The general buzz is that SCO's grasping at straws because they expected IBM to buy them out. Hence, SCO turns around and starts making trouble in the hopes to force IBM to buy them out.
News.comLWN's article, which references a News.com article, seems to point to this as well. They go a step further poking that IBM will buy out SCO, then toss them in the dumpster.
We all know the fact is that SCO's business has all but vanished. Their business model now is chasing after patent royalties. From my recent experience with patent hungry Gemstar and their failed buyout of DIVA
which resulted in Gemstar being fined $40mil, the patent-chasing business model is doomed to failure and only results in animosity towards the patent chaser.
SCO is just making noise to (1) get in the headlines, and (2) drive up their value before getting bought out.
First off, builder's margins are H-U-G-E. They fall into the extreme comfort range of 30-50%, depending on the area.
Builders, along with everyone else, are all about making as much money as they can, which translates to spending as little as possible. As an example, I remember the Brazillians who framed out my house.. I can guarantee that they were not being paid minimum wage (and, oddly, the one guy burned his toolbelt in effegy since his indenture was complete and he was heading back home).
With that in mind, my builder (5+ years ago) had no problems having the house wired per my specifications providing I supplied them with the CAT-5.
Of course, I also did not have them do the terminations. I had them run the physical cable, and I spent the time properly terminating it (aka: wiring it to the jack).
Builders will do the work, that's not the issue. It is easy, and probably profitable, to offer a pre-wired "technological" home as an option that the customer can pay for.:-)
Great article. Definitely hit the nail on the head. One thing they did omit was that, despite the change in medium (oil or Hydrogen), you will still have heat. And heat does add towards the theory of global warming, although it is only a participant (hydrocarbons are the real accelerant).
Has it been completely overlooked that the most advanced countries in the world, which rely on energy as a whole, give huge amounts of money to third world, dramatically unstable, and in most cases, dictatorial countries with the misguided expectation that all will be right with the world?
Putting massive amounts of money into anyone's hands is dangerous, even on a small scale, but the amount of money that goes to the Middle East and OPEC countries (some outside of the Middle East and SE Asia) where instability is a fact of life seems to be illogical.
Even if it was logical (which is clearly isn't), then all of the money dumped in to those countries would mean that those countries would be shining examples of success rather than shining examples of "haves" and massive "have-nots", which, obviously, is not the case.
When I worked for a major New Jersey located Ivy League university's (to be left unnamed) Computer Science department, they received a multi-year grant from Microsoft which consisted of several hundred computers, supplied by Dell, with Windows NT/2000 on them.
The grant was written in such a was as to say that the Windows operating system MUST remain on the machine. If the machine were to be reloaded, it MUST be a Windows operating system. If the systems were found to have another operating system installed, the contract would be in violation and Microsoft would have the ability to take back all of the grant equipment and cancel the grant entirely.
That contract put the fear of god in the entire departmental management. And, as expected, Microsoft did do periodic audits.
Because the University environment (a very unique environment, indeed) lives heavily off of grants, their decisions are swayed yearly by who gives what and how much. For example, the server infrastructure, which was heavily UNIX based for good reason, swayed from DEC Alpha systems to HP-UX to SUN Solaris in a very short span of time. It continues to be SUN based because of the continued grants year-to-year from SUN to maintain their footprint.
Students really do not have choice when it comes down to it (did they ever? C'mon.. students are always treated like second class citizens anyhow!). What the student uses is defined by the University, and, subsequently, the professors teaching the courses. It is the professors who have to adapt to the changing environment defined by the "upper management".
Could an all-non Microsoft environment be done? Sure, anything can be done. Is it cost effective? Probably not (and that pains me) since Microsoft's pockets are much deeper.. They can easily do the 'payoff' since they can shovel more money the way of the University.
You have to detatch the way your imagination depicts the the way any book, SF or otherwise, is written. The beauty of any novel is that, while the author is drawing an defining scenes and conversation, it is your mind that pieces it all together.
Each of us may read the same novel, but we will formulate our own mental picture.
Any movie will, perhaps, come close to what some of us imagined, but it will never be an exact copy of what we all imagined.
Personally, I have found that if you disconnect the novel from the movie, at least a little, you get to enjoy it more as a seperate story than as a carbon-copy-that-failed story.
Don't you get it? You would be able to buy just the songs you wanted instead of the extra fluff that they throw on to that "meatspace equivalent".
So, in essence, you would only pay $12 for a 12 song CD if you wanted the whole CD. If you only wanted the songs you wanted, it would cost you a lot less (like $3 or $4) and you could do what you wanted with those songs to make your own compilation CD.
That's a bogus argument. Diversifying for the sense of being diverse is just a rephrasing of "Security Through Obscurity".
It is not security. If anything, it represents another vulnerability. Rather than maintaining a single system (ease of administration is a strong point of security unto itself), now multiple system implementations are in place.
Sure, if someone wanted to take down ALL of the root name servers, chances are that if they could hack in to one, they could hack in to them all if they are all running the same DNS server software. However, that is usually not the case.. the real hit is when someone hacks in to A DNS server.
Another brand of software is in no means a security benefit. You have now doubled the requirements for a secure environment: both vendors now must be equally as secure.
A classic case of the failure of the axiom: benefits outweighing the costs (and efforts)
Essentially, the administrative workload has been doubled and the potential for exposure through hacking has doubled (you have doubled your software base) for the benefit of "security through obscurity".
This is totally bogus, and you know it. Accounts on ebay are simply that: an account. There is nothing that says: use your real name or your real business name (mind you, most selling on there (right now) is mostly individuals).
If some company is relying on feedback on ebay for your employment, then it isn't a place anyone should be working at. Anyhow, the point is that feedback on ebay should be held within the context of ebay, not towards anything else. It is an ebay transaction, and nothing more: not personal, not political, and not anything astrological!
In the broader scope, on-line slander is one thing. There is definitely a line, but people have a right to their opinions about a person, place, or thing. Not everyone will like you, and that is one guarantee in life. If they put it in print, so be it.
Anyhow, back to the topic at hand, feedback is feedback. If you get negative feedback, you have the option to respond, permanantly, to it. When future buyers investigate your feedback, they see the negative and neutral (does anyone leave neurtral?!) comments and your responses.
It is the truth about the transaction! Why hide it? It is up to the future buyer to weigh your overall record and your response to the negative feedback before they decide to trust you with regards to a purchase.
For example, if I buy from someone, I check their feedback. Mentally, I make a couple of rules: o Buying online from some joe schmoe out there is risky. I don't care who it is or via what forum (ebay, newsgroups, etc), you still have no idea who they are. o No one describes their product as "slightly worn" or "damaged piece of crap I want to unload." Everyone describes their items as being "MINT" or "Nearly MINT" or "slightly used". Consider reality when purchasing a product. o People with no feedback, sunglasses next to their name, or very very little feedback should be dealt with gingerly as they have a limited record of transactions. o People with a LOT of feedback (doesn't matter if it is 50 or 50000) can be trusted only slightly more than those with little or no feedback.
With those rules in place, I always look at the feedback. Negative feedback from one person doesn't usually mean crap. There are a whole mess of people out there with chips on their shoulders, and they are usually trying to get something for nothing. However, the feedback record will show trends.
For example, over Christmas, how many people were selling those ZipZap knock-off cars? And how many of them were so overwhelmed with sales that they couldnt keep up, and hence, people left them negative feedback? I would see that and skip right past them because it would show that they could not handle the intense load, but otherwise were good sellers.
YOU need to evaluate the person you are purchasing from. Experience in BUYING as well as SELLING helps make sense of it all.
Don't let one bad apple (or feedback) spoil the whole bunch.
C'mon.. this is obviously the RIAA 'fighting back' in the only way that they know how: illegal or gray-area tactics. They have been defaced over and over again and suffered severe embarassment due to it.
The comment from the advisory that reads as below points out their real intention:
4) Don't fu*k with the RIAA again, scriptkids.
The rest of it reads like pure scare tactics (aka "nothing you have will protect you! Muhahahahaha!") leading up to that almost conclusionary statement.
It is definitely directed towards the larger, non-technical/admin P2P community (hey, the P2P community wouldn't be as large as it is today if the RIAA didn't bring so much attention to Napster. They literally caused the explosion of P2P because of all of the media coverage! Really, how many of us actually saw it on the nightly news?!)
Yup! The right term for these type of folks, the ones that get so blinded by, or choose to be blinded by, their nearly religious following of one type of technology, is a "Technology Bigot".
An old colleague of mine used that phrase when referring to a newly hired Network Administrator who outright refused to work on anything other than a Cisco box as her theory was that if it wasn't Cisco, it wasn't worth it. She wouldn't even look at or administrate the Foundry, 3Com, or Nortel equipment.
IMHO, I think that we all have to ask ourselves if we are being a Technology Bigot when we are spec'ing out requirements for new equipment. Do that, and you will find that you purchase equipment that does the job well despite of any personal ties you may have.
Help the UNIX community and please, please, please make the clarification that Linux is JUST THE KERNEL, whereas a Linux Distribution is everything else; everything that gets piled on top.
That one key point is missed by so many.. I've seen dozens of articles in magazines and other rags that are written by people who do not understand the difference and, as a result, only spread further confusion.
To be honest, and I am sure that flames will shoot at me from everywhere, a friendly and GUI oriented distribution would be the best for a true newbie to use, such as RedHat.
Linux In A Nutshell is a good start, along with the very simplified RedHat documentation. UNIX In A Nutshell is also very helpful.
And to echo what others have said, stick to the GUI. Those that are truly interested will dig under the covers of the GUI to find the powerhouse of the command line interface. Neither one should be what people are FORCED to use.
Microsoft's argument against Linux sounds strangely familiar. Didn't Apple use this same tactic against Microsoft back in the 90's?
"It's initially cheaper to purchase and install a [insert competitor here]'s hardware and software, but more expensive in the long run with regards to administration and people."
Could this be a sign of desperation?
Anyhow, the chances M$ will come out with a GPL'd version of Linux are like nil. Now, a proprietary version of Linux... that is more likely, especially if the level of desperation rises!
One thing that I have noticed from all of what I have read is that there are a number of people with the odd opinion that only the US does what was described as "our government has been sticking it's nose all over the middle east".
The truth is that all countries do this. Some to a much lesser extent, but they do it. Many people seem to disregard the fact that the US media engine insures that everyone of the world knows of each move the US makes (over glorifying or over dramatizing every step), and that a vast majority of the countries in the world either censor their media or run their own media.
Information is definitely power. Supression of information is also power. Which is more powerful and whom benefits from each? Think of where you get your information from.. do you trust it? Really? Why?
A good professor of mine back in college taught us to never rely on (or trust) a single source of information. Always check and double check to confirm the validity. And he was right.
I'm a SysAdmin, not a reporter, but, in real life, confirming the validity of information is the real key. Don't believe everything you read, hear, and see.. you can be fooled more easily than you might believe.
The LinuxPPC kernel (that's all I can speak about aside from the x86 kernel.. no experience with the others) and the main distribution tree have always diverted away from one another, and, then, seemingly magically, they get sync'ed.
If I remember correctly, it wasn't until the 2.1.128 series kernel that it started building, right out of the box (http://www.kernel.org) on a PPC box. Prior to that, PPC users had to rsync their kernl from a site in AU.
From then on through the 2.2 kernel, this remained true. But, as new Mac hardware flooded into the pool and USB device support became a much higher demand, patches and changes to the kernel came at an accelerated rate, and the master kernel source (http://www.kernel.org) didn't provide the functionality PPC users wanted/needed.
With the 2.4 kernel, it seems that almost all support within the master kernel tree has been halted, and, hence, secondary architecture-focused trees have popped up to fill the void.
PPC users have gotten accustomed to the kernel.org kernel source working for them (as it does for most other architectures), and, with that comes a feeling of acceptance. The fact that it hasn't been working as of late seems like a step backwards (or, in this case, sideways), and is pretty disappointing..
I suspect that, as one response stated already, things will get sync'ed again as soon as it bubbles up to the top of Linus' to-do list.
Nothing against Canada, but I've learned over time that it is easier to get a few people to do something constently than it is to get a mass amount of people to do something.
Note that the total population of Canada is only a little larger than the total population of New York City (approximately).
Hence, it becomes a much different (and larger problem) the more people are involved.
I read over a handful of responses, and, I have to admit, it is so amazing just how naieve people can be.
To anyone who says that companies aren't looking towards bringing in people from other countries via H1-B's just because they can get them cheap, well, my reponse would be that you must be living in a friggin' hole.
Business is about money, and, aside from making and keeping it, that's all it is about. People/workers are a commodity and really nothing more.
Sure, a company has to abide by certain rules according to payment and such in order to bring people in with an H1-B, but, for one, the computing industry is confusing enough for those of us who are in it, just imagine how confusing it can be made for INS?
As an example, consider the fact that, in order to be sponsored, the employer has to write a letter basically saying that you are the only one who can do that job. With computer related jobs, that is really an easy task by simply wording the job description in just the right way.
Want to talk about pay? I've worked at 6 different employers, and, aside from one of them, they have all leaned towards VISAs of some sort in order to get cheap labor. There.. I've said it. You may wish to live in the clouds and belive that we're too pristine of a nation to have this happen, but it does.. this is reality.
In all of the situations, I became close friends of many of the employees, and, for some of them, I got a good idea as to salary. Believe me when I say that they were, on average, getting 25% less than others because they were brought in at lower job titles with similar responsibilities.
From another angle, to those that think that companies are cowering in fear and willing to do anything to retain their current trained employees who have great experience, you have your heads in the clouds. Same goes for those who think that companies would prefer to hold on to their valuable trained (and expensive) employees rather than get a college grad or less experienced H1-B in to do the same job.
Face the facts! Training is cheap.Companies play the numbers. Business figures that it is cheaper to pay a low wage to someone who will fight to come up to speed, throw training money at them, etc., rather than pay for a well experienced person to remain on staff. Want proof? Ask anyone who is approaching 50 who is either looking for a job or in one now. I don't care just how skilled they are, it's a blatant fact that companies start looking at those employees as 'too expensive' and they start thinking 'We could bring in 2 or 3 young employees to do the same job and more!'.
Remember.. it's all about the money. We're just a stepping stone along the path towards that money.
Ok, do nearly all of the previous responders have their heads up their butts? They would rather blow off the whole point just because Katz wrote it, rather than actually read it for what it is. Not that I am defending Katz here, but it constantly amazes me just how easily people will roll over and play dead when it comes to relinquishing bits and pieces of their privacy . How long will it be until we have willingly given up every last bit of our privacy for the 'greater good', whatever that may be..
Metallica is a bunch of 40yr olds who have more money than they know what to do with it. They just want more and more and more.
They are wasting how much money on lawyers to attempt to reclaim 'lost sales' from 355,000 people, many of which are underage. What do they hope to get? Money out of these people? Um.. if that is the case, then they are severely mistaken. C'mon, now.. really.. think about it.
The best that will come of it for them will be that they manage to alienate a bunch of their fans, and, hence, lose money.
Sure, the trading of songs on a mass scale is like walking through KMart with a blue light on your head, but what gets me is that we seem to go through this same argument over and over.. Remember when cassette tapes came out, when VHS came out, when computer games were made on that Commodore 64 (aka. they _knew_ people were going to copy them), when CDROM writers came out, etc., etc.. It's the same thing over and over again. I seem to remember something about being able to have a backup copy for safe keeping..
There is no easy solution to the MP3-sharing phenomona. I mean, it comes down to ethics. People are pissed off at the recording industry and the artists because they are shelling out >$20 for CD's with 2 good songs on them, and the recording industry and artists swim in money. Artists claim that they don't make all that much, but they aren't fooling anyone when they move into their $3M mansion and are carted around in that super strecth limo with the outdoor hottub. People in general have the feeling that they are getting blatantly screwed over every time.
Despite that whole argument, the probing done by Metallica (the lawyers represent Metallica, so, yes, it is correct to say that Metallica is doing this) is simply an effort to continue raking in the dough.
There are plenty of other ways to get the point across than to come into people's homes via their internet connection.
Slashdot Mirror
The general buzz is that SCO's grasping at straws because they expected IBM to buy them out. Hence, SCO turns around and starts making trouble in the hopes to force IBM to buy them out.
News.com LWN's article, which references a News.com article, seems to point to this as well. They go a step further poking that IBM will buy out SCO, then toss them in the dumpster.
We all know the fact is that SCO's business has all but vanished. Their business model now is chasing after patent royalties. From my recent experience with patent hungry Gemstar and their failed buyout of DIVA which resulted in Gemstar being fined $40mil, the patent-chasing business model is doomed to failure and only results in animosity towards the patent chaser.
SCO is just making noise to (1) get in the headlines, and (2) drive up their value before getting bought out.
First off, builder's margins are H-U-G-E. They fall into the extreme comfort range of 30-50%, depending on the area.
:-)
Builders, along with everyone else, are all about making as much money as they can, which translates to spending as little as possible. As an example, I remember the Brazillians who framed out my house.. I can guarantee that they were not being paid minimum wage (and, oddly, the one guy burned his toolbelt in effegy since his indenture was complete and he was heading back home).
With that in mind, my builder (5+ years ago) had no problems having the house wired per my specifications providing I supplied them with the CAT-5.
Of course, I also did not have them do the terminations. I had them run the physical cable, and I spent the time properly terminating it (aka: wiring it to the jack).
Builders will do the work, that's not the issue. It is easy, and probably profitable, to offer a pre-wired "technological" home as an option that the customer can pay for.
"75% of all statistics are wrong."
Great article. Definitely hit the nail on the head. One thing they did omit was that, despite the change in medium (oil or Hydrogen), you will still have heat. And heat does add towards the theory of global warming, although it is only a participant (hydrocarbons are the real accelerant).
Has it been completely overlooked that the most advanced countries in the world, which rely on energy as a whole, give huge amounts of money to third world, dramatically unstable, and in most cases, dictatorial countries with the misguided expectation that all will be right with the world?
Putting massive amounts of money into anyone's hands is dangerous, even on a small scale, but the amount of money that goes to the Middle East and OPEC countries (some outside of the Middle East and SE Asia) where instability is a fact of life seems to be illogical.
Even if it was logical (which is clearly isn't), then all of the money dumped in to those countries would mean that those countries would be shining examples of success rather than shining examples of "haves" and massive "have-nots", which, obviously, is not the case.
When I worked for a major New Jersey located Ivy League university's (to be left unnamed) Computer Science department, they received a multi-year grant from Microsoft which consisted of several hundred computers, supplied by Dell, with Windows NT/2000 on them.
The grant was written in such a was as to say that the Windows operating system MUST remain on the machine. If the machine were to be reloaded, it MUST be a Windows operating system. If the systems were found to have another operating system installed, the contract would be in violation and Microsoft would have the ability to take back all of the grant equipment and cancel the grant entirely.
That contract put the fear of god in the entire departmental management. And, as expected, Microsoft did do periodic audits.
Because the University environment (a very unique environment, indeed) lives heavily off of grants, their decisions are swayed yearly by who gives what and how much. For example, the server infrastructure, which was heavily UNIX based for good reason, swayed from DEC Alpha systems to HP-UX to SUN Solaris in a very short span of time. It continues to be SUN based because of the continued grants year-to-year from SUN to maintain their footprint.
Students really do not have choice when it comes down to it (did they ever? C'mon.. students are always treated like second class citizens anyhow!). What the student uses is defined by the University, and, subsequently, the professors teaching the courses. It is the professors who have to adapt to the changing environment defined by the "upper management".
Could an all-non Microsoft environment be done? Sure, anything can be done. Is it cost effective? Probably not (and that pains me) since Microsoft's pockets are much deeper.. They can easily do the 'payoff' since they can shovel more money the way of the University.
You have to detatch the way your imagination depicts the the way any book, SF or otherwise, is written. The beauty of any novel is that, while the author is drawing an defining scenes and conversation, it is your mind that pieces it all together.
Each of us may read the same novel, but we will formulate our own mental picture.
Any movie will, perhaps, come close to what some of us imagined, but it will never be an exact copy of what we all imagined.
Personally, I have found that if you disconnect the novel from the movie, at least a little, you get to enjoy it more as a seperate story than as a carbon-copy-that-failed story.
Don't you get it? You would be able to buy just the songs you wanted instead of the extra fluff that they throw on to that "meatspace equivalent".
So, in essence, you would only pay $12 for a 12 song CD if you wanted the whole CD. If you only wanted the songs you wanted, it would cost you a lot less (like $3 or $4) and you could do what you wanted with those songs to make your own compilation CD.
That's a bogus argument. Diversifying for the sense of being diverse is just a rephrasing of "Security Through Obscurity".
It is not security. If anything, it represents another vulnerability. Rather than maintaining a single system (ease of administration is a strong point of security unto itself), now multiple system implementations are in place.
Sure, if someone wanted to take down ALL of the root name servers, chances are that if they could hack in to one, they could hack in to them all if they are all running the same DNS server software. However, that is usually not the case.. the real hit is when someone hacks in to A DNS server.
Another brand of software is in no means a security benefit. You have now doubled the requirements for a secure environment: both vendors now must be equally as secure.
A classic case of the failure of the axiom: benefits outweighing the costs (and efforts)
Essentially, the administrative workload has been doubled and the potential for exposure through hacking has doubled (you have doubled your software base) for the benefit of "security through obscurity".
Bah.. what a waste of time.
This is totally bogus, and you know it. Accounts on ebay are simply that: an account. There is nothing that says: use your real name or your real business name (mind you, most selling on there (right now) is mostly individuals).
If some company is relying on feedback on ebay for your employment, then it isn't a place anyone should be working at. Anyhow, the point is that feedback on ebay should be held within the context of ebay, not towards anything else. It is an ebay transaction, and nothing more: not personal, not political, and not anything astrological!
In the broader scope, on-line slander is one thing. There is definitely a line, but people have a right to their opinions about a person, place, or thing. Not everyone will like you, and that is one guarantee in life. If they put it in print, so be it.
Anyhow, back to the topic at hand, feedback is feedback. If you get negative feedback, you have the option to respond, permanantly, to it. When future buyers investigate your feedback, they see the negative and neutral (does anyone leave neurtral?!) comments and your responses.
It is the truth about the transaction! Why hide it? It is up to the future buyer to weigh your overall record and your response to the negative feedback before they decide to trust you with regards to a purchase.
For example, if I buy from someone, I check their feedback. Mentally, I make a couple of rules:
o Buying online from some joe schmoe out there is risky. I don't care who it is or via what forum (ebay, newsgroups, etc), you still have no idea who they are.
o No one describes their product as "slightly worn" or "damaged piece of crap I want to unload." Everyone describes their items as being "MINT" or "Nearly MINT" or "slightly used". Consider reality when purchasing a product.
o People with no feedback, sunglasses next to their name, or very very little feedback should be dealt with gingerly as they have a limited record of transactions.
o People with a LOT of feedback (doesn't matter if it is 50 or 50000) can be trusted only slightly more than those with little or no feedback.
With those rules in place, I always look at the feedback. Negative feedback from one person doesn't usually mean crap. There are a whole mess of people out there with chips on their shoulders, and they are usually trying to get something for nothing. However, the feedback record will show trends.
For example, over Christmas, how many people were selling those ZipZap knock-off cars? And how many of them were so overwhelmed with sales that they couldnt keep up, and hence, people left them negative feedback? I would see that and skip right past them because it would show that they could not handle the intense load, but otherwise were good sellers.
YOU need to evaluate the person you are purchasing from. Experience in BUYING as well as SELLING helps make sense of it all.
Don't let one bad apple (or feedback) spoil the whole bunch.
C'mon.. this is obviously the RIAA 'fighting back' in the only way that they know how: illegal or gray-area tactics. They have been defaced over and over again and suffered severe embarassment due to it.
The comment from the advisory that reads as below points out their real intention:
4) Don't fu*k with the RIAA again, scriptkids.
The rest of it reads like pure scare tactics (aka "nothing you have will protect you! Muhahahahaha!") leading up to that almost conclusionary statement.
It is definitely directed towards the larger, non-technical/admin P2P community (hey, the P2P community wouldn't be as large as it is today if the RIAA didn't bring so much attention to Napster. They literally caused the explosion of P2P because of all of the media coverage! Really, how many of us actually saw it on the nightly news?!)
Yup! The right term for these type of folks, the ones that get so blinded by, or choose to be blinded by, their nearly religious following of one type of technology, is a "Technology Bigot".
An old colleague of mine used that phrase when referring to a newly hired Network Administrator who outright refused to work on anything other than a Cisco box as her theory was that if it wasn't Cisco, it wasn't worth it. She wouldn't even look at or administrate the Foundry, 3Com, or Nortel equipment.
IMHO, I think that we all have to ask ourselves if we are being a Technology Bigot when we are spec'ing out requirements for new equipment. Do that, and you will find that you purchase equipment that does the job well despite of any personal ties you may have.
Help the UNIX community and please, please, please make the clarification that Linux is JUST THE KERNEL, whereas a Linux Distribution is everything else; everything that gets piled on top.
That one key point is missed by so many.. I've seen dozens of articles in magazines and other rags that are written by people who do not understand the difference and, as a result, only spread further confusion.
To be honest, and I am sure that flames will shoot at me from everywhere, a friendly and GUI oriented distribution would be the best for a true newbie to use, such as RedHat.
Linux In A Nutshell is a good start, along with the very simplified RedHat documentation. UNIX In A Nutshell is also very helpful.
And to echo what others have said, stick to the GUI. Those that are truly interested will dig under the covers of the GUI to find the powerhouse of the command line interface. Neither one should be what people are FORCED to use.
Microsoft's argument against Linux sounds strangely familiar. Didn't Apple use this same tactic against Microsoft back in the 90's?
"It's initially cheaper to purchase and install a [insert competitor here]'s hardware and software, but more expensive in the long run with regards to administration and people."
Could this be a sign of desperation?
Anyhow, the chances M$ will come out with a GPL'd version of Linux are like nil. Now, a proprietary version of Linux... that is more likely, especially if the level of desperation rises!
One thing that I have noticed from all of what I have read is that there are a number of people with the odd opinion that only the US does what was described as "our government has been sticking it's nose all over the middle east".
The truth is that all countries do this. Some to a much lesser extent, but they do it. Many people seem to disregard the fact that the US media engine insures that everyone of the world knows of each move the US makes (over glorifying or over dramatizing every step), and that a vast majority of the countries in the world either censor their media or run their own media.
Information is definitely power. Supression of information is also power. Which is more powerful and whom benefits from each? Think of where you get your information from.. do you trust it? Really? Why?
A good professor of mine back in college taught us to never rely on (or trust) a single source of information. Always check and double check to confirm the validity. And he was right.
I'm a SysAdmin, not a reporter, but, in real life, confirming the validity of information is the real key. Don't believe everything you read, hear, and see.. you can be fooled more easily than you might believe.
Really...
The LinuxPPC kernel (that's all I can speak about aside from the x86 kernel.. no experience with the others) and the main distribution tree have always diverted away from one another, and, then, seemingly magically, they get sync'ed.
If I remember correctly, it wasn't until the 2.1.128 series kernel that it started building, right out of the box (http://www.kernel.org) on a PPC box. Prior to that, PPC users had to rsync their kernl from a site in AU.
From then on through the 2.2 kernel, this remained true. But, as new Mac hardware flooded into the pool and USB device support became a much higher demand, patches and changes to the kernel came at an accelerated rate, and the master kernel source (http://www.kernel.org) didn't provide the functionality PPC users wanted/needed.
With the 2.4 kernel, it seems that almost all support within the master kernel tree has been halted, and, hence, secondary architecture-focused trees have popped up to fill the void.
PPC users have gotten accustomed to the kernel.org kernel source working for them (as it does for most other architectures), and, with that comes a feeling of acceptance. The fact that it hasn't been working as of late seems like a step backwards (or, in this case, sideways), and is pretty disappointing..
I suspect that, as one response stated already, things will get sync'ed again as soon as it bubbles up to the top of Linus' to-do list.
why not go with a system like Canada's?
Nothing against Canada, but I've learned over time that it is easier to get a few people to do something constently than it is to get a mass amount of people to do something.
Note that the total population of Canada is only a little larger than the total population of New York City (approximately).
Hence, it becomes a much different (and larger problem) the more people are involved.
I read over a handful of responses, and, I have to admit, it is so amazing just how naieve people can be.
To anyone who says that companies aren't looking towards bringing in people from other countries via H1-B's just because they can get them cheap, well, my reponse would be that you must be living in a friggin' hole.
Business is about money, and, aside from making and keeping it, that's all it is about. People/workers are a commodity and really nothing more.
Sure, a company has to abide by certain rules according to payment and such in order to bring people in with an H1-B, but, for one, the computing industry is confusing enough for those of us who are in it, just imagine how confusing it can be made for INS?
As an example, consider the fact that, in order to be sponsored, the employer has to write a letter basically saying that you are the only one who can do that job. With computer related jobs, that is really an easy task by simply wording the job description in just the right way.
Want to talk about pay? I've worked at 6 different employers, and, aside from one of them, they have all leaned towards VISAs of some sort in order to get cheap labor. There.. I've said it. You may wish to live in the clouds and belive that we're too pristine of a nation to have this happen, but it does.. this is reality.
In all of the situations, I became close friends of many of the employees, and, for some of them, I got a good idea as to salary. Believe me when I say that they were, on average, getting 25% less than others because they were brought in at lower job titles with similar responsibilities.
From another angle, to those that think that companies are cowering in fear and willing to do anything to retain their current trained employees who have great experience, you have your heads in the clouds. Same goes for those who think that companies would prefer to hold on to their valuable trained (and expensive) employees rather than get a college grad or less experienced H1-B in to do the same job.
Face the facts! Training is cheap. Companies play the numbers. Business figures that it is cheaper to pay a low wage to someone who will fight to come up to speed, throw training money at them, etc., rather than pay for a well experienced person to remain on staff. Want proof? Ask anyone who is approaching 50 who is either looking for a job or in one now. I don't care just how skilled they are, it's a blatant fact that companies start looking at those employees as 'too expensive' and they start thinking 'We could bring in 2 or 3 young employees to do the same job and more!'.
Remember.. it's all about the money. We're just a stepping stone along the path towards that money.
Ok, do nearly all of the previous responders have their heads up their butts? They would rather blow off the whole point just because Katz wrote it, rather than actually read it for what it is. Not that I am defending Katz here, but it constantly amazes me just how easily people will roll over and play dead when it comes to relinquishing bits and pieces of their privacy . How long will it be until we have willingly given up every last bit of our privacy for the 'greater good', whatever that may be..
Metallica is a bunch of 40yr olds who have more money than they know what to do with it. They just want more and more and more.
They are wasting how much money on lawyers to attempt to reclaim 'lost sales' from 355,000 people, many of which are underage. What do they hope to get? Money out of these people? Um.. if that is the case, then they are severely mistaken. C'mon, now.. really.. think about it.
The best that will come of it for them will be that they manage to alienate a bunch of their fans, and, hence, lose money.
Sure, the trading of songs on a mass scale is like walking through KMart with a blue light on your head, but what gets me is that we seem to go through this same argument over and over.. Remember when cassette tapes came out, when VHS came out, when computer games were made on that Commodore 64 (aka. they _knew_ people were going to copy them), when CDROM writers came out, etc., etc.. It's the same thing over and over again. I seem to remember something about being able to have a backup copy for safe keeping..
There is no easy solution to the MP3-sharing phenomona. I mean, it comes down to ethics. People are pissed off at the recording industry and the artists because they are shelling out >$20 for CD's with 2 good songs on them, and the recording industry and artists swim in money. Artists claim that they don't make all that much, but they aren't fooling anyone when they move into their $3M mansion and are carted around in that super strecth limo with the outdoor hottub. People in general have the feeling that they are getting blatantly screwed over every time.
Despite that whole argument, the probing done by Metallica (the lawyers represent Metallica, so, yes, it is correct to say that Metallica is doing this) is simply an effort to continue raking in the dough.
There are plenty of other ways to get the point across than to come into people's homes via their internet connection.
To Metallica: I say piss off! .