They are based in Bentonville, GA. A hellhole of a place, quite a ways from a major city.
You mean Bentonville, ARKANSAS. It's still a hellhole of a place though. Everything else you said was true.
Believe me folks, there is a good reason why a number of cities in California are passing laws banning Walmart from opening stores. The fact is, Walmart strongarms their vendors into giving them prices that are unrealistic in order to get costs down. They move into small towns and undercut the local mom-and-pop shops, putting them out of business. Then, after there is no competition left, they jack up the prices and rape their customers.
There is nothing technically illegal about what they are doing (other than hiring illegals to clean their stores at night, but hey, we're not responsible, we had contractors that did a bad thing), but it sure ought to be illegal. It's at the very least immoral and unethical, and I can't figure out for the life of me why all the right-wing religions fanatics won't sell rated R movies that haven't been edited, but they'll happily fuck an entire Anytown, USA out of their hard-earned money.
Walmart is a cancer on America, and it needs to be shut down and put out of business.
I think you're incorrect. iTunes is not transcoding my VBR mp3 files down to 64k in real time just to stream them to a client over the LAN. If it was doing this, not only would I notice that the sound quality would suck, but the CPU usage on my main PC would be through the roof. I'm not even sure if my P4 2.6 ghz. could transcode in realtime to more than 1 or 2 clients.
I don't see how this can happen. Network Solutions bugs the crap out of me to renew mine well in advance. They've been sending me renewal notices for a couple of months now for domains I have that will need to be renewed by March and May of 2004!
You obviously haven't experienced Hotmail's overzealous spam filters. Pretty much any message coming from an automated system (including my Paypal emails) gets junked automatically unless you specifically allow that sender through. It took me forever just to figure out how to reset the password on my Paypal account because all of the password reset messages were getting trashed by Hotmail automagically...
It's not too far of a leap to think that automatic domain renewal notices will be junked by spam filters as potential spam. Most things coming from Network Solutions these days are spam.
I have a 30GB iPod with 27GB of music on it. I can format it and completely load it with music in about 45 minutes. That's long before the 8 hour battery runs out.
Everyone knows that USB doesn't carry enough power to charge the iPod. That's why Firewire is a better interface to use.
Instead of buying the $20 USB cable, why didn't you just buy a $20 PCI Firewire adapter for your computer and not have to worry about it?
If your computer can only copy 2 gigs of data in 8 hours there is something seriously fux0red with it.
I just got a brand new 15" G4 PowerBook (I love it, but that's another story), and the default setting for any installation of Mac OS X 10.2.7 (Jaguar) or 10.3 (Panther) is Bluetooth turned on and discoverable. Now the new iBooks ship with Bluetooth as well.
Knowing that most users don't bother to turn off services that are on by default, how long do you think it will be before people start spamming wi-fi hotspots where people are using a lot of computers.
Knowing that Microsoft tends to follow Apple's lead and most Wintel notebook manufacturers will start bundling Bluetooth with their systems I expect this will soon be a more serious issue.
Now, combine all of this information and predict that some innovative hacker will discover a buffer overrun exploit in the MS Bluetooth stack (of course there are probably several, it's MS after all) and now you have a new and innovative method of infection for the next Windows worm of the day...
Either that, or some really annoying Popups similar to the Windows messenger popup style ads you see today.
It doesn't matter how powerful the transmitter is because it still has to receive a response back from the receiver in order to "discover" that the receiver is there before sending the message. In other words, sending a vCard is still a two way operation. Sender "discovers" the potential receiver by an intermittent "ping" and is then able to send them the message.
Perhaps innovative spammers could figure out a way to ignore one half of the conversation or spoof the handshake in some way, but I doubt it.
Microsoft releases XBox 2 with a PPC 970 running at 2 ghz.
XBox hackers break the encryption and are able to run unsigned code on the PPC 970 processor.
XBox hackers use MacOnLinux to run a full-fledged Mac OS X on cheap Xbox hardware.
???
Profit!!!
Just kidding about the profit part... But who wouldn't want a 2 ghz. G5 running Mac OS X for about $300. This would be a killer workstation and would run circles around the existing Xbox 1 running Linux. Can you imagine?
That was a good article, but there was a glaring bit of bad information in the last paragraph:
But given the success that iTunes alone is experiencing - it sold a million songs during the first week that it opened its catalog to Windows users in October - it is only a matter of time before even the most recalcitrant artists are caught up by the musical tidal wave.
I believe the correct number was something like 3.5 million songs sold in the first few days. He is probably confusing the number of downloads of the software with the number of songs sold. Itunes for Windows did get downloaded 1 million times in the first week.
This is pretty abysmal in the tech world and should give a lot of users pause. Microsoft promises they will continue to support and release security patches for an OS for 5 years after it is no longer sold on the shelves. That means that customers running Windows NT have been able to get security patches up until this year (2003, I think they are finally EOLing NT 4.0). 5 years is pretty short. Sun releases Solaris security patches for 10 years after an OS is no longer sold.
A lot of IT managers will refuse to buy a product that has a forced upgrade cycle of anything less than 5 years. The reason for this is that there is much more cost involved in upgrading your OS than just the $129 per user. You also have to re-test all of your applications and make sure they are still compatible. You might have to re-write several applications and these are costs that cannot be absorbed on an annual basis, or whenever Steve Jobs feels like he needs to milk the Mac faithful for more money. If you want to see an example of this, just look at how many EDU organizations are still running OS 9.
If Apple doesn't change this policy quickly they will ensure that Macs stay in the homes where they already are and never penetrate very deep into the corporate world.
Of course Macs are much more secure by default than Windows. I'm not arguing that, but recently there have been several security holes in basic functionality like SSH that allow people to gain root access. Without security patches many vulnerable people could be infected by a Worm similar to anything that MS users get on a regular basis.
Of course, the crux of the matter is this: Steve Jobs wants all users to be on a 1 year upgrade cycle so that Apple makes more money, rather than releasing incremental updates like Service Packs that add functionality. If you're releasing an OS every year you can't afford to back-port all of your security patches to the previous 5 years worth of OS, there's just too much testing time involved.
Bottom line: Apple's greedy and it's costing them a lot of potential corporate customers.
She signed the note, "Sex depraved freshman."" This is a freshman girl at MIT... who is looking for loving... wants to get to know a gangly CS grad student...
I listened to this story on NPR this morning, and when they asked the guy what type of music he liked, he said... (drumroll please) he was a big fan of show tunes. I think I can safely say that he probably isn't interested in some sexually deprived (or depraved for that matter) freshman girl. He's probably more interested in her brother.
You might check out US1Camera.com. They currently have the 15" 1.25 G4 PowerBook w/ Superdrive for only $2399.99. Add $49.99 for shipping and handling and it is only $2449.98. I just ordered one on Friday and I can't wait until it arrives.
I was checking memory upgrade prices at Crucial and it looks like 1GB of memory (2x 512MB DIMMs) costs about $300 though, so if you want the 1GB of memory you'll probably get a better deal going with MacConnection. Just keep in mind the MacConnection price is only after a $100 mail in rebate, and a lot of the extras you get with it you probably don't need anyway (Case, Quickbooks, etc.), since you're buying a different case. They are both pretty good deals though.
I'm curious which products you think are s__t? (That was a rather disgusting metaphor, by the way!)
Thanks for the links to other reviews, I hadn't seen those yet. To be honest with you, I love Apple's products. I can't think of any that have been released since Jobs took the reigns again that are shit... I guess I've just been reading message boards at Macrumors too much. It's funny because as soon as someone speculates on some new whizbang hardware product that will never see the light of day (like iTablet, etc., etc.), there are tons of Mac faithful that go "oooh! a shiny! If Apple makes it then it must be good." I guess I never understood that mentality. I always wait until the product is released and a few reviews have rolled in before I make my own unbiased decision about whether or not it's worth purchasing. To take the example of the iTablet, I have no use for it personally. Between my desktop, my laptop, my smart phone, and my iPod, I have enough gadgets already and I don't need an 8" tablet to browse the web from the toilet with.
Apple does have a great track record, with a few minor flops (iBook logic boards that fail if you look at them wrong come to mind).
BTW, sorry if I offended you with that metaphor. I was just trying to make a point.
To my mind this is by far the superior service. I get to listen to anything I want as often as I want for ten bucks a month ('cept for the Beatles, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin and Elton John's Blue Moves.)
What about the 99.99% of people that want to own their music and not "rent" it? I don't want to worry that the music I've paid $10 a month for 10 years will all of a sudden be gone if Rhapsody goes belly up. Over time those monthly fees add up and most people want to keep their music.
You can have your "music rental" service. I'll stick with a service like Apple's that lets me own the music I buy.
Yet this discussion completely sidesteps one of the aspects of Napster (1) and the like -- that they were international. From almost anywhere in the world (assuming internet access) you could get music, that was itself from all over the world.
When Napster 2.0 is released I'm sure you'll find that it is only available to people in the US. There are way too many small record companies that have exclusive distribution rights in foreign countries to negotiate contracts with. It will be quite some time (years, possibly) before any of the online music services offer a ubiquitous international service that is available anywhere.
Just so you all know I'm not an Apple hater, I own a 30GB iPod and I love it. I also use iTunes for Windows and I've already bought a couple of albums. I agree with the article that iTunes is the best jukebox and music store for Windows, but isn't this the same author that gives every single Apple product a favorable review? It would be nice to see reviews from an unbiased source.
I like Apple products quite a bit and I'll probably buy a 15" G4 PowerBook in the next couple of weeks, but something that really bothers me about the Apple culture and the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field is that it seems like the Apple zealots love any product that Apple releases, regardless of how good or bad it is. Steve Jobs could shit in his hand and sell it as the iShit for $999 and Mac fanatics would be lining up around the block to buy it.
Appreciation of a good or well thought out product is one thing. Blind zealotry is quite another and I see entirely too much of that in the Apple world.
.. any bets on how long it'll take Darl to start foaming at the mouth, claiming that Fujitsu now owes SCO some $ due to partnering with Sun?
Not going to happen. Fujitsu licenses Solaris from Sun for use on their Sparc64 servers. As SCO has already stated, Sun purchased a license that allows them to do whatever they want with the System V code, including selling derivative works. As far as I know, Sun is the only vendor right now that can legally sell you a Linux distro, at least according to SCO.
Sun/TI partnership milestones: -- 1988 - Sun/TI relationship founded -- 1992 - Delivery of SuperSPARC(r) and MicroSPARC(r) 1 -- 1994 - Delivery of SuperSPARC II -- 1995 - Delivery of UltraSPARC I (first 64 bit SPARC processor) -- 1997 - Delivery of UltraSPARC II (72-way support) -- 2000 - UltraSPARC III (106-way support) -- 2001 - Copper UltraSPARC III -- 2002 - UltraSPARC III (industry's first 64-bit in 130 nm) -- 2003 - First 64-bit 90 nm process samples
Those are some fairly impressive milestones, but anyone that has followed Sun closely knows that Sun has been TI's bitch, basically the same way Apple has been Motorola's bitch.
TI has not kept up with product milestones. If they had met all of their deadlines, right now Sun's servers would have UltraSparc IVs running at 2Ghz+. Instead they have not kept up in the mhz. race and have been dragging Sun's overall performance down.
Why would you buy x86 servers from Sun that run linux, when you could by x86 servers from a true x86 company like Dell? OR buy support from Redhat, a true linux support company?
Because last time I checked, RedHat didn't have support engineers available worldwide on a 24x7 basis that are competent in Unix or Linux and willing to drive out at 2:00 in the morning when your Dell PowerEdge server bites the big one. Big customers buy systems that are supported by the vendors, and they want a one stop shop. They don't want to have to call Dell if there's a hardware problem or RedHat if there's a software problem. They want to make one call to Sun and have an SSE (System Support Engineer) that is qualified on both hardware and software drive out and fix it.
You are incorrect. The new PowerBooks use the Motorola 7447 chip, which includes everything the 7457 chip has without support for L3 cache. There have been several articles on this on Macrumors.
Those things have been in Winamp since forever. I'm sitting here right now staring at the library manager, it has a three-pane view of artist-album-track, and a search field. I use it all of the time, in fact I don't have a single playlist file anywhere. I used iTunes a lot when my Mac was working, and I still think Winamp is a lot handier, it can be collapsed to take up very little screen space yet still expanded and/or controlled with just a few keystrokes.
Sure Winamp has the Library function, Alt-L, which works just fine for finding specific artists, genres, or albums in your library. I used to use Winamp exclusively as my player, but iTunes has all this and more. It allows you to rank all of your tracks with 1 to 5 stars. Once you get a good number of your tracks ranked, the Smart Playlists functionality is awesome. Now I can create a playlist that says "Only play songs ranked 4 stars or better that I haven't listened to in the past two weeks, and pick 25 at random." This playlist updates itself so the end result is I'm always hearing music I haven't listened to in a while, and I'm always hearing good music.
Not only that, but this functionality works on my iPod as well, synchronizing the XML databases where this information is stored effortlessly between my computer and my iPod.
Don't get me wrong, Winamp is a great media player, but it's Library Management functions don't even compare to iTunes.
Would you mind pointing out specific instances where Sun has done something that made an enemy out of the Linux community?
I guess I have difficulty understanding the hatred the general Linux community displays towards Sun when they have contributed so much in the way of open standards (NFS anyone) and open source software (OpenOffice anyone) to the Linux community.
It seems that they have also been fairly generous with source code, even with Solaris via the Community Source license.
I'd be interested to know what Sun did wrong so that other companies can hopefully not repeat those mistakes. Was it aligning themselves with SCO?
Here's one for you though. If you type "WMD" using the Wingdings font, you get a crucifix, a bomb and a thumbs-down. Clearly a message that those who oppose Christianity plan to use violent methods to eliminate it. Spooky, eh?:)
Too late, already brushed you off as a tin-foil hat conspiracy theorist.
I don't actually believe it either... it's just an strange coincidence. Anyhoo, my message was just a joke, hoping to get modded +5 funny... (why, I'm not really sure because my karma's already excellent).
Use your same trick, only type in MSNBC. Still don't believe me? Type SLASHDOT and tell me that 'message' isn't startlingly appropriate.
Ok, the MSNBC one looked a little crazy, but what was there about the SLASHDOT in Wingdings that made it so "startingly appropriate"? A water drop, frowny face, peace sign, thumbs down, flag, and a snowflake? What significance did you find in that message? I'm just curious.
I have wondered before if some developers at Microsoft might have a hidden anti-semitic agenda. Before you brush me off as a tin-foil hat conspiracy theorist, try the following exercise:
1. Open MS Word. 2. Type the letters "NYC" (capitals) into a blank document. 3. Highlight the text NYC and change your font to Wingdings. 4. Voila!
Slashdot Mirror
They are based in Bentonville, GA. A hellhole of a place, quite a ways from a major city.
You mean Bentonville, ARKANSAS. It's still a hellhole of a place though. Everything else you said was true.
Believe me folks, there is a good reason why a number of cities in California are passing laws banning Walmart from opening stores. The fact is, Walmart strongarms their vendors into giving them prices that are unrealistic in order to get costs down. They move into small towns and undercut the local mom-and-pop shops, putting them out of business. Then, after there is no competition left, they jack up the prices and rape their customers.
There is nothing technically illegal about what they are doing (other than hiring illegals to clean their stores at night, but hey, we're not responsible, we had contractors that did a bad thing), but it sure ought to be illegal. It's at the very least immoral and unethical, and I can't figure out for the life of me why all the right-wing religions fanatics won't sell rated R movies that haven't been edited, but they'll happily fuck an entire Anytown, USA out of their hard-earned money.
Walmart is a cancer on America, and it needs to be shut down and put out of business.
I think you're incorrect. iTunes is not transcoding my VBR mp3 files down to 64k in real time just to stream them to a client over the LAN. If it was doing this, not only would I notice that the sound quality would suck, but the CPU usage on my main PC would be through the roof. I'm not even sure if my P4 2.6 ghz. could transcode in realtime to more than 1 or 2 clients.
I don't see how this can happen. Network Solutions bugs the crap out of me to renew mine well in advance. They've been sending me renewal notices for a couple of months now for domains I have that will need to be renewed by March and May of 2004!
You obviously haven't experienced Hotmail's overzealous spam filters. Pretty much any message coming from an automated system (including my Paypal emails) gets junked automatically unless you specifically allow that sender through. It took me forever just to figure out how to reset the password on my Paypal account because all of the password reset messages were getting trashed by Hotmail automagically...
It's not too far of a leap to think that automatic domain renewal notices will be junked by spam filters as potential spam. Most things coming from Network Solutions these days are spam.
Dude, you are so full of it it's not even funny.
I have a 30GB iPod with 27GB of music on it. I can format it and completely load it with music in about 45 minutes. That's long before the 8 hour battery runs out.
Everyone knows that USB doesn't carry enough power to charge the iPod. That's why Firewire is a better interface to use.
Instead of buying the $20 USB cable, why didn't you just buy a $20 PCI Firewire adapter for your computer and not have to worry about it?
If your computer can only copy 2 gigs of data in 8 hours there is something seriously fux0red with it.
I just got a brand new 15" G4 PowerBook (I love it, but that's another story), and the default setting for any installation of Mac OS X 10.2.7 (Jaguar) or 10.3 (Panther) is Bluetooth turned on and discoverable. Now the new iBooks ship with Bluetooth as well.
Knowing that most users don't bother to turn off services that are on by default, how long do you think it will be before people start spamming wi-fi hotspots where people are using a lot of computers.
Knowing that Microsoft tends to follow Apple's lead and most Wintel notebook manufacturers will start bundling Bluetooth with their systems I expect this will soon be a more serious issue.
Now, combine all of this information and predict that some innovative hacker will discover a buffer overrun exploit in the MS Bluetooth stack (of course there are probably several, it's MS after all) and now you have a new and innovative method of infection for the next Windows worm of the day...
Either that, or some really annoying Popups similar to the Windows messenger popup style ads you see today.
It doesn't matter how powerful the transmitter is because it still has to receive a response back from the receiver in order to "discover" that the receiver is there before sending the message. In other words, sending a vCard is still a two way operation. Sender "discovers" the potential receiver by an intermittent "ping" and is then able to send them the message.
Perhaps innovative spammers could figure out a way to ignore one half of the conversation or spoof the handshake in some way, but I doubt it.
Microsoft releases XBox 2 with a PPC 970 running at 2 ghz.
XBox hackers break the encryption and are able to run unsigned code on the PPC 970 processor.
XBox hackers use MacOnLinux to run a full-fledged Mac OS X on cheap Xbox hardware.
???
Profit!!!
Just kidding about the profit part... But who wouldn't want a 2 ghz. G5 running Mac OS X for about $300. This would be a killer workstation and would run circles around the existing Xbox 1 running Linux. Can you imagine?
That was a good article, but there was a glaring bit of bad information in the last paragraph:
But given the success that iTunes alone is experiencing - it sold a million songs during the first week that it opened its catalog to Windows users in October - it is only a matter of time before even the most recalcitrant artists are caught up by the musical tidal wave.
I believe the correct number was something like 3.5 million songs sold in the first few days. He is probably confusing the number of downloads of the software with the number of songs sold. Itunes for Windows did get downloaded 1 million times in the first week.
I swear to all that is good: goatse.cx has a Halloween Theme today:
You know what is really sad and pathetic: you actually check that site often enough to find out that they have a Halloween theme...
Just when I had almost repressed the horrid memory from my mind...
You're absolutely right.
This is pretty abysmal in the tech world and should give a lot of users pause. Microsoft promises they will continue to support and release security patches for an OS for 5 years after it is no longer sold on the shelves. That means that customers running Windows NT have been able to get security patches up until this year (2003, I think they are finally EOLing NT 4.0). 5 years is pretty short. Sun releases Solaris security patches for 10 years after an OS is no longer sold.
A lot of IT managers will refuse to buy a product that has a forced upgrade cycle of anything less than 5 years. The reason for this is that there is much more cost involved in upgrading your OS than just the $129 per user. You also have to re-test all of your applications and make sure they are still compatible. You might have to re-write several applications and these are costs that cannot be absorbed on an annual basis, or whenever Steve Jobs feels like he needs to milk the Mac faithful for more money. If you want to see an example of this, just look at how many EDU organizations are still running OS 9.
If Apple doesn't change this policy quickly they will ensure that Macs stay in the homes where they already are and never penetrate very deep into the corporate world.
Of course Macs are much more secure by default than Windows. I'm not arguing that, but recently there have been several security holes in basic functionality like SSH that allow people to gain root access. Without security patches many vulnerable people could be infected by a Worm similar to anything that MS users get on a regular basis.
Of course, the crux of the matter is this: Steve Jobs wants all users to be on a 1 year upgrade cycle so that Apple makes more money, rather than releasing incremental updates like Service Packs that add functionality. If you're releasing an OS every year you can't afford to back-port all of your security patches to the previous 5 years worth of OS, there's just too much testing time involved.
Bottom line: Apple's greedy and it's costing them a lot of potential corporate customers.
She signed the note, "Sex depraved freshman."" This is a freshman girl at MIT... who is looking for loving... wants to get to know a gangly CS grad student...
I listened to this story on NPR this morning, and when they asked the guy what type of music he liked, he said... (drumroll please) he was a big fan of show tunes. I think I can safely say that he probably isn't interested in some sexually deprived (or depraved for that matter) freshman girl. He's probably more interested in her brother.
You might check out US1Camera.com. They currently have the 15" 1.25 G4 PowerBook w/ Superdrive for only $2399.99. Add $49.99 for shipping and handling and it is only $2449.98. I just ordered one on Friday and I can't wait until it arrives.
I was checking memory upgrade prices at Crucial and it looks like 1GB of memory (2x 512MB DIMMs) costs about $300 though, so if you want the 1GB of memory you'll probably get a better deal going with MacConnection. Just keep in mind the MacConnection price is only after a $100 mail in rebate, and a lot of the extras you get with it you probably don't need anyway (Case, Quickbooks, etc.), since you're buying a different case. They are both pretty good deals though.
I'm curious which products you think are s__t? (That was a rather disgusting metaphor, by the way!)
Thanks for the links to other reviews, I hadn't seen those yet. To be honest with you, I love Apple's products. I can't think of any that have been released since Jobs took the reigns again that are shit... I guess I've just been reading message boards at Macrumors too much. It's funny because as soon as someone speculates on some new whizbang hardware product that will never see the light of day (like iTablet, etc., etc.), there are tons of Mac faithful that go "oooh! a shiny! If Apple makes it then it must be good." I guess I never understood that mentality. I always wait until the product is released and a few reviews have rolled in before I make my own unbiased decision about whether or not it's worth purchasing. To take the example of the iTablet, I have no use for it personally. Between my desktop, my laptop, my smart phone, and my iPod, I have enough gadgets already and I don't need an 8" tablet to browse the web from the toilet with.
Apple does have a great track record, with a few minor flops (iBook logic boards that fail if you look at them wrong come to mind).
BTW, sorry if I offended you with that metaphor. I was just trying to make a point.
To my mind this is by far the superior service. I get to listen to anything I want as often as I want for ten bucks a month ('cept for the Beatles, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin and Elton John's Blue Moves.)
What about the 99.99% of people that want to own their music and not "rent" it? I don't want to worry that the music I've paid $10 a month for 10 years will all of a sudden be gone if Rhapsody goes belly up. Over time those monthly fees add up and most people want to keep their music.
You can have your "music rental" service. I'll stick with a service like Apple's that lets me own the music I buy.
Yet this discussion completely sidesteps one of the aspects of Napster (1) and the like -- that they were international. From almost anywhere in the world (assuming internet access) you could get music, that was itself from all over the world.
When Napster 2.0 is released I'm sure you'll find that it is only available to people in the US. There are way too many small record companies that have exclusive distribution rights in foreign countries to negotiate contracts with. It will be quite some time (years, possibly) before any of the online music services offer a ubiquitous international service that is available anywhere.
Just so you all know I'm not an Apple hater, I own a 30GB iPod and I love it. I also use iTunes for Windows and I've already bought a couple of albums. I agree with the article that iTunes is the best jukebox and music store for Windows, but isn't this the same author that gives every single Apple product a favorable review? It would be nice to see reviews from an unbiased source.
I like Apple products quite a bit and I'll probably buy a 15" G4 PowerBook in the next couple of weeks, but something that really bothers me about the Apple culture and the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field is that it seems like the Apple zealots love any product that Apple releases, regardless of how good or bad it is. Steve Jobs could shit in his hand and sell it as the iShit for $999 and Mac fanatics would be lining up around the block to buy it.
Appreciation of a good or well thought out product is one thing. Blind zealotry is quite another and I see entirely too much of that in the Apple world.
.. any bets on how long it'll take Darl to start foaming at the mouth, claiming that Fujitsu now owes SCO some $ due to partnering with Sun?
Not going to happen. Fujitsu licenses Solaris from Sun for use on their Sparc64 servers. As SCO has already stated, Sun purchased a license that allows them to do whatever they want with the System V code, including selling derivative works. As far as I know, Sun is the only vendor right now that can legally sell you a Linux distro, at least according to SCO.
Sun/TI partnership milestones:
-- 1988 - Sun/TI relationship founded
-- 1992 - Delivery of SuperSPARC(r) and MicroSPARC(r) 1
-- 1994 - Delivery of SuperSPARC II
-- 1995 - Delivery of UltraSPARC I (first 64 bit SPARC processor)
-- 1997 - Delivery of UltraSPARC II (72-way support)
-- 2000 - UltraSPARC III (106-way support)
-- 2001 - Copper UltraSPARC III
-- 2002 - UltraSPARC III (industry's first 64-bit in 130 nm)
-- 2003 - First 64-bit 90 nm process samples
Those are some fairly impressive milestones, but anyone that has followed Sun closely knows that Sun has been TI's bitch, basically the same way Apple has been Motorola's bitch.
TI has not kept up with product milestones. If they had met all of their deadlines, right now Sun's servers would have UltraSparc IVs running at 2Ghz+. Instead they have not kept up in the mhz. race and have been dragging Sun's overall performance down.
Why would you buy x86 servers from Sun that run linux, when you could by x86 servers from a true x86 company like Dell? OR buy support from Redhat, a true linux support company?
Because last time I checked, RedHat didn't have support engineers available worldwide on a 24x7 basis that are competent in Unix or Linux and willing to drive out at 2:00 in the morning when your Dell PowerEdge server bites the big one. Big customers buy systems that are supported by the vendors, and they want a one stop shop. They don't want to have to call Dell if there's a hardware problem or RedHat if there's a software problem. They want to make one call to Sun and have an SSE (System Support Engineer) that is qualified on both hardware and software drive out and fix it.
You are incorrect. The new PowerBooks use the Motorola 7447 chip, which includes everything the 7457 chip has without support for L3 cache. There have been several articles on this on Macrumors.
Those things have been in Winamp since forever. I'm sitting here right now staring at the library manager, it has a three-pane view of artist-album-track, and a search field. I use it all of the time, in fact I don't have a single playlist file anywhere. I used iTunes a lot when my Mac was working, and I still think Winamp is a lot handier, it can be collapsed to take up very little screen space yet still expanded and/or controlled with just a few keystrokes.
Sure Winamp has the Library function, Alt-L, which works just fine for finding specific artists, genres, or albums in your library. I used to use Winamp exclusively as my player, but iTunes has all this and more. It allows you to rank all of your tracks with 1 to 5 stars. Once you get a good number of your tracks ranked, the Smart Playlists functionality is awesome. Now I can create a playlist that says "Only play songs ranked 4 stars or better that I haven't listened to in the past two weeks, and pick 25 at random." This playlist updates itself so the end result is I'm always hearing music I haven't listened to in a while, and I'm always hearing good music.
Not only that, but this functionality works on my iPod as well, synchronizing the XML databases where this information is stored effortlessly between my computer and my iPod.
Don't get me wrong, Winamp is a great media player, but it's Library Management functions don't even compare to iTunes.
Would you mind pointing out specific instances where Sun has done something that made an enemy out of the Linux community?
I guess I have difficulty understanding the hatred the general Linux community displays towards Sun when they have contributed so much in the way of open standards (NFS anyone) and open source software (OpenOffice anyone) to the Linux community.
It seems that they have also been fairly generous with source code, even with Solaris via the Community Source license.
I'd be interested to know what Sun did wrong so that other companies can hopefully not repeat those mistakes. Was it aligning themselves with SCO?
Here's one for you though. If you type "WMD" using the Wingdings font, you get a crucifix, a bomb and a thumbs-down. Clearly a message that those who oppose Christianity plan to use violent methods to eliminate it. Spooky, eh? :)
Brilliant!
Too late, already brushed you off as a tin-foil hat conspiracy theorist.
I don't actually believe it either... it's just an strange coincidence. Anyhoo, my message was just a joke, hoping to get modded +5 funny... (why, I'm not really sure because my karma's already excellent).
Use your same trick, only type in MSNBC. Still don't believe me? Type SLASHDOT and tell me that 'message' isn't startlingly appropriate.
Ok, the MSNBC one looked a little crazy, but what was there about the SLASHDOT in Wingdings that made it so "startingly appropriate"? A water drop, frowny face, peace sign, thumbs down, flag, and a snowflake? What significance did you find in that message? I'm just curious.
I have wondered before if some developers at Microsoft might have a hidden anti-semitic agenda. Before you brush me off as a tin-foil hat conspiracy theorist, try the following exercise:
1. Open MS Word.
2. Type the letters "NYC" (capitals) into a blank document.
3. Highlight the text NYC and change your font to Wingdings.
4. Voila!