My advice is to avoid buying from Dell UK unless you can get by with out _any_ technical support. They are really, really bad.
My Dad bought a laptop from them (at my recomendation to my eternal shame) and it came without the restore disk we requested. The disk appeared on the email order confirmation but not on the hardcopy invoice that arrived with the PC.
To cut a long story short, after 5 attempts to get the disk sent to us including a conversation with one of the "customer care" managers, we still have no disk. Being bounced around between about 50 people and then cut off is the plot of the average call. They are useless.
Its been so much hasle that we have given up.
On the otherhand, if you never need to speak to them, their laptops are excellent.:o)
And thank god someone did fork Smoothwall! They have been playing fast and loose with the GPL from the start and their attitude to the community is shocking. Use IPCop guys.
Guys... This was posted on LWN 2 days ago. Anyone who has not read it already is probably not an LWN reader anyway and so probably not interested. Why report this now?
On a brighter note... If you like LWN then give them some of your hard earned money to help them continue their excellent service to the community!
OpenOffice includes support for Java but it is most certainly _not_ Java based.
Anyone who has not used OpenOffice really should take a look. IMHO is is a viable replacement to Microsoft Office at home while Star Office (based on OpenOffice) is a viable replacement for Microsoft Office at work.
Wish good luck to the OpenOffice guys and take a bit of time to wish Sun good luck with Star Office too.
He would turn them down just like he would turn down jobs from any major commercial player in the GNU/Linux community to avoid giving them an unfair advantage.
I don't think he would work for hardware companies like AMD, Intel and VIA either for the same reason: people might think that the stuff manufactured by the company he was working for was "better" for GNU/Linux.
He's quite a principled bloke and I think he can afford to be choosy.:o)
It would be a good idea if several of the commercial companies pushing GNU/Linux got together and chipped in a bit each month to keep him working on Linux.
Java is always going to be more portable than anything involving C# and.NET. Microsoft are not creating these technologies for the good of the community. While Sun may well not be in it for the good of the community either, their intentions seem less evil and they are pro Unix (and pro Linux to some extent).
While I am a GNOME user at present I will be moving back to KDE when this stuff makes its way into GNOME proper. I imagine many people will do the same.
Previously you could run "./setup -net" under linux to install a shared copy of the binaries to somewhere like "/opt/OpenOffice". This does not seem to work now as the permissions appear to be incorrect after the installation.
The FreeBSD server that was originally hosting the site is still up. If you look at the Netcraft page here you can see the IP address of the new Win2K server is 130.94.214.143 where as the IP of the FreeBSD one is 198.63.57.204. Both are working at the moment though I doubt this will be the case for many more hours.
Someone also suggested earlier that the domain was being transfered from a hosting service to MS but you can see that the IPs are both in Verio's netblock so thats not the case. My guess would be that MS/Unisys saw/were told what was being used to host the site and said they wanted it moved to a Win2K box. We've just experienced the delay as the DNS updates.
How long until they get hacked then? A high profile campaign like this is bound to bring out all the kiddies and some of the not-so-kiddies. Maybe we should have a sweekstake?:-)
Looks like they should consider designing good webpages first. The big tables make the text scroll of the right side of the page for me. Really annoying.
Correct me if I'm wrong but CIFS (Common Internet File System?) is SMB (Server Message Block).
Things are deliberately changed by Microsoft to disrupt non-Microsoft projects such as Samba. Granted the basic SMB stuff is the same but they do like to break the domain and roaming profiles stuff every now and then. Windows2K SP2 contained a specific change that enabled roaming profiles to be downloaded successfully from Microsoft servers but not from a Samba server acting as a PDC (Primary Domain Controller).
Their main weapon is undocumented API's that they can change to their hearts content because no one knows about them (unless they have done some reverse engineering). These secret API's give Microsoft the stranglehold that they have.
Many of the attacks on Marcello here are silly. Try answering an interview in French or something and I bet your answers are short and not particularly sweet.
On the other hand I am not sure Marcello was the correct choice for 2.4 maintainer (no offense intended... read on). In my opinion Alan should have handed the relatively mature codebase that is 2.2 on to Marcello so he could get to grips with maintaining something that is already pretty mature. Giving him 2.4 is kinda throwing him in at the deep end because we all know it has a long way to go before it is what it could be. Also, with 2.4, SGI, IBM and all the others will be hounding him with patches that they want in the kernel, this would have been less of a problem with 2.2.
However... I love to be proved wrong.:-) Good luck Marcello!
(PS: I think the biggest complement a maintainer can get is to be told that you want him to maintain the next kernel release too. Thanks Alan.)
OK... Windows is where most of the gaming action is at the moment. I don't think anyone can argue with that. If you are building a box for gaming, you put Windows98 on it and woop dee doo. It crashes a lot but it doesn't really matter because you're only playing a game and you can reload from your previous save game. Annoying but not too bad. Microsofts slogan for windows should be - "Windows98 - crashes loads but runs games really well. HONEST.".
Pinning the development of their game engine to DirectX is really dumb though. Look. Microsoft have just been found guilty of loads of shit. Nobody trusts them. They are the most self-serving company ever to walk the earths surface. The really anoying thing is they take advantage of people who don't know much about PC's and claim everything they do is for the good of the PC industry. Does this Unreal guy really believe that Microsoft has created windows out of the goodness of Bill's heart? This is bollocks. He did it to make money. This whole Kerbos thing is a disgrace as well. I really can't believe that they have so blatantly ripped off something and fixed it to their advantage. Will they ever learn?
By pinning themselves to DirectX the writers of Unreal are in danger of finding themselves going down with a sinking ship. Microsoft may be big but their market share is shrinking. That.plan was quite strong in Microsofts favour wasn't it? Maybe Mr Gates is interested in bundling Unreal with the XBox (or whatever name it has this week). Money talks and the amount of money Microsoft has to offer talks very LOUD.
I would be very interested in hearing from 3D games developers about which is really better/nicer D3D or OpenGL. As a user I love OpenGL. Somehow it seems to offer smoother graphics. Does this make any sense? Also, OpenGL has never fucked my system with a VERY big stick. New versions of DirectX used to do this on a regular basis.
Long live OpenGL (come on guys... new version please!)
What? Quit posting as anon coward if you have anything useful to say.
What do you mean clay models and stereotypes? Gates is the most sucessful software engineer of all time. I know he is a stereotype but he illustrated my point nicely thank you.
Isn't taking open source stuff and incorporating it in a closed source product violating the GPL? Don't you have to release the code if you use any GPL'd software? I know not all OSS is GPL'd but I'd bet a lot of the useful stuff is.
I think it kind of does because bugs get fixed quicker so they can be incorporated in the next release. How many patches, service packs, etc do you have to apply to WinNT4 server and IIS4 before they are secure enough to use?
The only fundamental change to windows in the last 5 years has been the appreance on Win2000. Win95 was still mostly 16bit and contained large parts of Win3.1. And what about the step from win95 to win98? That was tiny but it was billed as a whole new OS.
Maybe I should have said look how much more Linux has evolved in the past 5 years than Windows has in the same time.
I was about to say that the techie's becoming suits would be a good thing because they would understand good code when they saw it and recognise bloat when it occured. Then I thought of Mr Gates, who is basically a techie gone suit, and realise I was completely wrong.... Bugger.
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My advice is to avoid buying from Dell UK unless you can get by with out _any_ technical support. They are really, really bad.
:o)
My Dad bought a laptop from them (at my recomendation to my eternal shame) and it came without the restore disk we requested. The disk appeared on the email order confirmation but not on the hardcopy invoice that arrived with the PC.
To cut a long story short, after 5 attempts to get the disk sent to us including a conversation with one of the "customer care" managers, we still have no disk. Being bounced around between about 50 people and then cut off is the plot of the average call. They are useless.
Its been so much hasle that we have given up.
On the otherhand, if you never need to speak to them, their laptops are excellent.
And thank god someone did fork Smoothwall! They have been playing fast and loose with the GPL from the start and their attitude to the community is shocking. Use IPCop guys.
What about USB2 under Mac OS X?
Guys... This was posted on LWN 2 days ago. Anyone who has not read it already is probably not an LWN reader anyway and so probably not interested. Why report this now?
On a brighter note... If you like LWN then give them some of your hard earned money to help them continue their excellent service to the community!
Thanks.
Errr... No.
OpenOffice includes support for Java but it is most certainly _not_ Java based.
Anyone who has not used OpenOffice really should take a look. IMHO is is a viable replacement to Microsoft Office at home while Star Office (based on OpenOffice) is a viable replacement for Microsoft Office at work.
Wish good luck to the OpenOffice guys and take a bit of time to wish Sun good luck with Star Office too.
Thanks.
He would turn them down just like he would turn down jobs from any major commercial player in the GNU/Linux community to avoid giving them an unfair advantage.
:o)
I don't think he would work for hardware companies like AMD, Intel and VIA either for the same reason: people might think that the stuff manufactured by the company he was working for was "better" for GNU/Linux.
He's quite a principled bloke and I think he can afford to be choosy.
It would be a good idea if several of the commercial companies pushing GNU/Linux got together and chipped in a bit each month to keep him working on Linux.
Java is always going to be more portable than anything involving C# and .NET. Microsoft are not creating these technologies for the good of the community. While Sun may well not be in it for the good of the community either, their intentions seem less evil and they are pro Unix (and pro Linux to some extent).
While I am a GNOME user at present I will be moving back to KDE when this stuff makes its way into GNOME proper. I imagine many people will do the same.
Previously you could run "./setup -net" under linux to install a shared copy of the binaries to somewhere like "/opt/OpenOffice". This does not seem to work now as the permissions appear to be incorrect after the installation.
Am I missing something or is it bust?
"This is great news, but what am I going to do with the extra hour or so a day?"
Extra hour a day?! So... Err... You're a windows user, right?
Yeah, yeah... I know.
Sweepstake.
Damn.
The FreeBSD server that was originally hosting the site is still up. If you look at the Netcraft page here you can see the IP address of the new Win2K server is 130.94.214.143 where as the IP of the FreeBSD one is 198.63.57.204. Both are working at the moment though I doubt this will be the case for many more hours.
Someone also suggested earlier that the domain was being transfered from a hosting service to MS but you can see that the IPs are both in Verio's netblock so thats not the case. My guess would be that MS/Unisys saw/were told what was being used to host the site and said they wanted it moved to a Win2K box. We've just experienced the delay as the DNS updates.
How long until they get hacked then? A high profile campaign like this is bound to bring out all the kiddies and some of the not-so-kiddies. Maybe we should have a sweekstake? :-)
Cheers...
Looks like they should consider designing good webpages first. The big tables make the text scroll of the right side of the page for me. Really annoying.
Just thought I would add my voice to the din to wish you both well for the future.
;-)
If I did something like this my girlfriend would run a mile so you must be on to something.
Good luck.
Correct me if I'm wrong but CIFS (Common Internet File System?) is SMB (Server Message Block).
Things are deliberately changed by Microsoft to disrupt non-Microsoft projects such as Samba. Granted the basic SMB stuff is the same but they do like to break the domain and roaming profiles stuff every now and then. Windows2K SP2 contained a specific change that enabled roaming profiles to be downloaded successfully from Microsoft servers but not from a Samba server acting as a PDC (Primary Domain Controller).
Their main weapon is undocumented API's that they can change to their hearts content because no one knows about them (unless they have done some reverse engineering). These secret API's give Microsoft the stranglehold that they have.
Thanks.
Many of the attacks on Marcello here are silly. Try answering an interview in French or something and I bet your answers are short and not particularly sweet.
:-) Good luck Marcello!
On the other hand I am not sure Marcello was the correct choice for 2.4 maintainer (no offense intended... read on). In my opinion Alan should have handed the relatively mature codebase that is 2.2 on to Marcello so he could get to grips with maintaining something that is already pretty mature. Giving him 2.4 is kinda throwing him in at the deep end because we all know it has a long way to go before it is what it could be. Also, with 2.4, SGI, IBM and all the others will be hounding him with patches that they want in the kernel, this would have been less of a problem with 2.2.
However... I love to be proved wrong.
(PS: I think the biggest complement a maintainer can get is to be told that you want him to maintain the next kernel release too. Thanks Alan.)
What fuckwit marked this as flaimbait?
I have a cell phone and... err... I forget what my point was.
OK... Windows is where most of the gaming action is at the moment. I don't think anyone can argue with that. If you are building a box for gaming, you put Windows98 on it and woop dee doo. It crashes a lot but it doesn't really matter because you're only playing a game and you can reload from your previous save game. Annoying but not too bad. Microsofts slogan for windows should be - "Windows98 - crashes loads but runs games really well. HONEST.".
.plan was quite strong in Microsofts favour wasn't it? Maybe Mr Gates is interested in bundling Unreal with the XBox (or whatever name it has this week). Money talks and the amount of money Microsoft has to offer talks very LOUD.
Pinning the development of their game engine to DirectX is really dumb though. Look. Microsoft have just been found guilty of loads of shit. Nobody trusts them. They are the most self-serving company ever to walk the earths surface. The really anoying thing is they take advantage of people who don't know much about PC's and claim everything they do is for the good of the PC industry. Does this Unreal guy really believe that Microsoft has created windows out of the goodness of Bill's heart? This is bollocks. He did it to make money. This whole Kerbos thing is a disgrace as well. I really can't believe that they have so blatantly ripped off something and fixed it to their advantage. Will they ever learn?
By pinning themselves to DirectX the writers of Unreal are in danger of finding themselves going down with a sinking ship. Microsoft may be big but their market share is shrinking. That
I would be very interested in hearing from 3D games developers about which is really better/nicer D3D or OpenGL. As a user I love OpenGL. Somehow it seems to offer smoother graphics. Does this make any sense? Also, OpenGL has never fucked my system with a VERY big stick. New versions of DirectX used to do this on a regular basis.
Long live OpenGL (come on guys... new version please!)
Bit of a rant. Sorry.
Guess I kind of misunderstood the "use" bit.
Thanks.
What? Quit posting as anon coward if you have anything useful to say.
What do you mean clay models and stereotypes? Gates is the most sucessful software engineer of all time. I know he is a stereotype but he illustrated my point nicely thank you.
Isn't taking open source stuff and incorporating it in a closed source product violating the GPL? Don't you have to release the code if you use any GPL'd software? I know not all OSS is GPL'd but I'd bet a lot of the useful stuff is.
Thats a comment with no grounds in reality.
For a start I could not afford UNIX in 1989 and Linux is free.
I think it kind of does because bugs get fixed quicker so they can be incorporated in the next release. How many patches, service packs, etc do you have to apply to WinNT4 server and IIS4 before they are secure enough to use?
The only fundamental change to windows in the last 5 years has been the appreance on Win2000. Win95 was still mostly 16bit and contained large parts of Win3.1. And what about the step from win95 to win98? That was tiny but it was billed as a whole new OS.
Maybe I should have said look how much more Linux has evolved in the past 5 years than Windows has in the same time.
I was about to say that the techie's becoming suits would be a good thing because they would understand good code when they saw it and recognise bloat when it occured. Then I thought of Mr Gates, who is basically a techie gone suit, and realise I was completely wrong.... Bugger.