Justify for me a legal reason for broadband. Within your justification leave out anything dealing with Open Source Software. Because the average home consumer like the average home computer user does not use Open Source OS's or software for the most part. It's a broad generalization I know.
What's left to legally justify broadband? Nothing at all. P2P is the only thing that justifies broadband. If you're not using p2p then you can probably get everything you need from a 56K modem and save yourself some money.
I know that there are media enriched sites and game demos that are rather hefty downloads, but with a little patience the average home user could probably save themselves $30 - $60 by just using a modem. But the average home user loves to load up kazaa and download to their hearts desire. The ability to find any movie, music, program, etc file is what the average home user finds as the coolest thing. Thanks to p2p you can now download just about anything you want to download.
It's a catch 22 of mass proportions for ISP's. They want to advertise blazing fast downloads, but they also want to stay in business with as few lawsuits as possible. They aren't censoring information. They are making p2p applications stop working because that's what 99% of the bandwidth for broandband is used for. Cable modems unlike DSL rely on neighborhoods of networks to share bandwidth, if little jimmy 13 year old is constantly downloading full length movies at 900 k/s then that neighborhoods bandwidth is shot.
What's next are we going to go after the department of transportation because they have speed limits up and don't let me drive my porsche as fast as it can go? Blocking p2p is something that I would look for in a broadband company so that I would know that I can have fast downloads. I download OSS software and SDK's all the time that range anywhere from 10megs to 2 gigs. Do you really think I want a 5 k/s download with files that large? Nope, hence why I like blocking p2p.
Everyone who claims that p2p is a right of freedom is the same type of moron that believes handguns are a security device. This is not a violation of America's civil rights and quite frankly I'm getting a little tired of the ACLU always thinking that there is something wrong. Do any of these radical groups ever think that they've won, that the battle is over, that it might be okay to shut the hell up and let people live peacefully.
To those wanting to respond, remember everyone is wrong in someones eyes.
Well the reason that turbo linux came out way back in the day was because it was optimized for higher end machines. Something that RedHat, Caldera, Slack, and Debian hadn't done, yet. The basic demise of Turbo's market hold came out when Mandrake came out. Mandrake took the ease of RedHat and brought the optimizations that RedHat users wanted. Along with a few extra packages that RedHat wouldn't carry (IE: KDE), Mankdrake brought about where linux would be going.
Turbo to this day has an installer that can compete only with slackware and debian, if you noticed neither of those installers are actually what anyone would call "user friendly". But they weren't designed to be user friendly they were designed to install their distribution. Turbo's marketshare is in Asia and Southern America. Europe and the US see RedHat, SuSE, Mandrake and Debian and think that the other distros of the past are dead.
Has anyone here every looked at the list of linux distributions out there today? It's not like there is a perfect distro for everyone. I wouldn't say Turbo was dead, just like I wouldn't say that and OSS project is dead. A dead OSS project is unknown because someone has forgotten about it. If there is at least one person who knows and uses a distro/software then it's not dead.
On a wee bit of a side note, if you want to count how success and whether or not something is alive by monetary values. How much money can one really expect to make on something that is free? I'm not trying to start a Open Source flamefest, but just identifying the original intent of Open Source, freedom. Can you put a price on freedom? I can't.
Half life is the game to thank for the craze of make your own game out of the game you already have. While Duke Nuke Um 3D came with a level editor right on the disc it was basically Half Life and the HL SDK have made it IMO the most modable game out there. Many gamers don't even realize that they are playing halflife still and not some other game. I know many gamers who can tell you exactly what counterstrike is, but have no idea what halflife is.
But is halflife the game to thank when it comes down to who made it possible? Nope, we still have doom in my book, the game that made everything possible. What made first person shooters and mulitlevel games the best thing since sliced bread? Doom. What gave everyone who had enough time and patience the ability to create their own game inside a game (know known as modding, back then known as wadding)? Doom again. What game set the presidence of how first person shooters would work? Doom.
Basically what I'm getting at is all these gamemakers made enough money off of their games that they wanted to help make it possible for those who had the time and dedication to elaborate on their work. I think everyone who codes, and especially open source, gets the greatest high when the work they've been working on is not only accepted in the OSS community, but when someone takes it and is so amazed with it that they want to take the time to learn it so that they can use it.
Does anyone else realize that halflife being as old as it is can still bring a top of the line machine to it's knees? This game was designed to be able to run on a p133 with 4 megs of video ram and 32 megs of system ram. I know that the mods have since made the game a little bit more in depth than the original, but I still find it funny.
Who here doesn't know what they're buying? And if you don't know and you don't like it, you can return it to where you bought it from (most of the time). If you own something, can you destroy it? Yes. If you own something is it anyone elses responsibility to make it better or fix it when it's broke? No. This is why we have consumer awareness groups, so you know what you're actually buying. You can't buy a car and whine because it's not a convertable, but you want to easily make it a convertable.
Basically this is a whiner article if you ask me.
Re:EBay and PayPal ... not my favorites
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Ebay buys PayPal
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I've never heard this, ever. And your claim about it being easy to get passwords.. do you have any backup on that?
Sure I do... but do I have to justify my post to you... nope.
But for sheer arguments sake I will go ahead and just give you an overview. EBay used to have the login setup that if you logged in wrong 3 times that you would be given the option to retreive a lost/forgotten password. So while this may not seem like a bad thing, I don't know the exact details (seeing as I'm not an ebay hax0r) but the link to verify a change to a password isn't random at all and I guess can be easily accessed without actually hijacking the email. Then once that page is loaded ebay just lets ya change the password to anything you want to change it to.
It has happened to me once, and I was very angry. I managed to actually dig up EBay's phone number and give them all call to tell them how angry I really was. They agreed that there was a security problem and said they'd fix it, have they? I don't know, I don't use EBay anymore.
Which fees are you refering to here? Paypal have great fees, it's just acouple of percent, no? Maybe I'm confused what you mean here.
The fee where a $300 check had $24 of it shaved off the top to transfer. That's the fee I'm talking about. I would love to be the middleman on these deals. No actual work just taking money. PayPal relies on EBay for business, I know that they have some online stores and online donation setups, but a large majority of their traffic still comes from EBay and other auction sites. They've got some heavy percentages that aren't just right there in the open for ya to know what they are.
EBay and PayPal ... not my favorites
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Ebay buys PayPal
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Granted these are two of the largest companies on the net now in terms of the average joe knowing about them. AOL, EBay, and Paypal are as common as the internet, heck I even read an article about how they were on the internet. EBay has all the junk you could ever want to get, but their security is seriously lacking. While you don't have to use your credit card to bid, the accounts aren't exactly secure. Password compromising is actually very easy. How many times have you heard a story to the tune of, "A hacker broke into joe schmoo's ebay account and started bidding on the weirdest things the other day. It's a shame, now he's a deadbeat bidder."
PayPal, while secure, isn't exactly cheap. While it's quick and secure, if you use credit cards and direct deposit. The fees for transfering funds are outrageous. I think PayPal starts to make up for it through the services they provide that are similar to any other bank. Still not to happy with the chunk of MY check that they take.
Why would ebay do this? Simple, that way they control every part of the bidding experience, from the post, to the bid, to the buy... I see them maybe trying to buy fedex next. I mean why not, let's plaster EBay on everything!!
It's a Harry Potter book. What value does this serve except for entertainment. Are children blessed with higher intellects by reading this? Are countries brought to peace through it? Do starving families eat well? NO! This is a prime example of media crap. Who cares if Harry Potter has a fake? Who cares if he turns into a troll? When are we going to realize that the world is controlled by media and not by what really counts?
Where are we honoring our intellectuals? Where are we showing that the value of reasoning is better than the value of dunking a basketball. We need to realize that the world needs to change or else we will begin to regress into worms. I come to slashdot for news that applies to techies and computer intellectuals, if I want to read entertainment news I'll go somewhere else. I was meerly stating that China has a whole heap of problems over the fact that they have a fake Harry Potter book.
The entire country is blocked by a huge firewall censoring the entire internet. All forms of news and entertainment media are controlled by the government. The country is ran by a one party dictatorship. People have minimal human rights. More than 60% of the country is impoverished.
But yes, let's focus on the fact that there's a bogus Harry Potter book floating around in China, God knows that's more important.
Amiga is back, amiga is dead, amiga is back, amiga is dead, etc.. I think we've finally seen that Amiga is back in somewhat full force now. I remember back in the good old days when amigas were the coolest thing next to sliced bread. But I was silly, while all the other kids were playing with apples, amigas, and commodores, I was playing with my 286.
Figures that the x86 wasn't really useable until the 4th revision. I'd say the 3rd revision, but that whole deal with the mathco and what-not, the bugs weren't worked out until 486. Amiga was always before its time. And a little out of my price range, besides who used a computer for video and sound editing? That's what complex dubbing and recording tools were for, not computers. Sheesh, if I only I knew where dreamworks would be 12 years ago, if only..
It still amazes me that these machines are selling for hundreds of dollars on ebay now, along with the apple II's, and commodores... but 286's are a dime a dozen. What's this tell me? Absolutely nothing:-)... just information.
Personally I think the day of MS is over, the day of apple is nearing, and the day of the underdogs is going to rise upon us once again. There will be hundreds on non-standards, software will be written for multiple platforms and operating systems, only to have one more victory to which we will be locked into another companies ideals and software. It's a vicious trend that does not have a foreseeable end to it... maybe one day... maybe.
Exactly, who's to say that having a bad idea and a poorly managed company is microsoft's doing. Plenty of companies not in the OS market go out of business, just because they have a bad product idea or a product idea that wasn't something adopted by the public.
Granted, I like BeOS and use it regularly, but I think there are lots of reasons that it didn't catch on, and microsoft having a better operating system is just a small part of those problems.
I mean has anyone here ever ran windows?... and you want to see the sourcecode... I mean seriously the sourcecode has to be a BFM (big freekin mess).
Besides wouldn't the code analyzers be smacked with the same NDA's that colleges who got ahold of NT's source code were. Something like you can't develope an OS or develope system maintence software for windows for 5 years.
If I was a code developer that had the ability to understand operating systems (like windows)... which I'm not... would I really want to take the burden of examining this code?
And a stripped down version of windows impossible? Funny windows 1 - 95b managed to work just fine WITHOUT internet explorer. And NT was just fine until 4.0 came out. I mean what functionality does IE really bring to the Operating System. Not to mention XP, there's that stupid CD burning software, dvd player, windows media player, internet explorer, and funky skins. If you take that away from XP... then you'll have Win2K:-).
IE integration is not neccessary to the OS itself. But I think that people really need to face the facts. If you don't like something... do something about it. I'm not talking about suing... I'm talking about not using it.
Let's get as many as I can remember here. BSD's, Linuxes, QNX, Be, AtheOS, Unicies (some are free now). And there are even non-free alternatives, MacOS, Solaris, Tru64, etc. If you don't like windows, stop complaining about how "virus prone", "crashy", and "crappy" it is, STOP USING IT.
Get yerself a CD-Burner and a high-speed connection and do yourself a favor, upgrade. And if you don't have the previous mentioned then find someone who does, it would take you probably all of 30 minutes to find one of your chaps that has the neccessary tools. Or get out of the house and off the phone with your lawyer, and go see your local UG (user group), perl mongers, BSD Users Groups, Linux UG's, Amiga Users, etc.
There are lots of resources out there, but you have to actually go find them. I don't think that you'll ever get a phone call "Hi this is Bill Gates, what can I do to make windows better for you?" , but if you do... simply reply "Can you have an option to install Debian in the setup menu?"
Don't get me wrong, I dis-like MS, but what have they done wrong except make a complex math tool a cool toy that is useful? I don't see anyone suing MacOS for only running on powerpcs... BeOS tried to get their foot in the door and linux runs on mac hardware. Is not an apple a monopoly in the mac world? Ohhh but wait, that's okay...
"It said windows 98 or better, so I installed linux"
true, but hopefully those who have gigabit ethernet safely and deeply bury their fiber. Though I do know of some companies that string it along telephone lines... I wish I had money to burn.
This would be wonderful _if_ wireless networks were anywhere near affordable. It's almost cheaper to just dig and run cable than it is to use a wireless network.
And lets not forget how fragile the whole system would be. A mirror, heavy fog, lightening striking, etc. all come to mind. From what I've heard wireless repeaters attract lightening quite well, and a nice surge like a lightening bolt can bring makes a wireless network a little worthless.
Hopefully with all this new technology coming out, cheap wireless networks will be next on the list of things that are cool for geeks. I mean WHO DOESN'T have their own intranet in their house???
Well we still got the GPL and everything that falls under it...
Re:Leave it to the Americans ...
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Apollo 1
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The fact that everyone isn't equal and hard work = bigger rewards... you can't get that in communism...
Re:Leave it to the Americans ...
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Apollo 1
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Not american censorship, but more of an asshole block... I can still read your stupid posts because I view at -1... so... what else you got for me... coz I got a one way plane ticket outta my country for ya...
You should know better than to screw with a patriot... I'm posting +2 because slashdot moderators feel I can be trusted with that (proof by their moderations...)
What's next... you pro communism?
Re:Leave it to the Americans ...
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Apollo 1
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You just stay an anonymous coward... coz that's what anit-americans are... cowards!
Leave it to the Americans ...
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Apollo 1
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... to never give up. If there's one thing I've learned in history class it's that Americans are destined to never take defeat lighlty. Apollo 1 was a major setback for NASA and they had to re-think safety (as safe as sitting on top of a rocket can be) and with success the Apollo Series successfully landed on the moon on multiple occasions. A goal set by nasa and kennedy, but fullfilled by very brave and very smart people.
American endurance has shown throughout the ages, though with a few setbacks like "war against communism" for instances, we never give up. I think that Apollo 1 should set as an example. America's war on terrorism will not stop and we were hit with a big blow, but we got right back up even more pissed off than we were before we got hit. Though not invincible, we as Americans, hold true in our beliefs. Democracy and the value of the individual American will always be held as a wonderful thing.
Is America perfect? No, but I'll tell ya what, I wouldn't turn my back on my country for a damn thing. Patriotism is strong in every American and will always be that way. We've set the groundwork to never have a facist dictator ever lead us (how many other countries can say that?... yeah about 3). We don't have all the best things, but we sure as hell try to make sure that everyone knows that we're on top in every endeavor we take up.
Though the price was high, NASA has brought us things that were never once thought possible. To be able to sit in the heavens and sustain life. Maybe one day to be able to call even another planet, home. But that doesn't mean that Americans want to do it alone, hence the ISS.
So I'm proud to be an American, and proud to know that 3 men risked their lives to advance science and safety. And I also am more than happy to remember the veterns and fallen soldiers who fought to keep my country a free country. Thank you.
This is not the Nerds Rumor Mill, nor does this matter until it's a real problem. If loki was going to go under dontcha think we would have heard about it a little earlier than a WEEK before the so-planned shutdown?
Here's an idea... how about you call the company in question for a comment... you know... like real reporters do... before they go an just publish things...
In the real world we like to call this research, I would have thought you'd learned your lesson from the AOL/RedHat deal... geeze
I'm a tool... no I've been in the so called "industry"... and I'll tell ya what... joe-average computer science person is one out of 100. Easily replaceable... so when joe-average CS/IT person lands a job... they try to keep it.
Saying... and doing... are two very different things.
Well leaving just because you don't like your boss is cocky... and well at least Cox has a well-known name that would let him score a job somewhere else.
I don't think anyone really likes their boss... I mean you can get along with them, but you're not going to want to grab a beer after work with them and shoot the shit about all the pens you stole the day before from the storage closet because you're too lazy to take your kid school shoppin.
Then there's the wonderfulness of... AOL HASN'T BOUGHT RED HAT YET... and throwing out these kinds of attitudes can definantelly cause you to loose your job even if there is no merger.
AOL has yet to put massive controls on a company that they've acquired... they're just looking for a solid investment... AOL = online... redhat = server... these are just IT buzzwords... and are recognizeable buzzwords... hell I know quite a few people who will ask me if I run linux 6.2 or 7.1...
But Cox really needs to look at who puts food on the table... I know if I had a nifty little job where I could do what I enjoy... I'd work to keep it... with or without slashdot's approval.
Alright I mean lets look at the past two articles here. AOL (the epitemy of newbiews) is going to buy RedHat. And now... USA puts listening devices in a Hostile Nuclear Countries Presidential AirPlane????
Ummmm I'm just waiting for the washingtonpost to actually post these stories in their paper before I believe them... and I would really like to see other sources.
Right now it's looking like someone is having fun with their systems and submitting the faked stories to slashdot. I mean really... since when does slashdot link to any paper besides the (Registration Required) NY Times?
2.4 was long over do. Does anyone else remember the "coming soon... erm wait..." and the date kept getting pushed back further and further...
I really like using USB, and I like not having to use ALSA for my sound card (not that I have anything against ALSA).
After playing around with debian the other day and seeing all of my hardware that WON'T WORK with the 2.2 series it has basically come to my attention that I am all for the 2.4 series.
Linux is a continously developing system, whether it be the kernel, distribution, or software. Linux will always be "In Developement". Which is perfect for linux.
So yeah... if you don't like 2.4... go back to 2.2... yeah... thought so:-P
With RedHat's new buying into the eCos and embedded technologies... of course the CEO of RedHat will be publically pushing towards that realm of things...
I say it now and I know I'll eat my words in 10 years, but "Who wants a box that can change channels, play every type of media, connect to the internet and play games?" Well the X-Box and PS2 have almost made the perfect component for that, but daddy wurbucks isn't putting one in his new home entertainment system quite yet...
Why are PC sales dropping? Everyone and their brother has one... I mean lets face it... everyone has a computer, or they at least can name 50 people they've met that have one. When the television came out no one thought anyone would ever have a need to have more than one TV in their house??? But low-and-behold multiple TV's are something that most middleclass to uperclass people have in their homes now.
Multiple computer homes are starting to become the standard for joe-public, but they aren't as common as they will be in the future. Will embedded low-priced systems be the key to this. You bet your ass they will. Will they run ( insert favorite free OS here ) ??? who knows... I mean does that really matter anymore. If people want to run ( insert favorite OS here ) on their systems... they will.
Computers aren't going away ever... the home computer is so big that we have made billionaires out of the craze. Will there be a bigger craze... of course... will it make new billionaires?... of course.
So is the interview all bunk?... Is the CEO of RedHat lying when he says he believes that personal computers are becoming a thing of the past?... NO... but I don't think the home computer is leaving any time soon... people like the ability to upgrade their computers... even if they have no idea how... so long as they believe they can upgrade without having to actually buy a whole new product... even if buying a new better product really isn't that much more than the cost of the new product.
I dunno... I'm weird... and hell... this is all just opinion... I can be wrong:-)
Slashdot Mirror
What's left to legally justify broadband? Nothing at all. P2P is the only thing that justifies broadband. If you're not using p2p then you can probably get everything you need from a 56K modem and save yourself some money.
I know that there are media enriched sites and game demos that are rather hefty downloads, but with a little patience the average home user could probably save themselves $30 - $60 by just using a modem. But the average home user loves to load up kazaa and download to their hearts desire. The ability to find any movie, music, program, etc file is what the average home user finds as the coolest thing. Thanks to p2p you can now download just about anything you want to download.
It's a catch 22 of mass proportions for ISP's. They want to advertise blazing fast downloads, but they also want to stay in business with as few lawsuits as possible. They aren't censoring information. They are making p2p applications stop working because that's what 99% of the bandwidth for broandband is used for. Cable modems unlike DSL rely on neighborhoods of networks to share bandwidth, if little jimmy 13 year old is constantly downloading full length movies at 900 k/s then that neighborhoods bandwidth is shot.
What's next are we going to go after the department of transportation because they have speed limits up and don't let me drive my porsche as fast as it can go? Blocking p2p is something that I would look for in a broadband company so that I would know that I can have fast downloads. I download OSS software and SDK's all the time that range anywhere from 10megs to 2 gigs. Do you really think I want a 5 k/s download with files that large? Nope, hence why I like blocking p2p.
Everyone who claims that p2p is a right of freedom is the same type of moron that believes handguns are a security device. This is not a violation of America's civil rights and quite frankly I'm getting a little tired of the ACLU always thinking that there is something wrong. Do any of these radical groups ever think that they've won, that the battle is over, that it might be okay to shut the hell up and let people live peacefully.
To those wanting to respond, remember everyone is wrong in someones eyes.
Turbo to this day has an installer that can compete only with slackware and debian, if you noticed neither of those installers are actually what anyone would call "user friendly". But they weren't designed to be user friendly they were designed to install their distribution. Turbo's marketshare is in Asia and Southern America. Europe and the US see RedHat, SuSE, Mandrake and Debian and think that the other distros of the past are dead.
Has anyone here every looked at the list of linux distributions out there today? It's not like there is a perfect distro for everyone. I wouldn't say Turbo was dead, just like I wouldn't say that and OSS project is dead. A dead OSS project is unknown because someone has forgotten about it. If there is at least one person who knows and uses a distro/software then it's not dead.
On a wee bit of a side note, if you want to count how success and whether or not something is alive by monetary values. How much money can one really expect to make on something that is free? I'm not trying to start a Open Source flamefest, but just identifying the original intent of Open Source, freedom. Can you put a price on freedom? I can't.
But is halflife the game to thank when it comes down to who made it possible? Nope, we still have doom in my book, the game that made everything possible. What made first person shooters and mulitlevel games the best thing since sliced bread? Doom. What gave everyone who had enough time and patience the ability to create their own game inside a game (know known as modding, back then known as wadding)? Doom again. What game set the presidence of how first person shooters would work? Doom.
Basically what I'm getting at is all these gamemakers made enough money off of their games that they wanted to help make it possible for those who had the time and dedication to elaborate on their work. I think everyone who codes, and especially open source, gets the greatest high when the work they've been working on is not only accepted in the OSS community, but when someone takes it and is so amazed with it that they want to take the time to learn it so that they can use it.
Does anyone else realize that halflife being as old as it is can still bring a top of the line machine to it's knees? This game was designed to be able to run on a p133 with 4 megs of video ram and 32 megs of system ram. I know that the mods have since made the game a little bit more in depth than the original, but I still find it funny.
Basically this is a whiner article if you ask me.
Sure I do ... but do I have to justify my post to you ... nope.
But for sheer arguments sake I will go ahead and just give you an overview. EBay used to have the login setup that if you logged in wrong 3 times that you would be given the option to retreive a lost/forgotten password. So while this may not seem like a bad thing, I don't know the exact details (seeing as I'm not an ebay hax0r) but the link to verify a change to a password isn't random at all and I guess can be easily accessed without actually hijacking the email. Then once that page is loaded ebay just lets ya change the password to anything you want to change it to.
It has happened to me once, and I was very angry. I managed to actually dig up EBay's phone number and give them all call to tell them how angry I really was. They agreed that there was a security problem and said they'd fix it, have they? I don't know, I don't use EBay anymore.
Which fees are you refering to here? Paypal have great fees, it's just acouple of percent, no? Maybe I'm confused what you mean here.
The fee where a $300 check had $24 of it shaved off the top to transfer. That's the fee I'm talking about. I would love to be the middleman on these deals. No actual work just taking money. PayPal relies on EBay for business, I know that they have some online stores and online donation setups, but a large majority of their traffic still comes from EBay and other auction sites. They've got some heavy percentages that aren't just right there in the open for ya to know what they are.
PayPal, while secure, isn't exactly cheap. While it's quick and secure, if you use credit cards and direct deposit. The fees for transfering funds are outrageous. I think PayPal starts to make up for it through the services they provide that are similar to any other bank. Still not to happy with the chunk of MY check that they take.
Why would ebay do this? Simple, that way they control every part of the bidding experience, from the post, to the bid, to the buy ... I see them maybe trying to buy fedex next. I mean why not, let's plaster EBay on everything!!
Where are we honoring our intellectuals? Where are we showing that the value of reasoning is better than the value of dunking a basketball. We need to realize that the world needs to change or else we will begin to regress into worms. I come to slashdot for news that applies to techies and computer intellectuals, if I want to read entertainment news I'll go somewhere else. I was meerly stating that China has a whole heap of problems over the fact that they have a fake Harry Potter book.
The entire country is blocked by a huge firewall censoring the entire internet. All forms of news and entertainment media are controlled by the government. The country is ran by a one party dictatorship. People have minimal human rights. More than 60% of the country is impoverished.
But yes, let's focus on the fact that there's a bogus Harry Potter book floating around in China, God knows that's more important.
Figures that the x86 wasn't really useable until the 4th revision. I'd say the 3rd revision, but that whole deal with the mathco and what-not, the bugs weren't worked out until 486. Amiga was always before its time. And a little out of my price range, besides who used a computer for video and sound editing? That's what complex dubbing and recording tools were for, not computers. Sheesh, if I only I knew where dreamworks would be 12 years ago, if only ..
It still amazes me that these machines are selling for hundreds of dollars on ebay now, along with the apple II's, and commodores ... but 286's are a dime a dozen. What's this tell me? Absolutely nothing :-) ... just information.
Personally I think the day of MS is over, the day of apple is nearing, and the day of the underdogs is going to rise upon us once again. There will be hundreds on non-standards, software will be written for multiple platforms and operating systems, only to have one more victory to which we will be locked into another companies ideals and software. It's a vicious trend that does not have a foreseeable end to it ... maybe one day ... maybe.
But right now, Go Amiga! :)
Exactly, who's to say that having a bad idea and a poorly managed company is microsoft's doing. Plenty of companies not in the OS market go out of business, just because they have a bad product idea or a product idea that wasn't something adopted by the public. Granted, I like BeOS and use it regularly, but I think there are lots of reasons that it didn't catch on, and microsoft having a better operating system is just a small part of those problems.
Besides wouldn't the code analyzers be smacked with the same NDA's that colleges who got ahold of NT's source code were. Something like you can't develope an OS or develope system maintence software for windows for 5 years.
If I was a code developer that had the ability to understand operating systems (like windows) ... which I'm not ... would I really want to take the burden of examining this code?
And a stripped down version of windows impossible? Funny windows 1 - 95b managed to work just fine WITHOUT internet explorer. And NT was just fine until 4.0 came out. I mean what functionality does IE really bring to the Operating System. Not to mention XP, there's that stupid CD burning software, dvd player, windows media player, internet explorer, and funky skins. If you take that away from XP ... then you'll have Win2K :-).
IE integration is not neccessary to the OS itself. But I think that people really need to face the facts. If you don't like something ... do something about it. I'm not talking about suing ... I'm talking about not using it.
Let's get as many as I can remember here. BSD's, Linuxes, QNX, Be, AtheOS, Unicies (some are free now). And there are even non-free alternatives, MacOS, Solaris, Tru64, etc. If you don't like windows, stop complaining about how "virus prone", "crashy", and "crappy" it is, STOP USING IT.
Get yerself a CD-Burner and a high-speed connection and do yourself a favor, upgrade. And if you don't have the previous mentioned then find someone who does, it would take you probably all of 30 minutes to find one of your chaps that has the neccessary tools. Or get out of the house and off the phone with your lawyer, and go see your local UG (user group), perl mongers, BSD Users Groups, Linux UG's, Amiga Users, etc.
There are lots of resources out there, but you have to actually go find them. I don't think that you'll ever get a phone call "Hi this is Bill Gates, what can I do to make windows better for you?" , but if you do ... simply reply "Can you have an option to install Debian in the setup menu?"
Don't get me wrong, I dis-like MS, but what have they done wrong except make a complex math tool a cool toy that is useful? I don't see anyone suing MacOS for only running on powerpcs ... BeOS tried to get their foot in the door and linux runs on mac hardware. Is not an apple a monopoly in the mac world? Ohhh but wait, that's okay ...
"It said windows 98 or better, so I installed linux"
And lets not forget how fragile the whole system would be. A mirror, heavy fog, lightening striking, etc. all come to mind. From what I've heard wireless repeaters attract lightening quite well, and a nice surge like a lightening bolt can bring makes a wireless network a little worthless.
Hopefully with all this new technology coming out, cheap wireless networks will be next on the list of things that are cool for geeks. I mean WHO DOESN'T have their own intranet in their house???
Well we still got the GPL and everything that falls under it ...
You should know better than to screw with a patriot ... I'm posting +2 because slashdot moderators feel I can be trusted with that (proof by their moderations ...)
What's next ... you pro communism?
American endurance has shown throughout the ages, though with a few setbacks like "war against communism" for instances, we never give up. I think that Apollo 1 should set as an example. America's war on terrorism will not stop and we were hit with a big blow, but we got right back up even more pissed off than we were before we got hit. Though not invincible, we as Americans, hold true in our beliefs. Democracy and the value of the individual American will always be held as a wonderful thing.
Is America perfect? No, but I'll tell ya what, I wouldn't turn my back on my country for a damn thing. Patriotism is strong in every American and will always be that way. We've set the groundwork to never have a facist dictator ever lead us (how many other countries can say that? ... yeah about 3). We don't have all the best things, but we sure as hell try to make sure that everyone knows that we're on top in every endeavor we take up.
Though the price was high, NASA has brought us things that were never once thought possible. To be able to sit in the heavens and sustain life. Maybe one day to be able to call even another planet, home. But that doesn't mean that Americans want to do it alone, hence the ISS.
So I'm proud to be an American, and proud to know that 3 men risked their lives to advance science and safety. And I also am more than happy to remember the veterns and fallen soldiers who fought to keep my country a free country. Thank you.
my 8-ball says that all sources point to no ...
Here's an idea ... how about you call the company in question for a comment ... you know ... like real reporters do ... before they go an just publish things ...
In the real world we like to call this research, I would have thought you'd learned your lesson from the AOL/RedHat deal ... geeze
Saying ... and doing ... are two very different things.
I don't think anyone really likes their boss ... I mean you can get along with them, but you're not going to want to grab a beer after work with them and shoot the shit about all the pens you stole the day before from the storage closet because you're too lazy to take your kid school shoppin.
Then there's the wonderfulness of ... AOL HASN'T BOUGHT RED HAT YET ... and throwing out these kinds of attitudes can definantelly cause you to loose your job even if there is no merger.
AOL has yet to put massive controls on a company that they've acquired ... they're just looking for a solid investment ... AOL = online ... redhat = server ... these are just IT buzzwords ... and are recognizeable buzzwords ... hell I know quite a few people who will ask me if I run linux 6.2 or 7.1 ...
But Cox really needs to look at who puts food on the table ... I know if I had a nifty little job where I could do what I enjoy ... I'd work to keep it ... with or without slashdot's approval.
Ummmm I'm just waiting for the washingtonpost to actually post these stories in their paper before I believe them ... and I would really like to see other sources.
Right now it's looking like someone is having fun with their systems and submitting the faked stories to slashdot. I mean really ... since when does slashdot link to any paper besides the (Registration Required) NY Times?
I really like using USB, and I like not having to use ALSA for my sound card (not that I have anything against ALSA).
After playing around with debian the other day and seeing all of my hardware that WON'T WORK with the 2.2 series it has basically come to my attention that I am all for the 2.4 series.
Linux is a continously developing system, whether it be the kernel, distribution, or software. Linux will always be "In Developement". Which is perfect for linux.
So yeah ... if you don't like 2.4 ... go back to 2.2 ... yeah ... thought so :-P
I say it now and I know I'll eat my words in 10 years, but "Who wants a box that can change channels, play every type of media, connect to the internet and play games?" Well the X-Box and PS2 have almost made the perfect component for that, but daddy wurbucks isn't putting one in his new home entertainment system quite yet ...
Why are PC sales dropping? Everyone and their brother has one ... I mean lets face it ... everyone has a computer, or they at least can name 50 people they've met that have one. When the television came out no one thought anyone would ever have a need to have more than one TV in their house??? But low-and-behold multiple TV's are something that most middleclass to uperclass people have in their homes now.
Multiple computer homes are starting to become the standard for joe-public, but they aren't as common as they will be in the future. Will embedded low-priced systems be the key to this. You bet your ass they will. Will they run ( insert favorite free OS here ) ??? who knows ... I mean does that really matter anymore. If people want to run ( insert favorite OS here ) on their systems ... they will.
Computers aren't going away ever ... the home computer is so big that we have made billionaires out of the craze. Will there be a bigger craze ... of course ... will it make new billionaires? ... of course.
So is the interview all bunk? ... Is the CEO of RedHat lying when he says he believes that personal computers are becoming a thing of the past? ... NO ... but I don't think the home computer is leaving any time soon ... people like the ability to upgrade their computers ... even if they have no idea how ... so long as they believe they can upgrade without having to actually buy a whole new product ... even if buying a new better product really isn't that much more than the cost of the new product.
I dunno ... I'm weird ... and hell ... this is all just opinion ... I can be wrong :-)