I understand that the U.S. vs. Microsoft case is still far from over, but Microsoft seems to be very arrogant here.
The recent rulings (in the past year) have been very much against Microsoft - and it would appear that Microsoft is in desperate need for a successful appeal. One of the main points of this case was that Windows was unfairly bundling IE with Windows - but now they've added a media player, cd burner, and instant messenger. No wonder XP requires a minimum of 128 MB of RAM.
Microsoft isn't looking to appease the government and survive - they're arrogantly pursuing their desire to dominate every major software type - OS, office package, media player, cd burner, browser, mail, and messenging - by far the most common applications used today. I can't imagine how these moves will help Microsoft in their court case.
Also, if XP is like the installations of 2000 I've done, it won't give you any options as to what components can and can not be installed (but hey, maybe I did something wrong). I also wonder of OEMs could choose to remove these packages from their computers before selling them.
Well, I guess it didn't work out as I had hoped.
on
Eazel Come, Eazel Go?
·
· Score: 3
I was really hoping that Eazel would be bought out for a bargain by some big name - IBM, HP, Red Hat, other another large distro company. Linux does need a top-notch file manager - and Nautilus showed promise (but from reports I've heard it wasn't quite there yet).
Unfortunately, as others have said, they had insufficient profit-making plans. As I browse through their web site, most desirable software and services are completely free (including free online storage space). This is obviously not the type of company that can survive on its own.
Instead, this company was creating a potentially essential project to many new and experienced Linux users (those willing to use a GUI at times instead of console). The companies to gain from this software are the Linux distributions themselves, because an excellent file manager is needed to help new *nix users get used to a non-Windows OS. Unfortunately, it would seem that the companies I hoped would take up the Eazel cause at a loss (the gain would be to help the parent project, not to make money as a branch division) did not. I would imagine that Eazel could have sold for quite a bargain - relatively (judging by the VC they used up, $11 million).
Perhaps this isn't true, or perhaps there's still time for some big company to step in and take up the development (after all, it is GPL, but it'd be nice to have the original dedicated developers too).
If a company fails to sponser this, it will only be a small amount of time before the open source volunteers take charge. We'll see what happens.
This is, of course, assuming the information is true.
As a non-Caldera Linux user, I'm curious to know for what contributions to the Linux community Caldera is directly responsible. I'm sure they have a whole host of server and desktop applications bundled with their distro, but would this shift in license preference affect the software we commonly use? The article wasn't helpful in mentioning how this would affect any software of any type developed by Caldera.
Draw a graph, label the left side "Quantity Demanded", label the bottom "Price". Draw a straight horizontal line across somewhere above the horizontal axis. This is what I was describing (my apologies if it wasn't clear). As price changes, quantity demanded does not. This is what I believe is the case around the $0.25-0.75 price range.
As someone pointed out, "inelastic demand" was the term I was looking for - it's been a little while since I've had an Econ class, forgot about that term until now.
I'm not a bit surprised to read about this surplus of CD-Rs - I wondered how they became so cheap between 1999-2000. This tripled price of CD-Rs probably won't affect quantity demanded much.
As a side note, too many people who've never learned economics confuse demand with quantity demanded Demand of these CD-Rs will remain the same if the only factor that changes is the price - the demand curve simply determines how many CD-Rs will be purchased at a given price. My personal opinion is that the demand curve is rather flat (on a quantity vs price graph) around the current price range.
Prices may double, triple, whatever, but I still find a 50 CD-R spindle at $15-25 a bargain. Besides, shouldn't we be saving plastic and backing up on CD-RW anyway? According to the article, CD-RW prices will remain stable - perhaps CD-RWs will become even more common in a year.
My laptop is a P150 with 48 megs of RAM. I run WindowMaker (not with GNOME, not with KDE). KDE 2.1.1 was so slow it was unusable - thought Konqueror does load faster under KDE than Netscape does (obviously because the libraries and widgets are already loaded, kinda like IE in Windows). GNOME (1.2) runs at a decent pace, but it still seems lagging (when I'm used to the responsiveness of a 700 Mhz computer w/ 196 megs of RAM as my primary). WindowMaker, by contrast, runs very, very quickly and responsively.
I only use a few non-console programs under X on my laptop, so WindowMaker is ideal. Basically XEmacs, Netscape, and the Gimp are the three biggest X applications I run.
Like I've said before - my experiences may be different that the average user. If I was running Linux on my primary desktop (I'm not because of a long list of necessary proprietary programs), I would be running KDE 2 with Konqueror as my primary browser, in all likelihood. But, I look to Linux as a primary development platform (with XEmacs), and my server operating system (I own one Linux server and maintain 4 Cobalts).
I just tried Mozilla 0.9 under Windows on my 700 Mhz machine - it's quickly approaching the point at which I can switch from my standby Netscape 4.76.
From reading the other posts, though, it would appear that my good experience with Netscape in both Linux and Windows is a rare thing to encounter. The only stability problem I've had with Netscape 4.7x is under Windows 2000, but Win9x works great (1 crash per week on average, like I said).
FYI: I used Linux as my primary operating system for about 8 hours a day for 9 months, using Netscape 4.7x the entire time. Yes, it crashed, but only about once a week.
I still use Netscape under Linux EVERY DAY on two different Linux machines, and it crashes no more or less than IE or Konqueror. Also, Netscape under Linux is the only close-to-fully-featured browser that can run on older pentiums (like my laptop) with any sort of usability. It's not perfect, and it does crash on occasion - but it's still very usuable. I can't speak for other ports of Netscape, only Linux and Windows.
Perhaps my experience on 4 separate Linux boxes is unique, but besides clunky widgets, it's a very viable browser for me.
Yes, even with Konqueror Netscape is still useful? Why? Older computers can't run KDE 2.1 worth a crap (trust me, it's horrible), and many of us prefer the GNOME/GTK environment and would rather not load up the whole host of kde libraries just for konqueror. I would agree that someone running KDE 2.x has no reason to use Netscape, but even my short experience with Konqueror produced more crashes than I normally receive with Netscape.
Perhaps you should consider that having a different experience with a program under an OS is different than having little experience.
I still use a few computers with Windows (including my main home computer). 2 of the 4 computers I own run Linux (including one small server), and my laptop (old) dual-boots.
Konqueror seems nice, but it's (obviously) not available for win32.
I don't particularly like how Internet Explorer renders pages (seems choppy, jerks while rendering tables and images without prespecified sizes), so I only use it under MacOS. Netscape 6 is far too slow and unstable to be used seriously (yes, I know it's based off of Mozilla, but they really messed with it before releasing it).
So what do I do? I end up using Netscape 4.76 on almost all computers, Linux included. It's reasonably fast, mostly stable (except in win2000 is seems), and actually renders nicely (IMO). I've tried recent milestones of Mozilla (not including this one), and it seems to have a fair amount of potential - but still is kinda slow for a browser (probably 'cause it's not built into the OS =). Also, their development seems to be taking a whole lot longer than applications like Konqueror, but perhaps in the end Mozilla will set the standard for high-quality browsers.
I'm off to try out this milestone to see how it runs, and maybe begin to replace my almost-obsolete Netscape 4.76. Good luck to the Mozilla team.
First - I share the belief with some others that this story is fake, considering the source. However, if it is true, then I think his chances of survival are tiny.
That said, I think it'd be incredibly interesting to browse through a detailed website showing how he came up with his ideas, what he used to make it, and how and with whom he built it. I want to see pictures of this thing. I'd love to see pictures/video of it blast off (assuming this is all real, of course).
Also, if he had that $250k back in 1990, he coulda easily made $20 million by 1999 with it (with stocks like Cisco and Dell). Then he'd have had a nice cozy ride with cosmonauts for 6 days like our buddy Tito. Then again, he makes toys for a living, he's not your average businessman (his loss).
Sooner or later, a big company (like Sony) would inevitably test the merit of the GPL license in court. The outcome of such a case will decide the future of GPL and significantly affect the Open Source community.
First step here is to make a fuss about this. Yes, I'm serious. Not here on Slashdot, but get reporters from AP and the Wall Street Journal (among others) so that Sony will actually care about their reputation.
If we really care about the GPL, we can't let Sony set this illegal precedant.
I wasn't referring to the writeup, I was referring to the inevitable flamers who decide that as soon as they read Microsoft in a story they prepare their posts.
Ok, so there's a major security flaw with Windows 2000 server computers running IIS 5.0 because this ISAPI extension is installed by default. A patch is already available, and for those who don't want to patch (why the hell not?), they can simply remove the extension.
Yes, this seems to be a really nasty hole, but it doesn't appear as if it's been exploited (yet, of course). Microsoft did release a patch and didn't try to play down its importance (so it seems to me). Those of us in the *nix community have had our share of root exploits in various daemons, so they crop up in even our most favorite software.
There is no reason to be blindly insulting MS or promoting the secureness of Open Source programs. Large, complex programs are subject to buffer overruns.
If you have a Win 2000 server or know someone that does, just get the patch. Simple as that.
This website only drives in the same point again. Commercial companies will continue to struggle to be close to successful with ad-based revenue sources. I'm of the opinion that the most enduring gaming sites will be those hosted by fans - without the need to make a profit. Sure, they may not have the resources or the sneak previews that commercial sites can get - but these web site developers are dedicated to their sites for the mere enjoyment of putting out good, informed information about the games they love.
Advertising is a great way for sites to help recoup the costs of hosting, but definately not paying the salaries of dozens of employees (with a few exceptions, obviously). I count 34 employees on their website. Even if many of them were part time, that's a lot of money simply in payroll.
In the end, this model may work for a very few popular commercial businesses (Yahoo, for example), but most of these websites will either be bought out or go out of business. The best thing is for a decent website to be bought out by a decent non-online company. This way, the parent company can afford to lose some money on the child company as long as it helps branding (thus making the child company an advertising expense). Granted, the Go Network isn't my favorite search engine/portal, but they do seem to have survived ok after being purchased by Disney.
That is not an observation, that is an opinion. In case you're unfamiliar with our friend the scientific method, here would be an appropriate observation:
Observation: you are an hourly employee sometimes asked to be on-call.
Advice: try to eliminate on call hours, switch to decent salary position, or leave job.
Posting early without being informed and checking up on something before you shout out "error!" is a mistake. Incorrect information is no uncommon on Slashdot, but download speeds and things of this nature are well known among those of us blessed with nice internet connections.
Losing karma is not the worst thing that can happen on Slashdot, looking foolish is (yes, I've done it myself enough).
These guys in the end are doing these companies a service by exposing blatant security holes and embarrassing them. However, they're also itching for a lawsuit. I know most people on/. don't see anything wrong with non-damaging probes on networks, but a law doesn't even have to be violated to win a lawsuit. Any one of these companies (especially the bigger ones) could perhaps win a lawsuit against these guys for using (stealing) their network resources without permission.
However, I believe three major things will keep most companies from prosecuting these guys.
1.) They are embarrassed enough already, and a court case will only embarrass a computer company more (Sun with an insecure network, that looks real good).
2. A lot of Silicon Valley comapnies are running out of cash.
3. The only thing the companies have to gain is deterring others from pulling the same stunt (and tattling about it later).
True, I know that KDE and GNOME run a variety of platforms. However, on ALMOST all of the platforms, XFree86 is being used - on almost all versions of Linux and *BSD. As for everyone calling out "code bloat", I never said that they needed to be part of the main install, but I think that RedHat and others should be working hard to put KDE and GNOME compatible hardware configuration utilities on their distributions, and available for download for those of us running Linux with XFree86 (I'd say the majority, but I have no statistics).
Sounds like Ximian has a project started. Seems to me that Ximian is the best company out there right now looking to make Linux more easily installed and configured (KDE setup is horrible, while Ximian GNOME is a breeze). I just hope they can stay in business.
I just wish that GNOME and KDE would include XFree86 configuration utilities (like DrakConf for Mandrake does, only a bit cleaner). In addition, they should make a bigger deal of the latest version of linuxconf, which seems to be the most comprehensive hardware and service control. I still use netcfg by RedHat sometimes to set up Gateway and DNS info.
My point here is, these application sets (KDE and GNOME) have been focusing almost entirely on configuration utilities for the GUI. The GNOME and KDE control-panels are useful only for changing simple things like backgrounds, themes, and keyboard shortcuts. If I were new to Linux, I'd be looking to these control panels to modify my screen resolution, set up my network (and network hardware), set up my sound card (I still use sndconfig sometimes), and other devices. A new user expects all system configuration to be in one place, like the Windows control panel. This was my experience when I first started using Linux about two years ago, and I had to do a fair amount of searching to find all of these little useful utilities (as well as editing config files manually) - like netcfg, sndconfig, Xconfigurator, linuxconf, etc. If nothing else, GNOME and KDE should include links and info about how and what to use to do these things.
I may be incorrect on a few points and simply missed how KDE and/or GNOME handle a feature - in that case, I'd like to know. However, it's been my experience that GNOME and KDE can't be truly newbie-friendly without the ability to easily change hardware (and service) settings.
I've been using the 2.4 kernel on my laptop since the week it was released, and I've had no problems (to my recollection, at least) visiting any sites. Granted, I use Datek instead of E-trade =). Looks like the sites that have older equipment have been quickly updating though, and I see no reason to disable this forward-thinking ECN.
For purposes of my having a grasp on the cost, I converted the article's estimate of 10 billion British pounds to U.S. dollars - about $14.4 billion. Now, I wondered, how long would it take for the Chinese government (assuming they built it) to gain their investment back?
If I did my math correctly, in order to gain back the $14.4 billion out of 100,000 people through rent and other profitable businesses within the tower, they would need to reap about $120 in profits per month from each person for 10 years. I think such a goal is definatley possible, especially if the 10 year goal is extended to 20. Remember, that number is the amount of profit after all other expenses, maintainence, and bureaucratic costs have been paid.
This sort of project would truly show the world that China's 1.2 billion people and vast landscape truly have an incredible amount of power. From a technological standpoint, I'd love to see this thing built.
Slashdot Mirror
I understand that the U.S. vs. Microsoft case is still far from over, but Microsoft seems to be very arrogant here.
The recent rulings (in the past year) have been very much against Microsoft - and it would appear that Microsoft is in desperate need for a successful appeal. One of the main points of this case was that Windows was unfairly bundling IE with Windows - but now they've added a media player, cd burner, and instant messenger. No wonder XP requires a minimum of 128 MB of RAM.
Microsoft isn't looking to appease the government and survive - they're arrogantly pursuing their desire to dominate every major software type - OS, office package, media player, cd burner, browser, mail, and messenging - by far the most common applications used today. I can't imagine how these moves will help Microsoft in their court case.
Also, if XP is like the installations of 2000 I've done, it won't give you any options as to what components can and can not be installed (but hey, maybe I did something wrong). I also wonder of OEMs could choose to remove these packages from their computers before selling them.
I was really hoping that Eazel would be bought out for a bargain by some big name - IBM, HP, Red Hat, other another large distro company. Linux does need a top-notch file manager - and Nautilus showed promise (but from reports I've heard it wasn't quite there yet).
Unfortunately, as others have said, they had insufficient profit-making plans. As I browse through their web site, most desirable software and services are completely free (including free online storage space). This is obviously not the type of company that can survive on its own.
Instead, this company was creating a potentially essential project to many new and experienced Linux users (those willing to use a GUI at times instead of console). The companies to gain from this software are the Linux distributions themselves, because an excellent file manager is needed to help new *nix users get used to a non-Windows OS. Unfortunately, it would seem that the companies I hoped would take up the Eazel cause at a loss (the gain would be to help the parent project, not to make money as a branch division) did not. I would imagine that Eazel could have sold for quite a bargain - relatively (judging by the VC they used up, $11 million).
Perhaps this isn't true, or perhaps there's still time for some big company to step in and take up the development (after all, it is GPL, but it'd be nice to have the original dedicated developers too).
If a company fails to sponser this, it will only be a small amount of time before the open source volunteers take charge. We'll see what happens.
This is, of course, assuming the information is true.
As a non-Caldera Linux user, I'm curious to know for what contributions to the Linux community Caldera is directly responsible. I'm sure they have a whole host of server and desktop applications bundled with their distro, but would this shift in license preference affect the software we commonly use? The article wasn't helpful in mentioning how this would affect any software of any type developed by Caldera.
Well, no.
Draw a graph, label the left side "Quantity Demanded", label the bottom "Price". Draw a straight horizontal line across somewhere above the horizontal axis. This is what I was describing (my apologies if it wasn't clear). As price changes, quantity demanded does not. This is what I believe is the case around the $0.25-0.75 price range.
As someone pointed out, "inelastic demand" was the term I was looking for - it's been a little while since I've had an Econ class, forgot about that term until now.
I'm not a bit surprised to read about this surplus of CD-Rs - I wondered how they became so cheap between 1999-2000. This tripled price of CD-Rs probably won't affect quantity demanded much.
As a side note, too many people who've never learned economics confuse demand with quantity demanded Demand of these CD-Rs will remain the same if the only factor that changes is the price - the demand curve simply determines how many CD-Rs will be purchased at a given price. My personal opinion is that the demand curve is rather flat (on a quantity vs price graph) around the current price range.
Prices may double, triple, whatever, but I still find a 50 CD-R spindle at $15-25 a bargain. Besides, shouldn't we be saving plastic and backing up on CD-RW anyway? According to the article, CD-RW prices will remain stable - perhaps CD-RWs will become even more common in a year.
My laptop is a P150 with 48 megs of RAM. I run WindowMaker (not with GNOME, not with KDE). KDE 2.1.1 was so slow it was unusable - thought Konqueror does load faster under KDE than Netscape does (obviously because the libraries and widgets are already loaded, kinda like IE in Windows). GNOME (1.2) runs at a decent pace, but it still seems lagging (when I'm used to the responsiveness of a 700 Mhz computer w/ 196 megs of RAM as my primary). WindowMaker, by contrast, runs very, very quickly and responsively.
I only use a few non-console programs under X on my laptop, so WindowMaker is ideal. Basically XEmacs, Netscape, and the Gimp are the three biggest X applications I run.
Like I've said before - my experiences may be different that the average user. If I was running Linux on my primary desktop (I'm not because of a long list of necessary proprietary programs), I would be running KDE 2 with Konqueror as my primary browser, in all likelihood. But, I look to Linux as a primary development platform (with XEmacs), and my server operating system (I own one Linux server and maintain 4 Cobalts).
I just tried Mozilla 0.9 under Windows on my 700 Mhz machine - it's quickly approaching the point at which I can switch from my standby Netscape 4.76.
From reading the other posts, though, it would appear that my good experience with Netscape in both Linux and Windows is a rare thing to encounter. The only stability problem I've had with Netscape 4.7x is under Windows 2000, but Win9x works great (1 crash per week on average, like I said).
FYI: I used Linux as my primary operating system for about 8 hours a day for 9 months, using Netscape 4.7x the entire time. Yes, it crashed, but only about once a week.
I still use Netscape under Linux EVERY DAY on two different Linux machines, and it crashes no more or less than IE or Konqueror. Also, Netscape under Linux is the only close-to-fully-featured browser that can run on older pentiums (like my laptop) with any sort of usability. It's not perfect, and it does crash on occasion - but it's still very usuable. I can't speak for other ports of Netscape, only Linux and Windows.
Perhaps my experience on 4 separate Linux boxes is unique, but besides clunky widgets, it's a very viable browser for me.
Yes, even with Konqueror Netscape is still useful? Why? Older computers can't run KDE 2.1 worth a crap (trust me, it's horrible), and many of us prefer the GNOME/GTK environment and would rather not load up the whole host of kde libraries just for konqueror. I would agree that someone running KDE 2.x has no reason to use Netscape, but even my short experience with Konqueror produced more crashes than I normally receive with Netscape.
Perhaps you should consider that having a different experience with a program under an OS is different than having little experience.
I still use a few computers with Windows (including my main home computer). 2 of the 4 computers I own run Linux (including one small server), and my laptop (old) dual-boots.
Konqueror seems nice, but it's (obviously) not available for win32.
I don't particularly like how Internet Explorer renders pages (seems choppy, jerks while rendering tables and images without prespecified sizes), so I only use it under MacOS. Netscape 6 is far too slow and unstable to be used seriously (yes, I know it's based off of Mozilla, but they really messed with it before releasing it).
So what do I do? I end up using Netscape 4.76 on almost all computers, Linux included. It's reasonably fast, mostly stable (except in win2000 is seems), and actually renders nicely (IMO). I've tried recent milestones of Mozilla (not including this one), and it seems to have a fair amount of potential - but still is kinda slow for a browser (probably 'cause it's not built into the OS =). Also, their development seems to be taking a whole lot longer than applications like Konqueror, but perhaps in the end Mozilla will set the standard for high-quality browsers.
I'm off to try out this milestone to see how it runs, and maybe begin to replace my almost-obsolete Netscape 4.76. Good luck to the Mozilla team.
"Due to increased demands on Rocket Guy's time by the media the launch will be delayed until May 2002".
I guess the New York Post is just taking up soo much of his time.
Nevermind. I stand corrected (even though nobody flamed me, yet). Rocketguy has a website. Time to browse.
First - I share the belief with some others that this story is fake, considering the source. However, if it is true, then I think his chances of survival are tiny.
That said, I think it'd be incredibly interesting to browse through a detailed website showing how he came up with his ideas, what he used to make it, and how and with whom he built it. I want to see pictures of this thing. I'd love to see pictures/video of it blast off (assuming this is all real, of course).
Also, if he had that $250k back in 1990, he coulda easily made $20 million by 1999 with it (with stocks like Cisco and Dell). Then he'd have had a nice cozy ride with cosmonauts for 6 days like our buddy Tito. Then again, he makes toys for a living, he's not your average businessman (his loss).
Sooner or later, a big company (like Sony) would inevitably test the merit of the GPL license in court. The outcome of such a case will decide the future of GPL and significantly affect the Open Source community.
First step here is to make a fuss about this. Yes, I'm serious. Not here on Slashdot, but get reporters from AP and the Wall Street Journal (among others) so that Sony will actually care about their reputation.
If we really care about the GPL, we can't let Sony set this illegal precedant.
I wasn't referring to the writeup, I was referring to the inevitable flamers who decide that as soon as they read Microsoft in a story they prepare their posts.
Yes, hence my use of "yet, of course". Maybe this will encourage those lazy sys admins to download the patch.
Ok, so there's a major security flaw with Windows 2000 server computers running IIS 5.0 because this ISAPI extension is installed by default. A patch is already available, and for those who don't want to patch (why the hell not?), they can simply remove the extension.
Yes, this seems to be a really nasty hole, but it doesn't appear as if it's been exploited (yet, of course). Microsoft did release a patch and didn't try to play down its importance (so it seems to me). Those of us in the *nix community have had our share of root exploits in various daemons, so they crop up in even our most favorite software.
There is no reason to be blindly insulting MS or promoting the secureness of Open Source programs. Large, complex programs are subject to buffer overruns.
If you have a Win 2000 server or know someone that does, just get the patch. Simple as that.
This website only drives in the same point again. Commercial companies will continue to struggle to be close to successful with ad-based revenue sources. I'm of the opinion that the most enduring gaming sites will be those hosted by fans - without the need to make a profit. Sure, they may not have the resources or the sneak previews that commercial sites can get - but these web site developers are dedicated to their sites for the mere enjoyment of putting out good, informed information about the games they love.
Advertising is a great way for sites to help recoup the costs of hosting, but definately not paying the salaries of dozens of employees (with a few exceptions, obviously). I count 34 employees on their website. Even if many of them were part time, that's a lot of money simply in payroll.
In the end, this model may work for a very few popular commercial businesses (Yahoo, for example), but most of these websites will either be bought out or go out of business. The best thing is for a decent website to be bought out by a decent non-online company. This way, the parent company can afford to lose some money on the child company as long as it helps branding (thus making the child company an advertising expense). Granted, the Go Network isn't my favorite search engine/portal, but they do seem to have survived ok after being purchased by Disney.
That is not an observation, that is an opinion. In case you're unfamiliar with our friend the scientific method, here would be an appropriate observation:
Observation: you are an hourly employee sometimes asked to be on-call.
Advice: try to eliminate on call hours, switch to decent salary position, or leave job.
2001-04-26 17:24:54 Agenda (apparently) delays launch date (articles,news) (rejected)
oh well.
Posting early without being informed and checking up on something before you shout out "error!" is a mistake. Incorrect information is no uncommon on Slashdot, but download speeds and things of this nature are well known among those of us blessed with nice internet connections.
Losing karma is not the worst thing that can happen on Slashdot, looking foolish is (yes, I've done it myself enough).
These guys in the end are doing these companies a service by exposing blatant security holes and embarrassing them. However, they're also itching for a lawsuit. I know most people on /. don't see anything wrong with non-damaging probes on networks, but a law doesn't even have to be violated to win a lawsuit. Any one of these companies (especially the bigger ones) could perhaps win a lawsuit against these guys for using (stealing) their network resources without permission.
However, I believe three major things will keep most companies from prosecuting these guys.
1.) They are embarrassed enough already, and a court case will only embarrass a computer company more (Sun with an insecure network, that looks real good).
2. A lot of Silicon Valley comapnies are running out of cash.
3. The only thing the companies have to gain is deterring others from pulling the same stunt (and tattling about it later).
This really doesn't seem like the coolest computer case I've ever seen, but it does bring a whole new meaning to "frying your processor".
True, I know that KDE and GNOME run a variety of platforms. However, on ALMOST all of the platforms, XFree86 is being used - on almost all versions of Linux and *BSD. As for everyone calling out "code bloat", I never said that they needed to be part of the main install, but I think that RedHat and others should be working hard to put KDE and GNOME compatible hardware configuration utilities on their distributions, and available for download for those of us running Linux with XFree86 (I'd say the majority, but I have no statistics).
Sounds like Ximian has a project started. Seems to me that Ximian is the best company out there right now looking to make Linux more easily installed and configured (KDE setup is horrible, while Ximian GNOME is a breeze). I just hope they can stay in business.
I just wish that GNOME and KDE would include XFree86 configuration utilities (like DrakConf for Mandrake does, only a bit cleaner). In addition, they should make a bigger deal of the latest version of linuxconf, which seems to be the most comprehensive hardware and service control. I still use netcfg by RedHat sometimes to set up Gateway and DNS info.
My point here is, these application sets (KDE and GNOME) have been focusing almost entirely on configuration utilities for the GUI. The GNOME and KDE control-panels are useful only for changing simple things like backgrounds, themes, and keyboard shortcuts. If I were new to Linux, I'd be looking to these control panels to modify my screen resolution, set up my network (and network hardware), set up my sound card (I still use sndconfig sometimes), and other devices. A new user expects all system configuration to be in one place, like the Windows control panel. This was my experience when I first started using Linux about two years ago, and I had to do a fair amount of searching to find all of these little useful utilities (as well as editing config files manually) - like netcfg, sndconfig, Xconfigurator, linuxconf, etc. If nothing else, GNOME and KDE should include links and info about how and what to use to do these things.
I may be incorrect on a few points and simply missed how KDE and/or GNOME handle a feature - in that case, I'd like to know. However, it's been my experience that GNOME and KDE can't be truly newbie-friendly without the ability to easily change hardware (and service) settings.
I've been using the 2.4 kernel on my laptop since the week it was released, and I've had no problems (to my recollection, at least) visiting any sites. Granted, I use Datek instead of E-trade =). Looks like the sites that have older equipment have been quickly updating though, and I see no reason to disable this forward-thinking ECN.
For purposes of my having a grasp on the cost, I converted the article's estimate of 10 billion British pounds to U.S. dollars - about $14.4 billion. Now, I wondered, how long would it take for the Chinese government (assuming they built it) to gain their investment back?
If I did my math correctly, in order to gain back the $14.4 billion out of 100,000 people through rent and other profitable businesses within the tower, they would need to reap about $120 in profits per month from each person for 10 years. I think such a goal is definatley possible, especially if the 10 year goal is extended to 20. Remember, that number is the amount of profit after all other expenses, maintainence, and bureaucratic costs have been paid.
This sort of project would truly show the world that China's 1.2 billion people and vast landscape truly have an incredible amount of power. From a technological standpoint, I'd love to see this thing built.