What is happening to Microsoft is what MS did to Netscape. How do you compete with free and good enough? Brand name recognition will carry you only so far. One of the things that is going to cut MS is thier ahndling of Works. Alot of OEMs now preinstall Works instead of Office or Word and Works is not thought of as a MS product like Office is. So people will get used to using something other than Office and find that there are viable replacements for Office. And on those rare cases when something doesn't open in Office, they will find that not even MS can garauntee compatibility on all Office docs.
It is more like a car or boat. It needs regular maintance; while misuse is not lethal yet, it can have legal ramifications; and a certain amount of training is needed to just use them.
BTW, PCs do meet certain standards, as electrical devices they need to meet certain FCC regs, of course this is not much different than an FM stereo...
Actually one would use a sail to help conserve fuel. But the rockets would be more used for steering and setup some gravity well slingshots. The slingshot manuever could shed momentum as well as gain momentum.
HT not performing well is not surprising. It is a hack to overcome the limitation of the Pentium's long pipeline. If there are few branch prediction misses, it is going to take away a bit of processing power. One can think of it like have the processor's attention divided. Hyperthreading is like having two pipelines. One pipeline gets clogged (branch prediction missed) and the other can be worked on. Disable HT and and the procesor can narrowly focus on one pipeline.
So a lot of the synthetic benchmarks seem to be optimized for Intel's long pipeline.
Why? One should already realize that any lock can be broken either through brute force or picking. The point of the lock is to slow down any potential thieves.
The point of the advisory as I see it is that one should be aware of any suspicious activity around the lock, even if the suspect is only carrying office supplies instead of just power tools or hack saws.
It is fraud on Kensigton's part that they claim they have cable that is secure, yet is easily pickable.
It is actual fraud if if you cut the cable and then sold the notebook on Ebay. If your notebook gets stolen by a thief that picks a lock, then it is in the spirit of the warranty to receive your refund.
The GPL requires one to freely Licence one's patents, that are applicable to the software, to any downstream users of the software. No further contracts are required.
As IBM distributes Linux to thier clients, they have to licence any applicable patents for use with the GPL.
It might be possible for IBM to say sue Postgresql, if IBM has never distributed Postgresql and Postgresql has not incorporated any code from any GPL project that IBM does distribute. I doubt any IBM lawyer will want to get involve in that, nor does IBM want to try to invalidate the GPL.
Even MS is going to have some problem suing F/OSS for patent violations as they have distributed GNU tools.
Actually the contracts might be what is preventing MS from attacking Linux. If MS was to sue for patent infringement on Linux developers, then IBm could claim that MS was materially harming thier business and the contract between them is broken.
I actually think the thing with MS patenting everything is a backlash from the Eolas web browser patent and similiar things. They are trying to preempt any future lawsuits. They are probably just going to use thier patents for FUDS value for the next couple of years.
It was probably not official policy. I work for a different OEM computer manufacturer, and we get idiots who will spout similiar things, but it is not true. You might loose your software support or even phone support, but the hardware warranty would still remain in place. We would still gladly send the notebook in for service regardless what you installed on it. You would need to get through the Indian or Filipino reps though.
You could still end up voiding your warranty if you say put in the wrong monitor sync rates and burn out the lcd panel, but that is pretty unlikely with modern notebooks and modern distros.
Most people prefer touchpads to the little nub thing, and touchpads wear better than roller balls.
I find touchpads and roller balls slightly undesirable, but are better than the little nubbin thing, but will tolerate them if I do not have an external mouse available.
And the last complaint is a matter of opinion. Personally, I find MS Office useless for any large paper. OOo is a bit better, and the cost is a lot better. But for truly large papers, LyX is the best.
My dad works for an airline, and trust me, your pay would suck if you weren't unionized. The airline my father works for, they tried firing several low level managers that were a couple years from retirement. This was solely to avoid paying retirement benefits. The employees union and several individuals got the fired managers in touch with one another so they could file a lawsuit.
Now imagine the kind of crap the company would be pulling without a Union.
Wrong. Corporations are granted a public charter to promote the public good. If the corporation fails to promote the public good, in theory the corporation can be disbanded.
How long does a slab of luncheon meat last in the wild? Protiens degrade, troll.
Besides, Toxins are already contraband, so a protein that causes a disease is by definition, toxic. You would get better results from dumping E. Coli into the food supply or dump soluble lead into the water supply.
Slashdot Mirror
What is happening to Microsoft is what MS did to Netscape. How do you compete with free and good enough? Brand name recognition will carry you only so far. One of the things that is going to cut MS is thier ahndling of Works. Alot of OEMs now preinstall Works instead of Office or Word and Works is not thought of as a MS product like Office is. So people will get used to using something other than Office and find that there are viable replacements for Office. And on those rare cases when something doesn't open in Office, they will find that not even MS can garauntee compatibility on all Office docs.
It is more like a car or boat. It needs regular maintance; while misuse is not lethal yet, it can have legal ramifications; and a certain amount of training is needed to just use them.
BTW, PCs do meet certain standards, as electrical devices they need to meet certain FCC regs, of course this is not much different than an FM stereo...
Actually one would use a sail to help conserve fuel. But the rockets would be more used for steering and setup some gravity well slingshots. The slingshot manuever could shed momentum as well as gain momentum.
It is Sci-Fi, they could have Quantum Foam/Flux or Superstring or Dark Matter anchors.
They do have FTL drives so some sort of anchor that latches onto Quantum Foam or Superstings could be considered plausible.
HT not performing well is not surprising. It is a hack to overcome the limitation of the Pentium's long pipeline. If there are few branch prediction misses, it is going to take away a bit of processing power. One can think of it like have the processor's attention divided. Hyperthreading is like having two pipelines. One pipeline gets clogged (branch prediction missed) and the other can be worked on. Disable HT and and the procesor can narrowly focus on one pipeline.
So a lot of the synthetic benchmarks seem to be optimized for Intel's long pipeline.
Why? One should already realize that any lock can be broken either through brute force or picking. The point of the lock is to slow down any potential thieves.
The point of the advisory as I see it is that one should be aware of any suspicious activity around the lock, even if the suspect is only carrying office supplies instead of just power tools or hack saws.
It is fraud on Kensigton's part that they claim they have cable that is secure, yet is easily pickable.
It is actual fraud if if you cut the cable and then sold the notebook on Ebay. If your notebook gets stolen by a thief that picks a lock, then it is in the spirit of the warranty to receive your refund.
IANAL
The GPL requires one to freely Licence one's patents, that are applicable to the software, to any downstream users of the software. No further contracts are required.
As IBM distributes Linux to thier clients, they have to licence any applicable patents for use with the GPL.
It might be possible for IBM to say sue Postgresql, if IBM has never distributed Postgresql and Postgresql has not incorporated any code from any GPL project that IBM does distribute. I doubt any IBM lawyer will want to get involve in that, nor does IBM want to try to invalidate the GPL.
Even MS is going to have some problem suing F/OSS for patent violations as they have distributed GNU tools.
Actually the contracts might be what is preventing MS from attacking Linux. If MS was to sue for patent infringement on Linux developers, then IBm could claim that MS was materially harming thier business and the contract between them is broken.
I actually think the thing with MS patenting everything is a backlash from the Eolas web browser patent and similiar things. They are trying to preempt any future lawsuits. They are probably just going to use thier patents for FUDS value for the next couple of years.
Bullpucky. HP just announced some Linux notebook offerings.
Actually, would not even need that. If Katie of katie.com was smart, she should have filed a defamation suit immediately.
What would the courts decision be if Penguin Publishing used her phone number for a title instead? Penguin would have been raked over the coals.
The only problem is getting a Judge to be able to see the comparison in a favorable light.
Why should you get Patent protection and Copyright protection?
It was probably not official policy. I work for a different OEM computer manufacturer, and we get idiots who will spout similiar things, but it is not true. You might loose your software support or even phone support, but the hardware warranty would still remain in place. We would still gladly send the notebook in for service regardless what you installed on it. You would need to get through the Indian or Filipino reps though.
You could still end up voiding your warranty if you say put in the wrong monitor sync rates and burn out the lcd panel, but that is pretty unlikely with modern notebooks and modern distros.
Most people prefer touchpads to the little nub thing, and touchpads wear better than roller balls.
I find touchpads and roller balls slightly undesirable, but are better than the little nubbin thing, but will tolerate them if I do not have an external mouse available.
And the last complaint is a matter of opinion. Personally, I find MS Office useless for any large paper. OOo is a bit better, and the cost is a lot better. But for truly large papers, LyX is the best.
My dad works for an airline, and trust me, your pay would suck if you weren't unionized. The airline my father works for, they tried firing several low level managers that were a couple years from retirement. This was solely to avoid paying retirement benefits. The employees union and several individuals got the fired managers in touch with one another so they could file a lawsuit.
Now imagine the kind of crap the company would be pulling without a Union.
How would that be immoral? The company got to turn the guy into an indentured servant. I would consider it to be honorable payback.
Wrong. Corporations are granted a public charter to promote the public good. If the corporation fails to promote the public good, in theory the corporation can be disbanded.
Anti-trust. IBM has already gone through being a monopoly once. They don't want to even give the appearance of being a monopoly.
Ya think that MS is going to be holding the bag? Almost every proprietary software out there has disclaimers out the wazoo.
You volunteering? Don't eat and don't have sex? What would be left in life?
Basically, yes.
How long does a slab of luncheon meat last in the wild? Protiens degrade, troll.
Besides, Toxins are already contraband, so a protein that causes a disease is by definition, toxic. You would get better results from dumping E. Coli into the food supply or dump soluble lead into the water supply.
Yeah, I found the review particularly helpful myself. I can probably get by with my AthlonXP 2100+ and get by with a Geforce4 or FX.