and because they know how to run Linux, Solaris is a small skip and a jump away in IT skills.
The more people who run Linux or BSD on their home systems, the more sales the big Unix vendors will be able to make, because there will be more people who know how to operate the systems. This is exactly why NT has gained so much ground. People know how to run Windows, so they figure a web server running NT can't be that big a leap.
Oddly enough, optimizing the Kernel for massive systems with a plethora of processors and RAM could hurt Linux if the big Unix companies see it as a threat.
www.matthewmiller.net
I can tell from your post that you don't spend much time in the US.
You clearly came from someplace where parents are involved in their children's lives, values are important and personal liberty and freedom has meaning. That is NOT the United States of America.
The USA is a nation of lazy couch potatoes who want everything fixed in a minute. Family conflict MUST be resolved in the sticom time frame of 22 minutes, or a daytime drama hour if it's really serious. Dinner should all but prepare itself (More than three steps and it doesn't sell) and children should be self raising.
No one wants the responsibility for anything. Parents don't want to raise their kids. They want the baseball trophies and class photos, but they don't want any of the heavy emotional messiness of a daughter's first period or explaining sex, violence and drugs to Little Jo. They want the schools and TV to raise the kids, and if something is wrong with the child they want a pill to make it go away by evening or they'll sue the doctors for incompetence.
Everyone is too busy with their empty, meaningless jobs to maintain relationships or family ties, children blame all their mistakes on poor parenting and spoiled baby boomers call their parents all sorts of terrible things just because they never smoked pot or dropped acid.
America has reached the state of lazy, degenerate opulence that Rome had shortly before it fell. Too lazy to do anything constructive, weekend extreme sports are considered somehow fulfilling, focusing on someone other than yourself is pathetic and whoever has fewer toys than you is pathetic and not worth the air they breathe.
Americans no longer understand real suffering or oppression, so the slow leaching of rights and liberties goes unnoticed. As long as the latest episode of Friends airs on time everything will be fine.
Of course Americans are allowing, even demanding Censorware into schools and libraries. Thinking is hard, and actually dealing with what's out there and teaching children values and ethics is too much to bother with, besides, talking to little Jessica about all the evil things on the Internet would mean you'd miss tonight's episode of Law and Order.
Only the young and the beautiful matter. Hollywood tells you so. Hollywood is the Church. More Americans believe in little Gray aliens kidnapping us and shoving probes up our arses than in any kind of a God. People are more worried about the new movie with the biggest special effects than in World Events.
How many Americans can name three world leaders? Two? One World Leader??? Many Americans don't even know who their own President is! From the reactions I've heard only 10% of the total population even knew the Electoral College even existed!
Americans don't care if Censorware blocks the important things. Just as long as the responsibility for raising the children is taken off their shoulders.
Yes, I am an American. There was a time I was proud of that. Of course that was when my age was still expressed with a single digit.
Censorship, oppression, loss of freedom, these are the things America is about. Fahrenheit 451 was not science fiction. It was a clear and detailed picture of what lies ahead. Get used to it.
www.matthewmiller.netNewsgroups. Download Forte Free Agent if you're running Windows (If you're in Linux the software you'll need is already there) and set it up to use your ISP's news server.
Not that I do any of that sort of thing. I only use Newsgroups to keep up to date on Quake mods and the latest info on getting my USB Orb drive to run under Linux...
Personally, I gave up on Netscape itself a long time ago. I'm using Mozilla when I can but still end up falling back on IE 5 pretty often.
From the beginning of the Mozilla project, I've just seen Netscape as a "Real Browser Plus AOL advertizing" product, and can't for the life of me think of a single reason to even consider using full-blown Netscape instead of Mozilla.
The Netscape browser exists for the single purpose of selling something. If you just want a (relatively) clean, simple browser use Mozilla.
Of course the Netscape browser is full of ads and flashy eye candy, that's the whole point of not just calling Mozilla Netscape.
This article is not very different from complaining about a Ford logo on a Ford truck. Of COURSE Netscape's browser is full of links, it exists for advertizing purposes. IE doesn't have that extra fluff because IE isn't there to sell a browser, but claim market scare for Microsoft. IE isn't a product on it's own, it's a grab for market share.
www.matthewmiller.net
Watch Gattaca. It's a very rosy view of the future, but Hollywood had to inject SOME home or no one woud ever watch it.
Most WYSIWYG editors insert Untitled Document or something similar by default. I know Netscape Composer used to do this. I've been using Homesite for ages so I don't know if it still does.
It just means they never went to the menu item that set the title to something informative.
I have a gut feeling some putz charged them an arm and a leg to design that web site for them...
Ultimately, their "we used a default template" website resides on Verio, probably on a leased server. best.com either owns or leases the server on Verio and resells bandwidth to subscribers. I'd look up more but I'm too tired to bother with a reverse DNS lookup. Besides, I work in the morning.
Here's the evidence:
URL: http://www.techsearch-llc.com
IP: 209.24.191.243
WHOIS entry:
Registrant:
TechSearch LLC (TECHSEARCH-LLC-DOM)
500 Skokie Blvd
Northbrook, IL 90062
US
Domain Name: TECHSEARCH-LLC.COM
Administrative Contact, Billing Contact:
Webmaster, Robert (RS12741) webmaster@TECHSEARCH-LLC.COM
TechSearch LLC
500 Skokie Blvd
Northbrook, IL 60062
+1 847 509 0774
Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
Hostmaster, Best Internet (BIH2) hostmaster@BEST.COM
Best Internet Communications, Inc.
345 E. Middlefield Road
Mountain View, CA 94043
+1 650 964 2378 www.best.com
Record last updated on 27-Jul-2000.
Record expires on 19-May-2001.
Record created on 19-May-1998.
Database last updated on 31-Oct-2000 06:27:59 EST.
Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.BEST.COM 209.24.149.41
NS2.BEST.COM 209.157.102.11
NS3.BEST.COM 209.24.149.42
WHOIS entry for their web hosting firm:
Domain Name.......... best.com
Creation Date........ 2000-03-23
Registration Date.... 2000-03-23
Expiry Date.......... 2001-08-29
Organisation Name.... Verio, Inc.
Organisation Address. 8005 South Chester Street
Organisation Address. Suite 200
Organisation Address. Englewood
Organisation Address. 80112
Organisation Address. CO
Organisation Address. UNITED STATES
Admin Name........... Verio Hostmaster
Admin Address........ 8005 S. Chester Street
Admin Address........ Suite 200
Admin Address........ Englewood
Admin Address........ 80112
Admin Address........ CO
Admin Address........ UNITED STATES
Admin Email.......... hostmaster@verio.net
Admin Phone.......... 214 290 8620
Admin Fax............ 214 745 1877
Tech Name............ Verio Hostmaster
Tech Address......... 8005 S. Chester Street
Tech Address......... Suite 200
Tech Address......... Englewood
Tech Address......... 80112
Tech Address......... CO
Tech Address......... UNITED STATES
Tech Email........... hostmaster@verio.net
Tech Phone........... 214 290 8620
Tech Fax............. 214 745 1877
Name Server.......... NS1.BEST.COM
Name Server.......... NS2.BEST.COM
Name Server.......... NS3.BEST.COM
The previous information has been obtained either directly from the
registrant or a registrar of the domain name other than Network Solutions. Network Solutions, therefore, does not guarantee its accuracy or completeness.
To whom it may concern,
After seeing a story about your firm on the web site www.slashdot.org, a friend and I started a discussion about your site's design, and I was wondering if you could settle the issue for us.
I say someone's nephew slapped it together with FrontPage, and he says one of the lawyers did it using whatever "Web Site Creation Tools" your Virtual Hosting service offers for newbies.
Which is it?
PS, Please don't sue me for criticising your web site. I was just noticing how ironic it is a firm that claims to own the patent on emulating one processor with another (Will you be suing Transmeta next?) and pretty much claims the patent on any kind of graphics on the Internet can't pull together the skill to design a decent web site.
When will you file your lawsuites against Macromedia, Real, Microsoft and the guy who invented GIF? They violate your patents too.
From http://www.techsearch-llc.com/about.htm& lt;/a>
Phone: (847) 509-0795
Fax: (847) 509-1330
Directions from Chicago
Directions from O'Hare Airport
Street Address:
500 Skokie Boulevard
Suite 585
Northbrook, IL 60062
Anyone else notice that http://www.techsearch-llc.com/ was put together by a moron?
No Title for any of the pages, and the "Contact Us" link goes straight to an AOL account?
The link on http://www.techsearch-llc.com/about.htm SAYS info@techsearch.com but when you mouseover, you find out it's a link to mailto:brownao@aol.com
They claim patents on major portions of computer technology, yet don't have the skill to set up an MX entry in a DNS...
Anyone else here really not like lawyers today???
So, the only think you can find wrong with my argument is the spelling of one word.
Thank you. You defeat in this debate has been noted.
"If you can not attack his logic and reasoning, attack his spelling. Loudly"
The trial isn't over yet. It will probably be drawn out for years to come. M$ will loose in some courts, the DOJ in others. No one will "Win" or "Loose" the trial until the Supreme Court hears or refuses to hear it, or one side gives up on further appeals.
Even if M$ were to loose, it would still take another three to ten years to split them up.
As for the whole "$$$ for the better lawyer" story, what do you think has been the major problem for the DECSS case? Judges who don't get it and lawyers who can talk circles around the truth.
There are plenty of cases where a criminal went free because of the quality of their lawyers. Standard Oil was bigger and badder than M$ can ever dream of being and made Bill Gates look like a Saint. It took years to even touch them, but not until JDR's personal fortune was 2% of the entire US Economy.
The "Teflon Don" escaped justice time and taime again, and OJ walked away a free man.
These are all because of lawyers and the US legal system. It has nothing to do with what is right and wrong, but who has the best legal team. Anyone who really thinks the "truth will set you free" or that anything other than money runs the nation is a sad individual with no concept of reality who might as well believe in Santa Calus.
Perhaps not Open Source in particular, but other projects as well. ANYONE who writes M$ compatible software could be attacked with this. While Linux, SAMBA, WINE and so on are the first examples that springs to my mind, this could also be used to attack BEos, MAC, Applix and any other software house that M$ doesn't want around. In the end it could be a HUGE boon to M$ by allowing then to use lawyers to destroy anyone who is a competitor, and since the destruction of each and every one of them would be legal, the Dept of Justice would be hard pressed to cry foul. "It's not my fault I'm the only game in town, everyone else was crooked and broke the law."
They may not be able to stop you and me from running Linux at home, but they could shut down Red Hat, VA Linux and kill corporate use of the OS.
I stand (Or sit to be more accurate) corrected.
I remembered the story from a PBS documentary years ago. (Circa 1995) and must have messed up on the company name.
Of course, the point wasn't about the company, but the whole idea of having one team hack the product and the other design a new one based on what they learned.
Compaq was very worried about this when they cloned the IBM PC. They had one group pf hackers chip away at an IBM PC to build the specs for what it needed to do, and a separate "Clean Room" team to use the specs and create the cloned BIOS. The "Clean room" designers had to be able to prove they had never worked with an IBM PC to get the job.
And thus the IMB clone of the PC architecture was born.
If they hadn't taken these precautions they would have been sued into oblivion by IBM and all PCs would be IBM PCs to this very day.
It's very simple. Have some code "Stolen," then use the whole "intellectual Property" issue to destroy the Linux Vendors a few upgrades from now. Don't you remember the Halloween documents? The proposal that Trade Secret Laws could be used to destroy open source???
Six months from you you'll see the SAMBA and WINE teams being sued. M$ will win because the judges know nothing about computers and M$ money can buy the best lawyers.
Oh well. I've been meaning to look at BEos for a while now anyway.
There are a number of really good ways to beat censorware.
- Lawsuits. Sue the people trying to keep your child from seeing dangerous things like the Writings of Rush Limbaugh
- any trick found on 2600.com
- Bootable BEOS CD reconfigured to use the school's or Library's internet connection
- Bootable BSD CD reconfigured to use the school's or Library's internet connection
- Bootable Linux CD reconfigured to use the school's or Library's internet connection
- Bootable QNX CD reconfigured to use the school's or Library's internet connection
- I'd say Do your web surfing from home but that is not an option for students who cannot afford a computer at home.
This is all an annoyance for people who have a home computer with an Internet connection, but a real disaster for people who do not.Point 1. Most users don't know the difference between Word and the OS.
/. ers could slap together a demo within 24 hours of reading this post!
Point 2. Most users will NEVER know the difference between the OS and the Office products they use.
I don't have the programming skill to make this happen, but why not create a Linux Kernel that just loads up into a customized StarOffice (Now that it's open source?)
The Office Appliance. Give it the ability to log into Netware, Unik and other Servers and you'll have exactly what most desktop users actually want.
Why not? Heck, most
I'm the MIS Director of an Internet firm. We went through a LOT of people in the department before I a) figured out how to find good people and b) learned how to manage them.
The books helped me the most:
How to Work for a Jerk: Your Success Is the Best Revenge teaches the different ways you can become a lousy manager and how to avoid them, while teaching you "suit" methods of dealing with those who outrank you. It also clues you in to the dirty tricks and false fronts those under you will use.
The One Minute Manager essentially tells you hot to avoid becoming a micromanager. It outlines the best practices for letting your staff be creative and do fulfilling work while keeping control of the situation.
Although published by the Borg. and obviously containing advice their OS division does not follow, the Software Project Survival Guide outlines how to run a software development project. It outlines the kinds of methods used by NASA. Propper up front planning, avoiding feature creep and a host of other plans to ensure that your programmers don't pull the heroic all night programming hauls but instead go home to play Quake and hunt for UnixChix after 5:00 comes around, while finishing the project on time and on budget with few bugs.
Last but not least is, believe it or not, Managing for Dummies . A lot of it falls under the "Well Duh" heading but if you have NO management experience it's a decent primer, but not as valuable as the first two books I mentioned.Matthew Miller,
Hasn't anyone been paying attention to the patent wars that have been going on? The patent will pass, do not doubt it. The US Patent Office is too stupid to catch it. "Oohh a way to make a computer pretend it's a different kind of computer. No one's ever done THAT before!"
The patent will remain until it is challenged in court and defeated, and it's almost impossible to overthrow a patent in court. The 800 lb gorillas can't start anything unless VOS tries to enforce the patent against them.
The end result? VOS gets the perfect weapon with which to kill off smaller competitors as long as they leave IBM and the like alone. The IBM bean counters won't authorize a legal battle over the patent just to keep a few Open Source projects alive. To them, it's not worth the expense. Plex86 is either killed off or developed only by people who live in countries that laugh at US patent laws. VMWare will probably be safe, but if VOS develops an attitude and gets some venture capital behind their legal department, VMWare will be toast.
Matthew Miller,
Let's say I want to buy the parts to build a bar code scanner and hook it up to my computer. What should I do? Where do I start? Where online are there instructions? What software do I use? Can I get it to look up the ISBN of a book on Amazon?
Matthew Miller,