Everything is relative, including the impact of prices. If you are earning six figures or even high five figure sums $1000 may not seem to be much, but for most of the world $1000 represents one hell of an investment.
True, true. But when you are talking about commercial activity, there's an assumption of viability.
In that case, it's expected that you are going to turn a significant amount of cash around - enough that $3/day is very reasonable.
If $3/day is too expensive for a core component of your business, you need to rethink your choice of businesses!
Based on this article, I downloaded and tried the package. I find:
1) I cannot edit text in a text box. I have to include a text file unless I've defined a "style"... (WTF?!?!)
2) It *can* resize images, but that's not the default. Even when you set it to resize images, the selection box isn't married to the size of the image. (Doh!)
3) When I select a.txt file (standard ASCII) it shows in some arabic-looking font that's completely unreadable unless I define a "style".
4) The program crashed in under 5 minutes with me just trying to figure out how it works.
It's coming along, it's looking nice, but it's not 1.0 just yet - somewhere around 0.7.0, I'd guess.
(sigh)
It'd be so nice to have a DTP that's at least as stable and usable as GIMP, which has its warts but is reasonably usable.
Yes, it's coming along, and I figure that it's close to reaching the point that GIMP or Apache hit a while ago where it became the "default" open-source solution.
What Quark/Pagemaker don't realize yet is that by not providing a Linux version, they're simply adding weight to the OSS alternatives - and by the time they catch on to what's going on, they may be marginalized beyond profitability.
I've recently discovered "GTA: Vice City" and have been playing a fair amount of it.
The realism I find amazing - it looks very much like real life. (but I sure wish real life came with a Paint-n-Spray!)
Anyway, I was bike-riding with my 14 Y.O. son (yes, I'm that old) and I saw a neon "Open" sign out of the corner of my eye. And the pinkish-red color was just like the color on the bright, moving icons for health found in Vice City.
And the thought crossed my mind as I rode along - "Get health?" followed by the immediate "D'oh! - real life, move on" thought...
I don't wonder within a few years psychologists officially recognize a mental disorder of "Video Game/Reality dissociation" or something...
(Notice above, I said "in Vice City" as though it was a place and you didn't even notice!)
1) Make it work. It's very important to have something to show/sell!
2) Make it work well. Once you have something to show, it's important that it generally behave as expected
3) Make it work right.Finally, once you have something working and doing what's expected, it's important that sound design and engineering principles are used, particularly in maintenance to ensure continued ability to meet the needs as they evolve.
This is where I'm more and more becoming an advocate of Extreme Programming. Primarily the concept of code evolution - that you quickly evolve the code to fit the needs as they evolve.
My most common evolutionary path is to start with a hack, and make it clearly known that it's Q&D, and then when needs overwhelm it, we consider it a "proof of concept" and rebuild/rewrite as needed.
Typically, when the Q&D solution isn't enough, the resources exist to pay for the "right" solution.
Another great reference work is the Big Ball of Mud, covering the various reasons why software develops the way it does, and highlights the various forces at work.
Why fix software when we can send lawyers and make examples and burning effigies instead?
Armed with a $1.00 hammer and a $1.00 crowbar I can break into your house. Take out a window, maybe pry a door open, and everything that matters to you lays before me.
Let me rephrase your statement:
Why fix houses when we can send police and make examples and burning effigies instead?
Could your house withstand my $1.00 hammer and crowbar?
I didn't think so. Tell me exactly: why should your software?
I'm not saying that it's right to ignore vulnerabilities anymore than I think you should just leave your front door open, but given the hammer/crowbar example above, where would you see the line drawn?
Since the source to compute the checksums for credit card numbers of openly available, script kiddies in foreign countries run their little scripts in an attempt to get free services or products from vendors.
No, that's not it. When you run a credit card thru various payment gateways, such as Verisign's Payflow or CardServices LinkPoint, the accounts are being verified online, in real time.
Meaning, that if I ran my otherwise valid credit card over limit 20 minutes ago, the transaction won't go through right now.
All the script kiddie false numbers in the world would have little or no effect on something like this.
VOIP is a term that's now "buzzword compliant". However...
Try vonage. For $40/mo, you turn ANY broadband connection with DHCP and 30 Kbps or higher connection into a long distance carrier with unlimited long distance.
Audio quality is good, latency is equivalent to a cell phone. You can use an ordinary $5 telephone, plus you get voicemail, call waiting, call forwarding, and a zillion other features thru a box about the size of a paperback book.
Contact me if you are interested, I can get 1 month of service to you for free.
Even if you're accepting the risk of ruining your hammer by overpounding it, and are willingly releasing the vendor from warranty obligations, you _are_ morally bankrupt, and are swindling all involved companies by not buying a heavier hammer to begin with. This is because you're violating the implied contract you made with them to run the hammer at the advertised pound rate.
I'll bet you're also the type who goes to the bathroom during TV commercials, which violates your contract to watch advertising which pays for TV programming. Hell, you're probably one of those scumbag Tivo users who fast-forwards through the commercials...
Do you have multiple workshops at home? You're probably connecting them all to one of those damned screwdrivers, instead of paying the local hardware store more for each tool!
How are companies supposed to survive with people like this around? We need more laws and enforcement to make sure people are using things they purchase only in ways that the manufacturers permit!!
Just as narcotics are addictive, information is as well.
Last week, just for shits, I added the following entry to my hosts file:
127.0.0.1 slashdot.org www.slashdot.org
since I suspected I was spending too much time surfing the "dot"... I was SHOCKED at how many times per day I got "Page could not be displayed" or similar....
It was really, truly, sincerely, surprising how many times a day it'd become habit to hit/.
Laugh if you want to, but even in this era of "disorders" there is certainly an issue of addiction..
I'm a web developer. As I run Linux, my applications ranges from Gimp to web/script/databaseserver to several web browsers, of course in addition to mail and news applications and all the small stuff like XMMS and Gaim. For these tasks, I have an AMD K6-II 400MHz with 128MB RAM and a 16 MB video adapter. I'll upgrade the RAM soon, but the computer is sufficient for my needs, and it's not painful.
And until recently, I did the same kind of thing on an AMD K6/2-450 w/512 MB RAM. I too thought it "was enough" until a new contract forced me to run multiple VMWare sessions. Then, I upgraded to an Athlon 1800+/1 GB RAM.
Now, there's no way I'd ever consider going back.
Moz is instantaneous. Kmail can search GBs of email very fast. Big PGSQL queries complete instantly. In short, I love it!
Realize that your time is worth money. Time you spend waiting on your computer is frequently time you're not getting paid for, and is otherwise time your customers are paying for.
How much do you charge per hour of your time? At my "good guy" rate of $65/hour, this motherboard costs 1.5 hours. I probably save that in billables to my clients in a few days to perhaps a week.
One sleazy spammer tactic is to target a domain and autogenerate a zillion possible email addresses
I wrote a program called a "bounce handler". The script uses heuristics to determine if the email is a bounce and if it is, drops it on the floor. Otherwise, it's sent to my email addy.
As a Sysadmin, it's reduced the volume of crap email from over 7,000 per day to under 20.
Not bad, but this script could easily be used for such an attack - modify said script to check against a list of sent addresses, and in a very short order you'd have a list of addresses that didn't bounce.
Get two hosts behind NAT, and they are unable to establish connections between themselves.
This is sometimes true, and is usually considered a benefit. Put servers on the public Internet, put client workstations behind NAT.
Because my workstation is behind NAT on IPv4, I have to either VPN in, or SSH to the firewall, and then onto my workstation.
Have you ever heard of port forwarding? Basically, you can take a high port (say, 60125) and forward any connections to a IP/Port on your internal network.
If an application crashes and brings down your whole damn network, then the problem is not with the application it is with the OS.
So the issue was quite clearly with the substandard OS.
That's exactly right. Applications should not have the power to crash the Operating System.
I run Linux on my desktop. During development, my software will often crash on a bug. This is part of software development.
I've NEVER seen even the NASTIEST bugs I've ever seen in my software crash my Linux dev workstation. I've seen plenty that crash Win2000/XP/98.
In years of using Linux, the only software situation that crashed it is trying to run Civ CTP twice on the same machine on different virtual desktops, and even then, only on Red Hat 6.2 when using a (long ago replaced) Nvidia TNT2 video card.
Don't buy the horse puckey that an screwy application should be able to bring down the O/S. A well designed, multi-user operating system should have plenty of protection from that kind of stuff.
XP/2000 is NOT multi-user. You can still only be logged in once at any given time! On my Linux systems, it's normal to be logged in 2, 3, 4, or more times at once on the same machine as different users.
I have dozens, maybe hundreds of "dead" projects. Ones I will probably never complete.
However, the technology I put together to start a "dead" project often comes to life in a completely different form.
For example, work I did in PHP to emulate a mail server relay (for the sheer heck of it) later came back to life in a commercial venue when I needed a method to synchronize data via the Internet. I used a somewhat SMTP-like protocol, added encryption for security, and voila!
It's sorta like being a welder in a wrecking yard - there's lots of raw material to work with to get the paying stuff complete.
That's somewhat like how the open source model works. By working in parallel, various projects that in and of themselves never become #1, still allow for the testing and proving of various ideas.
The ideas are then available for reuse elsewhere.
Think of SourceForge as a wrecking yard for Intellectual Property.
Now, those "failed" projects are ideas that were tried, and for whatever reason, failed. Each failure is actually a success, in that something that didn't work was tried, and now it's known not to work.
If you try to climb a cliff on the 10th of April, and by the 11th, you haven't made it to the top of the cliff, have you failed? Or have you simply tried a method that didn't work, and are free to try again?
The real issue raised by your post is really the black and white, "success/fail" mentality pounded into us by the "pass/fail" school system we all endured while growing up. But "pass/fail" is not how software engineering (or life) works.
A "failure" is simply an attempt that didn't achieve the intended goal. It can be considered a "success" if the information gained in the attempt lead to the achievement of the goal!
When you evaluate the strength of something, you have to look at not only its immediate action, but its long term effects.
One thing we know about government is that if there's a "temporary" fee, it will last forever. And those "small" fees are almost certain to grow.
By introducing this bill as a "miniscule" fee, they've effectively planted the seed that would all but defeat the existing "eternal" copyright insanities.
In short, we would have a say because government would have a reason to listen - $$ talks louder than any number of letters, faxes, and emails.
But 802.11x is high-bandwidth, and often unmetered...
Yeah, but it's also a pain in the 4$$.
Currently, I have a cheapo Verizon cellular phone that with the over-priced mobile office kit, gives me 19200 max Kbps service - and for my needs, it's actually enough.
The cell companies are just now beginning to experiment with umlimited plans, they'll be common in a few years, as will the 2.5G/3G networks that make high speed Internet possible.
Combine the two trends, and in a few years you'll get 128 Kbps or better speeds on a cell phone with unlimited minutes for probably $50-$75/month.
One of the wonderful things about cellular technology is that there is still actual competition which drives innovation and tends to push costs down. Compare to land-line telephone companies, or Microsoft
Nice to have competition, eh?
802.11 can and will continue in places where the consistency of the user experience can be assured. This means in company buildings, warehouses, people's homes, and the like.
Just to indicate how *bad* 802.11 is, I tried to connect a neighbor into my home network with 802.11, and to go (I kid you not!) 75 Ft through the wood construction house in the middle, we had to get special directional antennas.
My cellular phone, however, gets reasonable service just about anywhere, even standing in the middle of our metal-and-plaster construction local hospital, and the nearest cell tower is over a mile away. (I know where it is)
You lose control over quality of service and availability without saving that much money.
Not true with BitTorrent. BT torrent management bandwidth is about 1% of a normal download. The files are verified with SHA1 which has a possiblity of "getting it wrong" something like 1/(# of seconds elapsed in the known universe)
Whatever, for business, BT is supreme. Remember the recent demonstration where they served many (and I man MANY) thousands of RH 9.0 ISOs at drastically reduced bandwidth costs? There it was, days after RH9 was released, and as a paying member of RHN, I could not download it. But the Bit Torrent copy downloaded nicely at 40 Kbps, even though it was hosted under incredibly reduced bandwith hosting.
Of all the P2P technologies, I figure BT is the "one to watch" for the near future. Essentially, it brings P2P to the WWW.
I could see BitTorrent being embraced by the media companies, simply because it is less associated at its core with infringing on IP and such.
Oh, please! BT is used almost *exclusively* for distributing movies and TV shows! I think it's incredible technology with far-reaching and long-term effects, but don't think that means I think it's any bit more legit than Fast Track.
Wal-Mart doesn't exactly higher the "brightest bulbs in the chandelier" if you know what I mean.
Oh boy, that's rich. I mean, I just *have* to comment here, even though I'll probably lose some karma.
First off, they don't "higher" them, they hire them.
Second, it takes some awfully bright bulbs to build the largest and most efficient product distribution chain in the industrialized world.
Yes, you can argue that their mega-stores defer some of the distribution costs onto the client, and that's probably true, but let's face it - they're damn good.
When you buy something at Walmart, their computer database is updated, and this database is integrated with their distribution network so that replacement items are distributed based on demand and rate of sale.
That's why each store actually has a different inventory. They sell alot of swimwear in places near the coast. They sell lawn/garden tractors in rural settings, and just lawnmowers in the more urban settings.
You just don't scale up to the largest corporation in the world without "highering" [sic] some bright bulbs.
Try again when my grandmother can look at Linux, and with a short time (say, 30 minutes) of on-screen tutorials and simple instructions, she can send Email.
Linux is closer to this than you think. My wife, who is definitely *not* a computer freak, prefers KMail to either Outlook Express or Eudora.
Linux makes the most sense in a corporate environment, where the issues of maintaining the desktop packages can be scales across many desktops.
Windows scales small, Linux scales big. Once the packages are setup, Linux easily rivals Windows for ease of use and low cost of administration, since a single command can upgrade/maintain many thousands of workstations.
If you, like me, are running Linux *anywhere* (and I'm running it nearly *everywhere* I can) SUE THEM for $10,000 in your local small claims court. They won't show up, they won't defend themselves for such a small, nuisance suit, so they won't lose.
But can you imagine the impact of 5,000 of these kinds of suits?
I'd be willing to provide the hosting space for a site that instructs and coordinates this kind of effort.
But if SCO sold them Linux, I don't see how they could sue anyway. Isn't selling someone something which implements your IP an implicit grant of permission to use it?
Yes, and that's the point. The license was GPL and so your permission to use it under the attached GPL license means you have the right to grant others the right to use said IP.
Valid or not, I've seen this point made in a number of forms.
But to suggest Linux will surpass Mac on the desktop within the year? I've never owned a Mac and think that's ludicrous!
We're talking about market share. And it seems that very soon, Linux will, in fact, surpass Apple in desktop market share.
More webpages browsed, more email downloaded, more Flash pages viewed (yes, Flash 6 is supported on Linux!) and in general, more eyeballs staring at a Linux system than a Macintosh system.
And, most of the software you mention runs under WINE or crossover...
Slashdot Mirror
Everything is relative, including the impact of prices. If you are earning six figures or even high five figure sums $1000 may not seem to be much, but for most of the world $1000 represents one hell of an investment.
.txt file (standard ASCII) it shows in some arabic-looking font that's completely unreadable unless I define a "style".
True, true. But when you are talking about commercial activity, there's an assumption of viability.
In that case, it's expected that you are going to turn a significant amount of cash around - enough that $3/day is very reasonable.
If $3/day is too expensive for a core component of your business, you need to rethink your choice of businesses!
Based on this article, I downloaded and tried the package. I find:
1) I cannot edit text in a text box. I have to include a text file unless I've defined a "style"... (WTF?!?!)
2) It *can* resize images, but that's not the default. Even when you set it to resize images, the selection box isn't married to the size of the image. (Doh!)
3) When I select a
4) The program crashed in under 5 minutes with me just trying to figure out how it works.
It's coming along, it's looking nice, but it's not 1.0 just yet - somewhere around 0.7.0, I'd guess.
(sigh)
It'd be so nice to have a DTP that's at least as stable and usable as GIMP, which has its warts but is reasonably usable.
Yes, it's coming along, and I figure that it's close to reaching the point that GIMP or Apache hit a while ago where it became the "default" open-source solution.
What Quark/Pagemaker don't realize yet is that by not providing a Linux version, they're simply adding weight to the OSS alternatives - and by the time they catch on to what's going on, they may be marginalized beyond profitability.
Sad.
I've recently discovered "GTA: Vice City" and have been playing a fair amount of it.
The realism I find amazing - it looks very much like real life. (but I sure wish real life came with a Paint-n-Spray!)
Anyway, I was bike-riding with my 14 Y.O. son (yes, I'm that old) and I saw a neon "Open" sign out of the corner of my eye. And the pinkish-red color was just like the color on the bright, moving icons for health found in Vice City.
And the thought crossed my mind as I rode along - "Get health?" followed by the immediate "D'oh! - real life, move on" thought...
I don't wonder within a few years psychologists officially recognize a mental disorder of "Video Game/Reality dissociation" or something...
(Notice above, I said "in Vice City" as though it was a place and you didn't even notice!)
These are in order of priority...
1) Make it work. It's very important to have something to show/sell!
2) Make it work well. Once you have something to show, it's important that it generally behave as expected
3) Make it work right. Finally, once you have something working and doing what's expected, it's important that sound design and engineering principles are used, particularly in maintenance to ensure continued ability to meet the needs as they evolve.
This is where I'm more and more becoming an advocate of Extreme Programming. Primarily the concept of code evolution - that you quickly evolve the code to fit the needs as they evolve.
My most common evolutionary path is to start with a hack, and make it clearly known that it's Q&D, and then when needs overwhelm it, we consider it a "proof of concept" and rebuild/rewrite as needed.
Typically, when the Q&D solution isn't enough, the resources exist to pay for the "right" solution.
Another great reference work is the Big Ball of Mud, covering the various reasons why software develops the way it does, and highlights the various forces at work.
Why fix software when we can send lawyers and make examples and burning effigies instead?
Armed with a $1.00 hammer and a $1.00 crowbar I can break into your house. Take out a window, maybe pry a door open, and everything that matters to you lays before me.
Let me rephrase your statement:
Why fix houses when we can send police and make examples and burning effigies instead?
Could your house withstand my $1.00 hammer and crowbar?
I didn't think so. Tell me exactly: why should your software?
I'm not saying that it's right to ignore vulnerabilities anymore than I think you should just leave your front door open, but given the hammer/crowbar example above, where would you see the line drawn?
Since the source to compute the checksums for credit card numbers of openly available, script kiddies in foreign countries run their little scripts in an attempt to get free services or products from vendors.
No, that's not it. When you run a credit card thru various payment gateways, such as Verisign's Payflow or CardServices LinkPoint, the accounts are being verified online, in real time.
Meaning, that if I ran my otherwise valid credit card over limit 20 minutes ago, the transaction won't go through right now.
All the script kiddie false numbers in the world would have little or no effect on something like this.
VOIP is a term that's now "buzzword compliant". However...
Try vonage. For $40/mo, you turn ANY broadband connection with DHCP and 30 Kbps or higher connection into a long distance carrier with unlimited long distance.
Audio quality is good, latency is equivalent to a cell phone. You can use an ordinary $5 telephone, plus you get voicemail, call waiting, call forwarding, and a zillion other features thru a box about the size of a paperback book.
Contact me if you are interested, I can get 1 month of service to you for free.
Does this pass the "hammer" test?
Even if you're accepting the risk of ruining your hammer by overpounding it, and are willingly releasing the vendor from warranty obligations, you _are_ morally bankrupt, and are swindling all involved companies by not buying a heavier hammer to begin with. This is because you're violating the implied contract you made with them to run the hammer at the advertised pound rate.
I'll bet you're also the type who goes to the bathroom during TV commercials, which violates your contract to watch advertising which pays for TV programming. Hell, you're probably one of those scumbag Tivo users who fast-forwards through the commercials...
Do you have multiple workshops at home? You're probably connecting them all to one of those damned screwdrivers, instead of paying the local hardware store more for each tool!
How are companies supposed to survive with people like this around? We need more laws and enforcement to make sure people are using things they purchase only in ways that the manufacturers permit!!
I smell a troll.
Just as narcotics are addictive, information is as well.
/.
Last week, just for shits, I added the following entry to my hosts file:
127.0.0.1 slashdot.org www.slashdot.org
since I suspected I was spending too much time surfing the "dot"... I was SHOCKED at how many times per day I got "Page could not be displayed" or similar....
It was really, truly, sincerely, surprising how many times a day it'd become habit to hit
Laugh if you want to, but even in this era of "disorders" there is certainly an issue of addiction..
I'm a web developer. As I run Linux, my applications ranges from Gimp to web/script/databaseserver to several web browsers, of course in addition to mail and news applications and all the small stuff like XMMS and Gaim. For these tasks, I have an AMD K6-II 400MHz with 128MB RAM and a 16 MB video adapter. I'll upgrade the RAM soon, but the computer is sufficient for my needs, and it's not painful.
And until recently, I did the same kind of thing on an AMD K6/2-450 w/512 MB RAM. I too thought it "was enough" until a new contract forced me to run multiple VMWare sessions. Then, I upgraded to an Athlon 1800+/1 GB RAM.
Now, there's no way I'd ever consider going back.
Moz is instantaneous. Kmail can search GBs of email very fast. Big PGSQL queries complete instantly. In short, I love it!
Realize that your time is worth money. Time you spend waiting on your computer is frequently time you're not getting paid for, and is otherwise time your customers are paying for.
A new 2.0 Ghz motherboard/CPU can be had for under $100.
How much do you charge per hour of your time? At my "good guy" rate of $65/hour, this motherboard costs 1.5 hours. I probably save that in billables to my clients in a few days to perhaps a week.
In other words, get the right tool for the job.
One sleazy spammer tactic is to target a domain and autogenerate a zillion possible email addresses
I wrote a program called a "bounce handler". The script uses heuristics to determine if the email is a bounce and if it is, drops it on the floor. Otherwise, it's sent to my email addy.
As a Sysadmin, it's reduced the volume of crap email from over 7,000 per day to under 20.
Not bad, but this script could easily be used for such an attack - modify said script to check against a list of sent addresses, and in a very short order you'd have a list of addresses that didn't bounce.
God, this stuff gets obtuse after a while...
American humor is expected to involve either bodily functions or blonde women.
Yeah, or Polish people.
NAT is the spawn of SATAN. Really it is
Oh, come now. You're over-reacting.
Get two hosts behind NAT, and they are unable to establish connections between themselves.
This is sometimes true, and is usually considered a benefit. Put servers on the public Internet, put client workstations behind NAT.
Because my workstation is behind NAT on IPv4, I have to either VPN in, or SSH to the firewall, and then onto my workstation.
Have you ever heard of port forwarding? Basically, you can take a high port (say, 60125) and forward any connections to a IP/Port on your internal network.
If an application crashes and brings down your whole damn network, then the problem is not with the application it is with the OS.
So the issue was quite clearly with the substandard OS.
That's exactly right. Applications should not have the power to crash the Operating System.
I run Linux on my desktop. During development, my software will often crash on a bug. This is part of software development.
I've NEVER seen even the NASTIEST bugs I've ever seen in my software crash my Linux dev workstation. I've seen plenty that crash Win2000/XP/98.
In years of using Linux, the only software situation that crashed it is trying to run Civ CTP twice on the same machine on different virtual desktops, and even then, only on Red Hat 6.2 when using a (long ago replaced) Nvidia TNT2 video card.
Don't buy the horse puckey that an screwy application should be able to bring down the O/S. A well designed, multi-user operating system should have plenty of protection from that kind of stuff.
XP/2000 is NOT multi-user. You can still only be logged in once at any given time! On my Linux systems, it's normal to be logged in 2, 3, 4, or more times at once on the same machine as different users.
The amount of resources used in rsync alone must be huge. Where is this guy going to get the backing to make this even feasible?
Is there a reason not to use BitTorrent technology to offset (some of) the bandwidth requirements for Gentoo?
This only makes sense when you are a programmer.
I have dozens, maybe hundreds of "dead" projects. Ones I will probably never complete.
However, the technology I put together to start a "dead" project often comes to life in a completely different form.
For example, work I did in PHP to emulate a mail server relay (for the sheer heck of it) later came back to life in a commercial venue when I needed a method to synchronize data via the Internet. I used a somewhat SMTP-like protocol, added encryption for security, and voila!
It's sorta like being a welder in a wrecking yard - there's lots of raw material to work with to get the paying stuff complete.
That's somewhat like how the open source model works. By working in parallel, various projects that in and of themselves never become #1, still allow for the testing and proving of various ideas.
The ideas are then available for reuse elsewhere.
Think of SourceForge as a wrecking yard for Intellectual Property.
Now, those "failed" projects are ideas that were tried, and for whatever reason, failed. Each failure is actually a success, in that something that didn't work was tried, and now it's known not to work.
If you try to climb a cliff on the 10th of April, and by the 11th, you haven't made it to the top of the cliff, have you failed? Or have you simply tried a method that didn't work, and are free to try again?
The real issue raised by your post is really the black and white, "success/fail" mentality pounded into us by the "pass/fail" school system we all endured while growing up. But "pass/fail" is not how software engineering (or life) works.
A "failure" is simply an attempt that didn't achieve the intended goal. It can be considered a "success" if the information gained in the attempt lead to the achievement of the goal!
When you evaluate the strength of something, you have to look at not only its immediate action, but its long term effects.
One thing we know about government is that if there's a "temporary" fee, it will last forever. And those "small" fees are almost certain to grow.
By introducing this bill as a "miniscule" fee, they've effectively planted the seed that would all but defeat the existing "eternal" copyright insanities.
In short, we would have a say because government would have a reason to listen - $$ talks louder than any number of letters, faxes, and emails.
But 802.11x is high-bandwidth, and often unmetered ...
Yeah, but it's also a pain in the 4$$.
Currently, I have a cheapo Verizon cellular phone that with the over-priced mobile office kit, gives me 19200 max Kbps service - and for my needs, it's actually enough.
The cell companies are just now beginning to experiment with umlimited plans, they'll be common in a few years, as will the 2.5G/3G networks that make high speed Internet possible.
Combine the two trends, and in a few years you'll get 128 Kbps or better speeds on a cell phone with unlimited minutes for probably $50-$75/month.
One of the wonderful things about cellular technology is that there is still actual competition which drives innovation and tends to push costs down. Compare to land-line telephone companies, or Microsoft
Nice to have competition, eh?
802.11 can and will continue in places where the consistency of the user experience can be assured. This means in company buildings, warehouses, people's homes, and the like.
Just to indicate how *bad* 802.11 is, I tried to connect a neighbor into my home network with 802.11, and to go (I kid you not!) 75 Ft through the wood construction house in the middle, we had to get special directional antennas.
My cellular phone, however, gets reasonable service just about anywhere, even standing in the middle of our metal-and-plaster construction local hospital, and the nearest cell tower is over a mile away. (I know where it is)
You lose control over quality of service and availability without saving that much money.
Not true with BitTorrent. BT torrent management bandwidth is about 1% of a normal download. The files are verified with SHA1 which has a possiblity of "getting it wrong" something like 1/(# of seconds elapsed in the known universe)
Whatever, for business, BT is supreme. Remember the recent demonstration where they served many (and I man MANY) thousands of RH 9.0 ISOs at drastically reduced bandwidth costs? There it was, days after RH9 was released, and as a paying member of RHN, I could not download it. But the Bit Torrent copy downloaded nicely at 40 Kbps, even though it was hosted under incredibly reduced bandwith hosting.
Of all the P2P technologies, I figure BT is the "one to watch" for the near future. Essentially, it brings P2P to the WWW.
I could see BitTorrent being embraced by the media companies, simply because it is less associated at its core with infringing on IP and such.
Oh, please! BT is used almost *exclusively* for distributing movies and TV shows! I think it's incredible technology with far-reaching and long-term effects, but don't think that means I think it's any bit more legit than Fast Track.
Wal-Mart doesn't exactly higher the "brightest bulbs in the chandelier" if you know what I mean.
Oh boy, that's rich. I mean, I just *have* to comment here, even though I'll probably lose some karma.
First off, they don't "higher" them, they hire them.
Second, it takes some awfully bright bulbs to build the largest and most efficient product distribution chain in the industrialized world.
Yes, you can argue that their mega-stores defer some of the distribution costs onto the client, and that's probably true, but let's face it - they're damn good.
When you buy something at Walmart, their computer database is updated, and this database is integrated with their distribution network so that replacement items are distributed based on demand and rate of sale.
That's why each store actually has a different inventory. They sell alot of swimwear in places near the coast. They sell lawn/garden tractors in rural settings, and just lawnmowers in the more urban settings.
You just don't scale up to the largest corporation in the world without "highering" [sic] some bright bulbs.
Try again when my grandmother can look at Linux, and with a short time (say, 30 minutes) of on-screen tutorials and simple instructions, she can send Email.
Linux is closer to this than you think. My wife, who is definitely *not* a computer freak, prefers KMail to either Outlook Express or Eudora.
Linux makes the most sense in a corporate environment, where the issues of maintaining the desktop packages can be scales across many desktops.
Windows scales small, Linux scales big. Once the packages are setup, Linux easily rivals Windows for ease of use and low cost of administration, since a single command can upgrade/maintain many thousands of workstations.
If you, like me, are running Linux *anywhere* (and I'm running it nearly *everywhere* I can) SUE THEM for $10,000 in your local small claims court. They won't show up, they won't defend themselves for such a small, nuisance suit, so they won't lose.
But can you imagine the impact of 5,000 of these kinds of suits?
I'd be willing to provide the hosting space for a site that instructs and coordinates this kind of effort.
Unfortunately, there's no good legal way to say, "Put up or shut up!"
Sure there is. It's called defamation.
But if SCO sold them Linux, I don't see how they could sue anyway. Isn't selling someone something which implements your IP an implicit grant of permission to use it?
Yes, and that's the point. The license was GPL and so your permission to use it under the attached GPL license means you have the right to grant others the right to use said IP.
Valid or not, I've seen this point made in a number of forms.
But to suggest Linux will surpass Mac on the desktop within the year? I've never owned a Mac and think that's ludicrous!
We're talking about market share. And it seems that very soon, Linux will, in fact, surpass Apple in desktop market share.
More webpages browsed, more email downloaded, more Flash pages viewed (yes, Flash 6 is supported on Linux!) and in general, more eyeballs staring at a Linux system than a Macintosh system.
And, most of the software you mention runs under WINE or crossover...