I keep having these nightmares that Bill Gates is going to buy Andover.net and turn all the Linux sites in NT sites!
It could happen. But it would be a waste of Bill's money -- not that he cares about that. Worse than that it would be a waste of his time, which he does care about. If he tried it, all of the users would just jump ship to the new Linux sites that would spring up somewhere else.
One could argue that the Internet matured in 1992, that it started dying in 1996, and that organs are failiure is now setting in.
I see a lot of people (ala Bob Metcalfe) predicting the death of the Internet, but I just don't see a lot of evidence to support it. The Internet is changing, but more and more people are still hooking up, more and more sites are still appearing. Sure, there are a lot of 'dead' sites out there, and people will come and go, but it looks like the Internet is still on its way to becoming as ubiquitous as television.
One could argue that television died a long time ago. Certainly most of the complaints about degredation in quality and increase in commercial interests that are often leveled against the Internet are true and then some against television. Yet television lives on. Is it alive or undead? Depends on your perspective, but television is a part of almost everyone's life, if even a small part. The Internet looks like it will become that way too. For some it may mean that the Internet will no longer be as large a part of their life as it has been, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.
People who predict the demise of the Internet seem to miss one thing I think. If the Internet dies, what is going to replace it? Will people flock back to other, more traditional media? What new thing is coming out that could kill both the Internet and its predecessors? The advent of television hurt radio, but didn't kill it. The advent of the Internet has impacted television, but hasn't killed it.
Its easy to be a pundit, but not so easy to be a visionary.
This is absolutely correct. If MSFT buys Andover, you could bet that most of the Slashdot reader base would defect to another (clone) service. The same thing would likely happen, albiet to a slightly smaller degree if AOL were to buy Andover.
BTW, who does own Andover? Is it publically traded?
It is not at all surprising that Jonathan Littman is behind such a clueful article. He seems to be a really first rate journalist/author.
Re:Cheap ass open source people
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R.I.P. Linuxbox
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· Score: 1
Not really, it sounds like it is delinquent 'paying customers' who are causing the problems. It doesn't say at all what percentage of those paying customers are Linux users.
If they find that current laws do not apply, then perhaps they do need additional regs
When was the last time that they didn't think they needed a whole lot more regulation? Given the Clinton administration's recent call for extensive monitoring of the internet (and the outcry against it), there is little reason to believe this isn't just an excuse to start a big, sensationalized witch hunt to justify a lot of additional monitoring of the net, coupled with laws that add additional penalties for doing things that are already illegal, but on the internet. I can already see 'conspiracy to use the internet to do something-or-other'.
The problem is that it seems like anti-freedom politicians like Clinton and Gore seem to view 'free speech' in a far more limited way than most of us do. Their definition seems to be more like 'free, inoffensive, politically correct speech'.
If that stuff is illegal already, then why do we need to conduct an internet witch hunt and create a lot of new laws and regulations. How about enforcing the existing laws before we clog up the system with more?
Best Katz contribution to Slashdot yet
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Lo-Tech Cinema
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· Score: 1
This is the best thing I've seen here from Katz. He is clearly well within his element here (not over his head with technical issues) and his review definitely made me want to see the movie (which I wasn't all that interested in before).
Blather really should get moderated down. Now if someone posts something thoughtful and intelligent that is pro-MS and they get moderated down, then something is wrong. I don't see that happen much (people posting anything intelligent that is pro-MS, let alone it getting moderated down), and when it does happen, someone else will usually moderate it back up.
no one here owns MicroSloth stock
I certainly don't own any, but I'd bet there are quite a few people who read and even post on Slashdot that own Microsoft stock. And I'm not just talking AC's or obvious Microsoft apologists either.
As for your assertation that people aren't working as hard to get into the Linux box, I don't know if that is true. They are offering a real, tangible incentive (you get to keep the box if you get in). That is a pretty good reason. And unlike Microsoft, whom many wouldn't care to do debugging work for gratis, lots of people are happy to help out Linux developers.
About as seriously as someone who suggested an APC 1400 for enterprise-capable server protection
I didn't intend to suggest that particular model as the be-all-end-all of UPSs, I threw that out because it is a model I am familiar with, and it is sufficient to power a typical Wintel through at least a couple of hours of outages.
In this case something like an APC 1400 should have been more than adequate to have kept the server running since they didn't note any long term power outages or permanent hardware damage due to lightning. You can bet if they had legitimate hardware damage they would be holding that out as an excuse.
The fact that they didn't even seem to take basic, simple precautions that you would do even for a 'departmental server' in a case with such importance from a PR standpoint is the thing that I find most damning.
I just can't help but wonder if this server is sitting on some marketing droids desk somewhere in Redmond...
I wish reporters would read the fsck'ing logs. The Win2K box crashed once (but it had reboots and service restarts).
I still wouldn't consider that acceptable for the small amount of time that server has been up. If Microsoft is going to issue a challenge, then they should have done their homework and had that server ready to handle anything conceivable including power outages and SYN flood attacks.
Once again, the anti-MS FUD spreads....
Oh please, the amount of MS favored (if not outright sponsored) FUD outweighs any anti-MS FUD by several orders of magnatude.
The double standard that the industry, Slashdot and the media has with Microsoft is sickening.
Yes, it is, the media is still far too biased towards Microsoft. And as long as Microsoft is one of the largest advertising dollar spenders, that probably won't change. What is (pleasantly) surprising is that there is still enough journalistic integrity out there that any news unfavorable to Microsoft ever gets reported.
Why can't we get back to doing what's important: improving people's lives through software/hardware?
I wish that Microsoft couldn't be described by replacing 'improving' with 'controling' above.
Linux has improved my life, my life would be greatly improved if I didn't ever have to deal with the agony resulting from Microsoft software. I've managed to get rid of most of it, but I still occasionally have to deal with it at work.
Does Microsoft expect us to believe their server was down due to power outages? Haven't they ever heard of a UPS? Microsoft certainly can't claim they can't afford to put something nice like an APC 1400 on a server.
Does Microsoft really expect us to take them seriously as an enterprise-capable vendor if they would consider putting up a publicly accessable web server (even for a test) without putting it on a UPS?
Seems like some pretty lame attempts at PR spin to me. With what Microsoft pays for advertising and PR, they can certainly do better.
Ive had several problems with main boards based on via chipsets...
I've never had any problems with VIA based motherboards. I ran into more problems with VX and TX based Intel Socket5/7 chipset motherboards than anything else.
ranging from just bad drivers
I am assuming MS-DOS/Windows drivers. I wouldn't know anything about that, as I don't have either of those on any of my boxes. If you look at the hardware review pages, you'd see that even motherboards using the same basic chipsets can be drastically different in terms of performance and reliability. VIA isn't responsible if a motherboard vendor does a lousy job of designing a motherboard around their chipset. You also shouldn't necessarily blame things like bad CM640 IDE chips which were on many motherboards a couple years ago on VIA, just because they made the main chipset.
to periphreals not functioning correctly. Yes perhaps I have not had enough experience with via to make it a good one...but what I have had has left a bad taste in my mouth.
A lot of complaints I've seen about bad motherboards and/or chipsets are caused by things like bad memory, or on overly agressive BIOS settings. Or overclocking, which is a gamble in general.
Cyrix...too little, too late...
Just because Cyrix isn't the fastest doesn't mean they aren't acceptable for a lot of people. Frankly, a lot of people would be better served spending less on their CPU and putting the money they save there into memory.
Im sorry...but I will not say anything good about the winchip.
Nobody expects you to. I just don't see any point in saying unfounded bad things about them. It is O.K. to say they are weak performers, but if you do, you should give some reasons why you think so.
Unfortunately your strongest arguement does nothing to sway me.
Fine, but perhaps they will make someone else not just outright ignore Intel competitors just because people have badmouthed them. If other people have the same interests as you, then your opinion is probably a valid one for them to consider. If their needs aren't the same as yours, then they should look elsewhere.
No matter how cheap a product is...if it does not perform it is most certainly not worth buying.
The thing is that different people have different standards on whether something performs or not.
(I think you can guess on my opinion of thier performance).
The Winchip wasn't intended for game kiddies, but it is more than adequate for running general office automation software (word processing, light spreadsheets, etc). I probably wouldn't consider it for a serious workstation, but if I was building a machine for a secretary, it would be an excellent choice.
Early 6x86 chips (pre L version) had overheating problems. Later production ones don't seem to have those problems. Cyrix's 486 processors didn't have overheating problems either. The only programs I have heard of that don't work with Cyrix processors are games running under a Microsoft OS. Cyrix processors seem to be perfectly competible with Linux or *BSD.
Now, I personally prefer AMD, but for a certain price/performance point, Cyrix is a valid choice for a lot of people.
What do you have against VIA, Cyrix and IDT? I haven't ever bought anything that I know of from IDT, but I've always been happy with products I have from Cyrix and VIA. VIA is one of the few motherboard chipset alternatives to Intel (other than Acer Labs and SiS). Cyrix used to make the best 387 coprocessors, and while their x86 chips were never really top performers, their price/performance ratio was always fairly attractive and they in general filled a niche that Intel chose not to serve.
Given Intel's market stranglehold, I see no reason to be antagonistic to any of their competitors, even if you prefer to buy Intel's products, VIA, Cyrix, and IDT have been part of what has forced Intel to lower prices and increase performance faster. Given that, I fail to see a coherent reason for your hatred.
[ side-note: the Linus Torvalds interview along with followup comments were once available on Slashdot. However, shortly after their appearance, Rob Malda erased the article and comments because they were too forthright and honest for a timid audience.]
I don't think that Rob is likely to censor something for those kind of reasons. I also don't think Slashdot is a 'timid audience'. These sorts of accusations always seem to be made by faceless anonymous cowards with no backing. Worse than that, it always seems like they are the people giving the sob story about how they are oppressed by some mythic 'Slashdot Linux-zealot mob'. Slashdot isn't perfect, and it certainly isn't unbiased, but at least its biases are right upfront. Despite all the boo-hooing that some do about the moderation system, it seems to be working pretty well. I have to wonder if all of the Microsoft appologists are just sore because there is a forum which Bill can't just buy favorable treatment in through advertising dollars and where astroturfing is exposed almost immediately.
Mindshare is also a reason that Microsoft would likely do a *BSD based OS than Linux. They wouldn't really want to support/market another OS because they wanted it to succeed to the point of challenging their proprietary OSes. What they would want to do is splinter the open source OS market. By putting their eggs in the *BSD market they would divert a lot of mindshare away from Linux in a 'divide and conquer' sort of way. If they did a Linux distribution, then they would only add to the Linux mindshare.
The *BSD license is also much more friendly to proprietary OS vendors (like Apple -- but also traditionally a lot of the commercial *nixes were either *BSD based (SunOS 4.x and older, Ultrix, etc) or contained a number of "Berkeley enhancements" (just about everyone else).
Personally I think it is unlikely that either will happen anytime in the near future.
Only a Windows head would complain about too much choice. Its like complaining that there are too many brands of cars, and if someone was used to a Ford, they would be completely in shock if they had to drive a Toyota. Sure, some controls will be in slightly different places, and look a little different, but in a few minutes anyone with half a brain will have adjusted. I move back and forth between several different GUIs on completely different platforms every day, and its not a big deal. The only one I find really limiting is Windows. As for mixing KDE and Gnome apps, there is work in progress to make themability interchangeable between them, so your arguments may not hold any water at all in the future.
I've not seen this to be true at all. Perhaps under such cooked up benchmarks as Mindcraft's, but in the real world, NTFS doesn't appear to be particularly an impressive performer.
has much better recoverability.
Perhaps in theory, but in practice, I've not experienced this to be true. I've lost more data on NTFS than on ext2. Despite claims that NTFS is journaling, I've seen it take a considerable time doing 'file system checks' at boot time, which I've not seen on such journaling file systems as AIX's.
Generally Linux filesystem is one of the worst parts of whole OS.
While Linux's file system could still use some work (and it is already in progress), ext2 is already pretty good. I trust it a lot more than I do NTFS.
There seems to be an assumption in the computer business that there has to be one winner. It just isn't so. Despite that some people (typically the PHB types) think it is desireable to not have any choice (because they fear making decisions), it is not. Choice is good. Markets can't be viable in the long run without competition. Any time that one vendor controls more than about 40% of a market, the whole market suffers.
For me, Linux has already won. It works, it works well. I can work happily without going to something else. I don't begrudge *BSD, MacOS or BeOS or for that matter anything other than Microsoft from some market share. I'd be happy if the *BSD's saw increased popularity, MacOS was resurgeant and BeOS carved out a viable niche for itself. I don't even know if it is desireable for Microsoft to be completely wiped out (although occasionally that desire pops into my head). I'd be happy if they were beat down under 50% of the market so there were mainstream viable choices.
I just installed FreeBSD 3.1 on one of my boxes. I've been running Linux since 0.99pl7 (Yggdrasil BETA). So far I am not all that impressed. The installer isn't as nice as most of the current Linux distributions I've used (Red Hat, SuSE, Caldera), and the hardware support (especially at install time) doesn't seem to be as extensive as Linux. Things like network card setup are not as automated as they are under Linux.
All of this doesn't matter as much to me, since I am an old-timer and installing things from source doesn't scare me... But from what I've seen a lot of the FUD things I've seen about Linux that aren't true any more are still true of FreeBSD. It appears the *BSD's are much more by-hacker-for-hacker than Linux is these days. This is good and bad, of course. At any rate, it is certainly nice to have more choices. But I would be hessitant at this point to suggest FreeBSD as an alternative to Linux for the less technically inclined.
You are supposed to pay sales tax on everything anyway - if you order from other states and do not pay it, you need to pay it when you do your state taxes at the end of the year.
That depends on what state you live in. Some states (Texas, South Dakota and Nevada for instance) have no 'state taxes'.
I know that where I live there is no mechanism in place to pay such taxes for private individuals (although I believe there is something called a 'use tax' for businesses). At any rate, nobody that I know of pays sales tax on interstate mail order.
Slashdot Mirror
I keep having these nightmares that Bill Gates is going to buy Andover.net and turn all the Linux sites in NT sites!
It could happen. But it would be a waste of Bill's money -- not that he cares about that. Worse than that it would be a waste of his time, which he does care about. If he tried it, all of the users would just jump ship to the new Linux sites that would spring up somewhere else.
One could argue that the Internet matured in 1992, that it started dying in 1996, and that organs are failiure is now setting in.
I see a lot of people (ala Bob Metcalfe) predicting the death of the Internet, but I just don't see a lot of evidence to support it. The Internet is changing, but more and more people are still hooking up, more and more sites are still appearing. Sure, there are a lot of 'dead' sites out there, and people will come and go, but it looks like the Internet is still on its way to becoming as ubiquitous as television.
One could argue that television died a long time ago. Certainly most of the complaints about degredation in quality and increase in commercial interests that are often leveled against the Internet are true and then some against television. Yet television lives on. Is it alive or undead? Depends on your perspective, but television is a part of almost everyone's life, if even a small part. The Internet looks like it will become that way too. For some it may mean that the Internet will no longer be as large a part of their life as it has been, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.
People who predict the demise of the Internet seem to miss one thing I think. If the Internet dies, what is going to replace it? Will people flock back to other, more traditional media? What new thing is coming out that could kill both the Internet and its predecessors? The advent of television hurt radio, but didn't kill it. The advent of the Internet has impacted television, but hasn't killed it.
Its easy to be a pundit, but not so easy to be a visionary.
This is absolutely correct. If MSFT buys Andover, you could bet that most of the Slashdot reader base would defect to another (clone) service. The same thing would likely happen, albiet to a slightly smaller degree if AOL were to buy Andover.
BTW, who does own Andover? Is it publically traded?
It is not at all surprising that Jonathan Littman is behind such a clueful article. He seems to be a really first rate journalist/author.
Not really, it sounds like it is delinquent 'paying customers' who are causing the problems. It doesn't say at all what percentage of those paying customers are Linux users.
If they find that current laws do not apply, then perhaps they do need additional regs
When was the last time that they didn't think they needed a whole lot more regulation? Given the Clinton administration's recent call for extensive monitoring of the internet (and the outcry against it), there is little reason to believe this isn't just an excuse to start a big, sensationalized witch hunt to justify a lot of additional monitoring of the net, coupled with laws that add additional penalties for doing things that are already illegal, but on the internet. I can already see 'conspiracy to use the internet to do something-or-other'.
The problem is that it seems like anti-freedom politicians like Clinton and Gore seem to view 'free speech' in a far more limited way than most of us do. Their definition seems to be more like 'free, inoffensive, politically correct speech'.
If that stuff is illegal already, then why do we need to conduct an internet witch hunt and create a lot of new laws and regulations. How about enforcing the existing laws before we clog up the system with more?
This is the best thing I've seen here from Katz. He is clearly well within his element here (not over his head with technical issues) and his review definitely made me want to see the movie (which I wasn't all that interested in before).
Try posting some pro-M$ blather
Blather really should get moderated down. Now if someone posts something thoughtful and intelligent that is pro-MS and they get moderated down, then something is wrong. I don't see that happen much (people posting anything intelligent that is pro-MS, let alone it getting moderated down), and when it does happen, someone else will usually moderate it back up.
no one here owns MicroSloth stock
I certainly don't own any, but I'd bet there are quite a few people who read and even post on Slashdot that own Microsoft stock. And I'm not just talking AC's or obvious Microsoft apologists either.
As for your assertation that people aren't working as hard to get into the Linux box, I don't know if that is true. They are offering a real, tangible incentive (you get to keep the box if you get in). That is a pretty good reason. And unlike Microsoft, whom many wouldn't care to do debugging work for gratis, lots of people are happy to help out Linux developers.
About as seriously as someone who suggested an APC 1400 for enterprise-capable server protection
I didn't intend to suggest that particular model as the be-all-end-all of UPSs, I threw that out because it is a model I am familiar with, and it is sufficient to power a typical Wintel through at least a couple of hours of outages.
In this case something like an APC 1400 should have been more than adequate to have kept the server running since they didn't note any long term power outages or permanent hardware damage due to lightning. You can bet if they had legitimate hardware damage they would be holding that out as an excuse.
The fact that they didn't even seem to take basic, simple precautions that you would do even for a 'departmental server' in a case with such importance from a PR standpoint is the thing that I find most damning.
I just can't help but wonder if this server is sitting on some marketing droids desk somewhere in Redmond...
I saw it more as Microsoft trying to tap a little bit of the Bazzar for debugging Win2k
I saw it as Microsoft trying a publicity stunt, and getting out-maneuvered by the LinuxPPC guy.
I wish reporters would read the fsck'ing logs. The Win2K box crashed once (but it had reboots and service restarts).
I still wouldn't consider that acceptable for the small amount of time that server has been up. If Microsoft is going to issue a challenge, then they should have done their homework and had that server ready to handle anything conceivable including power outages and SYN flood attacks.
Once again, the anti-MS FUD spreads....
Oh please, the amount of MS favored (if not outright sponsored) FUD outweighs any anti-MS FUD by several orders of magnatude.
The double standard that the industry, Slashdot and the media has with Microsoft is sickening.
Yes, it is, the media is still far too biased towards Microsoft. And as long as Microsoft is one of the largest advertising dollar spenders, that probably won't change. What is (pleasantly) surprising is that there is still enough journalistic integrity out there that any news unfavorable to Microsoft ever gets reported.
Why can't we get back to doing what's important: improving people's lives through software/hardware?
I wish that Microsoft couldn't be described by replacing 'improving' with 'controling' above.
Linux has improved my life, my life would be greatly improved if I didn't ever have to deal with the agony resulting from Microsoft software. I've managed to get rid of most of it, but I still occasionally have to deal with it at work.
Does Microsoft expect us to believe their server was down due to power outages? Haven't they ever heard of a UPS? Microsoft certainly can't claim they can't afford to put something nice like an APC 1400 on a server.
Does Microsoft really expect us to take them seriously as an enterprise-capable vendor if they would consider putting up a publicly accessable web server (even for a test) without putting it on a UPS?
Seems like some pretty lame attempts at PR spin to me. With what Microsoft pays for advertising and PR, they can certainly do better.
Ive had several problems with main boards based on via chipsets...
I've never had any problems with VIA based motherboards. I ran into more problems with VX and TX based Intel Socket5/7 chipset motherboards than anything else.
ranging from just bad drivers
I am assuming MS-DOS/Windows drivers. I wouldn't know anything about that, as I don't have either of those on any of my boxes. If you look at the hardware review pages, you'd see that even motherboards using the same basic chipsets can be drastically different in terms of performance and reliability. VIA isn't responsible if a motherboard vendor does a lousy job of designing a motherboard around their chipset. You also shouldn't necessarily blame things like bad CM640 IDE chips which were on many motherboards a couple years ago on VIA, just because they made the main chipset.
to periphreals not functioning correctly. Yes perhaps I have not had enough experience with via to make it a good one...but what I have had has left a bad taste in my mouth.
A lot of complaints I've seen about bad motherboards and/or chipsets are caused by things like bad memory, or on overly agressive BIOS settings. Or overclocking, which is a gamble in general.
Cyrix...too little, too late...
Just because Cyrix isn't the fastest doesn't mean they aren't acceptable for a lot of people. Frankly, a lot of people would be better served spending less on their CPU and putting the money they save there into memory.
Im sorry...but I will not say anything good about the winchip.
Nobody expects you to. I just don't see any point in saying unfounded bad things about them. It is O.K. to say they are weak performers, but if you do, you should give some reasons why you think so.
Unfortunately your strongest arguement does nothing to sway me.
Fine, but perhaps they will make someone else not just outright ignore Intel competitors just because people have badmouthed them. If other people have the same interests as you, then your opinion is probably a valid one for them to consider. If their needs aren't the same as yours, then they should look elsewhere.
No matter how cheap a product is...if it does not perform it is most certainly not worth buying.
The thing is that different people have different standards on whether something performs or not.
(I think you can guess on my opinion of thier performance).
The Winchip wasn't intended for game kiddies, but it is more than adequate for running general office automation software (word processing, light spreadsheets, etc). I probably wouldn't consider it for a serious workstation, but if I was building a machine for a secretary, it would be an excellent choice.
Early 6x86 chips (pre L version) had overheating problems. Later production ones don't seem to have those problems. Cyrix's 486 processors didn't have overheating problems either. The only programs I have heard of that don't work with Cyrix processors are games running under a Microsoft OS. Cyrix processors seem to be perfectly competible with Linux or *BSD.
Now, I personally prefer AMD, but for a certain price/performance point, Cyrix is a valid choice for a lot of people.
What do you have against VIA, Cyrix and IDT? I haven't ever bought anything that I know of from IDT, but I've always been happy with products I have from Cyrix and VIA. VIA is one of the few motherboard chipset alternatives to Intel (other than Acer Labs and SiS). Cyrix used to make the best 387 coprocessors, and while their x86 chips were never really top performers, their price/performance ratio was always fairly attractive and they in general filled a niche that Intel chose not to serve.
Given Intel's market stranglehold, I see no reason to be antagonistic to any of their competitors, even if you prefer to buy Intel's products, VIA, Cyrix, and IDT have been part of what has forced Intel to lower prices and increase performance faster. Given that, I fail to see a coherent reason for your hatred.
[ side-note: the Linus Torvalds interview along with followup comments were once available on Slashdot. However, shortly after their appearance, Rob Malda erased the article and comments because they were too
forthright and honest for a timid audience.]
I don't think that Rob is likely to censor something for those kind of reasons. I also don't think Slashdot is a 'timid audience'. These sorts of accusations always seem to be made by faceless anonymous cowards with no backing. Worse than that, it always seems like they are the people giving the sob story about how they are oppressed by some mythic 'Slashdot Linux-zealot mob'. Slashdot isn't perfect, and it certainly isn't unbiased, but at least its biases are right upfront. Despite all the boo-hooing that some do about the moderation system, it seems to be working pretty well. I have to wonder if all of the Microsoft appologists are just sore because there is a forum which Bill can't just buy favorable treatment in through advertising dollars and where astroturfing is exposed almost immediately.
Mindshare is also a reason that Microsoft would likely do a *BSD based OS than Linux. They wouldn't really want to support/market another OS because they wanted it to succeed to the point of challenging their proprietary OSes. What they would want to do is splinter the open source OS market. By putting their eggs in the *BSD market they would divert a lot of mindshare away from Linux in a 'divide and conquer' sort of way. If they did a Linux distribution, then they would only add to the Linux mindshare.
The *BSD license is also much more friendly to proprietary OS vendors (like Apple -- but also traditionally a lot of the commercial *nixes were either *BSD based (SunOS 4.x and older, Ultrix, etc) or contained a number of "Berkeley enhancements" (just about everyone else).
Personally I think it is unlikely that either will happen anytime in the near future.
Only a Windows head would complain about too much choice. Its like complaining that there are too many brands of cars, and if someone was used to a Ford, they would be completely in shock if they had to drive a Toyota. Sure, some controls will be in slightly different places, and look a little different, but in a few minutes anyone with half a brain will have adjusted. I move back and forth between several different GUIs on completely different platforms every day, and its not a big deal. The only one I find really limiting is Windows. As for mixing KDE and Gnome apps, there is work in progress to make themability interchangeable between them, so your arguments may not hold any water at all in the future.
But NTFS is faster,
I've not seen this to be true at all. Perhaps under such cooked up benchmarks as Mindcraft's, but in the real world, NTFS doesn't appear to be particularly an impressive performer.
has much better recoverability.
Perhaps in theory, but in practice, I've not experienced this to be true. I've lost more data on NTFS than on ext2. Despite claims that NTFS is journaling, I've seen it take a considerable time doing 'file system checks' at boot time, which I've not seen on such journaling file systems as AIX's.
Generally Linux filesystem is one of the worst parts of whole OS.
While Linux's file system could still use some work (and it is already in progress), ext2 is already pretty good. I trust it a lot more than I do NTFS.
There seems to be an assumption in the computer business that there has to be one winner. It just isn't so. Despite that some people (typically the PHB types) think it is desireable to not have any choice (because they fear making decisions), it is not. Choice is good. Markets can't be viable in the long run without competition. Any time that one vendor controls more than about 40% of a market, the whole market suffers.
For me, Linux has already won. It works, it works well. I can work happily without going to something else. I don't begrudge *BSD, MacOS or BeOS or for that matter anything other than Microsoft from some market share. I'd be happy if the *BSD's saw increased popularity, MacOS was resurgeant and BeOS carved out a viable niche for itself. I don't even know if it is desireable for Microsoft to be completely wiped out (although occasionally that desire pops into my head). I'd be happy if they were beat down under 50% of the market so there were mainstream viable choices.
I just installed FreeBSD 3.1 on one of my boxes. I've been running Linux since 0.99pl7 (Yggdrasil BETA). So far I am not all that impressed. The installer isn't as nice as most of the current Linux distributions I've used (Red Hat, SuSE, Caldera), and the hardware support (especially at install time) doesn't seem to be as extensive as Linux. Things like network card setup are not as automated as they are under Linux.
All of this doesn't matter as much to me, since I am an old-timer and installing things from source doesn't scare me... But from what I've seen a lot of the FUD things I've seen about Linux that aren't true any more are still true of FreeBSD. It appears the *BSD's are much more by-hacker-for-hacker than Linux is these days. This is good and bad, of course. At any rate, it is certainly nice to have more choices. But I would be hessitant at this point to suggest FreeBSD as an alternative to Linux for the less technically inclined.
One that supports links, isn't plagued by the archaic and irritating 'drive letter' scheme and that doesn't do funky things with mixed case filenames.
NTFS is saddled with major annoyances in order to make it be able to coexist with regular Windows (and even MS-DOS) applications.
You are supposed to pay sales tax on everything anyway - if you order from other states and do not pay it, you need to pay it when you do your state taxes at the end of the year.
That depends on what state you live in. Some states (Texas, South Dakota and Nevada for instance) have no 'state taxes'.
I know that where I live there is no mechanism in place to pay such taxes for private individuals (although I believe there is something called a 'use tax' for businesses). At any rate, nobody that I know of pays sales tax on interstate mail order.