I run webhosting services for other businesses, and my setup is thus:
6 Ultra Sparcs 3 main servers and 3 replicated. The raid is shared for each pair, with an automatic failover running on a serial line. Each Raid is Raid 5 with a hot swap for 22 GB on each raid. I have a graphics domain, a db domain, and a main domain. All scripts run on the main server, the DB server runs as little as possible and all maint tasks are run through the Graphics server. Each Sparc has 256MB of RAM.
All of these are running on an FDDI ring to the router.
Firewall: Linux server on a crappy P100. Also serves as the Samba server and PDC for NT. Also rigged for auto failover to another P75 that is replicated on a daliy basis. (Cron)
3 Win NT workstations for design and input. Nobody, and I mean Nobody! but me ever sees the backend of my site.
Backups: Full backups every night to a DLT.
I also have a Cron Job that knows which processes should be running, and if it can determine it, kills processes it does not expect. If it cannot, it send mail to notify me.
Read all the Hacker FAQ's and find out where the obvious hacks are. The lamers that read these to get started are generally about 90% of the attacks you will see as an admin.
3 T1 lines. I know that a T3 is a better way to go, but with the pricing here, it's about the same price to get 3 T1's, and if 1 line goes down, my site is still operable. I experienced an outage due to the Telephone company about 2 years ago that had my sites off line for 48 hours.The money I had to reimburse my customers more than justifies the decision.
Startup: Well, luckily I got started before everybody thought they could make a million off the internet. It is all a question of how much money you have. What can you afford?? My initial setup was just a single Sparc 20, and I grew it from there. (And those were brand new then!) Draw up a business plan. Expenses out + 10% + capital investment yearly + time cost. Now look at this number and ask yourself if you can make more than this on your site. If not, scale back and redo the calculation. You need high margin to make it in this business.
Selling space to local concerns is a nice way to defer some of the initial setup costs, and you won't be using all of that disk space to begin with. (I hope! =|:>) If your admin skills are up to it, I do not reccommend renting space, due to possible restrictions from the provider. It's thold computer joke, "How much for a really good computer?" "How much do you have?"
Without knowing more about what you are trying to achieve, this is the best I can do.
I have to say that this is one of those life enriching moments, where you make concious moral decisions that will define you charachter. How important is this to you?? There is the possible cost to be absorbed in the case of a legal battle, but the same thing exists for Perdue University. And this is no small matter. The university has much more to lose in the case of a legal battle. There is the potential PR nightmare, etc...
Who is your academic advisor?? This might be someone to talk to early on, and try to win over to your side. Especially if you're in geek school. (CS) The best thing to do would be to ask the assistance of some faculty members that would be sympathetic to your plight. They can help you get a much better grasp of the hierarchy's involved around the university, and can be a welcome angry voice. Remember, in the eyes of these administrators, you are still a "kid". They believe you to be irresponsable, etc. A mature "respected" voice would go a long way to aid in your plight.
In the immediate future, a polite letter informing the university that you do not see where there is any trademark infringement, and that you plan to hold on to the domain for the time being would be your best course of action.
Should the University persist, I would shop the domain around to see if Perdue Chicken, Perdue Heavy Industries, Will Perdue, A friend of yours named Perdue, or anybody else is interested in the domain. Sell it for an amount that will pay for the internic costs, and be done with it. This is known as the "Scorched Ethernet" strategy. You might raise the ire of one of the Administrators of the university, but hey, this will just prepare you for the PHB you will eventually work for.
You have many options available to you, but I think that caving in to the administration is one that you will regret. "A life lived in fear is a life half lived."
You have a 50/50 chance of winning a lawsuit depending on the Judge, and you could probably appeal it until the point is moot, but you will lose your sanity and your credit rating in the process.
If nothing else, after shopping the Domain around, you could inform the university that you have an offer on the domain already, and explain that if they are going to force you to give it up, you would just as soon recoup your investment in the domain. But if it gets to this point, contact a lawyer for the wording so it does not sound like a threat. There are some technicalities involved in this. I had a similar problem with a company I used to work for, and now neither of us have the domain, and I have a better job.
~Jason Maggard "I have achieved peace in our time" ~Neville Chamberlain
All I can say about this is that it sounds like another Fox special. Hopefully they'll find somebody better than Johnathan Frakes to host this turkey...
And "Star Child Foundation"?? Is that any relation to Starman?
As I read down the list, I see the JPV interview, and then Mahir the kissing Turk.
I suggest the theme... "Idiots made famous for no good reason." or "Unqualified, Unloved, Unneeded." perhaps, "You defaced my website, and now I'm rich!"
I think any of these would make a decent episode of Jerry Springer.
~Jason Maggard http://www.springerdot.org "14 minutes and counting..."
People use Windows at home. They will come in to work expecting a Windows machine. Linux proliferation for the home user needs to be a higher priority. Up until a year (or so) ago to use PPP you had to write your own script. My first PPP setup took about a week and a half of any spare paitence I had. Then changing the mode so that I could dial as any user....
But back to the point, Linux will be hard to get on the desktop at work until you get it at home. If someone uses Win at home, it is easier to get them to use Win at work. Less training, which most companies know is a money pit anyway, fewer IT calls, because if Win crashes, the user can do the reboot themselves. Yes, Linux requires fewer reboots, but that's because we know the kill command, (and have it!) we know things like./apache stop ;./apache start.
"And if a Linux GUI is the user's first experience, there won't be any Windows training to undo. It seems reasonable to me..." How do you propose to make the Linux GUI the users first experience??
Please Note, this is more in refutation to the authors point than the posters...
~Jason "Flamebait" Maggard "I thought it was cool when my H.S. girlfriend believed that I was twelve inches, but then her second boyfriend had 24..." ~Dave Barry, "Things I never said..."
There is a difference between a start menu and a/Program Files directory. Or should I say/"Program Files". Also, XDM?? After they have configured Xwindows. Which for the newbie, regardless of background, usually takes a weekend. And does involve the command line. And the help files are in HTML, and the average user doesn't even know Lynx exists. And after they have started it. And after they have configured their system to runlevel 3 by default.
~Jason Maggard "Have a problem with your distro?? Try Debian, it'll make your old problem look trivial."
P.S. Explain to a Win user about quoting... Tee Hee
I understand the point that sombody always ahs to make about "Linux is the Kernel!", but as an OS, the entire package does need to be evaluated. Bash, pdksh, tcsh, etc. are not "Linux", but then what? M$ can now tout that "You're getting an operating system that doesn't even have a command prompt!" Really...
I can understand where your coming from man, but geez! Save those comments when somebody complains about E crashing, or other such rot, but "Linux" to the rest of the world IS the entire distro.
Unless you're just running a router you NEED the rest of the stuff. Can you imagine the reviews of just the Kernel?? "We are fairly sure that Linux supported most of our hardware, We saw the bootup screen in glorious VGA, and of course we had no way to play sound, etc...."
Man, there are some anti-commie sentiments floating around this drink tank ain't there??
First of all, the Linux OS is a perfect match for "ideal" communism. The very idea behind OSS is somewhat communist in it's doctrine. The Idea that everyone pitches in for the good of the group, "each according to his needs and abilities".
Secondly, the inherent belief that communism is "bad" is something that it seems that we have been indoctrinated to at birth. The truth of it is that communism is a good system marred by the actions of bad leaders. Would you defend democracy when one man owns a 15 Million dollar house and another sleeps on a sewer grate?? That seems like a poor human rights policy to me.
Now, in light of what I said, I think that the Chineese government most likely likes the ability of Linux for hacking systems. They have been defacing the web pages for a while now...
Also, If the Red Government violates the GPL??? Egad...
~HamBoy!
"By the half-light of burning republics Joe Stalin looks just like Uncle Sam" ~Andy Partrige
As a contractor who works on a lot of Gov't projects, I will say as little as possible and still try to get my point across.
IRS/Social Security: Half of the Y2K testing that they claim to have completed, they haven't. If you plan on starting benefits in Jan. or Feb., 2000, I would make a point of getting a statement of earnings before Dec. 15. This can be used to help them manually determine the benefit amount that you should recieve. If you already recieve benefits, there should be no change. If nothing else they can manually write checks for the amout you got last month. They have quite a few COBOL systems that have not yet been updated.
Power: Well, here it runs on linux for the routers, and the program was written in '97. Power is A'ok.
Military Systems: They've never had those machines right. I mean Geez! How many Script Kiddies can you allow into a place before you fix the statd vulnerability???? But on the bright side, all systems attached to big weapons have major failsafes. Of course there might be a problem or two that may make some things difficult to fire, but I shall say no more.
Well, those systems are the only ones I know about. But the basic premise is "Keep the higgeldy piggeldy out of the parlor". In english? Sure. If there's going to be a mess, do it where the people won't see. We have been told that the front line systems are the priority, but of course they won't run without the mainframes...
I'm just glad that this president is a better liar than the last one... My advice? Expect your government to get really inconvenient for about 3-4 months. "I'm from the government, and I'm here to borrow your laptop...."
~Hamboy!
"And in time, we won't even recall that we spoke Words that turned out to be as big as smoke As smoke disappears in the air But there's always something smouldering somewhere." ~Declan MacManus
What the heck is Merconium?? I tried the ol' google on it and came up with this:
gloria: Squirt Down my Leg ...Proscuitto In Utero * Parent Cult * Merconium Soup * Pregnant Pillow Talk... www.thecouch.com/diaries/gloria/diary.4.12.1996.ht ml Cached (9k) New! Try out GoogleScout
Hmmm, this harkens back to Intel's river motif, but what is this about ham in her uterus??
Egad, there are strange things afoot for the year 2050...
~Jason Maggard "Cat, Hat, in French, Chat, Chapeau, in Merconium she's Proscuitto In Utero..." -Dr. Seuss
This entire argument seems a bit premature to me. The tech/software field is still moving at a much faster pace than appliance makers. So my main point would be this: If IP enabled appliances rolled out the door tomorrow, how long before the acceptance grew? Sure, I'm as much of a geek as the next guy, but having to pay $15-20 more for a coffee pot that lets me regulate the burner temp doesn't sound like all that great an idea. And I would be willing to bet that the combo of NIC/FIRMWARE/SOFTWARE is going to add more than $15-20 to the price at least initially. Now lets figure in the impact of those who do not have a NIC in their home PC, a hub for attaching the toaster, etc...
So the question comes back: How long until we really see these devices in use? A long time by my count.
My VCR has an RS-232 port, and I do use it to set up a recording schedule. How many of the "truly geeky" have done this? RS ports on VCR's are also about 3 years old. (Maybe older, I said 3 to be conservative.) Is my VCR hackable? Yes, but what true damage could be done? ($50 in fees for my tapes being "not rewound"! Darn you hax0rs!!!)
Why hasn't anyone hacked my VCR and forced me to record "Emmanuelle in Space" over my copy of "Titanic"? (Actually, why haven't they darn it! My IP is...) Because noone is looking for it. Why doesn't someone out there write Macro Viruses for Ami-Pro?? Because they would have too little of an effect. Linux is still short on viruses, but they're coming...
So, until a hax0r sees the likelyhood of being able to hack your toaster, and figures it's likely that you have an IP enabled toaster, he/she will probably spend most of his/her time writing Office Macros that make your paperclip sing "I'm the only one".
I firmly believe that we will se a proliferation of TIVO and similar devices long before we see the CompuToaster (TM).
So, back to our original premise, IP enabled devices today. Plan on at least 3-5 years before there is enough market saturation to matter, and another 2 years for acceptance.
Where will the computer industry be in 5-7 years? What steps will be taken by M$, Linux, etc. in that time frame? Ask anybody that was using Linux 7 years ago if Linux has "changed".
It is becoming inevitable that within the next 3-5 years a competent firewall will be a part of every major operating system simply as a side effect of cable modems and the like. Believe me, the OS that does not have this feature will soon add it when the kids down the street decide it's best to hack your computer for practice. I recall that not too long ago there was no Virus protection on Windows. Along came MSAV, and you basically can't buy a computer without AV software installed nowadays. The market responds to new challenges.
Also, TCP/IP would be too much of a networking protocol to use for a toaster. There will probably be an updated version of NetBios, NetBeui, or SMB that will be used.
Debating a technology that is so far off into the future without considering the impact of a similar timeframe of advances in other fields is fruitless. As an earlier poster commented, "...will have safety precautions built in, like a temp control for the stove..." The hardware will not debut until the software is ready, and so on. In a country where you can sue someone for serving you coffee that is "too-hot", I must assume that the companies involved will make sure that they are protected from liability. Leaving a security hole in a program that in turn causes your Braun Shaver to shave the sofa and set it on fire would probably stand up in court as negligence.
********Paranoia Starts Here*********** Here's the real kicker. GE enters into an agreement with some monolithic OS maker and makes the CompuToaster (TM) a proprietary "OS 2000" only product. Sure, write your own interface, but we ain't responsable when you have a burnt loaf of wonderbread... Better yet, the makers of "OS 2000" decide that a "partnership" is in order, so that GE develops the toaster and firmware, and OSsoft develops the interface. It takes a level of responsability from both parties, as they can blame software/hardware (whichever side they didn't design) for any and all problems that occur. Sure, you could still sue the companies, but which one?? This would be great for both sides of the bargain, and as usual screw the guy in the middle. Just something to think about.
Will Bill control the destiny of your toaster??
~Jason Maggard "If all you have is a hammer, try 'ln -s/dev/hammer/dev/nailgun ;/dev/nails >/dev/nailgun ; !/dev/nailgun' It could work..."
If you don't do mutch with it. There are people out there that windows is the perfect choice for. Apparently only 10% of people...
But seriously, alot of these people claim that windows is unstable after f**king up their machines for years. Linux suffers the same slings and arrows from all of the people that complain that Linux won't work with their "insert hardware here".
When Linux is all beautiful and all of the apps are stable, I'll start worrying about forgetting the kill command. But until then, at least linux has the kill command.
~Jason Maggard "A man can be a slave to irrational hate or irrational passion. Unfortunately the poor beast is only capable of being rational and even keel when he is dead."
Seems that the last thing I heard about Wine is that it had really kinda been taken under Corel's wing (with Corel's paid developers) and was working up to being a devel environment. I'm not too sure how many people remember this, but I'm curious to know what the heck is happening with all of this.
1) I have never found a decent use for wine. I don't really use the prod apps for Win9x, and if I want to play games, it's best to go native. 2) Corel made it sound like the wine project was going the route of making it easier to greate cross-platform code for Windows and Linux. Was this the "entire" project? Or was this just the end they were working on? Is the "main" project still emulation while Corel runs a splinter project concerned with creating an IDE and backing libs??
What Corel was gamming on to sounded interesting, but there is definately room for both. I noticed a few posts mentioned that app support seemed to be getting worse lately. Is this the result of the "new direction", or what?
The final possibility is that I read a press release with very little basis in reality. (as with most press releases.)
So I'm looking for some of you "Wineeies" to come on down and school me up on the wine skinny.
Muchas Gracias! ~Jason Maggard "If we ban hemp due to it's relationship to marajuana, we should ban grapes due to their relationship to wine."
Actually, I still have my Wolfenstein floppy. (Registered version) and it is just one floppy. Ultimate Doom 5. NT 4.0 and SP4 (In our shop by special request)63 Floppies!!! All because my PHB says, "We don't need CD rom's on all of the servers. That's an X-tra 50$ per unit." It cost us 24$ in shipping to get Microsoft to ship us SP4 on floppy. We spent ~24$ on floppies to make a backup set. The extra hour and a half it takes me to install the programs costs the company somewhere in the neighborhood of 50$.
My god! Do I really work here???????
~Jason Maggard "Because there's an atom bomb in front of the refrigerator that's why!" ~Vivian (The Young Ones)
But how is the linux side of it?? The last time I tried to set up a DVD drive I had nothing but trouble. I finally just put in an old 16x CD rom... (After all, until now I didn't need one for linux...)
Also would like to add that kudos to SuSE for this one. They consistently have the most complete distro, even if they try to install everything in German... I just hope that they keep all of the great things involved in the OS. The live filesystem, the bootable CD, etc. We use the live system cd here often for troubleshooting.
~Jason Maggard "God, Root, what is difference?" -Pitr
How nice to hear. Don't forget that it was Nov. 3rd, 1883 that the Supreme Court declared Native Americans "aliens". With my being a Miami "Injun", just replying to my post would be illegal, and also touching my car.... Who would have thought that an alien would drive a Ford Taurus. Hey, I'll have that meter maid arrested! ~Jason Maggard "It's almost dawn and the cops are gone, let's all get dixie fried!"
The idea that we are "elevating the unthinking deployment of computer technology as a social -- and profit-making tool to make intuitive judgements in educational environments that often confound experts with years of training" is laudable. (oops! I meant laughable.)
Katz is the sort of journalist that makes his living from preying on paranoia. This has not changed in the many years that I have read him. I work with a journalist of the same caliber, but his angle is that there are communists everywhere, just like in 1984. The patter hardly changes from the left to right wing, and it is all just pablum for minds too weak to chew on real facts.
If they started a program for weeding out all of the geeks from high schools, there would be no students left to teach. And if this program does bring to bear the brunt of administrators on the "different" students, it will probably be for the best anyway. Most of this "different" behaviour is brought about by the need for attention in many cases. As the old saying goes, "Bad attention is better than no attention."
Also, teachers are generally not prepared to make these assertions without an aid, and neither are the counselors. Are these the "experts" that he mentions?? Let's face it the average School counselor was lucky to make it out of college, and if they were smart enough to find their bahoutney with both hands, they would have found a real job that would pay them a living wage. Why is Mr. Mackey on South Park so funny?? He's too darn accurate M'kay?
I for one am glad that these people will now have the tools to help them guide their students. They will now also be able to differentiate between "true" violent behaviour and a cry for attention. Even the cream of the crop in the mental health field uses computer aided tools to assist in the evaluation of illnesses. (Indeed, the profilers for the FBI use... M-2K.)
As is pointed out in White's "The Orginaztion Man" the people responsable for educating our children are generally the least capable of doing so. If we can give them tools to assist in their task, I am all for it.
However, this is a situation that is equivalent to saying "Well, he can't figure out how to use a hammer, give him a nail gun." Yes, but make sure that he understands that the nail gun is dangerous if used improperly, and don't let it be used witout some safety supervision.
I guess that Katz is also against Radar guns in the hands of the Highway patrol?? If it weren't for these little gadgets, they could pull you over whenever they wanted to just by saying, "He looked like he was going 75, please step out of the car sir so that the dog can sniff around."
These tools are much the same. The counselor calls the parents and says: "Your little Johnny seems like a violent Psycho because he doesn't like football." The parent says: "What did his tests say??" Counselor: "Well, intelligent but precocious, with a disregard for authority. But no violent tendancies..." Parent: "Good, then stuff it." What can I say, I love America!
The real and present danger here is that the computer will have it's word taken for law, and that incomplete information inputted by incompetent imbeciles instigates immoral and inexplicable inconvenience for those involved. (Woo Hoo! Aliteration!) We must remember that these are just tools. A hammer would never build a house, but in the right hands, it can make the process easier.
It would certainly be an improvement from the days back when, when I was sent to see my counselor (The one responsable for students L-Z) because I read too fast. I was informed that by not reading at the same pace as my classmates, I was being antisocial. What was that Vonnegut story about the people that wore ear plugs so that nobody could hear better than anyone else, and bad glasses so that nobody could see better than anyone else, etc...
The only true shame is that these same school boards that will use this system, probably have no computer tools to help teachers teach better, to help students learn better, or to monitor which teachers are liable to risk the psyche of one of their students "by pouring their derision upon anything we did, exposing any weakness no matter how carefully hidden by the kids...".
So when your local school board starts proposing software to stop violence, ask them what software they have to help start and continue learning. If they say "Encarta", buy your kid a gun.
~Jason Maggard "And as things fell apart, nobody paid much attention"
I hate the New York times for forcing you to "Become a member" before you can read a fraggin' story. How about adding a user pref. so that we can screen them from our Slashdot? I disagree with the notion that we should be forced to divulge personal information just to get access to something as basic as a newspaper article. What's next? Please become a Yahoo member before starting your search. Just submit your name, age, race, and yearly earnings.
~Jason Maggard "People who live in glass houses undress in the basement." -Joey, Age 4
I won a copy of this program from Linux Today. It turned out to not be the laptop version (which I needed at the time)(Darn Neo-Magic) but it was the desktop version instead. All of my Linux machines have Matrox Millenium II's inside, and I was actually noticing more crashes on the machine with the XIG drivers. I noticed 2 crashes in the first month. (!) The machine was still accessible over the network (only for a reboot), but was unresponsive to any of the std. escape sequences. For comparison, I maybe crashed Xfree twice in a year previously, and the process was always killable with an escape seq. or a top over the network. After two months their CD was being used as a drink coaster. Add in the inconvenience of a less than intuitive setup, and no real performance benefit that was noticeable, and now I only reccommend their package for cards that are unsupported by the base distro.
I would also like to add that I did at some point in the proces need tech support, and I never got through on the telephone, and I never recieved an E-mail that was not an auto-responder. Now a newbie needing install support would not be able to get it from his Distro provider, and no response from XIG?? That sounds like a lose-lose situation.
In the interest of fairness, the Matrox acceleration is the best among the Xfree servers, and other people using ATI or such might experience different results. This experience that I relate happened ~1 1/2 years ago, so the state of their customer service and/or their drivers might be quite different. (But the the Xfree SVGA server has gotten better too...)
Other points of interest: Since Xfree SVGA is open source, you can diagnose and fix any driver problems yourself if you know how. But then I hardly think that this ad targets folks with know how... This is just another case of FUD.
Jason Maggard hamnrye@mindspring.com
"I went mad for a while, It did me no end of good..." -Z. Beeblebrox
First of all, I am an ASCAP member. The ASCAP has the basic job of defending intellectual property rights for musicians and composers. While I do not always agree with their methods, I am glad that they are around.
If you play music in your business, you use that music to make money. ASCAP sees that the artists are compensated for that. It really is that simple. When my jingle becomes the McDonalds commercial, I get compensated. If I open the Carly Simon cafe, all Carly, all the time, Shouldn't Carly be compensated for using her music in the restaraunt??
The web site in question used their links to radio stations in such a way as to make it appear local. Hence it is the same situation as any restaraunt that might use a stereo to play CD's while you browse. He could have simply made the links open a new window to another site.
Microsoft sells ads on their "Radio Guide" page, and hence they pay a licensing fee. As the web develops you will see more "portal sites" that center around mp3 and internet radio. They will be using the music as a draw to sell advertising in the millions. (M$ radio guide takes in a million dollars every month....)
While some of the ASCAP's practices may seem strange to normal people, there are usually ways around these rules. Case in point, if this guy would just have a pop-up window that made it known that the stream was not local, his site is business as usual.
And if the music is not useful to the retailer, he always has the option of doing without, as is the case here. But obviously music is important to these people.
ASCAP is what keeps music piracy at a minimum. If sowtware had an orginization like this, software piracy would be at a low, and software would be less expensive due to it. Games would cost 20$ because they don't have to compensate for you buying it and burning 13 copies for all of your friends.
I am typing this at work... I could do with less interruptions... *SIGH*
The little war we have going over the IE vs. Navigator is an idiotic waste of disk space. First of all, I use Linux, I use Windows. The time I spend in windows won't make me less of a geek, just like the time I spend in Linux doesn't make me more of a geek. It's what you do in either of those operating systems that makes or breaks a geek. I'd rather see a guy with windows editing the registry than see some of our linux users who get uptight about editing their.xinitrc.
Secondly, IE 5.0 beats the tar out of Nutscrape 4.5 on the win32 platform. The full screen mode is cool, it loads faster, (yes, because it's already partially loaded as your file manager) it renders faster, it has a cleaner interface, and a whole slew of other things.
On Linux, we have no choice. KFM is an ok browser, but it still needs support for alot of things.
On the win32 platform it comes down to one thing, IE wanted to win more than Nutscrape. Netscape got old and fat and lazy, and they got beaten.
I don't know how many of you were there when the tarballs were released, but I seem to recall that the first big decision the OSS geeks made with Mozilla was to dump 80% of the existing source code and start from scratch. The rendering engine was a nightmare.
So, Netscape/Mozilla is dead. This is son of Mozilla!
Third, IMHO, the M releases are a mistake. They should not be distributing binaries, but instead they should be distributing source. The logic being that if you are unable to compile the program, you can't run the program. This makes them less likely to get assinine comments from pseudo-geeks, or hacker wanna-be's. We all know that there are some/.ers that can barely handle shell scripting, and they tend to post just to go for the geek chic... These are the same folks that balk at recompiling the kernel (with a nice TK script no less!) and think that VI is the number of the horse that won the Preakness.
This is a prerelease of opensource software. We are very understanding of other "pre-releases" so lets do the same for this one. How long have we been humoring Enlightenment?? (Are we still on DR 0.14?) We seem to think that because this is a "Company" we are allowed to expect more. It's just not true.
Oh, and as to the IE market share, 3 years ago, IE had 2% of the market share... So I guess it died 3 years ago...
The moral: Use what you find useful, and then ridicule the beejeezus out of anybody that uses something you find useless.
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I run webhosting services for other businesses, and my setup is thus:
6 Ultra Sparcs 3 main servers and 3 replicated. The raid is shared for each pair, with an automatic failover running on a serial line. Each Raid is Raid 5 with a hot swap for 22 GB on each raid. I have a graphics domain, a db domain, and a main domain. All scripts run on the main server, the DB server runs as little as possible and all maint tasks are run through the Graphics server. Each Sparc has 256MB of RAM.
All of these are running on an FDDI ring to the router.
Firewall: Linux server on a crappy P100. Also serves as the Samba server and PDC for NT. Also rigged for auto failover to another P75 that is replicated on a daliy basis. (Cron)
3 Win NT workstations for design and input. Nobody, and I mean Nobody! but me ever sees the backend of my site.
Backups: Full backups every night to a DLT.
I also have a Cron Job that knows which processes should be running, and if it can determine it, kills processes it does not expect. If it cannot, it send mail to notify me.
Read all the Hacker FAQ's and find out where the obvious hacks are. The lamers that read these to get started are generally about 90% of the attacks you will see as an admin.
3 T1 lines. I know that a T3 is a better way to go, but with the pricing here, it's about the same price to get 3 T1's, and if 1 line goes down, my site is still operable. I experienced an outage due to the Telephone company about 2 years ago that had my sites off line for 48 hours.The money I had to reimburse my customers more than justifies the decision.
Startup: Well, luckily I got started before everybody thought they could make a million off the internet. It is all a question of how much money you have. What can you afford?? My initial setup was just a single Sparc 20, and I grew it from there. (And those were brand new then!) Draw up a business plan. Expenses out + 10% + capital investment yearly + time cost. Now look at this number and ask yourself if you can make more than this on your site. If not, scale back and redo the calculation. You need high margin to make it in this business.
Selling space to local concerns is a nice way to defer some of the initial setup costs, and you won't be using all of that disk space to begin with. (I hope! =|:>) If your admin skills are up to it, I do not reccommend renting space, due to possible restrictions from the provider. It's thold computer joke, "How much for a really good computer?" "How much do you have?"
Without knowing more about what you are trying to achieve, this is the best I can do.
~Jason Maggard
Sorry, I went to community college...
So just sell the thing to some porn vendor who specializes in nekkid college girls. That should put a bug up their bum...
~Jason Maggard
"This redneck will take a rain check on that cybersex
It's just newfangled chicken chokin' for that Generation X"
~Mojo Nixon
P.S. At least the quote segways nicely between chicken and porn....
I have to say that this is one of those life enriching moments, where you make concious moral decisions that will define you charachter. How important is this to you?? There is the possible cost to be absorbed in the case of a legal battle, but the same thing exists for Perdue University. And this is no small matter. The university has much more to lose in the case of a legal battle. There is the potential PR nightmare, etc...
Who is your academic advisor?? This might be someone to talk to early on, and try to win over to your side. Especially if you're in geek school. (CS) The best thing to do would be to ask the assistance of some faculty members that would be sympathetic to your plight. They can help you get a much better grasp of the hierarchy's involved around the university, and can be a welcome angry voice. Remember, in the eyes of these administrators, you are still a "kid". They believe you to be irresponsable, etc. A mature "respected" voice would go a long way to aid in your plight.
In the immediate future, a polite letter informing the university that you do not see where there is any trademark infringement, and that you plan to hold on to the domain for the time being would be your best course of action.
Should the University persist, I would shop the domain around to see if Perdue Chicken, Perdue Heavy Industries, Will Perdue, A friend of yours named Perdue, or anybody else is interested in the domain. Sell it for an amount that will pay for the internic costs, and be done with it. This is known as the "Scorched Ethernet" strategy. You might raise the ire of one of the Administrators of the university, but hey, this will just prepare you for the PHB you will eventually work for.
You have many options available to you, but I think that caving in to the administration is one that you will regret. "A life lived in fear is a life half lived."
You have a 50/50 chance of winning a lawsuit depending on the Judge, and you could probably appeal it until the point is moot, but you will lose your sanity and your credit rating in the process.
If nothing else, after shopping the Domain around, you could inform the university that you have an offer on the domain already, and explain that if they are going to force you to give it up, you would just as soon recoup your investment in the domain. But if it gets to this point, contact a lawyer for the wording so it does not sound like a threat. There are some technicalities involved in this. I had a similar problem with a company I used to work for, and now neither of us have the domain, and I have a better job.
~Jason Maggard
"I have achieved peace in our time"
~Neville Chamberlain
All I can say about this is that it sounds like another Fox special. Hopefully they'll find somebody better than Johnathan Frakes to host this turkey...
And "Star Child Foundation"?? Is that any relation to Starman?
No, I do not mean the song by David Bowie. I speak of a far more dangerous man....
~Jason "Intelligent life out there" Maggard
P.S. First Post!!
As I read down the list, I see the JPV interview, and then Mahir the kissing Turk.
I suggest the theme... "Idiots made famous for no good reason." or "Unqualified, Unloved, Unneeded." perhaps, "You defaced my website, and now I'm rich!"
I think any of these would make a decent episode of Jerry Springer.
~Jason Maggard
http://www.springerdot.org
"14 minutes and counting..."
Excellent point, but also consider this.
./apache stop ; ./apache start.
People use Windows at home. They will come in to work expecting a Windows machine. Linux proliferation for the home user needs to be a higher priority. Up until a year (or so) ago to use PPP you had to write your own script. My first PPP setup took about a week and a half of any spare paitence I had. Then changing the mode so that I could dial as any user....
But back to the point, Linux will be hard to get on the desktop at work until you get it at home. If someone uses Win at home, it is easier to get them to use Win at work. Less training, which most companies know is a money pit anyway, fewer IT calls, because if Win crashes, the user can do the reboot themselves. Yes, Linux requires fewer reboots, but that's because we know the kill command, (and have it!) we know things like
"And if a Linux GUI is the user's first experience, there won't be any Windows training to undo. It seems reasonable to me..." How do you propose to make the Linux GUI the users first experience??
Please Note, this is more in refutation to the authors point than the posters...
~Jason "Flamebait" Maggard
"I thought it was cool when my H.S. girlfriend believed that I was twelve inches, but then her second boyfriend had 24..."
~Dave Barry, "Things I never said..."
There is a difference between a start menu and a /Program Files directory. Or should I say /"Program Files". Also, XDM?? After they have configured Xwindows. Which for the newbie, regardless of background, usually takes a weekend. And does involve the command line. And the help files are in HTML, and the average user doesn't even know Lynx exists. And after they have started it. And after they have configured their system to runlevel 3 by default.
~Jason Maggard
"Have a problem with your distro?? Try Debian, it'll make your old problem look trivial."
P.S. Explain to a Win user about quoting... Tee Hee
I understand the point that sombody always ahs to make about "Linux is the Kernel!", but as an OS, the entire package does need to be evaluated. Bash, pdksh, tcsh, etc. are not "Linux", but then what? M$ can now tout that "You're getting an operating system that doesn't even have a command prompt!" Really...
I can understand where your coming from man, but geez! Save those comments when somebody complains about E crashing, or other such rot, but "Linux" to the rest of the world IS the entire distro.
Unless you're just running a router you NEED the rest of the stuff. Can you imagine the reviews of just the Kernel??
"We are fairly sure that Linux supported most of our hardware, We saw the bootup screen in glorious VGA, and of course we had no way to play sound, etc...."
Thats just my $0.02
P.S. Moderators, just label these both troll...
Man, there are some anti-commie sentiments floating around this drink tank ain't there??
First of all, the Linux OS is a perfect match for "ideal" communism. The very idea behind OSS is somewhat communist in it's doctrine. The Idea that everyone pitches in for the good of the group, "each according to his needs and abilities".
Secondly, the inherent belief that communism is "bad" is something that it seems that we have been indoctrinated to at birth. The truth of it is that communism is a good system marred by the actions of bad leaders. Would you defend democracy when one man owns a 15 Million dollar house and another sleeps on a sewer grate?? That seems like a poor human rights policy to me.
Now, in light of what I said, I think that the Chineese government most likely likes the ability of Linux for hacking systems. They have been defacing the web pages for a while now...
Also, If the Red Government violates the GPL??? Egad...
~HamBoy!
"By the half-light of burning republics Joe Stalin looks just like Uncle Sam"
~Andy Partrige
As a contractor who works on a lot of Gov't projects, I will say as little as possible and still try to get my point across.
IRS/Social Security: Half of the Y2K testing that they claim to have completed, they haven't. If you plan on starting benefits in Jan. or Feb., 2000, I would make a point of getting a statement of earnings before Dec. 15. This can be used to help them manually determine the benefit amount that you should recieve. If you already recieve benefits, there should be no change. If nothing else they can manually write checks for the amout you got last month. They have quite a few COBOL systems that have not yet been updated.
Power: Well, here it runs on linux for the routers, and the program was written in '97. Power is A'ok.
Military Systems: They've never had those machines right. I mean Geez! How many Script Kiddies can you allow into a place before you fix the statd vulnerability???? But on the bright side, all systems attached to big weapons have major failsafes. Of course there might be a problem or two that may make some things difficult to fire, but I shall say no more.
Well, those systems are the only ones I know about. But the basic premise is "Keep the higgeldy piggeldy out of the parlor". In english? Sure. If there's going to be a mess, do it where the people won't see. We have been told that the front line systems are the priority, but of course they won't run without the mainframes...
I'm just glad that this president is a better liar than the last one... My advice? Expect your government to get really inconvenient for about 3-4 months. "I'm from the government, and I'm here to borrow your laptop...."
~Hamboy!
"And in time, we won't even recall that we spoke
Words that turned out to be as big as smoke
As smoke disappears in the air
But there's always something smouldering somewhere."
~Declan MacManus
Darn it all...
Well, I guess I'll have to go out and get a 3D card for my linux box now. Either that, or stick with DosEmu... (Now in beta!)
Will it still run on my 386??
~Jason Maggard
What the heck is Merconium?? I tried the ol' google on it and came up with this:
...Proscuitto In Utero * Parent Cult * Merconium Soup * Pregnant Pillow Talk... t ml Cached (9k) New! Try out GoogleScout
gloria: Squirt Down my Leg
www.thecouch.com/diaries/gloria/diary.4.12.1996.h
Hmmm, this harkens back to Intel's river motif, but what is this about ham in her uterus??
Egad, there are strange things afoot for the year 2050...
~Jason Maggard
"Cat, Hat, in French, Chat, Chapeau, in Merconium she's Proscuitto In Utero..."
-Dr. Seuss
This entire argument seems a bit premature to me. The tech/software field is still moving at a much faster pace than appliance makers. So my main point would be this: If IP enabled appliances rolled out the door tomorrow, how long before the acceptance grew? Sure, I'm as much of a geek as the next guy, but having to pay $15-20 more for a coffee pot that lets me regulate the burner temp doesn't sound like all that great an idea. And I would be willing to bet that the combo of NIC/FIRMWARE/SOFTWARE is going to add more than $15-20 to the price at least initially. Now lets figure in the impact of those who do not have a NIC in their home PC, a hub for attaching the toaster, etc...
/dev/hammer /dev/nailgun ; /dev/nails > /dev/nailgun ; ! /dev/nailgun' It could work..."
So the question comes back: How long until we really see these devices in use? A long time by my count.
My VCR has an RS-232 port, and I do use it to set up a recording schedule. How many of the "truly geeky" have done this? RS ports on VCR's are also about 3 years old. (Maybe older, I said 3 to be conservative.) Is my VCR hackable? Yes, but what true damage could be done? ($50 in fees for my tapes being "not rewound"! Darn you hax0rs!!!)
Why hasn't anyone hacked my VCR and forced me to record "Emmanuelle in Space" over my copy of "Titanic"? (Actually, why haven't they darn it! My IP is...) Because noone is looking for it. Why doesn't someone out there write Macro Viruses for Ami-Pro?? Because they would have too little of an effect. Linux is still short on viruses, but they're coming...
So, until a hax0r sees the likelyhood of being able to hack your toaster, and figures it's likely that you have an IP enabled toaster, he/she will probably spend most of his/her time writing Office Macros that make your paperclip sing "I'm the only one".
I firmly believe that we will se a proliferation of TIVO and similar devices long before we see the CompuToaster (TM).
So, back to our original premise, IP enabled devices today. Plan on at least 3-5 years before there is enough market saturation to matter, and another 2 years for acceptance.
Where will the computer industry be in 5-7 years? What steps will be taken by M$, Linux, etc. in that time frame? Ask anybody that was using Linux 7 years ago if Linux has "changed".
It is becoming inevitable that within the next 3-5 years a competent firewall will be a part of every major operating system simply as a side effect of cable modems and the like. Believe me, the OS that does not have this feature will soon add it when the kids down the street decide it's best to hack your computer for practice. I recall that not too long ago there was no Virus protection on Windows. Along came MSAV, and you basically can't buy a computer without AV software installed nowadays. The market responds to new challenges.
Also, TCP/IP would be too much of a networking protocol to use for a toaster. There will probably be an updated version of NetBios, NetBeui, or SMB that will be used.
Debating a technology that is so far off into the future without considering the impact of a similar timeframe of advances in other fields is fruitless. As an earlier poster commented, "...will have safety precautions built in, like a temp control for the stove..." The hardware will not debut until the software is ready, and so on. In a country where you can sue someone for serving you coffee that is "too-hot", I must assume that the companies involved will make sure that they are protected from liability. Leaving a security hole in a program that in turn causes your Braun Shaver to shave the sofa and set it on fire would probably stand up in court as negligence.
********Paranoia Starts Here***********
Here's the real kicker. GE enters into an agreement with some monolithic OS maker and makes the CompuToaster (TM) a proprietary "OS 2000" only product. Sure, write your own interface, but we ain't responsable when you have a burnt loaf of wonderbread... Better yet, the makers of "OS 2000" decide that a "partnership" is in order, so that GE develops the toaster and firmware, and OSsoft develops the interface. It takes a level of responsability from both parties, as they can blame software/hardware (whichever side they didn't design) for any and all problems that occur. Sure, you could still sue the companies, but which one?? This would be great for both sides of the bargain, and as usual screw the guy in the middle. Just something to think about.
Will Bill control the destiny of your toaster??
~Jason Maggard
"If all you have is a hammer, try 'ln -s
If you don't do mutch with it. There are people out there that windows is the perfect choice for. Apparently only 10% of people...
But seriously, alot of these people claim that windows is unstable after f**king up their machines for years. Linux suffers the same slings and arrows from all of the people that complain that Linux won't work with their "insert hardware here".
When Linux is all beautiful and all of the apps are stable, I'll start worrying about forgetting the kill command. But until then, at least linux has the kill command.
~Jason Maggard
"A man can be a slave to irrational hate or irrational passion. Unfortunately the poor beast is only capable of being rational and even keel when he is dead."
...I still like the Missile Silo Home better. Not only is it in posession of massive quantities of "geek chic", but what better place to carry out your experiments that defy the laws of nature?
I do like the plane on a post idea however. But this begs one question: Will my AIBO (No link, just look for the banner ad...) be waterproof??
Hmmm... I think I'll just save up for the Condos on Mars... Maybe a Boeing 727 in a Bomb shelter on Mars... WoooHooo!
~Jason Maggard
"A house flown by a drunken pilot cannot stand." ~Abe Lincoln
Seems that the last thing I heard about Wine is that it had really kinda been taken under Corel's wing (with Corel's paid developers) and was working up to being a devel environment. I'm not too sure how many people remember this, but I'm curious to know what the heck is happening with all of this.
1) I have never found a decent use for wine. I don't really use the prod apps for Win9x, and if I want to play games, it's best to go native.
2) Corel made it sound like the wine project was going the route of making it easier to greate cross-platform code for Windows and Linux. Was this the "entire" project? Or was this just the end they were working on? Is the "main" project still emulation while Corel runs a splinter project concerned with creating an IDE and backing libs??
What Corel was gamming on to sounded interesting, but there is definately room for both. I noticed a few posts mentioned that app support seemed to be getting worse lately. Is this the result of the "new direction", or what?
The final possibility is that I read a press release with very little basis in reality. (as with most press releases.)
So I'm looking for some of you "Wineeies" to come on down and school me up on the wine skinny.
Muchas Gracias!
~Jason Maggard
"If we ban hemp due to it's relationship to marajuana, we should ban grapes due to their relationship to wine."
Actually, I still have my Wolfenstein floppy. (Registered version) and it is just one floppy. Ultimate Doom 5. NT 4.0 and SP4 (In our shop by special request)63 Floppies!!! All because my PHB says, "We don't need CD rom's on all of the servers. That's an X-tra 50$ per unit." It cost us 24$ in shipping to get Microsoft to ship us SP4 on floppy. We spent ~24$ on floppies to make a backup set. The extra hour and a half it takes me to install the programs costs the company somewhere in the neighborhood of 50$.
My god! Do I really work here???????
~Jason Maggard
"Because there's an atom bomb in front of the refrigerator that's why!"
~Vivian (The Young Ones)
But how is the linux side of it?? The last time I tried to set up a DVD drive I had nothing but trouble. I finally just put in an old 16x CD rom... (After all, until now I didn't need one for linux...)
Also would like to add that kudos to SuSE for this one. They consistently have the most complete distro, even if they try to install everything in German... I just hope that they keep all of the great things involved in the OS. The live filesystem, the bootable CD, etc. We use the live system cd here often for troubleshooting.
~Jason Maggard
"God, Root, what is difference?"
-Pitr
How nice to hear. Don't forget that it was Nov. 3rd, 1883 that the Supreme Court declared Native Americans "aliens". With my being a Miami "Injun", just replying to my post would be illegal, and also touching my car.... Who would have thought that an alien would drive a Ford Taurus. Hey, I'll have that meter maid arrested! ~Jason Maggard "It's almost dawn and the cops are gone, let's all get dixie fried!"
Gerald Holmes??
"linux will become baron" Baron Von Linux... I like that!
A few notes to the newbies... Linux cannot use and does not need a 32 MB Rage Fury card. Actually, neither does Windows...
-Hamnrye
"Our graphic artists are complaining that their computers are too slow, we should look in to some of the new 16 MB video cards." -My PHB
Katz has outdone himself this time...
The idea that we are "elevating the unthinking deployment of computer technology as a social -- and profit-making tool to make intuitive judgements in educational environments that often confound experts with years of training" is laudable. (oops! I meant laughable.)
Katz is the sort of journalist that makes his living from preying on paranoia. This has not changed in the many years that I have read him. I work with a journalist of the same caliber, but his angle is that there are communists everywhere, just like in 1984. The patter hardly changes from the left to right wing, and it is all just pablum for minds too weak to chew on real facts.
If they started a program for weeding out all of the geeks from high schools, there would be no students left to teach. And if this program does bring to bear the brunt of administrators on the "different" students, it will probably be for the best anyway. Most of this "different" behaviour is brought about by the need for attention in many cases. As the old saying goes, "Bad attention is better than no attention."
Also, teachers are generally not prepared to make these assertions without an aid, and neither are the counselors. Are these the "experts" that he mentions?? Let's face it the average School counselor was lucky to make it out of college, and if they were smart enough to find their bahoutney with both hands, they would have found a real job that would pay them a living wage. Why is Mr. Mackey on South Park so funny?? He's too darn accurate M'kay?
I for one am glad that these people will now have the tools to help them guide their students. They will now also be able to differentiate between "true" violent behaviour and a cry for attention. Even the cream of the crop in the mental health field uses computer aided tools to assist in the evaluation of illnesses. (Indeed, the profilers for the FBI use... M-2K.)
As is pointed out in White's "The Orginaztion Man" the people responsable for educating our children are generally the least capable of doing so. If we can give them tools to assist in their task, I am all for it.
However, this is a situation that is equivalent to saying "Well, he can't figure out how to use a hammer, give him a nail gun." Yes, but make sure that he understands that the nail gun is dangerous if used improperly, and don't let it be used witout some safety supervision.
I guess that Katz is also against Radar guns in the hands of the Highway patrol?? If it weren't for these little gadgets, they could pull you over whenever they wanted to just by saying, "He looked like he was going 75, please step out of the car sir so that the dog can sniff around."
These tools are much the same. The counselor calls the parents and says: "Your little Johnny seems like a violent Psycho because he doesn't like football." The parent says: "What did his tests say??" Counselor: "Well, intelligent but precocious, with a disregard for authority. But no violent tendancies..." Parent: "Good, then stuff it." What can I say, I love America!
The real and present danger here is that the computer will have it's word taken for law, and that incomplete information inputted by incompetent imbeciles instigates immoral and inexplicable inconvenience for those involved. (Woo Hoo! Aliteration!) We must remember that these are just tools. A hammer would never build a house, but in the right hands, it can make the process easier.
It would certainly be an improvement from the days back when, when I was sent to see my counselor (The one responsable for students L-Z) because I read too fast. I was informed that by not reading at the same pace as my classmates, I was being antisocial. What was that Vonnegut story about the people that wore ear plugs so that nobody could hear better than anyone else, and bad glasses so that nobody could see better than anyone else, etc...
The only true shame is that these same school boards that will use this system, probably have no computer tools to help teachers teach better, to help students learn better, or to monitor which teachers are liable to risk the psyche of one of their students "by pouring their derision upon anything we did, exposing any weakness no matter how carefully hidden by the kids...".
So when your local school board starts proposing software to stop violence, ask them what software they have to help start and continue learning. If they say "Encarta", buy your kid a gun.
~Jason Maggard
"And as things fell apart, nobody paid much attention"
I hate the New York times for forcing you to "Become a member" before you can read a fraggin' story. How about adding a user pref. so that we can screen them from our Slashdot? I disagree with the notion that we should be forced to divulge personal information just to get access to something as basic as a newspaper article. What's next? Please become a Yahoo member before starting your search. Just submit your name, age, race, and yearly earnings.
~Jason Maggard
"People who live in glass houses undress in the basement."
-Joey, Age 4
I won a copy of this program from Linux Today. It turned out to not be the laptop version (which I needed at the time)(Darn Neo-Magic) but it was the desktop version instead. All of my Linux machines have Matrox Millenium II's inside, and I was actually noticing more crashes on the machine with the XIG drivers. I noticed 2 crashes in the first month. (!) The machine was still accessible over the network (only for a reboot), but was unresponsive to any of the std. escape sequences. For comparison, I maybe crashed Xfree twice in a year previously, and the process was always killable with an escape seq. or a top over the network. After two months their CD was being used as a drink coaster. Add in the inconvenience of a less than intuitive setup, and no real performance benefit that was noticeable, and now I only reccommend their package for cards that are unsupported by the base distro.
I would also like to add that I did at some point in the proces need tech support, and I never got through on the telephone, and I never recieved an E-mail that was not an auto-responder. Now a newbie needing install support would not be able to get it from his Distro provider, and no response from XIG?? That sounds like a lose-lose situation.
In the interest of fairness, the Matrox acceleration is the best among the Xfree servers, and other people using ATI or such might experience different results. This experience that I relate happened ~1 1/2 years ago, so the state of their customer service and/or their drivers might be quite different. (But the the Xfree SVGA server has gotten better too...)
Other points of interest: Since Xfree SVGA is open source, you can diagnose and fix any driver problems yourself if you know how. But then I hardly think that this ad targets folks with know how... This is just another case of FUD.
Jason Maggard
hamnrye@mindspring.com
"I went mad for a while, It did me no end of good..."
-Z. Beeblebrox
First of all, I am an ASCAP member. The ASCAP has the basic job of defending intellectual property rights for musicians and composers. While I do not always agree with their methods, I am glad that they are around.
If you play music in your business, you use that music to make money. ASCAP sees that the artists are compensated for that. It really is that simple. When my jingle becomes the McDonalds commercial, I get compensated. If I open the Carly Simon cafe, all Carly, all the time, Shouldn't Carly be compensated for using her music in the restaraunt??
The web site in question used their links to radio stations in such a way as to make it appear local. Hence it is the same situation as any restaraunt that might use a stereo to play CD's while you browse. He could have simply made the links open a new window to another site.
Microsoft sells ads on their "Radio Guide" page, and hence they pay a licensing fee. As the web develops you will see more "portal sites" that center around mp3 and internet radio. They will be using the music as a draw to sell advertising in the millions. (M$ radio guide takes in a million dollars every month....)
While some of the ASCAP's practices may seem strange to normal people, there are usually ways around these rules. Case in point, if this guy would just have a pop-up window that made it known that the stream was not local, his site is business as usual.
And if the music is not useful to the retailer, he always has the option of doing without, as is the case here. But obviously music is important to these people.
ASCAP is what keeps music piracy at a minimum. If sowtware had an orginization like this, software piracy would be at a low, and software would be less expensive due to it. Games would cost 20$ because they don't have to compensate for you buying it and burning 13 copies for all of your friends.
I am typing this at work... I could do with less interruptions... *SIGH*
The little war we have going over the IE vs. Navigator is an idiotic waste of disk space. First of all, I use Linux, I use Windows. The time I spend in windows won't make me less of a geek, just like the time I spend in Linux doesn't make me more of a geek. It's what you do in either of those operating systems that makes or breaks a geek. I'd rather see a guy with windows editing the registry than see some of our linux users who get uptight about editing their .xinitrc.
/.ers that can barely handle shell scripting, and they tend to post just to go for the geek chic... These are the same folks that balk at recompiling the kernel (with a nice TK script no less!) and think that VI is the number of the horse that won the Preakness.
Secondly, IE 5.0 beats the tar out of Nutscrape 4.5 on the win32 platform. The full screen mode is cool, it loads faster, (yes, because it's already partially loaded as your file manager) it renders faster, it has a cleaner interface, and a whole slew of other things.
On Linux, we have no choice. KFM is an ok browser, but it still needs support for alot of things.
On the win32 platform it comes down to one thing, IE wanted to win more than Nutscrape. Netscape got old and fat and lazy, and they got beaten.
I don't know how many of you were there when the tarballs were released, but I seem to recall that the first big decision the OSS geeks made with Mozilla was to dump 80% of the existing source code and start from scratch. The rendering engine was a nightmare.
So, Netscape/Mozilla is dead. This is son of Mozilla!
Third, IMHO, the M releases are a mistake. They should not be distributing binaries, but instead they should be distributing source. The logic being that if you are unable to compile the program, you can't run the program. This makes them less likely to get assinine comments from pseudo-geeks, or hacker wanna-be's. We all know that there are some
This is a prerelease of opensource software. We are very understanding of other "pre-releases" so lets do the same for this one. How long have we been humoring Enlightenment?? (Are we still on DR 0.14?) We seem to think that because this is a "Company" we are allowed to expect more. It's just not true.
Oh, and as to the IE market share, 3 years ago, IE had 2% of the market share... So I guess it died 3 years ago...
The moral: Use what you find useful, and then ridicule the beejeezus out of anybody that uses something you find useless.
That's my $0.02, and I'll probably get change.
~HAMNRYE