True, but Netscape lost a lot of marketshare by continuing to charge for their browser up until 4.something when Microsoft was giving theirs away for free all along. They also really missed the boat with AOL; rather than take a loss in order to gain enormous market share, they demanded that AOL pay them. Not unreasonable actions in themselves, but in those circumstances it killed them.
Maybe, but the situations are different. Real Media is still very much alive, while Netscape was pretty much dead in the Windows world when the anti-trust lawsuit finally was decided.
But even if the issue of liability were taken off the table, they would still have to get off of their metaphorical butts and set up a caching system. I don't know if there is any usable open-source system currently in existence, but if not, they would either have to code it themselves or adapt something already out there that doesn't serve their needs. Disk space isn't really an issue, as the commenting system takes a lot more space than the cache would (assuming they didn't mirror isos or anything silly like that).
I think the main problem is that the guys who run slashdot would probably need to get permission beforehand to cache the linked page, and it would take too much time out of their day to email back and forth to every linked site. Sure, J Random Hacker wouldn't mind being cached, but CNN, News.com.com.com.com.com, and the New York Times just might. And they would have enough bandwidth to handle the Slashdotting.
Why pay all the extra money for an OS that won't run on your less-than-uptodate hardware and which has draconian phone-home anti-piracy measures? Sure Windows 98 wasn't the most stable Operating System in the world, but it's Windows and Windows just wouldn't be Windows without instability.
I personally run an old copy of Win98 under Win4Lin for Linux. I use it for a program or two which I need to use for work but which does not have a compatable Linux counterpart.
Police regularly use credit card records to track suspects movements as well. I wouldn't be surprised if divorce lawyers did the same. Convenience often comes with a price. I have no problem with that. I would have a problem if the old fashioned way of doing things, i.e., with cash, were eliminated.
Lindows is a lame name to begin with. I don't think that it is a Good Thing(TM) for Linux vendors to try to make carbon copies of Windows. Sure it might win a few people over, but we need to win converts on Linux's strengths, not on the perceived strengs of its competitors.
Knoppix lets you store your personal info on a usb key device and it's free. But with MDK, you have not only to pay them money, but buy the retail pack to get this capability. Giving away a feature-crippled version and them selling a non-crippled version is a disturbing step Mandrake is taking, but it is not surprising considering some of the things that they've done recently.
It is a matter of opened standards (Latin, English, or any language) versus closed (many data formats (think M$) and simplicity vs. complexity (legible marks on vegetable matter versus pits in an optical digital data storage medium). It also helps enormously that the instrument we use to read marks on paper is built-in to the vast majority of us in a functional manner, whereas laserdisk/cd/dvd/floppy readers are most certainly not, and are therefore subject to quick obsolescense.
Another part of the equation is that while computer equipment is evolving at a break-neck pace (at least for the time being), language evolves much slower and marks-on-surface technology evolves in such a way that it can still be used from era to era without learning very many new tricks (once you get past the language thing).
archive.org provides an essential service to counteract the short lifespan of the typical webpage. It also allows for permanent links to webpages that might be gone soon. I personally think that academia should either pour money into archive.org or create their own specialized archive for academic websites.
In the later case, the service would archive sites of scholarly interest on its own and it would have a feature that would allow someone writing an academic paper to request that a particular page be archives. The page that he references in his work would be a http://academicarchive.org page, not the original.
that SCO is an unofficial wholly owned subsidiary of Micro$oft Corp. They are actually paying people to go to another OS, not necessarily theirs. Obviously the most likely choice other than a Unix is Windows, which would profit Micro$oft and not SCO. Except that SCO is owned by Micro$oft, in the manner that a judge is owned by a mafia boss.
I would hope that if they did try to pull some crap like that, Mozilla would blow the whistle that they're weren't getting anything out of the deal. A web-based business should fear thousands of enraged geeks.
This whole SCO business is just an attempt by the upper-echelon of SCO management to get as much ill-gotten money out of it as they can and then flee to Costa Rica. I fully expect the lawsuit to fall apart right after every single upper-management person is found to have left the country with suitcases full of cash.
Isn't October 15th the same day that SCO jacks up the commercial SCO-IP for Linux liscense price from $699 to $1399? If it's not the same day, I know it's pretty damn close.
but not as intrusive as M$'s phone-home registration for Windows XP, etc., which is applied to those who have paid for the software. I don't particularly like it, but if people would stop pirating software on such a large scale, such tactics (both the software in question's and Microsoft's) would not be justifiable to the general computing public. When companies are losing a lot of money to piracy, they are going to fight back. If you can't pay, or don't want to, use Free Software instead.
Microsoft would do well to remedy this problem before someone decides to write a 'real' virus.
They should, but they won't. They can deny responsibility for the damage a given virus causes and blame it on the author of the virus (who bear most of the blame, although M$ is also to blame for making an insecure product), while they can hardly disclaim responsibility for the hassle that your Average Joe would go through with permissions and users and all that (which is well worth going through, for the reasons you give above). Microsoft is making the choice that will cause it the least grief and all Windows users are paying for it.
Perhaps I was not clear. I did not say that the attachments could be opened under Linux and have the same effect, but that the worm could be written to run under Linux and do the same thing. The problem is in people executing executables sent via email, not the email software. I am not saying that Outlook/OExpress are secure, just saying that this problem is one that Linux could have as well.
Slashdot Mirror
True, but Netscape lost a lot of marketshare by continuing to charge for their browser up until 4.something when Microsoft was giving theirs away for free all along. They also really missed the boat with AOL; rather than take a loss in order to gain enormous market share, they demanded that AOL pay them. Not unreasonable actions in themselves, but in those circumstances it killed them.
Maybe, but the situations are different. Real Media is still very much alive, while Netscape was pretty much dead in the Windows world when the anti-trust lawsuit finally was decided.
Google is Google and Slashdot is Slashdot.
But even if the issue of liability were taken off the table, they would still have to get off of their metaphorical butts and set up a caching system. I don't know if there is any usable open-source system currently in existence, but if not, they would either have to code it themselves or adapt something already out there that doesn't serve their needs. Disk space isn't really an issue, as the commenting system takes a lot more space than the cache would (assuming they didn't mirror isos or anything silly like that).
I think the main problem is that the guys who run slashdot would probably need to get permission beforehand to cache the linked page, and it would take too much time out of their day to email back and forth to every linked site. Sure, J Random Hacker wouldn't mind being cached, but CNN, News.com.com.com.com.com, and the New York Times just might. And they would have enough bandwidth to handle the Slashdotting.
Google is a search engine used and respected by virtually everyone. Slashdot is, well, Slashdot.
Also, I believe that Google respects instructions in the robots.txt not to cache their page.
But does it run Linux?
Why pay all the extra money for an OS that won't run on your less-than-uptodate hardware and which has draconian phone-home anti-piracy measures? Sure Windows 98 wasn't the most stable Operating System in the world, but it's Windows and Windows just wouldn't be Windows without instability.
I personally run an old copy of Win98 under Win4Lin for Linux. I use it for a program or two which I need to use for work but which does not have a compatable Linux counterpart.
Police regularly use credit card records to track suspects movements as well. I wouldn't be surprised if divorce lawyers did the same. Convenience often comes with a price. I have no problem with that. I would have a problem if the old fashioned way of doing things, i.e., with cash, were eliminated.
Lindows is a lame name to begin with. I don't think that it is a Good Thing(TM) for Linux vendors to try to make carbon copies of Windows. Sure it might win a few people over, but we need to win converts on Linux's strengths, not on the perceived strengs of its competitors.
Is mozilla going to have to be overhauled or pay exorbitant patent fees to MS?
retail purchasers exclusively:
Knoppix lets you store your personal info on a usb key device and it's free. But with MDK, you have not only to pay them money, but buy the retail pack to get this capability. Giving away a feature-crippled version and them selling a non-crippled version is a disturbing step Mandrake is taking, but it is not surprising considering some of the things that they've done recently.
Han never has to dirty his hands on a dirty, dirty gun.
Sooo, Han is MacGyver's first name (and Solo his middle name). I missed the episode where they revealed that. Thanks.
It is a matter of opened standards (Latin, English, or any language) versus closed (many data formats (think M$) and simplicity vs. complexity (legible marks on vegetable matter versus pits in an optical digital data storage medium). It also helps enormously that the instrument we use to read marks on paper is built-in to the vast majority of us in a functional manner, whereas laserdisk/cd/dvd/floppy readers are most certainly not, and are therefore subject to quick obsolescense.
Another part of the equation is that while computer equipment is evolving at a break-neck pace (at least for the time being), language evolves much slower and marks-on-surface technology evolves in such a way that it can still be used from era to era without learning very many new tricks (once you get past the language thing).
And many people still read Latin. Just go to alt.language.latin and you will find many people who can even converse in that language.
archive.org provides an essential service to counteract the short lifespan of the typical webpage. It also allows for permanent links to webpages that might be gone soon. I personally think that academia should either pour money into archive.org or create their own specialized archive for academic websites.
In the later case, the service would archive sites of scholarly interest on its own and it would have a feature that would allow someone writing an academic paper to request that a particular page be archives. The page that he references in his work would be a http://academicarchive.org page, not the original.
that SCO is an unofficial wholly owned subsidiary of Micro$oft Corp. They are actually paying people to go to another OS, not necessarily theirs. Obviously the most likely choice other than a Unix is Windows, which would profit Micro$oft and not SCO. Except that SCO is owned by Micro$oft, in the manner that a judge is owned by a mafia boss.
I would hope that if they did try to pull some crap like that, Mozilla would blow the whistle that they're weren't getting anything out of the deal. A web-based business should fear thousands of enraged geeks.
Zero profit at around $10 a pound? Unlikely.
This whole SCO business is just an attempt by the upper-echelon of SCO management to get as much ill-gotten money out of it as they can and then flee to Costa Rica. I fully expect the lawsuit to fall apart right after every single upper-management person is found to have left the country with suitcases full of cash.
Safari is great, especially for O'Reilly books. But some of us prefer to have the feel of dead trees in our hands when we're learning how to program.
that I would buy any computerized/electronic product named HAL. Especially if it were going to go on my body.
Isn't October 15th the same day that SCO jacks up the commercial SCO-IP for Linux liscense price from $699 to $1399? If it's not the same day, I know it's pretty damn close.
but not as intrusive as M$'s phone-home registration for Windows XP, etc., which is applied to those who have paid for the software. I don't particularly like it, but if people would stop pirating software on such a large scale, such tactics (both the software in question's and Microsoft's) would not be justifiable to the general computing public. When companies are losing a lot of money to piracy, they are going to fight back. If you can't pay, or don't want to, use Free Software instead.
Microsoft would do well to remedy this problem before someone decides to write a 'real' virus.
They should, but they won't. They can deny responsibility for the damage a given virus causes and blame it on the author of the virus (who bear most of the blame, although M$ is also to blame for making an insecure product), while they can hardly disclaim responsibility for the hassle that your Average Joe would go through with permissions and users and all that (which is well worth going through, for the reasons you give above). Microsoft is making the choice that will cause it the least grief and all Windows users are paying for it.
Perhaps I was not clear. I did not say that the attachments could be opened under Linux and have the same effect, but that the worm could be written to run under Linux and do the same thing. The problem is in people executing executables sent via email, not the email software. I am not saying that Outlook/OExpress are secure, just saying that this problem is one that Linux could have as well.