I registered my copy of Linux with SCO. It only costs $700, and I don't have to worry about getting sued or breaking the law.
If that isn't a troll, I don't know what a troll is. But I appreciate the straight delivery....so I will bite. So, what did you get in return for this $700?
I have telecommuted for about two years now (4 days a week on average), but not as a programmer. (ok, some perl crap, but thats 3% of my job) I do the photography, website management, IT and general marketing for a smallish manufacturer/retailer. I find the trick is to make sure you sandbag your best ideas, and talk to the boss from home so he thinks you do your best work in your undies. Actually, I TELL him I do my best work in my undies, which is partially true since my best work happens at 7 am, before the office opens.
There IS a bad side to telecommuting: The boss has a bad habit of calling me around 5pm on Fridays with "ideas" to work on over the weekend. He seems to think that since i work at home, I don't mind working weekends. Which brings up another point: When you work at home, its hard to get away from the office. Also makes it hard to drop off for a beer on the way home. Now I go camping when I can on the weekends to get out of the house, and get away from the temptation of "hey, I got an idea, lemme go write it down" and spending half the weekend working.
Most people FAIL at telecommuting because the temptation to sit around all day watching cartoons is too great, and it's hard to get motivated without the normal rituals of getting up, shit/shower/shave/coffee/drive to get their brain in gear. I've been self employed alot (still own a pawnshop someone else runs) so self motivation isn't a problem, but I can see over half the 20-30 year old guys not getting anything done.
On the other hand, it may teach you to code fast, to try to produce 40 hours worth of work in 8 hours on Monday so you CAN watch SpongeBob all week:p
I have had a 384sdsl line to provide outbound access for an office of about 6 users for almost 3 years now. The only downtime I had was during 9-11. Everytime I call, I get a human. Everytime I email, I get an answer. The latency is decent, the uptime is excellent, the price is about average. The throughput is good. They never screw up a bill. Came with 16 IPs. (remember, its just 384k)
We are moving to a new building, and getting dual T1s (12 pair for phones, so 1.5 for data). I TRIED to get speakeasy to provide it for us, but they couldn't out of the CO we will be using (outskirts of town). Speakeasy isn't perfect, but all and all, I can easily recommend them.
I also have a 1.2 SDSL line with ATT/Covad. Their service sucks. Their hold line is always long. They never have answers. They try to blame the local phone co. for problems that are obviously NOT their fault. I get noticably better latency with ATT/Covad, but mediocre uptime and crapola service. Had that line for 3 years also. I can't recommend ATT/Covad.
Those "new cars" are replacing "old cars" and thus absorbing tens of thousands of dollars from each consumer and preventing them from buying new stuff.
First of all, if they buy a new car, this doesn't prevent them from buying new stuff. The new stuff they bought is the car (duh). I could expand more on this, but the stupidity is self evident.
And all those people at Home Depot are buying stuff to fix their houses,
Actually, if you ASK, you will find they are NOT fixing their homes. They are adding features, improving them, making them more comfortable. Building a deck is not the same as replacing a toilet. Remodeling the kitchen is done not because the old one fell apart, but because you want "new".
Check out how many different brands of the same item you can get at home depot, in almost every case there is ONE brand, and thus zero competition.
As someone who shops there several times a week, I can say your arguement holds no water. The REAL competition is NOT from brand A or B at Home Depot. Its from either going to Home Depot, Lowes, 84 Lumber, or another home improvement center anyway. Yes, you might only find one brand of drainage pipe at Home Depot, but I can shop elsewhere if I don't like the brand they have.
And "capitalists" who defend the current system....
Many of us defend pure capitolism, which is different from the over-regulated version that has been shoved down our throats by liberal thinking over the last 50 years. With the exception of that last point (which is partially opinion and can be debated) your entire post is either the result of a total misunderstanding of the economy, or a willful attempt to distort the truth to make it fit your version of reality.
This is beyond a simple mistake, this is willful ignorance.
I really have to wonder when it actually came to pass that SCO's code came to have SMP support - and is it worth anything?
It appears it's worth $1 billion dollars, in SCO's eyes anyway. But the main claim is support for more than 4 cpus, which was marginal before 2.4. I went to SCO's site and read all their 'evidence', which is admitedly, quite thin.
With IBM's new PPC 970 Quad 2Ghz servers scheduled for under $3500, I get the feeling they will have the extra bucks needed to buy out SCO. The more I read, the more I believe that is going to be the end result. Personally, I would love to see IBM open the source for all SCO's theoretical IP. I have several older IBM servers, and would be glad to repay them with future loyalty, especially at $3500 for quad box.
Oh, and if memory serves me right, Xenix was for x86 (bought out or licensed later by MS I believe), while most SMP boxes running *nix were MIPS or Alphas. I have an old copy of SCO for 386 that doesn't say anything about SMP either.
If you read the article, it points to 2.4+ kernels, saying that 2.2 kernels could handle 2 to 4 cpus, but 2.4 can scale to 32+ cpus. I am assuming that this means SCO thinks the illegal code is NOT in 2.2 and only in 2.4 kernels anyway. IF this is the case, then the fact that they released a 2.2 kernel really doesn't apply.
There is no question that the items in question are pirate devices.
I believe the standard is "substantial legal uses" which a card reader has. If the card readers had a ROM that automatically updated the card to receive DTV, then your arguement would hold water. However, there are substantial legal uses for card readers/programmers, not the least of which is "education" or for legal reverse engineering. The readers are generic devices, NOT specific devices for the sole reason to pirate DTV.
Because the majority of people who use these card readers are using them for illegal purposes (just a guess) does NOT take away the fact that they have substantial legal purposes.
Another example: if you have an AR-15 (the civilian equivelent of a M16) and a fully automatic receiver that is NOT installed, you have a legal weapon. Its only when you combine the two are they illegal. If you find the card reader with BasicH or setup with other software for programming DTV cards, or with similar evidence, THEN you have illegal use and possession of a pirating device.
Not to be overly critical, but I want to know where these mysterious 1986 CDROM drives are? Enough that it did NOT have a scsi port, but most computers in 1992 didn't have a cdrom drive, no less in 1986. To my best recollection, they did not exist in mass in 1986, and it was several years later before it was a reasonable option for any computer, closer to 1990, and until Windows 95 came out before virtually ALL computers had them. After all, Windows 3.11 was only 7 or 8 floppies to install, DOS 6.x was 3.
After doing some googling, I find one site saying the first scsi cdrom was in 1987, a Philips CM110, after its big brother, the CM100 which used a proprietary interface. The CD110 converted the scsi signal to the proprietary as well.
You young whipper snappers forget how it was before CDROMs, back when it took forever to fill up a 20mb drive;)
Your link to the original article does not work. Also, it is kind of disgusting that you can karmawhore just by posting in its entirety someone elses well thought out joke. Even if you do post a broken link giving credit to the original author, its pretty pathetic.
first off,/. adds a space to the url to keep it from breaking tables, so yes, the url he gave works fine if you delete the space. Anyone that has been here a while knows this.
Second: AC's don't karma whore. The proper way to post this IS as AC, which he did. Properly. Giving proper credit. He could have used html code for the link, but it was short enough that it almost passed through without/. breaking it up anyway. Besides, anyone but newbs know it puts the space in there.
Third: Since it was short, it was better to quote than to just link, although the link is necessary to give props to the author. Again, common knowlege here.
Fourth: Learn what you are talking about before you talk. You just demonstrate how new or stupid you really are by being so wrong and so loud.
Go read the FAQ before you start judging others who have posted exactly as the system is designed to be used.
It also fits on a usb keychain, knoppix sorta works too, but no ntfs writes.
I just started experimenting with Knoppix so I am far from an expert on it, but your statement caught me offguard. Knoppix may mount NTFS as RO, but cant you manually remount the partition RW?
Personally, I have never mounted NTFS RW from Linux of any flavor, but part of the reason I purchased a Knoppix CD was for repair of failed systems, including NT. If I truly can not RW a NTFS partition, Knoppix will be of little use to me.
Re:For those unfortunate times...
on
42-Volt Autos
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· Score: 1
Like I said to a similar reply: The new 42v will be more expensive cars. They all have automatic lights, so its pretty hard, if at all possible, to leave them on. Not impossible, just highly improbable to be a problem on a 30k+ car.
Re:For those unfortunate times...
on
42-Volt Autos
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· Score: 1
Leaving the headlights on may be difficult as most cars have an alarm that warns you. But I don't think a car needs to be 10 years old before you are able to accidently leave the interior light on over a long weekend...
Again, only the more expensive cars will initially be 42 volt. Most expensive cars have automatic lights. My 2001 Chevy TRUCK has auto lights and radio, and would not qualify as an 'expensive car' at less than 25k when new. Is it possible? Yes, but not very likely for the class of cars it will be in.
Re:For those unfortunate times...
on
42-Volt Autos
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· Score: 1
I think you guys are missing the point:
Most new cars come with free 1 year road side assistance now. Personally, I have a Gold AAA membership, which costs a whopping $55 a year. For this, they will tow once a year, bring you 5 gallons of gas, etc.
If you can afford one of these new 42v cars (which will be in the high end to start) then you can afford $55 a year for AAA, or at least $25 a year for basic coverage. I mean come on, American Express charges $55 a year, and you don't even get tow service.
Another thing: most newer cars simply don't need to be jumped. Usually a car is 10 years old before its enough of a piece of shit to need jumping (assuming you are smart enough to change batteries every 4 years). This means we have a bit until the po folks get one anyway.
10^51 happens to be about 2^170. IPv6 has 2^128 addresses. So I guess if we needed to assign every atom on earth an IP we may run into a problem. Remember "640k should be enough for everyone"? Well this time 2^128 should be enough for everyone.
The irony is that one day, people will ask how we were so short sighted to think 2^128 would be enough. (just as 640k). Of course, that is if every appliance in every home has an ip, along with every car, lawn mower, telephone, cell phone, pay phone, coke machine, radio, fishing rod, power tool....
well, hell, I guess 2^128 is still enough. Takes the fun out of it. Kinda like when you get a new 120gb hard drive and you want to see how fast you can fill it up, but I can't even imagine how we would use them up. Damn.
What is MAY do is help reduce new startups for spam, since the potential for lawsuits and charges will reduce the appeal to new spammers. If this narrows down the field, it gets easier to find the hardcore professional spammers.
One of the more important things that I think it accomplishes is psycological. It finally establishes a legal basis that spam is bad. Many people see spam as an irritant only (ie: my mom, Joe Sixpack, etc.), but once the common perception finally sees that it is a crime that robs resources and costs us ALL money, you will see changes in attitude from ISPs, access providers and rack services. This won't happen overnight, but it IS key to eventually reducing spam from 1/2 to 3/4 of all mail, to just background noise. A small, but necessary start.
I have several TFC servers (The HL mod) and have seen several kids get into programming by creating maps for the game, as well as Counter Strike, Day of Defeat, etc. You have to use logic, and a pretty crappy (free) program to do it.
Also, I see alot of kids writing scripts for actions in the game, and of course, tweaking cheats out.
I started the servers in 1999, on Linux, when I was quite new to Linux (but not a kid by far). Running a server, for ME, helped to work with crond, atd, bash scripts, perl, installing PHP based message forums, website, etc. I went from minor experience to a relative comfort level with linux. So even old dogs can learn new tricks.
Are you suggesting that once MS installs their own AV software it will 'break' NAV or McAfee? They wouldn't do that now, would they?;)
MS used to be in the AV business back in the Windows 3.0/DOS days. Not sure what really happened then. I can see them making special hooks in the OS that makes their AV work better, more 'direct' with the OS, making the others seem slow in comparison. Actually, I can see them making damn SURE that other AV works slower by adding 'compatability layers' for them to work on this 'new AV OS'. Then its Norton's problem that it doesn't work with the new undocumented APIs.
Think about it, now they can sell the disease and the cure, and charge you twice for it.
I understand you point, but I can buy XP home for 89 buck anywhere I buy a motherboard, and I am sure that IBM, Dell, Compusa buy it much cheaper. You cant compare OEM pricing to retail pricing, since they are selling OEM for $50 in this case.
My point is that it may be borderline, but its not 'obviously dumping' because $50 is likely inline with their OEM program with the bigger guys anyway. Unethical, yes, but still potentially legal.
IF and it is a BIG IF, if this is true then what happened to the Anti-Monopoly laws?
IANAL, but the problem is that $50 is not below their cost. Considering they have about 80% profit in each copy, and the average copy (counting OEM, retail) is probably $80, then they have less than $20 into each copy. They could sell it for half of the $50 and not technically be 'dumping'.
To price your product at a profit, even a smaller profit, to make it more attractive, is not illegal per se. Coke puts its products on sale to get people who buy generic colas to purchase Coke instead, at the same price, to develop a preference for Coke. The real question is not the price, its the other details in the deal.
If MS is attempting to get companies to drop Lindows or other OS's in favor of MS only, there may be some legal problems with the methods for THIS activity. This could be seen as preditory in practice. Normally to be considered preditory, you have to take a LOSS on the product in order to damage another company, which they are NOT doing at $50.
This is a classic example of a company (MS) doing something that is probably LEGAL, but not ethical. Since this is somewhat business as usual, I don't see it making a difference in people's perception of MS on average, which runs from hatred from those that do not use their products anyway, to indifference from the masses who just want to 'buy one of them there computers to get on the internet'.
One of the advantages of having a monopoly is you don't have to be nice to your customers....theoretically. If you not only have a monopoly, but can legally suppress any competition, then theory becomes fact.
1) Buy out SCO. Hostile style. Buy up enough of the stock to have them vote to merge under IBM. 2) Fire the entire board of directors. A severance package of one pack of oreos and cab fare 3) ?????? 4) Profit....or at least not losing money on this crap, which is the next best thing.
One of the articles (yea, some of us read them) actually pointed out a rather obvious 3) point, that is the goodwill generated if IBM were to GPL SCO's IP (god, more acronyms than the military).
As a long time IBM fan, I could see this benefitting IBM in a way that generates profit. Since they really sell hardware and services, this could help to increase sales, partially because of the goodwill, and because they would be able to impliment any useful code gained somewhat faster. IBM has already gained alot of traction by investing 1 billion into Linux, which they claim they recovered in the first year. Adding a few hundred million to GPL UnixWare may be even more profitable, at a lower cost.
I was going to verify your 11M shares (you are right) which sounded low, and found this tidbit:
According to Yahoo Stocks: The SCO Group, Inc. develops and markets software based onthe Linux operating system and provides related services that enable the development, deployment and management of Internet access devices and specialized servers.
Actually, I have scrolled through about 100 comments, and yet to find a single one that is relevent to the article. Wouldn't that mean that the original article now qualifies as the longest troll ever on/. ? Too bad you can't moderate the articles.
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I registered my copy of Linux with SCO. It only costs $700, and I don't have to worry about getting sued or breaking the law.
If that isn't a troll, I don't know what a troll is. But I appreciate the straight delivery....so I will bite. So, what did you get in return for this $700?
I have telecommuted for about two years now (4 days a week on average), but not as a programmer. (ok, some perl crap, but thats 3% of my job) I do the photography, website management, IT and general marketing for a smallish manufacturer/retailer. I find the trick is to make sure you sandbag your best ideas, and talk to the boss from home so he thinks you do your best work in your undies. Actually, I TELL him I do my best work in my undies, which is partially true since my best work happens at 7 am, before the office opens.
:p
There IS a bad side to telecommuting: The boss has a bad habit of calling me around 5pm on Fridays with "ideas" to work on over the weekend. He seems to think that since i work at home, I don't mind working weekends. Which brings up another point: When you work at home, its hard to get away from the office. Also makes it hard to drop off for a beer on the way home. Now I go camping when I can on the weekends to get out of the house, and get away from the temptation of "hey, I got an idea, lemme go write it down" and spending half the weekend working.
Most people FAIL at telecommuting because the temptation to sit around all day watching cartoons is too great, and it's hard to get motivated without the normal rituals of getting up, shit/shower/shave/coffee/drive to get their brain in gear. I've been self employed alot (still own a pawnshop someone else runs) so self motivation isn't a problem, but I can see over half the 20-30 year old guys not getting anything done.
On the other hand, it may teach you to code fast, to try to produce 40 hours worth of work in 8 hours on Monday so you CAN watch SpongeBob all week
adding to the conversation about Speakeasy:
I have had a 384sdsl line to provide outbound access for an office of about 6 users for almost 3 years now. The only downtime I had was during 9-11. Everytime I call, I get a human. Everytime I email, I get an answer. The latency is decent, the uptime is excellent, the price is about average. The throughput is good. They never screw up a bill. Came with 16 IPs. (remember, its just 384k)
We are moving to a new building, and getting dual T1s (12 pair for phones, so 1.5 for data). I TRIED to get speakeasy to provide it for us, but they couldn't out of the CO we will be using (outskirts of town). Speakeasy isn't perfect, but all and all, I can easily recommend them.
I also have a 1.2 SDSL line with ATT/Covad. Their service sucks. Their hold line is always long. They never have answers. They try to blame the local phone co. for problems that are obviously NOT their fault. I get noticably better latency with ATT/Covad, but mediocre uptime and crapola service. Had that line for 3 years also. I can't recommend ATT/Covad.
Those "new cars" are replacing "old cars" and thus absorbing tens of thousands of dollars from each consumer and preventing them from buying new stuff.
....
First of all, if they buy a new car, this doesn't prevent them from buying new stuff. The new stuff they bought is the car (duh). I could expand more on this, but the stupidity is self evident.
And all those people at Home Depot are buying stuff to fix their houses,
Actually, if you ASK, you will find they are NOT fixing their homes. They are adding features, improving them, making them more comfortable. Building a deck is not the same as replacing a toilet. Remodeling the kitchen is done not because the old one fell apart, but because you want "new".
Check out how many different brands of the same item you can get at home depot, in almost every case there is ONE brand, and thus zero competition.
As someone who shops there several times a week, I can say your arguement holds no water. The REAL competition is NOT from brand A or B at Home Depot. Its from either going to Home Depot, Lowes, 84 Lumber, or another home improvement center anyway. Yes, you might only find one brand of drainage pipe at Home Depot, but I can shop elsewhere if I don't like the brand they have.
And "capitalists" who defend the current system
Many of us defend pure capitolism, which is different from the over-regulated version that has been shoved down our throats by liberal thinking over the last 50 years. With the exception of that last point (which is partially opinion and can be debated) your entire post is either the result of a total misunderstanding of the economy, or a willful attempt to distort the truth to make it fit your version of reality.
This is beyond a simple mistake, this is willful ignorance.
I really have to wonder when it actually came to pass that SCO's code came to have SMP support - and is it worth anything?
It appears it's worth $1 billion dollars, in SCO's eyes anyway. But the main claim is support for more than 4 cpus, which was marginal before 2.4. I went to SCO's site and read all their 'evidence', which is admitedly, quite thin.
With IBM's new PPC 970 Quad 2Ghz servers scheduled for under $3500, I get the feeling they will have the extra bucks needed to buy out SCO. The more I read, the more I believe that is going to be the end result. Personally, I would love to see IBM open the source for all SCO's theoretical IP. I have several older IBM servers, and would be glad to repay them with future loyalty, especially at $3500 for quad box.
Oh, and if memory serves me right, Xenix was for x86 (bought out or licensed later by MS I believe), while most SMP boxes running *nix were MIPS or Alphas. I have an old copy of SCO for 386 that doesn't say anything about SMP either.
If you read the article, it points to 2.4+ kernels, saying that 2.2 kernels could handle 2 to 4 cpus, but 2.4 can scale to 32+ cpus. I am assuming that this means SCO thinks the illegal code is NOT in 2.2 and only in 2.4 kernels anyway. IF this is the case, then the fact that they released a 2.2 kernel really doesn't apply.
There is no question that the items in question are pirate devices.
I believe the standard is "substantial legal uses" which a card reader has. If the card readers had a ROM that automatically updated the card to receive DTV, then your arguement would hold water. However, there are substantial legal uses for card readers/programmers, not the least of which is "education" or for legal reverse engineering. The readers are generic devices, NOT specific devices for the sole reason to pirate DTV.
Because the majority of people who use these card readers are using them for illegal purposes (just a guess) does NOT take away the fact that they have substantial legal purposes.
Another example: if you have an AR-15 (the civilian equivelent of a M16) and a fully automatic receiver that is NOT installed, you have a legal weapon. Its only when you combine the two are they illegal. If you find the card reader with BasicH or setup with other software for programming DTV cards, or with similar evidence, THEN you have illegal use and possession of a pirating device.
Card readers don't steal DTV. People steal DTV.
Not to be overly critical, but I want to know where these mysterious 1986 CDROM drives are? Enough that it did NOT have a scsi port, but most computers in 1992 didn't have a cdrom drive, no less in 1986. To my best recollection, they did not exist in mass in 1986, and it was several years later before it was a reasonable option for any computer, closer to 1990, and until Windows 95 came out before virtually ALL computers had them. After all, Windows 3.11 was only 7 or 8 floppies to install, DOS 6.x was 3.
;)
After doing some googling, I find one site saying the first scsi cdrom was in 1987, a Philips CM110, after its big brother, the CM100 which used a proprietary interface. The CD110 converted the scsi signal to the proprietary as well.
You young whipper snappers forget how it was before CDROMs, back when it took forever to fill up a 20mb drive
Your link to the original article does not work. Also, it is kind of disgusting that you can karmawhore just by posting in its entirety someone elses well thought out joke. Even if you do post a broken link giving credit to the original author, its pretty pathetic.
/. adds a space to the url to keep it from breaking tables, so yes, the url he gave works fine if you delete the space. Anyone that has been here a while knows this.
/. breaking it up anyway. Besides, anyone but newbs know it puts the space in there.
first off,
Second: AC's don't karma whore. The proper way to post this IS as AC, which he did. Properly. Giving proper credit. He could have used html code for the link, but it was short enough that it almost passed through without
Third: Since it was short, it was better to quote than to just link, although the link is necessary to give props to the author. Again, common knowlege here.
Fourth: Learn what you are talking about before you talk. You just demonstrate how new or stupid you really are by being so wrong and so loud.
Go read the FAQ before you start judging others who have posted exactly as the system is designed to be used.
It also fits on a usb keychain, knoppix sorta works too, but no ntfs writes.
I just started experimenting with Knoppix so I am far from an expert on it, but your statement caught me offguard. Knoppix may mount NTFS as RO, but cant you manually remount the partition RW?
Personally, I have never mounted NTFS RW from Linux of any flavor, but part of the reason I purchased a Knoppix CD was for repair of failed systems, including NT. If I truly can not RW a NTFS partition, Knoppix will be of little use to me.
Like I said to a similar reply: The new 42v will be more expensive cars. They all have automatic lights, so its pretty hard, if at all possible, to leave them on. Not impossible, just highly improbable to be a problem on a 30k+ car.
Leaving the headlights on may be difficult as most cars have an alarm that warns you. But I don't think a car needs to be 10 years old before you are able to accidently leave the interior light on over a long weekend...
Again, only the more expensive cars will initially be 42 volt. Most expensive cars have automatic lights. My 2001 Chevy TRUCK has auto lights and radio, and would not qualify as an 'expensive car' at less than 25k when new. Is it possible? Yes, but not very likely for the class of cars it will be in.
I think you guys are missing the point:
Most new cars come with free 1 year road side assistance now. Personally, I have a Gold AAA membership, which costs a whopping $55 a year. For this, they will tow once a year, bring you 5 gallons of gas, etc.
If you can afford one of these new 42v cars (which will be in the high end to start) then you can afford $55 a year for AAA, or at least $25 a year for basic coverage. I mean come on, American Express charges $55 a year, and you don't even get tow service.
Another thing: most newer cars simply don't need to be jumped. Usually a car is 10 years old before its enough of a piece of shit to need jumping (assuming you are smart enough to change batteries every 4 years). This means we have a bit until the po folks get one anyway.
Wait a sec, I just laid down that piece of window trim, but I can't find it.....
10^51 happens to be about 2^170. IPv6 has 2^128 addresses. So I guess if we needed to assign every atom on earth an IP we may run into a problem. Remember "640k should be enough for everyone"? Well this time 2^128 should be enough for everyone.
The irony is that one day, people will ask how we were so short sighted to think 2^128 would be enough. (just as 640k). Of course, that is if every appliance in every home has an ip, along with every car, lawn mower, telephone, cell phone, pay phone, coke machine, radio, fishing rod, power tool....
well, hell, I guess 2^128 is still enough. Takes the fun out of it. Kinda like when you get a new 120gb hard drive and you want to see how fast you can fill it up, but I can't even imagine how we would use them up. Damn.
Funny thing is, it still won't end spam.
What is MAY do is help reduce new startups for spam, since the potential for lawsuits and charges will reduce the appeal to new spammers. If this narrows down the field, it gets easier to find the hardcore professional spammers.
One of the more important things that I think it accomplishes is psycological. It finally establishes a legal basis that spam is bad. Many people see spam as an irritant only (ie: my mom, Joe Sixpack, etc.), but once the common perception finally sees that it is a crime that robs resources and costs us ALL money, you will see changes in attitude from ISPs, access providers and rack services. This won't happen overnight, but it IS key to eventually reducing spam from 1/2 to 3/4 of all mail, to just background noise. A small, but necessary start.
I have several TFC servers (The HL mod) and have seen several kids get into programming by creating maps for the game, as well as Counter Strike, Day of Defeat, etc. You have to use logic, and a pretty crappy (free) program to do it.
Also, I see alot of kids writing scripts for actions in the game, and of course, tweaking cheats out.
I started the servers in 1999, on Linux, when I was quite new to Linux (but not a kid by far). Running a server, for ME, helped to work with crond, atd, bash scripts, perl, installing PHP based message forums, website, etc. I went from minor experience to a relative comfort level with linux. So even old dogs can learn new tricks.
Are you suggesting that once MS installs their own AV software it will 'break' NAV or McAfee? They wouldn't do that now, would they? ;)
MS used to be in the AV business back in the Windows 3.0/DOS days. Not sure what really happened then. I can see them making special hooks in the OS that makes their AV work better, more 'direct' with the OS, making the others seem slow in comparison. Actually, I can see them making damn SURE that other AV works slower by adding 'compatability layers' for them to work on this 'new AV OS'. Then its Norton's problem that it doesn't work with the new undocumented APIs.
Think about it, now they can sell the disease and the cure, and charge you twice for it.
I understand you point, but I can buy XP home for 89 buck anywhere I buy a motherboard, and I am sure that IBM, Dell, Compusa buy it much cheaper. You cant compare OEM pricing to retail pricing, since they are selling OEM for $50 in this case.
My point is that it may be borderline, but its not 'obviously dumping' because $50 is likely inline with their OEM program with the bigger guys anyway. Unethical, yes, but still potentially legal.
IF and it is a BIG IF, if this is true then what happened to the Anti-Monopoly laws?
IANAL, but the problem is that $50 is not below their cost. Considering they have about 80% profit in each copy, and the average copy (counting OEM, retail) is probably $80, then they have less than $20 into each copy. They could sell it for half of the $50 and not technically be 'dumping'.
To price your product at a profit, even a smaller profit, to make it more attractive, is not illegal per se. Coke puts its products on sale to get people who buy generic colas to purchase Coke instead, at the same price, to develop a preference for Coke. The real question is not the price, its the other details in the deal.
If MS is attempting to get companies to drop Lindows or other OS's in favor of MS only, there may be some legal problems with the methods for THIS activity. This could be seen as preditory in practice. Normally to be considered preditory, you have to take a LOSS on the product in order to damage another company, which they are NOT doing at $50.
This is a classic example of a company (MS) doing something that is probably LEGAL, but not ethical. Since this is somewhat business as usual, I don't see it making a difference in people's perception of MS on average, which runs from hatred from those that do not use their products anyway, to indifference from the masses who just want to 'buy one of them there computers to get on the internet'.
One of the advantages of having a monopoly is you don't have to be nice to your customers....theoretically. If you not only have a monopoly, but can legally suppress any competition, then theory becomes fact.
that's almost the exact same text as the cringly article.
Then they took it from Jack Nicholson. I gave proper credit to the source of the quote, thank you. Did the article?
1) Buy out SCO. Hostile style. Buy up enough of the stock to have them vote to merge under IBM.
2) Fire the entire board of directors. A severance package of one pack of oreos and cab fare
3) ??????
4) Profit....or at least not losing money on this crap, which is the next best thing.
One of the articles (yea, some of us read them) actually pointed out a rather obvious 3) point, that is the goodwill generated if IBM were to GPL SCO's IP (god, more acronyms than the military).
As a long time IBM fan, I could see this benefitting IBM in a way that generates profit. Since they really sell hardware and services, this could help to increase sales, partially because of the goodwill, and because they would be able to impliment any useful code gained somewhat faster. IBM has already gained alot of traction by investing 1 billion into Linux, which they claim they recovered in the first year. Adding a few hundred million to GPL UnixWare may be even more profitable, at a lower cost.
I believe it was Jack Nicholson who said "Only in America, if you suck a tit, its rated R, if you shoot it off with a shotgun, it's rated PG".
I was going to verify your 11M shares (you are right) which sounded low, and found this tidbit:
According to Yahoo Stocks: The SCO Group, Inc. develops and markets software based onthe Linux operating system and provides related services that enable the development, deployment and management of Internet access devices and specialized servers.
Does SCO know thats what they do?
Actually, I have scrolled through about 100 comments, and yet to find a single one that is relevent to the article. Wouldn't that mean that the original article now qualifies as the longest troll ever on /. ? Too bad you can't moderate the articles.