This. I "have" 25mb service, the fastest available in my area. As to the amount I can "use", I can't recall ever seeing a speed test break the single digits (today is a good day at 7.5mb down). I'm in a populated section of the DFW area with apartments and business building all around. When I complained I was told by the service tech that our neighborhood isn't that bad so don't expect service upgrades anytime soon. I'd switch providers if I could but outside of satellite providers, I have 0 options.
I'm sure Pai's FCC includes me as having broadband when in reality I'm nowhere close.
I wouldn't get too worried. I took advantage of the free games offer to pick up a HD 7970. Running Windows 8 with the latest AMD beta drivers and I have yet to notice this issue.
I've created sites with plone and use confluence almost daily at work. If you're after an easy to use wiki then you can't go wrong with confluence. It stable, has a lot of free add ons that really add functionality, and they release frequently with updates that really improve the product. Though the 4.0 release will give me pause due to the new unified editor.
Atlassian also seems to be a decent company (no I don't work for them). They give away licenses of confluence to open source projects, and their $10 starter packs proceeds go to charity.
If you can't or won't spend the money then I'd look at Xwiki. It's an OK substitute for confluence and open source. I use it at a site that doesn't use a wiki enough to justify the licensing costs and it works well.
The biggest selling point for the Xbox I think is the hard drive, so you don't have to waste time and money on memory cards.
I'm going to have to disagree with you here. I currently own all the major consoles. And my release day XBox is now in the process of breaking down for the 3rd time. It has to be turned off and on several times before it can read the disc.
On both the previous breakdowns MS tech support had me "format" the HD. I don't recall the exact details but a certain sequence of controler actions from a specific dashboard screen will wipe the HD clean. Before I did this of course I had to run to the store to purchase a xbox memory unit if I wanted to backup my files. Prior to this I never worried about save space so when it came time to "backup" my system I had to simply lose a lot of save files due the to high cost of the backup media (the memory cards).
On a side note, my 2nd xbox breakdown involved the lose of audio over the optical cable. MS Tech support had me run to the store and buy a second adv. audio connector to prove that my 1st one was still working properly.
To wrap this up I'll share a bit of a letter I wrote to send to MS.....
So experience has shown me
that I can't just buy an xbox and expect it to work. I have to buy the
xbox, buy a memory card to backup game files for when the unit fails, and
buy an extended warranty. Then I'm going to have to spend time dealing
with the unit failures. I'm going to have tech support sending me to the
store to spend more of my money to diagnose their problems. And I'm fairly
certain that after my extended warranty runs out that the XBox will fail
yet again and the collection of games I have for it will be useless.
Would people have felt this way about SCO technology a year ago? How about two years ago? I doubt it. So now I'm to punish Netraverse for not having the ability to forsee SCO's actions years in advance even though I myself didn't?
Thanks to Netraverse's product I now have 6 GNU/Linux ternimals running KDE where windows only boxes used to set. The users are doing less and less inside windows as they find *nix equivilents that work as well, if not better, than their windows counterparts. The installs under win4lin are more stable and require less support time. The product is solid and Netraverse's techincal support staff have been nothing short of amazing in dealing with issues that have cropped up.
While I have no desire to support SCO I have even less desire to punish a company like Netraverse for something that is clearly beyond their control.
I settled on the M$ keyboard as well. I have the second version with the funky vertical key layout for the home,end,delete,pup,pdown,ins but it wasn't hard to adapt to it.
It's comfortable, it's easy to tear down and clean after the inevitable Mountain Dew spill, and it's cheap. (~$40)
in many cases a service pack can cause a bug that didn't previously exist
Haven't we been hearing lately that the lack of service packs is a bad thing for Linux? I think PC Week recently mentioned the fact they needed 21 patches for their crack test linux box as if it was a bad thing.
I'd much rather apply the individual patches I need rather than slap on "Keg 'o Patches 7" weighing in with umpteen meg of system updates. The first method leaves me in control, the second leaves me wondering if I've overlooked some subtle interaction during testing or if I'll find a hardware variation in a production machine that is going to burn me.
My most memorable burn so far was complete system failure due to SP5 not being compatible with some NT4.0 WHQL certified video cards in some of our production machines. (No I can't afford to buy a twin machine for testing for every one on the floor.) I didn't need to update the video subsystems, I didn't want to update them. I had other needs to which Update to SP5 was the answer. Now the answer seems to be Update to SP5. Oh and buy new video cards that are NT4.0 WHQL certified. You say your's were listed as NT4.0 WHQL certified? Yes, well that was then, this is now. Have a nice day. Bye.
of all the times M$ has pull this same stunt in the past. Looks to me like AOL (though not in the right) is just given M$ a taste of their own medicine.
Now for start of a list.....
Win ?.? : The DR-DOS check and "Warning Windows is only Guaranteed to run on MS-DOS" message Win 3.11 : Broke Win32 compatibility in OS/2 Win 4.^H^H95 : No more need for (DR-)DOS Um, MS-DOS 7, yeah we need that...just fon't tell anybody. Win32 API : Incompatabilities used to drive competing office software market share down Win98 : When IE5 was removed reports of increased Netscape stability
The 2003 NASA mission the article talks about was scrapped June 29th. The link to the story can be found at the bottom of the page from the article above.
Why are people in the open source movement rushing to embrace MS? Doesn't the history of this company send up red flags. Searching my memory here are a few things that should cause Open-Source supporters to pause. I'm sure you'll correct me if I get one wrong.
MS contracted with Apple to develop the apps that are now known as MS office. Under contract, MS couldn't use the proprietary info given to them by Apple in a competing product (read OS). MS gained a great deal of knowledge about windowing environments and put that knowledge to use in their windows product. Apple was furious but MS had found a loophole in the contract and exploited it.
Before Windows 1.0 there was a product called GEOS (IIRC). GEOS worked, Windows didn't. MS created a Smoke and Mirrors demo of Windows. It was a single application that gave the appearance of several applications running simultaneously under a Windows environment. It looked real slick during the press demo, and MS said just wait till we get all the kinks worked out and it'll be better than GEOS. They didn't even have a product. The public took the bait and waited for the product instead of buynig a working GEOS product. Microsoft took the trust of the press/public and exploited it.
Windows95, via win32, was seen as a boon to application developers before it was released. Trade magazines saw increased ad sales for the competing products in their future. Now, where is the compitition and diverse applications people were expecting. Gone. MS used the win32 api as a weapon. The Win3.11 upgrade did.....? Sure it broke the win32 compatibility of OS/2 but what else? MS took their position as maintainer of the win32 API and exploited it.
How many times in the past have they done this? Can anyone think of a single case in the past where MS hasn't exploited their business partners or customers to further their own obsession with wealth and power. I cannot.
Why would it be any different this time? Does ESR and crew have a legal team that write a contract better than Apple did? Can their philosophies about software development (freedom and choice) even allow them to think along the same lines as MS(exploitation and control)?
We don't need them. Yet they need us. We are winning the hearts and mindshare of the public and press and they *NEED* that to survive. If we accept them into our community, the only thing we'll end up with is a knife in our backs.
I too thought that Open Source would be a wonderful thing. I had even hoped to use the "Open Source" title as part of a business automation project I'm working on(to appeal to the PHBs that might have read about Open Source in the mags). But now I'm no longer certain that being associated with "Open Source" is a good thing.
It seems that the recent release of numerous "Open Source" licenses is thining out the number of programmers available to create actual free code. These companies get free labor and debugging of their code while they continue to pay full time people to improve their code base. They get all the benifits of free source development as well as the rapid development provided by paid full time programmers. It seems that over time they'll have a product that can eclipse any truly free, volunteer product. And since these licenses contain "we own it" and "you must stop using it when we say so" clauses, they can then release a new version with the new features as closed source while making no new open source versions available. They could then legaly force users to upgrade to the new version or discontinue use of the free version. All the free development, new innovations, and debuging provided by the our community would not only be lost but could be patened by the company as well (it's their code now), preventing the same programmers that provided the original code from reimplimenting it in a free version. Their greatly enhanced (via free labor) programs coupled with a marketing department and ad budget could capture mindshare from corporate buyers thus hurting the chances of a new free projects from taking hold.
I'd like to think I'm being paranoid, but I've seen too many cases of corporate greed screwing people over for the almighty dollar.
> I have to edit the kernel source code every time I upgrade my system.
Then supply the kernel hackers a patch to be included in the next release.
As far as hardware support goes, I know linux does have weak spots. So did NT when it first hit the market, I forked over ~$60 to get the beta of NT 1.0 er I mean 3.1 from MS (young and stupid I know) and the hardware compatiblity list was pretty short. It still has issues, I have a ScanJet IIc sitting outside my office that's dead weight now that NT is on the computer it's hooked to. Sure NT supports the scanner, it however doesn't support the scsi card that came bundled with the scanner. I had to fork over $80 last week and order a new scsi card and now I wait for it's arival. So I know how screwed you can be when your OS doesn't support your hardware and you can't change it, about $80 worth of screwing in my case.:-)
Here's a question for you. If you ever needed or wanted to rebuild the NT kernel, could you?
I see no reason for a typical "mainstream" user to build a kernel. Its easy enough to add items without rebuilds and RedHat (one example) provides RPMs for kernel upgrades much like your NT service packs. So a "mainstream" linux user can apply "major OS patches" without ever touching the kernel. Exactly the same as an NT or Mac user.
Here's the key difference. If I want to or for some reason need to rebuild the kernel I CAN do it. I have done it. Why? Because I can, because I wanted to learn how, because I wanted to run a leaner kernel configured for my exact hardware specs, because I didn't need a generic kernel that could run on a 386/486/586 but instead I wanted one optimized for a P2 class machine. Notice I never mentioned a reason I HAD to do it, it was my choice. Was it hard? No, a nice set of menus let me choose what I wanted. What if I ever want a choice not on the menu? There's the source code ready for me to dig in if I choose, to learn about it if I choose. If, while sitting in front of that NT box, you decided you want to dig in and learn how it works, could you?
So yes, my linux box can go with kernel recompiles if I so choose, but in the end it's my choice.
I've got a few but I'm not sure how to make MS look bad and us look good.....
1. The inherent instability in the windows product line encouages administrators to apply core component updates as soon as they are available in an attempt to reduce system downtime. The numerous security flaws also encourage this behaviour. Thus users on an NT network are pretty much guarenteed to be receiving the latest "innovations" from MS soon after release.
This is in contrast to a *nix admin who may be reluctant to down his system for a kernel update due to a. everything is working fine, and has been for months b. it will take over 3 months to get his uptime command to display triple digit day values again
2. The ever increasing minimum system requirements for the windows product line helps to support the computer hardware manufactures. More jobs for everyone.
This is in contrast to the *nix camp who seem dedicated to reusing old 386/486 machines.
3. The lack of scalability and lack of stability encourage people to have multiple machines performing a single function often with backup machines in place(PDC, BDC, BDC, app server, file server, db server, etc, etc). This has the same effect as #2 in providing jobs in computer manufacturing.
Obviously once again the *nix people seem out to hurt the computer industry. They encourage running multiple services using a single low end box. The fact that *nix seems perfectly capable of handling the load on these older machines just encourages this bad behaviour.
4. The forced upgrade cycle and lack of backwards compatibilty in MS products helps to insure that the clerical workers will always be in high demand. The re-entry and/or cleanup of important documents, coupled with the frequent crashes (see #1) will help keep people employed. It also has the nice side effect of preventing these same people from finding on the clock time to learn new job skills. That helps insure the employee will not leave for better paying positions.
Again, the unix people clamor for open standards to reduce the amount of work required during system chages. They also encourage people to think for themselves and learn about the system they work on.
I could go on but I'm starting to feel bad about all the awful things *nix advocates like me are doing. Anyone know how to put a positive PR spin on this stuff so that MS looks bad instead of us.
I do this now via an NFS mounted/usr/local filesystem for most my programs.
You also have rdist or better yet scp which unless I'm missing something would accomplish that same goal while leaving you in total control of the process. I've had enough problems with installing software sitting in front of a windows machine that doing it remotely scares the hell out of me.
Does anyone know what systems management features we lack that they have? The only feature that comes to my mind is the "reboot" feature whenever I make a minor systems change.
I haven't messed with WINE in quite some time. But I seem to remember that you could use files from your MS Windows install to provide some of the Windows functionality that WINE didn't support. It could be argued that people would be encouraged to pirate those pieces and not purchase a copy of Windows.
I currently have several NT workstations use a CVS copy of SAMBA as their PDC. This PDC functionality is not a publicly available spec. The SAMBA team has, to the best of my knowledge, reverse engineered the protocol used by the PDC server while communicating with it's clients. Nintendo is claiming damages from lost revenue due to piracy. If they win this case it seems very likely that MS could claim the "emulation" of a NT PDC by SAMBA would encourge people not to purchase NT server. The API of Nintendo and the protocol used by NT PDC are both basically an interface to some service.
The remark about sendmail was simply an exageration about how bad things could get once this "emulation is illegal" mentality take hold. But it really as far out as it seems. Take cascading style sheets for example. The W3C whose policy, from their own web page is "W3C is dedicated to creating specifications and software that are available to the public for any purpose and without fee or royalty." did a great deal of the grunt work on CSS technology, and MS, being the bottom feeding leeches on inovation they have proven themselves to be time and time again, patented the technology. Where does this leave the members of the W3C that helped create the technology? In violation of a patent, thats where.
Why bother with an emulator at all. I'm not sure how the catridges in the nintendo are mfg but it seems that someone could post instructions via usenet for building a generic cartridge. ROM burners aren't that scarce. I'm sure a person could find someone to copy the ROM. It may cost the pirate a little more to get setup, but the net result is the same. Less sales to nintendo.
I can't help but wonder how far this IP crap can go. Where does someone draw the line. Could the makers of WINE be sued? What about SAMBA? Both products simulate (emulate?) a popular MS product which reduces the number of sales MS gets for their products. I can see it now, a few years down the road and the creators of sendmail get sued for
A) interfering with the sales of MS Exchange(or whatever their crappy smtp server is called)
B) patent infringement against the 1999 MS patent for transfering electronic messages across a computer network, based upon their patent for using a medium to transfer information between two devices, based upon their patent for using a form of communication to transfer information between two objects, based upon their patent for.....
Let nintendo know how you feel. nintendo@nintendo.com
I hope their link is pretty fast. That way they can handle the bloat from the HTML, RTF, or WFT? file formats that piece of trash converts plain old text e-mail into. Christ, I've had to handle some email sent to one of our users in Word format.
Slashdot Mirror
This. I "have" 25mb service, the fastest available in my area. As to the amount I can "use", I can't recall ever seeing a speed test break the single digits (today is a good day at 7.5mb down). I'm in a populated section of the DFW area with apartments and business building all around. When I complained I was told by the service tech that our neighborhood isn't that bad so don't expect service upgrades anytime soon. I'd switch providers if I could but outside of satellite providers, I have 0 options.
I'm sure Pai's FCC includes me as having broadband when in reality I'm nowhere close.
I wouldn't get too worried. I took advantage of the free games offer to pick up a HD 7970. Running Windows 8 with the latest AMD beta drivers and I have yet to notice this issue.
I've created sites with plone and use confluence almost daily at work. If you're after an easy to use wiki then you can't go wrong with confluence. It stable, has a lot of free add ons that really add functionality, and they release frequently with updates that really improve the product. Though the 4.0 release will give me pause due to the new unified editor.
Atlassian also seems to be a decent company (no I don't work for them). They give away licenses of confluence to open source projects, and their $10 starter packs proceeds go to charity.
If you can't or won't spend the money then I'd look at Xwiki. It's an OK substitute for confluence and open source. I use it at a site that doesn't use a wiki enough to justify the licensing costs and it works well.
I'm going to have to disagree with you here. I currently own all the major consoles. And my release day XBox is now in the process of breaking down for the 3rd time. It has to be turned off and on several times before it can read the disc.
On both the previous breakdowns MS tech support had me "format" the HD. I don't recall the exact details but a certain sequence of controler actions from a specific dashboard screen will wipe the HD clean. Before I did this of course I had to run to the store to purchase a xbox memory unit if I wanted to backup my files. Prior to this I never worried about save space so when it came time to "backup" my system I had to simply lose a lot of save files due the to high cost of the backup media (the memory cards).
On a side note, my 2nd xbox breakdown involved the lose of audio over the optical cable. MS Tech support had me run to the store and buy a second adv. audio connector to prove that my 1st one was still working properly.
To wrap this up I'll share a bit of a letter I wrote to send to MS.....
So experience has shown me that I can't just buy an xbox and expect it to work. I have to buy the xbox, buy a memory card to backup game files for when the unit fails, and buy an extended warranty. Then I'm going to have to spend time dealing with the unit failures. I'm going to have tech support sending me to the store to spend more of my money to diagnose their problems. And I'm fairly certain that after my extended warranty runs out that the XBox will fail yet again and the collection of games I have for it will be useless.
You could also use pyrex and save yourself the troubles of dealing with the Python/C API.
Need a particular reason? Take your pick. http://sql-info.de/mysql/gotchas.html
As a user of win4lin I have to disagree.
Would people have felt this way about SCO technology a year ago? How about two years ago? I doubt it. So now I'm to punish Netraverse for not having the ability to forsee SCO's actions years in advance even though I myself didn't?
Thanks to Netraverse's product I now have 6 GNU/Linux ternimals running KDE where windows only boxes used to set. The users are doing less and less inside windows as they find *nix equivilents that work as well, if not better, than their windows counterparts. The installs under win4lin are more stable and require less support time. The product is solid and Netraverse's techincal support staff have been nothing short of amazing in dealing with issues that have cropped up.
While I have no desire to support SCO I have even less desire to punish a company like Netraverse for something that is clearly beyond their control.
I settled on the M$ keyboard as well. I have the second version with the funky vertical key layout for the home,end,delete,pup,pdown,ins but it wasn't hard to adapt to it.
It's comfortable, it's easy to tear down and clean after the inevitable Mountain Dew spill, and it's cheap. (~$40)
in many cases a service pack can cause a bug that didn't previously exist
Haven't we been hearing lately that the lack of service packs is a bad thing for Linux? I think PC Week recently mentioned the fact they needed 21 patches for their crack test linux box as if it was a bad thing.
I'd much rather apply the individual patches I need rather than slap on "Keg 'o Patches 7" weighing in with umpteen meg of system updates. The first method leaves me in control, the second leaves me wondering if I've overlooked some subtle interaction during testing or if I'll find a hardware variation in a production machine that is going to burn me.
My most memorable burn so far was complete system failure due to SP5 not being compatible with some NT4.0 WHQL certified video cards in some of our production machines. (No I can't afford to buy a twin machine for testing for every one on the floor.) I didn't need to update the video subsystems, I didn't want to update them. I had other needs to which Update to SP5 was the answer. Now the answer seems to be Update to SP5. Oh and buy new video cards that are NT4.0 WHQL certified. You say your's were listed as NT4.0 WHQL certified? Yes, well that was then, this is now. Have a nice day. Bye.
of all the times M$ has pull this same stunt in the past. Looks to me like AOL (though not in the right) is just given M$ a taste of their own medicine.
Now for start of a list.....
Win ?.? : The DR-DOS check and "Warning Windows is only Guaranteed to run on MS-DOS" message
Win 3.11 : Broke Win32 compatibility in OS/2
Win 4.^H^H95 : No more need for (DR-)DOS Um, MS-DOS 7, yeah we need that...just fon't tell anybody.
Win32 API : Incompatabilities used to drive competing office software market share down
Win98 : When IE5 was removed reports of increased Netscape stability
Any others?
The 2003 NASA mission the article talks about was scrapped June 29th. The link to the story can be found at the bottom of the page from the article above.
Or just go
here
Why are people in the open source movement rushing to embrace MS? Doesn't the history of this company send up red flags. Searching my memory here are a few things that should cause Open-Source supporters to pause. I'm sure you'll correct me if I get one wrong.
MS contracted with Apple to develop the apps that are now known as MS office. Under contract, MS couldn't use the proprietary info given to them by Apple in a competing product (read OS). MS gained a great deal of knowledge about windowing environments and put that knowledge to use in their windows product. Apple was furious but MS had found a loophole in the contract and exploited it.
Before Windows 1.0 there was a product called GEOS (IIRC). GEOS worked, Windows didn't. MS created a Smoke and Mirrors demo of Windows. It was a single application that gave the appearance of several applications running simultaneously under a Windows environment. It looked real slick during the press demo, and MS said just wait till we get all the kinks worked out and it'll be better than GEOS. They didn't even have a product. The public took the bait and waited for the product instead of buynig a working GEOS product. Microsoft took the trust of the press/public and exploited it.
Windows95, via win32, was seen as a boon to application developers before it was released. Trade magazines saw increased ad sales for the competing products in their future. Now, where is the compitition and diverse applications people were expecting. Gone. MS used the win32 api as a weapon. The Win3.11 upgrade did.....? Sure it broke the win32 compatibility of OS/2 but what else? MS took their position as maintainer of the win32 API and exploited it.
How many times in the past have they done this? Can anyone think of a single case in the past where MS hasn't exploited their business partners or customers to further their own obsession with wealth and power. I cannot.
Why would it be any different this time? Does ESR and crew have a legal team that write a contract better than Apple did? Can their philosophies about software development (freedom and choice) even allow them to think along the same lines as MS(exploitation and control)?
We don't need them. Yet they need us. We are winning the hearts and mindshare of the public and press and they *NEED* that to survive. If we accept them into our community, the only thing we'll end up with is a knife in our backs.
I too thought that Open Source would be a wonderful thing. I had even hoped to use the "Open Source" title as part of a business automation project I'm working on(to appeal to the PHBs that might have read about Open Source in the mags). But now I'm no longer certain that being associated with "Open Source" is a good thing.
It seems that the recent release of numerous "Open Source" licenses is thining out the number of programmers available to create actual free code. These companies get free labor and debugging of their code while they continue to pay full time people to improve their code base. They get all the benifits of free source development as well as the rapid development provided by paid full time programmers. It seems that over time they'll have a product that can eclipse any truly free, volunteer product. And since these licenses contain "we own it" and "you must stop using it when we say so" clauses, they can then release a new version with the new features as closed source while making no new open source versions available. They could then legaly force users to upgrade to the new version or discontinue use of the free version. All the free development, new innovations, and debuging provided by the our community would not only be lost but could be patened by the company as well (it's their code now), preventing the same programmers that provided the original code from reimplimenting it in a free version. Their greatly enhanced (via free labor) programs coupled with a marketing department and ad budget could capture mindshare from corporate buyers thus hurting the chances of a new free projects from taking hold.
I'd like to think I'm being paranoid, but I've seen too many cases of corporate greed screwing people over for the almighty dollar.
> I have to edit the kernel source code every time I upgrade my system.
:-)
Then supply the kernel hackers a patch to be included in the next release.
As far as hardware support goes, I know linux does have weak spots. So did NT when it first hit the market, I forked over ~$60 to get the beta of NT 1.0 er I mean 3.1 from MS (young and stupid I know) and the hardware compatiblity list was pretty short. It still has issues, I have a ScanJet IIc sitting outside my office that's dead weight now that NT is on the computer it's hooked to. Sure NT supports the scanner, it however doesn't support the scsi card that came bundled with the scanner. I had to fork over $80 last week and order a new scsi card and now I wait for it's arival. So I know how screwed you can be when your OS doesn't support your hardware and you can't change it, about $80 worth of screwing in my case.
Here's a question for you. If you ever needed or wanted to rebuild the NT kernel, could you?
I see no reason for a typical "mainstream" user to build a kernel. Its easy enough to add items without rebuilds and RedHat (one example) provides RPMs for kernel upgrades much like your NT service packs. So a "mainstream" linux user can apply "major OS patches" without ever touching the kernel. Exactly the same as an NT or Mac user.
Here's the key difference. If I want to or for some reason need to rebuild the kernel I CAN do it. I have done it. Why? Because I can, because I wanted to learn how, because I wanted to run a leaner kernel configured for my exact hardware specs, because I didn't need a generic kernel that could run on a 386/486/586 but instead I wanted one optimized for a P2 class machine. Notice I never mentioned a reason I HAD to do it, it was my choice. Was it hard? No, a nice set of menus let me choose what I wanted. What if I ever want a choice not on the menu? There's the source code ready for me to dig in if I choose, to learn about it if I choose. If, while sitting in front of that NT box, you decided you want to dig in and learn how it works, could you?
So yes, my linux box can go with kernel recompiles if I so choose, but in the end it's my choice.
I've got a few but I'm not sure how to make MS look bad and us look good.....
1. The inherent instability in the windows product line encouages administrators to apply core component updates as soon as they are available in an attempt to reduce system downtime. The numerous security flaws also encourage this behaviour. Thus users on an NT network are pretty much guarenteed to be receiving the latest "innovations" from MS soon after release.
This is in contrast to a *nix admin who may be reluctant to down his system for a kernel update due to
a. everything is working fine, and has been for months
b. it will take over 3 months to get his uptime command to display triple digit day values again
2. The ever increasing minimum system requirements for the windows product line helps to support the computer hardware manufactures. More jobs for everyone.
This is in contrast to the *nix camp who seem dedicated to reusing old 386/486 machines.
3. The lack of scalability and lack of stability encourage people to have multiple machines performing a single function often with backup machines in place(PDC, BDC, BDC, app server, file server, db server, etc, etc). This has the same effect as #2 in providing jobs in computer manufacturing.
Obviously once again the *nix people seem out to hurt the computer industry. They encourage running multiple services using a single low end box. The fact that *nix seems perfectly capable of handling the load on these older machines just encourages this bad behaviour.
4. The forced upgrade cycle and lack of backwards compatibilty in MS products helps to insure that the clerical workers will always be in high demand. The re-entry and/or cleanup of important documents, coupled with the frequent crashes (see #1) will help keep people employed. It also has the nice side effect of preventing these same people from finding on the clock time to learn new job skills. That helps insure the employee will not leave for better paying positions.
Again, the unix people clamor for open standards to reduce the amount of work required during system chages. They also encourage people to think for themselves and learn about the system they work on.
I could go on but I'm starting to feel bad about all the awful things *nix advocates like me are doing. Anyone know how to put a positive PR spin on this stuff so that MS looks bad instead of us.
I do this now via an NFS mounted /usr/local filesystem for most my programs.
You also have rdist or better yet scp which unless I'm missing something would accomplish that same goal while leaving you in total control of the process. I've had enough problems with installing software sitting in front of a windows machine that doing it remotely scares the hell out of me.
Does anyone know what systems management features we lack that they have? The only feature that comes to my mind is the "reboot" feature whenever I make a minor systems change.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0446168076/ qid=922201731/sr=1-2/002-0335228-5130212
Did an install last week of Solaris 7 on a SS1. It wasn't fast but it works.
Compare that to a guy I know who was complaining today that the newest Mac OS wouldn't run on his 1 1/2 year old Mac.
I haven't messed with WINE in quite some time. But I seem to remember that you could use files from your MS Windows install to provide some of the Windows functionality that WINE didn't support. It could be argued that people would be encouraged to pirate those pieces and not purchase a copy of Windows.
I currently have several NT workstations use a CVS copy of SAMBA as their PDC. This PDC functionality is not a publicly available spec. The SAMBA team has, to the best of my knowledge, reverse engineered the protocol used by the PDC server while communicating with it's clients. Nintendo is claiming damages from lost revenue due to piracy. If they win this case it seems very likely that MS could claim the "emulation" of a NT PDC by SAMBA would encourge people not to purchase NT server. The API of Nintendo and the protocol used by NT PDC are both basically an interface to some service.
The remark about sendmail was simply an exageration about how bad things could get once this "emulation is illegal" mentality take hold. But it really as far out as it seems. Take cascading style sheets for example. The W3C whose policy, from their own web page is "W3C is dedicated to creating specifications and software that are available to the public for any purpose and without fee or royalty." did a great deal of the grunt work on CSS technology, and MS, being the bottom feeding leeches on inovation they have proven themselves to be time and time again, patented the technology. Where does this leave the members of the W3C that helped create the technology? In violation of a patent, thats where.
Why bother with an emulator at all. I'm not sure how the catridges in the nintendo are mfg but it seems that someone could post instructions via usenet for building a generic cartridge. ROM burners aren't that scarce. I'm sure a person could find someone to copy the ROM. It may cost the pirate a little more to get setup, but the net result is the same. Less sales to nintendo.
I can't help but wonder how far this IP crap can go. Where does someone draw the line. Could the makers of WINE be sued? What about SAMBA? Both products simulate (emulate?) a popular MS product which reduces the number of sales MS gets for their products. I can see it now, a few years down the road and the creators of sendmail get sued for
.....
A) interfering with the sales of MS Exchange(or whatever their crappy smtp server is called)
B) patent infringement against the 1999 MS patent for transfering electronic messages across a computer network, based upon their patent for using a medium to transfer information between two devices, based upon their patent for using a form of communication to transfer information between two objects, based upon their patent for
Let nintendo know how you feel.
nintendo@nintendo.com
I hope their link is pretty fast. That way they can handle the bloat from the HTML, RTF, or WFT? file formats that piece of trash converts plain old text e-mail into. Christ, I've had to handle some email sent to one of our users in Word format.
I believe most scientists are *nix advocates. I have people here that won't touch a M$ OS when doing research work.