can anyone tell me what the benefits of SCO are in todays world ? What does SCO provide that Linux already doesn't.. or is not in the works ?
I understand the following will not cater well to a developer community, as I am a developer myself. However, the following are to extremely important points in the business world, and I was surpirsed to find out exactly where SCO/Caldera is already at...
Take a look at their Partners and lots of success stories with customers across the board, including Small to Medium Business, Retail, and Enterprise customers, not to mention a strong reseller force.
Once you're in with these kinds of customers, you're usually in for the long haul.
If I'm not mistaken, this is Lycoris' first break into a deal with a name that people recognize. Once they have one deal, they can use that deal and the name involved to be more persuasive in their effort to land other deals.
Not only that, the overall tone and general grammer of the original LEC email makes me think it came from some other source. I find it hard to believe it actually came from an official representative of LEC, much less someone from their Business and Legal Affairs department. Is this a fake?
the wrong people. As much as I like free beer and booth babes, you don't need to spend millions of dollars selling a free product to a bunch of geeks who already have it, and don't intend to buy support.
Where does it say that UnitedLinux is going to be sold to the "bunch of geeks" out there? UnitedLinux is not targeted at geeks! Isn't this a glaringly obvious point yet?
he feels that we, the developers out here writing the actual code, owe him something because of all this "promotion" that Caldera has done.
Where does it say that developers owe UnitedLinux anything? If anything, UnitedLinux is looking to entice those who haven't looked at Linux in the past. That in and of itself would make me happier as a developer! What is one of the main pushes for me to write software? Acceptance of said software. (Sure, that's not the only reason, but it's a big one in most cases.) Anyone who is willing to push my software into greater acceptance should go for it! I welcome it! "But shouldn't you get a piece of the money pie?" you might ask? If that was the case, I wouln't use BSD/GPL/<insert your favorite open source licence here>.
Linux will be sold the same way all other platforms are sold: by the applications.
And UnitedLinux looks to bring the corporate application developers on board who wouldn't even consider Linux before. Sounds like you're actually in agreement on this one!
Instead, they take everything we offer and then try to sell it back to us.
You missed the point entirely.
UnitedLinux is not trying to sell anything back to "you." It's taking what "you" have developed and spending the time and money to make it tasty to the people with the big bucks. Yes, that's right; it takes time, money, and expertise to sell something to the corporate world. That is what UnitedLinux is trying to do.
And at the same time it is promising that what is developed will go back to "you" by way of source code. As a developer, that's what I want to see. From a pure developer point of view, I want to see code , not get some free binaries. However, remember that this is a side effect. It's really all about making Linux valid in the corporate world.
Let's say I make bricks. I know everything there is to know about how to make good, solid, strong bricks. Do I tell the architect what the building should look like? No! I make bricks. The architect plans how the bricks should be used. The construction crew actually implements the plan.
Brick builder = Linux community
Architect = UnitedLinux
Construction Crew = Companies who build offerings on top of UnitedLinux
As I said, it takes time, money, and expertise to take Linux to the "next level." UnitedLinux is really about enabling Linux providers to take Linux to the next level above what we're so used to as a "distribution." It's a new way of thinking; it's a new way of implementing.
Your analogy doesn't quite fit here. Green Day was catering to their "street kids and whatnot" community and depended on them for money and popularity. They allegedly turned their backs on them by deciding to "bank on their talent" which alienated the very people who were giving them respect and money.
On the other hand, United Linux is taking something built by a community and building more on top of it to cater to the enterprise business. They are not trying to cater to the Linux community specifically. Since the enterprise is being sought here (along with popularity and money from said enterprise), I doubt the enterprise would deliberately turn their collective back on United Linux.
These are two different situations.
That is not to say the community still won't benefit. The work done by United Linux on the GPLed and other Open Sourced code goes back to the community. The using of money to push Linux into the Enterprise only boosts the popularity of Linux to yet another market segment. I'm sure there are other benefits, but these two are fairly significant.
== This is my personal opinion. You can share it if you like. ==
Just as a bit of a defence for those with "cutesy" songy ringtones
[...]
Agreed.
The telephone really is a fascinating part of our society: So many people are brought up believing that the telephone is instant attention from the receiving end. I personally almost never answer the telephone (that's what voicemail is for. Note that people who hate voicemail are usually the "BUT I'M TOO IMPORTANT FOR VOICEMAIL! WHERE ARE YOU! I NEED YOU UNDIVIDED ATTENTION NOW BECAUSE I'M SPECIAL AND SUPERCEDE ALL OTHER TASKS!").
But that was the point of the telephone in the first place.
So when you listen to your voicemail and the person who left it asks for a response, do you expect them to pick up the phone when you call? If everyone adopted your approach, then nobody would be talking to each other, but to each other's voicemail. One of the HUGE benefits of a telephone (and even more so for a mobile phone) is that you can get things discussed and worked out much more quickly than, say, email, or even postal mail, or anything else comparable.
Stage 1: Let's start with the pony express. Slow by today's standards.
Stage 2: Postal mail becomes standardized. Much faster than stage 1, but not too useful if you need to get things done quickly.
Stage 3: Telephone gives us the opportunity to talk "in real time" with people very far away. No more waiting and forgetting what you wanted to say.
Stage 4: Mobile phones give us the same opportunity as stage 3 except that it is with you all the time (if you so choose; why else do you get a "mobile" phone?). Very quick turn-around compared to any of the other stages.
(Of course, this has been a part of making our society as a whole much faster paced, which could be considered a health risk in and of itself; that's another discussion.)
So I would question why you have a mobile phone at all? Possibly so you can check your voice mail whenever you want? That's more of a side-effect than it is the original intent of a mobile phone. But, hey, that doesn't mean you shouldn't use it for that. It does mean that people who complain about how other people use their phones, especially when it consists of the originally planned use, shouldn't be complaining at all.
Unless, of course, it is specifically harming others because of that original planned use. Then, it should be the original idea that should be under scrutiny, not the people who are using it.
For those who's arguments against this are "no tactile feedback" or "I can't type as fast with it" or the like, please consider that this thing probably isn't meant to replace your current keyboard for your computer.
This thing is targeted at use with mobile devices. It eliminates the need to carry a keyboard around with your Palm or your mobile phone. It will become integrated into your mobile computing device or phone or whatever (i.e., no extra device to carry around for keyboard input). It is meant as a convinience for mobile devices specifically.
It is not supposed to enhance your typing experience; it is meant to enhance the portability of other devices (even if that means you give up some speed or responsiveness).
How long does the Speedpass Car Tag battery last?
Three to five years. When you need a replacement battery, you can purchase one at any pharmacy or contact our Customer Service Center at 1-87-SPEEDPASS (1-877-733-3727).
It sounds to me like eBay should implement a Web of Trust idea like GnuPG or Thawte. Everybody is associated with identities and those identities are trusted more or less depending on other people's evaluations of them. You'd also know who validated who so that there is more responsibility when it comes to saying, "This person is safe to deal with." The more effort it takes to build up your identity which is tied to some sort of official identification (gov't. issued ID, for example) the more likely you'll play right with that identity.
The feedback system is like a lame version of the web of trust idea.
I'd want eBay to keep track of trust levels depending on actual identification of some sort which people they already trust have validated in person (just like, for example, what Thawte does). And if someone ends up being a bad validator along the way, they get some of their validator power taken away.
This seems like it would at least be a step in the right direction. Maybe there are already auction/selling sites out there that do this. Anyone know of them? Unfortunately, eBay is the big-name company which gets more exposure, so it's hard (as a seller) to go to another site.
This is available. It's called escrow services. eBay offers it (as I'm sure other companies do) and the information is on their eBay escrow page. Of course, as it is an additional service, it costs $$$.
If this thing can record from a digital feed (such as from a DISH unit) to D-VHS, doesn't this thing need to support MPEG-2 encoding (which is what I believe D-VHS uses)? That would require more hardware than your average VHS or even DVD player. Maybe that helps explain the price. ($2K? Naw...)
Can you encrypt your own recordings, too? That would be nifty...
Yup. Help->About Microsoft Outlook Express yields version 6.00.2600.0000. This is the client I used (on Win98) to receive the email.
Make sure you send the email in plain text (use mutt or something). In fact, go to a Linux/Unix box, log in, and type:
echo "begin badattachment" | mail -s "test email" your@email.address
(replacing "your@email.address" with your email address, of course). Don't forget those two spaces! That should give you an email with an attachment called "badattachment." If you tell OE to open it you'll open a file "badattachment.dat" with nothing in it (since there was nothing after the "begin..." line).
As many have already mentioned, this most likely only hurts the "Free Software" cause. Many have mentioned that it simply turns current Windows users away from ever wanting to even be part of the various "Free Software" or "Open Source" or "Anti-Microsoft" or whatever "community" you want to mention. Sure, there are distinctions between the different movements, but for the vast majority of Windows users, "Free Software" means "Open Source" and so on. Some people believe MS products to be superior. Is this kind of tactic going to convince them otherwise? (Answer: no.) Besides, many are MS users because their boss tells them to be.
However, the most unfortunate side effect here is on people in my situation. I tend to use both proprietary and free software. I believe free software has many good principles driving it. But when I see people acting this way "in the name of free software" it only turns me off to the "free software name." And I'm even an advocate of free software. I work with non-proprietary OSes about 80% of my computing time.
We must remember, though, that this is only one (or a few) voice(s) of the entire community. It's to be expected that there will be the few extremists who wish to prove a point at almost any cost in any way (however silly that way may be). And that goes for either camp (proprietary vs. "free"). It's best to take what they have to say with a grain (or two) of salt and move on with what you believe in personally.
What do people think about government run broadband solutions? In my case, the city government is putting a fiber/cable network throughout the whole city and will offer tv and internet through it.
I have some reservations about this, but at least it should be more stable (i.e., much less chance of bankruptcy) than a lot of these poor companies going out of business.
I guess we need to accept that there's no such thing as privacy on the net.
I agree completely! I've always accepted this. Nobody ever promised privacy on the net (unless you're talking about encryption, but even then, is it perfect? And who's willing to promise?). Asking for privacy on the net is like asking for privacy on an interstate highway.
By schooling, fish reduce their chance of being singled out by predators. In a group of a million fish, the chance of any particular one of them getting eaten by a shark is small.
Birds do it. They stay up in the air. I don't see why we shouldn't be able to do it, too.
The only problem I see is that this really won't be efficient compared to other methods of flight. It is efficient for birds because (1) they have a lighter skeletal structure (humans don't) and (2) birds don't know how to use jet fuel properly.
Joking aside, since humans weigh so much, this will take a lot of force for a little lift compared to conventional flight methods (props, jet propulsion, etc.)
I have a hard time believing the gov't is interested in going around to EVERY person who has an MP3 archive or "neato shell scripts." In fact, I don't think the gov't is too interested in any of what "regular" computer users have.
On the flip side, I would hope that the definition of hacking tools would be much more clearly defined or this power could be abused in a most horrible fashion. (I think we've established that.)
The gov't wants control, but there's hope that they still want to protect and serve...
Slashdot Mirror
I understand the following will not cater well to a developer community, as I am a developer myself. However, the following are to extremely important points in the business world, and I was surpirsed to find out exactly where SCO/Caldera is already at...
Take a look at their Partners and lots of success stories with customers across the board, including Small to Medium Business, Retail, and Enterprise customers, not to mention a strong reseller force.
Once you're in with these kinds of customers, you're usually in for the long haul.
If I'm not mistaken, this is Lycoris' first break into a deal with a name that people recognize. Once they have one deal, they can use that deal and the name involved to be more persuasive in their effort to land other deals.
Not only that, the overall tone and general grammer of the original LEC email makes me think it came from some other source. I find it hard to believe it actually came from an official representative of LEC, much less someone from their Business and Legal Affairs department. Is this a fake?
Where does it say that UnitedLinux is going to be sold to the "bunch of geeks" out there? UnitedLinux is not targeted at geeks! Isn't this a glaringly obvious point yet?
he feels that we, the developers out here writing the actual code, owe him something because of all this "promotion" that Caldera has done.
Where does it say that developers owe UnitedLinux anything? If anything, UnitedLinux is looking to entice those who haven't looked at Linux in the past. That in and of itself would make me happier as a developer! What is one of the main pushes for me to write software? Acceptance of said software. (Sure, that's not the only reason, but it's a big one in most cases.) Anyone who is willing to push my software into greater acceptance should go for it! I welcome it! "But shouldn't you get a piece of the money pie?" you might ask? If that was the case, I wouln't use BSD/GPL/<insert your favorite open source licence here>.
Linux will be sold the same way all other platforms are sold: by the applications.
And UnitedLinux looks to bring the corporate application developers on board who wouldn't even consider Linux before. Sounds like you're actually in agreement on this one!
You missed the point entirely.
UnitedLinux is not trying to sell anything back to "you." It's taking what "you" have developed and spending the time and money to make it tasty to the people with the big bucks. Yes, that's right; it takes time, money, and expertise to sell something to the corporate world. That is what UnitedLinux is trying to do.
And at the same time it is promising that what is developed will go back to "you" by way of source code. As a developer, that's what I want to see. From a pure developer point of view, I want to see code , not get some free binaries. However, remember that this is a side effect. It's really all about making Linux valid in the corporate world.
Let's say I make bricks. I know everything there is to know about how to make good, solid, strong bricks. Do I tell the architect what the building should look like? No! I make bricks. The architect plans how the bricks should be used. The construction crew actually implements the plan.
Brick builder = Linux community
Architect = UnitedLinux
Construction Crew = Companies who build offerings on top of UnitedLinux
As I said, it takes time, money, and expertise to take Linux to the "next level." UnitedLinux is really about enabling Linux providers to take Linux to the next level above what we're so used to as a "distribution." It's a new way of thinking; it's a new way of implementing.
That's enough for now.
Your analogy doesn't quite fit here. Green Day was catering to their "street kids and whatnot" community and depended on them for money and popularity. They allegedly turned their backs on them by deciding to "bank on their talent" which alienated the very people who were giving them respect and money.
On the other hand, United Linux is taking something built by a community and building more on top of it to cater to the enterprise business. They are not trying to cater to the Linux community specifically. Since the enterprise is being sought here (along with popularity and money from said enterprise), I doubt the enterprise would deliberately turn their collective back on United Linux.
These are two different situations.
That is not to say the community still won't benefit. The work done by United Linux on the GPLed and other Open Sourced code goes back to the community. The using of money to push Linux into the Enterprise only boosts the popularity of Linux to yet another market segment. I'm sure there are other benefits, but these two are fairly significant.
== This is my personal opinion. You can share it if you like. ==
[...]
Agreed.
The telephone really is a fascinating part of our society: So many people are brought up believing that the telephone is instant attention from the receiving end. I personally almost never answer the telephone (that's what voicemail is for. Note that people who hate voicemail are usually the "BUT I'M TOO IMPORTANT FOR VOICEMAIL! WHERE ARE YOU! I NEED YOU UNDIVIDED ATTENTION NOW BECAUSE I'M SPECIAL AND SUPERCEDE ALL OTHER TASKS!").
But that was the point of the telephone in the first place.
So when you listen to your voicemail and the person who left it asks for a response, do you expect them to pick up the phone when you call? If everyone adopted your approach, then nobody would be talking to each other, but to each other's voicemail. One of the HUGE benefits of a telephone (and even more so for a mobile phone) is that you can get things discussed and worked out much more quickly than, say, email, or even postal mail, or anything else comparable.Stage 1: Let's start with the pony express. Slow by today's standards.
Stage 2: Postal mail becomes standardized. Much faster than stage 1, but not too useful if you need to get things done quickly.
Stage 3: Telephone gives us the opportunity to talk "in real time" with people very far away. No more waiting and forgetting what you wanted to say.
Stage 4: Mobile phones give us the same opportunity as stage 3 except that it is with you all the time (if you so choose; why else do you get a "mobile" phone?). Very quick turn-around compared to any of the other stages.
(Of course, this has been a part of making our society as a whole much faster paced, which could be considered a health risk in and of itself; that's another discussion.)
So I would question why you have a mobile phone at all? Possibly so you can check your voice mail whenever you want? That's more of a side-effect than it is the original intent of a mobile phone. But, hey, that doesn't mean you shouldn't use it for that. It does mean that people who complain about how other people use their phones, especially when it consists of the originally planned use, shouldn't be complaining at all.
Unless, of course, it is specifically harming others because of that original planned use. Then, it should be the original idea that should be under scrutiny, not the people who are using it.
For those who's arguments against this are "no tactile feedback" or "I can't type as fast with it" or the like, please consider that this thing probably isn't meant to replace your current keyboard for your computer.
This thing is targeted at use with mobile devices. It eliminates the need to carry a keyboard around with your Palm or your mobile phone. It will become integrated into your mobile computing device or phone or whatever (i.e., no extra device to carry around for keyboard input). It is meant as a convinience for mobile devices specifically.
It is not supposed to enhance your typing experience; it is meant to enhance the portability of other devices (even if that means you give up some speed or responsiveness).
From http://www.speedpass.com/faqs/category.jsp?categor yId=1
It sounds to me like eBay should implement a Web of Trust idea like GnuPG or Thawte. Everybody is associated with identities and those identities are trusted more or less depending on other people's evaluations of them. You'd also know who validated who so that there is more responsibility when it comes to saying, "This person is safe to deal with." The more effort it takes to build up your identity which is tied to some sort of official identification (gov't. issued ID, for example) the more likely you'll play right with that identity.
The feedback system is like a lame version of the web of trust idea.
I'd want eBay to keep track of trust levels depending on actual identification of some sort which people they already trust have validated in person (just like, for example, what Thawte does). And if someone ends up being a bad validator along the way, they get some of their validator power taken away.
This seems like it would at least be a step in the right direction. Maybe there are already auction/selling sites out there that do this. Anyone know of them? Unfortunately, eBay is the big-name company which gets more exposure, so it's hard (as a seller) to go to another site.
This is available. It's called escrow services. eBay offers it (as I'm sure other companies do) and the information is on their eBay escrow page. Of course, as it is an additional service, it costs $$$.
A press-release-looking document on the D-VHS specs is at http://www.jvc-victor.co.jp/english/products/vcr/D -VHS-e.html
e .html
It looks like the first idea behind these units were to record digital satellite links in DSRs (Digital Satellite Recorders). Here's another press release from 1997:
http://www.jvc-victor.co.jp/english/D-VHS/d970601
If this thing can record from a digital feed (such as from a DISH unit) to D-VHS, doesn't this thing need to support MPEG-2 encoding (which is what I believe D-VHS uses)? That would require more hardware than your average VHS or even DVD player. Maybe that helps explain the price. ($2K? Naw...)
Can you encrypt your own recordings, too? That would be nifty...
Make sure you send the email in plain text (use mutt or something). In fact, go to a Linux/Unix box, log in, and type:
echo "begin badattachment" | mail -s "test email" your@email.address
(replacing "your@email.address" with your email address, of course). Don't forget those two spaces! That should give you an email with an attachment called "badattachment." If you tell OE to open it you'll open a file "badattachment.dat" with nothing in it (since there was nothing after the "begin..." line).
Try the word "begin" with two spaces after it followed by the attachment name. This should be at the beginning of its own line, as in:
begin blahblahblahThis will result in an attachment named "blahblahblah."
I just tried it with OE6 and it is buggy.
As many have already mentioned, this most likely only hurts the "Free Software" cause. Many have mentioned that it simply turns current Windows users away from ever wanting to even be part of the various "Free Software" or "Open Source" or "Anti-Microsoft" or whatever "community" you want to mention. Sure, there are distinctions between the different movements, but for the vast majority of Windows users, "Free Software" means "Open Source" and so on. Some people believe MS products to be superior. Is this kind of tactic going to convince them otherwise? (Answer: no.) Besides, many are MS users because their boss tells them to be.
However, the most unfortunate side effect here is on people in my situation. I tend to use both proprietary and free software. I believe free software has many good principles driving it. But when I see people acting this way "in the name of free software" it only turns me off to the "free software name." And I'm even an advocate of free software. I work with non-proprietary OSes about 80% of my computing time.
We must remember, though, that this is only one (or a few) voice(s) of the entire community. It's to be expected that there will be the few extremists who wish to prove a point at almost any cost in any way (however silly that way may be). And that goes for either camp (proprietary vs. "free"). It's best to take what they have to say with a grain (or two) of salt and move on with what you believe in personally.
In memory of my good buddy, Mel Cahoon from Utah, who was sleek, quick, smart, and very dolphin-esque.
What do people think about government run broadband solutions? In my case, the city government is putting a fiber/cable network throughout the whole city and will offer tv and internet through it.
I have some reservations about this, but at least it should be more stable (i.e., much less chance of bankruptcy) than a lot of these poor companies going out of business.
I agree completely! I've always accepted this. Nobody ever promised privacy on the net (unless you're talking about encryption, but even then, is it perfect? And who's willing to promise?). Asking for privacy on the net is like asking for privacy on an interstate highway.
By schooling, fish reduce their chance of being singled out by predators. In a group of a million fish, the chance of any particular one of them getting eaten by a shark is small.
Unless the shark has a really big mouth.
Birds do it. They stay up in the air. I don't see why we shouldn't be able to do it, too.
The only problem I see is that this really won't be efficient compared to other methods of flight. It is efficient for birds because (1) they have a lighter skeletal structure (humans don't) and (2) birds don't know how to use jet fuel properly.
Joking aside, since humans weigh so much, this will take a lot of force for a little lift compared to conventional flight methods (props, jet propulsion, etc.)
So, I'm guessing this thing won't work with the Dreamcast web browser, either. Gee, and I was hoping for my own easy WebTV (tm) solution.
Now I can burn a CD with a minimal system, and MP3 player, and a whole group of MP3's. I plop the CD in and off I go!
On the flip side, I would hope that the definition of hacking tools would be much more clearly defined or this power could be abused in a most horrible fashion. (I think we've established that.) The gov't wants control, but there's hope that they still want to protect and serve...