I like the idea of linux for the masses, and I am all for the teaching of others to use linux- but that being said; there are so many people that don't even understand Windows 98 (let alone 2000) that I would be afraid of them using linux because they would be constantly coming to me. The people that can't find their 'run' command in windows- you know who I mean.
You've just described my little sister. She's used Red Hat's Linux with heavy customizations from me for over 3 years. Questions I have had this month include;
How do I install the software from the CD that came with this new printer? (I walked her through CUPS and mentioned the new fancy features of her printer.)
Do I have to format diskettes under Linux when I take them from a Windows machine? (Yes, she did get confused and formatted a diskette that had data on it before she clicked on the floppy icon.)
Why don't I have any scanner programs? (She has four different ones, under the Graphics menu. Half of them have names with the word "scan" in them.)
What's a cookie? (I forgot to disable the warning message for Konqueror and she used it for the first time last week -- first time in 3 years.)
That she uses Linux vs. Windows means nothing, except that she knows I don't support Windows. If she wants Windows, she can get help from someone else.
Linux for the masses is great, but lets not let the masses over-simplify it or take it to the lowest commom demononator. And let's not bloat it either (i know redhat is a hog, but it works pretty well)
You're making a mistake with this reasoning;
Mac users get a standard set of programs; good and bad.
Windows users get a standard set of programs; remove seemingly unneeded programs and your system will not work properly.
Except for the kernel sources, there is no standard "Linux". There are only distributions. Remove or add anything you want -- if something stops working, it's probably because something you removed was logically necessary.
Lycoris is a distribution, though so are Tomsrbt, Lindows, and the one bundled with a TIVO. These four aren't similar, and they shouldn't have to be.
In most situations, if a distribution is bloated or too lean, it only means you haven't changed it beyond the defaults. You're not alone in this, though.
Example: A friend reciently went on a rant about Red Hat not having a GUI. I asked what he did during the install, and he answered "I don't know, I asked for a Linux server and they gave me Red Hat". Red Hat's default server configuration is to not install X; servers don't need a GUI and having X around by default introduces problems in a server environment.
both are fairly moot now, thanks to my 'wonderful' software based Alcatel SpeedtouchUSB (didn't have much choice there, they wanted a higher monthy fee for an ethernet connected DSL package.. and they weren't doing 'we provide the line, you provide the hardware' at the time)
If you're in the U.S., try Earthlink. They provide an external ethernet hub-style DSL modem -- standard. (Verify this with them for your area; I can't say it's the same everywhere.)
The only problem with selling support that I can see is the "ethical" side. GNU/Philosophy tells us we should be selling services and software support to people who use our software. The side issue is, if you really DO make great software, why would anyone buy your support ? Do you have to specifically make you software buggy so people can ask you for support and pay ?
Ah! Support and ease of use are linked...but not in the way you are thinking; making a product easier to use does not reduce support demands, it increases them.
Does that make sense? Here's one example, though after checking with other support departments it seems to be universal.
Back in the stone age, I worked Technical Support for a year and then trained new support techs, ran a testing lab tracking down issues discovered in support, as well as testing and debugging before releasing the software.
The company's main product was a complex, hardware-specific, DOS utility that required the users to fiddle around in hex to figure out the optimal way to use it. Needless to say, our sales were low.
In support, the questions were fairly hard but there were only a half dozen of them...so once you learned the answers, helping the customers was quick and fairly painless -- that, and the fact that the timid customers were scared away before even buying the program.
Though most customers never called, for each box we sold we would get about one 5 minute call.
Even though this was the case, the number one request we had was a tool that would auto-configure the program. That sounded like a good idea, after all if it installs automatically the number of calls would drop and the product should become much more popular. So, we did it. After a year of hard work and tweaking, we released an automated version that did such a good job that our chief programmer found it very difficult to hand tune any better results.
We released the new version and it sold very well. The half dozen types of calls we were getting vanished, and in thier place we ended up with two different types of support requests;
"Where is that 'Any' key again?"
Damn difficult problems that even the chief programmer would spend weeks figuring out.
For every box sold, we still recieved about 1 phone call, but now each call averaged about 15 minutes.
After watching the TS managers and a few other departments struggle, they were able to cut the average call time down to about 5 minutes again. It was not unusual to hear that some calls would now last a few hours with follow up that stretched over a few weeks. Yes, quite a few of those calls were because of real problems but it didn't take us long to track them down and fix the really nasty ones. The ones that remained were typically due to broken hardware or hardware/software that was Broken As Designed. More and more time was spent finding how other products failed, and then patching around the bad behaviour in ours. (Also known as "It's not our fault, but it is our problem.")
I have no doubt that RedHat will do well with the support model, even if they continue to make thier 'free' product as easy to use and as defect-free as possible.
The EFF had a Washington D.C. based branch, but backed out of it because they didn't like how they were pressured into endorsing really bad ideas inorder to gain clout on the issues they were primarily interested in.
Will Geek Pac work better? If they know going in that this is the way D.C. works, they might be able to deal with it.
Either way, it might be more effective to have two different organizations -- one 'Washington insider' and another clean of such dreck and nonsense.
If you were still an OS/2 user, you'd know that IBM still offers updates to OS/2, and the past few rounds, they have been heavily subscribed that they can't press enough CD's in time.
Were is the operative word. Over a year ago -- well after IBM promoted migration strategies and recommended customers move off of OS/2 -- I posted a few messages to a local news group offering all my OS/2 software. After about a week, and a couple bites from non-local current OS/2 users, one person who is local to me (Washington DC-Metro) agreed to drop by and take the box of software off my hands. I think I handed over a dozen titles plus 3 boxed versions of OS/2.
At the point that I dumped my OS/2 software, I hadn't used any of it for three or more years.
Since then, I've had zero interest in following OS/2; it's just not a viable platform for any new development. The argument that Europeans use it isn't convincing; I didn't see it at all in three seperate European countries where I worked on banking projects over the past 10 years. The 'OS/2 is popular in Europe' argument has also been used by Amiga advocates yet I noticed only a one Amiga used for slide shows in a public lobby over those same 10 years.
Admitedly none of those contracts delt with automatic teller machines, so maybe OS/2 is still widely deployed there. Personally, I don't care.
If you see OS/2 as viable now, even when IBM hasn't for many years, you'd have a hard time convincing me.
I liked OS/2, I used OS/2, and some of it's features are still not duplicated properly on any other OS. None of the remaining features are compelling, though.
Agreed; only my first PC (a lugable) and a laptop weren't home built. The reason used to be price and control, but now it's only control.
IDE chipsets, video cards, and built-in sound support problems in systems I maintain are enough for me to continue to insist on paying for good parts that aren't bleeding edge when I suggest a computer to anyone else. A friend who, dispite my advice, chose a packaged computer only because of it's price ended up throwing the same computer away reciently...after over a year of odd problems with it. Yet, he's still looking for 'a deal' or a name brand and can't be bothered to investigate what he's actually buying.
In recient years, though, I've been bitten a few times on parts that should have worked without much fuss but instead required firmware upgrades and special handling such as putting cards in specific slots and BIOS tweaking. With a pre-packaged PC, much of that should not be an issue.
In the future, I don't know if I'll start recommending brand-name packaged systems. It is entirely likely, though.
...I'm deeply puzzled who would buy this now. I can see some sales to specific customers, but not enough to field a COTS product release. Anyone want to enlighten me?
(BTW...the file system monitor tools fam and imon add a feature to Linux that was missing for way too long; generic and instant update of file status for X. This effectively ties the desktop and the current file system state together eliminating the need to 'refresh' an application to find out what's really there. After having this under OS/2 and seeing how poorly it was handled under Windows (9x & NT forks), I was glad to see SGI port and support this for Linux and IRIX (other Unix-like systems can add this support as well if they don't have something like it already).)
Re:This is much more significant than you may thin
on
New PlayStation 2 Chip
·
· Score: 1
Exactly. I looked at the other responses, and yours is the only one that gets it. MS's design -- basing the console on PC hardware -- is flawed for pure economic reasons.
Here's my prediction; MS (seeing the price gap widen) will tune a new slimmed down XBOX.
1. The new one will not work with 100% of the XBOX games that exist now due partly by design changes and partly by the game makers not following the MS provided specs.
2. The new one will still cost more to make when compaired to the PS2 or Game Cube.
3. MS will goof, allowing the new ones to be converted into cheap PCs.
4. The new unit -- rushed to market when the price gap becomes obvious -- will not be as reliable.
The only alternative to this is to bundle more freebies with the console so that the cost is cheaper. This is hard to pull off; if they give away too much, they will cut into profits from actual game sales. Even though that could happen, it might be the most sane decision MS could make because they can increase market share -- even if it's at the expense of themselves as well as thier competitors.
That said, Sony or Nintendo could also offer bundles as aggressively as MS and MS would be back at a disadvantage.
I've read a few comments that since it's OK with Microsoft to use non-GPL, BSD-style licences, that this is exactly what we should do.
As has been said before, this is not a battle. It's a chess game; MS has no use for GPL, BSD or any other licence that has the potential to weaken thier position or strengthen thier competitors.
MS wants us to sacrifice our GPL castle and move our king into a corner. MS's ability to dominate the chess board will be so much easier with the GPL gone.
Switching or sticking with a licence out of ideology would be as effective as using the bishop all the time because you like diagonal movement.
Instead, we should continue to be aggressive just not foolishly so.
He's given honest, reliable, reviews in the past so I see no reason to consider this to be a hyped up Ziff-style garbage piece. After seeing so many articles that just aren't well researched, I'll take one that is -- even if the review is not positive.
On the other hand, this is a first release for a fairly complex device, so I'd expect a few changes in the hardware and quite a few software changes. If they come gratis to the current Zaurus owners (and those soon to be), that would be good thing. That said, there are trade offs in any design so I don't expect all the gripes WM had to be addressed at all.
My main concern with Sharp is thier web page rejecting perfectly valid browsers. That alone has cooled me to considering a Zaurus myself.
However - you DO need to subscribe to WineX in order to use the final release of WarCraft 3 due to the fact that WineX will support the copy protection that will come on the WC3 CD.
Unfortunately, the copy protection support in WineX is very limited. Don't take it as a fact that it will work with the final version of WC3 without a crack...and even then, it's not a gaurantee.
Check the transgaming.com web site for details on other games (Alice & Tony Hawk's Pro Skater) that sometimes work...but often don't specifically because of the wonders of Macrovision's Safedisc CD cripple ware.
Why not leave what looks like an open relay open, wait for spammers to test and abuse it, then break into the spammer's machine? A fitting bit of revenge would be to set up an open relay on the spammer's machine.
If they think it's OK to abuse a resource, they must think it's OK to get abused as well, right?
Ah, the olden days of Usenet. If you're talking over 6 years ago, then I agree. If you're talking 5 or fewer years, you should have know better. Spam to mail addresses posted on Usenet has been a problem for quite a while.
Not true. Check with Microsoft on these OEMed versions. It's not the same as "Windows for Dell" or "Windows for Gateway", these are more generic OEM copies. It's the same software that is sold with house-brand computers at many small local computer stores.
If I needed Windows -- and I don't -- I would buy one of these versions because they are legitimate and cheaper. If you know otherwise, beyond speculation, report it to Microsoft.
As for the OEM versions...they're the same ones that local stores sell (non-super store, local stores). Are they 'legit'? Looks like it to me, but I don't have a reason to buy each and every copy just to prove a point.
Failing that, get Dolly - it's used to clone partitions. Clone it to a HD and then start looking at repair options.
If you have access to a Unix/Linux box, you can use dd instead like this;
dd if=/dev/input_device of=destination
Where "input_device" is the device name, and destination is where you want the image to go (another device or a backup location). Once there, you can pop in a blank disk and restore the image to that before you start using any recovery tools. If you screw up your copy, make another.
I am a support tech and although I love using Linux at home, I can't imagine the folks I talk to everyday using it. They barely understand the whole logging on as a user idea.
I understand. I did a stint in tech support, and also serve as the helpful geek to family and friends. My little sister -- the one who learned last week how to view files in Konqueror forgot this week -- is the Uber end-user from Hell. I spent 1/2 an hour explaining how to double click on two icons when she wanted two a new games. She would have problems with any computer she uses, and while using Linux isn't pain free it's not worse for either her or me. (Well, it is worse for me since if she used Windows I'd refuse to help beyond giving her general advice.)
As for logining in, if they use GDM as thier login manager, you can set up a single user account and have GDM auto-logon when the computer is turned on. This means no local security, but otherwise the passwords are still required for remote logins -- something that should be disabled anyway. KDM might have something similar. This doesn't get around having to login as root to install some software, though there are ways to do that as well (though not ones that make me personally happy).
Write out a disk image to a new disk, use a password generator program to change the passwords, and you're done -- Linux with no login hassles.
$300? While I also find few people know that Windows is so pricy, all the local office and home electronics stores sell boxed Windows ME/98/2000/XP for about $200 (usd).
On Pricewatch, vendors sell OEM (no box but with media, not just a paper licence, and not an upgrade), sell XP Pro(!) for ~$140 ($126+$12 shipping) and Win98 or WinME for ~$85 ($75+$10).
That said, I agree that showing the real cost of Windows to users -- $100+ (typical OEM price added to a computer) -- is important. In many ways, it is a hidden tax and a substantial chunk of the cost of a new computer.
Don't get me wrong, I'll take cute over sultry any day (well, almost any day). Yet, the stretch-thong-cling-shimmering-things that they wear at Fall Comdex...and they will pose with you there. Not the same kind of booth bunnies.
Unlike Comdex, CeBit starts out as a serious and sober event. It is well organized. It is very productive. It is run by Germans. It does not have buxom booth bunnies. (OK, not Los Vegas-style booth bunnies and those that are there are few and far between and you can't get your picture with them.)
The only giddy joy and adventure at CeBit beyond the cool tech is the day the local kids come in to get and trade pins, and at night in the on-site beer hall, getting drunk, then challenging some Japaneese company to tug of war and hooting ape calls. Who needs language?
While Microsoft was fully justified in complaining if the sound was loud at the Sony booth, it sure sounds like they are taking on the role of smarmy tattle tale. That in itself is not in the spirit of CeBit.
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You've just described my little sister. She's used Red Hat's Linux with heavy customizations from me for over 3 years. Questions I have had this month include;
That she uses Linux vs. Windows means nothing, except that she knows I don't support Windows. If she wants Windows, she can get help from someone else.
Linux for the masses is great, but lets not let the masses over-simplify it or take it to the lowest commom demononator. And let's not bloat it either (i know redhat is a hog, but it works pretty well)
You're making a mistake with this reasoning;
Windows users get a standard set of programs; remove seemingly unneeded programs and your system will not work properly.
Except for the kernel sources, there is no standard "Linux". There are only distributions. Remove or add anything you want -- if something stops working, it's probably because something you removed was logically necessary.
Lycoris is a distribution, though so are Tomsrbt, Lindows, and the one bundled with a TIVO. These four aren't similar, and they shouldn't have to be.
In most situations, if a distribution is bloated or too lean, it only means you haven't changed it beyond the defaults. You're not alone in this, though.
Example: A friend reciently went on a rant about Red Hat not having a GUI. I asked what he did during the install, and he answered "I don't know, I asked for a Linux server and they gave me Red Hat". Red Hat's default server configuration is to not install X; servers don't need a GUI and having X around by default introduces problems in a server environment.
If you're in the U.S., try Earthlink. They provide an external ethernet hub-style DSL modem -- standard. (Verify this with them for your area; I can't say it's the same everywhere.)
Great! How well does it play DVDs? (:
(Serious note: Good project.)
Ah! Support and ease of use are linked...but not in the way you are thinking; making a product easier to use does not reduce support demands, it increases them .
Does that make sense? Here's one example, though after checking with other support departments it seems to be universal.
Back in the stone age, I worked Technical Support for a year and then trained new support techs, ran a testing lab tracking down issues discovered in support, as well as testing and debugging before releasing the software.
The company's main product was a complex, hardware-specific, DOS utility that required the users to fiddle around in hex to figure out the optimal way to use it. Needless to say, our sales were low.
In support, the questions were fairly hard but there were only a half dozen of them...so once you learned the answers, helping the customers was quick and fairly painless -- that, and the fact that the timid customers were scared away before even buying the program.
Though most customers never called, for each box we sold we would get about one 5 minute call.
Even though this was the case, the number one request we had was a tool that would auto-configure the program. That sounded like a good idea, after all if it installs automatically the number of calls would drop and the product should become much more popular. So, we did it. After a year of hard work and tweaking, we released an automated version that did such a good job that our chief programmer found it very difficult to hand tune any better results.
We released the new version and it sold very well. The half dozen types of calls we were getting vanished, and in thier place we ended up with two different types of support requests;
For every box sold, we still recieved about 1 phone call, but now each call averaged about 15 minutes .
After watching the TS managers and a few other departments struggle, they were able to cut the average call time down to about 5 minutes again. It was not unusual to hear that some calls would now last a few hours with follow up that stretched over a few weeks. Yes, quite a few of those calls were because of real problems but it didn't take us long to track them down and fix the really nasty ones. The ones that remained were typically due to broken hardware or hardware/software that was Broken As Designed. More and more time was spent finding how other products failed, and then patching around the bad behaviour in ours. (Also known as "It's not our fault, but it is our problem.")
I have no doubt that RedHat will do well with the support model, even if they continue to make thier 'free' product as easy to use and as defect-free as possible.
So do nothing?
"Enough is enough is enough," he added. "It is time for people in the technology community to open up their wallets and donate money to the EFF and fund this political action committee ... We've got to do this or we're going to lose, folks, it's that simple."
The EFF had a Washington D.C. based branch, but backed out of it because they didn't like how they were pressured into endorsing really bad ideas inorder to gain clout on the issues they were primarily interested in.
Will Geek Pac work better? If they know going in that this is the way D.C. works, they might be able to deal with it.
Either way, it might be more effective to have two different organizations -- one 'Washington insider' and another clean of such dreck and nonsense.
ATMs, cash registers, have used OS/2 for quite a while. What you noticed was something that is at best in maintenance mode.
Yeah, that's been posted on /. a few times. It's interesting, but I don't think it negates anything I said earlier.
Were is the operative word. Over a year ago -- well after IBM promoted migration strategies and recommended customers move off of OS/2 -- I posted a few messages to a local news group offering all my OS/2 software. After about a week, and a couple bites from non-local current OS/2 users, one person who is local to me (Washington DC-Metro) agreed to drop by and take the box of software off my hands. I think I handed over a dozen titles plus 3 boxed versions of OS/2.
At the point that I dumped my OS/2 software, I hadn't used any of it for three or more years.
Since then, I've had zero interest in following OS/2; it's just not a viable platform for any new development. The argument that Europeans use it isn't convincing; I didn't see it at all in three seperate European countries where I worked on banking projects over the past 10 years. The 'OS/2 is popular in Europe' argument has also been used by Amiga advocates yet I noticed only a one Amiga used for slide shows in a public lobby over those same 10 years.
Admitedly none of those contracts delt with automatic teller machines, so maybe OS/2 is still widely deployed there. Personally, I don't care.
If you see OS/2 as viable now, even when IBM hasn't for many years, you'd have a hard time convincing me.
I liked OS/2, I used OS/2, and some of it's features are still not duplicated properly on any other OS. None of the remaining features are compelling, though.
IDE chipsets, video cards, and built-in sound support problems in systems I maintain are enough for me to continue to insist on paying for good parts that aren't bleeding edge when I suggest a computer to anyone else. A friend who, dispite my advice, chose a packaged computer only because of it's price ended up throwing the same computer away reciently...after over a year of odd problems with it. Yet, he's still looking for 'a deal' or a name brand and can't be bothered to investigate what he's actually buying.
In recient years, though, I've been bitten a few times on parts that should have worked without much fuss but instead required firmware upgrades and special handling such as putting cards in specific slots and BIOS tweaking. With a pre-packaged PC, much of that should not be an issue. In the future, I don't know if I'll start recommending brand-name packaged systems. It is entirely likely, though.
(BTW...the file system monitor tools fam and imon add a feature to Linux that was missing for way too long; generic and instant update of file status for X. This effectively ties the desktop and the current file system state together eliminating the need to 'refresh' an application to find out what's really there. After having this under OS/2 and seeing how poorly it was handled under Windows (9x & NT forks), I was glad to see SGI port and support this for Linux and IRIX (other Unix-like systems can add this support as well if they don't have something like it already).)
Exactly. I looked at the other responses, and yours is the only one that gets it. MS's design -- basing the console on PC hardware -- is flawed for pure economic reasons.
Here's my prediction; MS (seeing the price gap widen) will tune a new slimmed down XBOX.
1. The new one will not work with 100% of the XBOX games that exist now due partly by design changes and partly by the game makers not following the MS provided specs.
2. The new one will still cost more to make when compaired to the PS2 or Game Cube.
3. MS will goof, allowing the new ones to be converted into cheap PCs.
4. The new unit -- rushed to market when the price gap becomes obvious -- will not be as reliable.
The only alternative to this is to bundle more freebies with the console so that the cost is cheaper. This is hard to pull off; if they give away too much, they will cut into profits from actual game sales. Even though that could happen, it might be the most sane decision MS could make because they can increase market share -- even if it's at the expense of themselves as well as thier competitors.
That said, Sony or Nintendo could also offer bundles as aggressively as MS and MS would be back at a disadvantage.
As has been said before, this is not a battle. It's a chess game; MS has no use for GPL, BSD or any other licence that has the potential to weaken thier position or strengthen thier competitors.
MS wants us to sacrifice our GPL castle and move our king into a corner. MS's ability to dominate the chess board will be so much easier with the GPL gone.
Switching or sticking with a licence out of ideology would be as effective as using the bishop all the time because you like diagonal movement.
Instead, we should continue to be aggressive just not foolishly so.
He's given honest, reliable, reviews in the past so I see no reason to consider this to be a hyped up Ziff-style garbage piece. After seeing so many articles that just aren't well researched, I'll take one that is -- even if the review is not positive.
On the other hand, this is a first release for a fairly complex device, so I'd expect a few changes in the hardware and quite a few software changes. If they come gratis to the current Zaurus owners (and those soon to be), that would be good thing. That said, there are trade offs in any design so I don't expect all the gripes WM had to be addressed at all.
My main concern with Sharp is thier web page rejecting perfectly valid browsers. That alone has cooled me to considering a Zaurus myself.
Unfortunately, the copy protection support in WineX is very limited. Don't take it as a fact that it will work with the final version of WC3 without a crack...and even then, it's not a gaurantee.
Check the transgaming.com web site for details on other games (Alice & Tony Hawk's Pro Skater) that sometimes work...but often don't specifically because of the wonders of Macrovision's Safedisc CD cripple ware.
If they think it's OK to abuse a resource, they must think it's OK to get abused as well, right?
Ah, the olden days of Usenet. If you're talking over 6 years ago, then I agree. If you're talking 5 or fewer years, you should have know better. Spam to mail addresses posted on Usenet has been a problem for quite a while.
If I needed Windows -- and I don't -- I would buy one of these versions because they are legitimate and cheaper. If you know otherwise, beyond speculation, report it to Microsoft.
See Staples.com and search on "windows me". Here's the link it gives me (may not be valid for you);
http://www.staples.com/Catalog/Browse/SKU.asp?BC Fl ag=False&PageType=1&SKU=440212
As for the OEM versions...they're the same ones that local stores sell (non-super store, local stores). Are they 'legit'? Looks like it to me, but I don't have a reason to buy each and every copy just to prove a point.
I stand by my statements on price.
If you have access to a Unix/Linux box, you can use dd instead like this;
dd if=/dev/input_device of=destination
Where "input_device" is the device name, and destination is where you want the image to go (another device or a backup location). Once there, you can pop in a blank disk and restore the image to that before you start using any recovery tools. If you screw up your copy, make another.
I understand. I did a stint in tech support, and also serve as the helpful geek to family and friends. My little sister -- the one who learned last week how to view files in Konqueror forgot this week -- is the Uber end-user from Hell. I spent 1/2 an hour explaining how to double click on two icons when she wanted two a new games. She would have problems with any computer she uses, and while using Linux isn't pain free it's not worse for either her or me. (Well, it is worse for me since if she used Windows I'd refuse to help beyond giving her general advice.)
As for logining in, if they use GDM as thier login manager, you can set up a single user account and have GDM auto-logon when the computer is turned on. This means no local security, but otherwise the passwords are still required for remote logins -- something that should be disabled anyway. KDM might have something similar. This doesn't get around having to login as root to install some software, though there are ways to do that as well (though not ones that make me personally happy).
Write out a disk image to a new disk, use a password generator program to change the passwords, and you're done -- Linux with no login hassles.
On Pricewatch, vendors sell OEM (no box but with media, not just a paper licence, and not an upgrade), sell XP Pro(!) for ~$140 ($126+$12 shipping) and Win98 or WinME for ~$85 ($75+$10).
That said, I agree that showing the real cost of Windows to users -- $100+ (typical OEM price added to a computer) -- is important. In many ways, it is a hidden tax and a substantial chunk of the cost of a new computer.
Don't get me wrong, I'll take cute over sultry any day (well, almost any day). Yet, the stretch-thong-cling-shimmering-things that they wear at Fall Comdex...and they will pose with you there. Not the same kind of booth bunnies.
Unlike Comdex, CeBit starts out as a serious and sober event. It is well organized. It is very productive. It is run by Germans. It does not have buxom booth bunnies. (OK, not Los Vegas-style booth bunnies and those that are there are few and far between and you can't get your picture with them.)
The only giddy joy and adventure at CeBit beyond the cool tech is the day the local kids come in to get and trade pins, and at night in the on-site beer hall, getting drunk, then challenging some Japaneese company to tug of war and hooting ape calls. Who needs language?
While Microsoft was fully justified in complaining if the sound was loud at the Sony booth, it sure sounds like they are taking on the role of smarmy tattle tale. That in itself is not in the spirit of CeBit.
While I disagree on Wine's status as an API layer, and how good the Windows wrapper was under OS/2...well, let's just say we disagree. :)