i've waited for the yopy for what seems like years. i studied every photograph, every news article, and every review, waiting for the consumer model. then, i finally woke up
now i have a new love, the sharp zaurus (linux, java, keyboard). the developer edition is supposed to be released soon (end of this month)
The developer version of YOPY was released many months ago, and the consumer version will be released in a couple of weeks....about the time Zaurus is released to developers. There's a connection here, but if I express it for you the value of realizing it yourself will be lost.
The trick with verizon is to never never sign on for the verizon ISP service but get your own. And insist on a real splitter, instead of microfilters -but that goes for any dsl service.
The verizon pppoe software for windows was reported to chew the cpu prodigously like you were running SETI@home. That's where alot of discontent with verizon originated. I heard about that when doing research , but then I already had made other plans. I set Verizon dsl up with a dhcp provding local isp instead of Verizon or earthlink with a Linux floppy based firewall. It's been fabulously great (for the people I set it up for) ever since the splitter was installed. Literally like dialtone.
Oh yes, and another thing: if it isn't a dsl to ethernet bridge, it was never designed to perform with stability in the first place. Whoever your dsl provider is, they don't necessarily want you to be connected 24/7, so as the the technology "matures" , meaning as they get past the tech-savvy, nitpicky, first-adopters, they think : why should they give away hardware that contributes to high uptime when they can buy the cheapest POS usb devices and microfilters instead , saving themselves money and keeping the customers offline a little more ?
oh but maybe i'm just too cynical about the telco monopolies.
It's been said already but I am not ashamed to repeat it: you'll get my dsl modem when you can pry it from my cold dead hands. Cheap hunk of usb shite that it is, it's my umbilicus.
I only want one telephone line. If I ordered a second phone number the telco would just multiplex it on the same wire as my first phone number. The consequences of that manouever (DAML) for the line noise usually cuts the download speed of a 56k modem in HALF. That's just not bearable.
DSL frees my phoneline for normal calls while I am online, which was nearly round the clock already when I suffered with 56k "service".
Large software downloads that would take all night to complete now take 10 minutes to half an hour.
I never wait now to be connected.
Most web pages load like they're part of my local filesystem or already stored in browser cache. Big pages load with tolerable quickness, usually, instead of provoking me to slap my monitor.
1.5mbs down/ 256 kbps up for $49/mo compared to a second line plus 56k unlimited access plans that limit you to 300 hours is no comparison at all
Really people should not whine about this kind of service and shake their fingers at the RBOCs and say "You have to make this less expensive before people will buy into it" I hear this from time to time and I wonder how cheap do they think it can be made and how far out do they think telcos can defer breaking evern on DSL service expansion. It's already a bargain at the price compared to the dialup alternative.
You really haven't been following this case have you?
In 1995 you say there was no credible threat to the MS desktop monopoly. Wrong! There was a federal trial over this exact issue. Netscape and the Internet were the threat to the desktop paradigm and Microsoft's deathgrip on it. The browser + middleware, MS realized belatedly, threatened to make their control of the desktop irrelevant. That's why Netscape had to die.
MS has a monopoly on DESKTOP OPERATING SYSTEMS, whether that means win9x or "A SUCCESSOR SYSTEM". That has been a fact central to the latest case and now has been upheld as a fact on appeal.
The legal term monopoly does not mean and has never been legally construed in US antitrust jurisprudence to mean that the monopolist has the only possible choice in a given market segment. It doesn't matter if Linux has 2% if Microsoft has the power to initimidate desktop application and hardware vendors from providing support to it. And since you're unnaturally concerned about absolutes, Microsoft has a 100% monopoly on preloaded operating systems for PCs in the brick and mortar retail channel.
Where the fuck have you been all this time D? Billg's anus can't be that interesting.
There's a nice big grassy area in front of the Capitol building. Only a couple lanes of street separate the grass from the Capitol This grassy area is large, level, well compacted and suitable for tanks and troop carriers, but it will also work just as well for tractors, SUVs cars and trucks and legion hordes of pissed off citizens who're mad as hell and have decided that they just will not take being fucked by their government anymore. Once they have reached a point of irritation where what pisses them off has sufficient power to actually distract them more than momentarily, sufficient power to crowd out thoughts of what's on TV tonight and those recurring daydreams of the perfect living room suite, then they may finally step off that curb into the street to tell the world about it. Immediately they will begin to feel relief. A weighted riot baton can feel like a masseur's hand. However, until that point arrives they must persevere with the cold comfort of Everybody Loves Raymond and fantasies of ensconcing themselves in velvet or leather recliners.
There's a colossal cascade of white marble steps that flow down from the Capitol's portico. White marble makes for a high contrast background against which your expression of displeasure can hardly be overlooked by television cameras. Red is a color that can really "pop" on a white background under all sorts of lighting. There on the steps is as wide a canvas for you to express your displeasure as can be found anywhere in North America. You may have to furnish the red pigment from your personal supply like brave people did in Genoa and Seattle, but if you wait for corporate sponsorship of your art you will die without ever being heard.
I'd like to join you there. But since you and other people are still talking about writing letters to tell distant frauds and functionaries how pissed off you are, I can tell you aren't very serious or very pissed off yet.
The only letter that can change the present corrupt state of affairs in America is a Frank Booth Love Letter.
You can always tell how stupid someone is by how able or incapable they are of forming an understanding of things without resorting to dualities.
You, like most people I've met, have just failed the "duality" test on this particular legal case.
The proposed remedy endorsed by Judge Jackson did not simply propose to break up Microsoft and declare the matter closed. There were numerous conduct remedies IN ADDITION TO the breakup plan. More stringent conduct remedies than anything in this sweetheart deal, I might add, if reports of the settlement are true.
It was never a question of either/or. It was never a choice between exclusive options of breaking up the company or imposing conduct remedies.
The Jackson remedy, flawed by leniency though it was, was ALWAYS a both/and proposition, as any meaningful remedy had to be. He endorsed, eventually, the need to break the company's strength into 2 pieces to push down the barrier to entry for standard applications on OS's competitive with Windows AND he also endorsed the idea that the baby-bills should be closely monitored to prevent monopolistic collusions. IN ADDITION to that, file formats and the Win32 api that MS and Windows based 3rd party applications use were to be fully documented for once by the establishment of an Justice Dept.controlled escrow for MS source code. IN ADDITION TO THAT, Oems were to be allowed to eliminate pieces formerly tied into Windows from their preloads and deduct these from their contracts and payments to Microsoft.
This settlement isn't even a joke. It's a transparent surrender to Microsoft - although surrender is probably not the right term to use since it usually indicates duress and distress on the part of the conceding party and overwhelming force on the part of the victor. In this case the government was in no way under duress or in a legal bind. The legal case against Microsoft was won overwhelmingly and largely upheld on appeal, therefore the government held the upper hand, even though the appellate showed their bias against a divestiture remedy. They still held the upper hand -that is right up until they mysteriously capitulated.
Well, I exaggerate. There is in fact no real mystery about what they are doing. Everyone who isn't a shit eating Dick Army goosestepper has seen this coming in his nightmares and warned others this sellout was likely.
It was never either/or, except for people who were fed the MS line along with all they've heard abouth the case by the cable news talk radio GOP spin machine. It was never either/or legally, not until the Bush goonsquad got its tentacles on the DOJ.
Tell me what part of BOTH/AND don't you average Americans understand? Why is this concept so very difficult?
Is it the Christian mythology endemic in the USian population that has destroyed your power to reason and make distinctions?
Is it the 24/7 lie factory of your media?
Or are you all just that dumb?
Seems to me that ARM could be many times more important to Linux and its future success than the 64 bit iCantium arch, which is a wheezing mess, or Alpha which is now tragically disappearing beneath the scaly folds of the beast that hatched iCantium, (Hello ? FTC ? Travis Bickle where are you when we need you!) but you hear so little about ARM.
Maybe kernel hackers could recalibrate their ideas of what's glamorous to work on and enduser Linux might tale off, thereby securing the future of Linux server side...
On second thought, if you actually find Win XP's very well coordinated, highly colorful interface scheme to be insulting then maybe you take your GUI and yourself way too seriously?
Really, any Linux desk environment project should be so lucky as to aquire the talents of a design team that could put together XP's "Luna" and IE6.0 They should damn well give their eyeteeth and pimp out their mothers, or sell their souls to El Diablo in exchange for a similar ability to handle COLOR as the primary element of their designs. If they could match that then you might actually see some glowing reviews of Linux as a desktop from mainstream writers for once, and maybe the OS would start to move in on the desktop some. Just maybe. Everyone in OSS seems to underestimate the value of aesthetic quality on the perception of functionality for some reason. Quite a blindspot for many geeks. An attractive interface might be the best $ RedHat ever spent - but how would they know what design to buy and who to contract with? It's a chicken and egg dilemma.
So far, none of them, on the Linux side, has even come close to the quality level seen in XP (speaking strictly of the graphic sophistication of the interface) whether you find it thematically too "cutesey" or not.
Y'know not everyone asks their computer to prove to them how geek`leet and/or technomacho they are. Most, in fact probably desire the interface to be cheerful and brightly colored, so they won't feel threatened and alienated by the computer's machiney otherness. Tinker Toys never meant to threaten anyone, except that one time when you sat back rather too fast and landed on the giant connector...OUCH! But no one else saw what happened and you got revenge on that evil tinker toy properly later on.
Holy jeeBuS! I can't believe I am sticking up for Microsoft.
It's probably intended to make you feel comfortable, since the look is opposite that of techno and threatening. Most users of XP Professional will not be computer professionals, but people convinced computerised calendars and whatnot is necessary for them to be "productive".
Do they really think all consumers are idiots and buy whatever is put in front of them? No, I'm sure they don't think that's true -not yet. But it is the goal and they are working towards it very hard. And those that can't be suckered, MSFT will simply shoulder aside with lock-out policies (like no other MUA but Outlook at MSN, illegible FrontPage "html", Ie / IIS hooks, etc, etc, )
Any idea on when this model will debut in USA? I have looked for the flora a few times at Hitachi's site and been unable to find that ie55 Transmeta/Midori model. Never heard of it being distributed stateside.
Yeah, why is it that the Gummint has to settle with MS?
I mean they won the case. They won the appeal. The Supreme Court didn't want to hear the case... Why are Microsoft still being consulted at all about what they are willing to accept?
Just how many times does MS have to lose in court before a fucking penalty and remedy will be applied to them whether its a remedy that suits MS or not? I think the time has passed when Billy should be allowed to complain But this one is too hot, and this one is too cold and....I just don't like the look of that other one .
Seriously, they've had hundreds of chances to be reasonable and settle before, almost a thousand (that's counting a day of open settlement talks as a literal chance) and instead of coming to terms they forced the DOJ to come and get them, risking the worst case scenario. Or they would have risked a worst case if they had been an ordinary defendant like anyone of us or our businesses. At this point in the normal legal process the lawyer for the ordinary lawbreaker is usually saying something like "I told you to plead manslaughter so they wouldn't try you for murder, dumbass. Now you've been found guilty and you'll face a mandatory 25 to life. " Or " I told you to approach the IRS and start making payments on your company's back taxes. Now they're going to liquidate your business, your personal assets, too, and you'll still owe them money when they're done." MS just gets a new chance to cut themselves a deal.
I guess there are two different court systems, one for the rich and powerful and another for the rest of us.
The law, normally impatient for restoration and justice and even vengeance, can be put on indefinite hold until a remedy can be found that comports with what Bill Gates benevolently decides is best "for the US economy". This case may yet have to be tried and retried again until a judge can be found who will prove her unbiased state of mind by declaring MS innocent.
Just how many extra chances to do they get anyway? Is this something with a hard limit like 2^64 that's so roomy as to be inexhaustible or is it really infinitely elastic, as it seems? I'd like to have a ballpark figure so I know where we are in the progress of this charade, or if it the fun never ends until the defendant can declare himself guilty but free to go in view of time already served.
Sorry, current Mac OS and current Windows OS don't run well in 64MB of RAM either, according to their official reccommendations.
A Linux install can be taken down to run in very tight circumstances if the need arises. I have plenty of MDK 8.0 installs doing important work in 32MB ram systems, and Linux-Router installs in 16MB ram w/ NO SWAP of any sort available. They run great with weeks of uptime.
This guy needs to spend 20 dollars to increase his RAM or cast a critical eye on the applications he's running and cut out his use of redundant graphical libraries.
Apple went easy on IP-theft once, ONCE, which was enough to give Windows, the cut-rate Mac imitator, take over the desktop market. So what? Whose fault is that? Here's some empathy-free clue for you: when Apple tried to cash in and shake Microsoft down in the courts over this issue, they lost on 99.99% of their case. That means in the eyes of the law, there was no IP theft. Apple licensed their work away, and could not collect an amount that seemed commensurate to them with the benefit MS received. Too bad, but it's not Yang's fault.
Yang isn't trying to make a dime from adapting the Aqua style to non-commercial projects. Following your logic, a term which I hesitate to deploy at all in this instance, if I make fried chicken for my friends and family with the 11 herbs and spices similar to Kentucky Fried Chicken's batter recipe, based on my experience with the Colonel's product, then KFC-Pepsico lawyers can come to my employer and demand that he seize the hd on my laptop and discover if I am storing their recipes on it.
That may sound absurd and hyperbolically Orwellian but it is really no more insane than what has happened to Eric Yang.
Apple invested heavily to develop the Aqua look and feel...
So what? The law doesn't mandate politeness and courtesy to the tender feelings of people who work hard last I checked. Millions of people have invested billions in 401K plans that have slid backwards for 12months on average. There is no law that ensuring these investors will be made whole, either.
...to set the new standard for desktop computing; Eric Yang attempts to profit...from Apple's work.
Oh good, now you're
falsely implying that larceny is his motive all along...
Let's see: lying, boasting... Oh, I think I can guess who real the sociopath here is --Mr. Yang you're in the clear.
The real "Bottomline": individual freedom cannot be continually squeezed and whittled and chiseled down to nothing to accomodate the corporate ultimatum for profit. You get a chance in this country to make a buck, not a government backed guarantee. Make it or fold and work for someone else. Don't enlist the State to intimidate people whose free expression you feel may create an atmosphere antagonistic to your business plan--there is no right to do that even if you can twist the legal "process" to do most of your dirty work preemptively, just by threatening to involve innocent people in the courts.
Don't try to use the State to enforce and extract the maximum profit at the expense of the liberty of the people individually or collectively. We will come to resent it in a way no "Think Different" advertizing campaign will assuage.
Did Yang attempt to SELL his themes and market them as equivalent to Apple products?
I think not.
If it's "illegal" for a PRIVATE CITIZEN to write frigging buttons and frames that just LOOK like some corporations' product then maybe what this country needs is a good old fashioned REVOLUTION.
Why aren't regular ads enough of a revenue stream to sustain the operations of a fairly simple site like salon.com?
I'm not saying they are, but clearly if a site with as much traffic as Salon gets cannot bring in enough $ through normal ads -- and this appears to be the case all over the web, not just at Salon-- then maybe the question to ask is why is the marketplace failing to assign sufficient value to normal banners, etc. ?
If the answer of the marketplace is that I have to see popup ads cover my screen and view ads first in order to get to content, at Salon or anywhere else, then SORRY the marketplace has guessed wrong, and worse than being wrong, it just shit itself out of luck.
The real "fucking babies" are companies that won't pay decently for normal banners. As they spread their shit over more and more of the typical web "experience", trying to get noticed, people will spend less and less time around them, their ads, and the sites they deface. Products advertized in this way are almost guaranteed to drive people to the competition, just as sites that accept such ads are surely going to be dropped from my surfing list. Funny way to get my money, don't you think? A little shortsighted maybe?
do as you damn well please and not be held accountable for it
I believe the idea embodied in the phrase above is usually referred to as "liberty", for shorthand. Sometimes even Liberty with an initial cap.
If you have broken no laws, then you should have nothing to account for. No one should be holding you to account until there is a "probable cause for suspicion" of a specific offense.
If you seek to monitor everyone regardless of their guilt or innocence and track their activities so you can " hold them accountable " at some unknown future time when it seems right to you, and at your maximum convenience, then you and me have what legal scholars in my part of the country usually refer to, in shorthand, as " a shootin' quarrel".
Um, you do realize that extensive user testing has shown that multiple buttons are in fact inferior from a usability standpoint?
So what? And one button plus a control character on the keyboard is supposed to be easier to remember and manipulate? What a crock...
Can you conceive of a frame of mind in which Apple Computer sponsored useability studies from the 80's or early 90's aren't taken at face value as the Word Of God?
If 2 or 3 buttons are said to be confusing to someone new to computers, well SO WHAT?
I really can't care about that since I can barely a time in my life when I didn't know how to use a 2 or 3 button mouse.
One could just as well say that since a newcomer to a good CLI like BASH is going to be unproductive and lost on day 1, that BASH is at useability level 0 and a bad design. But only a complete ignoramus who knew nothing about the subject or maybe David Korn who probably knows everything about the subject would dare to say that BASH renders its users "unproductive". Holy Shit! People who know only Gui shells are the ones who are mired in an inefficient timewasting environment! I wonder if they can guess how stuck they are?
The first "pc" I owned personally was an Apple, it had a square 1 button mouse and was fine until I replaced it with a trackball. However since that time I have learned what multibutton mice are about and I would never accept going back to Apple's ideas about mice. It's simply less useable to ME. So shove your study.
Moreover, everyone I know who uses computers, and that's alot of people, has been using personal computers now for a long time - few are newcomers. And the ones who use 2+ button mice (that's most of them) are doing just fine with their 2+ button mice. Somehow the issue never seems to come up. They don't have the excuse that they "find it all so overwhelming."
If 2 or 3 button mice are claimed to be confusing to children under 6, again, I can't really care about that either since I see kids of that age using 2 button mice as well as 4 and 5 button (scroll mice) and they get along just fine whether they use the second button or not. Usually button 2 is a shortcut to functions that are accessable elsewhere in the software through a arm motion plus a press of button one. Since I use a computer all day, I'd like that shortcut, thank you very much, and I don't want to reduce my GUI interface to the level of a speak'n'spell just because rug rats can't muster the dexterity for using the 2nd button. Use or not as you are able.
If 2 or 3 button mice are difficult and confusing for easily confused, arthritic senior citizens, well let them buy Macs I guess. I don't consider their interface proficiencies or incapacities as any kind of rule binding what's appropriate for able bodied adults. I don't ride around on a "Rascal" or have a chair lift installed on my stairs, although that is how a sizeable percentage of the old folks in this culture get around. Likewise, I don't know why I should restrict myself to an interface they find manageable if I want more.
I have used Apple's "insanely great" interface quite a bit as it has evolved at glacial speed over the last 17 years and I gotta say: it's not all that. After using X environments of one sort or another then going back to a classic Mac os8.x or 9 system I am impressed with how well my X desktops fit me.
I don't hate Macs or Mac users (I'm one on frequent occasions) and I have never liked to engage in pointless public pissing contests about Mac v. PC , but when one of the last few Mac-jihadists detonates himself in a public forum and hysterically proclaims the eternal superiority of the Mac interface... because of something as dumb as the one button mouse... I just feel sorry for him.
The one button mouse has only slightly more ergonomic validity than the insanely awful round mouse, ca. Yosemite G3. That is to say: it has no validity at all except that Steve Jobs says it's good thing, and Mac users can like or lump it.
whether WINE will run viruses little bits of malicious code or Notepad.exe. The question is when will it run useful desktop applications at 100% functionailty.
In the next couple of years, WINE will have to become as stable or better running win32 apps to entice people to use it, along with their old Office versions, instead of rolling over for the FINAL SOLUTION: the.NET mass internment of user's data.
I'll second that emotion.
It would be particularly unsettling if the same government that is now demanding sweeping domestic spying capabilities also ignored good evidence that a major terrorist attack was coming via the airlines to American soil, wouldn't it? It might be enough to make you wonder just what they want the increased surveillance powers for if they intentionally ignore the critical intelligence they're already getting from sigint and allied spy networks.
Did administration officials smother a friendly, timely warning with shocking obtuse ness
Did adminstration officials shitcan a timely bipartisan report on America's vulnerabilty to airborne terror because it did not suit their political agenda of pressing for utterly irrelevant Buck Rogers style intercontinental missile defense?
These people simply do not deserve to be trusted with broader powers. Take your pick of reasons to distrust them, they're all equally valid, probably. We should be considering instead how to limit the further damage they can do of granting them a permanent, legislated hold on what should be only "National State of Emergency" wartime powers to be granted in the last resort in a fight against a dangerous foe like Nazi Germany/ Kaisarean Germany before that or the Confederacy even earlier.
Re:Technology? Low tech solution to hijacking.
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Our New Pearl Harbor
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Making a blastproof door won't help much because the big bargaining chip is on the other side of it with the terrorists.
The attackers probably told the crew(s) that they would blow up the plane if they did not open the door. And since air crews have no way of really knowing what they have on the other side, they'll always do what they're told as long as it doesn't immediately mean the death of the passengers and people on the ground. It could be that if they comply the hijacker will just take them to Topeka and give himself up. Or if they do not comply, the terrorists may start killing passengers one at a time, or detonate a bomb in the hold killing them all.
The ideal would be to remove the ability of the terrorists to control the plane either directly or indirectly and to remove their ability to deliver threats and conduct negotiations, such as open this door or I blow up the plane, etc.
A possibility (one that is high tech) is for planes in the future to be remotely controlled from the ground in the event of possible hijacking or other in flight emergency. Remote piloting of commerical aircraft is frequently mentioned as a likely development anyway, but for economic reasons. It also needs to be possible to shut down all communication with the ground from the plane so that attackers have no one to deliver threats to. So taking control of an airplane by coercing the crew, or killing them and flying it yourself like the attackers did today, will become futile since the ground controllers will assume uninteruptible control of the flight remotely if a) the plane is off-course and b)no voice communication with the pilot is made. We will need many many safeguards to prevent remote control hijacking of course. It wouldn't be hard for remote telemetry from the cockpit gathered continuously and stored in a loop, like the cockpit -voice and flight data are now, to be sent from the aircraft automatically after the plane deviates from the flightpath. That would give people on the ground terrific information about what has been happening onboard just prior to the event. Also I would cause the radio to be disabled and for a big sign saying (RADIO DISBALED) to flash in the cockpit in the event that the remote telemetry suggests a terorrist takeover. Basically convert the flight into a freight elevator and make it physically impossible for them to influence the direction of the flight. Shut the terrorists up and take them down remotely somewhere as soon as possible, preferably a military base where they can receive a proper welcome.
What technology? Guy walks into a plane, shoots pilots, and turns the yoke.These events could have happened at any time since the towers were first constructed 30 years ago. What is this rant about technology for?
Indeed, according to CNN reports about a cellphone call made during the attack from Barbara Olsen, a victim in one of the planes and wife of the controversial Solicitor General Ted Olsen, the terrorists were armed with knives and boxcutters. Any more low-tech than that and they would have been armed with sharpened sticks and rocks.
The only thing that can ultimately defend against terrorism is signals intelligence --high tech. We have insanely high capabilities in this area and use them. The problem is that committed terrorists will always find a way. They are capable of keeping their mouths shut, thereby defeating some of our intelligence gathering tech. They are also essentially impossible to penetrate with human agents, and they resourceful and willing to go to "war" with primitive weapons, and they don't care about dying.
The one shocker in this is not that they did it. After all, Israel has been assassinating Palestinians suspected of terror activities wholesale lately -- America's leaders were arrogant fools if they thought they could let this campaign go on, and continue to back Sharon, and not suffer any consequences for it here at home. (Sorry if it offends people that I assume that an arab extremist group is behind it). Neither is it a surprise to me where they did it, nor how they did it, but that we were not prepared at all for the contingency of multiple airliners being diverted for kamikaze attacks. And that, though it is extremely plain what is afoot looking at the paths of these planes on FAA radar records, apparently no interceptors were scrambled to at least follow and splash them if needed.
I thought civilian and military air traffic control was better coordinated than this. I bet from now on it will be. I also suspect there will be a call for co-pilots to be "security officers" and both they and pilots to fly armed.
Did it occur to you to ever read the news on the case you're pontificating on?
The States AG are widely said to be the only reason a breakup solution was requested at all (in addition to conduct remedies). They were more hardline that the DOJ about taking MS apart in order to lessen the ability and the incentive for tying application software to the Windows OS, the way MS has always done and will continue to do as long as they remain one business.
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now i have a new love, the sharp zaurus (linux, java, keyboard). the developer edition is supposed to be released soon (end of this month)
The developer version of YOPY was released many months ago, and the consumer version will be released in a couple of weeks....about the time Zaurus is released to developers. There's a connection here, but if I express it for you the value of realizing it yourself will be lost.
The verizon pppoe software for windows was reported to chew the cpu prodigously like you were running SETI@home. That's where alot of discontent with verizon originated. I heard about that when doing research , but then I already had made other plans. I set Verizon dsl up with a dhcp provding local isp instead of Verizon or earthlink with a Linux floppy based firewall. It's been fabulously great (for the people I set it up for) ever since the splitter was installed. Literally like dialtone.
Oh yes, and another thing: if it isn't a dsl to ethernet bridge, it was never designed to perform with stability in the first place. Whoever your dsl provider is, they don't necessarily want you to be connected 24/7, so as the the technology "matures" , meaning as they get past the tech-savvy, nitpicky, first-adopters, they think : why should they give away hardware that contributes to high uptime when they can buy the cheapest POS usb devices and microfilters instead , saving themselves money and keeping the customers offline a little more ?
oh but maybe i'm just too cynical about the telco monopolies.
I only want one telephone line. If I ordered a second phone number the telco would just multiplex it on the same wire as my first phone number. The consequences of that manouever (DAML) for the line noise usually cuts the download speed of a 56k modem in HALF. That's just not bearable.
DSL frees my phoneline for normal calls while I am online, which was nearly round the clock already when I suffered with 56k "service".
Large software downloads that would take all night to complete now take 10 minutes to half an hour. I never wait now to be connected. Most web pages load like they're part of my local filesystem or already stored in browser cache. Big pages load with tolerable quickness, usually, instead of provoking me to slap my monitor. 1.5mbs down/ 256 kbps up for $49/mo compared to a second line plus 56k unlimited access plans that limit you to 300 hours is no comparison at all
Really people should not whine about this kind of service and shake their fingers at the RBOCs and say "You have to make this less expensive before people will buy into it" I hear this from time to time and I wonder how cheap do they think it can be made and how far out do they think telcos can defer breaking evern on DSL service expansion. It's already a bargain at the price compared to the dialup alternative.
You really haven't been following this case have you?
In 1995 you say there was no credible threat to the MS desktop monopoly. Wrong! There was a federal trial over this exact issue. Netscape and the Internet were the threat to the desktop paradigm and Microsoft's deathgrip on it. The browser + middleware, MS realized belatedly, threatened to make their control of the desktop irrelevant. That's why Netscape had to die.
MS has a monopoly on DESKTOP OPERATING SYSTEMS, whether that means win9x or "A SUCCESSOR SYSTEM". That has been a fact central to the latest case and now has been upheld as a fact on appeal.
The legal term monopoly does not mean and has never been legally construed in US antitrust jurisprudence to mean that the monopolist has the only possible choice in a given market segment. It doesn't matter if Linux has 2% if Microsoft has the power to initimidate desktop application and hardware vendors from providing support to it. And since you're unnaturally concerned about absolutes, Microsoft has a 100% monopoly on preloaded operating systems for PCs in the brick and mortar retail channel.
Where the fuck have you been all this time D? Billg's anus can't be that interesting.
There's a nice big grassy area in front of the Capitol building. Only a couple lanes of street separate the grass from the Capitol This grassy area is large, level, well compacted and suitable for tanks and troop carriers, but it will also work just as well for tractors, SUVs cars and trucks and legion hordes of pissed off citizens who're mad as hell and have decided that they just will not take being fucked by their government anymore. Once they have reached a point of irritation where what pisses them off has sufficient power to actually distract them more than momentarily, sufficient power to crowd out thoughts of what's on TV tonight and those recurring daydreams of the perfect living room suite, then they may finally step off that curb into the street to tell the world about it. Immediately they will begin to feel relief. A weighted riot baton can feel like a masseur's hand. However, until that point arrives they must persevere with the cold comfort of Everybody Loves Raymond and fantasies of ensconcing themselves in velvet or leather recliners.
There's a colossal cascade of white marble steps that flow down from the Capitol's portico. White marble makes for a high contrast background against which your expression of displeasure can hardly be overlooked by television cameras. Red is a color that can really "pop" on a white background under all sorts of lighting. There on the steps is as wide a canvas for you to express your displeasure as can be found anywhere in North America. You may have to furnish the red pigment from your personal supply like brave people did in Genoa and Seattle, but if you wait for corporate sponsorship of your art you will die without ever being heard.
I'd like to join you there. But since you and other people are still talking about writing letters to tell distant frauds and functionaries how pissed off you are, I can tell you aren't very serious or very pissed off yet.
The only letter that can change the present corrupt state of affairs in America is a Frank Booth Love Letter.
You can always tell how stupid someone is by how able or incapable they are of forming an understanding of things without resorting to dualities.
You, like most people I've met, have just failed the "duality" test on this particular legal case.
The proposed remedy endorsed by Judge Jackson did not simply propose to break up Microsoft and declare the matter closed. There were numerous conduct remedies IN ADDITION TO the breakup plan. More stringent conduct remedies than anything in this sweetheart deal, I might add, if reports of the settlement are true.
It was never a question of either/or. It was never a choice between exclusive options of breaking up the company or imposing conduct remedies.
The Jackson remedy, flawed by leniency though it was, was ALWAYS a both/and proposition, as any meaningful remedy had to be. He endorsed, eventually, the need to break the company's strength into 2 pieces to push down the barrier to entry for standard applications on OS's competitive with Windows AND he also endorsed the idea that the baby-bills should be closely monitored to prevent monopolistic collusions. IN ADDITION to that, file formats and the Win32 api that MS and Windows based 3rd party applications use were to be fully documented for once by the establishment of an Justice Dept.controlled escrow for MS source code. IN ADDITION TO THAT, Oems were to be allowed to eliminate pieces formerly tied into Windows from their preloads and deduct these from their contracts and payments to Microsoft.
This settlement isn't even a joke. It's a transparent surrender to Microsoft - although surrender is probably not the right term to use since it usually indicates duress and distress on the part of the conceding party and overwhelming force on the part of the victor. In this case the government was in no way under duress or in a legal bind. The legal case against Microsoft was won overwhelmingly and largely upheld on appeal, therefore the government held the upper hand, even though the appellate showed their bias against a divestiture remedy. They still held the upper hand -that is right up until they mysteriously capitulated.
Well, I exaggerate. There is in fact no real mystery about what they are doing. Everyone who isn't a shit eating Dick Army goosestepper has seen this coming in his nightmares and warned others this sellout was likely.
It was never either/or, except for people who were fed the MS line along with all they've heard abouth the case by the cable news talk radio GOP spin machine. It was never either/or legally, not until the Bush goonsquad got its tentacles on the DOJ.
Tell me what part of BOTH/AND don't you average Americans understand? Why is this concept so very difficult?
Is it the Christian mythology endemic in the USian population that has destroyed your power to reason and make distinctions?
Is it the 24/7 lie factory of your media?
Or are you all just that dumb?
Seems to me that ARM could be many times more important to Linux and its future success than the 64 bit iCantium arch, which is a wheezing mess, or Alpha which is now tragically disappearing beneath the scaly folds of the beast that hatched iCantium, (Hello ? FTC ? Travis Bickle where are you when we need you!) but you hear so little about ARM.
.02 USD
Maybe kernel hackers could recalibrate their ideas of what's glamorous to work on and enduser Linux might tale off, thereby securing the future of Linux server side...
My
You should try running it on a computer then. It's pretty nice.
posted with Mozilla M-0.95 and lots of love.
29 million clueless idiots.
Really, any Linux desk environment project should be so lucky as to aquire the talents of a design team that could put together XP's "Luna" and IE6.0 They should damn well give their eyeteeth and pimp out their mothers, or sell their souls to El Diablo in exchange for a similar ability to handle COLOR as the primary element of their designs. If they could match that then you might actually see some glowing reviews of Linux as a desktop from mainstream writers for once, and maybe the OS would start to move in on the desktop some. Just maybe. Everyone in OSS seems to underestimate the value of aesthetic quality on the perception of functionality for some reason. Quite a blindspot for many geeks. An attractive interface might be the best $ RedHat ever spent - but how would they know what design to buy and who to contract with? It's a chicken and egg dilemma.
So far, none of them, on the Linux side, has even come close to the quality level seen in XP (speaking strictly of the graphic sophistication of the interface) whether you find it thematically too "cutesey" or not.
Y'know not everyone asks their computer to prove to them how geek`leet and/or technomacho they are. Most, in fact probably desire the interface to be cheerful and brightly colored, so they won't feel threatened and alienated by the computer's machiney otherness. Tinker Toys never meant to threaten anyone, except that one time when you sat back rather too fast and landed on the giant connector...OUCH! But no one else saw what happened and you got revenge on that evil tinker toy properly later on.
Holy jeeBuS! I can't believe I am sticking up for Microsoft.
Do they really think all consumers are idiots and buy whatever is put in front of them?
No, I'm sure they don't think that's true -not yet. But it is the goal and they are working towards it very hard. And those that can't be suckered, MSFT will simply shoulder aside with lock-out policies (like no other MUA but Outlook at MSN, illegible FrontPage "html", Ie / IIS hooks, etc, etc, )
Any idea on when this model will debut in USA? I have looked for the flora a few times at Hitachi's site and been unable to find that ie55 Transmeta/Midori model. Never heard of it being distributed stateside.
I mean they won the case. They won the appeal. The Supreme Court didn't want to hear the case... Why are Microsoft still being consulted at all about what they are willing to accept?
Just how many times does MS have to lose in court before a fucking penalty and remedy will be applied to them whether its a remedy that suits MS or not? I think the time has passed when Billy should be allowed to complain But this one is too hot, and this one is too cold and
Seriously, they've had hundreds of chances to be reasonable and settle before, almost a thousand (that's counting a day of open settlement talks as a literal chance) and instead of coming to terms they forced the DOJ to come and get them, risking the worst case scenario. Or they would have risked a worst case if they had been an ordinary defendant like anyone of us or our businesses. At this point in the normal legal process the lawyer for the ordinary lawbreaker is usually saying something like "I told you to plead manslaughter so they wouldn't try you for murder, dumbass. Now you've been found guilty and you'll face a mandatory 25 to life. " Or " I told you to approach the IRS and start making payments on your company's back taxes. Now they're going to liquidate your business, your personal assets, too, and you'll still owe them money when they're done." MS just gets a new chance to cut themselves a deal.
I guess there are two different court systems, one for the rich and powerful and another for the rest of us.
The law, normally impatient for restoration and justice and even vengeance, can be put on indefinite hold until a remedy can be found that comports with what Bill Gates benevolently decides is best "for the US economy". This case may yet have to be tried and retried again until a judge can be found who will prove her unbiased state of mind by declaring MS innocent.
Just how many extra chances to do they get anyway? Is this something with a hard limit like 2^64 that's so roomy as to be inexhaustible or is it really infinitely elastic, as it seems? I'd like to have a ballpark figure so I know where we are in the progress of this charade, or if it the fun never ends until the defendant can declare himself guilty but free to go in view of time already served.
Sorry, current Mac OS and current Windows OS don't run well in 64MB of RAM either, according to their official reccommendations.
A Linux install can be taken down to run in very tight circumstances if the need arises. I have plenty of MDK 8.0 installs doing important work in 32MB ram systems, and Linux-Router installs in 16MB ram w/ NO SWAP of any sort available. They run great with weeks of uptime.
This guy needs to spend 20 dollars to increase his RAM or cast a critical eye on the applications he's running and cut out his use of redundant graphical libraries.
So what? Whose fault is that? Here's some empathy-free clue for you: when Apple tried to cash in and shake Microsoft down in the courts over this issue, they lost on 99.99% of their case. That means in the eyes of the law, there was no IP theft. Apple licensed their work away, and could not collect an amount that seemed commensurate to them with the benefit MS received. Too bad, but it's not Yang's fault.
Yang isn't trying to make a dime from adapting the Aqua style to non-commercial projects. Following your logic, a term which I hesitate to deploy at all in this instance, if I make fried chicken for my friends and family with the 11 herbs and spices similar to Kentucky Fried Chicken's batter recipe, based on my experience with the Colonel's product, then KFC-Pepsico lawyers can come to my employer and demand that he seize the hd on my laptop and discover if I am storing their recipes on it.
That may sound absurd and hyperbolically Orwellian but it is really no more insane than what has happened to Eric Yang.
Apple invested heavily to develop the Aqua look and feel...
So what? The law doesn't mandate politeness and courtesy to the tender feelings of people who work hard last I checked. Millions of people have invested billions in 401K plans that have slid backwards for 12months on average. There is no law that ensuring these investors will be made whole, either.
Let's see: lying, boasting... Oh, I think I can guess who real the sociopath here is --Mr. Yang you're in the clear.
The real "Bottomline": individual freedom cannot be continually squeezed and whittled and chiseled down to nothing to accomodate the corporate ultimatum for profit. You get a chance in this country to make a buck, not a government backed guarantee. Make it or fold and work for someone else. Don't enlist the State to intimidate people whose free expression you feel may create an atmosphere antagonistic to your business plan--there is no right to do that even if you can twist the legal "process" to do most of your dirty work preemptively, just by threatening to involve innocent people in the courts.
Don't try to use the State to enforce and extract the maximum profit at the expense of the liberty of the people individually or collectively. We will come to resent it in a way no "Think Different" advertizing campaign will assuage.
I think not.
If it's "illegal" for a PRIVATE CITIZEN to write frigging buttons and frames that just LOOK like some corporations' product then maybe what this country needs is a good old fashioned REVOLUTION.
I'm not saying they are, but clearly if a site with as much traffic as Salon gets cannot bring in enough $ through normal ads -- and this appears to be the case all over the web, not just at Salon-- then maybe the question to ask is why is the marketplace failing to assign sufficient value to normal banners, etc. ?
If the answer of the marketplace is that I have to see popup ads cover my screen and view ads first in order to get to content, at Salon or anywhere else, then SORRY the marketplace has guessed wrong, and worse than being wrong, it just shit itself out of luck.
The real "fucking babies" are companies that won't pay decently for normal banners. As they spread their shit over more and more of the typical web "experience", trying to get noticed, people will spend less and less time around them, their ads, and the sites they deface. Products advertized in this way are almost guaranteed to drive people to the competition, just as sites that accept such ads are surely going to be dropped from my surfing list. Funny way to get my money, don't you think? A little shortsighted maybe?
I believe the idea embodied in the phrase above is usually referred to as "liberty", for shorthand. Sometimes even Liberty with an initial cap.
If you have broken no laws, then you should have nothing to account for. No one should be holding you to account until there is a "probable cause for suspicion" of a specific offense.
If you seek to monitor everyone regardless of their guilt or innocence and track their activities so you can " hold them accountable " at some unknown future time when it seems right to you, and at your maximum convenience, then you and me have what legal scholars in my part of the country usually refer to, in shorthand, as " a shootin' quarrel".
Um, you do realize that extensive user testing has shown that multiple buttons are in fact inferior from a usability standpoint?
So what? And one button plus a control character on the keyboard is supposed to be easier to remember and manipulate? What a crock...
Can you conceive of a frame of mind in which Apple Computer sponsored useability studies from the 80's or early 90's aren't taken at face value as the Word Of God?
If 2 or 3 buttons are said to be confusing to someone new to computers, well SO WHAT?
I really can't care about that since I can barely a time in my life when I didn't know how to use a 2 or 3 button mouse.
One could just as well say that since a newcomer to a good CLI like BASH is going to be unproductive and lost on day 1, that BASH is at useability level 0 and a bad design. But only a complete ignoramus who knew nothing about the subject or maybe David Korn who probably knows everything about the subject would dare to say that BASH renders its users "unproductive". Holy Shit! People who know only Gui shells are the ones who are mired in an inefficient timewasting environment! I wonder if they can guess how stuck they are?
The first "pc" I owned personally was an Apple, it had a square 1 button mouse and was fine until I replaced it with a trackball. However since that time I have learned what multibutton mice are about and I would never accept going back to Apple's ideas about mice. It's simply less useable to ME. So shove your study.
Moreover, everyone I know who uses computers, and that's alot of people, has been using personal computers now for a long time - few are newcomers. And the ones who use 2+ button mice (that's most of them) are doing just fine with their 2+ button mice. Somehow the issue never seems to come up. They don't have the excuse that they "find it all so overwhelming."
If 2 or 3 button mice are claimed to be confusing to children under 6, again, I can't really care about that either since I see kids of that age using 2 button mice as well as 4 and 5 button (scroll mice) and they get along just fine whether they use the second button or not. Usually button 2 is a shortcut to functions that are accessable elsewhere in the software through a arm motion plus a press of button one. Since I use a computer all day, I'd like that shortcut, thank you very much, and I don't want to reduce my GUI interface to the level of a speak'n'spell just because rug rats can't muster the dexterity for using the 2nd button. Use or not as you are able.
If 2 or 3 button mice are difficult and confusing for easily confused, arthritic senior citizens, well let them buy Macs I guess. I don't consider their interface proficiencies or incapacities as any kind of rule binding what's appropriate for able bodied adults. I don't ride around on a "Rascal" or have a chair lift installed on my stairs, although that is how a sizeable percentage of the old folks in this culture get around. Likewise, I don't know why I should restrict myself to an interface they find manageable if I want more.
I have used Apple's "insanely great" interface quite a bit as it has evolved at glacial speed over the last 17 years and I gotta say: it's not all that. After using X environments of one sort or another then going back to a classic Mac os8.x or 9 system I am impressed with how well my X desktops fit me.
I don't hate Macs or Mac users (I'm one on frequent occasions) and I have never liked to engage in pointless public pissing contests about Mac v. PC , but when one of the last few Mac-jihadists detonates himself in a public forum and hysterically proclaims the eternal superiority of the Mac interface... because of something as dumb as the one button mouse... I just feel sorry for him.
The one button mouse has only slightly more ergonomic validity than the insanely awful round mouse, ca. Yosemite G3. That is to say: it has no validity at all except that Steve Jobs says it's good thing, and Mac users can like or lump it.
whether WINE will run viruses little bits of malicious code or Notepad.exe. The question is when will it run useful desktop applications at 100% functionailty. .NET mass internment of user's data.
In the next couple of years, WINE will have to become as stable or better running win32 apps to entice people to use it, along with their old Office versions, instead of rolling over for the FINAL SOLUTION: the
I'll second that emotion.
It would be particularly unsettling if the same government that is now demanding sweeping domestic spying capabilities also ignored good evidence that a major terrorist attack was coming via the airlines to American soil, wouldn't it? It might be enough to make you wonder just what they want the increased surveillance powers for if they intentionally ignore the critical intelligence they're already getting from sigint and allied spy networks.
Did administration officials receive advance knowledge of attacks with frightening indifference ?
Did administration officials smother a friendly, timely warning with shocking obtuse ness
Did adminstration officials shitcan a timely bipartisan report on America's vulnerabilty to airborne terror because it did not suit their political agenda of pressing for utterly irrelevant Buck Rogers style intercontinental missile defense?
These people simply do not deserve to be trusted with broader powers. Take your pick of reasons to distrust them, they're all equally valid, probably. We should be considering instead how to limit the further damage they can do of granting them a permanent, legislated hold on what should be only "National State of Emergency" wartime powers to be granted in the last resort in a fight against a dangerous foe like Nazi Germany/ Kaisarean Germany before that or the Confederacy even earlier.
The attackers probably told the crew(s) that they would blow up the plane if they did not open the door. And since air crews have no way of really knowing what they have on the other side, they'll always do what they're told as long as it doesn't immediately mean the death of the passengers and people on the ground. It could be that if they comply the hijacker will just take them to Topeka and give himself up. Or if they do not comply, the terrorists may start killing passengers one at a time, or detonate a bomb in the hold killing them all.
The ideal would be to remove the ability of the terrorists to control the plane either directly or indirectly and to remove their ability to deliver threats and conduct negotiations, such as open this door or I blow up the plane, etc.
A possibility (one that is high tech) is for planes in the future to be remotely controlled from the ground in the event of possible hijacking or other in flight emergency. Remote piloting of commerical aircraft is frequently mentioned as a likely development anyway, but for economic reasons. It also needs to be possible to shut down all communication with the ground from the plane so that attackers have no one to deliver threats to. So taking control of an airplane by coercing the crew, or killing them and flying it yourself like the attackers did today, will become futile since the ground controllers will assume uninteruptible control of the flight remotely if a) the plane is off-course and b)no voice communication with the pilot is made. We will need many many safeguards to prevent remote control hijacking of course. It wouldn't be hard for remote telemetry from the cockpit gathered continuously and stored in a loop, like the cockpit -voice and flight data are now, to be sent from the aircraft automatically after the plane deviates from the flightpath. That would give people on the ground terrific information about what has been happening onboard just prior to the event. Also I would cause the radio to be disabled and for a big sign saying (RADIO DISBALED) to flash in the cockpit in the event that the remote telemetry suggests a terorrist takeover. Basically convert the flight into a freight elevator and make it physically impossible for them to influence the direction of the flight. Shut the terrorists up and take them down remotely somewhere as soon as possible, preferably a military base where they can receive a proper welcome.
Indeed, according to CNN reports about a cellphone call made during the attack from Barbara Olsen, a victim in one of the planes and wife of the controversial Solicitor General Ted Olsen, the terrorists were armed with knives and boxcutters. Any more low-tech than that and they would have been armed with sharpened sticks and rocks.
The only thing that can ultimately defend against terrorism is signals intelligence --high tech. We have insanely high capabilities in this area and use them. The problem is that committed terrorists will always find a way. They are capable of keeping their mouths shut, thereby defeating some of our intelligence gathering tech. They are also essentially impossible to penetrate with human agents, and they resourceful and willing to go to "war" with primitive weapons, and they don't care about dying.
The one shocker in this is not that they did it. After all, Israel has been assassinating Palestinians suspected of terror activities wholesale lately -- America's leaders were arrogant fools if they thought they could let this campaign go on, and continue to back Sharon, and not suffer any consequences for it here at home. (Sorry if it offends people that I assume that an arab extremist group is behind it). Neither is it a surprise to me where they did it, nor how they did it, but that we were not prepared at all for the contingency of multiple airliners being diverted for kamikaze attacks. And that, though it is extremely plain what is afoot looking at the paths of these planes on FAA radar records, apparently no interceptors were scrambled to at least follow and splash them if needed.
I thought civilian and military air traffic control was better coordinated than this. I bet from now on it will be. I also suspect there will be a call for co-pilots to be "security officers" and both they and pilots to fly armed.
The States AG are widely said to be the only reason a breakup solution was requested at all (in addition to conduct remedies). They were more hardline that the DOJ about taking MS apart in order to lessen the ability and the incentive for tying application software to the Windows OS, the way MS has always done and will continue to do as long as they remain one business.