The problem here is, that the marketting dept was uninformed about GPL and stuff. They wanted the name Linux, the almighty buzzword. Development dept. who actually made the iToaster, and the Legal dept, who know about GPL, may have been ignored, because "what do they know about marketting?"
This may have backfired at them, Being that the slashdot crowd hates them, and getting criticized from GNU and Linux developers (such in the mosix case).
OTOH it may have benefitted them. They got some extra headlines and, and now everyone knows that they are good.
...I couldn't resist: a quick peek at the iToaster
--- The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck,
How does one enforce GPL? After all, closed source programs could use GPL without anyone notices!
For example, Let's assume Bill Gates decides to make NT crash free. He's looking for a bug in some device driver, but when he sees the size of NT's source, he gives up, and just steal it from Linux. Or he wants support for other filesystems besides FAT, or IP masquarading, or whatever other feature.
Theoreticly, noone can check for GPL violations in anything! From that point, my software can be BSD or LGPL and it won't matter. Is there a "warrent" to allow a court to check a source to see these violations? For all we know every proprietary product may have GPL'ed code in it!
--- The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck,
Whenever I need to move source code from (or to) non-networked places, when I want to boot after Windows erased my MBR, when I am in school and they say: "you must back up on a floppy":-)
Though I use ZIP drives to transfer actual data, I can't rely on it, until most computers will have one, and for small text files, what's the point?
Damn it, They can get 180,000 valid email addresses out of there with a robot. I think we should ask distributed.net not to tell our emails, but rather our names, just like, ehm, seti@home does.
People don't run their home computer all the time.
You have to remember, Although most of the packets come from fast alphas and such, that would work all night anyway, Most of the computers that run it are home computers, used by people to play games and chat on IRC, and would otherwise be turned off at night. (or when not in use)
The people that conribute to Seti@home, may leave their computer on for the night for that matter. I know I did. (Until I heard I'm wasting CPU, I thoguht I contribute to an important project)
As a proof for my claim, you can see clearly the statistics that state that most of the clients are Windows/Intel ones, and that almost everyone is runnig this project AT HOME.
to blame other people for their mistakes. It's Microsoftish. (also, testing for bugs after the release, and they did that)
"We're having trouble and wasting everyone's CPU cycles for nothing" would be much better than "Unix hackers are fucking our systems".
I have used Seti@home just for a day, (since I heard there is a slashdot team), and I'll quit and join distributed.net - where they don't blame Linux users for their problems.
Yeah, I rather waste my cycles on something useful.;-)
I was amazed to see Philips was on this list. I had a hard time with their "Brilliance" screens, that are the winmodems of screens. (they need software called customax)
I've been fighting trapezoid shapes until I gave up and settled for a lower resolution and scan rate, because they're "customax" is windows only. I found a reference for OS/2 but the actual driver could not be found.
Since I live in Israel I have to contact their middle-east support center, which is conveniently loacted in Saudi Arabia. They don't have email addresses for support not sales nor anything, So I couldn't even had the pleasure of hearing that they don't have plans to support linux.
My opinion is, that they only want their name to be on "a linux thing" because "linux is THE buzzword and we like buzzwords". I say, until they prove to help linux, just fuck 'em.
I thought Opera was meant for people who disliked Netscape for being a big bloated piece of (something), and IE for being a big bloated piece buggy Microsoft-style (something).
Assuming Mozilla will be out in the same time Opera does, Why would I pay money to get the same speed and stability, but not all the features I would get in an open project?
From what I've heard (and i never saw the article), MOSIX was kept closed becaused it was used by the Israeli army, IDF. I may be a bit biased, but i prefer my nation security to GNU.
1. This idea sucks for Liunux newbies as they (the companies) would give no OS support.
What do you mean OS Support? If I call and ask them "what the start menu does" they'll laugh and hangup. But if I called and say "my screen is broken" they will try to fix it. However, you do have a point, since many resellers don't know Linux, I may call and say "my modem doesn't work" and they would say "prove it!". (not understanding what i do, claiming i don't know how to use isapnp or something)
2. These companies are simply taking the easy way out What's the hard way, then? Our goal was to get a choice and not being forced to windows, we got it. Do you want something else?
1. Some Linux users would like "world domination". This is refferd to a joke made by Linus. I'm sorry to say some mean it seriously, but most dont.
2. Other Linux users don't want to spread Linux to "newbies" I recommend newbies not use it sometimes. Some would find it too hard and can damage their existing windows partitions. Some may find it unusable. But I don't consider linux users as "elite".
Some of the "comlete idiots" will think they know linux without having any experience. They won't read any material or seek help, they will try to use it on their own, because they knew windows was easy to use. They will be buffled when seeing the "login" prompt and get upset. They won't know anything to do and think it's because "linux sucks". I had the "pleasure" of knowing some of these guys, and I woudn't recommend linux to them. One like this had asked me for linux and I had to refuse, I didnt want him to get a bad experience. (parading and saying that linux sucks)
I can't believe the fuss. Micrsoft so proud of the survey while everybody knows it's fake. Saying that "NT is for mission critical applications" and is stable, is the stupidest thing ever. (I wouldnt trust NT to feed my cat, and I don't even have a cat) People know that they lie, and they become even less credible.
I think they make a joke of themselves, and it's quite funny, too. In their struggle to survive Linux, they are being fools, and that will cost them costumers.
People are starting to realize what Microsoft is about. Their crap bloatware is getting on people's nerves, and the legal tactics are now more understood by the public (thanks to the DoJ). But more of it, people are sick of being fed lies, and obviously bogus facts.
We don't want fake videotapes and false promises. I'm glad to see Microsoft like that. I'm just waiting for the big crash.
How about keyword boolean filters? I'd like to screen stories that have both "ZDNet" and "Linux" in them. I'd also like to screen comments that has the words ("sucks"&&"Microsoft")||"first post" I'm sure many would use that.
It can help browse the main page easily, and shrink overcommented stories by eliminating the posts you dont want to see. (if you don't think moderators score good, or have certain subjects that doesnt interest you)
This is Microsoft style bloat. "lets add another quadrillion features to w2k, lets add a gazillion more to MSIE5".
I think, that browsers should have been browsers and thats it. No chat, no audio streaming, not even ftp. I thought gecko^H^H^H^H^HNGLayout stood for being modular. I though i could seperate the html rendring from being able to browse files, or chat. But appearently, they just add and add and add.
I'll finish with a quote: "You know software is good, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there's nothing more to take away"
So you use Explorer at work? Is there a special force that keeps you away from Netscape? I'll tell you a site that isn't blocked for MSIE. - www.netscape.com It may be blocked by BackOffice (as seen on their howto page) by you'll get around that. Then you download the installer and you have a nice new browser.
When I have to use the computers in my school, they have MSIE. I have kindly asked for Netscape (being that they erased it when I installed it), and now everyone can use his/her favorite browser (unfortunatly some prefer MSIE for some reason).
Sites that blocks MSIE are preserving our freedom, even though they actually block it. Over the past many commercial sites (many, but not all of them belong Microsoft somehow), have blocked Netscape for Money and World Domination. It's a positive thing that someone stood up against them.
Alas, that's not all of it. Sites that have been generated by Frontapge, Use broken MSIE HTML to force the use of MSIE. They "block" Netscape or any other non-msie page, and are very common. And should I mention "sorry you must use ActiveX" sites? Many sites like that, contain also ? instead of 's, if we browse them with linux. I can tell you, that almost every commercial site never cares, and we are being "blocked".
Generaly as a policy, I decide not to give a damn over the users of MSIE. I won't block them or anything, but they have a full choice to use netscape, and for the cost of being enslaved to Microsoft, they better do. "If you want a good browser use Netscape, otherwise, don't complain and just go away". (I don't respond to emails with doc attachments too)
See the point? Sometimes a political stand, is much more important then a content.
This will not work. They cannot grab a market with a proprietary file format, when an open one exists, and is VERY popular. Microsoft knows well that a large userbase, is more important than quality, and that's assuming that MSAudio actually works as they said it would. (they said that win98 runs faster with ie -- under oath!)
The "pirate protection" is stupid in many ways. it won't hold, since i can always decode ms4 to mp3 and distribute, and people will use mp3 as alsways "since ms4 doesnt allow pirating"
The current ternds are another block in their path. We all know the microsoft-bashing trends have become rather popular among mainstream press. The trial has made some people understand (hopefuly the judge;-) that closed formats can harm, and actualy hold back innovation, so starting a new closed "nobody has a clue how it works" format, is against them. (I assume the court won't allow bundling of MS4 "winamp airsupply cutter" product with windows)
Finaly, I think the market share of MS4 wouldnt rise much until aac (aka mp4) is alive and kicking. by syaing alive and kicking, I mean: a. winamp (most popular player) will play it well. b. it can be encoded by a free utility. c. music sites start using it And that is not far away, if it is what it's suppose to be. (free format that has the mp3 qulaity in 70% of size, lowering MS4 "advantage by size" factor)
BTW, Do you remember Yamaha's VQF proprietary format? Wasn't such a success, was it? I know Microsoft has much more leverage than Yamaha, but lessons should have been learnt.
I have the best HTML editor for linux. It is GNU, and I like it very much. I think it comes with every distribution. Besides emacs, vi is a good editor too.
From my very humble experience WYSIWYG HTML editors give crap results. (Not to mention "Microsoft/MSIE style" html by frontpage).
As for mp3 encoding. There is a good encode called BladeEnc. I ran it on a PII350 and much faster than a windows equivalent i saw.
I have not understood completely how this works, but from what i did understand, you need to have an average post/view ratio. no lurkers but no obsessive posters.
I think, I'll have to say that only the lurkers will get moderation. (but one must post, i think he must be in the 50%-80% percentile of lurkerness)
This is because lurkers usualy are less biased towards an opinion, They will modertae flames, first!, and meepts, instead of the "opposing opinion". (you cant control moderation by opinion if you have a thousand moderators)
Also, since it is "to post XOR to moderate", lurkers will moderate more, since they don't post anyway.
Also some technical difficulties, may cause a person to load many pages but not post, these can be from bad connections (i need to reload some times when i get partial pages), or some people use slashdot as their homepage, and view it every new browser window.
Lastly, Rob, I think you'll be glad when people will load slashdot more. You get money from ads:-)
So.... The "almighty hackers" have been slashdotted. I thought they're smarted than that.
I think the/. effect is becoming quite positive. even better, i suggest a "distibuted net" slashdot-daemon, It will check slashdot.org/effect and slashdot all the links from there automaticly. (that would be a good way to knock some NT sites quickly such as algore2000 and microsoft)
Normally, Gore's as intersting as a dead tree. but for the last couple of weeks, he's shooting scandals all over us, making noises (funny noises) and using ou-of-conext buzzphrases.
HE DOESNT COUNT ON THE GEEKS! He count's on the geeks TO LAUGH AT HIM, thus, GIVING HIM MEDIA COVERAGE!
Although I remember how laughable was Perot 3 years ago, he was a clown, he mocked himslef to everyone. people today have no idea what open source is, and who invented the internet, but if the geeks are mad at him, it must be important thing. (thinking redneck: whooo, geeks hate him? he must be good!)
We're just giving him attention, that's what he wants. if we ignored the whole thing, then nobody would know about it, and nobody would care.
btw, i think Segfault ran a piece about "anonymous coward is not one person". They should have read it.
Do you want to see the preview of windows2001? (codename neptune) very close to ms-bob? (toaster-os thingy). try to view it on john dvorak column on pc magazine. (now zdnet) quite funny. click here
These businessman, regard linux users as a dumb crowd. Some of us, are infect a dumb crowd, using Linux just because of the hype.
but the most of don't need portals. we know what we want to do.
These peope think: "hmmmm.... linux has 7 million reachable users, thats a good target, let's get them". It won't work. Portals are made for internet newbies, and these sites never thought that linux users arent such.
if a linux newbie is looking for info, he'll search the ldp. if he wants news, he'll go to slashdot/linuxtoday. want jokes? he'll go to segfault. need files? freshmeat is the place. (not linuxberg)
the unix way is to spererate different services, and that's what they don't understand. (slashdot may be regarded as a portal to some people, but as a recent poll showed, for most, it's just a news/discussion site)
on the future, though, when there will be many "just-for-the-hype" newbies, that come from windows, yahoo, tucows, and zdnet, these portals will have audience.
also the saturation of the market with so many linux sites, is not good for anyone.
on a different note, there are many cool services in justlinux (the one i checked out). such as email forwarding, dns for dynamic ip's (that's a rather good idea) and redirection. too bad all of the domains end with a.com
Your argument would be true if they had actually gone to the trouble of fixing these bugs in the first place, but they didnt!
I can imagine a conversation at Microsoft right now: employee 1: "So, are we going to fix XXnastyBug?" employee 2: "Ok, let's go" gates: "STOP! Let's save some bugs for windows 98.3"
Think about it. they have thousands of employees and billions of dollars. they can afford to fix all these bugs IF THEY WANT. are they fixing them? do they care? they get more money for upgrades, and spend less for debugging.
btw, the goverment didt care that win98 is just a bugfix, they cared that it bundled internet explorer.
Slashdot Mirror
AFAIK it includes both qt 1.4 and 2.0 branches.
Just peek at www.oreilly.com, they know.
---
The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck,
The problem here is, that the marketting dept was uninformed about GPL and stuff.
They wanted the name Linux, the almighty buzzword.
Development dept. who actually made the iToaster, and the Legal dept, who know about GPL,
may have been ignored, because "what do they know about marketting?"
This may have backfired at them,
Being that the slashdot crowd hates them,
and getting criticized from GNU and Linux developers (such in the mosix case).
OTOH it may have benefitted them.
They got some extra headlines and, and now everyone knows that they are good.
...I couldn't resist:
a quick peek at the iToaster
---
The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck,
How does one enforce GPL?
After all, closed source programs could use GPL without anyone notices!
For example, Let's assume Bill Gates decides to make NT crash free.
He's looking for a bug in some device driver, but when he sees the size of NT's source,
he gives up, and just steal it from Linux.
Or he wants support for other filesystems besides FAT, or IP masquarading, or whatever other feature.
Theoreticly, noone can check for GPL violations in anything!
From that point, my software can be BSD or LGPL and it won't matter.
Is there a "warrent" to allow a court to check a source to see these violations?
For all we know every proprietary product may have GPL'ed code in it!
---
The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck,
Whenever I need to move source code from (or to) non-networked places, :-)
when I want to boot after Windows erased my MBR,
when I am in school and they say: "you must back up on a floppy"
Though I use ZIP drives to transfer actual data,
I can't rely on it, until most computers will have one,
and for small text files, what's the point?
---
Damn it,
They can get 180,000 valid email addresses out of there with a robot.
I think we should ask distributed.net not to tell our emails,
but rather our names, just like, ehm, seti@home does.
---
I sent you the password... (I sent it to fuddoson@hotmail.com)
Now check the slashdot stats and choose to sign in.
BTW,
According to the stats your avg. rate is 200kk/s and not 800kk/s.
(or is it because you ran it only part of the time)
---
People don't run their home computer all the time.
You have to remember,
Although most of the packets come from fast alphas and such, that would work all night anyway,
Most of the computers that run it are home computers,
used by people to play games and chat on IRC,
and would otherwise be turned off at night.
(or when not in use)
The people that conribute to Seti@home,
may leave their computer on for the night for that matter.
I know I did.
(Until I heard I'm wasting CPU, I thoguht I contribute to an important project)
As a proof for my claim,
you can see clearly the statistics that state that most of the clients are Windows/Intel ones,
and that almost everyone is runnig this project AT HOME.
---
to blame other people for their mistakes.
;-)
It's Microsoftish.
(also, testing for bugs after the release, and they did that)
"We're having trouble and wasting everyone's CPU cycles for nothing"
would be much better than
"Unix hackers are fucking our systems".
I have used Seti@home just for a day,
(since I heard there is a slashdot team),
and I'll quit and join distributed.net - where they don't blame Linux users for their problems.
Yeah, I rather waste my cycles on something useful.
---
I was amazed to see Philips was on this list.
I had a hard time with their "Brilliance" screens, that are the winmodems of screens.
(they need software called customax)
I've been fighting trapezoid shapes until I gave up and settled for a lower resolution and scan rate,
because they're "customax" is windows only.
I found a reference for OS/2 but the actual driver could not be found.
Since I live in Israel I have to contact their middle-east support center,
which is conveniently loacted in Saudi Arabia.
They don't have email addresses for support not sales nor anything,
So I couldn't even had the pleasure of hearing that they don't have plans to support linux.
My opinion is,
that they only want their name to be on "a linux thing" because "linux is THE buzzword and we like buzzwords".
I say, until they prove to help linux, just fuck 'em.
---
I thought Opera was meant for people who disliked Netscape for being a big bloated piece of (something),
and IE for being a big bloated piece buggy Microsoft-style (something).
Assuming Mozilla will be out in the same time Opera does,
Why would I pay money to get the same speed and stability,
but not all the features I would get in an open project?
This doesn't make sence.
---
which kernel would that be?
FreeBSD? Linux? maybe NT?
You apache is not for one platform only...
Also, you seem to forget that web serving IS NOT a job for the kernel anyway.
---
From what I've heard (and i never saw the article),
MOSIX was kept closed becaused it was used by the Israeli army, IDF.
I may be a bit biased, but i prefer my nation security to GNU.
---
1. This idea sucks for Liunux newbies as they (the companies) would give no OS support.
What do you mean OS Support?
If I call and ask them "what the start menu does" they'll laugh and hangup.
But if I called and say "my screen is broken" they will try to fix it.
However, you do have a point, since many resellers don't know Linux,
I may call and say "my modem doesn't work" and they would say "prove it!".
(not understanding what i do, claiming i don't know how to use isapnp or something)
2. These companies are simply taking the easy way out
What's the hard way, then?
Our goal was to get a choice and not being forced to windows, we got it.
Do you want something else?
1. Some Linux users would like "world domination".
This is refferd to a joke made by Linus.
I'm sorry to say some mean it seriously, but most dont.
2. Other Linux users don't want to spread Linux to "newbies"
I recommend newbies not use it sometimes.
Some would find it too hard and can damage their existing windows partitions.
Some may find it unusable.
But I don't consider linux users as "elite".
Some of the "comlete idiots" will think they know linux without having any experience.
They won't read any material or seek help, they will try to use it on their own,
because they knew windows was easy to use.
They will be buffled when seeing the "login" prompt and get upset.
They won't know anything to do and think it's because "linux sucks".
I had the "pleasure" of knowing some of these guys, and I woudn't recommend linux to them.
One like this had asked me for linux and I had to refuse, I didnt want him to get a bad experience.
(parading and saying that linux sucks)
---
I can't believe the fuss.
Micrsoft so proud of the survey while everybody knows it's fake.
Saying that "NT is for mission critical applications" and is stable, is the stupidest thing ever.
(I wouldnt trust NT to feed my cat, and I don't even have a cat)
People know that they lie, and they become even less credible.
I think they make a joke of themselves, and it's quite funny, too.
In their struggle to survive Linux, they are being fools, and that will cost them costumers.
People are starting to realize what Microsoft is about.
Their crap bloatware is getting on people's nerves,
and the legal tactics are now more understood by the public (thanks to the DoJ).
But more of it, people are sick of being fed lies, and obviously bogus facts.
We don't want fake videotapes and false promises.
I'm glad to see Microsoft like that.
I'm just waiting for the big crash.
---
How about keyword boolean filters?
I'd like to screen stories that have both "ZDNet" and "Linux" in them.
I'd also like to screen comments that has the words ("sucks"&&"Microsoft")||"first post"
I'm sure many would use that.
It can help browse the main page easily,
and shrink overcommented stories by eliminating the posts you dont want to see.
(if you don't think moderators score good, or have certain subjects that doesnt interest you)
---
This is Microsoft style bloat.
"lets add another quadrillion features to w2k, lets add a gazillion more to MSIE5".
I think, that browsers should have been browsers and thats it.
No chat, no audio streaming, not even ftp.
I thought gecko^H^H^H^H^HNGLayout stood for being modular.
I though i could seperate the html rendring from being able to browse files, or chat.
But appearently, they just add and add and add.
I'll finish with a quote:
"You know software is good, not when there is nothing more to add,
but when there's nothing more to take away"
---
So you use Explorer at work?
Is there a special force that keeps you away from Netscape?
I'll tell you a site that isn't blocked for MSIE. - www.netscape.com
It may be blocked by BackOffice (as seen on their howto page) by you'll get around that.
Then you download the installer and you have a nice new browser.
When I have to use the computers in my school, they have MSIE.
I have kindly asked for Netscape (being that they erased it when I installed it),
and now everyone can use his/her favorite browser (unfortunatly some prefer MSIE for some reason).
Sites that blocks MSIE are preserving our freedom, even though they actually block it.
Over the past many commercial sites (many, but not all of them belong Microsoft somehow),
have blocked Netscape for Money and World Domination.
It's a positive thing that someone stood up against them.
Alas, that's not all of it.
Sites that have been generated by Frontapge,
Use broken MSIE HTML to force the use of MSIE.
They "block" Netscape or any other non-msie page, and are very common.
And should I mention "sorry you must use ActiveX" sites?
Many sites like that, contain also ? instead of 's, if we browse them with linux.
I can tell you, that almost every commercial site never cares, and we are being "blocked".
Generaly as a policy, I decide not to give a damn over the users of MSIE.
I won't block them or anything,
but they have a full choice to use netscape,
and for the cost of being enslaved to Microsoft, they better do.
"If you want a good browser use Netscape, otherwise, don't complain and just go away".
(I don't respond to emails with doc attachments too)
See the point?
Sometimes a political stand, is much more important then a content.
---
This will not work.
;-)
They cannot grab a market with a proprietary file format,
when an open one exists, and is VERY popular.
Microsoft knows well that a large userbase, is more important than quality,
and that's assuming that MSAudio actually works as they said it would.
(they said that win98 runs faster with ie -- under oath!)
The "pirate protection" is stupid in many ways.
it won't hold, since i can always decode ms4 to mp3 and distribute,
and people will use mp3 as alsways "since ms4 doesnt allow pirating"
The current ternds are another block in their path.
We all know the microsoft-bashing trends have become rather popular among mainstream press.
The trial has made some people understand (hopefuly the judge
that closed formats can harm, and actualy hold back innovation,
so starting a new closed "nobody has a clue how it works" format, is against them.
(I assume the court won't allow bundling of MS4 "winamp airsupply cutter" product with windows)
Finaly,
I think the market share of MS4 wouldnt rise much until aac (aka mp4) is alive and kicking.
by syaing alive and kicking, I mean:
a. winamp (most popular player) will play it well.
b. it can be encoded by a free utility.
c. music sites start using it
And that is not far away, if it is what it's suppose to be.
(free format that has the mp3 qulaity in 70% of size, lowering MS4 "advantage by size" factor)
BTW,
Do you remember Yamaha's VQF proprietary format?
Wasn't such a success, was it?
I know Microsoft has much more leverage than Yamaha,
but lessons should have been learnt.
---
I have the best HTML editor for linux.
It is GNU, and I like it very much.
I think it comes with every distribution.
Besides emacs, vi is a good editor too.
From my very humble experience WYSIWYG HTML editors give crap results.
(Not to mention "Microsoft/MSIE style" html by frontpage).
As for mp3 encoding.
There is a good encode called BladeEnc.
I ran it on a PII350 and much faster than a windows equivalent i saw.
---
I have not understood completely how this works,
:-)
but from what i did understand,
you need to have an average post/view ratio.
no lurkers but no obsessive posters.
I think, I'll have to say that only the lurkers will get moderation.
(but one must post, i think he must be in the 50%-80% percentile of lurkerness)
This is because lurkers usualy are less biased towards an opinion,
They will modertae flames, first!, and meepts,
instead of the "opposing opinion".
(you cant control moderation by opinion if you have a thousand moderators)
Also, since it is "to post XOR to moderate", lurkers will moderate more,
since they don't post anyway.
Also some technical difficulties, may cause a person to load many pages but not post,
these can be from bad connections (i need to reload some times when i get partial pages),
or some people use slashdot as their homepage,
and view it every new browser window.
Lastly, Rob, I think you'll be glad when people will load slashdot more. You get money from ads
---
So....
/. effect is becoming quite positive.
The "almighty hackers" have been slashdotted.
I thought they're smarted than that.
I think the
even better, i suggest a "distibuted net" slashdot-daemon,
It will check slashdot.org/effect and slashdot all the links from there automaticly.
(that would be a good way to knock some NT sites quickly such as algore2000 and microsoft)
---
Normally, Gore's as intersting as a dead tree.
but for the last couple of weeks,
he's shooting scandals all over us,
making noises (funny noises) and using ou-of-conext buzzphrases.
HE DOESNT COUNT ON THE GEEKS!
He count's on the geeks TO LAUGH AT HIM, thus, GIVING HIM MEDIA COVERAGE!
Although I remember how laughable was Perot 3 years ago,
he was a clown, he mocked himslef to everyone.
people today have no idea what open source is,
and who invented the internet,
but if the geeks are mad at him, it must be important thing.
(thinking redneck: whooo, geeks hate him? he must be good!)
We're just giving him attention,
that's what he wants.
if we ignored the whole thing,
then nobody would know about it, and nobody would care.
btw,
i think Segfault ran a piece about "anonymous coward is not one person".
They should have read it.
---
Do you want to see the preview of windows2001? (codename neptune)
very close to ms-bob? (toaster-os thingy).
try to view it on john dvorak column on pc magazine. (now zdnet)
quite funny.
click here
---
These businessman, regard linux users as a dumb crowd.
.com
Some of us, are infect a dumb crowd,
using Linux just because of the hype.
but the most of don't need portals.
we know what we want to do.
These peope think: "hmmmm.... linux has 7 million reachable users, thats a good target, let's get them".
It won't work.
Portals are made for internet newbies, and these sites never thought that linux users arent such.
if a linux newbie is looking for info, he'll search the ldp.
if he wants news, he'll go to slashdot/linuxtoday.
want jokes? he'll go to segfault.
need files? freshmeat is the place. (not linuxberg)
the unix way is to spererate different services,
and that's what they don't understand.
(slashdot may be regarded as a portal to some people, but as a recent poll showed,
for most, it's just a news/discussion site)
on the future, though,
when there will be many "just-for-the-hype" newbies,
that come from windows, yahoo, tucows, and zdnet,
these portals will have audience.
also the saturation of the market with so many linux sites,
is not good for anyone.
on a different note,
there are many cool services in justlinux (the one i checked out).
such as email forwarding, dns for dynamic ip's (that's a rather good idea) and redirection.
too bad all of the domains end with a
---
Your argument would be true if they had actually gone to the trouble of fixing these bugs in the first place, but they didnt!
I can imagine a conversation at Microsoft right now:
employee 1: "So, are we going to fix XXnastyBug?"
employee 2: "Ok, let's go"
gates: "STOP! Let's save some bugs for windows 98.3"
Think about it.
they have thousands of employees and billions of dollars.
they can afford to fix all these bugs IF THEY WANT.
are they fixing them?
do they care?
they get more money for upgrades,
and spend less for debugging.
btw,
the goverment didt care that win98 is just a bugfix,
they cared that it bundled internet explorer.
---