MCI, and now MCI Worldcom, has been reselling wireless service from other providers for a long time now. The conventional wisdom in the industry is that you've got to offer your customers one-stop telecommunications shopping, and nobody believes this more strongly than MCI.
I think that their hope is to actually start turning a profit on wireless service, rather than just offering it to round out their product line.
While I won't argue that AOL doesn't believe that they are, for all intents and purposes, the Internet, you're just wrong -- "Flamebait" or "Troll" would be more accurate than "Informative" for this one.
The only overlap between the AOL and MCI Worldcom boards is Steve Case himself. There's no overlap, to the best of my knowledge, between Sprint and either AOL or WCOM. I would imagine that Case is on the Worldcom board as a result of Worldcom's purchase of ANS from AOL a couple of years ago. Note that John Sidgemore (former UUnet CEO) and Bert Roberts (MCI CEO) are also on the board.
If anyone "controls" MCI Worldcom through ownership of stock, it's your grandma. Over 60% of their stock is held by "instututional investors", which generally means pension funds and such.
Re:Can You Install Windows 98? I think I can!
on
CNN Installs Linux
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· Score: 2
Windows 98 is indeed much, much improved over 95 for installation. It's certainly easier to install than any Linux distribution I've ever installed. God help you if you don't have a 98 startup disk handy (if you can't boot from the CD), though, or if you need to re-partition the disk, or anything else out of the ordinary. Then you start getting odd messages like "Incorrect DOS version" and such, and you start reaching for the antacids.
Windows NT installation is truly hell, though -- and face it, NT is the real parallel to Linux -- even when everything goes perfectly. Go have lunch while DOS sloooowly copies just abour everything off the CD onto the hard drive (don't have DOS handy or a disk partition that DOS can read? Sorry!) and then actually begins to install the OS. Oh, and it waits for you to say "OK" several times while doing this, so you'd better eat lunch at your desk.
In fairness, NT 4.0 *is* getting long in the tooth, and it appears that Windows 2000 is a lot better about this.
Perhaps we should ask them to install NT...
on
CNN Installs Linux
·
· Score: 4
I've installed Linux, Windows 95, 98, and NT (among other OSes), both on computers originally fitted with another OS and on vigrin machines.
Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it isn't -- with all OSes, with different mixes of hardware, etc. I've had Windows NT install with no tears (okay, with few tears), and I've spent days struggling to get Linux installations working worth a damn. On different occasions, I've had the opposite experience. My current theory is that it's the phase of the moon.
We should try to get a major news organization to attempt installing Windows NT on a machine that has Linux pre-installed. Send 'em the machine and a shrinkwrapped copy of NT Workstation. I'll even volunteer to provide the machine and the copy of Windows to CNN if they promise to try to return them safely.
The reality is that despite the efforts of various Linux vendors to change this, no operating system is simple to install for someone with little or no computer knowledge, and that it's more confusing still for them to install an OS over another, pre-existing one. It's about time that that fact gets reported in the press, rather than just that "Linux is hard to install".
I'd like to see a source for this information. While most of my CDs are from the 1990s, I've got about 20 or so in the 10 to 15 year-old range. They've certainly not been stored carefully -- they've probably spent a couple of cumulative years in cars. Not a single one has shown any sign of degradation.
Second try: First time was submitted inadvertently. Maybe the submit and preview buttons' positions should be switched.
I have a Motorola Pagewriter 2000, which is a glorified, overgrown, two-way pager with a keyboard. It's like the RIM device, but in a clamshell configuration and with, frankly, inferior software. It's possible to load other applications onto it (organizer, games, etc.) but I haven't tried them -- they're expensive, and they don't look too impressive. The standard service is in- and out-bound e-mail, to an address of the usual form xxxxxx@foo.com where xxx is your pager phone number, and foo your pager provider. Through the magic of procmail (or Outlook, or anything else) you can obviously have mail from any address sent to it.
I have receive-only service just about everywhere in the country, and outbound service anywhere with population to speak of.
The main thing keeping me from running out and buying a Palm VII right now is the size; while the PageWriter is huge for a pager, it does fit on my belt. My Palm Pro is already too bulky to fit comfortably in my pocket (YMMV) and the Palm VII is even a bit larger. While I'd like the web clipping service, it's possible to get access to most information via e-mail bots (see http://www.hz.com/) through the smaller, lighter, (and less expensive) PageWriter or RIM mail services.
There's a big future for wireless data -- I don't know how I could get anything done without my Ricochet modem and fancy pager -- but Palm's first entry looks to me to be more of a proof-of-concept than anything. It doesn't appear to offer enough additional value over current wireless offerings.
I have a Motorola Pagewriter 2000, which is a glorified, overgrown pager. It's possible to load other applications onto it (organizer, games, etc.) but I haven't tried them.
After negotiating through a maze of pages that seem designed to do nothing but make it hard to reach my goal, I come upon a page with a link ("accepot the license agreement?") to http://support.us.stardivision.com/registration/do wnload/unxlnxi510.html. Click on it. 404.
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I think that their hope is to actually start turning a profit on wireless service, rather than just offering it to round out their product line.
The only overlap between the AOL and MCI Worldcom boards is Steve Case himself. There's no overlap, to the best of my knowledge, between Sprint and either AOL or WCOM. I would imagine that Case is on the Worldcom board as a result of Worldcom's purchase of ANS from AOL a couple of years ago. Note that John Sidgemore (former UUnet CEO) and Bert Roberts (MCI CEO) are also on the board.
If anyone "controls" MCI Worldcom through ownership of stock, it's your grandma. Over 60% of their stock is held by "instututional investors", which generally means pension funds and such.
Windows NT installation is truly hell, though -- and face it, NT is the real parallel to Linux -- even when everything goes perfectly. Go have lunch while DOS sloooowly copies just abour everything off the CD onto the hard drive (don't have DOS handy or a disk partition that DOS can read? Sorry!) and then actually begins to install the OS. Oh, and it waits for you to say "OK" several times while doing this, so you'd better eat lunch at your desk.
In fairness, NT 4.0 *is* getting long in the tooth, and it appears that Windows 2000 is a lot better about this.
Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it isn't -- with all OSes, with different mixes of hardware, etc. I've had Windows NT install with no tears (okay, with few tears), and I've spent days struggling to get Linux installations working worth a damn. On different occasions, I've had the opposite experience. My current theory is that it's the phase of the moon.
We should try to get a major news organization to attempt installing Windows NT on a machine that has Linux pre-installed. Send 'em the machine and a shrinkwrapped copy of NT Workstation. I'll even volunteer to provide the machine and the copy of Windows to CNN if they promise to try to return them safely.
The reality is that despite the efforts of various Linux vendors to change this, no operating system is simple to install for someone with little or no computer knowledge, and that it's more confusing still for them to install an OS over another, pre-existing one. It's about time that that fact gets reported in the press, rather than just that "Linux is hard to install".
I'd like to see a source for this information. While most of my CDs are from the 1990s, I've got about 20 or so in the 10 to 15 year-old range. They've certainly not been stored carefully -- they've probably spent a couple of cumulative years in cars. Not a single one has shown any sign of degradation.
Second try: First time was submitted inadvertently. Maybe the submit and preview buttons' positions should be switched.
I have a Motorola Pagewriter 2000, which is a glorified, overgrown, two-way pager with a keyboard. It's like the RIM device, but in a clamshell configuration and with, frankly, inferior software. It's possible to load other applications onto it (organizer, games, etc.) but I haven't tried them -- they're expensive, and they don't look too impressive. The standard service is in- and out-bound e-mail, to an address of the usual form xxxxxx@foo.com where xxx is your pager phone number, and foo your pager provider. Through the magic of procmail (or Outlook, or anything else) you can obviously have mail from any address sent to it.
I have receive-only service just about everywhere in the country, and outbound service anywhere with population to speak of.
The main thing keeping me from running out and buying a Palm VII right now is the size; while the PageWriter is huge for a pager, it does fit on my belt. My Palm Pro is already too bulky to fit comfortably in my pocket (YMMV) and the Palm VII is even a bit larger. While I'd like the web clipping service, it's possible to get access to most information via e-mail bots (see http://www.hz.com/) through the smaller, lighter, (and less expensive) PageWriter or RIM mail services.
There's a big future for wireless data -- I don't know how I could get anything done without my Ricochet modem and fancy pager -- but Palm's first entry looks to me to be more of a proof-of-concept than anything. It doesn't appear to offer enough additional value over current wireless offerings.
I have a Motorola Pagewriter 2000, which is a glorified, overgrown pager. It's possible to load other applications onto it (organizer, games, etc.) but I haven't tried them.
After negotiating through a maze of pages that seem designed to do nothing but make it hard to reach my goal, I come upon a page with a link ("accepot the license agreement?") to http://support.us.stardivision.com/registration/do wnload/unxlnxi510.html. Click on it. 404.