This is common knowledge if you are in the US. There are three major credit reporting agencies and there is next to zero government regulation. If they get something wrong, there is no guarantee that you can correct it. The horror stories are routinely featured on television, but no one is doing anything about it.
For all the talk the major risk from credit card fraud is to shops not customers. You can cancel a credit card payment. This is the major problem with any new system.
If you cancel a payment, it will damage your credit history and that is a huge problem for you. Next time you are refused a loan, think about the $5 charge that you cancelled. Companies know this, and this is why they don't follow up small credit card fraud cases. (And by small they mean anything under a few thousand dollars).
Re:Heres what I dont understand..
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Mandrake News
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· Score: 1
PIX is Cisco and there isn't a Linux company on the market that can beat their support. Match it MAYBE, but not beat it.
I don't think that will be a problem for really high end stuff when you are willing to pay whatever it takes. But for something like this, I think Linux would be competitive. I don't know what they charge for SMARTNET, but it must be in the thousands.
Re:Given up on Mandrake
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Mandrake News
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· Score: 1
Can you tell me what the procedure is to have my bug report 'evaluated'? Is it that MandrakeExpert site?
Yes, I was talking about the MandrakeExpert site. I think the qa site redirects you there. Very frustrating. And BTW, are there any working US mirrors for Cooker? Most of the links on the main site seem to be in Europe.
Re:If this is good news...
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Mandrake News
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· Score: 1
My understanding was that RedHat were making a small profit, but the profits came from support to fairly large corporate customers, not from the distro itself.
Server market is where the money is right now. However, RedHat has recently started focusing on the desktop again, and they even have a multimedia distribution. And a lot of people swear by the RedHat update system. I think they will do well.
From my experiences here in France, I don't think anyone could make money supporting Linux for end users, and I'm not even sure about installing networks: a few companies have tried, and have got some business from schools, govt departments etc, but I'm not sure any of them are still trading.
There are certainly markets in which Linux is doing well right now. Every week there is an announcement about a high performance computing system installed by a Linux company.
The only people I can think of who might be making money on Linux are IBM.
And all the companies IBM allies with for different tasks (RedHat etc.).
Re:Given up on Mandrake
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Mandrake News
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· Score: 1
My biggest problem with Mandrake is the lack of any sensible system for reporting bugs. Their Bugzilla at https://qa.mandrakesoft.com/ is for the unstable 'Cooker' release only. So you can report bugs for the version that's expected to be buggy, but not for the stable version! WTF?
Is this true? They used to have a proper bugtracking system some time ago. You could add listing to the specific rpm. However, now they want you to go through this interface where your bug is "evaluated" and then maybe added to the system.
Re:Heres what I dont understand..
on
Mandrake News
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· Score: 2, Informative
But why the hell do they charge so much? The cost of that firewall package was 1,999 Euro. We bought a PIX firewall and it cost like 3,000 Euros. Considering the PIX is actually a hardware appliance as well, I dont think its that bad a deal.
What about support for your product? I think with companies like SUN you will have to pay extra for support (and I don't mean the read from the script kind).
the beauty that is occurring now is that SOME (re: Nvidia) manufacturers are actively supporting Linux... but more importantly... a LOT of them are releasing documentation to the community that allows truly free drivers to be developed OUTSIDE the manufacturing world
A much deeper problem is hardware being optimized for Windows. This is apparent only at the kernel level. I am not talking about Winmodems and such, but stuff like SCSI controllers. You have a situation where it performs well on the Windows infrastructure, but Linux needs a lot of workarounds leading to performance problems.
Re:If this is good news...
on
Mandrake News
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Linux almost bankrupted Corel
Corel was in trouble even before they moved into Linux. This was at a time when Linux was supposed to be the Silver Bullet.
Redhat distributes the software at a loss
I think Redhat makes a small profit now.
Selling Windows pays, selling Linux manifestly doesn't.
Selling Windows pays for Microsoft and a few large companies. I doubt if you would be successful with a Windows startup right now.
Pine insists on sending all of your information out in your email even if you are using a different role. You cannot change this with any option setting. The only way is to patch the source and recompile;-( This is the kind of behavior you won't see in most GNU/Linux programs (which protect the user's privacy by default).
Apple is a company, not a charity or a benevolent benefactor. They have realized that some open source efforts are good for their business.
And the Open Source community has to realize that this license is bad for them. Unless you have a big sucker written on your forehead, in which case you will be happy to work for Apple for free.
GPL - 6 pages of legalsleaze 25000+ words.
BSD - 1/4 page less than 300 words.
The GPL license is there to protect you. If you have software that is released under BSD, you will have the likes of Microsoft running with it. How many people use FreeBSD compared to Windows, despite running the same code? And GPL is not written in legalese, and you would have known that if you managed to read it (rather than run Word's count words command on it).
One thing that sems to be missing in all of this is that Apple is a public, for profit company, releasing code in to the public domain.
They are not releasing it to the public domain. It is still copyrighted, and what is more, severely restricted software.
While im sure the GPL et al. are great, what apple does is give themselves some protection, and try to make it so that their code doesnt get forked and messy with no way "keep up" with it.
Which is why it makes it a really one sided license and people should be wary of it. What about the messy stuff Apple creates?
So far we have several dozen posts complaining about licenses (so very Slashdot of you, really), and no one talking about why releasing the Releasing the Rendezvous source is so cool. Zeroconf is cool stuff.
Yeah, we are supposed to jump up and lose all reason when they show some shiny stuff, right? It is important that the license stuff is discussed now and understood before people go ahead and code for it and it becomes some sort of standard. And Apple is one of the most litigious companies around, so this is doubly important.
I thought the trade marked opensource.org community says Apple's license is open source. Can't we rely on them to police these licenses?
Of course you can't. OSI have been known to accept all sorts of licences so that "OSI approved" doesn't mean anything. A better seal would be that of the Debian software guidelines (and no, it is not limited to GPL).
The FSF has come along after the fact and tried to enforce their ideology with a name change. Aside from their case's merits (or lack of), if people don't want to use a new term, no amount of whining will change that. Give up already.
In the beginning was FSF... If anything, Linux was after the fact. And if you want to give up, Microsoft has 93% market share and is poised to implement Palladium--now would be good time.
GNUs iron grip on Linux is fading. Personally, I say the faster the better. Maybe he finally realized it and this is a last ditch panic before he loses all control. A death rattle if you will.
Wow! I guess you like Microsoft's treatment of customers much better. GNU is about freedom. If you don't want to do something they won't force you to.
This idea of restrictions is probably one of the reasons the Linux kernel has been more successful than Hurd. Hurd is part of the GNU system and to contribute to it you have to sign over the copyright for your code to the FSF. Linux has a mixed copyright with no such restriction.
That is because GNU has been through fire regarding copyrights etc. How do you enforce copyrights for the Linux kernel? See the recent problems for Mozilla when they wanted to change the license.
People obviously like being able to do things and contribute to things with less restrictions.
Unless GPL is really applied they are not really contributing now are they?
Also see XEmacs which is streets ahead of GNU Emacs.
How is Xemacs streets ahead of emacs? I don't see how it is better than emacs 21. A lot of the xemacs code was from commercial developers (SUN). You might also want to look into market shares for each.
No need to signal process in the CPU, you can knock together a PCI card with a ADC on it for $30 that perfectly good for recording sound, I made one on an ISA card for a 286 ohhh at least 7 years ago and it was cheap then...
That is interesting. Did you buy this ADC someplace? What kind of tools would be required to design one? As I mentioned in my original post, the motherboard may reject such cards;-(
What I care about is that I can publish my own audio, text, photos, and video on the web and that others can do so as well, without paying anybody. There are ways in which "Fritz" can mess that up (like requiring positive authentication for any media to play in any hardware), but Palladium doesn't go that far yet.
There is no reason to believe that they will not do that. There are taxes on blank media on most countries except US. (In Germany they even have a huge tax (~$20) on writers). They have already killed independent online radio with the tax. This will create a huge barrier to entry to everything related to computers (which in a few years will be *everything* you do).
Apple has Appleworks which is very good. I use it more than MS Orfice. It's not loaded down with a buch of crap.
I thought Appleworks was more along the lines of the Works suite rather than a full blown Office suite? In any case, Office is a really big stick that Microsoft holds over Apple. And Apple's hostility towards Openoffice is not helping matters.
Slashdot Mirror
Have you got anything to back that statement up?
This is common knowledge if you are in the US. There are three major credit reporting agencies and there is next to zero government regulation. If they get something wrong, there is no guarantee that you can correct it. The horror stories are routinely featured on television, but no one is doing anything about it.
Actually, it was Office 2000 that was the first (limited) testbed for product activation.
They had product activation overseas before they had it in the US. I think they tried it somewhere in Southeast-Asia.
For all the talk the major risk from credit card fraud is to shops not customers. You can cancel a credit card payment. This is the major problem with any new system.
If you cancel a payment, it will damage your credit history and that is a huge problem for you. Next time you are refused a loan, think about the $5 charge that you cancelled. Companies know this, and this is why they don't follow up small credit card fraud cases. (And by small they mean anything under a few thousand dollars).
PIX is Cisco and there isn't a Linux company on the market that can beat their support. Match it MAYBE, but not beat it.
I don't think that will be a problem for really high end stuff when you are willing to pay whatever it takes. But for something like this, I think Linux would be competitive. I don't know what they charge for SMARTNET, but it must be in the thousands.
Can you tell me what the procedure is to have my bug report 'evaluated'? Is it that MandrakeExpert site?
Yes, I was talking about the MandrakeExpert site. I think the qa site redirects you there. Very frustrating. And BTW, are there any working US mirrors for Cooker? Most of the links on the main site seem to be in Europe.
My understanding was that RedHat were making a small profit, but the profits came from support to fairly large corporate customers, not from the distro itself.
Server market is where the money is right now. However, RedHat has recently started focusing on the desktop again, and they even have a multimedia distribution. And a lot of people swear by the RedHat update system. I think they will do well.
From my experiences here in France, I don't think anyone could make money supporting Linux for end users, and I'm not even sure about installing networks: a few companies have tried, and have got some business from schools, govt departments etc, but I'm not sure any of them are still trading.
There are certainly markets in which Linux is doing well right now. Every week there is an announcement about a high performance computing system installed by a Linux company.
The only people I can think of who might be making money on Linux are IBM.
And all the companies IBM allies with for different tasks (RedHat etc.).
My biggest problem with Mandrake is the lack of any sensible system for reporting bugs. Their Bugzilla at https://qa.mandrakesoft.com/ is for the unstable 'Cooker' release only. So you can report bugs for the version that's expected to be buggy, but not for the stable version! WTF?
Is this true? They used to have a proper bugtracking system some time ago. You could add listing to the specific rpm. However, now they want you to go through this interface where your bug is "evaluated" and then maybe added to the system.
But why the hell do they charge so much? The cost of that firewall package was 1,999 Euro. We bought a PIX firewall and it cost like 3,000 Euros. Considering the PIX is actually a hardware appliance as well, I dont think its that bad a deal.
What about support for your product? I think with companies like SUN you will have to pay extra for support (and I don't mean the read from the script kind).
the beauty that is occurring now is that SOME (re: Nvidia) manufacturers are actively supporting Linux ... but more importantly ... a LOT of them are releasing documentation to the community that allows truly free drivers to be developed OUTSIDE the manufacturing world
A much deeper problem is hardware being optimized for Windows. This is apparent only at the kernel level. I am not talking about Winmodems and such, but stuff like SCSI controllers. You have a situation where it performs well on the Windows infrastructure, but Linux needs a lot of workarounds leading to performance problems.
Linux almost bankrupted Corel
Corel was in trouble even before they moved into Linux. This was at a time when Linux was supposed to be the Silver Bullet.
Redhat distributes the software at a loss
I think Redhat makes a small profit now.
Selling Windows pays, selling Linux manifestly doesn't.
Selling Windows pays for Microsoft and a few large companies. I doubt if you would be successful with a Windows startup right now.
1 - Tabbed browsing is cool, but you should get a confirmation that you'd like to close the main browser window when you have 23 tabs open
It doesn't help that C-q is right next to C-w.
CTRL-SHIFT-L to open a web address. Make it CTRL-O.
F6 should work as well.
Godzilla trademark owners have taken to suing any product with "zilla" in their name. They gave a special exemption to Mozillla.
Pine insists on sending all of your information out in your email even if you are using a different role. You cannot change this with any option setting. The only way is to patch the source and recompile ;-( This is the kind of behavior you won't see in most GNU/Linux programs (which protect the user's privacy by default).
What is it about the coding sytle that makes it very insecure?
A simple grep through the sources shows that there about 4,000 occurrences of insecure string copying (potential buffer overflows).
Apple is a company, not a charity or a benevolent benefactor. They have realized that some open source efforts are good for their business.
And the Open Source community has to realize that this license is bad for them. Unless you have a big sucker written on your forehead, in which case you will be happy to work for Apple for free.
GPL - 6 pages of legalsleaze 25000+ words. BSD - 1/4 page less than 300 words.
The GPL license is there to protect you. If you have software that is released under BSD, you will have the likes of Microsoft running with it. How many people use FreeBSD compared to Windows, despite running the same code? And GPL is not written in legalese, and you would have known that if you managed to read it (rather than run Word's count words command on it).
One thing that sems to be missing in all of this is that Apple is a public, for profit company, releasing code in to the public domain.
They are not releasing it to the public domain. It is still copyrighted, and what is more, severely restricted software.
While im sure the GPL et al. are great, what apple does is give themselves some protection, and try to make it so that their code doesnt get forked and messy with no way "keep up" with it.
Which is why it makes it a really one sided license and people should be wary of it. What about the messy stuff Apple creates?
So far we have several dozen posts complaining about licenses (so very Slashdot of you, really), and no one talking about why releasing the Releasing the Rendezvous source is so cool. Zeroconf is cool stuff.
Yeah, we are supposed to jump up and lose all reason when they show some shiny stuff, right? It is important that the license stuff is discussed now and understood before people go ahead and code for it and it becomes some sort of standard. And Apple is one of the most litigious companies around, so this is doubly important.
I thought the trade marked opensource.org community says Apple's license is open source. Can't we rely on them to police these licenses?
Of course you can't. OSI have been known to accept all sorts of licences so that "OSI approved" doesn't mean anything. A better seal would be that of the Debian software guidelines (and no, it is not limited to GPL).
The FSF has come along after the fact and tried to enforce their ideology with a name change. Aside from their case's merits (or lack of), if people don't want to use a new term, no amount of whining will change that. Give up already.
In the beginning was FSF... If anything, Linux was after the fact. And if you want to give up, Microsoft has 93% market share and is poised to implement Palladium--now would be good time.
GNUs iron grip on Linux is fading. Personally, I say the faster the better. Maybe he finally realized it and this is a last ditch panic before he loses all control. A death rattle if you will.
Wow! I guess you like Microsoft's treatment of customers much better. GNU is about freedom. If you don't want to do something they won't force you to.
This idea of restrictions is probably one of the reasons the Linux kernel has been more successful than Hurd. Hurd is part of the GNU system and to contribute to it you have to sign over the copyright for your code to the FSF. Linux has a mixed copyright with no such restriction.
That is because GNU has been through fire regarding copyrights etc. How do you enforce copyrights for the Linux kernel? See the recent problems for Mozilla when they wanted to change the license.
People obviously like being able to do things and contribute to things with less restrictions.
Unless GPL is really applied they are not really contributing now are they?
Also see XEmacs which is streets ahead of GNU Emacs.
How is Xemacs streets ahead of emacs? I don't see how it is better than emacs 21. A lot of the xemacs code was from commercial developers (SUN). You might also want to look into market shares for each.
No need to signal process in the CPU, you can knock together a PCI card with a ADC on it for $30 that perfectly good for recording sound, I made one on an ISA card for a 286 ohhh at least 7 years ago and it was cheap then...
That is interesting. Did you buy this ADC someplace? What kind of tools would be required to design one? As I mentioned in my original post, the motherboard may reject such cards ;-(
What I care about is that I can publish my own audio, text, photos, and video on the web and that others can do so as well, without paying anybody. There are ways in which "Fritz" can mess that up (like requiring positive authentication for any media to play in any hardware), but Palladium doesn't go that far yet.
There is no reason to believe that they will not do that. There are taxes on blank media on most countries except US. (In Germany they even have a huge tax (~$20) on writers). They have already killed independent online radio with the tax. This will create a huge barrier to entry to everything related to computers (which in a few years will be *everything* you do).
Apple has Appleworks which is very good. I use it more than MS Orfice. It's not loaded down with a buch of crap.
I thought Appleworks was more along the lines of the Works suite rather than a full blown Office suite? In any case, Office is a really big stick that Microsoft holds over Apple. And Apple's hostility towards Openoffice is not helping matters.