I was able to boot Caldera OpenLinux 2.3 under Virtual PC 3.0 (and it booted all the way, started X and KDE) but it was painfully slow on my iBook, even with 160 MB of memory. It ran maybe at the speed of a 486/66, if that. If it means anything, I also was able to get at least part of the way through the Solaris/x86 installer on the iBook as well; I don't know if it would have booted all the way since I didn't have time to deal with it.
Since everyone out here is bashing the iBook, let me play devils advocate and say why I bought one.
1) Everything is integrated. I have no need to go out and buy PC cards for modem & network, it's all built into the same box at one price.
2) AirPort. You gotta love the AirPort. CompUSA was giving away free AirPort cards w/ iBooks the weekend I bought mine, so that made it even better.
3) Strength. As a college student, I already have enough junk to carry around with me, much less a bulky laptop bag. Since the iBook's case is so strong, I can just shove it in my backpack along with my books and not worry about it getting hurt. Plus, since the battery lasts so long, I don't even need to carry around a power adapter.
4) Price. I picked up an iBook and a 128 MB memory module for less than $2000. A comparable x86 laptop would cost much more. And since I knew I'd run Linux on it, no matter whether I bought Apple or x86, the cheaper one wins.
5) Design. This really is a great-looking notebook (at least the blue one is... the orange is pretty ugly).
6) No M$ tax. I refuse to give Microsoft any more money, and if I buy an x86 machine from a reputable manufacturer, I'd probably end up buying a machine subject to the M$ tax.
I bought a Dell Inspiron 7000 over the summer and sent it back a week later. It weighed 10 pounds, but felt flimsy and fragile. The iBook is nothing like that - it feels like a tank.
Yellow Dog Linux runs great on it despite the lack of support for a lot of the hardware. I can't wait until it's fully supported...
I tried using the development kernel on my iBook, and it works surprisingly great, despite the missing network/modem support, etc. Linux flies on it, although that might have to do with how I have 160 MB of memory on it.
Here's the thing that really freaked me out though, when I booted it up: the dmesg output reports 598.02 BogoMIPS. My Dell PII-400 only reports around 390, and I'm getting 598 from a 300 MHz Mac. Even the 400 MHz Alphas I use only report 360.
I have two speculations - either a) the iBook is a serious powerhouse crippled by a bloated MacOS, or b) the G3 has some optimization in it that throws off the numbers.
Can anyone shed some light on this? I know BogoMIPS isn't an absolute indicator of performance, but how does one account for a 200 point difference from a machine 100 MHz slower? If the G3'S really are this fast, I will never buy another x86 box again.
The problem with this 'hack,' as with most of the popular worms & trojans of late, is right between the keyboard and the chair. Part of the blame should be placed on user stupidity. AOL repeatedly warns not to open attachments from people you don't know or trust. They also tell you not to go and give out your password to anyone. While AOL and ICQ do have a responsibility to keep their systems secure, the users also have a responsibility to protect their own account information. If a user opens a file that extracts their password, despite the fact that AOL (and that little voice in the back of their head called common sense) tells them not to open strange files, then it's partly their problem. Although on the other hand, it seems now that the way AOL stores user passwords on their hard disks is somewhat insecure, and AOL has a responsibility to modify their software and distribute a patch so that this doesn't happen again.
If anything, I bet this "anti-hacking" campaign will be just like the DARE campaign which didn't work well at all.
I hope they don't tell children things like "If you see someone who's on the computer too much, or they don't just look at websites your teacher tells you to look at, they're probably a hacker. Go tell Mom and Dad and your principal at your school."
Saying things like this will only discourage people who don't want to get labeled as a "hacker." This sort of approach may end up discouraging someone who could end up being the next Linus Torvalds.
It won't deter anyone though, and for the ones who would end up cracking systems later on anyway, it probably might just instill curiosity in them at an earlier age. If you leave a kid in a room and tell them "I'm going to leave this room now, and while I'm gone, don't push this red button," you'll probably return later to find that the kid pushed it because you told him not to.
All I think this will do is discourage good kids and encourage the bad ones even more.
These were the original "all-in-one" G3's, which predated the iMacs by about 6 months, and the b&w's by maybe a year. I think Apple finally discontinued them over the winter, which is good, because the machines were downright ugly.
Even an old iMac costs twice as much ($799?) as one of these Sun boxes (can we call them boxes?). OS X server is pretty expensive, too.
I don't know what pricing on the Sun server hardware looks like, so I'm not going to try to jump to any conclusions here, though.
I hope nobody goes bad-mouthing these thin-clients before thinking about how much time and energy it saves people in the schools.
When I was in high school I helped manage the computer lab, and I'd have to say that some sort of network computing system would be a godsend compared to what I had to deal with.
I went to a small private school which didn't really have a lot of money to throw around for technology. Half the room was Mac G3's, and the other half was Mac 6100/60 PPCs, since they couldn't afford to upgrade all of the old 6100's to G3s all at once. Having two totally different systems means we have to have older versions of software on half the lab since the older machines couldn't handle it.
Then of course there is the problem of "terrorism." We had very minimal problems with this in previous years, but last year (my last year there) the problem exploded. At the very least, people would come in, download games off the web, and just clog the hard drives up with garbage. One person even went so far as to make two or three nested folders inside the Extensions folder of one of our Macs to hide half a gigabyte worth of games. And on the other end of the spectrum, there's the people who drag the System file out of the System Folder, reboot the machine, and walk away, leaving us to come back and boot the machine off a CD to fix it.
After about a month and a half of this we frantically purchased Foolproof and locked down all the systems, but that only caused more problems, since a lot of programs actually didn't cooperate with Foolproof.
The sad thing is that the only things they use those computers for are classes in intro. Java, C++, web page editing, and word processing, all of which are nicely covered by Linux. I never missed an opportunity to say that if we set up an NIS/NFS server and used Linux that would be the end of all the problems, but it never really took hold.
The Sun Rays probably would have been great. People could have done development work and ran StarOffice or something like that, and admin'ing the whole system would have been a whole lot easier. Plus, compared to Mac hardware, which is prevalent in K-12, they're dirt cheap. For the price of one iMac, they can buy three thin clients. Seems to work out better for everyone.
Getting kids to recognize your brand at a young age is a great marketing device.
Does this really matter for Sun? Kids won't be able to buy a Sun Ray, because it needs an expensive server to feed it all its applications. And I don't see Mommy and Daddy buying Junior an Ultra 5 workstation anytime soon, either.
I don't think Sun's got any incentive like that here, at least in the K-12 market.
Seems to me that this person at MS called the Loki tech support line, and who was on the other end? Someone who (as best as I can tell) courteously and helpfully told the person how to install the software, and had a friendly chat with them while the install was going. If someone calls MS for support, all they'll be talking to is an automated voice prompt, at least until they hand over their charge card number. And I'm pretty sure you can bet that there probably won't be a friendly tech support person on the other end of the line, should you choose to pay for support. Seems like MS should be studying the usability of their own stuff first....
This was probably one of the "Community Bulletin Board" or "Prevue" channels... every once in a while in my city those channels crash. Over labor day weekend (and all weekend, since nobody was there to fix it) the whole channel just showed an Amiga crash screen.
Wow... I'm surprised I've never seen these before. I think I pulled a muscle in my gut laughing so hard. My favorite line on these is "For every winner, there are dozens of losers. Odds are you are one of them."
These are a WHOLE lot better than those campy motivational posters I've seen hanging around my office...
If you're a big audiophile, you're not going to be using MP3 anyway. MP3 is for a whole different group of pepole.
The issue with MP3 is its portability. The idea is that I can encode 10 or 11 of my CDs, burn it on a CD-R, and have a nice wide selection of music I can play on my desktop PC at work. Rather than haul around (and possibly scratch) a whole stack of CDs, I just have to carry around one CD-R that if I scratch up, I just have to burn a new copy from the files on my hard drive. I don't care about quality - heck, I listen to MP3s on a Sun with 8-bit audio. But it's great to be able to stick in one CD, fire up xaudio, and have 10 or 11 CDs to pick from.
Or, MP3 is nice because of convenience -- I can get my music quickly. Suppose at home, and I'm sunk deep into coding and don't want to be distracted. If I want music, I'd have to go to my CD collection, pull out a CD, walk over to the CD changer on my stereo, wait for it to turn on and spin up, and then play the CD. OR, I can just click over to the directory of MP3s on my PC, queue up a whole bunch, and have great music without even getting up from my chair.
Sure, MP3 is nice for downloading too, but unless you have a fast connection, who really wants to sit around and download a whole bunch of 4-meg files?
When you're a guest at someone's house, I'm sure you treat the place with respect, since it's not yours. Would you go to Rob M.'s house and start scribbling on the walls with Magic Marker, or rummaging through the bathroom medicine cabinet?
If someone tried that in my house, I'd kick them out PDQ.
It's time to get rid of the AC's. If people don't follow house rules, it's time to kick them out.
I cring every time I hear the that there's no accountability with Linux vendors... as in "There's nobody to sue if something goes wrong." Looks like SCO graduated from the Microsoft School of FUD.
Closed-source advocates should take a second look at their precious end-user license agreements. Most claim that the product will perform reasonably according to whatever feature claims the vendor made. They also limit liability to the purchase price of the product.
If you're running a major operation and your server crashes causing you to have $100,000 in lost business, the only $$$ you'll get back is the couple thousand $ you paid for the software. You agreed to that limited liability by way of the license for your software.
GNU and closed-source licensed software makers have the same level of accountability here... zilch. If something breaks, you keep both pieces.
In the early days, Prodigy would close the service for a couple hours every night for maintenance. The service would shut down at 2 or 3 AM every night and come back up early the next morning.
Also, anyone else remember the CEO game on Prodigy? This was the game where you could be an executive in a candy, beer, or auto business. Each game lasted 2 weeks - you'd find an open game that was starting that day and join it. Then you'd have to make business decisions for your 'company' - like setting up budgets for advertising, etc, all in an effort to beat everyone else enrolled in your game.
It was a really fun game, but they shut it down a few years ago.... too bad.
I signed up for Prodigy back in the spring of 1991. To put this in perspective, I was using a 286 with a 1200 baud modem to access their service. I probably still have their sign-on packet somewhere in my basement... =)
I had no idea what a modem was until I started using Prodigy.
One thing I remember was that back in '91/'92, AOL was so small that they purchased advertising space on Prodigy. Prodigy is also perhaps the originator of the online banner ad.
My first experience with e-commerce was buying things from Sears online from Prodigy. Order something online and they deliver it straight to your door... what a concept.
In late 1994 Prodigy was the first online service to give you this strange new program called a "Web Browser." This was back when Yahoo! didn't even have its own domain name yet. I got hooked. When Prodigy started letting people create their own personal web pages, I learned HTML.
In 1995 I "graduated" from Prodigy and signed up with a local ISP. Today I'm doing web/CGI/Linux work for my job, and I would not be there if it weren't for that start I had got on Prodigy.
(sorry if this went out twice, accidentally punched "submit") Doesn't the Java license have a clause that says it shouldn't be used in life-or-death situations, i.e. nuclear power plant controls, aircraft traffic control, etc, since Java is still an 'unstable' technology? Isn't WAR one of these sorts of life-or-death situations?
This is a Good Thing(tm). Now that there's a company like Sun backing them up, it'll go a lot further. With Linux office suite being the only missing piece of the puzzle, hopefully Sun can get things moving.
I'm not saying that StarOffice is a perfect product - it's still a little rough around the edges. But it'll be a whole lot easier to pitch this to the typical PHB now that there's a billion-dollar company behind the product. `
...they could get a machine w/o windows and get a discount on it (even if it was a limited-time deal). We US people didn't seem to have that option, as far as I could tell. When I went to purchase a notebook from Dell (US), I asked about removing the pre-loaded M$ software for a discount. Our conversation went something like this:
Me: I'm looking at your web page here, and it says there's all this bundled Microsoft software like Windows and MS Works here. I won't be using Windows or MS Works on this, so can you take this off so I won't have to pay for it?
Dell: Well sir, that software is free with your computer, so removing it wouldn't change the price.
Me: They charge hundreds of dollars for this software if I were to buy it at a store - obviously someone had to pay for this software, and that all got worked into the price for my notebook. I don't want to pay for something I don't want.
Dell: The software's free, so you're not losing anything by deleting it yourself.
Me: There's no way this software can be free. Dell had to pay for an OEM license for all this bundled software, and Dell must be passing their costs for it on to me.
Dell: Well sir, the software is free.
Dell is also trying to nail people who try the windows refund approach, since they say if you want to return bundled software, their policy is that you have to return the entire system it came with.... all for a refund on a "free" product.
Remember that Netscape is now part of AOL, the online M$. It seems like Microsoft's business plan is "Make low-quality products and sell them at high prices to people who don't know any better." AOL shares that philosophy... charging $22/mo for half the speed of a $14.95 local ISP.
I kept hearing people saying stuff like "this movie is extremely scary", etc. etc... so when I went into this film I expected it to be similar to some of the cheesy mainstream horror flicks we've become so used to (I Know What You [still] Did Last Summer, Scream, etc.). Boy was I wrong.
The wavy camera motion really gives the impression of a "first-hand" perspective of this brave group of 3 fictional filmmakers. You're one of them. When they get mad at one of the group members (like after the missing map segment) you get mad at that guy too. When they're running, so are you. At the final scene (I won't give anything away) you're part of the action.
Weaving the viewer right into the action is a different flavor of horror, and left me walking out of the theatre feeling a lot more entertained than I have after a whole lot of movies.
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I was able to boot Caldera OpenLinux 2.3 under Virtual PC 3.0 (and it booted all the way, started X and KDE) but it was painfully slow on my iBook, even with 160 MB of memory. It ran maybe at the speed of a 486/66, if that. If it means anything, I also was able to get at least part of the way through the Solaris/x86 installer on the iBook as well; I don't know if it would have booted all the way since I didn't have time to deal with it.
I better put on the asbestos suit for this one.
Since everyone out here is bashing the iBook, let me play devils advocate and say why I bought one.
1) Everything is integrated. I have no need to go out and buy PC cards for modem & network, it's all built into the same box at one price.
2) AirPort. You gotta love the AirPort. CompUSA was giving away free AirPort cards w/ iBooks the weekend I bought mine, so that made it even better.
3) Strength. As a college student, I already have enough junk to carry around with me, much less a bulky laptop bag. Since the iBook's case is so strong, I can just shove it in my backpack along with my books and not worry about it getting hurt. Plus, since the battery lasts so long, I don't even need to carry around a power adapter.
4) Price. I picked up an iBook and a 128 MB memory module for less than $2000. A comparable x86 laptop would cost much more. And since I knew I'd run Linux on it, no matter whether I bought Apple or x86, the cheaper one wins.
5) Design. This really is a great-looking notebook (at least the blue one is... the orange is pretty ugly).
6) No M$ tax. I refuse to give Microsoft any more money, and if I buy an x86 machine from a reputable manufacturer, I'd probably end up buying a machine subject to the M$ tax.
I bought a Dell Inspiron 7000 over the summer and sent it back a week later. It weighed 10 pounds, but felt flimsy and fragile. The iBook is nothing like that - it feels like a tank.
Yellow Dog Linux runs great on it despite the lack of support for a lot of the hardware. I can't wait until it's fully supported...
I tried using the development kernel on my iBook, and it works surprisingly great, despite the missing network/modem support, etc. Linux flies on it, although that might have to do with how I have 160 MB of memory on it.
Here's the thing that really freaked me out though, when I booted it up: the dmesg output reports 598.02 BogoMIPS. My Dell PII-400 only reports around 390, and I'm getting 598 from a 300 MHz Mac. Even the 400 MHz Alphas I use only report 360.
I have two speculations - either a) the iBook is a serious powerhouse crippled by a bloated MacOS, or b) the G3 has some optimization in it that throws off the numbers.
Can anyone shed some light on this? I know BogoMIPS isn't an absolute indicator of performance, but how does one account for a 200 point difference from a machine 100 MHz slower? If the G3'S really are this fast, I will never buy another x86 box again.
The problem with this 'hack,' as with most of the popular worms & trojans of late, is right between the keyboard and the chair. Part of the blame should be placed on user stupidity. AOL repeatedly warns not to open attachments from people you don't know or trust. They also tell you not to go and give out your password to anyone. While AOL and ICQ do have a responsibility to keep their systems secure, the users also have a responsibility to protect their own account information. If a user opens a file that extracts their password, despite the fact that AOL (and that little voice in the back of their head called common sense) tells them not to open strange files, then it's partly their problem. Although on the other hand, it seems now that the way AOL stores user passwords on their hard disks is somewhat insecure, and AOL has a responsibility to modify their software and distribute a patch so that this doesn't happen again.
If anything, I bet this "anti-hacking" campaign will be just like the DARE campaign which didn't work well at all.
I hope they don't tell children things like "If you see someone who's on the computer too much, or they don't just look at websites your teacher tells you to look at, they're probably a hacker. Go tell Mom and Dad and your principal at your school."
Saying things like this will only discourage people who don't want to get labeled as a "hacker." This sort of approach may end up discouraging someone who could end up being the next Linus Torvalds.
It won't deter anyone though, and for the ones who would end up cracking systems later on anyway, it probably might just instill curiosity in them at an earlier age. If you leave a kid in a room and tell them "I'm going to leave this room now, and while I'm gone, don't push this red button," you'll probably return later to find that the kid pushed it because you told him not to.
All I think this will do is discourage good kids and encourage the bad ones even more.
These were the original "all-in-one" G3's, which predated the iMacs by about 6 months, and the b&w's by maybe a year. I think Apple finally discontinued them over the winter, which is good, because the machines were downright ugly.
Even an old iMac costs twice as much ($799?) as one of these Sun boxes (can we call them boxes?). OS X server is pretty expensive, too.
I don't know what pricing on the Sun server hardware looks like, so I'm not going to try to jump to any conclusions here, though.
What kind of server is running to service all of these thin clients? What about the price tag for all of this stuff?
I hope nobody goes bad-mouthing these thin-clients before thinking about how much time and energy it saves people in the schools.
When I was in high school I helped manage the computer lab, and I'd have to say that some sort of network computing system would be a godsend compared to what I had to deal with.
I went to a small private school which didn't really have a lot of money to throw around for technology. Half the room was Mac G3's, and the other half was Mac 6100/60 PPCs, since they couldn't afford to upgrade all of the old 6100's to G3s all at once. Having two totally different systems means we have to have older versions of software on half the lab since the older machines couldn't handle it.
Then of course there is the problem of "terrorism." We had very minimal problems with this in previous years, but last year (my last year there) the problem exploded. At the very least, people would come in, download games off the web, and just clog the hard drives up with garbage. One person even went so far as to make two or three nested folders inside the Extensions folder of one of our Macs to hide half a gigabyte worth of games. And on the other end of the spectrum, there's the people who drag the System file out of the System Folder, reboot the machine, and walk away, leaving us to come back and boot the machine off a CD to fix it.
After about a month and a half of this we frantically purchased Foolproof and locked down all the systems, but that only caused more problems, since a lot of programs actually didn't cooperate with Foolproof.
The sad thing is that the only things they use those computers for are classes in intro. Java, C++, web page editing, and word processing, all of which are nicely covered by Linux. I never missed an opportunity to say that if we set up an NIS/NFS server and used Linux that would be the end of all the problems, but it never really took hold.
The Sun Rays probably would have been great. People could have done development work and ran StarOffice or something like that, and admin'ing the whole system would have been a whole lot easier. Plus, compared to Mac hardware, which is prevalent in K-12, they're dirt cheap. For the price of one iMac, they can buy three thin clients. Seems to work out better for everyone.
Getting kids to recognize your brand at a young age is a great marketing device.
Does this really matter for Sun? Kids won't be able to buy a Sun Ray, because it needs an expensive server to feed it all its applications. And I don't see Mommy and Daddy buying Junior an Ultra 5 workstation anytime soon, either.
I don't think Sun's got any incentive like that here, at least in the K-12 market.
Seems to me that this person at MS called the Loki tech support line, and who was on the other end? Someone who (as best as I can tell) courteously and helpfully told the person how to install the software, and had a friendly chat with them while the install was going. If someone calls MS for support, all they'll be talking to is an automated voice prompt, at least until they hand over their charge card number. And I'm pretty sure you can bet that there probably won't be a friendly tech support person on the other end of the line, should you choose to pay for support. Seems like MS should be studying the usability of their own stuff first....
This was probably one of the "Community Bulletin Board" or "Prevue" channels... every once in a while in my city those channels crash. Over labor day weekend (and all weekend, since nobody was there to fix it) the whole channel just showed an Amiga crash screen.
Wow... I'm surprised I've never seen these before. I think I pulled a muscle in my gut laughing so hard. My favorite line on these is "For every winner, there are dozens of losers. Odds are you are one of them."
These are a WHOLE lot better than those campy motivational posters I've seen hanging around my office...
If you're a big audiophile, you're not going to be using MP3 anyway. MP3 is for a whole different group of pepole.
The issue with MP3 is its portability. The idea is that I can encode 10 or 11 of my CDs, burn it on a CD-R, and have a nice wide selection of music I can play on my desktop PC at work. Rather than haul around (and possibly scratch) a whole stack of CDs, I just have to carry around one CD-R that if I scratch up, I just have to burn a new copy from the files on my hard drive. I don't care about quality - heck, I listen to MP3s on a Sun with 8-bit audio. But it's great to be able to stick in one CD, fire up xaudio, and have 10 or 11 CDs to pick from.
Or, MP3 is nice because of convenience -- I can get my music quickly. Suppose at home, and I'm sunk deep into coding and don't want to be distracted. If I want music, I'd have to go to my CD collection, pull out a CD, walk over to the CD changer on my stereo, wait for it to turn on and spin up, and then play the CD. OR, I can just click over to the directory of MP3s on my PC, queue up a whole bunch, and have great music without even getting up from my chair.
Sure, MP3 is nice for downloading too, but unless you have a fast connection, who really wants to sit around and download a whole bunch of 4-meg files?
When you're a guest at someone's house, I'm sure you treat the place with respect, since it's not yours. Would you go to Rob M.'s house and start scribbling on the walls with Magic Marker, or rummaging through the bathroom medicine cabinet?
If someone tried that in my house, I'd kick them out PDQ.
It's time to get rid of the AC's. If people don't follow house rules, it's time to kick them out.
I cring every time I hear the that there's no accountability with Linux vendors... as in "There's nobody to sue if something goes wrong." Looks like SCO graduated from the Microsoft School of FUD.
Closed-source advocates should take a second look at their precious end-user license agreements. Most claim that the product will perform reasonably according to whatever feature claims the vendor made. They also limit liability to the purchase price of the product.
If you're running a major operation and your server crashes causing you to have $100,000 in lost business, the only $$$ you'll get back is the couple thousand $ you paid for the software. You agreed to that limited liability by way of the license for your software.
GNU and closed-source licensed software makers have the same level of accountability here... zilch. If something breaks, you keep both pieces.
In the early days, Prodigy would close the service for a couple hours every night for maintenance. The service would shut down at 2 or 3 AM every night and come back up early the next morning.
Also, anyone else remember the CEO game on Prodigy? This was the game where you could be an executive in a candy, beer, or auto business. Each game lasted 2 weeks - you'd find an open game that was starting that day and join it. Then you'd have to make business decisions for your 'company' - like setting up budgets for advertising, etc, all in an effort to beat everyone else enrolled in your game.
It was a really fun game, but they shut it down a few years ago.... too bad.
heh... MadMaze. I couldn't stop myself from playing that game.
I signed up for Prodigy back in the spring of 1991. To put this in perspective, I was using a 286 with a 1200 baud modem to access their service. I probably still have their sign-on packet somewhere in my basement... =)
I had no idea what a modem was until I started using Prodigy.
One thing I remember was that back in '91/'92, AOL was so small that they purchased advertising space on Prodigy. Prodigy is also perhaps the originator of the online banner ad.
My first experience with e-commerce was buying things from Sears online from Prodigy. Order something online and they deliver it straight to your door... what a concept.
In late 1994 Prodigy was the first online service to give you this strange new program called a "Web Browser." This was back when Yahoo! didn't even have its own domain name yet. I got hooked. When Prodigy started letting people create their own personal web pages, I learned HTML.
In 1995 I "graduated" from Prodigy and signed up with a local ISP. Today I'm doing web/CGI/Linux work for my job, and I would not be there if it weren't for that start I had got on Prodigy.
Really sad to see it go.
(sorry if this went out twice, accidentally punched "submit") Doesn't the Java license have a clause that says it shouldn't be used in life-or-death situations, i.e. nuclear power plant controls, aircraft traffic control, etc, since Java is still an 'unstable' technology? Isn't WAR one of these sorts of life-or-death situations?
This is a Good Thing(tm). Now that there's a company like Sun backing them up, it'll go a lot further. With Linux office suite being the only missing piece of the puzzle, hopefully Sun can get things moving.
I'm not saying that StarOffice is a perfect product - it's still a little rough around the edges. But it'll be a whole lot easier to pitch this to the typical PHB now that there's a billion-dollar company behind the product. `
...they could get a machine w/o windows and get a discount on it (even if it was a limited-time deal). We US people didn't seem to have that option, as far as I could tell. When I went to purchase a notebook from Dell (US), I asked about removing the pre-loaded M$ software for a discount. Our conversation went something like this:
Me: I'm looking at your web page here, and it says there's all this bundled Microsoft software like Windows and MS Works here. I won't be using Windows or MS Works on this, so can you take this off so I won't have to pay for it?
Dell: Well sir, that software is free with your computer, so removing it wouldn't change the price.
Me: They charge hundreds of dollars for this software if I were to buy it at a store - obviously someone had to pay for this software, and that all got worked into the price for my notebook. I don't want to pay for something I don't want.
Dell: The software's free, so you're not losing anything by deleting it yourself.
Me: There's no way this software can be free. Dell had to pay for an OEM license for all this bundled software, and Dell must be passing their costs for it on to me.
Dell: Well sir, the software is free.
Dell is also trying to nail people who try the windows refund approach, since they say if you want to return bundled software, their policy is that you have to return the entire system it came with.... all for a refund on a "free" product.
They mentioned in the news.com article only a few cities by name -- New York, Houston, Toronto, Chicago, Dallas, and Atlanta.
What are the 4 other cities?
Remember that Netscape is now part of AOL, the online M$. It seems like Microsoft's business plan is "Make low-quality products and sell them at high prices to people who don't know any better." AOL shares that philosophy... charging $22/mo for half the speed of a $14.95 local ISP.
I kept hearing people saying stuff like "this movie is extremely scary", etc. etc... so when I went into this film I expected it to be similar to some of the cheesy mainstream horror flicks we've become so used to (I Know What You [still] Did Last Summer, Scream, etc.). Boy was I wrong.
The wavy camera motion really gives the impression of a "first-hand" perspective of this brave group of 3 fictional filmmakers. You're one of them. When they get mad at one of the group members (like after the missing map segment) you get mad at that guy too. When they're running, so are you. At the final scene (I won't give anything away) you're part of the action.
Weaving the viewer right into the action is a different flavor of horror, and left me walking out of the theatre feeling a lot more entertained than I have after a whole lot of movies.
It's called OmniRemote.
http://www.pacificneotek.com