Two months is more than 99% of people need in a workstation. Most people turn them off at night. When using Win9x, the stability problem is a real issue because you can't get through an entire day without having to reboot to alleviate some problem.
There have been plenty of articles on the stability of Win2k. There has been even more (and I mean a substantial amount) of anecdotal evidence on the stability of Win2k.
Linux people are going to have to accept the fact that Win2k appears to be sufficiently stable for workstations and for file/print servers. I've not done any reading as far as it working as a web server, db server, or anything else.
Okay, this link has shown up a few times, so I thought I may as well see if it is real. That is the most offensive thing I have ever seen in my life. It truly made my stomach (physically) hurt.
Two months ago, we moved our desktops from Win98SE to Win2k. Some of them have been running for the entire two months. My workstation has been rock solid, and I have 15 to 20 apps open constantly (Outlook, Excel, our ERP system client, IE, Mozilla, Netscape, MSSQL Enterprise Manager, Query Analyzer, VB, Interdev, Seti, IIS Web/FTP server, SQL DB Server, MS Terminal Server client, and a few others are basically open 24x7). Not once has a workstation locked up or become bogged down and needed rebooting. Oh, and they got rid of that need to reboot every time you touch something.
We have several Win2k servers now, and they are solid as a rock.
We've got a Win2k terminal server that has been up since day 1 accepting about 40-50 client sessions a day running client software for our ERP system.
Hey, I like Linux and use it at home. I'd like to use it at work. I don't like Win9x or NT4 because they are not very stable. However, there is not much argument that Win2k is unstable.
A certification would have to work somewhat like this:
You get certified by some means. Taking courses, whatever.
You can lose your certification by taking actions which are considered detrimental to your client/customer. These actions must be verfiably damaging according to some accepted, structured set of rules.
It would have to be difficult to regain your Trustworthiness.
This would almost be like your credit rating. Clients could see a trust history on you. However, it would take some work to stop people from building up fake trust records and whatnot. Although, if negative ratings were counted strongly, someone couldn't go far on a fake good rating before they were marked negatively.
I know it seems like the companies that are screwing people are making good money, but they never last long. They will not get referrals, and they will end up with a bad reputation.
I witnessed one of my largest clients get screwed by a company that attempted to upgrade their NT 4 server to 2 processors. They installed the second processor, ran some uptomp.exe thing from the resource kit, and completely ruined the server. It would not boot. They spent two days trying to fix it without restoring from tape (because, they pointed out, you'd still have a single processor kernel if you did that). After two days, I convinced my client to get rid of them and let me fix the server. The company then billed my client for 32 hours (two people, two days) at $175/hr for the creation of this mess!
I know several people who own their own consulting companies, and they get all of their business from word of mouth. They are up front and honest and will even tell the client that the client does not need their services when that is the case. It very much impresses people when you take less time that you estimated, or recommend that they not spend their money on something they are asking for because you can do it in a cheaper, better way.
On a related note, my father is in sales and has often had similar problems. He often found that when he started at a new company or in selling a product in a new field that he lagged behind the dishonest sales people who sold products customers didn't need and stole customers from their coworkers. He found that in every field, he became very successful for being honest with people. He also found that many times if he told someone that a competitor had a product that was more suited to them, they would buy from him anyway because they trusted him.
Yes, it would be extremely useful to have an accepted code of ethics for consulting (and sales is somewhat related to this). If this was well known and accepted, it would be easy to use to show how effective consultants were. Somewhat of a measuring stick, I guess. It would also give more substance to the word of mouth reviews about a consultant because you would have something to point to and say 'they did all these things which were harmful to my business'.
I thought about mentioning civil disobedience, but speeding seems like such a petty form of protest. Sort of like saying "I have no patience, therefore you should accommodate me!".
I'm not making any statements about it being logical. I'm just saying people don't accept that type of restriction. Maybe it is just because of that lingering 'What if?' about not being able to do something. What if I was in a situation where I needed to do it?
At the same time that it seems like a safety measure, it seems dangerous. Sure, if I'm in danger from something, it may not be a good idea for me to speed to get away from it. However, I'm not sure I want to be prevented from trying. There are areas where people literally get run off the road by carjackers (Miami, for example).
For an example that sounds more reasonable: say my son falls and is bleeding badly. Should I:
a. Drive slowly to the hospital. b. Drive quickly to the hospital.
c. See how long it takes an ambulance to find my house.
I can't believe someone hasn't gotten rid of this practice. I don't exactly see why the registrant of the license plate deserves a ticket for loaning his/her car to a friend, a spouse, a child, a sibling, etc.
Although, I suppose they do the same thing with parking tickets. However, parking tickets don't build up points on your license which jack up your insurance and can potentially get your license suspended. Can you imagine getting your license suspended because of all the speeding tickets your son got driving your car?
If you let me speed, it'll take me less time to get away from you!
But seriously, it's still not exactly right to prevent someone from ever breaking the law. People have accepted the crime causes punishment concept. They do not like the involuntary prevention concept. They are very different.
Re:Been done here for ages, and it works.
on
The Unblinking Eye
·
· Score: 3
Do you think our democracy "worked" as you describe for the folks of darker complexion who were discouraged from voting in Florida by police checkpoints near the polls, or the ones who were unceremoniously dumped from the rolls because a database (built by a company closely allied with one and only one of our two major political parties) said they were felons?
Terrible shit is happening all around you! Whatever shall you do? Both of these things are overmanipulated stories that are part of media sensationalism.
UK, land of the infamous Terrorist Act that allows you to be held without bond and interrogated for, what is it, 7 days
Umm, we here in the US have this stupid thing call Secret Evidence (tm). The FBI holds people for years without having to disclose the evidence they have against them. Ever hear of a guy named Mazen Al-Najjar? (Sorry I can't find any links to any articles that don't want $$ to show them). He was finally release on bail in December after being held for 3 years, without trial, because of some secret evidence the FBI had against him.
No, they don't let you pay for a higher listing. Now, they just make you pay for any listing. Then, they tell you that they may or may not end up putting your link in the database, they will use whatever title they want, whatever category they want, and whatever description they want. I'm glad they made me pay for that.
My company is listed on Yahoo! under the wrong company name, a bad description, and in the wrong category. Did I submit it that way? No. That's just what Yahoo! thought was best for us, and they made us pay for it.
This is the best answer (or the dos/Windows version of Civilization). The problem with StarCraft is that there are too many things to know in the game. This will show you how well they remember things.
Civilization is easy to learn, but hard to master (as someone above me said). This means that you will get a better test of how smart they are and how well they learn.
IE users visit an average of 39 pages. Netscape users visit an average of 37 pages. This is counting only.asp or.htm/.html pages (not gif or jpg or css).
I'm not writing an IE only site. I never have been. I can guarantee you that my boss would have me write an IE only site if he even understood the concept of there being more than one browser. The guy runs AOL over our T1 line because he doesn't know that there is any other way to get on the web.
But if I were a 50 year old woman driving a brand new Cadillac... who here thinks that violation would have been enforced? (You caught me! I'm a twenty-something male in a not-so-new vehicle...)
Now, imagine if you were black...
I'm not black, and I can't imagine how much more frustrating it must be for them to get pulled over. I'm not far removed from being a 20-something in a not so good car. Seems like everytime I went over the speed limit I was pulled over for it, many times when I was going with the flow of traffic. However, since I bought a nice car (Volvo), I've yet to be pulled over.
My preferred conversation goes like this:
"Have you been drinking?"
"No."
"How many beers did you have?"
"I haven't been drinking."
"What kind of liquor was it?"
"I haven't been drinking."
"Was it at a party?"
"I wasn't at a party, and I haven't been drinking?"
"Did they have a keg?"
"Who?"
"At the party, did they have a keg?"
"I told you I wasn't at a party."
"Can you step outside the vehicle?"
At which point, I was asked to recite the alphabet - backwards. The guy was nice enough to let me go. He wrote me a $38 ticket for traveling 65 mph in a 65 mph zone. I kid you not.
I'm not sure how those surveys work. I am webmaster for several e-commerce sites, and our traffic is 97% Internet Explorer. I've seen Opera all of one time. I'm sure that if I showed the logs to my boss he'd tell me to quit wasting time making the pages work in Netscape.
If he's smart, he'll use the stats from his log files. Surveys don't mean anything to him - he only wants to know who comes to his site.
Yes, I did. I found this piece of information, which doesn't seemt to make sense:
All of our records are destroyed within 24 hours of shipping. We maintain financial records of anonymous transactions ONLY. Please remember to keep your order number if you need to correspond with us after the event.
If they destroy all information, what good is an order number?
This has nothing to do with libraries. This law actually makes sense.
I've worked in ObGyn, and will tell you that there is a distinct difference between medical resources and pornography resources. The professors may be stretching things a little too far, unless they are researching the effects of pornography. Their research has to be approved by the University anyway, so they would be allowed to look at the stuff if it was for an approved project.
It's not about stopping discrimination - it's about money. This is happening in America, here on Planet Earth. This is not about some idealistic notion of ending racism at Microsoft.
The consumer is the one responsible for paying sales tax. Retailers, etc have been providing the service of collecting and remitting the sales tax on behalf of the consumers. They get a discount from the states for doing so.
On all sales on the internet, and from catalog, the consumer is still responsible for paying the sales tax. It has just become common place for retailers to not collect it because it is an enormous pain in the ass for them to keep track of all of the local taxes (there are services like Vertex that will provide this data for a fee). In these Internet sales situations, the consumer is obligated to calculate and remit the tax to their local taxing authority. This just never gets enforced.
So, they aren't going to create any 'new' taxes, they are just going to force retailers to collect the taxes that have always applied. This will be more difficult in some industries than others. For example, with dental products (those sold to dentists, not consumers), the tax classification for each product varies from state to state.
What exactly do you mean 'for your regular mail'? You can't force your phone company, your bank, etc to send you your mail through FedEx. They simply won't bother. Nothing to do with the law. Maybe I am misunderstanding what you meant.
There is a federal law about FedEx or UPS using your mailbox to deliver anything to you.
Because the canvassing boards followed the law regarding what votes are acceptable.
Not true. We are under a mandate from the US Supreme Court regarding overseas military ballots. It has been around for years. We are required to accept military ballots without postmark, provided that they are properly signed and dated.
No one raised a fuss four years ago because the election was not close enough for it to have mattered.
Democrats are known cheaters when it comes to elections. It is well known that there was considerable fraud in the Kennedy-Nixon race. The biggest incidence was in Chicago, where ballot boxes were stuffed with Kennedy votes. Nixon just didn't pout about it.
LBJ was elected fraudulently in Texas. All the precincts (precinct, county, not sure) came in, except the one where his good buddy was sherriff. He was losing by 10000 votes. The returns from that precinct gave him a margin of +10500 in that area. Go figure.
Democrats are well known to give people cigarrettes to go vote. Of course, they are just giving out cigarrettes for voting - not necessarily voting Democrat. But, if you are dirt poor and don't care anyway, aren't you going to vote for the guy that just bought you a carton.
The police found a Democratic Florida State Senator driving around with a ballot machine in his car on election day. No clue what that was about.
Fraud was not necessarily committed. The counting machines are known to be inaccurate. There has never been an election in which the margin was smaller than the accuracy of the machine. Hand counting cannot possibly be more accurate.
The reason so many more Gore votes are turning up is because they are in highly Democratic areas. He had 70% of the vote down there. So, when they find a ballot that wasn't counted the first time, it has a 70% chance of being for him. That is why he only asked for a recount in those counties.
Despite what he says in public, he doesn't give a shit about the will of the voters. He only wants the will of the people that voted for him. He and Lieberman keep acting like they are doing the 'just' thing, but they are trying to skew the vote towards themselves.
They made all attempts to throw out the military vote because it is known to be traditionally Republican. What about the will of those voters? Ahh, screw em - they're only serving their country, what the hell would they know about who should be Commander in Chief?
I didn't vote for Gore because he is a major league asshole (to quote George Bush, who was talking about someone else). This whole election thing has made me think I was right in thinking that.
Don't try to justify what Gore is doing. You can't. I'm not saying Bush is acting 100% respectably, either. I'm just saying Gore is being a bigger ass.
The problem with any of this being that MS has a dramatically superior product. Lotus and WP have solid products, but they are not nearly as easy to use, much less extend.
I don't think that StarOffice will have problems related to being free. Corporations still have to pay for it, and pay for support. It may benefit from being acquired by Sun. At least now it has the weight of a respectable company behind it (no offense to Star Division).
BTW, name some of the features that 2000 has that 97 doesn't. I've used both, and 97 really does everything you'd need it to.
Slashdot Mirror
Two months is more than 99% of people need in a workstation. Most people turn them off at night. When using Win9x, the stability problem is a real issue because you can't get through an entire day without having to reboot to alleviate some problem.
There have been plenty of articles on the stability of Win2k. There has been even more (and I mean a substantial amount) of anecdotal evidence on the stability of Win2k.
Linux people are going to have to accept the fact that Win2k appears to be sufficiently stable for workstations and for file/print servers. I've not done any reading as far as it working as a web server, db server, or anything else.
Okay, this link has shown up a few times, so I thought I may as well see if it is real. That is the most offensive thing I have ever seen in my life. It truly made my stomach (physically) hurt.
That guy must not know what he is doing.
Two months ago, we moved our desktops from Win98SE to Win2k. Some of them have been running for the entire two months. My workstation has been rock solid, and I have 15 to 20 apps open constantly (Outlook, Excel, our ERP system client, IE, Mozilla, Netscape, MSSQL Enterprise Manager, Query Analyzer, VB, Interdev, Seti, IIS Web/FTP server, SQL DB Server, MS Terminal Server client, and a few others are basically open 24x7). Not once has a workstation locked up or become bogged down and needed rebooting. Oh, and they got rid of that need to reboot every time you touch something.
We have several Win2k servers now, and they are solid as a rock. We've got a Win2k terminal server that has been up since day 1 accepting about 40-50 client sessions a day running client software for our ERP system.
Hey, I like Linux and use it at home. I'd like to use it at work. I don't like Win9x or NT4 because they are not very stable. However, there is not much argument that Win2k is unstable.
A certification would have to work somewhat like this:
You get certified by some means. Taking courses, whatever.
You can lose your certification by taking actions which are considered detrimental to your client/customer. These actions must be verfiably damaging according to some accepted, structured set of rules.
It would have to be difficult to regain your Trustworthiness.
This would almost be like your credit rating. Clients could see a trust history on you. However, it would take some work to stop people from building up fake trust records and whatnot. Although, if negative ratings were counted strongly, someone couldn't go far on a fake good rating before they were marked negatively.
I know it seems like the companies that are screwing people are making good money, but they never last long. They will not get referrals, and they will end up with a bad reputation.
I witnessed one of my largest clients get screwed by a company that attempted to upgrade their NT 4 server to 2 processors. They installed the second processor, ran some uptomp.exe thing from the resource kit, and completely ruined the server. It would not boot. They spent two days trying to fix it without restoring from tape (because, they pointed out, you'd still have a single processor kernel if you did that). After two days, I convinced my client to get rid of them and let me fix the server. The company then billed my client for 32 hours (two people, two days) at $175/hr for the creation of this mess!
I know several people who own their own consulting companies, and they get all of their business from word of mouth. They are up front and honest and will even tell the client that the client does not need their services when that is the case. It very much impresses people when you take less time that you estimated, or recommend that they not spend their money on something they are asking for because you can do it in a cheaper, better way.
On a related note, my father is in sales and has often had similar problems. He often found that when he started at a new company or in selling a product in a new field that he lagged behind the dishonest sales people who sold products customers didn't need and stole customers from their coworkers. He found that in every field, he became very successful for being honest with people. He also found that many times if he told someone that a competitor had a product that was more suited to them, they would buy from him anyway because they trusted him.
Yes, it would be extremely useful to have an accepted code of ethics for consulting (and sales is somewhat related to this). If this was well known and accepted, it would be easy to use to show how effective consultants were. Somewhat of a measuring stick, I guess. It would also give more substance to the word of mouth reviews about a consultant because you would have something to point to and say 'they did all these things which were harmful to my business'.
I thought about mentioning civil disobedience, but speeding seems like such a petty form of protest. Sort of like saying "I have no patience, therefore you should accommodate me!".
I'm not making any statements about it being logical. I'm just saying people don't accept that type of restriction. Maybe it is just because of that lingering 'What if?' about not being able to do something. What if I was in a situation where I needed to do it?
At the same time that it seems like a safety measure, it seems dangerous. Sure, if I'm in danger from something, it may not be a good idea for me to speed to get away from it. However, I'm not sure I want to be prevented from trying. There are areas where people literally get run off the road by carjackers (Miami, for example).
For an example that sounds more reasonable: say my son falls and is bleeding badly. Should I:
a. Drive slowly to the hospital.
b. Drive quickly to the hospital.
c. See how long it takes an ambulance to find my house.
I can't believe someone hasn't gotten rid of this practice. I don't exactly see why the registrant of the license plate deserves a ticket for loaning his/her car to a friend, a spouse, a child, a sibling, etc.
Although, I suppose they do the same thing with parking tickets. However, parking tickets don't build up points on your license which jack up your insurance and can potentially get your license suspended. Can you imagine getting your license suspended because of all the speeding tickets your son got driving your car?
If you ask me, I'd rather you didn't [speed].
If you let me speed, it'll take me less time to get away from you!
But seriously, it's still not exactly right to prevent someone from ever breaking the law. People have accepted the crime causes punishment concept. They do not like the involuntary prevention concept. They are very different.
Do you think our democracy "worked" as you describe for the folks of darker complexion who were discouraged from voting in Florida by police checkpoints near the polls, or the ones who were unceremoniously dumped from the rolls because a database (built by a company closely allied with one and only one of our two major political parties) said they were felons?
Terrible shit is happening all around you! Whatever shall you do? Both of these things are overmanipulated stories that are part of media sensationalism.
UK, land of the infamous Terrorist Act that allows you to be held without bond and interrogated for, what is it, 7 days
Umm, we here in the US have this stupid thing call Secret Evidence (tm). The FBI holds people for years without having to disclose the evidence they have against them. Ever hear of a guy named Mazen Al-Najjar? (Sorry I can't find any links to any articles that don't want $$ to show them). He was finally release on bail in December after being held for 3 years, without trial, because of some secret evidence the FBI had against him.
No, they don't let you pay for a higher listing. Now, they just make you pay for any listing. Then, they tell you that they may or may not end up putting your link in the database, they will use whatever title they want, whatever category they want, and whatever description they want. I'm glad they made me pay for that.
My company is listed on Yahoo! under the wrong company name, a bad description, and in the wrong category. Did I submit it that way? No. That's just what Yahoo! thought was best for us, and they made us pay for it.
This is the best answer (or the dos/Windows version of Civilization). The problem with StarCraft is that there are too many things to know in the game. This will show you how well they remember things.
Civilization is easy to learn, but hard to master (as someone above me said). This means that you will get a better test of how smart they are and how well they learn.
Moderate this post up to get some attention!
IE users visit an average of 39 pages. Netscape users visit an average of 37 pages. This is counting only .asp or .htm/.html pages (not gif or jpg or css).
I'm not writing an IE only site. I never have been. I can guarantee you that my boss would have me write an IE only site if he even understood the concept of there being more than one browser. The guy runs AOL over our T1 line because he doesn't know that there is any other way to get on the web.
But if I were a 50 year old woman driving a brand new Cadillac... who here thinks that violation would have been enforced? (You caught me! I'm a twenty-something male in a not-so-new vehicle...)
Now, imagine if you were black...
I'm not black, and I can't imagine how much more frustrating it must be for them to get pulled over. I'm not far removed from being a 20-something in a not so good car. Seems like everytime I went over the speed limit I was pulled over for it, many times when I was going with the flow of traffic. However, since I bought a nice car (Volvo), I've yet to be pulled over.
My preferred conversation goes like this:
"Have you been drinking?"
"No."
"How many beers did you have?"
"I haven't been drinking."
"What kind of liquor was it?"
"I haven't been drinking."
"Was it at a party?"
"I wasn't at a party, and I haven't been drinking?"
"Did they have a keg?"
"Who?"
"At the party, did they have a keg?"
"I told you I wasn't at a party."
"Can you step outside the vehicle?"
At which point, I was asked to recite the alphabet - backwards. The guy was nice enough to let me go. He wrote me a $38 ticket for traveling 65 mph in a 65 mph zone. I kid you not.
I'm not sure how those surveys work. I am webmaster for several e-commerce sites, and our traffic is 97% Internet Explorer. I've seen Opera all of one time. I'm sure that if I showed the logs to my boss he'd tell me to quit wasting time making the pages work in Netscape.
If he's smart, he'll use the stats from his log files. Surveys don't mean anything to him - he only wants to know who comes to his site.
Yes, I did. I found this piece of information, which doesn't seemt to make sense:
All of our records are destroyed within 24 hours of shipping. We maintain financial records of anonymous transactions ONLY. Please remember to keep your order number if you need to correspond with us after the event.
If they destroy all information, what good is an order number?
This has nothing to do with libraries. This law actually makes sense.
I've worked in ObGyn, and will tell you that there is a distinct difference between medical resources and pornography resources. The professors may be stretching things a little too far, unless they are researching the effects of pornography. Their research has to be approved by the University anyway, so they would be allowed to look at the stuff if it was for an approved project.
There should be no legitimate complaint here.
Why do you need a damn patent for it? Just don't tell anyone which one it is. If I find it on my own, you can't keep me from using it.
It's not about stopping discrimination - it's about money. This is happening in America, here on Planet Earth. This is not about some idealistic notion of ending racism at Microsoft.
The consumer is the one responsible for paying sales tax. Retailers, etc have been providing the service of collecting and remitting the sales tax on behalf of the consumers. They get a discount from the states for doing so.
On all sales on the internet, and from catalog, the consumer is still responsible for paying the sales tax. It has just become common place for retailers to not collect it because it is an enormous pain in the ass for them to keep track of all of the local taxes (there are services like Vertex that will provide this data for a fee). In these Internet sales situations, the consumer is obligated to calculate and remit the tax to their local taxing authority. This just never gets enforced.
So, they aren't going to create any 'new' taxes, they are just going to force retailers to collect the taxes that have always applied. This will be more difficult in some industries than others. For example, with dental products (those sold to dentists, not consumers), the tax classification for each product varies from state to state.
What exactly do you mean 'for your regular mail'? You can't force your phone company, your bank, etc to send you your mail through FedEx. They simply won't bother. Nothing to do with the law. Maybe I am misunderstanding what you meant.
There is a federal law about FedEx or UPS using your mailbox to deliver anything to you.
Because the canvassing boards followed the law regarding what votes are acceptable.
Not true. We are under a mandate from the US Supreme Court regarding overseas military ballots. It has been around for years. We are required to accept military ballots without postmark, provided that they are properly signed and dated.
No one raised a fuss four years ago because the election was not close enough for it to have mattered.
Democrats are known cheaters when it comes to elections. It is well known that there was considerable fraud in the Kennedy-Nixon race. The biggest incidence was in Chicago, where ballot boxes were stuffed with Kennedy votes. Nixon just didn't pout about it.
LBJ was elected fraudulently in Texas. All the precincts (precinct, county, not sure) came in, except the one where his good buddy was sherriff. He was losing by 10000 votes. The returns from that precinct gave him a margin of +10500 in that area. Go figure.
Democrats are well known to give people cigarrettes to go vote. Of course, they are just giving out cigarrettes for voting - not necessarily voting Democrat. But, if you are dirt poor and don't care anyway, aren't you going to vote for the guy that just bought you a carton.
The police found a Democratic Florida State Senator driving around with a ballot machine in his car on election day. No clue what that was about.
Fraud was not necessarily committed. The counting machines are known to be inaccurate. There has never been an election in which the margin was smaller than the accuracy of the machine. Hand counting cannot possibly be more accurate.
The reason so many more Gore votes are turning up is because they are in highly Democratic areas. He had 70% of the vote down there. So, when they find a ballot that wasn't counted the first time, it has a 70% chance of being for him. That is why he only asked for a recount in those counties.
Despite what he says in public, he doesn't give a shit about the will of the voters. He only wants the will of the people that voted for him. He and Lieberman keep acting like they are doing the 'just' thing, but they are trying to skew the vote towards themselves.
They made all attempts to throw out the military vote because it is known to be traditionally Republican. What about the will of those voters? Ahh, screw em - they're only serving their country, what the hell would they know about who should be Commander in Chief?
I didn't vote for Gore because he is a major league asshole (to quote George Bush, who was talking about someone else). This whole election thing has made me think I was right in thinking that.
Don't try to justify what Gore is doing. You can't. I'm not saying Bush is acting 100% respectably, either. I'm just saying Gore is being a bigger ass.
Your grammar is atrocious. Your spelling is also poor.
The problem with any of this being that MS has a dramatically superior product. Lotus and WP have solid products, but they are not nearly as easy to use, much less extend.
I don't think that StarOffice will have problems related to being free. Corporations still have to pay for it, and pay for support. It may benefit from being acquired by Sun. At least now it has the weight of a respectable company behind it (no offense to Star Division).
BTW, name some of the features that 2000 has that 97 doesn't. I've used both, and 97 really does everything you'd need it to.