No, he has not. The statement that MS has "done a lot for IT" is stupid. If they hadn't someone else would. And it just might have been someone less greedy, less predatory, stronger vision, and with less negative impact on the market.
Bill Gates personally took the world from free software to proprietary software, destroying a natually formed ecosystem and pocketing billions of dollars from those he stepped on to do it.
Microsoft has only one distinction going for it - ruthless marketing. And it's used that single trick to destroy everyone who got in thier way.
Has anyone recently written a cohesive description of the XFree86, X.org, FreeDesktop, Gnome and KDE projects, what thier states are, and when stuff is coming down the pipe? I understand the immense task this would represent, and that it would be several weeks out of date by the time it was readable, but I'd really appreciate a loose timeline for all of the fantastic projects I see outlined at freedesktop.
I've been looking at the screenshots up there and dreaming about translucency, D-BUD, unified spellchecking and display postscript for my desktop... Is this stuff two years out? Coming next month? Just vapor? Could I be running betas of them right now, if I chose to?
Yes, this OS X stuff does look like a zealotry thing. That's almost certainly why it persists. But you are still paying extra for brand loyalty and spraypaint.
Once again, text files beat the crap out of your 'administrative interface.' Both in raw speed, simplicity and ability to transfer between sites for setup speed. Yes, less lickable. I don't consider that a deciding factor.
Commoditized hardware is cheaper - a lot cheaper. The G5 box may be powerful, but it's not going to be more powerful than the three Athlon XP boxes I could put in place for the same price. Yes, less anodized aluminum and bevelled edges. I don't consider that a deciding factor.
That doesn't explain why you would pay extra money for this. Can't you do everything on the list you just mentioned without paying the Apple premium for hardware and software?
It's all based on the same free software you'd get from a Linux distro. What exactly are you paying for, if not the GUI? Brand name?
Ok, so yes, you're willing to pay extra money to get all that lickity-clickity stuff in your way.
Still doesn't help me understand the phenomena, but at least there's one more for Apple's "Charge me extra, please!" camp. I think I'm in the wrong business.
Ok, I admit to hearing about this OSX server, but chalked it up to marketing fluff -- stuff that wasn't meant to be understood in the context of common sense. So art houses that really think Macintoshes are better for photoshop can feel like geeks, or something.
Now, somebody on slashdot has apparently actually bought and installed it this thing. Although he doesn't seem very technical, he also doesn't seem stupid. So I don't understand why.
Darwin on X86, I suppose I could understand, for fun. Darwin on heavy IBM iron, I could understand if it scaled fairly well and got blessed properly.
But why OSX? Why would people actually pay so much money to have all that licky-clicky gui stuff get in their way on a server?
I was on location with my boss, several thousand miles from home, installing a machine at a client, when it suddenly dawned on me that maybe my boss had something to do with the recent dissapearances of some of my co workers.
He was keeping a pretty close eye on me, and I was wondering whether to contact the authorities when local cops and FBI stormed us, locked him away, and left me suddenly catapulted into being in charge of satisfying a boatload of unhappy clients, several employees short, with no clear view of how we were going to get paid, with my nutcase boss harassing us from prison.
I should have walked. I'm not sure why I didn't, but I learned a lot about customer loyalty, and the legal system.
There's more than one reason that this could be better than a satellite connection - the latency from the ride to space and back makes satellite-based Internet connectivity almost useless for anything but mail and web.
Presumably, this will be a shorter bounce with less latency, provided they don't relay packets via satellite anyway from the airship..
If you're going to make people eternal, you may want to figure out how to feed, house, warm them and then how to prevent the population from reproducing first. Right now, our current longevity is a curse on each following generation, and the problem is growing. You're suggestion would make that problem exponential in nature.
So, in order, how about: Eliminate poverty, then eliminate hunger, then eliminate money, then eliminate disease, then eliminate age, then populate other worlds, if we've got nothing better to do, and if we can still find space on the planet to build stuff.
There are a whole lot of reasons for that, but one of the largest is that:
Illegally sharing media annoys a large, amoral (and sometimes immoral) company that relies upon those it is attacking for it's very popularity and survival.
Spamming is an example of a large, amoral (or immoral) company going out of it's way to pester millions of people, in support of another amoral (or immoral) company that survives by preying on the stupid or uninformed.
In other words, in the eyes of most thinking people:
Government making the peoples' lives better at the expense of the corporations, good.
Government making the corporations' lives better at the expense of the people, bad.
You cannot plagarize unintentionally. If I spontaneously write a paper that is exactly the same as another paper, then I should not be penalized for it.
First, the accessability of information increases every day - the people who benefit from it are those that stay ahead of the curve. Those that benefit from the status quo fall behind.
The system where you are ranked on your ability to function within an autonomous vacuum is probably going to fall apart, because people in the real world no longer enforce that vacuum. Today's kids synthesize from multiple branches of media in everything they do, and sharing data, information, or anything else digital is second nature.
Judging someone on how well they write a paper is silly, in a world where the paper is already available, and readily accessable. Find something worthwhile to judge them on, and do the hard work necessary to judge them accurately on it, because they won't do it for you. You're laziness will only make more loopholes for them to control you through.
Secondly, todays educational institutions (most of them anyway) are cheap shams of what they once were. Going to university used to mean a period of hardship and disconnection from your old life where you were shaped into a person who cherished academics, tradition, service, honor and culture.
Now, it's the place you go to party for 4 years so you can put something "totally rad" on your resume. These institutions are letting the students down, and in turn, the students are letting the institutions down, and the whole mess is sinking into the sewer.
I think this is reasonable. The people that find a way to thrive on mars will be citizens of that colony, and it will be thier world - or at least thier part of it.
As a fictional comparison, what would you expect to happen if the people who "seeded" Earth came back and demanded we make room for them and their culture?
Many posts are drawing a parallel between this action by RedHat and Microsoft's eol'ing (or not eol'ing) Win98.
1) Yes, they are both doing this for the same reason: MONEY
2) No, it's not the same because THIRD PARTIES CAN SUPPORT REDHAT. If you want to start your own DEAD RH support company, go ahead. You have the full source.
3) No, it's not the same because YOU CAN UPGRADE FOR FREE. Go download it. No one is left behind here.
4) No, it's not the same because NO ONE IS LOCKED IN. If you want to jump off of the RedHat ship, nothing is stopping you - you're not stranded. Copy and run those same binaries on debian, gentoo or roll-your own, anytime you want to.
Slashdot Mirror
What do you have against the the postal service?
Well, I didn't say I'd be proud of it, but .. who else would you root for? At least the lawyers would be stealing from them both.
No, he has not. The statement that MS has "done a lot for IT" is stupid. If they hadn't someone else would. And it just might have been someone less greedy, less predatory, stronger vision, and with less negative impact on the market.
Bill Gates personally took the world from free software to proprietary software, destroying a natually formed ecosystem and pocketing billions of dollars from those he stepped on to do it.
Microsoft has only one distinction going for it - ruthless marketing. And it's used that single trick to destroy everyone who got in thier way.
Has anyone recently written a cohesive description of the XFree86, X.org, FreeDesktop, Gnome and KDE projects, what thier states are, and when stuff is coming down the pipe? I understand the immense task this would represent, and that it would be several weeks out of date by the time it was readable, but I'd really appreciate a loose timeline for all of the fantastic projects I see outlined at freedesktop.
I've been looking at the screenshots up there and dreaming about translucency, D-BUD, unified spellchecking and display postscript for my desktop... Is this stuff two years out? Coming next month? Just vapor? Could I be running betas of them right now, if I chose to?
Yes, this OS X stuff does look like a zealotry thing. That's almost certainly why it persists. But you are still paying extra for brand loyalty and spraypaint.
Once again, text files beat the crap out of your 'administrative interface.' Both in raw speed, simplicity and ability to transfer between sites for setup speed. Yes, less lickable. I don't consider that a deciding factor.
Commoditized hardware is cheaper - a lot cheaper. The G5 box may be powerful, but it's not going to be more powerful than the three Athlon XP boxes I could put in place for the same price. Yes, less anodized aluminum and bevelled edges. I don't consider that a deciding factor.
Well, it may be more "helpful" but it certainly isn't easier, faster, or simpler than editing a text file.
Is that what Apple people are paying extra for? The online help?
That doesn't explain why you would pay extra money for this. Can't you do everything on the list you just mentioned without paying the Apple premium for hardware and software?
It's all based on the same free software you'd get from a Linux distro. What exactly are you paying for, if not the GUI? Brand name?
Ok, so yes, you're willing to pay extra money to get all that lickity-clickity stuff in your way.
Still doesn't help me understand the phenomena, but at least there's one more for Apple's "Charge me extra, please!" camp. I think I'm in the wrong business.
Ok, I admit to hearing about this OSX server, but chalked it up to marketing fluff -- stuff that wasn't meant to be understood in the context of common sense. So art houses that really think Macintoshes are better for photoshop can feel like geeks, or something.
Now, somebody on slashdot has apparently actually bought and installed it this thing. Although he doesn't seem very technical, he also doesn't seem stupid. So I don't understand why.
Darwin on X86, I suppose I could understand, for fun. Darwin on heavy IBM iron, I could understand if it scaled fairly well and got blessed properly.
But why OSX? Why would people actually pay so much money to have all that licky-clicky gui stuff get in their way on a server?
I was on location with my boss, several thousand miles from home, installing a machine at a client, when it suddenly dawned on me that maybe my boss had something to do with the recent dissapearances of some of my co workers.
He was keeping a pretty close eye on me, and I was wondering whether to contact the authorities when local cops and FBI stormed us, locked him away, and left me suddenly catapulted into being in charge of satisfying a boatload of unhappy clients, several employees short, with no clear view of how we were going to get paid, with my nutcase boss harassing us from prison.
I should have walked. I'm not sure why I didn't, but I learned a lot about customer loyalty, and the legal system.
In the event that continual night lasts longer than 1 week, I'd like to think that I'd become concerned about things other than high-speed bandwidth.
But I probably wouldn't.
There's more than one reason that this could be better than a satellite connection - the latency from the ride to space and back makes satellite-based Internet connectivity almost useless for anything but mail and web.
Presumably, this will be a shorter bounce with less latency, provided they don't relay packets via satellite anyway from the airship..
I'm just wondering why you think thier '90 days' statement is legally binding, and what will happen to them if they don't sue someone (ever).
Am I missing some point here?
I'm coming to the conclusion that against all common sense and reason, SCO's stock is indestructable.
Future generations will consder it the bar that all other stocks are compared to. I'm actually considering buying some, on the premise that either
a) I will make money from SCO's FUD efforts.
b) My luck will cause it to tank, and I will be able to sacrifice my savings so that that SCO will die.
What happens if SCO misses it's deadline? Do you have a bet with Darl or something?
Probably because it steals a little of the victory from the person who made it.
If you're going to make people eternal, you may want to figure out how to feed, house, warm them and then how to prevent the population from reproducing first. Right now, our current longevity is a curse on each following generation, and the problem is growing. You're suggestion would make that problem exponential in nature.
So, in order, how about: Eliminate poverty, then eliminate hunger, then eliminate money, then eliminate disease, then eliminate age, then populate other worlds, if we've got nothing better to do, and if we can still find space on the planet to build stuff.
There are a whole lot of reasons for that, but one of the largest is that:
Illegally sharing media annoys a large, amoral (and sometimes immoral) company that relies upon those it is attacking for it's very popularity and survival.
Spamming is an example of a large, amoral (or immoral) company going out of it's way to pester millions of people, in support of another amoral (or immoral) company that survives by preying on the stupid or uninformed.
In other words, in the eyes of most thinking people:
Government making the peoples' lives better at the expense of the corporations, good.
Government making the corporations' lives better at the expense of the people, bad.
OK, you got me. I was thinking in the wrong direction there.
You cannot plagarize unintentionally. If I spontaneously write a paper that is exactly the same as another paper, then I should not be penalized for it.
The problem is twofold:
First, the accessability of information increases every day - the people who benefit from it are those that stay ahead of the curve. Those that benefit from the status quo fall behind.
The system where you are ranked on your ability to function within an autonomous vacuum is probably going to fall apart, because people in the real world no longer enforce that vacuum. Today's kids synthesize from multiple branches of media in everything they do, and sharing data, information, or anything else digital is second nature.
Judging someone on how well they write a paper is silly, in a world where the paper is already available, and readily accessable. Find something worthwhile to judge them on, and do the hard work necessary to judge them accurately on it, because they won't do it for you. You're laziness will only make more loopholes for them to control you through.
Secondly, todays educational institutions (most of them anyway) are cheap shams of what they once were. Going to university used to mean a period of hardship and disconnection from your old life where you were shaped into a person who cherished academics, tradition, service, honor and culture.
Now, it's the place you go to party for 4 years so you can put something "totally rad" on your resume. These institutions are letting the students down, and in turn, the students are letting the institutions down, and the whole mess is sinking into the sewer.
I think this is reasonable. The people that find a way to thrive on mars will be citizens of that colony, and it will be thier world - or at least thier part of it.
As a fictional comparison, what would you expect to happen if the people who "seeded" Earth came back and demanded we make room for them and their culture?
Many posts are drawing a parallel between this action by RedHat and Microsoft's eol'ing (or not eol'ing) Win98.
1) Yes, they are both doing this for the same reason: MONEY
2) No, it's not the same because THIRD PARTIES CAN SUPPORT REDHAT. If you want to start your own DEAD RH support company, go ahead. You have the full source.
3) No, it's not the same because YOU CAN UPGRADE FOR FREE. Go download it. No one is left behind here.
4) No, it's not the same because NO ONE IS LOCKED IN. If you want to jump off of the RedHat ship, nothing is stopping you - you're not stranded. Copy and run those same binaries on debian, gentoo or roll-your own, anytime you want to.