While it's not the solution you were really looking for, you can always setup your own ssh tunnel VPN to your work desktop. There are a variety of other solutions like this. Firewall be damned - as long as you have some way to get outside your corporate network you can setup your own back door into it. Just need it initiated from your work desktop with some scripts to bring it back up if it ever drops.
Yeah, but if you read the fine print that's 100 peak minutes, with the rest offpeak. Offpeak is 7 or 8pm to 6 or 7am usually. Sometimes weekends are totally offpeak, sometimes they are not. Looking at my cell bill, 95% of my calls are during peak.
"They've got a monopoly, and I agree that it's hurting industry. Let's put that aside."
Argh! That's the flipping POINT. You CAN'T shove it aside. If it's OK for MS to keep hurting the industry then it's OK for politicians to lie, rapists to rape, and so on. (If Apple was not in the schools they would be DEAD by now, BTW.) Can't you break the mindless kneejerk "anything MS does is good and OK even if it means that they can rape everyone" attitude? If you have an abused monopoly like this then there is ZERO incentive for software manufacturers to support anything but Windows. This is the problem we have today. MS drones are completely UNWILLING to move off your existing path and explore other alternatives.
So you say the open source community should step up. THEY HAVE. This is why you have linux to begin with! You have a Rock Solid platform to build on. Open source is about freedom, not that everything around it need be free. Open source gives you the ability to HELP YOURSELF. If you are unwilling to help yourself and teach yourself, then you need to pony up and lay out the cash for consulting or whatever. Financially strapped schools need to be creative. They are educators, they can LEARN. Why do you expect everything to be delivered to you on a silver platter? This is COMPLETELY unrealistic.
Schools currently pay big bucks for Windows consulting and licenses. Instead of paying all that for MS solutions, you can pay some for opensource solutions too. The fact that there is no license cost just makes it that much more attractive (to someone with an open mind that is.)
What the opensource concept can do for schools is this. You have "well to do" schools with a budget. They band together with other "well to do" schools and fund software / solutions for what they need. Poor schools reap the benefits too. Bing. Problem solved. But you know what? this is probably NOT the way it will happen. My guess is that these poor schools that need to get creative WILL. THEY will be the ones to band together and create their own solutions. Need is the father of invention.
Schools can participate in user group meetings / usenet / irc / mailing lists as well, and ASK for help. You may even find that people are WILLING to help for nothing. What you seem to be asking for is the open source evangalists to go door to door forcing this stuff down people throats. It's not our way man! What we want is for MICROSOFT to stop shoving the crap down our throats. We want choice. The attitude you spew just perpetuates the problem.
FYI, I have a few VERY good friends that are teachers. I HAVE gone into these schools to help. Know what? These schools are heavily Mac based. So you want to give them free windows licenses? To run on WHAT precisly? When they have PC's they are usually old, like 486's, pentium 100's, 16M ram, etc. Again, are they gonna run Office? WinXP? Right.... You obviously haven't been IN a school lately have you? The "well to do" schools have the modern hardware and can afford the big bucks on XP, but they are not the ones with the need.
So the bottom line is that it isn't the open source community that needs to "step up", it's the schools that need to "step out."
"Let's only use Windows forever because it's what we know and are unwilling to learn anything new even if it is better / more cost effective."
Listen, LIFE is a constant learning process. Change happens. Get used to it. Your argument sounds like an old 1950's secretary that refuses to learn a word processor. It's FUD and everyone knows it. The only studies that show Windows having a lower cost of ownership have been paid for by Microsoft. Go search the net. The truth is out there.
I don't bash MS for doing good, I bash them for illegally abusing their monopoly power to crush competition. I also bash them for putting out substandard insecure software despite having more than enough cash to throw at it to fix it. This cash comes from the people who USE the crap, and MS has a duty to fix this crap. Yet they don't. They constantly come out with "new" versions that they charge for that are just as bad (from a security and stability standpoint) as the last ones YET PEOPLE KEEP GIVING THEM MORE MONEY!!!!!
I don't see the logic in being "wise" to continue down the MS path of costly useless upgrades and outrageous license terms. By default, it's wise to look at alternatives.
So, let's look at the open source issue. The cost per PC in licenses is nil. The cost for Windows and associated MS software (since most have to pay for their software) for a machine at "educational" pricing is somewhere around $200.
There are somewhere around 10 Million PC's in schools across america (may be even higher.) I think the open source community could create a user friendly alternatives to Windows crap for a little less than 2 billion dollars don't you? (keep in mind that you have "upgrade" dollars to use too...) Add in the money from all the city, county, state, federal offices and you have billions more. Add other governments around the world. Businesses. Home users. Cha-ching!
NOW you know why MS is spreading so much fud. They have a LOT to lose if open source takes of It's all about the money and has NOTHING to do with the "freedom to innovate".
Look, it's also a mindset thing. A person may use Windows for 5 years, and linux for a month. He keeps trying to apply Windows concepts to Linux and it just doesn't work! Of COURSE he's gonna have trouble.
You also have to remember that most Windows apps include all the dependacies they need on the install CD. Virtually no Linux software comes on a CD. If it did, it could include all the dependancies that it needed to (Red Hat 7.2 for example comes with all the dependcies worked out for all the sofware included.)
Windows also has just a few versions to support, and they all have the same windowmanager. Not so with linux where you have CHOICES. With flexability comes power, but you can't get that for free. This is partially what KDE is about - give people a stable familier base if they don't have the intellectual ability or desire to handle the intricacies, responsibilities and self education that go along with freedom of choice. Of course KDE doesn't LIMIT you to just KDE, but there seems to be a specific KDE version or alternative for just about everything.
I do find it annoying that the RPM system is so half-assed, but it is fixable.
Yeah, but you can lose that right when you are found guilty abusing your monopoly power to force your restrictive contract terms. That's one of the big elements in this case. That's the whole point of anti-trust law. This is why MS is fighting tooth and nail.
1. (Lindows) Agree. Lindows needs to open up. You partake in the free beer, you need to pony up.
2&3. (free windows & privacy / centralization) Agree. 100%.
4. AMD has another choice - to shut the hell up. They chose the dark side. Bad AMD. No biscuit. "Yeah I won the race, but I was in collusion with the second place guy to slash the tires on all the other cars." AMD is willing to hurt the rest of the computer industry for its own gains. Can't condone this.
1. (Open API's) Yes. Best thing we can do. HOWEVER: this MUST also include the RAND licensing for commercial software, and Free licensing for opensource / freeware software of all patented algorithms. Having open API's is USELESS if you can't use the technology.
2. (fixed pricing) Yes. This has to include other components like Office too otherwise MS will penalize them by jacking up the price on Office if they don't install Windows on all their boxes. MS has other power over OEM's too. Consider things like co-marketing dollars. Those are BIG incentives to "force" companies to bend to BillG's will.
3. (Fine for purgury) No brainer. Of course.
4. (Free software to schools) Frankly, this is a bad idea. It puts companies like Apple, or solutions like Linux at a disadvantage. Poor schools shouldn't be buying software in the first place. They should use their dollars more wisely and support open source. Frankly, I'd like to see a mandate that ALL branches of government consider open source as an alternative including the option of funding development instead of paying license fees. Imagine where Linux would be with a couple billion spent on development...
As far as AMD is concerned, I'm boycotting them now. How dare they support a company that has illegally abused its monopoly power to harm other technologies and companies. You sleep with the dark side, you take the chance of being convicted in the court of public opinion. Guilty.
Where do they come up with this stuff? Unless your memory is Extremely slow, and I mean slower than anything used in personal computers since the days of the Altair, AND you are using a faster than 10M net connection (not realistically possible on an altair) on that slow memory, this will have ZERO effect on download speeds. Any computer faster than a 386 can handle damn near GigE where the limiting factor will be the PCI bus, disks, etc. - not the memory. (well, maybe non GigE on a 386, but 100M easily.) Sheesh. Considering I can't even get DSL or Cablemodem service in SILICON VALLEY, I don't think we will be seeing memory speeds being the limiting factor in downloads anytime soon - like not in the next 10 years even if computers stopped getting faster.
Windows degrades over time. XP does too. Sorry. The heavier the use, the faster it degrades. If a computer just sits there, It may indeed stay up for a couple months. My record uptime for a linux box is over 2 YEARS. It finally needed a reboot because it had to be moved. This was a public HTTP server running MySQL, PHP, Apache, Sendmail, IMAPd, and a variety of other things. No firewall, never got hacked, never got a virus.
It may be a "sad" attitude, but it's 100% correct.
All these guys are corrupt. People just like to bury their heads in the sand and think otherwise. Laws are bought, along with their sponsers.
These representatives / senators / governors are CONSTANLY making back-room, private deals. Don't do what the corps want? Watch them fund the challenger the next time.
It's sad that we have a system that promotes this behavior... Actually, it pretty much requires it for re-election. You have to "play ball" if you want to participate / have a voice at all.
Every once and a while you will get someone in office that speaks out. If you notice, they get slapped down pretty quickly. (Paul Wellstone from MN is a good example.)
If you have a hard time handling concrete boats, just remember that steel and fiberglass are both heavier than water, yet boats made with them can float.
The newer concrete products are actually pretty cool. Even in residential building, lightweight concrete products are used in things like flooring. You don't want to use 1200lbs of traditional concrete on a 2nd floor bathroom floor for example (ceramic tile needs a solid base) so you use a lightweight concrete that may only weigh 200 lbs. Leightweight concrete is also use to reline old chimneys - they insert tubular balloons in the middle of a chimney, pour in the concrete around, and voilla! Traditional concrete would blow out an old chimney, crush the balloons, etc.
The additives to concrete / altering proportions make a huge difference in the end product. Concrete used in bridges for example is about 10 times stronger than concrete used in sidewalks. Fiberglass strands added to concrete can prevent cracking. The list is endless.
The problem is that "very annoying ads" are the type that pay good money.
weather.com is probably trying to make their web site self sufficient. This isn't that easy to do.
So the current scenario is that everytime advertisers / webmasters come up with a new trick, users get pissed off and block it. So is the solution for all web sites to be subscription? How much? $5 / month? Would you be able to afford to surf if it costs $3000 / year for all the web sites you currently go to?
Much like/., sites have to do SOMTHING in order to remain in the black. Sites like/. are especially hard - they don't have any other way to make money than to charge a subscription, or show ads. As site operators are seeing, the "good old" banner ads don't pay the bills. Advertisers just don't assign much of a value to them.
So besides annoying advertising and subscriptions, how else do you make money?
Re:My favorite algorythm
on
Deep Algorithms?
·
· Score: 3, Funny
Just run it under Windows and it terminates eventually just fine! Therefore it's an algorithm!
(I hated to lose the ability to mod, but I couldn't resist!:-) )
First, IMHO, SO / OO isn't quite ready for prime-time corporate use. Both have been quite unstable for me on RH 7.2 for example.
But to rebut:
Several points. Citrix / WTS is VERY expensive. Concessions are quite hard to get, and are usually minimal. You won't get many discounts from Citrix - it's their bread and butter, it's all they do.
Select doesn't save you THAT much - MSO is still several hundred dollars per seat. It's not just upgrades, it's adding new seats too.
While the original poster mentioned "X-terminals", in reality you would use light workstations. All apps are installed on the local hard drive (not quite "diskless", but essentially read-only.) By doing this, your server CAN support hundreds of users.
You don't cost justify over 1 year. Any attempts to will fail. Long term savings can really add up especially in terms of support / user.
Using something like netoctopus you can remotely install applications like SO, etc. Downtime, install time, conversion time should be essentially zero from a user standpoint (if it's not, IT is NOT doing it's job) so that is a moot issue. OO is free, so that makes things even less expensive than SO if you go that route. No more MS forced expensive upgrades. Considering that the "cost" of SO is offset by not having to upgrade, it's a big savings.
Getting out from under MS's thumbscrews, the BSA stormtroopers, outrageous license fees, audits, buggy insecure software, etc. is in every corporations best interests.
Personally, OO seems to me a much better solution that SO due to the open-source nature, but it has a way to go before it's adoptable from a corporate standpoint (I don't know of anyone that's actually been able to compile it for example.)
"I don't understand your comment about bloat. Do you want support for word processing, or are you just looking for a fancy text file?"
I'm not the original poster, but here is my take on this: Word Processor != Desktop publishing.
The problem seems to be that MS is trying to make Word into a full blown desktop publishing system. It isn't one, and will never be one. The problem this causes is that you end up with a pile of dog doo that is trying to be everything to everyone. It is FULL of features (and the bugs to go with them) that most people will never need. It makes the program overly complicated for neophytes, slow, a memory / disk hog, etc.
Word is also full of other crap MS added because they COULD, not because they SHOULD. Scripting: probably less than 1% of users even care about it, yet it has been one of the most common ways viruses spread. Why is it enable by default?????? Yeah, the most recent versions of office FINALLY seem to have SOME protection, but it has taken 6 YEARS to get it. 6 YEARS PEOPLE!!!!
I've been tracking all the crap that MS has done since the original IBM PC / Apple ][ days, and Wordstar was king (anyone remember Visicalc on the Apple?). MS Office has gone from a TOTAL PILE OF CRAP that wasn't worth the shrink wrap on the box, to just plain old ordinary crap that STILL crashes on a regular basis. MS has NO excuse for delivering such buggy software. None. Office XP solid? What kind of crack are you smoking?
Fine. Whatever. There are still bazillions of cases of prior art. I designed a system back in 96 for sending business transactions ( PO's / invoices - EDI) over the internet that used encryption in an automated way. It's still being used in production as the core of that companies infrastructure.
Patent's are not supposed to be granted for obvious uses of existing technology (obvious by someone in the trade.)
The facts remain that the USPTO is totally out of control. They have no incentive NOT to issue a patent, and nobody has any reasonable recourse in cases like this where a patent should not have been issued. (Being sued and forced to pay massive amounts of $$$ to defend yourself, hire experts, etc. is NOT "reasonable recourse."
Our current laws don't provide for penalties for filing frivolus patents. Maybe they should.
Um, yeah, they do work, but are VERY fragile. Never drop it even a little, and for got sakes don't even bump the drive if it's running. Few (if any) PC systems can't boot off firewire or USB 2.0 either. I killed 2 of the VST boxes when I bumped the FW cable and the whole drive slid off the mini-tower and onto the floor. Instant toast. Less than a 2' drop onto carpet.
Don't know about the ipod...
They DO have some USB keychain SSD's that hold a few meg (64, 128M), which may be enough to hold a few files, ssh keys, etc.
Yeah, it's not a BAD solution, but you are understating the costs. There is also a very high "recurring" cost to using any MS products. You are forced to upgrade periodically if you want to continue to use "current" software, or to continue to exchange documents with outside users. Anyone that has upgraded Office, Exchange, or Windows in a corporate environment knows what I'm talking about. You also are forced to participate in MS's audits! Oh Joy! BSA storm troopers anyone?
So I guess your configuration is the best "MS Windows" solution, but UNIX is a far better overall solution.
... and the first application the user installs breaks all this due to the app registering crap in the non-user part of the registry. Windows has no concept of a/usr/local. Applications still put crap all over the place, and you have ZERO control over what goes where (just TRY and install Office without it putting crap in the Windows system directory, updating DLL's, etc.)
Despite some of the recent work MS has done, Windows is still designed as a single user system. Fixing the right way this would break EVERY APPLICATION - so they did a MASSIVE hack (Term Serv). Win Term Serv can be used in a cluster and allows for multiple users, but this doesn't scale either (besides being totally cost prohibitive) and won't allow you to "take it with you" via laptop / etc. WTS (from personal experience) still sucks over a modem (and anything less than a T1.) WTS is also very unstable and frequently crashes - not suitable in a production environment.
BTW, WinVNC allow ONE (and only one) user to access a machine at a time.
You know, "technically" this is correct. X is braindead in many ways. BUT - it works. It also works MUCH better than Windows for remote operation, and does so without expensive licenses (Citrix, Win TS, etc.)
For distributed desktops in a corp environment, Unix / X works fine. You don't run remote X, you run local X with shared drives for accessing data / non-standard apps. Automounters can even handle different platforms automatically handling different OS versions, processors, etc.
VNC / timbuktu, PCAnywhere, etc. work, but none will give you acceptable performance over a modem for all but the most simplistic tasks. The only thing that runs "well" over a modem is text sessions.
It all depends on what you are trying to do and what you are willing to put up with from a reliability / security / performace standpoint.
Replication consistency issues are solvable. Even MS has software to help. Of course there are many solutions such as SAN's, rsync, etc. that have been around for YEARS.
Of course EVERYTHING is harder on Microsoft's platform, but that's another bag of worms.
It cracks me up to see people continually trying to force MS Windows to do things that Unix has been able to do with NO ADDITIONAL SOFTWARE for YEARS.
Face it people, MS doesn't get it and NEVER will. You just keep banging your head into a brick wall.
To solve your problem, you have to change your mindset. Think outside the box - the Microsoft box that is. Run everything possible in a UNIX environment, only using Windows for the last couple remaining proprietary apps that tie you to Windows (second machine, VMWare, or whatever.)
While the CLIENT software may have been custom, it sounds like the SERVER portion was standard AOL. This would explain the attachment limits, spammer tagging, etc.
Also, since AOL is planning on using a mozilla like system replaincing IE, and has been putting big bucks into continued Netscape browser developement, my guess is that the client software was netscape 6 based. Considering how stable NS6 is, coupled with the AOL server backend, it's no wonder the system sucked.
Slashdot Mirror
While it's not the solution you were really looking for, you can always setup your own ssh tunnel VPN to your work desktop. There are a variety of other solutions like this. Firewall be damned - as long as you have some way to get outside your corporate network you can setup your own back door into it. Just need it initiated from your work desktop with some scripts to bring it back up if it ever drops.
Yeah, but if you read the fine print that's 100 peak minutes, with the rest offpeak. Offpeak is 7 or 8pm to 6 or 7am usually. Sometimes weekends are totally offpeak, sometimes they are not. Looking at my cell bill, 95% of my calls are during peak.
"They've got a monopoly, and I agree that it's hurting industry. Let's put that aside."
Argh! That's the flipping POINT. You CAN'T shove it aside. If it's OK for MS to keep hurting the industry then it's OK for politicians to lie, rapists to rape, and so on. (If Apple was not in the schools they would be DEAD by now, BTW.) Can't you break the mindless kneejerk "anything MS does is good and OK even if it means that they can rape everyone" attitude? If you have an abused monopoly like this then there is ZERO incentive for software manufacturers to support anything but Windows. This is the problem we have today. MS drones are completely UNWILLING to move off your existing path and explore other alternatives.
So you say the open source community should step up. THEY HAVE. This is why you have linux to begin with! You have a Rock Solid platform to build on. Open source is about freedom, not that everything around it need be free. Open source gives you the ability to HELP YOURSELF. If you are unwilling to help yourself and teach yourself, then you need to pony up and lay out the cash for consulting or whatever. Financially strapped schools need to be creative. They are educators, they can LEARN. Why do you expect everything to be delivered to you on a silver platter? This is COMPLETELY unrealistic.
Schools currently pay big bucks for Windows consulting and licenses. Instead of paying all that for MS solutions, you can pay some for opensource solutions too. The fact that there is no license cost just makes it that much more attractive (to someone with an open mind that is.)
What the opensource concept can do for schools is this. You have "well to do" schools with a budget. They band together with other "well to do" schools and fund software / solutions for what they need. Poor schools reap the benefits too. Bing. Problem solved. But you know what? this is probably NOT the way it will happen. My guess is that these poor schools that need to get creative WILL. THEY will be the ones to band together and create their own solutions. Need is the father of invention.
Schools can participate in user group meetings / usenet / irc / mailing lists as well, and ASK for help. You may even find that people are WILLING to help for nothing. What you seem to be asking for is the open source evangalists to go door to door forcing this stuff down people throats. It's not our way man! What we want is for MICROSOFT to stop shoving the crap down our throats. We want choice. The attitude you spew just perpetuates the problem.
FYI, I have a few VERY good friends that are teachers. I HAVE gone into these schools to help. Know what? These schools are heavily Mac based. So you want to give them free windows licenses? To run on WHAT precisly? When they have PC's they are usually old, like 486's, pentium 100's, 16M ram, etc. Again, are they gonna run Office? WinXP? Right.... You obviously haven't been IN a school lately have you? The "well to do" schools have the modern hardware and can afford the big bucks on XP, but they are not the ones with the need.
So the bottom line is that it isn't the open source community that needs to "step up", it's the schools that need to "step out."
FUD, Fud, fud.
"Let's only use Windows forever because it's what we know and are unwilling to learn anything new even if it is better / more cost effective."
Listen, LIFE is a constant learning process. Change happens. Get used to it. Your argument sounds like an old 1950's secretary that refuses to learn a word processor. It's FUD and everyone knows it. The only studies that show Windows having a lower cost of ownership have been paid for by Microsoft. Go search the net. The truth is out there.
I don't bash MS for doing good, I bash them for illegally abusing their monopoly power to crush competition. I also bash them for putting out substandard insecure software despite having more than enough cash to throw at it to fix it. This cash comes from the people who USE the crap, and MS has a duty to fix this crap. Yet they don't. They constantly come out with "new" versions that they charge for that are just as bad (from a security and stability standpoint) as the last ones YET PEOPLE KEEP GIVING THEM MORE MONEY!!!!!
I don't see the logic in being "wise" to continue down the MS path of costly useless upgrades and outrageous license terms. By default, it's wise to look at alternatives.
So, let's look at the open source issue. The cost per PC in licenses is nil. The cost for Windows and associated MS software (since most have to pay for their software) for a machine at "educational" pricing is somewhere around $200.
There are somewhere around 10 Million PC's in schools across america (may be even higher.) I think the open source community could create a user friendly alternatives to Windows crap for a little less than 2 billion dollars don't you? (keep in mind that you have "upgrade" dollars to use too...) Add in the money from all the city, county, state, federal offices and you have billions more. Add other governments around the world. Businesses. Home users. Cha-ching!
NOW you know why MS is spreading so much fud. They have a LOT to lose if open source takes of It's all about the money and has NOTHING to do with the "freedom to innovate".
... and you DID tell them about gnorpm?
Look, it's also a mindset thing. A person may use Windows for 5 years, and linux for a month. He keeps trying to apply Windows concepts to Linux and it just doesn't work! Of COURSE he's gonna have trouble.
You also have to remember that most Windows apps include all the dependacies they need on the install CD. Virtually no Linux software comes on a CD. If it did, it could include all the dependancies that it needed to (Red Hat 7.2 for example comes with all the dependcies worked out for all the sofware included.)
Windows also has just a few versions to support, and they all have the same windowmanager. Not so with linux where you have CHOICES. With flexability comes power, but you can't get that for free. This is partially what KDE is about - give people a stable familier base if they don't have the intellectual ability or desire to handle the intricacies, responsibilities and self education that go along with freedom of choice. Of course KDE doesn't LIMIT you to just KDE, but there seems to be a specific KDE version or alternative for just about everything.
I do find it annoying that the RPM system is so half-assed, but it is fixable.
(Freedom of tort)
Yeah, but you can lose that right when you are found guilty abusing your monopoly power to force your restrictive contract terms. That's one of the big elements in this case. That's the whole point of anti-trust law. This is why MS is fighting tooth and nail.
1. (Lindows) Agree. Lindows needs to open up. You partake in the free beer, you need to pony up.
2&3. (free windows & privacy / centralization) Agree. 100%.
4. AMD has another choice - to shut the hell up. They chose the dark side. Bad AMD. No biscuit. "Yeah I won the race, but I was in collusion with the second place guy to slash the tires on all the other cars." AMD is willing to hurt the rest of the computer industry for its own gains. Can't condone this.
I'll take these on one point at a time.
1. (Open API's) Yes. Best thing we can do. HOWEVER: this MUST also include the RAND licensing for commercial software, and Free licensing for opensource / freeware software of all patented algorithms. Having open API's is USELESS if you can't use the technology.
2. (fixed pricing) Yes. This has to include other components like Office too otherwise MS will penalize them by jacking up the price on Office if they don't install Windows on all their boxes. MS has other power over OEM's too. Consider things like co-marketing dollars. Those are BIG incentives to "force" companies to bend to BillG's will.
3. (Fine for purgury) No brainer. Of course.
4. (Free software to schools) Frankly, this is a bad idea. It puts companies like Apple, or solutions like Linux at a disadvantage. Poor schools shouldn't be buying software in the first place. They should use their dollars more wisely and support open source. Frankly, I'd like to see a mandate that ALL branches of government consider open source as an alternative including the option of funding development instead of paying license fees. Imagine where Linux would be with a couple billion spent on development...
As far as AMD is concerned, I'm boycotting them now. How dare they support a company that has illegally abused its monopoly power to harm other technologies and companies. You sleep with the dark side, you take the chance of being convicted in the court of public opinion. Guilty.
Where do they come up with this stuff? Unless your memory is Extremely slow, and I mean slower than anything used in personal computers since the days of the Altair, AND you are using a faster than 10M net connection (not realistically possible on an altair) on that slow memory, this will have ZERO effect on download speeds. Any computer faster than a 386 can handle damn near GigE where the limiting factor will be the PCI bus, disks, etc. - not the memory. (well, maybe non GigE on a 386, but 100M easily.) Sheesh.
Considering I can't even get DSL or Cablemodem service in SILICON VALLEY, I don't think we will be seeing memory speeds being the limiting factor in downloads anytime soon - like not in the next 10 years even if computers stopped getting faster.
Windows degrades over time. XP does too. Sorry. The heavier the use, the faster it degrades. If a computer just sits there, It may indeed stay up for a couple months. My record uptime for a linux box is over 2 YEARS. It finally needed a reboot because it had to be moved. This was a public HTTP server running MySQL, PHP, Apache, Sendmail, IMAPd, and a variety of other things. No firewall, never got hacked, never got a virus.
USB 2.0 does. Question is, does any Mac support
USB 2.0?
It may be a "sad" attitude, but it's 100% correct.
All these guys are corrupt. People just like to bury their heads in the sand and think otherwise. Laws are bought, along with their sponsers.
These representatives / senators / governors are CONSTANLY making back-room, private deals. Don't do what the corps want? Watch them fund the challenger the next time.
It's sad that we have a system that promotes this behavior... Actually, it pretty much requires it for re-election. You have to "play ball" if you want to participate / have a voice at all.
Every once and a while you will get someone in office that speaks out. If you notice, they get slapped down pretty quickly. (Paul Wellstone from MN is a good example.)
If you have a hard time handling concrete boats, just remember that steel and fiberglass are both heavier than water, yet boats made with them can float.
The newer concrete products are actually pretty cool. Even in residential building, lightweight concrete products are used in things like flooring. You don't want to use 1200lbs of traditional concrete on a 2nd floor bathroom floor for example (ceramic tile needs a solid base) so you use a lightweight concrete that may only weigh 200 lbs. Leightweight concrete is also use to reline old chimneys - they insert tubular balloons in the middle of a chimney, pour in the concrete around, and voilla! Traditional concrete would blow out an old chimney, crush the balloons, etc.
The additives to concrete / altering proportions make a huge difference in the end product. Concrete used in bridges for example is about 10 times stronger than concrete used in sidewalks. Fiberglass strands added to concrete can prevent cracking. The list is endless.
The problem is that "very annoying ads" are the type that pay good money.
/., sites have to do SOMTHING in order to remain in the black. Sites like /. are especially hard - they don't have any other way to make money than to charge a subscription, or show ads. As site operators are seeing, the "good old" banner ads don't pay the bills. Advertisers just don't assign much of a value to them.
weather.com is probably trying to make their web site self sufficient. This isn't that easy to do.
So the current scenario is that everytime advertisers / webmasters come up with a new trick, users get pissed off and block it. So is the solution for all web sites to be subscription? How much? $5 / month? Would you be able to afford to surf if it costs $3000 / year for all the web sites you currently go to?
Much like
So besides annoying advertising and subscriptions, how else do you make money?
Just run it under Windows and it terminates eventually just fine! Therefore it's an algorithm!
:-) )
(I hated to lose the ability to mod, but I couldn't resist!
First, IMHO, SO / OO isn't quite ready for prime-time corporate use. Both have been quite unstable for me on RH 7.2 for example.
But to rebut:
Several points. Citrix / WTS is VERY expensive. Concessions are quite hard to get, and are usually minimal. You won't get many discounts from Citrix - it's their bread and butter, it's all they do.
Select doesn't save you THAT much - MSO is still several hundred dollars per seat. It's not just upgrades, it's adding new seats too.
While the original poster mentioned "X-terminals", in reality you would use light workstations. All apps are installed on the local hard drive (not quite "diskless", but essentially read-only.) By doing this, your server CAN support hundreds of users.
You don't cost justify over 1 year. Any attempts to will fail. Long term savings can really add up especially in terms of support / user.
Using something like netoctopus you can remotely install applications like SO, etc. Downtime, install time, conversion time should be essentially zero from a user standpoint (if it's not, IT is NOT doing it's job) so that is a moot issue. OO is free, so that makes things even less expensive than SO if you go that route. No more MS forced expensive upgrades. Considering that the "cost" of SO is offset by not having to upgrade, it's a big savings.
Getting out from under MS's thumbscrews, the BSA stormtroopers, outrageous license fees, audits, buggy insecure software, etc. is in every corporations best interests.
Personally, OO seems to me a much better solution that SO due to the open-source nature, but it has a way to go before it's adoptable from a corporate standpoint (I don't know of anyone that's actually been able to compile it for example.)
"I don't understand your comment about bloat. Do you want support for word processing, or are you just looking for a fancy text file?"
I'm not the original poster, but here is my take on this: Word Processor != Desktop publishing.
The problem seems to be that MS is trying to make Word into a full blown desktop publishing system. It isn't one, and will never be one. The problem this causes is that you end up with a pile of dog doo that is trying to be everything to everyone. It is FULL of features (and the bugs to go with them) that most people will never need. It makes the program overly complicated for neophytes, slow, a memory / disk hog, etc.
Word is also full of other crap MS added because they COULD, not because they SHOULD. Scripting: probably less than 1% of users even care about it, yet it has been one of the most common ways viruses spread. Why is it enable by default?????? Yeah, the most recent versions of office FINALLY seem to have SOME protection, but it has taken 6 YEARS to get it. 6 YEARS PEOPLE!!!!
I've been tracking all the crap that MS has done since the original IBM PC / Apple ][ days, and Wordstar was king (anyone remember Visicalc on the Apple?). MS Office has gone from a TOTAL PILE OF CRAP that wasn't worth the shrink wrap on the box, to just plain old ordinary crap that STILL crashes on a regular basis. MS has NO excuse for
delivering such buggy software. None. Office XP solid? What kind of crack are you smoking?
Fine. Whatever. There are still bazillions of cases of prior art. I designed a system back in 96 for sending business transactions ( PO's / invoices - EDI) over the internet that used encryption in an automated way. It's still being used in production as the core of that companies infrastructure.
Patent's are not supposed to be granted for obvious uses of existing technology (obvious by someone in the trade.)
The facts remain that the USPTO is totally out of control. They have no incentive NOT to issue a patent, and nobody has any reasonable recourse in cases like this where a patent should not have been issued. (Being sued and forced to pay massive amounts of $$$ to defend yourself, hire experts, etc. is NOT "reasonable recourse."
Our current laws don't provide for penalties for filing frivolus patents. Maybe they should.
Um, yeah, they do work, but are VERY fragile. Never drop it even a little, and for got sakes don't even bump the drive if it's running. Few (if any) PC systems can't boot off firewire or USB 2.0 either.
I killed 2 of the VST boxes when I bumped the FW cable and the whole drive slid off the mini-tower and onto the floor. Instant toast. Less than a 2' drop onto carpet.
Don't know about the ipod...
They DO have some USB keychain SSD's that hold a few meg (64, 128M), which may be enough to hold a few files, ssh keys, etc.
Yeah, it's not a BAD solution, but you are understating the costs. There is also a very high "recurring" cost to using any MS products. You are forced to upgrade periodically if you want to continue to use "current" software, or to continue to exchange documents with outside users. Anyone that has upgraded Office, Exchange, or Windows in a corporate environment knows what I'm talking about. You also are forced to participate in MS's audits! Oh Joy! BSA storm troopers anyone?
So I guess your configuration is the best "MS Windows" solution, but UNIX is a far better overall solution.
... and the first application the user installs breaks all this due to the app registering crap in the non-user part of the registry. Windows has no concept of a /usr/local. Applications still put crap all over the place, and you have ZERO control over what goes where (just TRY and install Office without it putting crap in the Windows system directory, updating DLL's, etc.)
Despite some of the recent work MS has done, Windows is still designed as a single user system. Fixing the right way this would break EVERY APPLICATION - so they did a MASSIVE hack (Term Serv). Win Term Serv can be used in a cluster and allows for multiple users, but this doesn't scale either (besides being totally cost prohibitive) and won't allow you to "take it with you" via laptop / etc. WTS (from personal experience) still sucks over a modem (and anything less than a T1.)
WTS is also very unstable and frequently crashes - not suitable in a production environment.
BTW, WinVNC allow ONE (and only one) user to access a machine at a time.
You know, "technically" this is correct. X is braindead in many ways. BUT - it works. It also works MUCH better than Windows for remote operation, and does so without expensive licenses (Citrix, Win TS, etc.)
For distributed desktops in a corp environment, Unix / X works fine. You don't run remote X, you run local X with shared drives for accessing data / non-standard apps. Automounters can even handle different platforms automatically handling different OS versions, processors, etc.
VNC / timbuktu, PCAnywhere, etc. work, but none will give you acceptable performance over a modem for all but the most simplistic tasks. The only thing that runs "well" over a modem is text sessions.
It all depends on what you are trying to do and what you are willing to put up with from a reliability / security / performace standpoint.
Replication consistency issues are solvable. Even MS has software to help. Of course there are many solutions such as SAN's, rsync, etc. that have been around for YEARS.
Of course EVERYTHING is harder on Microsoft's platform, but that's another bag of worms.
You are just using the wrong version of Windows.
It cracks me up to see people continually trying to force MS Windows to do things that Unix has been able to do with NO ADDITIONAL SOFTWARE for YEARS.
Face it people, MS doesn't get it and NEVER will. You just keep banging your head into a brick wall.
To solve your problem, you have to change your mindset. Think outside the box - the Microsoft box that is. Run everything possible in a UNIX environment, only using Windows for the last couple remaining proprietary apps that tie you to Windows (second machine, VMWare, or whatever.)
While the CLIENT software may have been custom, it sounds like the SERVER portion was standard AOL. This would explain the attachment limits, spammer tagging, etc.
Also, since AOL is planning on using a mozilla like system replaincing IE, and has been putting big bucks into continued Netscape browser developement, my guess is that the client software was netscape 6 based. Considering how stable NS6 is, coupled with the AOL server backend, it's no wonder the system sucked.