Yeah, but don't forget, this is Microsoft were talking about. Who here wants to bet on the outcome of a Realplayer vs. Microsoft slugging match of codecs? I'd bet on the great M$, myself, in which case Windows would have WMF, Linux wouldn't and M$ would have just one more lever to use against Linux. "Why, why would you want to use THEM? They don't even have WMF. And since we blackmailed , you HAVE to use WMF to do ". We'd all love an open source codec, or failing that, one that doesn't have M$'s hands on it, but we might not have the choice. And if the contract IS clean, there really isn't that much M$ can do, legally.
Strange. I use IE 5, and I've never seen any of those problems. In fact, I've only ever had it crash twice, and neither time did it lock up my entire computer. OTOH, the latest version of Netscape crashes whenever my modem logs on. I have to log on, THEN start Netscape. It also crashes if I key a newsgroup name into the "subscribe to newsgroup" dialogue box that it can't find, and then hit enter. It also crashes periodically for no reason I can find, every few hours on average. It also crashes if I try and run StarOffice while it's running. And when it DOES crash, it pops up an illegal operation dialouge box that doesn't ever go away, no matter what you do. And once that happens, trying to reboot the computer will make it do a "hard" lock up.
And that, my friends, is why I'm posting this using IE, not Netscape.:-)
The token unit of measurement offered in Tesla's name is meaningless.
And who put you in charge of deciding what is meaningful and what isn't, Mr. Coward? Fact is, with the SI unit, Tesla's name is practically guaranteed to be remembered;
Is it? Is it really? I've got a friend who's last name is Foot (well, Foote, actually, but let's ignor that). I'm sure HIS name will be remembered too, won't it? Well...no, actually, because he doesn't have any connection to the unit of distance. The name of a unit of magnetic flux is becoming the same as most other names of units--devoid of any connection to an inventor. Like it or not, Nicola Tesla != a tesla for most people, any more than my friend Peter Foote = a foot. We shouldn't care about the second--my friend didn't invent the foot. OTOH, Nicola Tesla DID invent the eponymous unit, and his name should be remembered.
he's in the company of a lot of the most renowned physicists, and anyone who gets curious won't have a hard time finding truthful information about him.
Won't they? Really? I think not. You have to look pretty damn hard to find any reference of him--and who's going to be curious enough to look up someone they don't know exists? Did you ever go look up the name Pound in an encyclopedia to try and find the inventor of the pound? Speculate perhaps about the possible scientific career of Ezra Pound? No, of course not.
Edison and Marconi, on the other hand, do not have a unit named after them.
Nor do they need one--after all, every schoolchild learns their names. Who knows or cares about UNITS, for Dog's sake? All we know or care about, in general, is the nice little fairy tales which fit so nicely into a textbook. Everyone knows Newtons name too, do they not? But not because of the newton--because they will have heard that silly story about the apple.
Not ANY computer--it doesn't list MY first machine. A truly excellent beast, was the Victor 4000. In many ways, quite ahead of it's time--and sadly, sunk without a trace. I've never even met someone who's HEARD of it. It even pioneered (it was the first, and as far as I know, last, to use it) an interesting technique by which the disk drive heads changed speed based on their position. Made it's disks completly incompatible with every other system known to man, but it packed a few more K on to a 5'1/4" disk...
If you want NT webhosting, they've got most of the bells and whistles (ASP, databases, index server, unlimted mailboxes, big account sizes, let you use custom components, etc.) pretty cheaply. The tech support is good, and I've ALWAYS got an answer within 24 hours.
Very good pricing structure too--like it's a one time (small) fee to register a component, and any updates changed to it are free. Most of the stuff is like that--small up front fee, no montly charge. Better than some places (which will go unmentioned) which charge HIGH monthly fees for everything.
Of course! You should complain to @Home. Do so at length, and threaten to take your business elsewhere until @Home manages to fix the problem @Home has which is hurting @Home users.
If @Home doesn't fix the problem, you really should switch, if possible. If not, there are many other solutions. The cheapest and easiest would be to read newsgroups via Dejanews or Remarq. Better solutions would be to get a Unix shell account (these are available for free some places at least).
Of course, @Home may come around, hopefully before the UDP hits on the 18th. If so, you have no problems at all.
It's simple really. Competition is good, right? Sure! So what any solution needs is to either increase the number of competitors, or decrease the ability of the competitors to utilize non-competitive practices.
The second solution is difficult, and not likely to have a good outcome, since it requires someone to take a proactive role in regulating things. None of want that, I'm sure.
The first solution is great. We need more competitors, so we simply create them by fiat. How? By breaking Microsoft into pieces. "Baby Bills", I think someone called them. But the key here is they must compete!
Microsoft should be broken into 4-6 competing companies (plus 1 or 2 small ones for the Hardware and Publishing devisions), all with a license to the source code for the core stuff--the programs and OS. The API's would also be published, of course.
All of a sudden you've got lots of companies, all of which are competing. They HAVE to differentiate themselves or die, and price is the easiest. (Boom, prices come down). But all of the Baby Bills can do THAT, so next up is features. And since there won't be a monopoly any more, it's even likely one of the Baby Bills will have the bright idea of heading open source to some degree as a means of upstaging it's rivals.
And THAT is the optimum outcome. Whether you think it likely or not, it's gotta be better than splitting the Microsoft monopoly into lots of little ones. That tactic has been tried before...
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Yeah, but don't forget, this is Microsoft were talking about. Who here wants to bet on the outcome of a Realplayer vs. Microsoft slugging match of codecs? I'd bet on the great M$, myself, in which case Windows would have WMF, Linux wouldn't and M$ would have just one more lever to use against Linux. "Why, why would you want to use THEM? They don't even have WMF. And since we blackmailed , you HAVE to use WMF to do ". We'd all love an open source codec, or failing that, one that doesn't have M$'s hands on it, but we might not have the choice. And if the contract IS clean, there really isn't that much M$ can do, legally.
This is pretty damn cool. The trend just gets better.
Strange. I use IE 5, and I've never seen any of those problems. In fact, I've only ever had it crash twice, and neither time did it lock up my entire computer. OTOH, the latest version of Netscape crashes whenever my modem logs on. I have to log on, THEN start Netscape. It also crashes if I key a newsgroup name into the "subscribe to newsgroup" dialogue box that it can't find, and then hit enter. It also crashes periodically for no reason I can find, every few hours on average. It also crashes if I try and run StarOffice while it's running. And when it DOES crash, it pops up an illegal operation dialouge box that doesn't ever go away, no matter what you do. And once that happens, trying to reboot the computer will make it do a "hard" lock up.
:-)
And that, my friends, is why I'm posting this using IE, not Netscape.
The token unit of measurement offered in Tesla's name is meaningless.
And who put you in charge of deciding what is meaningful and what isn't, Mr. Coward? Fact is, with the SI unit, Tesla's name is practically guaranteed to be remembered;
Is it? Is it really? I've got a friend who's last name is Foot (well, Foote, actually, but let's ignor that). I'm sure HIS name will be remembered too, won't it? Well...no, actually, because he doesn't have any connection to the unit of distance. The name of a unit of magnetic flux is becoming the same as most other names of units--devoid of any connection to an inventor. Like it or not, Nicola Tesla != a tesla for most people, any more than my friend Peter Foote = a foot. We shouldn't care about the second--my friend didn't invent the foot. OTOH, Nicola Tesla DID invent the eponymous unit, and his name should be remembered.
he's in the company of a lot of the most renowned physicists, and anyone who gets curious won't have a hard time finding truthful information about him.
Won't they? Really? I think not. You have to look pretty damn hard to find any reference of him--and who's going to be curious enough to look up someone they don't know exists? Did you ever go look up the name Pound in an encyclopedia to try and find the inventor of the pound? Speculate perhaps about the possible scientific career of Ezra Pound? No, of course not.
Edison and Marconi, on the other hand, do not have a unit named after them.
Nor do they need one--after all, every schoolchild learns their names. Who knows or cares about UNITS, for Dog's sake? All we know or care about, in general, is the nice little fairy tales which fit so nicely into a textbook. Everyone knows Newtons name too, do they not? But not because of the newton--because they will have heard that silly story about the apple.
Not ANY computer--it doesn't list MY first machine. A truly excellent beast, was the Victor 4000. In many ways, quite ahead of it's time--and sadly, sunk without a trace. I've never even met someone who's HEARD of it. It even pioneered (it was the first, and as far as I know, last, to use it) an interesting technique by which the disk drive heads changed speed based on their position. Made it's disks completly incompatible with every other system known to man, but it packed a few more K on to a 5'1/4" disk...
...M6 Hosting.
If you want NT webhosting, they've got most of the bells and whistles (ASP, databases, index server, unlimted mailboxes, big account sizes, let you use custom components, etc.) pretty cheaply. The tech support is good, and I've ALWAYS got an answer within 24 hours.
Very good pricing structure too--like it's a one time (small) fee to register a component, and any updates changed to it are free. Most of the stuff is like that--small up front fee, no montly charge. Better than some places (which will go unmentioned) which charge HIGH monthly fees for everything.
Oh, and I'm not affiliated with them. :-)
Of course! You should complain to @Home. Do so at length, and threaten to take your business elsewhere until @Home manages to fix the problem @Home has which is hurting @Home users.
If @Home doesn't fix the problem, you really should switch, if possible. If not, there are many other solutions. The cheapest and easiest would be to read newsgroups via Dejanews or Remarq. Better solutions would be to get a Unix shell account (these are available for free some places at least).
Of course, @Home may come around, hopefully before the UDP hits on the 18th. If so, you have no problems at all.
It's simple really. Competition is good, right? Sure! So what any solution needs is to either increase the number of competitors, or decrease the ability of the competitors to utilize non-competitive practices.
The second solution is difficult, and not likely to have a good outcome, since it requires someone to take a proactive role in regulating things. None of want that, I'm sure.
The first solution is great. We need more competitors, so we simply create them by fiat. How? By breaking Microsoft into pieces. "Baby Bills", I think someone called them. But the key here is they must compete!
Microsoft should be broken into 4-6 competing companies (plus 1 or 2 small ones for the Hardware and Publishing devisions), all with a license to the source code for the core stuff--the programs and OS. The API's would also be published, of course.
All of a sudden you've got lots of companies, all of which are competing. They HAVE to differentiate themselves or die, and price is the easiest. (Boom, prices come down). But all of the Baby Bills can do THAT, so next up is features. And since there won't be a monopoly any more, it's even likely one of the Baby Bills will have the bright idea of heading open source to some degree as a means of upstaging it's rivals.
And THAT is the optimum outcome. Whether you think it likely or not, it's gotta be better than splitting the Microsoft monopoly into lots of little ones. That tactic has been tried before...