there is something wrong with you, if you are so willing to label someone or something 'evil/vile' solely on the basis of 'leveraging their monopoly'. think about it.
at the best, you only serve to dilute the words, and at the worst, you completely sully the memory of the dead, who suffered and died at the hands of the truly 'evil/vile'.
it's like you people have completely lost touch with reality. get a grip, a clue, a life!
It is plain-as-day that IBM's adoption of Linux is yet another thrust/counter-thrust in the decades old struggle against Microsoft, especially now that they threaten the Enterprise market with increasingly robust NT 5.0 based system software (laugh if you want, but that's how you need to see it when painting the Big Picture).
By pushing the free OS, Big Blue can use it to sell consultancy, support and best of all, the leases on their fantastically expensive hardware, while at the same time undermining win2k based systems and harnessing the power of volunteering and crazed idealogue hobbyist developers.
It's a masterstroke strategy, where the payoffs easilly make up for the $Billion Dollar outlay and there are beau-coup bucks more to be saved by phasing out the proprietary UNIX development.
your figures sound entirely off-the-cuff and ridiculous. show us your work. Give me some delta-V numbers that would call for a specific impulse beyond 30 seconds (a typical rating for light thrusters), and we'll be talking the language of reason. till then, sit back, have a cup of tea and consider the wisdom in silence.
The links i provided do show altitude. and I realize the velocities, periods and what-all are not perfectly synchronized ahead of time.
A big part of rocket science is figuring out how to engineer an orbit with near-perfect efficiency. There is no reason NASA and the JPL are unable to calculate minimalist burns off a boster pack to settle HST in line with the ISS. maybe it will take a couple complete orbits, maybe even hundreds!, but still it could be done with just a few seconds of burn from a small rocket.
What I want to know, though, is how you people can have an interest in tech, and yet be so near sighted. do you really end at identifying problems, rather than looking for solutions? Is this same malaise what currently hobbles NASA grandeur? such a pity.
if you'd bother to follow the links i make at the top of this thread, you'd see precisely how close HST is to the ISS. Nobody said anything about star trek, but hey, great backhanded insult. I want you to consider that the shuttles have quite easilly made it to both HST and ISS on several occasions, and that there is no way matching orbits is cheaper than a relaunch, as if they'd ever relaunch a bird to begin with.
Notthat I mind being strung along like this. maybe you'e even trolled me? who can tell anymore.
I would be interested in any better answers you might have, though.
What I propose is not a lot more difficult than targeting a specific place for reentry. Besides, it certainly isn't any harder than shuttle rendezvous.
But maybe you are right. Just trash the thing for only slightly less $$$ than the cost of saving it!
They'll still have to send a booster pack and calculate a willy-nilly five ways from felicia, double indemnified, internationally approved series of orbital vectors in order to put the thing down where it needs to go. I'm sure the couple-dozen kilometers drop to the ISS orbit is much more difficult to arrange for than that.
I say to you: of all the possible ways to save the thing, this would be cheapest and easiest.
I've got the solution to our Hubble Troubles: lash that bugger to the ISS.
It's simple, really. To sink the Hubble, NASA already plans on firing off an un-manned mission to drive it down into a decaying orbit:
The Hubble will eventually fall out of orbit and crash to Earth, probably in 2011 or 2012. To make that event safe, Grunsfeld said, NASA will design and build a small robot craft that will be launched and guided to the Hubble.
The robot craft would "grab the Hubble and bring it into the atmosphere in a controlled manner," he said, guiding the school-bus-sized craft to harmlessly splash into a remote part of an ocean.
This shows the resources for manuevering the telescope are already budgeted. There may be added expense in engineering a mount point on the ISS, and additional risk & effort involved in calculating a safe vector, but as the following (kick ass) tools can show you, the HST and the ISS have practically identical orbits assigned them. The difference in orbits between the ISS and the HST are in almost identical orbits, as regards altitude, speed and direction of travel. It would be simple and cheap to re-purpose the end-of-life booster pack to serve as a tow truck into ISS space.
What problems would this plan solve? Well, service missions are suddenly a matter of popping out on the patio and replacing a fuse, instead of a multi-billion dollar voyage risking the life and safety of many billions more worth of equipment, personel and reputation. Extra parts can be tucked in with ISS mission carry-on baggage if necessary. and the HST would still be one of the finest optical instruments ever imagined.
Would there be problems with this solution? Yes. There may be issues with local radiation effects in the vicinity of the station, effects that might diminish the sensitivity of the instrument, whether by heating, light-polution, communications equipment or even vibration from the motors used aboard the station. The HST was not designed to work under such conditions. However, many of these issues can be solved with careful consideration with engineering the mount point spar. Any remaining degradation is worth the pain, as a hobbled hubble is better than a scrubbed hubbled.
This solution is just the first off the top of my head. There are others to consider. Perhaps they could use the booster to park the HST in a non-decaying orbit long enough to wait on the arrival of cherap space flight. On second though, by the time we have cheap space flight, it will be a simple thing to put up copies of the HST and far more besides. I suppose there are other possibilities, but mating the HST to the ISS is the cheapest, fastest, safest and sanest choice for the immediate future.
I would recommend completely removing the LCD and any misc. hardware before performing the operation. I guess I took it for granted that that was obvious.
I used to work in a motorcycles-only body shop. We'd do custom jobs to harley's and bullet bikes. The work on the bullet-bikes ('crotch-rockets' as they are sometimes known) largely involved prepping the fairings and repairing small cracks.
Since fairings are made out of PVC, it was a simple matter to repair cracks in them with a soldering iron and a strip of raw pvc (or some old bits of fairing laying around). The welds would come out as strong or stronger than the original PVC. The only side effect would be an awful scarring effect, which we would then sand out, fill with bondo and apply primer. Good as new.
Your laptop bezel is made out of PVC or a similar polymer. It would probably be a simple matter to weld the crack back together, or whatever (hinges, clips &etc).
The most important part of this technique, however, is to work in a place with good ventilation and *WEAR A GODDAM FACE MASK*. The fumes and smoke of the process are toxic, carcinogenic and easilly filtered by a cheap paper mask over you mouth and nose. You know, like Michael Jackson would wear on the streets of Hong Kong. Eye protection is a good idea, too. This is why I still have lungs and vision.
I would always do the plastic welding in the paint booth, with the painter's mask and the fans on high. Since you'd only need to do a small amount, the face mask and a kitchen or bathroom fan would probably suffice.
And remember: this is slashdot. think before you take any advice.
that's Windows Messenger you are referring to, a completely different beast than MSN Messenger. Windows Messenger is an old component for sending explorer events to domain clients, for saying things like 'The Network is Going Down. Save Your Work Now." and such to your users. MSN Messenger is for "lol cyber u a/s/l/ here's a link to my plush toy auction on ebay" style messages to your social circle (and random people).
There is a drive technology called "Mini-Magnetospheric Plasma Propulsion", or m2p2, that in effect creates a large scale magnetic bubble around a spacecraft.
In the current incarnation, it is intended as a solar-sail like drive for very low-mass probes. However, attached to a larger mass, like an interplanetary vehicle of the scale suitable for human occupancy, it would barely impart momentum at all, which would make it unsuitable as a drive technology.
Though it would work wonderfully to shield the vehicle from the solar wind and other problematic radiation.
The crazy thing is, though a portable magnetosphere is so obviously a crucial requirement for trans-planetary travel, there isn't a single resource available through my above-average googling skills. The technology is either so far removed from mainstream mission planning circles, or...
"First off, I'm not defending Ballmer. He's an idiot."
You: a random slashdot shlub.
Him: The man in the driver's seat of the world's largest software company, a position won through intense dedication, competence and skill.
Don't kid yourself, shlub. These mega corps have all sorts of failsafes to ensure "idiots" aren't placed in charge. Things like boards full of directors, SEC reports, due diligence constraints and hordes of slavering lawyers waiting for a slip-up pretty much ensure that anyone near the top of that circus is far from being an 'idiot'.
How exactly can we accept this vaguely technical argument on software quality control when you preface your point with such glaring misconception? Whether you make a point about testing or not is sort of left by the wayside of your factual bumling. It's this sort of thoughtlessness that keeps OS/FS down in the gutter, you heaving beaver.
The main reason I can see is that the shuttles (and presumably the replacement) were meant to haul in and return broken satellites. Those bumpy landings from the other re-entry strategies are hopelessly jarring for the purpose. The wings are just part of the streamlining for controlled re-entry, and house numerous critical systems, fuel and sensors.
That no satellites have ever been returned to Earth (not yet cost effective to retrieve/repair/relaunch a bird like that) is irrelevant: the capability could someday be crucial (think hubble debacle). And since the wings are stubby, basically just part of a funny shaped hull, why not have them?
ranting about _create_ and _innovate_ in reference to Linux makes you look a bit silly. After all, everything involved in Linux development is about emulation and immitation. Consider: the kernel and basic tools are directly lifted from UNIX. Gnome and KDE are directly lifted from the windows '95 GUI. The office apps available with your distro are almost feature-for-feature lifted from MS Office.
Where's the innovation in Linux?
The answer is not that shocking. The innovative thing about projects like linux is the license. That license (the GPL) was developed nearly 20 years ago, and save for minor refinements, hasn't really changed much since.
So, in short, if the OSS/FSS communities would just "demonstrate their ability to _CREATE_ and _INNOVATE_ instead of count coup on the _CREATIONS_ and _INNOVATIONS_ of others, SCO would be a healthy example of [Open Source] Development", instead of being sued for cheesing the property of others and being taken to task for it.
Michael, as always you pipe up with the useless snide commentary that betrays your privileged, naive, simplistic world view... You are taking a pot-shot at SBC like a fool and you completely miss the important point: the reality here is that the market pressures happen to be working in favorable coincidence with privacy rights, for once. Enjoy it, thank SBC profusely and make it worth their while to turn the reality into positive PR and increased goodwill between the telcos and the customers.
You'd think this would be happy news, something that should be noted and considered in a thankful tone in the write-up. But as always, Michael, you show yourself to be a thankless and simplistic fool. To turn your nose up at SBC for operating in congruence with public interest, no matter what their motivation in the matter, is just sending the message that "no matter what you do we'll resent you, you evil company!". You are basically putting them into a position of 'damned if they do, damned if they don't' with your editorial powers. such a shame.
In the interest of actually advancing the cause of F/OS/S adoption, I'm going to take a stab at playing devil's advocate to your response to egg troll. I am concerned here that this is all the further the scene's participants consider the issues, and it is a death sentence unless we can establish more logical and reasonable arguments, rather than this standard 'OOH BSODS ARE TEH SUKC" arguments:
The longer and harder you think, the more time gets wasted. You lose nothing when givng Linux a try.
oh? you loose hundreds of hours in training, across the org.
How did your Sally Secretary learn to use Windows and Office? Osmosis? I doubt it. Trining[sic] isn't a factor for normal users.
actually, she learned it thanks to a consistent graphical metaphor and standards that work across apps. let's not forget the much simpler fat file tree and 3 digit extension and the lack of 10 different directories to control 8 different aspects of an installed app. You may scoff, after all, this unix-y stuff is familiar to you. The windows environment is far simpler to grasp and always the same. that is to stay, the environment is stable, even if some of the apps aren't. *nixes are wildly varient. just take the switch from netscape's "Alt-C" for copy to Moz's "Ctrl-C" for copy, and you'll have your proof of what I'm saying.
In Gnome, for example, I occasionally get a dialog box that says " occurred. For more information, click on the help button." Naturally there is no help button.
In MS Office, Sally frequently gets "It appears you are typing a letter" message. Does she know how to turn it off? Is there a toll free MS support number she can contact?
wtf? she can ignore the clip. r-click on it and choose hide assistant. couldn't be simpler.
What about " Program performed illegal operation. Instruction could not be Read" messgaes[sic]? Those pop-ups? Those BSODs? Does BSOD come with a Help button?
fwiw, BSODs haven't been a problem for years. and when they were, 99% of the time it was the result of 3rd party developers stomping all over the memory space of a kernel that was working to support 20+ years of legacy apps and hardware. And professionals all over the world understand this.
Please.. think before you troll.
Maybe you should stop and think before you advocate with thoughtless zealotry. You are hardly going to accomplish anything with foolish knee-jerking, nor are you contributing to the serious discussion of these matters by echoing the party-line. How are we ever going to shake the MSFT yoke with shallow stick shaking like this?
Quite typical of the slashdot crowd, the slurs and insults are being spewed from both sides of the 'community mouth' when it comes to MSFT vs. F/OS/S. In this case, IIS sucks because it is closed source, so the bugs are worse. Other times, it sucks because MCSEs and department supervisors around the world don't know how to configure it (look at the dumb users! hahah). Finally we have the matter of familiarity and popularity, ften pointed to by sympathetic and/or apologistic commentators, usually to the tune of much derision and contempt... but that is not the case here, as Apache has the market.
The reality, of course lay squarely in the middle of these extreme opinions. IIS (pre-Server 2003 versions, anyway) had some flaws and NT has some flaws, namely shipping with a soft pre-configuration (which, believe it or not, makes sense from a certain standpoint. it's called ease of use). This is often the main reason for IIS being a major target, and most exploits are performed against flaws that have already been patched. Of course, this crowd will spit on automatic updates as an invasion of privacy or some such malarkey, while trumpeting Apache's superiority in between their own patch binges. As you can see, there is very little space for MSFT to do right here. They do a great job given what pressures they face, and the new IIS/S'03 is fantastic, and though we'll need top wait on indications of security, things are looking good.
But as it turns out, the most likely cause of the rampant IIS exploits is that your hax0rs and script-kiddies are often the same F/OS/S enthusiasts flaming MSFT in a forum like slashdot, bearing a senseless grudge against an important and influential developer like MSFT and gleefully proving their point with cheap trick after cheap trick.
Finally, as an aside, I had a friend visiting this weekend, here in Seattle. He's an F/OS/S enthusiast, so I took him on a tour of 1 Microsoft Way in Redmond. Aside from the pleasant, tranquill atmosphere and a small group of Indian developers playing Futball, the only thing that stood out for us was the many banners urging everyone at the company to "make it trustworthy", hung over every door, on every light-post and wall, it seemed. It struck me that the last couple times MSFT set their sights on a goal like that, it was dominance of the web (IE) and total hardware compatibility (win95). Regardless of your personal feelings on the matter, it is hard to argue that they didn't succeed in those pursuits!
something you knee-jerk types might not realize is that this is absolutely normal business procedure. for example, this is the exact same deal that movie poster designers in hollywood have with the studios. it's just a way to recoup the losses that exposure to novel ideas incurs. it is completely typical, and in fact, defensible by ample precedent.
as has been pointed out in other comments, this practice isn't even in conflict with the DOJ settlement. This is just muck-raking by the have-nots. ho-hum.
I am quite familiar with the CCRF. If you would be so kind as to re-read my statement, it is most clear that I say Canada does not have the same guarantees for free speech.
a good point, but there is also nothing prohibiting DirectTV from pursuit of a civil remedy, either. Nor does Canada have the same constitutional guarantees for free speech that US citizens have.
Recall that Canada is part of the Commonwealth of the United Kingdom. The same UK that has a tax on the act of "watching TV", with snaggle-toothed thugs riding around in little vans scanning for the EM emissions of a CRT and comparing addresses with tax rolls. They do this in Great Britain for traditional broadcasts by the state-owned corporation, which I find a significant precedent long established in the Mother Country. This may or may not weigh on the minds of judges in Canada, but they do both have a common legal heritage to draw from.
There is also the practical matter of the Brit companies like SkyTV, whatever operators Canada as or will have, and the pressure for the Canuck Judiciary to set appropriate precedent defending the ability of these companies to do business in the future.
Slashdot Mirror
there is something wrong with you, if you are so willing to label someone or something 'evil/vile' solely on the basis of 'leveraging their monopoly'. think about it.
at the best, you only serve to dilute the words, and at the worst, you completely sully the memory of the dead, who suffered and died at the hands of the truly 'evil/vile'.
it's like you people have completely lost touch with reality. get a grip, a clue, a life!
Nothing like a few citizens getting their ass reamed to foster change in government.
I think you are in the wrong debate: the Gay Marriage issue is being dealt with over at kuro5hin.org
It is plain-as-day that IBM's adoption of Linux is yet another thrust/counter-thrust in the decades old struggle against Microsoft, especially now that they threaten the Enterprise market with increasingly robust NT 5.0 based system software (laugh if you want, but that's how you need to see it when painting the Big Picture).
By pushing the free OS, Big Blue can use it to sell consultancy, support and best of all, the leases on their fantastically expensive hardware, while at the same time undermining win2k based systems and harnessing the power of volunteering and crazed idealogue hobbyist developers.
It's a masterstroke strategy, where the payoffs easilly make up for the $Billion Dollar outlay and there are beau-coup bucks more to be saved by phasing out the proprietary UNIX development.
do mention the filthy poisons released by chip fabs. in thrid-woirld countries like korea and germany. all for a quick buck. the shame of it all...
your figures sound entirely off-the-cuff and ridiculous. show us your work. Give me some delta-V numbers that would call for a specific impulse beyond 30 seconds (a typical rating for light thrusters), and we'll be talking the language of reason. till then, sit back, have a cup of tea and consider the wisdom in silence.
The links i provided do show altitude. and I realize the velocities, periods and what-all are not perfectly synchronized ahead of time.
A big part of rocket science is figuring out how to engineer an orbit with near-perfect efficiency. There is no reason NASA and the JPL are unable to calculate minimalist burns off a boster pack to settle HST in line with the ISS. maybe it will take a couple complete orbits, maybe even hundreds!, but still it could be done with just a few seconds of burn from a small rocket.
What I want to know, though, is how you people can have an interest in tech, and yet be so near sighted. do you really end at identifying problems, rather than looking for solutions? Is this same malaise what currently hobbles NASA grandeur? such a pity.
if you'd bother to follow the links i make at the top of this thread, you'd see precisely how close HST is to the ISS. Nobody said anything about star trek, but hey, great backhanded insult. I want you to consider that the shuttles have quite easilly made it to both HST and ISS on several occasions, and that there is no way matching orbits is cheaper than a relaunch, as if they'd ever relaunch a bird to begin with.
Notthat I mind being strung along like this. maybe you'e even trolled me? who can tell anymore.
I would be interested in any better answers you might have, though.
What I propose is not a lot more difficult than targeting a specific place for reentry. Besides, it certainly isn't any harder than shuttle rendezvous.
But maybe you are right. Just trash the thing for only slightly less $$$ than the cost of saving it!
They'll still have to send a booster pack and calculate a willy-nilly five ways from felicia, double indemnified, internationally approved series of orbital vectors in order to put the thing down where it needs to go. I'm sure the couple-dozen kilometers drop to the ISS orbit is much more difficult to arrange for than that.
I say to you: of all the possible ways to save the thing, this would be cheapest and easiest.
It's simple, really. To sink the Hubble, NASA already plans on firing off an un-manned mission to drive it down into a decaying orbit:
This shows the resources for manuevering the telescope are already budgeted. There may be added expense in engineering a mount point on the ISS, and additional risk & effort involved in calculating a safe vector, but as the following (kick ass) tools can show you, the HST and the ISS have practically identical orbits assigned them. The difference in orbits between the ISS and the HST are in almost identical orbits, as regards altitude, speed and direction of travel. It would be simple and cheap to re-purpose the end-of-life booster pack to serve as a tow truck into ISS space.
What problems would this plan solve? Well, service missions are suddenly a matter of popping out on the patio and replacing a fuse, instead of a multi-billion dollar voyage risking the life and safety of many billions more worth of equipment, personel and reputation. Extra parts can be tucked in with ISS mission carry-on baggage if necessary. and the HST would still be one of the finest optical instruments ever imagined.
Would there be problems with this solution? Yes. There may be issues with local radiation effects in the vicinity of the station, effects that might diminish the sensitivity of the instrument, whether by heating, light-polution, communications equipment or even vibration from the motors used aboard the station. The HST was not designed to work under such conditions. However, many of these issues can be solved with careful consideration with engineering the mount point spar. Any remaining degradation is worth the pain, as a hobbled hubble is better than a scrubbed hubbled.
This solution is just the first off the top of my head. There are others to consider. Perhaps they could use the booster to park the HST in a non-decaying orbit long enough to wait on the arrival of cherap space flight. On second though, by the time we have cheap space flight, it will be a simple thing to put up copies of the HST and far more besides. I suppose there are other possibilities, but mating the HST to the ISS is the cheapest, fastest, safest and sanest choice for the immediate future.
I would recommend completely removing the LCD and any misc. hardware before performing the operation. I guess I took it for granted that that was obvious.
I used to work in a motorcycles-only body shop. We'd do custom jobs to harley's and bullet bikes. The work on the bullet-bikes ('crotch-rockets' as they are sometimes known) largely involved prepping the fairings and repairing small cracks.
Since fairings are made out of PVC, it was a simple matter to repair cracks in them with a soldering iron and a strip of raw pvc (or some old bits of fairing laying around). The welds would come out as strong or stronger than the original PVC. The only side effect would be an awful scarring effect, which we would then sand out, fill with bondo and apply primer. Good as new.
Your laptop bezel is made out of PVC or a similar polymer. It would probably be a simple matter to weld the crack back together, or whatever (hinges, clips &etc).
The most important part of this technique, however, is to work in a place with good ventilation and *WEAR A GODDAM FACE MASK*. The fumes and smoke of the process are toxic, carcinogenic and easilly filtered by a cheap paper mask over you mouth and nose. You know, like Michael Jackson would wear on the streets of Hong Kong. Eye protection is a good idea, too. This is why I still have lungs and vision.
I would always do the plastic welding in the paint booth, with the painter's mask and the fans on high. Since you'd only need to do a small amount, the face mask and a kitchen or bathroom fan would probably suffice.
And remember: this is slashdot. think before you take any advice.
hey, foolio:
that's Windows Messenger you are referring to, a completely different beast than MSN Messenger. Windows Messenger is an old component for sending explorer events to domain clients, for saying things like 'The Network is Going Down. Save Your Work Now." and such to your users. MSN Messenger is for "lol cyber u a/s/l/ here's a link to my plush toy auction on ebay" style messages to your social circle (and random people).
In the current incarnation, it is intended as a solar-sail like drive for very low-mass probes. However, attached to a larger mass, like an interplanetary vehicle of the scale suitable for human occupancy, it would barely impart momentum at all, which would make it unsuitable as a drive technology.
Though it would work wonderfully to shield the vehicle from the solar wind and other problematic radiation.
The crazy thing is, though a portable magnetosphere is so obviously a crucial requirement for trans-planetary travel, there isn't a single resource available through my above-average googling skills. The technology is either so far removed from mainstream mission planning circles, or...
You: a random slashdot shlub. Him: The man in the driver's seat of the world's largest software company, a position won through intense dedication, competence and skill.
Don't kid yourself, shlub. These mega corps have all sorts of failsafes to ensure "idiots" aren't placed in charge. Things like boards full of directors, SEC reports, due diligence constraints and hordes of slavering lawyers waiting for a slip-up pretty much ensure that anyone near the top of that circus is far from being an 'idiot'.
How exactly can we accept this vaguely technical argument on software quality control when you preface your point with such glaring misconception? Whether you make a point about testing or not is sort of left by the wayside of your factual bumling. It's this sort of thoughtlessness that keeps OS/FS down in the gutter, you heaving beaver.
The main reason I can see is that the shuttles (and presumably the replacement) were meant to haul in and return broken satellites. Those bumpy landings from the other re-entry strategies are hopelessly jarring for the purpose. The wings are just part of the streamlining for controlled re-entry, and house numerous critical systems, fuel and sensors.
That no satellites have ever been returned to Earth (not yet cost effective to retrieve/repair/relaunch a bird like that) is irrelevant: the capability could someday be crucial (think hubble debacle). And since the wings are stubby, basically just part of a funny shaped hull, why not have them?
ranting about _create_ and _innovate_ in reference to Linux makes you look a bit silly. After all, everything involved in Linux development is about emulation and immitation. Consider: the kernel and basic tools are directly lifted from UNIX. Gnome and KDE are directly lifted from the windows '95 GUI. The office apps available with your distro are almost feature-for-feature lifted from MS Office.
Where's the innovation in Linux?
The answer is not that shocking. The innovative thing about projects like linux is the license. That license (the GPL) was developed nearly 20 years ago, and save for minor refinements, hasn't really changed much since.
So, in short, if the OSS/FSS communities would just "demonstrate their ability to _CREATE_ and _INNOVATE_ instead of count coup on the _CREATIONS_ and _INNOVATIONS_ of others, SCO would be a healthy example of [Open Source] Development", instead of being sued for cheesing the property of others and being taken to task for it.
blah de dha flawh
oh, and good work posting this just in time for the eurotrash to comment on. a story about oregon. michael.
You'd think this would be happy news, something that should be noted and considered in a thankful tone in the write-up. But as always, Michael, you show yourself to be a thankless and simplistic fool. To turn your nose up at SBC for operating in congruence with public interest, no matter what their motivation in the matter, is just sending the message that "no matter what you do we'll resent you, you evil company!". You are basically putting them into a position of 'damned if they do, damned if they don't' with your editorial powers. such a shame.
In the interest of actually advancing the cause of F/OS/S adoption, I'm going to take a stab at playing devil's advocate to your response to egg troll. I am concerned here that this is all the further the scene's participants consider the issues, and it is a death sentence unless we can establish more logical and reasonable arguments, rather than this standard 'OOH BSODS ARE TEH SUKC" arguments:
The longer and harder you think, the more time gets wasted. You lose nothing when givng Linux a try.
oh? you loose hundreds of hours in training, across the org.
How did your Sally Secretary learn to use Windows and Office? Osmosis? I doubt it. Trining[sic] isn't a factor for normal users.
actually, she learned it thanks to a consistent graphical metaphor and standards that work across apps. let's not forget the much simpler fat file tree and 3 digit extension and the lack of 10 different directories to control 8 different aspects of an installed app. You may scoff, after all, this unix-y stuff is familiar to you. The windows environment is far simpler to grasp and always the same. that is to stay, the environment is stable, even if some of the apps aren't. *nixes are wildly varient. just take the switch from netscape's "Alt-C" for copy to Moz's "Ctrl-C" for copy, and you'll have your proof of what I'm saying.
In Gnome, for example, I occasionally get a dialog box that says " occurred. For more information, click on the help button." Naturally there is no help button.
In MS Office, Sally frequently gets "It appears you are typing a letter" message. Does she know how to turn it off? Is there a toll free MS support number she can contact?
wtf? she can ignore the clip. r-click on it and choose hide assistant. couldn't be simpler.
What about " Program performed illegal operation. Instruction could not be Read" messgaes[sic]? Those pop-ups? Those BSODs? Does BSOD come with a Help button?
fwiw, BSODs haven't been a problem for years. and when they were, 99% of the time it was the result of 3rd party developers stomping all over the memory space of a kernel that was working to support 20+ years of legacy apps and hardware. And professionals all over the world understand this.
Please.. think before you troll.
Maybe you should stop and think before you advocate with thoughtless zealotry. You are hardly going to accomplish anything with foolish knee-jerking, nor are you contributing to the serious discussion of these matters by echoing the party-line. How are we ever going to shake the MSFT yoke with shallow stick shaking like this?
Quite typical of the slashdot crowd, the slurs and insults are being spewed from both sides of the 'community mouth' when it comes to MSFT vs. F/OS/S. In this case, IIS sucks because it is closed source, so the bugs are worse. Other times, it sucks because MCSEs and department supervisors around the world don't know how to configure it (look at the dumb users! hahah). Finally we have the matter of familiarity and popularity, ften pointed to by sympathetic and/or apologistic commentators, usually to the tune of much derision and contempt... but that is not the case here, as Apache has the market.
The reality, of course lay squarely in the middle of these extreme opinions. IIS (pre-Server 2003 versions, anyway) had some flaws and NT has some flaws, namely shipping with a soft pre-configuration (which, believe it or not, makes sense from a certain standpoint. it's called ease of use). This is often the main reason for IIS being a major target, and most exploits are performed against flaws that have already been patched. Of course, this crowd will spit on automatic updates as an invasion of privacy or some such malarkey, while trumpeting Apache's superiority in between their own patch binges. As you can see, there is very little space for MSFT to do right here. They do a great job given what pressures they face, and the new IIS/S'03 is fantastic, and though we'll need top wait on indications of security, things are looking good.
But as it turns out, the most likely cause of the rampant IIS exploits is that your hax0rs and script-kiddies are often the same F/OS/S enthusiasts flaming MSFT in a forum like slashdot, bearing a senseless grudge against an important and influential developer like MSFT and gleefully proving their point with cheap trick after cheap trick.
Finally, as an aside, I had a friend visiting this weekend, here in Seattle. He's an F/OS/S enthusiast, so I took him on a tour of 1 Microsoft Way in Redmond. Aside from the pleasant, tranquill atmosphere and a small group of Indian developers playing Futball, the only thing that stood out for us was the many banners urging everyone at the company to "make it trustworthy", hung over every door, on every light-post and wall, it seemed. It struck me that the last couple times MSFT set their sights on a goal like that, it was dominance of the web (IE) and total hardware compatibility (win95). Regardless of your personal feelings on the matter, it is hard to argue that they didn't succeed in those pursuits!
something you knee-jerk types might not realize is that this is absolutely normal business procedure. for example, this is the exact same deal that movie poster designers in hollywood have with the studios. it's just a way to recoup the losses that exposure to novel ideas incurs. it is completely typical, and in fact, defensible by ample precedent.
as has been pointed out in other comments, this practice isn't even in conflict with the DOJ settlement. This is just muck-raking by the have-nots. ho-hum.
perhaps even more obvious is your glaring lack of reading-comprehension. Or perhaps it is you that suffers from limited knowledge of Canadian law.
Whatever the case, I must kindly request that you refrain from jerking your knee near my insightful commentary in the future. thanks.
I am quite familiar with the CCRF. If you would be so kind as to re-read my statement, it is most clear that I say Canada does not have the same guarantees for free speech.
a good point, but there is also nothing prohibiting DirectTV from pursuit of a civil remedy, either. Nor does Canada have the same constitutional guarantees for free speech that US citizens have.
Recall that Canada is part of the Commonwealth of the United Kingdom. The same UK that has a tax on the act of "watching TV", with snaggle-toothed thugs riding around in little vans scanning for the EM emissions of a CRT and comparing addresses with tax rolls. They do this in Great Britain for traditional broadcasts by the state-owned corporation, which I find a significant precedent long established in the Mother Country. This may or may not weigh on the minds of judges in Canada, but they do both have a common legal heritage to draw from.
There is also the practical matter of the Brit companies like SkyTV, whatever operators Canada as or will have, and the pressure for the Canuck Judiciary to set appropriate precedent defending the ability of these companies to do business in the future.