You could indeed be sued for photocopying a newspaper. Even just for personal use. The only reason you never hear of this happening is because it would be too costly to bring a suit against you. But if the paper wanted to waste their money, hypothetically, they could sue you, and possibly even win.
It has happened, and the newspaper won. Specifically, there was a newsletter which charged outrageous subscription fees. A company purchased several subscriptions but then photocopied the newsletter for employees. The newsletter sued and won millions of dollars. This case became a poster child of the US Copyright Office because they wanted proof that they do, indeed, protect small businesses (at least when they sue other small businesses).
I'm not decided either way whether this is good or bad. They shouldn't have done the crime if they can't do the time - as they say.
However, your argument is slightly flawed. If I copy say 1000's worth of music and give it to someone else who wouldn't have bought it, then I'm not costing anyone anything, so it's not the same as stealing say 1000 car.
But copyright infringement has never been a crime! It is not a criminal offence and no one has ever gone to jail for it. That is why this is news. Why should these college students have had any idea that they would go to jail?
Lets get RMS to sue the bastards for defaming his precious open-source license system by aligning it with piracy.
Just try and ask RMS to do that. You will get a harranguing to end all harranguings over the fcat that he does not advocate Open Source, but rather Free Software:). Now, ESR would be a better candidate here, particularly if you remind him that Aussies have lost their right to bear arms.:)
MS makes money on server sales as well. People who run VirtualPC are mainly corporate Unix developers.
Linux has hurt alot. Back in the 90's one of the arguments for switching to NT from Unix is that you would need 2 workstations per developer. One expensive risc box and one windows. Also you could run IIS on each web developers workstation and test things out. Linux and now virtual pc eliminated that. You do not even need to reboot. Just launch Virtual PC. This makes proprietary.net and the win32 environment less attractive and thus costs money from lost SQL Server and Windows2k Server licenses.
Microsoft requires a license for each instance of the OS that is running. If you have Windows on your computer, that is one license, and for each vpc instance you run you must pay another license for each copy of the software. If you terminal service to another computer, you must pay a Windows license for the computer you connect to using terminal services, the computer you connect with, and the ephemeral session of windows in the terminal session must also have a windows license.
This is why Microsoft says that using Ghost and PCAnywhere is a violation of their license.
I have three machines. I've put various versions of windows on all of them with no problems, but Linux will only run in text mode on them (no XFree drivers). That includes VPC running on these machine with lunix on the VPC. XFree has always had a problem keeping up with the times. If you know an alternative, other than writing my own driver, please let me know.
It would help if you told us what video card you are using, or if you knew. Most sane video cards are VESA compatable, and therefore can use the VESA or SVGA driver. IBM and Diamond (who were IIRC swallowed by ATI) made the FireGL which was specifically not VESA compatable and only worked with Windows (not any other OS at all), but ATI made open source drivers for it before they decided to stop helping open source developers altogether.
More data would help a lot here. Also distribution matters. It does not help to say that Xfree is behind the times if you are, for instance, running Debian and Xfree 3.3.6. The source-based distros are more up to date in this area and many cards are only supported under 4.x (though, perversely, some older cards only work in 3.x IIRC).
Thank you... VirtualPC is a PC emulators... if it doesn't run Linux, then it doesn't run shit...
But Microsoft is also specifically stating that they do not care if Linux actually runs on VirtualPC and do not recommend this application for it. They say in the article that people that report that Linux will not run in VirtualPC will be directed to their Linux Providers for support and bugfixes. So Linux has to be changed to work with VirtualPC if we want it to work after it stops working. It just happens to work now. We will see what happens later.
"Or if you want to be a privacy nut, they -could- just turn on a transparently caching IRC server and log every channel that way. No bots needed, just need 1 node willing to let you plug in."
And I'd be immediately onto the admins, demanding that that server be delinked, or I chat elsewhere.
Er, how would you be onto the admins? I mean first off you would have to know that there was a server logging the channels. Second off, once you know and then get onto the admins, they would probably tell you you could chat wherever you like. IRC is not a service you pay for, so no one gives a shit whether you use it or not.
Veering way off topic here, but this is a situation where the power of the net is obvious. If you wanted a different view of the war, you could read news written in any part of the world from every view point. Myself, I read the BBC site.
And the BBC site is just as hawkish as CNN, so what is your point. I thought it was hilarious that even today the BBC is censored from reporting news that is embarrassing to the Prince of Wales. At least they can still report on said censorship, but sheesh!
Don't forget Dan Rather. He has actually held fund raisers for the democratic party. And check out this quote from Dan.
"When you nominate someone to be Attorney General... who you know is going to raise questions, rightly or wrongly, justifiably or otherwise about race relations, quote 'a hardline stance on a woman's right to choose' on abortion; when you appoint somebody, nominate someone, to be head of the Interior Department who says, 'Listen, it's alright for people who own private land to pollute,' I'm not saying that's right or wrong. I am saying that a lot are going to say, 'Wait a minute, this is not uniter-divider country."
Well wasn't he right? John Ashcroft is probably the most controversial Attorney General in US history. I mean, heck, most people haven't even pay attention to who did that job since RFK had it, except for a small blip during the Watergate hearings. But google for Ashcroft and you find plenty of back and forth.
When they were confirming Ashcroft, I have to say I wondered what all the hooplah was about. I mean all the Attorney General is is a prosecutor. He enforces the laws Congress passes. Or so I thought. But Ashcroft is a cowboy. He thinks he writes the laws instead of just enforcing them and has been pretty successful in prosecutig people for stuff he just makes up on his own. He's Bush's Witch Finder General, he is.
All Dan Rather said was that Ashcroft would ruffle feathers, and he was right about that, 100%.
While certainly Bush shares his hawkishness with LBJ's, they're not a hell of a lot alike in any other respects. I don't believe Bush would ever foster "Great Society"-type stuff.
LBJ was not a hawk. Read a history book. LBJ inherited the war and was more concerned with his Great Society plan. He wanted out of Vietnam but since it was a war the only way out was victory. This is also why part of Nixon's "secret plan" to get out of Vietnam was to bomb the hell out of it.
Of course it is in invalid. Despite any concerns you may have about the Bush administration it is plain dishonest to make the claim that Bush is comparable to Stalin.
Right or wrong, what most likely happened was Bush Sr. had the article pulled not the White House.
Bush != Stalin. However, the poster did not say that Bush was worse than Stalin. The poster said that Bush edited his family's remarks, and that Stalin did not. Then again, Stalin did not have to do so when his family were in Russia, and could not when they were in the US.
Because, at this point, Debian has a proven track record years ahead of Gentoo?
Yeah, a proven track record of not being ready for the desktop and not ever wanting to be. In fact debian deliberately tries not to be ready for the desktop.
First off, in the desktop space, you need to be running the latest kernel and usually the latest versions of software packages. Why? Because you need support for desktop hardware, which changes very quickly, and the software packages in the desktop space are just coming into their own in some cases (like gnucash) or just plain will not work if you use old versions (like gaim). Debian promises to use very old versions of everything, because that is their philosophy and the premise for their existence. It is the absolute worst distribution they could have chosen for this application.
Probably because debian takes the GPL and licensing issues seriously from the start.
Debian also manages package dependancy hell a bit better AFACT.
I recommended debian for a large project for this reason, though I did later curse it soundly for my personal installation.
Maybe when sarge installer is working a bit better I'll try it again.
It does not surprise me that a person who recommends dogfood to his customer without trying it first is wrong on this point. All the source based distributions maintain their freeness as much as if not moreso than debian. After all, you are downloading and compiling from source for most packages; if you can't do that you know there is something wrong. Much like debian, free and non-free are kept seperate and there is a lot of discussion of purging nonfree altogether. Non-free software really sticks out in a source-based distro.
Package management and dependencies are a breeze on the source-based distributions. I just cast or emerge the package I want, and all the dependencies come down automagically. What could be simpler?
Because Debian supports more architectures, has more packages, has more developers and generally, it is a more mature distro.
Also, Gentoo's "compile your own" philosophy is not that great when you have to care for lots of computers.
Not true at all to both of them. First off, all the source-based distributions get their packages right from the horse's mouth, so you have the original source, unmolested.
Secondly, source-based distributions are actually perfect for people with multiple boxes. There are two schools of thought here. One is that most people who care for multiple machines image those machines anyway. No OS install is as fast or flexible as disk imaging, and considering that LInux provides free tools for doing so, it is a no-brainer. Most people who maintain multiple boxes also have many of the exact same box, so this works for source-based distros.
Also, most source-based distros have some facility for maintaining multiple macines and ensuring they all have the same packages, such as Sourcemage's cabal concept. Kicking off an install on one does so on the others. Something else that is being worked on is having multiple machines all work together on compiles so that having multiple machines in this situation is actually more desirable.
Personally my choice in a production environment is the disk image method. Part of this is that the right way to do anything is to do it on a test box first before rolling into production. So you spend yoru 5 days compiling or whatever on the one test box, do all your testing, and then roll out on the productionboxes.
But wait, you say, what about when you upgrade packages? Well all source based distributions include a facility for caching compiled packages. So I upgrade test, and once the compile is done there is a cache. I test my app, and make sure I want to roll it out, then roll out to my production boxes. The production boxes do not have to do compiles then. They will install from the cache I copy to them from test.
People who make these objections do not really care for multiple production boxes, or else they should not be allowed to do so because they don't know what they are talking about and probably are too dangerous to be allowe dto touch production with their cowboy methodologies.
Yes, it's a variant on Netscape's business model. Their idea was, we will make money selling servers, but no-one will want servers unless there are lots of people with browsers, so we'll give browsers away for free. I believe the original analogy was "we sell printing presses but first we have to teach people to read to create demand for books" - Jim Clark or Barksdale, can't remember which.
Except that netscape screwed this up by not actually giving away the browser for free. They tried to charge money for it, and quite abit of money at that. That is why they lost when microsoft not only gave the browser away for free but installed it for the customer.
If you actually compare the price per megabyte with other hard-drive based players, the ipod does very well.
And originally it was the *only* hard drive based player. It has consistently been the most feature rich, best designed mp3 player with the most storage. Of course I think I am going with one of the cheaper SD card based mp3 players, but I still say that the ipod is the best one for the money and the best one period. (I just don't need that kind of horsepower and cash outlay in this space.)
I have to wonder what the RIAA/Artist cut of that $0.99 is, because I am suprised that they aren't making at least some profit off of the music sales. I gather that the users seem to like the interface, so I suppose when they say no profit, they really mean that it will be a long time before the capital costs that went into building iTunes pays off. As you pointed out, however, Apple is a patient company, and recognises that style and function have to work together to make good products.
None of that money goes to the artist, or to be pedantic, even to the RIAA. The money is going to the record label which is a member of the RIAA.
As usual, this just proves the point. Even apple cannot make money working with the RIAA members because they are too greedy. Nothing is going to the artists and actual distributers of the damn music. It is all going to the middlemen who are worthless vicious jackals.
I think you are mixing fraudulent businesses and legitimate businesses. For example, I work for an email marketing company, but we don't do spam. What we do, is help customers learn how to grow their own list and send to them effectively. We are not based on annoying people (our customer's lists are usually less than 5,000 addresses), we're based on helping companies provide useful services and advertise by email. Our reputation lives and dies by the percentage of people who find the marketing piece interesting and perform actions based on it. We usually get between 20% and 30% of people we send to to click through to the website. One of our lists gets a 50% click-through rate. I would say that for the most part, the people we send to are glad they are getting the email, since they do appear to be actively engaging with it. This is why we LOVE unsubscribes - if everyone who doesn't want the email unsubscribes, our numbers go WAY up, and we can say - look, this is getting GREAT returns per person sent.
Here lies the problem - when you outlaw a mode of communication, you aren't helping anyone. We already have laws on the books for fraud. Perhaps we need more, but really the telephone isn't the problem here, is it? The problem is people acting fraudulently. Why don't we take care of _that_ issue? Then we wouldn't have to worry about disrupting business for those who use the medium and are not fraudulent.
Now, another problem with telemarketing is - what about cold calls from individual business people? Is _that_ telemarketing? If it is, we might as well close down industry in this country, because that would cut off the supply for our sales forces.
It seems to me that whatever they are teaching in business schools about sales is completely unethical. Sales is actually what keeps industry turning. Unfortunately, the schools turning out unethical sales forces is giving the whole industry a bad name, and if it continues progressing, could cause a recession.
Yes, cold calling is telemarketing and must be stopped. No, you are not a spammer or a telemarketer by my or any real definition if you are telling the truth. If we outlawed mailing lists, then kernel.org would be out of business and few slashdotters want that!
I do not think I am calling for outlawing legitemate communication. I think it is perfectly fine for my bank to call me with information about my account that might be important, or for a car dealer to call me and remind me of my maintenance, or for the electric company to remind me I forgot to pay my bill. If I want to get the latest, greatest deals I think it is perfectly valid to be able to sign up for a mailing list to do so.
However, every single one of these things are opt-in excercises. And they should only involve the individual entity that I am dealing with and have asked to be bothered by. And if I tell them to stop, they do. That scenario is perfectly fine.
Likewise, with b2b sales if there is a department set aside for taking calls from vendors it is perfectly valid to call them. What I am talking about as far as cold calls is when some cowboy calls random people at companies and at home at random times trying to sell crap. The person may not even have anything to do with that area much less requisitions for that area, but they get called anyway. If I get calls like that I make sure to mark that company down as "never buy from them and make sure the boss knows they are wasting our company's time and money so he does not either."
Legitemate business is about getting in touch with real live customers who actually want to use your product, and really should almost never involve outbound calls at all. If they are outbound they should be return calls (with teh possible exception outlined above), otherwise no you are being an ass and do not deserve anyone's business.
Inflating SCO's stock price is only an option if IBM could be coerced into buying the company. Once IBM publicly rejected that option, the chances of anyone else buying them at an inflated price dropped to near zero.
* Novell wanted a Linux company, but they went for one with some serious market share who were also cheaper.
* It would be a bad option for Microsoft - then everyone would take it as read that they were behind the whole thing from the word go, something that may well be true anyway. Unless SCO's price drops through the floor (and once it starts falling, it will probably go all the way) then no-one sane will bite.
If Microsoft wants to get back into the unix game this is the perfect time for them to buy SCO. They can give the thinly veiled excuse that they were being blackmailed like everyone else and had to buy the company. The Republicans will not do a thing to Microsoft even if they simply announced that they are behind this and that they want to destroy Linux and all choice. And if Senator Orrin Hatch has his way we may be dealing with President Ahnold after Bush, which means more leeway for Microsoft.
Honestly I think they probably couldn't get into trouble under this administration if they started kidnapping kids to stuff their XP boxes.
For a minute there I thought it said "SCO's lawyers anal-ized"
Well, I was hoping someone had psychoanalyzed them. Of course you have to pay money to read this article so it is even less likely the three slashdotters who read articles will read it.:P
When computer industry will realise that microsoft does not have partners, only usefull pieces. They will launch a terrible software tight to windows API, they will put in it 5 or 6 features and tell everybody that this features is more important than all other features in competitor product. They will integrate this on all versions of windows, Give a development tool for free and convince all other software makers to support the new software. 3 years past the competitor will be dead. Microsoft will stop to concern about this software and will aim theirs cannons to another one.
Worse than that, and in keeping with Microsoft's usual BS, the more frightening aspect is the following:
A lot of the goals Microsoft is aiming at with "Sparkle" are the same as those Flash is looking to accomplish, one source said. But the tool goes beyond Flash in delivering a.NET application that has access to all the APIs (define) in Longhorn,
So Microsoft is going to embed their flash-alike in the OS and give it full free reign over the OS like they did IE and messenger (and look where it got them! 5000 exploits all remote root exploits! Tons of Viruses!) Now you will be able to get a virus from watching sparkle cartoons!
This is just too ridiculous for words. I hope the idiots who still use Windows are paying attention because Microsoft is still punishing its customers. Are they all masochists? I mean, really, instead of making things nicer for customers they are making it harder every day, and making the computing experience under windows more horrifying. Yet people line up to give them money for the pleasure just as they line up for the dungeons. I seriously think Microsoft is beginning to use their monopoly position to make fun of its own customer base and inflict pain and suffering on them simply so Bill can collapse in schadenfreude-induced laughter in his castle.
It is the height of absurdity that people use Windows at all in such conditions.
You'd think *someone* at Microsoft would be able to setup a reminder in Outlook, for fuck's sake.
They probably did but then it lost the reminder. Outlook loses meetings, email and reminders all the time. Maybe the paperclip eats them. Honestly vi would be more useful than that!
Slashdot Mirror
You could indeed be sued for photocopying a newspaper. Even just for personal use. The only reason you never hear of this happening is because it would be too costly to bring a suit against you. But if the paper wanted to waste their money, hypothetically, they could sue you, and possibly even win.
It has happened, and the newspaper won. Specifically, there was a newsletter which charged outrageous subscription fees. A company purchased several subscriptions but then photocopied the newsletter for employees. The newsletter sued and won millions of dollars. This case became a poster child of the US Copyright Office because they wanted proof that they do, indeed, protect small businesses (at least when they sue other small businesses).
I'm not decided either way whether this is good or bad. They shouldn't have done the crime if they can't do the time - as they say.
However, your argument is slightly flawed. If I copy say 1000's worth of music and give it to someone else who wouldn't have bought it, then I'm not costing anyone anything, so it's not the same as stealing say 1000 car.
But copyright infringement has never been a crime! It is not a criminal offence and no one has ever gone to jail for it. That is why this is news. Why should these college students have had any idea that they would go to jail?
Lets get RMS to sue the bastards for defaming his precious open-source license system by aligning it with piracy.
Just try and ask RMS to do that. You will get a harranguing to end all harranguings over the fcat that he does not advocate Open Source, but rather Free Software :). Now, ESR would be a better candidate here, particularly if you remind him that Aussies have lost their right to bear arms. :)
MS makes money on server sales as well. People who run VirtualPC are mainly corporate Unix developers.
.net and the win32 environment less attractive and thus costs money from lost SQL Server and Windows2k Server licenses.
Linux has hurt alot. Back in the 90's one of the arguments for switching to NT from Unix is that you would need 2 workstations per developer. One expensive risc box and one windows. Also you could run IIS on each web developers workstation and test things out. Linux and now virtual pc eliminated that. You do not even need to reboot. Just launch Virtual PC. This makes proprietary
Microsoft requires a license for each instance of the OS that is running. If you have Windows on your computer, that is one license, and for each vpc instance you run you must pay another license for each copy of the software. If you terminal service to another computer, you must pay a Windows license for the computer you connect to using terminal services, the computer you connect with, and the ephemeral session of windows in the terminal session must also have a windows license.
This is why Microsoft says that using Ghost and PCAnywhere is a violation of their license.
I have three machines. I've put various versions of windows on all of them with no problems, but Linux will only run in text mode on them (no XFree drivers). That includes VPC running on these machine with lunix on the VPC. XFree has always had a problem keeping up with the times. If you know an alternative, other than writing my own driver, please let me know.
It would help if you told us what video card you are using, or if you knew. Most sane video cards are VESA compatable, and therefore can use the VESA or SVGA driver. IBM and Diamond (who were IIRC swallowed by ATI) made the FireGL which was specifically not VESA compatable and only worked with Windows (not any other OS at all), but ATI made open source drivers for it before they decided to stop helping open source developers altogether.
More data would help a lot here. Also distribution matters. It does not help to say that Xfree is behind the times if you are, for instance, running Debian and Xfree 3.3.6. The source-based distros are more up to date in this area and many cards are only supported under 4.x (though, perversely, some older cards only work in 3.x IIRC).
Thank you...
VirtualPC is a PC emulators... if it doesn't run Linux, then it doesn't run shit...
But Microsoft is also specifically stating that they do not care if Linux actually runs on VirtualPC and do not recommend this application for it. They say in the article that people that report that Linux will not run in VirtualPC will be directed to their Linux Providers for support and bugfixes. So Linux has to be changed to work with VirtualPC if we want it to work after it stops working. It just happens to work now. We will see what happens later.
"Or if you want to be a privacy nut, they -could- just turn on a transparently caching IRC server and log every channel that way. No bots needed, just need 1 node willing to let you plug in."
And I'd be immediately onto the admins, demanding that that server be delinked, or I chat elsewhere.
Er, how would you be onto the admins? I mean first off you would have to know that there was a server logging the channels. Second off, once you know and then get onto the admins, they would probably tell you you could chat wherever you like. IRC is not a service you pay for, so no one gives a shit whether you use it or not.
Veering way off topic here, but this is a situation where the power of the net is obvious. If you wanted a different view of the war, you could read news written in any part of the world from every view point. Myself, I read the BBC site.
And the BBC site is just as hawkish as CNN, so what is your point. I thought it was hilarious that even today the BBC is censored from reporting news that is embarrassing to the Prince of Wales. At least they can still report on said censorship, but sheesh!
Don't forget Dan Rather. He has actually held fund raisers for the democratic party. And check out this quote from Dan.
"When you nominate someone to be Attorney General... who you know is going to raise questions, rightly or wrongly, justifiably or otherwise about race relations, quote 'a hardline stance on a woman's right to choose' on abortion; when you appoint somebody, nominate someone, to be head of the Interior Department who says, 'Listen, it's alright for people who own private land to pollute,' I'm not saying that's right or wrong. I am saying that a lot are going to say, 'Wait a minute, this is not uniter-divider country."
Well wasn't he right? John Ashcroft is probably the most controversial Attorney General in US history. I mean, heck, most people haven't even pay attention to who did that job since RFK had it, except for a small blip during the Watergate hearings. But google for Ashcroft and you find plenty of back and forth.
When they were confirming Ashcroft, I have to say I wondered what all the hooplah was about. I mean all the Attorney General is is a prosecutor. He enforces the laws Congress passes. Or so I thought. But Ashcroft is a cowboy. He thinks he writes the laws instead of just enforcing them and has been pretty successful in prosecutig people for stuff he just makes up on his own. He's Bush's Witch Finder General, he is.
All Dan Rather said was that Ashcroft would ruffle feathers, and he was right about that, 100%.
While certainly Bush shares his hawkishness with LBJ's, they're not a hell of a lot alike in any other respects. I don't believe Bush would ever foster "Great Society"-type stuff.
LBJ was not a hawk. Read a history book. LBJ inherited the war and was more concerned with his Great Society plan. He wanted out of Vietnam but since it was a war the only way out was victory. This is also why part of Nixon's "secret plan" to get out of Vietnam was to bomb the hell out of it.
Of course it is in invalid. Despite any concerns you may have about the Bush administration it is plain dishonest to make the claim that Bush is comparable to Stalin.
Right or wrong, what most likely happened was Bush Sr. had the article pulled not the White House.
Bush != Stalin. However, the poster did not say that Bush was worse than Stalin. The poster said that Bush edited his family's remarks, and that Stalin did not. Then again, Stalin did not have to do so when his family were in Russia, and could not when they were in the US.
Archive.org, Google Cache, etc. all help.
Nice first post. Too bad you did not read the article, which talked about how the White House has been working to defeat the Google cache.
Why Debian, instead of, say Gentoo?
Because, at this point, Debian has a proven track record years ahead of Gentoo?
Yeah, a proven track record of not being ready for the desktop and not ever wanting to be. In fact debian deliberately tries not to be ready for the desktop.
First off, in the desktop space, you need to be running the latest kernel and usually the latest versions of software packages. Why? Because you need support for desktop hardware, which changes very quickly, and the software packages in the desktop space are just coming into their own in some cases (like gnucash) or just plain will not work if you use old versions (like gaim). Debian promises to use very old versions of everything, because that is their philosophy and the premise for their existence. It is the absolute worst distribution they could have chosen for this application.
Probably because debian takes the GPL and licensing issues seriously from the start.
Debian also manages package dependancy hell a bit better AFACT.
I recommended debian for a large project for this reason, though I did later curse it soundly for my personal installation.
Maybe when sarge installer is working a bit better I'll try it again.
It does not surprise me that a person who recommends dogfood to his customer without trying it first is wrong on this point. All the source based distributions maintain their freeness as much as if not moreso than debian. After all, you are downloading and compiling from source for most packages; if you can't do that you know there is something wrong. Much like debian, free and non-free are kept seperate and there is a lot of discussion of purging nonfree altogether. Non-free software really sticks out in a source-based distro.
Package management and dependencies are a breeze on the source-based distributions. I just cast or emerge the package I want, and all the dependencies come down automagically. What could be simpler?
Because Debian supports more architectures, has more packages, has more developers and generally, it is a more mature distro.
Also, Gentoo's "compile your own" philosophy is not that great when you have to care for lots of computers.
Not true at all to both of them. First off, all the source-based distributions get their packages right from the horse's mouth, so you have the original source, unmolested.
Secondly, source-based distributions are actually perfect for people with multiple boxes. There are two schools of thought here. One is that most people who care for multiple machines image those machines anyway. No OS install is as fast or flexible as disk imaging, and considering that LInux provides free tools for doing so, it is a no-brainer. Most people who maintain multiple boxes also have many of the exact same box, so this works for source-based distros.
Also, most source-based distros have some facility for maintaining multiple macines and ensuring they all have the same packages, such as Sourcemage's cabal concept. Kicking off an install on one does so on the others. Something else that is being worked on is having multiple machines all work together on compiles so that having multiple machines in this situation is actually more desirable.
Personally my choice in a production environment is the disk image method. Part of this is that the right way to do anything is to do it on a test box first before rolling into production. So you spend yoru 5 days compiling or whatever on the one test box, do all your testing, and then roll out on the productionboxes.
But wait, you say, what about when you upgrade packages? Well all source based distributions include a facility for caching compiled packages. So I upgrade test, and once the compile is done there is a cache. I test my app, and make sure I want to roll it out, then roll out to my production boxes. The production boxes do not have to do compiles then. They will install from the cache I copy to them from test.
People who make these objections do not really care for multiple production boxes, or else they should not be allowed to do so because they don't know what they are talking about and probably are too dangerous to be allowe dto touch production with their cowboy methodologies.
Yes, it's a variant on Netscape's business model. Their idea was, we will make money selling servers, but no-one will want servers unless there are lots of people with browsers, so we'll give browsers away for free. I believe the original analogy was "we sell printing presses but first we have to teach people to read to create demand for books" - Jim Clark or Barksdale, can't remember which.
Except that netscape screwed this up by not actually giving away the browser for free. They tried to charge money for it, and quite abit of money at that. That is why they lost when microsoft not only gave the browser away for free but installed it for the customer.
The ipod is NOT THAT EXPENSIVE.
If you actually compare the price per megabyte with other hard-drive based players, the ipod does very well.
And originally it was the *only* hard drive based player. It has consistently been the most feature rich, best designed mp3 player with the most storage. Of course I think I am going with one of the cheaper SD card based mp3 players, but I still say that the ipod is the best one for the money and the best one period. (I just don't need that kind of horsepower and cash outlay in this space.)
Good point.
I have to wonder what the RIAA/Artist cut of that $0.99 is, because I am suprised that they aren't making at least some profit off of the music sales. I gather that the users seem to like the interface, so I suppose when they say no profit, they really mean that it will be a long time before the capital costs that went into building iTunes pays off. As you pointed out, however, Apple is a patient company, and recognises that style and function have to work together to make good products.
None of that money goes to the artist, or to be pedantic, even to the RIAA. The money is going to the record label which is a member of the RIAA.
As usual, this just proves the point. Even apple cannot make money working with the RIAA members because they are too greedy. Nothing is going to the artists and actual distributers of the damn music. It is all going to the middlemen who are worthless vicious jackals.
I think you are mixing fraudulent businesses and legitimate businesses. For example, I work for an email marketing company, but we don't do spam. What we do, is help customers learn how to grow their own list and send to them effectively. We are not based on annoying people (our customer's lists are usually less than 5,000 addresses), we're based on helping companies provide useful services and advertise by email. Our reputation lives and dies by the percentage of people who find the marketing piece interesting and perform actions based on it. We usually get between 20% and 30% of people we send to to click through to the website. One of our lists gets a 50% click-through rate. I would say that for the most part, the people we send to are glad they are getting the email, since they do appear to be actively engaging with it. This is why we LOVE unsubscribes - if everyone who doesn't want the email unsubscribes, our numbers go WAY up, and we can say - look, this is getting GREAT returns per person sent.
Here lies the problem - when you outlaw a mode of communication, you aren't helping anyone. We already have laws on the books for fraud. Perhaps we need more, but really the telephone isn't the problem here, is it? The problem is people acting fraudulently. Why don't we take care of _that_ issue? Then we wouldn't have to worry about disrupting business for those who use the medium and are not fraudulent.
Now, another problem with telemarketing is - what about cold calls from individual business people? Is _that_ telemarketing? If it is, we might as well close down industry in this country, because that would cut off the supply for our sales forces.
It seems to me that whatever they are teaching in business schools about sales is completely unethical. Sales is actually what keeps industry turning. Unfortunately, the schools turning out unethical sales forces is giving the whole industry a bad name, and if it continues progressing, could cause a recession.
Yes, cold calling is telemarketing and must be stopped. No, you are not a spammer or a telemarketer by my or any real definition if you are telling the truth. If we outlawed mailing lists, then kernel.org would be out of business and few slashdotters want that!
I do not think I am calling for outlawing legitemate communication. I think it is perfectly fine for my bank to call me with information about my account that might be important, or for a car dealer to call me and remind me of my maintenance, or for the electric company to remind me I forgot to pay my bill. If I want to get the latest, greatest deals I think it is perfectly valid to be able to sign up for a mailing list to do so.
However, every single one of these things are opt-in excercises. And they should only involve the individual entity that I am dealing with and have asked to be bothered by. And if I tell them to stop, they do. That scenario is perfectly fine.
Likewise, with b2b sales if there is a department set aside for taking calls from vendors it is perfectly valid to call them. What I am talking about as far as cold calls is when some cowboy calls random people at companies and at home at random times trying to sell crap. The person may not even have anything to do with that area much less requisitions for that area, but they get called anyway. If I get calls like that I make sure to mark that company down as "never buy from them and make sure the boss knows they are wasting our company's time and money so he does not either."
Legitemate business is about getting in touch with real live customers who actually want to use your product, and really should almost never involve outbound calls at all. If they are outbound they should be return calls (with teh possible exception outlined above), otherwise no you are being an ass and do not deserve anyone's business.
Inflating SCO's stock price is only an option if IBM could be coerced into buying the company. Once IBM publicly rejected that option, the chances of anyone else buying them at an inflated price dropped to near zero.
* Novell wanted a Linux company, but they went for one with some serious market share who were also cheaper.
* It would be a bad option for Microsoft - then everyone would take it as read that they were behind the whole thing from the word go, something that may well be true anyway.
Unless SCO's price drops through the floor (and once it starts falling, it will probably go all the way) then no-one sane will bite.
If Microsoft wants to get back into the unix game this is the perfect time for them to buy SCO. They can give the thinly veiled excuse that they were being blackmailed like everyone else and had to buy the company. The Republicans will not do a thing to Microsoft even if they simply announced that they are behind this and that they want to destroy Linux and all choice. And if Senator Orrin Hatch has his way we may be dealing with President Ahnold after Bush, which means more leeway for Microsoft.
Honestly I think they probably couldn't get into trouble under this administration if they started kidnapping kids to stuff their XP boxes.
"Normally, MS cannot get into the unix business due to an agreement they signed when they spun off Xenix to a different company"
This is an internet urban legend. No proof. So spare your genius conclusions.
BTW, Microsoft sells a Unix-compatible product right now called SFU/Interix.
Interix is not a UNIX. It is a set of tools (mostly gnu tools) that run under windows. There is a big difference here.
For a minute there I thought it said "SCO's lawyers anal-ized"
Well, I was hoping someone had psychoanalyzed them. Of course you have to pay money to read this article so it is even less likely the three slashdotters who read articles will read it. :P
When computer industry will realise that microsoft does not have partners, only usefull pieces.
They will launch a terrible software tight to windows API, they will put in it 5 or 6 features and tell everybody that this features is more important than all other features in competitor product. They will integrate this on all versions of windows, Give a development tool for free and convince all other software makers to support the new software. 3 years past the competitor will be dead. Microsoft will stop to concern about this software and will aim theirs cannons to another one.
Worse than that, and in keeping with Microsoft's usual BS, the more frightening aspect is the following:
A lot of the goals Microsoft is aiming at with "Sparkle" are the same as those Flash is looking to accomplish, one source said. But the tool goes beyond Flash in delivering a .NET application that has access to all the APIs (define) in Longhorn,
So Microsoft is going to embed their flash-alike in the OS and give it full free reign over the OS like they did IE and messenger (and look where it got them! 5000 exploits all remote root exploits! Tons of Viruses!) Now you will be able to get a virus from watching sparkle cartoons!
This is just too ridiculous for words. I hope the idiots who still use Windows are paying attention because Microsoft is still punishing its customers. Are they all masochists? I mean, really, instead of making things nicer for customers they are making it harder every day, and making the computing experience under windows more horrifying. Yet people line up to give them money for the pleasure just as they line up for the dungeons. I seriously think Microsoft is beginning to use their monopoly position to make fun of its own customer base and inflict pain and suffering on them simply so Bill can collapse in schadenfreude-induced laughter in his castle.
It is the height of absurdity that people use Windows at all in such conditions.
You'd think *someone* at Microsoft would be able to setup a reminder in Outlook, for fuck's sake.
They probably did but then it lost the reminder. Outlook loses meetings, email and reminders all the time. Maybe the paperclip eats them. Honestly vi would be more useful than that!
You'd think MS would be a registrar.
They will be when they buy out Verisign.