My understanding is that the audio is not mp3, "and while built in MP3 support is absent, the CLIE can play Sony's ATRAC 3 format for up to 11 hours of music" to quote a blerb from PDA Buzz (http://www.pdabuzz.com/#newsitem984546846,4847,). A quick search on ATRAC only turned up the sony VAIO Music Clip which with a little additional reading stated that ATRAC3 was a Sony/proprietary compression.
Without the full specs on the clie, it sounds like there will be additional software to purchase from Sony if you want to move your mp3s to ATRAC3 format.
It is interesting to hear your perspective, mainly because it is stark contrast with mailer MS sent out to OEMs. As I stated in another post somewhere around here, MS made it sound like the initial box format was the only valid format and the end user would be allowed to restore to the initial state, but modify the system and you need a new license for your new system configuration. Also implied was that the license type from the OEM would be different from that of the end user. So it may be that your company is working on the over the counter format.
Same machine means the whole thing. If you upgrade the video, it is no longer the same machine. If you change hardware, you are changing the system and that is not the one for which MS sold you a license. As I read it, as an OEM a box is sold with OS installed in an as is state. It would be possible OS wise to restore it to the delivered state, but any type of upgrade to the system would require the purchase of a new license.
In short, they were going to finger print all the hardware as a single entity. I am not sure about the BIOS, but based on their take on hardware changes, they probably would like more money each time you flash your BIOS too.
Values have shifted or more to the point are being shifted. It is interesting to look at things like the impeachment of B.C. in light of what was said by his own party before the trial began. Just as it is interesting to see the many times that B.G. and his company bold faced lied as well, but also faced no consequences for their actions.
Court cases, half the time, are not argued about whether or not someone did something. Instead the defense does their best job at pointing out loop holes which do not directly relate to the issue at hand. I was on such a jury and it took the better part of the day to straighten out what our purpose was because of the curve which most of the jurors had followed listening to the defense.
At the core, the system design is great. The problem exists in the abuses of the system. Unfortunately, as the founding fathers pointed out, this system will not work for an unjust people. There are people who function above the law because a significant portion of people actually get away with the same thing and as a pot are not about to call a kettle black.
Until the american people refocus their values and hold their politicians, judges, lawyers, etc. to the same standard, the system can not help but to fail. It is like a computer program receiving bogus data, it can not help but yield a wrong result (correct based on the input).
The shift in focus/values is being orchestrated by such entities as political parties and big business. They are using means which are not on the radar or right and wrong for most individuals, i.e. what is wrong with role-playing a trial? Nothing if the purpose is strictly to analyze your communication effectiveness and logic. Everything if you are seeking to produce a result which is not based on the facts as much as it is based on pushing people's buttons to yield the result you desire.
From what I have seen of Trinity's station, the signal gets passed seriel wise through effects processors. So as process one completes chunk a, it passes chunk a to process two while process one starts working on chunk b. This is all accomplished on a special 10MB backbone.
Either a hacker took the code so that it will be easier to find the weaknesses of MS and exploit them with very targetted viruses and such
or
M$ faked it so they can mess with the OSS community. Anything could be pirated code unless M$ puts out for public record the code that was stolen so that everyone knows what not to accept. The truth is this could be done without M$ compromising their code. A federal agency could be the middle man who does code comparisions for OSS projects. If something smells fishy, the OSS can be notified of the possible problem. Then it is up to the OSS to monitor the specific source for futher tainted code. Admittedly, it would be a bit of a pain to decide on the criteria for comparisions, but that is a different issue.
Part of staying an icon is having a vision and recognizing which way the market is flowwing long term. As has already been addressed by another post, being able to incorperate jvm functionality closer to the kernel would give it a bit of a kick in the pants (which is what MS did in the windows envirnoment sort of). But at a more intere$ting level, one of the growing fields is Training. Sun had already started getting its hand into this. If they are able to boost java's use, and they are seen as the defacto source for java instruction then they profit. Think about it. 12 people paying $2000 for a week's instruction. That is $24000 to cover the cost of a trainer, a site, and some sun nick-nacks. RedHat is diving into training as fast as they can (maybe too fast) because there is profit.
There are ways of gleaning this information during an interview. Questions like, "Do you have any problems with working round the clock when we head into a crunch time? This is a salaried rather than hourly position."
I am a person who is married, has 2 kids and would love to work a moderately sane schedule. Supervisors above my immediate boss are more than willing to let me know that people like me are a dime a dozen. Mainly, because they can hire new inexperienced bodies or visa labor for less. They may get what they pay for, but their main concern is the bottom line on payroll. Penny wise and pound foolish, they do not have a clue about the services they manage.
Until I can line up a position which pays at or above where I am, I am trapped taking the crap and lousy hours (60 is tame) because I do have a wife and 2 kids to support. At the same time, if you go looking and they find out, things can get very nasty.
P.S. I am a systems administrator who has done work in BSD, Linux, Novell, NT, and OS/2. Additionally, I have a programming background with 13 languages when I graduated from college (about 10 yrs ago). Currently, I am programming in VB, Perl, C, C++, and Java. Because of being a one man show, I am a jack of all trades and a master of none. Aside from cramming in the RHCE over a year ago, it is hard to get focus time when you are too busy watching your vacation time being flushed every year and any comp time you earn over 120 hrs gets flushed immediately.
Actually, it goes beyond just the price of the CD. There was a time when large franchises were pressured into playing specific material at dance bars, etc. It was my understanding that the public playing of the music violated the lawful use of the music. I know this is true of videos, it is part of the FBI warning that you get to see. The music like the videos are sold for individual use. This is very similiar to libraries paying a hire price for magazine subscriptions. So, just because you own the disc does not mean you can play it anywhere you want to.
Let me qualify my background. Prior to RH courses and test, I had been flying linux by the seat of my pants relying on updates (better configured installs) to correct my problems as they arose. This is admittedly a stupid way to run servers, but at the time I had jumped ship from NT because in a hostile environment NT was crashing daily, whereas linux stayed alive and kicking with the default install.
Initially I signed up for 133 and 233. Well, for reasons I will leave out at the moment, 133 was a waste of money. Fearing that 233 would be the same kind of flop, I switched to 300 with the understanding I was going to be part of the 35% who do not pass the exam. Starting half way through the 133 week, I began to read the RH installation text, followed by O'Rielly's "Running Linux, 2nd Edition (the third edition came out 2 weeks later). Based on that, and rebuilding and reconfiguring my laptop every other night, I was able to get through 300 and do great on the test.
That said, I was not what you would call an experienced admin (I was a joke). 300 did what it was intended to do, and I did the rest. My initial impression from reading the article was that it was leaning in the direction of saying that 300 was a weak course. It is not until "The Exam Separated From The Course" that the distinction is strongly made about the course's intent.
I agreed with the raw content of the article. The issue I had with it was that it left me with the impression of "as an upper level course, this is lacking." If it were an upper level course, I agree, it would be lacking in depth in many areas. As a final prep before the exam, I think it was right on target.
My understanding of the 300 course was it is designed to be a brief review of everything you should know for the exam. The course is not ment to go too indepth. Breadth of material is the focus. They cover a bit of everything from 3 courses which are each intended to go into more depth.
I took the course in Aug 99. The course was well done for it's intended target group. About 1/4 of the class did not take the exam. Their purpose for taking the course was to get an idea of the exam's expectation. Of those who took the exam (no I don't know their real scores), there were at least two who failed based on how they did in the hands on sections. There was probably at least one more who failed due to a low overall score.
The course helped me mainly because my personal use up to this point had been very focused. This course coupled with two weeks of solid study were very just what I needed.
A laptop is only a tool like a screwdriver. It really does not matter which screwdriver manufacture I pick (other than mileage may vary) to assemble a do-it-yourself kit. What matters is the do-it-yourself kit. The laptop is inconsequential because you are still working with the same kit. Give a bad teacher better tools and you still have a bad teacher.
The education system has many known good points and many failings. To date, I do not know of any software or communication forum on the net which significantly improves on the thing we call public education.
When looking only at the laptop as a tool, I say (personal opinion), the sooner a child is exposed to technology the better. My son started playing on a computer at age 2. He is now 4 and can select his own background, install software (if there are not too many options), and work his way through many types of problem solving tasks. He also has no fear of trying every button on the screen that he can find. Consequently, he has managed to do things on his computer which I did not know was possible as a feature of some software. He has a fresh curiousity which will take him very far, something that people lose as they get older. Right now, aside from problem solving, he is learning to master the computer. The reading, spanish, and math software which he has is coming along barely ok. He does much better when I or his mother work through this software with him because while he is focusing on the environment, he can easily miss the "true" objective. He learning also improves when we review the material outside of his computer time.
Without the direct adult attention, he is focussing on what he finds important.
What my first son does with the computer is great, but there is nothing which indicates to me that my second son will have the same kind of experience. All children are unique. So what will be a boon for one will be a hinderance for another. A tool is only worth having if it is appropriate to the task. The task is education of unique individuals--no one tool will work in all cases (but my favorite is the hammer;)
I thought the post was referring to the text that was on the PDA, not that the sight was in japanese. A little clearer warning would be nice.
That aside, yes, it appears to be some version of palmOS with a sony exterior. They have done a good job at producing an identifiable hardware visual style.
Because the truth is free beer is not free. It costs money to for the ingredients, for maintaining the still, and it takes an individual's time which is worth something. There are many who just take from the community and think, "this is great! software for nothing." This is a braindead mentality.
Some companies, like RedHat, make their money in support and training. If you plan to $$ support them via this avenue, then by all means accept their free stuff. But, they are not the only type of company out there. There are also gaming companies (which I do not think are going to make a killing in support and training). Maybe they have sponsor companies, in which case, it is not free software, it is a link to advertisement.
There are other ways of contributing to the community, i.e. producing worthwhile code, but this does not mean you should still not pay to support what you find valuable to use. My point is if all you do is take from the community, you are no more than a vampire and a bloodsucker. I personally choose to buy a distro once per major modification (i.e. going from 2.0 to 2.2, inclusion of X version 4.0 will be worth it) because though I may be able to patch and compile my way there, I would prefer to spend my time doing more cost effective things.
Please note, I am not calling the poster of this comment a vampire or bloodsucker, I do not know the individual's involvement with the community, the post is addressing the question, "Why pay for it?"
P.S. - Yes, I bought a linux version of Quake III.
On topic: I agree with another poster, it is helpful to be able to get to the mirror sites before the mad rush hits.
On-and-off topic: I believe their should be a different grouping for beta release and distro release news. In this manner, those who do not care can elect to have it not appear in their news listing.
Off topic (but in line with this post): Too often people who have negative points are moderated down as troll. Mention something positive about M$ and you take a dive. I am not saying I like M$, but some of the posts have been useful insights. I understand there is a problem with the moderating system. It lacks an option which indicates 'false-inflation'. Some comments are not worthy of being hire than 1. If some lame moderator puts down "insightful", if it really was only wasted text, you are left with calling it "troll" or "off-topic".
I have been through the RH 133 and RH 300, total cost $4300 plus travel and lodging. I am not sure where the $5000 came from in the initial post. I took the courses back in August '99.
Point 1: RH training was at that time far from perfect. I wrote a them a rather lengthy letter regarding the state of their training. After I completed the examination, I spend about an hour talking with one of the instructor's regarding the training format and material.
I have not attended a MS type bootcamp to date. Rather I have purchase about $600 worth of texts and $2000 in CBT. I have yet to get a consistant answer from either regarding many issues of the Win architecture. All of the books mildly flame MS's testing structure. Even the bootcamps I have evaluated for attending this summer all mildly flame the MS concept of certification.
Point 2: As products go, this is a comparison between apples and a dung heap. RH just like the other major Linux distro's produces relatively prompt patches (yes, there are some biggies which are still hanging around). MS on the otherhand has lead the life of denial. Keeping some patches secret (meaning unless you contact the magic people and tell them the correct definition of the problem, they will not give you the patch even though they know the product is broken).
Point 3: RH is not the end-all of end-alls in Linux. They are one of many resources available. If you are dissatisfied with them, there are other distro's and their support staff. However, MS is the final word on MS.
IF A CAR WORKED AS POORLY AS MS PRODUCTS, WE WOULD SEE A TON MORE BIKES!!
Before I will try messing with the card, I would first like to see it work correctly in my system. I got one about 4 months ago, but I have not gotten it to recognize the drive. The system sees the card and I can use the drive with the motherboard's regular ide, but the promise card is being a pain.
Second point, I am not too hot on the idea of applying heat to a card. Even if it works, I could see Promise coming out with later driver updates which are tweaked to work right on their raid cards and deep-6 a tweaked card (referring to purchased OS's, not open OS's and home grown drivers) . This is too new a card. There will be a year more of bug fixes before they work everything out.
Point of clarification. I am not a news junkie. The "silence" over the Crusoe and the noise from the others relates to advertisements I regularly get in the mail and articles which frequently appear at the few sites I regularly visit.
If the battle is over desktop chips, then what the !@$#* is in a laptop? I guess neither intel nor AMD see any relation between a web-pad and another device of comparable size. Espcially if the web-pad starts out running regular windows and quake.
Lastly, I run win 9x, nt, linux, mac os, and bsd due to what I support. I fail to see how that had anything to do with my initial post.
I do not have a problem with big companies. The problem is unfair marketing practices. Marketing vaporware should be illegal. When MS says, "we will have product X out by day Y." Their purpose is to convince people to wait and try their product. They are doing this to hurt the competition, and they are succeeding even though there is no product on the market until date Y++.
Another practice which MS has engaged in was crippling their software so that it would not work with the competion. They did this back with win 3.1 and DR Dos. MS coded windows so various things could not be installed on a DR Dos system. The initial solution was to boot with a MS DOS diskette, run the install, exit, and reboot the DR DOS.
Then they changed the packaging scheme. They stopped selling the OS independant of the GUI. There is obviously a OS under win 9X. It is what you get with format a:/s. The fact that this one got settled out of court stinks. Especially being the DR Dos was the better OS. It had better memory management, multitask, diskcopy to an img file, etc.
They get away with a ton of stuff that in any other industry people would have been screaming foul a long time ago over, but when it gets right down to it, most people do not understand the computer industry. There are many users, out there who know how to get a task done, and that is it. It is like me with my car. I know how to drive, put gas in it, use the stereo, and take it in for regular maintainance.
But, if you car started giving me the blue screen of death more than once every 12,000 miles, some car manufacture would be getting regular visits from me until they fixed it or gave me my money back. Computer users just accept the blue death as a fact of life. Lemon laws do not appear to apply to computer programs. (i.e. read the fine print where it says this software is not guaranteed to do anything we say it does).
I will be honest. When it comes to the Intel - AMD battle, I prefer Crusoe. It was kept quiet till they had a chip in production.
With Intel, when they made bad chips there was a small call back. With windows when they produce trashed memory management from way back to present, it just continues to be a black hole that never gets fixed.
If you check their products section and on line store, all you find is EZ drive which is their drive installation software.
I thought they also had a backup program, but I was unable to locate it on their site. For that matter, I have been unable to locate info about any other package they might have out there.
Why has there not been a single communications satalite set in orbit around mars? Part of the problem with this last mission was they sent an unmanned mission into a communication blind spot. So, now we have no idea what transpired which caused the failure. NASA will spend a ton of money on people time theorizing on what went wrong.
If they invested in a group of communications satalite, it would pay off in the long run if mars is seen as a functional part of the future space program.
Let's see. First Red Hat does the CEO shuffle (twice), now Microsoft is doing it.
Personally, I agree with the concept when the person is worth their salt as a creative visionary. Get a business person to manage the company. Get a programmer with a vision back in the ring.
1. It is just that Geller should win the suit if they did not make the appropriate contacts.
2. It would also be just for Geller to be slapped with a frivelous filing of suit given the amount of money he is asking. My first response to this story was "Who the heck is Uri Geller?" If the character had been "Pizza the Hut" and it had a red roof looking top half, ok maybe there is a reason for there to be alot of money because the business has a ton of face time with the world and they have paid for that face time. It would be more interesting if the jury was allowed to set damages in cases like this rather than the plaintif.
People power tends to be cheap, so I do not see them paying for the support. RH will probably see a big boo$t in their trailing programs. This is where alot of the real money is. Think about it, $2000.00 per person, a class of 12, for fives training. That is $24,000 a week minus some expense. It is still a nice chunk of change for a single course.
Slashdot Mirror
Without the full specs on the clie, it sounds like there will be additional software to purchase from Sony if you want to move your mp3s to ATRAC3 format.
(I wait impatiently for the english version)
It is interesting to hear your perspective, mainly because it is stark contrast with mailer MS sent out to OEMs. As I stated in another post somewhere around here, MS made it sound like the initial box format was the only valid format and the end user would be allowed to restore to the initial state, but modify the system and you need a new license for your new system configuration. Also implied was that the license type from the OEM would be different from that of the end user. So it may be that your company is working on the over the counter format.
Same machine means the whole thing. If you upgrade the video, it is no longer the same machine. If you change hardware, you are changing the system and that is not the one for which MS sold you a license. As I read it, as an OEM a box is sold with OS installed in an as is state. It would be possible OS wise to restore it to the delivered state, but any type of upgrade to the system would require the purchase of a new license.
In short, they were going to finger print all the hardware as a single entity. I am not sure about the BIOS, but based on their take on hardware changes, they probably would like more money each time you flash your BIOS too.
Values have shifted or more to the point are being shifted. It is interesting to look at things like the impeachment of B.C. in light of what was said by his own party before the trial began. Just as it is interesting to see the many times that B.G. and his company bold faced lied as well, but also faced no consequences for their actions.
Court cases, half the time, are not argued about whether or not someone did something. Instead the defense does their best job at pointing out loop holes which do not directly relate to the issue at hand. I was on such a jury and it took the better part of the day to straighten out what our purpose was because of the curve which most of the jurors had followed listening to the defense.
At the core, the system design is great. The problem exists in the abuses of the system. Unfortunately, as the founding fathers pointed out, this system will not work for an unjust people. There are people who function above the law because a significant portion of people actually get away with the same thing and as a pot are not about to call a kettle black.
Until the american people refocus their values and hold their politicians, judges, lawyers, etc. to the same standard, the system can not help but to fail. It is like a computer program receiving bogus data, it can not help but yield a wrong result (correct based on the input).
The shift in focus/values is being orchestrated by such entities as political parties and big business. They are using means which are not on the radar or right and wrong for most individuals, i.e. what is wrong with role-playing a trial? Nothing if the purpose is strictly to analyze your communication effectiveness and logic. Everything if you are seeking to produce a result which is not based on the facts as much as it is based on pushing people's buttons to yield the result you desire.
From what I have seen of Trinity's station, the signal gets passed seriel wise through effects processors. So as process one completes chunk a, it passes chunk a to process two while process one starts working on chunk b. This is all accomplished on a special 10MB backbone.
Either a hacker took the code so that it will be easier to find the weaknesses of MS and exploit them with very targetted viruses and such
or
M$ faked it so they can mess with the OSS community. Anything could be pirated code unless M$ puts out for public record the code that was stolen so that everyone knows what not to accept. The truth is this could be done without M$ compromising their code. A federal agency could be the middle man who does code comparisions for OSS projects. If something smells fishy, the OSS can be notified of the possible problem. Then it is up to the OSS to monitor the specific source for futher tainted code. Admittedly, it would be a bit of a pain to decide on the criteria for comparisions, but that is a different issue.
Part of staying an icon is having a vision and recognizing which way the market is flowwing long term. As has already been addressed by another post, being able to incorperate jvm functionality closer to the kernel would give it a bit of a kick in the pants (which is what MS did in the windows envirnoment sort of). But at a more intere$ting level, one of the growing fields is Training. Sun had already started getting its hand into this. If they are able to boost java's use, and they are seen as the defacto source for java instruction then they profit. Think about it. 12 people paying $2000 for a week's instruction. That is $24000 to cover the cost of a trainer, a site, and some sun nick-nacks. RedHat is diving into training as fast as they can (maybe too fast) because there is profit.
It may not be legal, but it is a fact of life.
There are ways of gleaning this information during an interview. Questions like, "Do you have any problems with working round the clock when we head into a crunch time? This is a salaried rather than hourly position."
I am a person who is married, has 2 kids and would love to work a moderately sane schedule. Supervisors above my immediate boss are more than willing to let me know that people like me are a dime a dozen. Mainly, because they can hire new inexperienced bodies or visa labor for less. They may get what they pay for, but their main concern is the bottom line on payroll. Penny wise and pound foolish, they do not have a clue about the services they manage.
Until I can line up a position which pays at or above where I am, I am trapped taking the crap and lousy hours (60 is tame) because I do have a wife and 2 kids to support. At the same time, if you go looking and they find out, things can get very nasty.
P.S. I am a systems administrator who has done work in BSD, Linux, Novell, NT, and OS/2. Additionally, I have a programming background with 13 languages when I graduated from college (about 10 yrs ago). Currently, I am programming in VB, Perl, C, C++, and Java. Because of being a one man show, I am a jack of all trades and a master of none. Aside from cramming in the RHCE over a year ago, it is hard to get focus time when you are too busy watching your vacation time being flushed every year and any comp time you earn over 120 hrs gets flushed immediately.
Actually, it goes beyond just the price of the CD. There was a time when large franchises were pressured into playing specific material at dance bars, etc. It was my understanding that the public playing of the music violated the lawful use of the music. I know this is true of videos, it is part of the FBI warning that you get to see. The music like the videos are sold for individual use. This is very similiar to libraries paying a hire price for magazine subscriptions. So, just because you own the disc does not mean you can play it anywhere you want to.
Let me qualify my background. Prior to RH courses and test, I had been flying linux by the seat of my pants relying on updates (better configured installs) to correct my problems as they arose. This is admittedly a stupid way to run servers, but at the time I had jumped ship from NT because in a hostile environment NT was crashing daily, whereas linux stayed alive and kicking with the default install.
Initially I signed up for 133 and 233. Well, for reasons I will leave out at the moment, 133 was a waste of money. Fearing that 233 would be the same kind of flop, I switched to 300 with the understanding I was going to be part of the 35% who do not pass the exam. Starting half way through the 133 week, I began to read the RH installation text, followed by O'Rielly's "Running Linux, 2nd Edition (the third edition came out 2 weeks later). Based on that, and rebuilding and reconfiguring my laptop every other night, I was able to get through 300 and do great on the test.
That said, I was not what you would call an experienced admin (I was a joke). 300 did what it was intended to do, and I did the rest. My initial impression from reading the article was that it was leaning in the direction of saying that 300 was a weak course. It is not until "The Exam Separated From The Course" that the distinction is strongly made about the course's intent.
I agreed with the raw content of the article. The issue I had with it was that it left me with the impression of "as an upper level course, this is lacking." If it were an upper level course, I agree, it would be lacking in depth in many areas. As a final prep before the exam, I think it was right on target.
My understanding of the 300 course was it is designed to be a brief review of everything you should know for the exam. The course is not ment to go too indepth. Breadth of material is the focus. They cover a bit of everything from 3 courses which are each intended to go into more depth.
I took the course in Aug 99. The course was well done for it's intended target group. About 1/4 of the class did not take the exam. Their purpose for taking the course was to get an idea of the exam's expectation. Of those who took the exam (no I don't know their real scores), there were at least two who failed based on how they did in the hands on sections. There was probably at least one more who failed due to a low overall score.
The course helped me mainly because my personal use up to this point had been very focused. This course coupled with two weeks of solid study were very just what I needed.
A laptop is only a tool like a screwdriver. It really does not matter which screwdriver manufacture I pick (other than mileage may vary) to assemble a do-it-yourself kit. What matters is the do-it-yourself kit. The laptop is inconsequential because you are still working with the same kit. Give a bad teacher better tools and you still have a bad teacher.
;)
The education system has many known good points and many failings. To date, I do not know of any software or communication forum on the net which significantly improves on the thing we call public education.
When looking only at the laptop as a tool, I say (personal opinion), the sooner a child is exposed to technology the better. My son started playing on a computer at age 2. He is now 4 and can select his own background, install software (if there are not too many options), and work his way through many types of problem solving tasks. He also has no fear of trying every button on the screen that he can find. Consequently, he has managed to do things on his computer which I did not know was possible as a feature of some software. He has a fresh curiousity which will take him very far, something that people lose as they get older. Right now, aside from problem solving, he is learning to master the computer. The reading, spanish, and math software which he has is coming along barely ok. He does much better when I or his mother work through this software with him because while he is focusing on the environment, he can easily miss the "true" objective. He learning also improves when we review the material outside of his computer time.
Without the direct adult attention, he is focussing on what he finds important.
What my first son does with the computer is great, but there is nothing which indicates to me that my second son will have the same kind of experience. All children are unique. So what will be a boon for one will be a hinderance for another. A tool is only worth having if it is appropriate to the task. The task is education of unique individuals--no one tool will work in all cases (but my favorite is the hammer
I thought the post was referring to the text that was on the PDA, not that the sight was in japanese. A little clearer warning would be nice.
That aside, yes, it appears to be some version of palmOS with a sony exterior. They have done a good job at producing an identifiable hardware visual style.
Why pay for it?
Because the truth is free beer is not free. It costs money to for the ingredients, for maintaining the still, and it takes an individual's time which is worth something. There are many who just take from the community and think, "this is great! software for nothing." This is a braindead mentality.
Some companies, like RedHat, make their money in support and training. If you plan to $$ support them via this avenue, then by all means accept their free stuff. But, they are not the only type of company out there. There are also gaming companies (which I do not think are going to make a killing in support and training). Maybe they have sponsor companies, in which case, it is not free software, it is a link to advertisement.
There are other ways of contributing to the community, i.e. producing worthwhile code, but this does not mean you should still not pay to support what you find valuable to use. My point is if all you do is take from the community, you are no more than a vampire and a bloodsucker. I personally choose to buy a distro once per major modification (i.e. going from 2.0 to 2.2, inclusion of X version 4.0 will be worth it) because though I may be able to patch and compile my way there, I would prefer to spend my time doing more cost effective things.
Please note, I am not calling the poster of this comment a vampire or bloodsucker, I do not know the individual's involvement with the community, the post is addressing the question, "Why pay for it?"
P.S. - Yes, I bought a linux version of Quake III.
On topic:
I agree with another poster, it is helpful to be able to get to the mirror sites before the mad rush hits.
On-and-off topic:
I believe their should be a different grouping for beta release and distro release news. In this manner, those who do not care can elect to have it not appear in their news listing.
Off topic (but in line with this post):
Too often people who have negative points are moderated down as troll. Mention something positive about M$ and you take a dive. I am not saying I like M$, but some of the posts have been useful insights. I understand there is a problem with the moderating system. It lacks an option which indicates 'false-inflation'. Some comments are not worthy of being hire than 1. If some lame moderator puts down "insightful", if it really was only wasted text, you are left with calling it "troll" or "off-topic".
Just my 3 cents.
I have been through the RH 133 and RH 300, total cost $4300 plus travel and lodging. I am not sure where the $5000 came from in the initial post. I took the courses back in August '99.
Point 1: RH training was at that time far from perfect. I wrote a them a rather lengthy letter regarding the state of their training. After I completed the examination, I spend about an hour talking with one of the instructor's regarding the training format and material.
I have not attended a MS type bootcamp to date. Rather I have purchase about $600 worth of texts and $2000 in CBT. I have yet to get a consistant answer from either regarding many issues of the Win architecture. All of the books mildly flame MS's testing structure. Even the bootcamps I have evaluated for attending this summer all mildly flame the MS concept of certification.
Point 2: As products go, this is a comparison between apples and a dung heap. RH just like the other major Linux distro's produces relatively prompt patches (yes, there are some biggies which are still hanging around). MS on the otherhand has lead the life of denial. Keeping some patches secret (meaning unless you contact the magic people and tell them the correct definition of the problem, they will not give you the patch even though they know the product is broken).
Point 3: RH is not the end-all of end-alls in Linux. They are one of many resources available. If you are dissatisfied with them, there are other distro's and their support staff. However, MS is the final word on MS.
IF A CAR WORKED AS POORLY AS MS PRODUCTS, WE WOULD SEE A TON MORE BIKES!!
Before I will try messing with the card, I would first like to see it work correctly in my system. I got one about 4 months ago, but I have not gotten it to recognize the drive. The system sees the card and I can use the drive with the motherboard's regular ide, but the promise card is being a pain.
Second point, I am not too hot on the idea of applying heat to a card. Even if it works, I could see Promise coming out with later driver updates which are tweaked to work right on their raid cards and deep-6 a tweaked card (referring to purchased OS's, not open OS's and home grown drivers) . This is too new a card. There will be a year more of bug fixes before they work everything out.
Point of clarification. I am not a news junkie. The "silence" over the Crusoe and the noise from the others relates to advertisements I regularly get in the mail and articles which frequently appear at the few sites I regularly visit.
If the battle is over desktop chips, then what the !@$#* is in a laptop? I guess neither intel nor AMD see any relation between a web-pad and another device of comparable size. Espcially if the web-pad starts out running regular windows and quake.
Lastly, I run win 9x, nt, linux, mac os, and bsd due to what I support. I fail to see how that had anything to do with my initial post.
PS. I thought VAX died along with disco.
I do not have a problem with big companies. The problem is unfair marketing practices. Marketing vaporware should be illegal. When MS says, "we will have product X out by day Y." Their purpose is to convince people to wait and try their product. They are doing this to hurt the competition, and they are succeeding even though there is no product on the market until date Y++.
Another practice which MS has engaged in was crippling their software so that it would not work with the competion. They did this back with win 3.1 and DR Dos. MS coded windows so various things could not be installed on a DR Dos system. The initial solution was to boot with a MS DOS diskette, run the install, exit, and reboot the DR DOS.
Then they changed the packaging scheme. They stopped selling the OS independant of the GUI. There is obviously a OS under win 9X. It is what you get with format a:/s. The fact that this one got settled out of court stinks. Especially being the DR Dos was the better OS. It had better memory management, multitask, diskcopy to an img file, etc.
They get away with a ton of stuff that in any other industry people would have been screaming foul a long time ago over, but when it gets right down to it, most people do not understand the computer industry. There are many users, out there who know how to get a task done, and that is it. It is like me with my car. I know how to drive, put gas in it, use the stereo, and take it in for regular maintainance.
But, if you car started giving me the blue screen of death more than once every 12,000 miles, some car manufacture would be getting regular visits from me until they fixed it or gave me my money back. Computer users just accept the blue death as a fact of life. Lemon laws do not appear to apply to computer programs. (i.e. read the fine print where it says this software is not guaranteed to do anything we say it does).
I will be honest. When it comes to the Intel - AMD battle, I prefer Crusoe. It was kept quiet till they had a chip in production.
With Intel, when they made bad chips there was a small call back. With windows when they produce trashed memory management from way back to present, it just continues to be a black hole that never gets fixed.
If you check their products section and on line store, all you find is EZ drive which is their drive installation software.
I thought they also had a backup program, but I was unable to locate it on their site. For that matter, I have been unable to locate info about any other package they might have out there.
Why has there not been a single communications satalite set in orbit around mars? Part of the problem with this last mission was they sent an unmanned mission into a communication blind spot. So, now we have no idea what transpired which caused the failure. NASA will spend a ton of money on people time theorizing on what went wrong.
If they invested in a group of communications satalite, it would pay off in the long run if mars is seen as a functional part of the future space program.
Let's see. First Red Hat does the CEO shuffle (twice), now Microsoft is doing it.
Personally, I agree with the concept when the person is worth their salt as a creative visionary. Get a business person to manage the company. Get a programmer with a vision back in the ring.
Justice should be served.
1. It is just that Geller should win the suit if they did not make the appropriate contacts.
2. It would also be just for Geller to be slapped with a frivelous filing of suit given the amount of money he is asking. My first response to this story was "Who the heck is Uri Geller?" If the character had been "Pizza the Hut" and it had a red roof looking top half, ok maybe there is a reason for there to be alot of money because the business has a ton of face time with the world and they have paid for that face time. It would be more interesting if the jury was allowed to set damages in cases like this rather than the plaintif.
People power tends to be cheap, so I do not see them paying for the support. RH will probably see a big boo$t in their trailing programs. This is where alot of the real money is. Think about it, $2000.00 per person, a class of 12, for fives training. That is $24,000 a week minus some expense. It is still a nice chunk of change for a single course.
RH would be insane not to get a site there.
It may be that it runs on win 9x, but if you look at the specs on the web site, they specify NT as the doze os.