So you're OK with the legal, business, and societal implications of technology, but not the political? What makes the political aspects of technology so much more polemical or problematic? I mean, doesn't politics relate & pertain to law, business, and society (and vice versa)?
I'm not against Libertarians. I have a lot of friends who claim they're Libertarians. But the truth is, they just don't want to deal with anything political, and their rote reaction is to lambast government and scoff at liberalism. But they're just tacitly supporting the right-wing, while avoiding any kind of responsibility, anxiety, or guilt by claiming they stand outside the Democrat-Republican polarity.
Libertarian!=Republican Libertarians (ie. Cato Institute) should oppose the current tax cut (not fair), energy plan (corporate welfair), & judicial nominations (restrict civil liberties).
I just read (seven months too late!) a pre-election article in that sh!tfest FastCompany interviewing Al Gore and G. W. Bush, and it actually gave some insight into them. Al Gore sounded like an OSS freak, giving an analogy between the Constitution and an OS. G. W. Bush came across as being saavy about the tech industry, and his answers sounded like statements he'd used to sweet-talk companies into moving to Texas (as many have, God forbid).
Actually, a simple one page letter is about all they're going to read, and most Representatives & Senators prefer faxes. So once you write a simple one-page letter, you can fax it & mail it (for redundancy), and you're set. Of course, it'd be great if they liked e-mail, but I can understand since it hinders the ½ of the US population that doesn't have convenient Internet access.
You're going to reap just what you sow.
Lou Reed, "Perfect Day" from Transformer
Oh that's so damn funny. VB Developers Journal, oh that's too much! It's got me all verklempt. "Important concepts," oh, it hurts. But I'll give you my topic: Visual Basic is neither visual nor BASIC. Discuss amongst yourselves.
Total irony in a post mentioning Jon Katz being marked off-topic. Jon Katz gives non-technical discussion a bad name. Does/. keep Katz around to show how social discussions of technical issues are irrelevant & stupid?
Problem-solving vs. Reflection: I don't reflect enough on code I've written. And I only read other people's code only enough to figure out what it's doing. If it works, I'm moving on. This is the same mentality a lot of these posters have--"The election's over. Move along, nothing to see here." But I should examine code I've written AND the election--in order to find mistakes, learn, & improve on them.
Jon Katz is supposed to be the reflective voice on/., but the only thing he seems to reflect on is his own ass. Look at his review of The Dish. He goes out of his way to make it seem LESS geeky--"It's really a romantic comedy." There's one sentence in his review about the techy aspect of the plot.
Before somebody marks me as off-topic, I'm saying either Katz should focus on/.-type issues directly, or leave. He does nothing but marginalize social commentary here.
P.S. Lord Vipor Scorpion wears a mask, so you can't see what he looks like.
It would be really great if all these posts were the same person (a la Fight Club), and the two personalities were just going at it.
But shouldn't we wonder why _this thread_ took off inside _this story_? This is one of the most intense imbroglios on Slashdot since the election.
I skipped this story when it was posted because it looked like a not-so-interesting nod to the military-industrial complex. But I think that's why these very reactionary posters have come out so strongly. Nobody seems to mention the incident in Peru today where a US reconnaissance plane gave a Peruvian fighter plane the go ahead to shoot down a suspected drug plane, which was in reality a Baptist missionary plane. I think this is an indication that recon planes are a bit too ubiquitous.
I think the Slashdot crowd identifies with the people in these planes, and many posters probably live a spartan existence centered around their work--as I imagine these military people do. But I know many Slashdotters who are cosmopolitan (a view International, as that SNL guy says), and who would rather focus their time & energy on almost anything but the US defense industry & our role as schoolyard bully in the global playground. I know many well-adjusted people who work for the defense industry, too.
Thankfully there is a range of views on Slashdot (and in the US), but there is an increasing dichotomy/polarity. I can't see how we can escape this stupid two party system, especially when the people here who say they voted for alternative candidates immediately jump into the talking points of one party or the other. It seems like they use their "alternative" vote to mask their very commonplace ideological views as unique or esoteric.
Why the &%$* is this off-topic? The beauty of Linux (Before the Business/Corporate interests of the the New Economy turned Torvalds in the Enterprise direction) was that it ran on cheap machines. Remember why Linus created it in the first place?
If you took two people completely unfamiliar with computers, sat one in front of Windows & the other in front of Linux (running KDE or Gnome), they would reach the same skill level simultaneously. Anyone who doubts this must not remember DOS or hasn't had a bad install of Windows/Office, crappy drivers, needed to change some esoteric Windows configuration, etc.
I can still run Debian on my LC II--no floppy, though.:-(
In this day of the $1K supercomputer, the average home user probably pays a 10% M$ tax. And then they're stuck with the OS on their machine!
Nanojath, the AC's an obvious troll--and seemingly a Freeper, too. The derogative "comrade" is a dead giveaway. The worst thing about Freepers is how they flame people/institutions as Communist & Fascist & Socialist & et al., not seeing the differences between these ideologies. Of course, that's how Freepers maintain so many conflicting right-wing perspectives, it all comes down to Us vs. Them, Right(-wing) vs. Wrong, etc. The guy they banished was just following the Freeper mantra, but with the opposite viewpoint!
I think your reaction evinces a certain insecurity/defensiveness among Green Party supporters, though.
Also, (for all intents & purposes) the Supreme Court elected Bush, 5-4.
My privacy means more to me the more it's infringed upon, so at least scaring us like this isn't all that bad. For M$, technology is both the means & the justification for Hailstorm. But there is a much bigger issue involved here. I've never even seen my full medical record. I last saw my credit report a year or two ago. So why would I ever let someone else take control of these? Why NOT do it myself? It's more than the path of least resistance, it's giving up personal responsibility.
Hey, that Rachael Tyrell quote is pretty ironic for this story. After all, noboby even knew if they "owned" their own thoughts in Blade Runner
So, 1984 will become a reality--it's just a few decades behind schedule. Is that what you're saying? The most insidious part of this is that M$ wants to monitor individual user's activities (a la 1984).
I posted earlier about the possibility of a vast majority who believe that Western Capitalism entitles them to have their privacy respected. This is the response of such an individual. Ironic or not, Teflon Coating is saying, "This is as good as it gets."
BTW, that movie blew chunks, especially that gross old bastard Nicholson getting the girl (and the guy!). So many people I knew thought, "Oh, wow, this is as good as it gets." Hollywood tripe.
Many corporations (i.e. those who might see M$ as competition) are never going to go for this. M$ will hope to infiltrate these companies through their own employees use of Hailstorm,.Net, etc., but there will be resistance there (as we see with UCITA). Not that they're going to be our great saviors, but then there will be anybody who cares for their civil liberty. The problem lies with people who delusionally believe they are entitled to their privacy (or at least respect for their privacy). The question is: Is this the vast majority out there?
Ummmm, do you have cable? $9.95 won't even get you HBO--fucking AOL Time Warner!
As far as what's available, your DSL connection couldn't handle much more. Without asynchronous transfer or flow control or whatever IPv6 will offer, the Net itself can't handle any better quality streaming.
As far as the rights to the content are concerned, you already have the right to #1,2,&4 Any good researcher is going to publish their findings for anyone to use (especially social studies stuff that Salon specializes in), so #3 is fairly moot. You want exclusive, home-grown research for $2.50/month? Okay, sure.
Also, if you ever read Salon you'd know they have a mixed group of writers. That David Horowitz guy is making quite a stink over there. AHhhh, but you can't even read the Slashdot stories before posting ($30/month!?).
This is nearly word for word what I have found. Except I cannot fathom why FileMaker has remained as hokey as it has. AFAIK the "Server" version is just an unfettered version of the program with some admin goodies & tweaks.
I run Postgres on the Mac, but customers always shun it. A lot of companies I've worked for or with need a good DB, but also something they can learn on. Access & Filemaker fit this, but they're crap. MySQL & Postgres are great to use once you know exactly how to implement what you want. But WTF, half of all Slashdotters seem to be Oracle DBAs! Must be nice, but it only reinforces the view of DBAs as cult members.
The poster mentioned Access/MSSQL. Access is the easiest front-end for MSSQL, just as phpMyAdmin or others would be for MySQL. I try to work with MSSQL on the command line, but I can't figure out if it has any comparable functionality to BASH. So it's a huge pain, but it actually is easier & better than Enterprise Manager (for import/export, Transact-SQL). I saw that there's an O'Reilly book on the NT Shell, so there must be some functionality in there.
Then, if I smoked all that crack at once, I wouldn't mind using Access & SQL Server. Of course, then I'm out FOUR GRAND. The trick is to sneak the "CRACK clause" into the fine print of the project's proposal, then when the customer calls & I'm out of my mind & I've got every field in every table linked to each other & I've written their App in VBA, I just say, "Yeah, it's in the contract. I think you want to talk to Trevor Goodchild."
Have you noticed that the SQL Server query builder is entirely different & better? It has the tables on top, then the field/operator/criteria in a nice table-like layout, and then the SQL is at the bottom. The Access Query builder is a mess. If you select more than four or five fields, you have to constantly scroll right & left. The field columns are fixed-width & cut off long field/table/view names. I also hate that you have to switch between the SQL view & the GUI view. The SQL view lacks basic GUI functionality like Search & replace (or even Ctrl-A). The only reasoning is to hide the SQL & hinder you from even learning anything about SQL.
Check FreshMeat. I use a nice CommonLisp interface for PostGreSQL. There are many others out there, but few offer the real benefits of plain-old SQL. The hardest part is the intracies of Joins, but that is like saying COBOL or VB is hard when there are really hard things like C & Lisp out there.
Access has two modes: Plain old Access & Access as a front-end for SQL Server. Plain old Access connects to SQL Server just using ODBC. It's no better than connecting Access to PostGreSQL. Plain old access has queries, not views (although you can convert queries to views, you cannot connect plain old Access to views or stored procedures on the server). Using Access as a front-end (What M$ calls a "Project") allows you to see the views & stored procedures on the server, and it connects to all of the tables on the server automatically through M$'s "ADO" (which is COM?). The problem seems to be that this ADO connection is not all that good. For tables or views using more than 30,000 records (not displaying, just processing), Access just can't wait for the information to come down from the server. So it fails or (with tables) just grinds away. I'm talking about numeric data, too. Now, the Poster of this story probably wouldn't run into this, but the Slashdot crowd always has to talk about the toughest possible scenario, so I'm sticking by this shit.
Several times, I have set up SQL Server with 10,000 or so records of sample data, and then when it got in 30,000+...BOOM, the customer can't use Access. SQL Server works great with straight out ASP/VB, but that wouldn't help this guy at all. And he won't learn anything except Microsoft BS.
After reading this story, I realized how much M$ sucks & I'm determined to stay away from it.
This story really shows what Slashdot is about these days. 50% of the responses are about how easy it is to set-up ODBC connections to Access, and then they say they only use this as a lark. The other 50% are M$ trolls who saw Access mentioned & are trying to convince the guy to forego any OSS altogether.
This guy is moving from FileMaker! Comma-delimited text files & Perl would work better. Day to day, MySQL & Access will be a big improvement.
Yeah, you can connect Access to MySQL/PostGreSQL. This will work, and down the road you can show that a PHP, PERL, or Java interface offers way more than Access can ever offer. Then you can learn some cool-ass shit, too. XML, PHP, etc. This is the way to go. Keep a copy of the tables in an Access DB on the side, just to cover your ass.
Mod this "That's a rather idiotic idea" fucker down. Who the fuck is moderating this guy up? "That's a rather idiotic idea" is the line I hear every time I suggest an idea using OSS to companies, and here SlashDot is kissing this guy's ass? Access does not work well with SQL Server I know what you're thinking: "That's a rather idiotic statement." But it's true. Access fucks up the tables with arbitrary row limits. Views & Stored Procedures don't and won't work past about 100,000 records. You end up having to write everything out in PERL or PHP or VB just to get it to work.
Now, MS Access & SQL Server will easily replace this guy's FileMaker setup, but at the cost of at least TWO GRAND, and not offer anything more than MySQL. FileMaker is so far worse than MySQL--Where is Trevor Goodchild's fucking idiotic perspective coming from?
I know of a lot of mission critical operations out there using MySQL. I prefer PostGreSQL or even some commercial rdbms's (DB2, Oh..WTF, ORacle), but I will at the very least stand up for MySQL.
Access is adequate if rather pathetic on it's own. But it doesn't work well as a front-end, EVEN FOR M$ SQL Server. It can't handle tables! On any big view or stored procedure, the connection times out. So you have to pass-through the SQL statements to SQLServer and retrieve the results JUST LIKE YOU'D HAVE TO DO WITH HTML. I'm not sure if Access has this problem with MySQL, as I use PostGreSQL. I don't know what that fucking AC has up it's ass, but you can be sure it's not pretty.
Half the shit that looks good in Access is useless M$ market-researched nonsense. Most of the advanced functionality Access offers is just advertising for SQL Server. It's crippled so that you end up having to buy SQL Server.
2000 is worse than '97, too. That whole fucking Outlook-style bar on the left side? Groups for tables, views, etc? If you have to organize your your db with shortcuts to even have a coherent front-end, then your DB is royally fucked up. Access forms are actually more difficult to set-up & maintain, and offer no more than much more cleaner, useful HTML forms. The "Query Builder" is also a fucking PITA. That's why SQL Server offers has a different, better version. VB is M$'s attempt to undercut SQL.
And VB! *%^&#*$%^*&%$@# VB! Most of what VB does has a better alternative in SQL92, which is even implemented in Access. So you have parallel ways to do the same thing! You have to decide--VB or SQL?--for each different application.
That's it, I'm all verklempt. Talk amongst yourselves. Here, I'll give you a topic: Visual Basic is neither visual nor BASIC.
Well, I'm guessing you posted AC so you could avoid revealing what a dumbshit you are, but here's an article from the NYTimes about how most pharmaceutical research is done by university researchers (and how these researchers are funded by the government).
MEDICINE MERCHANTS: Birth of a Blockbuster; Drug Makers Reap Profits On Tax-Backed Research
By JEFF GERTH and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
On Jan. 7, 1982, in a laboratory at Columbia University, a little-known science professor, Laszlo Z. Bito, finished a nine-month experiment on the eyes of cats. In his handwritten data, carefully charted in gray hardcover notebooks, lay the origins o...
April 23, 2000, Sunday
National Desk , 6382 words
You'll have to pay to read it online, but you could always go to your local public library & get it for free. Oh, but you probably don't believe in public libraries, either.
Why did Apple take down the http://ppclinux.apple.com page we were all so proud of them for a few months ago?
Cuz they're asking themselves this same damn question, and they've decided to make it harder for Mac owners to continue to use Linux.
I want Linux on all of the machines I use, whether they're PPC or x86 or StrongARM or Crusoe. I want to understand the OS I use in its totality. Also: Never depend on a single company for anything you need.
Haven't we learned anything with Microsoft over the last twenty years? Doesn't Apple's charging for beta software smack of M$ BS?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not against Libertarians. I have a lot of friends who claim they're Libertarians. But the truth is, they just don't want to deal with anything political, and their rote reaction is to lambast government and scoff at liberalism. But they're just tacitly supporting the right-wing, while avoiding any kind of responsibility, anxiety, or guilt by claiming they stand outside the Democrat-Republican polarity.
Libertarian!=Republican
Libertarians (ie. Cato Institute) should oppose the current tax cut (not fair), energy plan (corporate welfair), & judicial nominations (restrict civil liberties).
I'm a Civil Libertarian.
I just read (seven months too late!) a pre-election article in that sh!tfest FastCompany interviewing Al Gore and G. W. Bush, and it actually gave some insight into them. Al Gore sounded like an OSS freak, giving an analogy between the Constitution and an OS. G. W. Bush came across as being saavy about the tech industry, and his answers sounded like statements he'd used to sweet-talk companies into moving to Texas (as many have, God forbid).
You're going to reap just what you sow.
Lou Reed, "Perfect Day" from Transformer
Oh that's so damn funny. VB Developers Journal, oh that's too much! It's got me all verklempt. "Important concepts," oh, it hurts. But I'll give you my topic: Visual Basic is neither visual nor BASIC. Discuss amongst yourselves.
Problem-solving vs. Reflection: I don't reflect enough on code I've written. And I only read other people's code only enough to figure out what it's doing. If it works, I'm moving on. This is the same mentality a lot of these posters have--"The election's over. Move along, nothing to see here." But I should examine code I've written AND the election--in order to find mistakes, learn, & improve on them.
Jon Katz is supposed to be the reflective voice on /., but the only thing he seems to reflect on is his own ass. Look at his review of The Dish. He goes out of his way to make it seem LESS geeky--"It's really a romantic comedy." There's one sentence in his review about the techy aspect of the plot.
Before somebody marks me as off-topic, I'm saying either Katz should focus on /.-type issues directly, or leave. He does nothing but marginalize social commentary here.
P.S. Lord Vipor Scorpion wears a mask, so you can't see what he looks like.
But shouldn't we wonder why _this thread_ took off inside _this story_? This is one of the most intense imbroglios on Slashdot since the election.
I skipped this story when it was posted because it looked like a not-so-interesting nod to the military-industrial complex. But I think that's why these very reactionary posters have come out so strongly. Nobody seems to mention the incident in Peru today where a US reconnaissance plane gave a Peruvian fighter plane the go ahead to shoot down a suspected drug plane, which was in reality a Baptist missionary plane. I think this is an indication that recon planes are a bit too ubiquitous.
I think the Slashdot crowd identifies with the people in these planes, and many posters probably live a spartan existence centered around their work--as I imagine these military people do. But I know many Slashdotters who are cosmopolitan (a view International, as that SNL guy says), and who would rather focus their time & energy on almost anything but the US defense industry & our role as schoolyard bully in the global playground. I know many well-adjusted people who work for the defense industry, too.
Thankfully there is a range of views on Slashdot (and in the US), but there is an increasing dichotomy/polarity. I can't see how we can escape this stupid two party system, especially when the people here who say they voted for alternative candidates immediately jump into the talking points of one party or the other. It seems like they use their "alternative" vote to mask their very commonplace ideological views as unique or esoteric.
If you took two people completely unfamiliar with computers, sat one in front of Windows & the other in front of Linux (running KDE or Gnome), they would reach the same skill level simultaneously. Anyone who doubts this must not remember DOS or hasn't had a bad install of Windows/Office, crappy drivers, needed to change some esoteric Windows configuration, etc.
I can still run Debian on my LC II--no floppy, though. :-(
In this day of the $1K supercomputer, the average home user probably pays a 10% M$ tax. And then they're stuck with the OS on their machine!
I think your reaction evinces a certain insecurity/defensiveness among Green Party supporters, though.
Also, (for all intents & purposes) the Supreme Court elected Bush, 5-4.
Hey, that Rachael Tyrell quote is pretty ironic for this story. After all, noboby even knew if they "owned" their own thoughts in Blade Runner
So, 1984 will become a reality--it's just a few decades behind schedule. Is that what you're saying? The most insidious part of this is that M$ wants to monitor individual user's activities (a la 1984).
BTW, that movie blew chunks, especially that gross old bastard Nicholson getting the girl (and the guy!). So many people I knew thought, "Oh, wow, this is as good as it gets." Hollywood tripe.
Many corporations (i.e. those who might see M$ as competition) are never going to go for this. M$ will hope to infiltrate these companies through their own employees use of Hailstorm, .Net, etc., but there will be resistance there (as we see with UCITA). Not that they're going to be our great saviors, but then there will be anybody who cares for their civil liberty. The problem lies with people who delusionally believe they are entitled to their privacy (or at least respect for their privacy). The question is: Is this the vast majority out there?
Are you talking about transfer & storage, or legal ownership?
As far as what's available, your DSL connection couldn't handle much more. Without asynchronous transfer or flow control or whatever IPv6 will offer, the Net itself can't handle any better quality streaming.
As far as the rights to the content are concerned, you already have the right to #1,2,&4 Any good researcher is going to publish their findings for anyone to use (especially social studies stuff that Salon specializes in), so #3 is fairly moot. You want exclusive, home-grown research for $2.50/month? Okay, sure.
Also, if you ever read Salon you'd know they have a mixed group of writers. That David Horowitz guy is making quite a stink over there. AHhhh, but you can't even read the Slashdot stories before posting ($30/month!?).
I run Postgres on the Mac, but customers always shun it. A lot of companies I've worked for or with need a good DB, but also something they can learn on. Access & Filemaker fit this, but they're crap. MySQL & Postgres are great to use once you know exactly how to implement what you want. But WTF, half of all Slashdotters seem to be Oracle DBAs! Must be nice, but it only reinforces the view of DBAs as cult members.
The poster mentioned Access/MSSQL. Access is the easiest front-end for MSSQL, just as phpMyAdmin or others would be for MySQL. I try to work with MSSQL on the command line, but I can't figure out if it has any comparable functionality to BASH. So it's a huge pain, but it actually is easier & better than Enterprise Manager (for import/export, Transact-SQL). I saw that there's an O'Reilly book on the NT Shell, so there must be some functionality in there.
Then, if I smoked all that crack at once, I wouldn't mind using Access & SQL Server. Of course, then I'm out FOUR GRAND. The trick is to sneak the "CRACK clause" into the fine print of the project's proposal, then when the customer calls & I'm out of my mind & I've got every field in every table linked to each other & I've written their App in VBA, I just say, "Yeah, it's in the contract. I think you want to talk to Trevor Goodchild."
Check FreshMeat. I use a nice CommonLisp interface for PostGreSQL. There are many others out there, but few offer the real benefits of plain-old SQL. The hardest part is the intracies of Joins, but that is like saying COBOL or VB is hard when there are really hard things like C & Lisp out there.
Several times, I have set up SQL Server with 10,000 or so records of sample data, and then when it got in 30,000+...BOOM, the customer can't use Access. SQL Server works great with straight out ASP/VB, but that wouldn't help this guy at all. And he won't learn anything except Microsoft BS.
After reading this story, I realized how much M$ sucks & I'm determined to stay away from it.
This guy is moving from FileMaker! Comma-delimited text files & Perl would work better. Day to day, MySQL & Access will be a big improvement.
Yeah, you can connect Access to MySQL/PostGreSQL. This will work, and down the road you can show that a PHP, PERL, or Java interface offers way more than Access can ever offer. Then you can learn some cool-ass shit, too. XML, PHP, etc. This is the way to go. Keep a copy of the tables in an Access DB on the side, just to cover your ass.
Now, MS Access & SQL Server will easily replace this guy's FileMaker setup, but at the cost of at least TWO GRAND, and not offer anything more than MySQL. FileMaker is so far worse than MySQL--Where is Trevor Goodchild's fucking idiotic perspective coming from?
I know of a lot of mission critical operations out there using MySQL. I prefer PostGreSQL or even some commercial rdbms's (DB2, Oh..WTF, ORacle), but I will at the very least stand up for MySQL.
Access is adequate if rather pathetic on it's own. But it doesn't work well as a front-end, EVEN FOR M$ SQL Server. It can't handle tables! On any big view or stored procedure, the connection times out. So you have to pass-through the SQL statements to SQLServer and retrieve the results JUST LIKE YOU'D HAVE TO DO WITH HTML. I'm not sure if Access has this problem with MySQL, as I use PostGreSQL. I don't know what that fucking AC has up it's ass, but you can be sure it's not pretty.
2000 is worse than '97, too. That whole fucking Outlook-style bar on the left side? Groups for tables, views, etc? If you have to organize your your db with shortcuts to even have a coherent front-end, then your DB is royally fucked up. Access forms are actually more difficult to set-up & maintain, and offer no more than much more cleaner, useful HTML forms. The "Query Builder" is also a fucking PITA. That's why SQL Server offers has a different, better version. VB is M$'s attempt to undercut SQL.
And VB! *%^&#*$%^*&%$@# VB! Most of what VB does has a better alternative in SQL92, which is even implemented in Access. So you have parallel ways to do the same thing! You have to decide--VB or SQL?--for each different application.
That's it, I'm all verklempt. Talk amongst yourselves. Here, I'll give you a topic: Visual Basic is neither visual nor BASIC.
MEDICINE MERCHANTS: Birth of a Blockbuster; Drug Makers Reap Profits On Tax-Backed Research ...
By JEFF GERTH and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
On Jan. 7, 1982, in a laboratory at Columbia University, a little-known science professor, Laszlo Z. Bito, finished a nine-month experiment on the eyes of cats. In his handwritten data, carefully charted in gray hardcover notebooks, lay the origins o
April 23, 2000, Sunday
National Desk , 6382 words
You'll have to pay to read it online, but you could always go to your local public library & get it for free. Oh, but you probably don't believe in public libraries, either.
Why did Apple take down the http://ppclinux.apple.com page we were all so proud of them for a few months ago?
Cuz they're asking themselves this same damn question, and they've decided to make it harder for Mac owners to continue to use Linux.
I want Linux on all of the machines I use, whether they're PPC or x86 or StrongARM or Crusoe. I want to understand the OS I use in its totality. Also: Never depend on a single company for anything you need.
Haven't we learned anything with Microsoft over the last twenty years? Doesn't Apple's charging for beta software smack of M$ BS?