It's a pity that certain political factions like to lionize Microsoft as bastions of capitalism when Microsoft is itself devoted to strangling the free market at every turn.
I have to point out something here... a capitalist, by the nature of the fact that he/she is trying to maximize their "take" (profit) from the market, will attempt, at all times, to corner, strangle, etc the "free market" at "every turn."
This is raw, unabashed capitalism. It's "Me me me" and that's all. The thing that throws a wrench into the works is that nasty thing called competition.
If Microsoft is as good as they say they are, why are they so afraid of competing in an open and fair market?
See above. Even if they were the best, they still want to control the entire market... more profit == bigger house for Billy-boy and Stevie-B.
Why have they adopted such a deeply un-American stance towards the fundamental values of political and economic liberty?
I find that comment completely offensive. Calling something "un-American" is merely a ploy to gain my agreement (since I'm American)... especially after the September 11th events. "Oh, no, I don't want to be un-American -- whatever you say as long as it's for the USA."
Ballmer can spew all he wants about the GPL being communist, but as near as I can tell, it is Microsoft that is seeking to create a command economy.
And you wouldn't if you only motivation was profit? And before you overreact, what exactly do you think is Microsoft's goal as a company? To make our lives better by producing "teh bestest software evar" (TM)?
The problem is that the slashbots trolling us on April 1st aren't creative enough to bring us "funny" jokes... and as such we are left with these "half jokes" and more intelligent readers are left to fill in the blanks for themselves.
What part of "not funny" do you have difficulty understanding?
I'm all for a good practical joke, but April 1st brings out the worst in Slashdot.
It's not funny just because it's about Linux. It's not funny just because it bashes Microsoft. It's not funny just because there is a "Cowboy Neal" option. It's not funny just because it's April 1st.
I once saw power strips advertised to protect "computers up to 350 MHz". Of course, the more expensive one could go up to 450 MHz. Yes, you have to buy a more expensive power strip for a faster computer.
Fool! Everyone who's anyone is overclocking their powerstrips nowadays!
That sounds as bad as one of my clients home machines, which, until recently, was a dual Pentium II machine running Windows 98. I don't know who sold it to him but it's good for a laugh around the office.
Unfortunately, your $0.02 is easily outweighed by AOL's $109,100,000.00 market capitalization.
And you obviously didn't read the article, because AOL wanted to switch TW over to prove how good the AOL system was (I assume AOL uses it for itself...?). And TW didn't use the AOL client... they just used the (crappy) AOL servers.
Samsung has a SyncMaster 240T, which has, among other things, multiple inputs (DVI/Analog D-Sub), picture by picture, picture in picture, etc.
If you're a HD freak, check out Samsung's upcoming 241MP, which will support composite inputs as well, and includes a TV tuner. It's HDTV compatible. Pricing will be around $7000.
Nobody is claiming that this makes the iPod a full featured PDA.
Except perhaps, Liquidape, who submitted the article:
Hack Turns iPod into PDA Provue Development has released a personal info and contact manager app called iPod Organizer. The program enables use of iPod for storing and retrieving phone numbers, email addresses, flight numbers, appointment times and other data. It also comes with a sync feature.
It's entirely possible that even the best parents in the world could have evil, maladjusted, sociopathic children.
Being a "good parent" simply means you child is not a detriment to society. That means you child is not a murderer, rapist, Enron executive, politician, etc.
What about John Walker Lindh's parents? They think they're good people, and that may be true. They even think their son is a "good person at heart." The problem is that they're his parents, and it will be hard for them to really see him as a "terrorist" (assuming he is one). He has obviously chosen a path separate from the norms of our society; that isn't always bad, but in his case it led to treason.
Were they bad parents? They didn't educate him enough on the "right" way (say what you want about what is truly the "right" way, but whatever our society decides is "right" is just that) to behave as part of our society. He left to another society, and got involved in a war on the wrong side.
So should we blame parents? Yes. Always. They are responsible for the education, socialization, and (when necessary) medication of their child. If any of those has failed when the child "grows up" then stand back...
Does that mean parents are exclusively to blame? No, of course not. But for them to deny responsibility is completely rediculous.
There was a situation a little while back where posts (in the same thread) were all modded down to -1 by the endless points of the employees of slashdot. The exact thread escapes me at the moment, but think about this:
What if those users had active (paid) subscriptions? Now they actually have some stake in things... does slashdot itself have the right to effectively censor them? What kind of rights come with the payment? Can people request a refund if that happens (and is the subscription fee refundable at all)?
This works great, IF there's competition. But who does the MPAA compete with? Although the member organizations might in theory compete with each other, they choose to rally together to protect the industry as they have defined it, and marketing forces can do very little but sway which direction they go.
Hmm, your analysis is interesting, but unfortunately a bit long winded. I could be summarized in one word:
cartel
Which, according to existing U.S. laws, are 100% illegal.
...to ask a question that I wanted to ask as well. Granted, this topic seems a little strange, considering the Linux cluster is in place, and it seems like the kind of question which encourages a Microsoft vs. Linux world domination showdown for grandmaster of the universe. It also shows a limited business sense on the part of the poster (why change something that works well when you can't afford a replacement?).
Right now a coworker and I are looking at pricing and configuring a fault-tolerant cluster for a client who runs Windows 2000 and Exchange 2000. They're a bit paranoid, so they've decided they want a cluster. We've tried to educate them on exactly what a Microsoft cluster can and can't do, so it's difficult to understand exactly what they want (basically an entire network exactly like Microsoft's own, but for $1000).
Pricing on a two system cluster is around $50,000. Buying two copies of Exchange and Windows Advanced Server will total $20,000. Then there's the hardware costs. For our client, they've specifically requested this, so they're ready to pay.
My question to Whamo is are they really taking the Microsoft rep seriously? If they have to pay software costs for their new cluster that's going to mean two things: either buying less CPUs to add to the cluster, or not doing the project at all, because just the software will put them over budget. With Advanced Server running somewhere around $4000 that's a lot per machine when Linux costs at most $5 to burn a CD after downloading it via the university's T1/T3/etc. Whamo says "it is running on old hardware and is basically used for dog and pony shows to get more funding and hopefully donations of higher-end systems" and to me that is your answer. If you can't afford the hardware you can't afford to buy Microsoft's software...
Also, there's MOSIX as well, but I don't have much experience with MOSIX and thus cannot comment on it.
The almost religious "must please the shareholders" attitude is particularly irritating. Fuck the shareholders if they don't like the way you run YOUR business!
I guess you've never been a shareholder, then. Do you realize that the shareholders actually own the company? So if there is more than one shareholder (other than you) then technically it isn't exclusively "YOUR" business. Thus even if you're Bill Gates, unless you hold the majority shares, if nobody likes you, the next shareholder vote is going to land your on your arrogant ass.
With that aside, I'm sure there is room for discussion on why the shareholders might want to kick you out. Perhaps you aren't making any money for the company (in other words running the company into the ground while still happily collecting a paycheck), or perhaps you make decisions without getting educated opinions first.
And it seems the MIPS-based versions of the respective OSes are coming along; NetBSD will run on your O2. SGI's work on Linux for MIPS is as far as "only Indys have a working XFree86" although a few other machines will boot Linux.
An interesting question is what about the Cobalt MIPS-based appliances? Don't they run Linux as the x86 ones do? So where's the source code for those?
Since we're ushering this new era of KDE/Gnome friendliness, I have one simple request...
Can one (or both) of these two desktops allow me to scale the title bar on the windows? I can change all of the other fonts to a bigger size, but when I change the title bar font it just gets cut off vertically. Sorry, but some of us try to run high resolutions on smaller monitors.
By the way, here's cool theme from KDE-Look.org (one of the few ones that didn't rip off some pre-existing OS (majority were XP/MacOS X)):
Gorilla @ KDE-Look.org (preview)
Notice how small the title bar font is... just think the joy you could bring to small children if that scaled with the font size! It would be perfect on this theme...
LUCAS: Digital is cool. I'm cool. I'm old, but I can still set a trend.
STAR WARS FANS: Speak to us your words of wisdom, oh wise one!
Lucas: Um, okay, I guess I don't do anything else. Hmmm...
Lucas: <Intense thinking>
Lucas: I have it! I will produce AOTC digitally and it will be shown on digital screens around the country... I am a visionary; I will be worshipped like a god!
Star Wars Fans: <Proceed to worship Lucas like a god>
Lucas: Muhahah! My plan is complete!
BYSTANDER: But don't digital screens cost money? Who's going to pay for it?
Lucas: If I produce it, they will pay.
Star Wars Fans: If he produces it, we will pay.
Bystander: No, I meant who will pay for the digital projection equipment and the like...
Lucas: <Shock flashes across his face>
Lucas: They shall not have AOTC without installing a digital projection system! I command it.
Bystander: Say, how many more days until the next installment of LOTR?
Considering IM clients are very rarely work-related, I don't see why a company should need to protect against it. They should be limiting what crap you install on your workstation, with AIM/MSN messenger/Yahoo messenger/etc being one of them. Of course this would be convered under corporate policies, and should be enforced.
Microsoft spokesman Jim Desler said the company had proved during the trial that it is impossible to remove software features from Windows without damaging the operating system.
I got rid of Internet Explorer a few months ago, and my system is just fine.
I think your comment is meant to be +1, Funny, because if you follow the link you provided it says in red bold letters:
Not for use with Windows 2000sr2 or Windows XP
Geewiz, I wonder why. Could it be because IE is so tightly integrated with the OS that removing it would kill your unborn children? Perhaps. But Mr. Desler's comments are right on... they can't remove it because they purposely integrated it into the OS. I think that's a great thing for the consumers... but the end result was some shady business practices that Microsoft deserves punishment for.
One thing I think a lot of the RPGs are missing is an actual real-time realistic combat system.
Do you mean a system where as you see your oppontent preparing to strike at your neck with his sword, you then need to use the "shield parry" command (or skill) to then block, but only at the right time, and of course, only at the right height (your neck)... so those who try to attack at the same time might find themselves decapitated? Obviously the better you got the faster your opponent and thus the less time to react...
Slashdot Mirror
Note: Use even more extreme caution and even more common sense when throwing anything up to a rooftop (especially CRTs).
It's a pity that certain political factions like to lionize Microsoft as bastions of capitalism when Microsoft is itself devoted to strangling the free market at every turn.
I have to point out something here... a capitalist, by the nature of the fact that he/she is trying to maximize their "take" (profit) from the market, will attempt, at all times, to corner, strangle, etc the "free market" at "every turn."
This is raw, unabashed capitalism. It's "Me me me" and that's all. The thing that throws a wrench into the works is that nasty thing called competition.
If Microsoft is as good as they say they are, why are they so afraid of competing in an open and fair market?
See above. Even if they were the best, they still want to control the entire market... more profit == bigger house for Billy-boy and Stevie-B.
Why have they adopted such a deeply un-American stance towards the fundamental values of political and economic liberty?
I find that comment completely offensive. Calling something "un-American" is merely a ploy to gain my agreement (since I'm American)... especially after the September 11th events. "Oh, no, I don't want to be un-American -- whatever you say as long as it's for the USA."
Ballmer can spew all he wants about the GPL being communist, but as near as I can tell, it is Microsoft that is seeking to create a command economy.
And you wouldn't if you only motivation was profit? And before you overreact, what exactly do you think is Microsoft's goal as a company? To make our lives better by producing "teh bestest software evar" (TM)?
The problem is that the slashbots trolling us on April 1st aren't creative enough to bring us "funny" jokes... and as such we are left with these "half jokes" and more intelligent readers are left to fill in the blanks for themselves.
What part of "not funny" do you have difficulty understanding?
I'm all for a good practical joke, but April 1st brings out the worst in Slashdot.
It's not funny just because it's about Linux.
It's not funny just because it bashes Microsoft.
It's not funny just because there is a "Cowboy Neal" option.
It's not funny just because it's April 1st.
Is "Ask Slashdot" joke spamming too?
I once saw power strips advertised to protect "computers up to 350 MHz". Of course, the more expensive one could go up to 450 MHz. Yes, you have to buy a more expensive power strip for a faster computer.
Fool! Everyone who's anyone is overclocking their powerstrips nowadays!
That sounds as bad as one of my clients home machines, which, until recently, was a dual Pentium II machine running Windows 98. I don't know who sold it to him but it's good for a laugh around the office.
~my $.02
Unfortunately, your $0.02 is easily outweighed by AOL's $109,100,000.00 market capitalization.
And you obviously didn't read the article, because AOL wanted to switch TW over to prove how good the AOL system was (I assume AOL uses it for itself...?). And TW didn't use the AOL client... they just used the (crappy) AOL servers.
Samsung has a SyncMaster 240T, which has, among other things, multiple inputs (DVI/Analog D-Sub), picture by picture, picture in picture, etc.
If you're a HD freak, check out Samsung's upcoming 241MP, which will support composite inputs as well, and includes a TV tuner. It's HDTV compatible. Pricing will be around $7000.
Well that's good... the program I watched was quite a few years ago, and I definitely didn't catch the name at the time.
So despite your insult, I thank you for the information.
Anyone else see that show on the MIT (IIRC) guy who had a wearable computer?
Face rec, face rec!
CHeck out Lugnet.com .Someone recently just made an all-Lego roller coaster, using monorail(or is it train?) parts and it does everything
Perhaps this is the link you were referring to.
runs away to see if it's patentable
For a moment I thought you meant:
"runs away to see if running away is patentable"
But that's rediculous, since it was invented, and patented, by Al Gore.
Nobody is claiming that this makes the iPod a full featured PDA.
Except perhaps, Liquidape, who submitted the article:
Hack Turns iPod into PDA
Provue Development has released a personal info and contact manager app called iPod Organizer. The program enables use of iPod for storing and retrieving phone numbers, email addresses, flight numbers, appointment times and other data. It also comes with a sync feature.
It's entirely possible that even the best parents in the world could have evil, maladjusted, sociopathic children.
Being a "good parent" simply means you child is not a detriment to society. That means you child is not a murderer, rapist, Enron executive, politician, etc.
What about John Walker Lindh's parents? They think they're good people, and that may be true. They even think their son is a "good person at heart." The problem is that they're his parents, and it will be hard for them to really see him as a "terrorist" (assuming he is one). He has obviously chosen a path separate from the norms of our society; that isn't always bad, but in his case it led to treason.
Were they bad parents? They didn't educate him enough on the "right" way (say what you want about what is truly the "right" way, but whatever our society decides is "right" is just that) to behave as part of our society. He left to another society, and got involved in a war on the wrong side.
So should we blame parents? Yes. Always. They are responsible for the education, socialization, and (when necessary) medication of their child. If any of those has failed when the child "grows up" then stand back...
Does that mean parents are exclusively to blame? No, of course not. But for them to deny responsibility is completely rediculous.
There was a situation a little while back where posts (in the same thread) were all modded down to -1 by the endless points of the employees of slashdot. The exact thread escapes me at the moment, but think about this:
What if those users had active (paid) subscriptions? Now they actually have some stake in things... does slashdot itself have the right to effectively censor them? What kind of rights come with the payment? Can people request a refund if that happens (and is the subscription fee refundable at all)?
This works great, IF there's competition. But who does the MPAA compete with? Although the member organizations might in theory compete with each other, they choose to rally together to protect the industry as they have defined it, and marketing forces can do very little but sway which direction they go.
Hmm, your analysis is interesting, but unfortunately a bit long winded. I could be summarized in one word:
cartel
Which, according to existing U.S. laws, are 100% illegal.
...to ask a question that I wanted to ask as well. Granted, this topic seems a little strange, considering the Linux cluster is in place, and it seems like the kind of question which encourages a Microsoft vs. Linux world domination showdown for grandmaster of the universe. It also shows a limited business sense on the part of the poster (why change something that works well when you can't afford a replacement?).
Right now a coworker and I are looking at pricing and configuring a fault-tolerant cluster for a client who runs Windows 2000 and Exchange 2000. They're a bit paranoid, so they've decided they want a cluster. We've tried to educate them on exactly what a Microsoft cluster can and can't do, so it's difficult to understand exactly what they want (basically an entire network exactly like Microsoft's own, but for $1000).
Pricing on a two system cluster is around $50,000. Buying two copies of Exchange and Windows Advanced Server will total $20,000. Then there's the hardware costs. For our client, they've specifically requested this, so they're ready to pay.
My question to Whamo is are they really taking the Microsoft rep seriously? If they have to pay software costs for their new cluster that's going to mean two things: either buying less CPUs to add to the cluster, or not doing the project at all, because just the software will put them over budget. With Advanced Server running somewhere around $4000 that's a lot per machine when Linux costs at most $5 to burn a CD after downloading it via the university's T1/T3/etc. Whamo says "it is running on old hardware and is basically used for dog and pony shows to get more funding and hopefully donations of higher-end systems" and to me that is your answer. If you can't afford the hardware you can't afford to buy Microsoft's software...
Also, there's MOSIX as well, but I don't have much experience with MOSIX and thus cannot comment on it.
The almost religious "must please the shareholders" attitude is particularly irritating. Fuck the shareholders if they don't like the way you run YOUR business!
I guess you've never been a shareholder, then. Do you realize that the shareholders actually own the company? So if there is more than one shareholder (other than you) then technically it isn't exclusively "YOUR" business. Thus even if you're Bill Gates, unless you hold the majority shares, if nobody likes you, the next shareholder vote is going to land your on your arrogant ass.
With that aside, I'm sure there is room for discussion on why the shareholders might want to kick you out. Perhaps you aren't making any money for the company (in other words running the company into the ground while still happily collecting a paycheck), or perhaps you make decisions without getting educated opinions first.
Remember, the shareholders own your job.
Although this one throws in a few SPARC and VAX machines...
0 49208
http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/02/19/
And it seems the MIPS-based versions of the respective OSes are coming along; NetBSD will run on your O2. SGI's work on Linux for MIPS is as far as "only Indys have a working XFree86" although a few other machines will boot Linux.
An interesting question is what about the Cobalt MIPS-based appliances? Don't they run Linux as the x86 ones do? So where's the source code for those?
Since we're ushering this new era of KDE/Gnome friendliness, I have one simple request...
Can one (or both) of these two desktops allow me to scale the title bar on the windows? I can change all of the other fonts to a bigger size, but when I change the title bar font it just gets cut off vertically. Sorry, but some of us try to run high resolutions on smaller monitors.
By the way, here's cool theme from KDE-Look.org (one of the few ones that didn't rip off some pre-existing OS (majority were XP/MacOS X)):
Gorilla @ KDE-Look.org (preview)
Notice how small the title bar font is... just think the joy you could bring to small children if that scaled with the font size! It would be perfect on this theme...
LUCAS: Digital is cool. I'm cool. I'm old, but I can still set a trend.
STAR WARS FANS: Speak to us your words of wisdom, oh wise one!
Lucas: Um, okay, I guess I don't do anything else. Hmmm...
Lucas: <Intense thinking>
Lucas: I have it! I will produce AOTC digitally and it will be shown on digital screens around the country... I am a visionary; I will be worshipped like a god!
Star Wars Fans: <Proceed to worship Lucas like a god>
Lucas: Muhahah! My plan is complete!
BYSTANDER: But don't digital screens cost money? Who's going to pay for it?
Lucas: If I produce it, they will pay.
Star Wars Fans: If he produces it, we will pay.
Bystander: No, I meant who will pay for the digital projection equipment and the like...
Lucas: <Shock flashes across his face>
Lucas: They shall not have AOTC without installing a digital projection system! I command it.
Bystander: Say, how many more days until the next installment of LOTR?
Considering IM clients are very rarely work-related, I don't see why a company should need to protect against it. They should be limiting what crap you install on your workstation, with AIM/MSN messenger/Yahoo messenger/etc being one of them. Of course this would be convered under corporate policies, and should be enforced.
Microsoft spokesman Jim Desler said the company had proved during the trial that it is impossible to remove software features from Windows without damaging the operating system.
I got rid of Internet Explorer a few months ago, and my system is just fine.
I think your comment is meant to be +1, Funny, because if you follow the link you provided it says in red bold letters:
Not for use with Windows 2000sr2 or Windows XP
Geewiz, I wonder why. Could it be because IE is so tightly integrated with the OS that removing it would kill your unborn children? Perhaps. But Mr. Desler's comments are right on... they can't remove it because they purposely integrated it into the OS. I think that's a great thing for the consumers... but the end result was some shady business practices that Microsoft deserves punishment for.
One thing I think a lot of the RPGs are missing is an actual real-time realistic combat system.
Do you mean a system where as you see your oppontent preparing to strike at your neck with his sword, you then need to use the "shield parry" command (or skill) to then block, but only at the right time, and of course, only at the right height (your neck)... so those who try to attack at the same time might find themselves decapitated? Obviously the better you got the faster your opponent and thus the less time to react...