I heard that something ridiculous like 50% or more of HP's profits come from printer cartridges. That means the rest of the company is more or less unprofitable. HP should sell everything BUT the printer cartridge division and invest in more printer cartridge plants. Jeez! No wonder Fiorina's in trouble these days.
Well, I can see by your -1 score that you have poor taste *AND* absolutely no point whatsoever to make, not to mention the fact that you're completely WRONG.
The United States constitution grants copyrights to those who innovate and/or bring some positive benefit to society. This copyright does not belong to the individual or company in question, but to society itself. In return, the government grants said company/individual a temporary exclusive right to sell these materials, but must grant the purchasers of these copyrighted materials certain fair usage rights. The copyrights were supposed to expire within 20 years of the author's death. Thanks to Disney's shameless lobbying, that copyright is being continuously extended.
So you're wrong about fair use. Copyrighted materials in fact belong to society as a whole, and they are being LENT to the companies/individuals in question for a limited time and with limited priviledges. So our right to fair use is a RIGHT, guaranteed under the constitution.
If you wish to reply with more B.S. please do. I'd love to see your karma drop by another two points:))
It seems awfully excessive for this law to apply to ALL software. Applying this law to mission-critical enterprise server software makes a great deal of sense. Applying it to a small program like a text editor would be outrageous.
Also, will this law apply to consumer software as well as corporate software? If somebody hacks into my computer through a chess program that I'm running on Windows 98 while I'm connected to the internet, that doesn't constitute a breach of national security. If some cyber-terrorist breaks into the White House enterprise server and starts deleting critical government files, that's a different story altogether.
I'm betting that due to M$'s lobbying, this won't pass. After all, Gates' good buddy Dubya (George W. Bush) can veto any law that he wants, even if it managed to pass both houses of Congress. M$ would go out of business if this bill became law and were properly implemented. That's why it won't pass.
I don't use cable for TV *OR* internet. In my two previous apartments, I got cable for free, but found that I hardly watched it at all. In my new apartment, I decided not to get cable at all, and I don't miss it at all.
I pay $45 (Canadian) incl. tax for my DSL. The quality of service has started a precipitous decline, but, apparently, so has cable. I can cancel my DSL at any time, but if I got cable, I would have been locked in for a year, and would have had to pay the installation fees, and, as far as I know, would have had to buy the cable modem too.
It's surprising how hooked people can get on TV when they have, but how little they need it when it's gone. More people should do what I did and break the habbit. All the news and info I need are right here, on the internet.
If the federal judge accepts the DOJ-M$ "settlement", then none of this will matter.
The potential impact of Microsoft getting off virtually scot-free by the DOJ will overwhealm the positive impact of this settlement being struck down.
Should Microsoft be allowed to continue these exclusive arrangements with OEM's, the leveraging of Windows into other margets, gauging for Office, leaving out Java support in XP as well as plguins for IE, forcing users to ask for permission to upgrade their PCs on XP home edition, rigging ZD Net polls on.NET vs Java, etc... then preventing that company from dominating a single segment of the economy: education, will be practically meaningless.
How many entrepreneurs have been dissuaded or discouraged from writing software because of Microsoft stiffling innovation? (hardly any commerical companies make consumer operating systems anymore) How many once dynamic and cutting-edge products have stagnated once Microsoft gained a 90% share? If they dominate more of the industry, we're going to see even more inferior products. The only good software M$ ever came up with was when they had to compete with another company.
Having the school settlement struck down is a small victory, one that pales in comparison to the potential losses that would occur if the colluded DOJ settlement is accepted.
I am not preaching linux, mac, or any other OS, just don't support microsoft!
Easier said than done. M$ has exclusive contracts with all the large OEM's that effectively FORCE all their customers to pay for a copy of Windows, whether or not they choose to install the system. They will refuse to sell you a "naked PC".
In order to avoid giving money to Microsoft, you would have to either go to a smaller OEM that would be willing to sell you a naked PC, or a PC installed with another OS *OR* buy the parts and assemble the system yourself.
Of course, you could make up for the money you've been forced to pay for your OEM Windows by pirating M$ Office and copying it profusely to give to your friends:)
The question is, what is that 1% based on? If you're talking about people buying a shrink-wrapped version of it at a BusinessDepot, I wholeheartedly agree. If you're talking about people who DOWNLOAD Linux for free, I disagree.
For instance, I have used 4 distributions/versions of Linux so far, yet I have only paid for one of them. The rest I've either copied from someone else, or downloaded the ISO's from the distro's site.
I'm sure if you factor those free versions of Linux, the percentage of Linux users comes closer to 5%.
Ironically, right now, I'm using the distro that I paid for, so you can count me among the 1%:)
I agree that despite its technical merits, Linux will remain a geek-only operating system in 2002. However, that could change in 2003 once people get *REALLY* fed up with M$.
(Of course, the stock market is the vilest entity ever created. This is here, and gambling is illegal?!)
Obviously, you don't understand the vast importance of capital markets to our economic system.
Without properly functioning capital markets, the right companies would not get the financing they need to start up or to maintain their operations. Wasteful, badly managed companies would not be punished for their intransigence with, among other things, the threat of reduced financing, bank collateral or a takeover to eliminate their incompetent management. Successful companies and wise investors with foresight would not be rewarded for their initiative and risk-taking.
If stock markets were eliminated, I would be your my life savings that the global economy would plunge into an economic depression several times greater than the one in the 30's.
With Mozilla and StarOffice, Linux now has a world-class browser and office suite. KDE as a GUI is good enough to compete with Windows. With distributions like Mandrake, installing and configuring hardware is easy and painless. There are programs to enable you to play and rip MP3's, burn CD's, chat, ICQ clones, games,etc... Everything is in place EXCEPT for an easy and hassle-proof software install system.
Let me use an example. I recently downloaded Vim 6.0, and proceeded to install it on both my Windows and Linux boxes. On Windows, all I had to do was double click on the EXE file and the program, including the shortcuts, was installed and ready to go in no time. On Linux, I had to download a source tarball, dump it into a directory, run.configure, make and make install, as well as changing my PATH to point to/usr/local/bin BEFORE/usr/bin (so as to run 6.0 before 5.8) and create an icon on my KDE QuickLauch.
Vim works just fine on my Linux box, and I found the install the be relatively straightforward. However, I'm confortable in a command-line environment, most newbies are not.
RPM is a bold attempt at making the install process, but it is fraught with problems and dependencies. For example, just for fun (don't flame me, I don't use RPM's), I tried to install the latest version of Mozilla (Moz 8.0 was the package in my distribution) with the RPM file from the site. I ran rpm -U and it complained about having to upgrade each COMPONENT of mozilla (mail, chat, etc) before upgrading the whole thing. I tried uninstalling it. It told me I had to uninstall all related packages first, including GNOME. Since I use KDE, I decided to do it. Only THEN was I able to install the 0.9.5 RPM. Now, needless to say, I simply grab the tarball for the latest distribution on dump it into a directory.
Somebody needs to come up with an accepted, standardized protocol to install new programs or upgrade existing ones onto an existing distribution that doesn't involve compiling from source or using RPM files. Mind you, the option to compile from source should remain for the advanced users.
So because I have no university degree I'm suddenly considered useless? I studyed long and hard to change careers from banking. I took a 9-month intensive IT course which was at times very hectic. The J2CP exam was no joke, neither was the 60% of my knowledge that I learned without formal training on the job in my first 2 months, or the first month of my new job, in which I had to learn yet ANOTHER new set of skills and development tools with almost no training whatsoever.
Are we suddenly going to stop rewarding initiative, independent learning, flexibility and gumption, and only give credit to people who were lucky enough to figure out their career paths in their late teens, unlike me? Proposterous!
If the Mozilla team can straighten out some of the plug in problems (for example, it takes some voodoo before java actually works), or at least come up with a definitive install procedure, we'll be rockin'.
With Java it's simple. You just copy all the.dll files from your JavaSoft directory in Windows to the Mozilla plug-ins directory. For Linux, you just do a symlink to the java2/plugin/i386/ns600/libjava.oji.so directory in the mozilla plugins directory. For all other plug-ins, just copy and paste all the files in your Netscape 4.7x directory to the Mozilla plugins directory (Windows AND Linux).
When will they replace the Mozilla icon in Windows with the lizard that they use in Linux? What *IS* the Windows icon supposed to be, anyway?
XBox Promomotions in Montreal
on
XBox Released
·
· Score: 1
I was walking in downtown Montreal last Friday night and as I passed by the Paramount movie theatre, I saw three guys standing on the sidewalk wearing strange uniforms and a backpack upon which was attached a long pipe that mounted an flat-panel screen that was showing X-Box demos. It was freezing cold that night too.
Also, as I walked by the local Blockbuster, I noticed there were TWO ENTIRE empty rows with shelves reserved for X-Box games. M$ must be paying Blockbuster a lot of money to promote an unproven product.
If they can port GNOME to Solaris and offer users a choice between the two desktops, why can't they port KDE as well, which, IMHO, is far superior to GNOME?
With the increasing rivalry and competition between AOL and Microsoft, along with the speculation about AOL replacing IE with Gekko, I'm wondering if it's only a matter of time before AOL comes up with its OWN operating system to compete with Windows.
They certain have the distribution clout and the customers. They have the financial resources. The only thing that would stand in their way is the engineering of the OS. They could try to pull an Apple and put their front end on top of FreeBSD, but even that would take time, unless they've already secretly begun.
BTW, this is just pure speculation. I really have no idea what AOL is thinking.
I've had some real problems with 8.1, and decided to downgrade to 8.0. I had real problems getting my CDROM and Floppy to mount automatically. I had to mount them manually everytime I wanted to use them. I couldn't get my CDWriter to work at ALL.
At one point, I couldn't view my desktop, or any of the icons, in either GNOME or KDE.
Finally, I just said the hell with it and went back to 8.0. Hopefully, they will have fixed the bugs by 8.2.
I have managed to at least partially convert my System Admin, who just happens to sit beside me at work. He runs FreeBSD and stubbornly stuck with Netscape, before giving it a try today:)
I use the browser AND mail client as my default applications, and they just keep getting better and better.
IE may have slightly more features and functionality, but it has stagnated as a product and may in fact be declining due to M$ removing plug-in and Java support. They have done this because they believe they have a monopoly in browsers, but they're wrong. All Mozilla has to do is add a few new features (expanding upon ideas like disabling pop-up windows) on top of what's already there, and it will be a markedly superior browser. I think this project has enough momentum to continue long past version 1.0, and I believe there's enough creative energy on the development team to come up with a long list of new features to leave IE in the dust once and for all.
AOL seems to be very aggressive in promoting Netscape 6.1. For instance, there's a Netscape banner at the top of cnn.com. If AOL can, at the very least, convince Netscape 4.7 users to upgrade to 6.1, it will have done the Mozilla project a huge favour.
Sad, but true. I myself have changed a lot. I recently got myself Mandrake 8.0 and have been steadilty leaning myself off of Windows. As soon as I get sick of my old DOS games and get Linux DVD software that works, I won't need to use that inferior OS anymore:D
Then again, I found my motivation to change in my blind hatred of M$, Gates and Balmer. Without it, I doubt I would have given Linux a chance. Most people seem to like M$ for some odd reason.
Those who can adapt and learn will always do well in society, because most people can't. Adaptability and flexibility is a rare commodity in today's workplace. Now I just have to convince my boss of that at my next 6-month review:)
I presently use Bell Canada's Sympatico High Speed Internet here in Montreal, and it uses PPPoE. The service is pretty reliable, as long as I'm using the Mandrake 8.0 access software, and not the Windows Access Manager. Still, the access software I use now seems to be specific to the Mandrake 8.0 distribution, and I'm not sure if other distributions have such easy DSL access software.
The access software still won't let me connect to my DSL automatically, even when I change the settings.
I work for an ISP that competes with Bell Canada. They've just offered ADSL service, but, as far as I know, haven't gotten any customers because they're charging more than Bell.
One of my coworkers was telling me there's a way to get a static IP address for ADSL access. I'll have to ask him about it again.
Slashdot Mirror
I heard that something ridiculous like 50% or more of HP's profits come from printer cartridges. That means the rest of the company is more or less unprofitable. HP should sell everything BUT the printer cartridge division and invest in more printer cartridge plants. Jeez! No wonder Fiorina's in trouble these days.
Well, I can see by your -1 score that you have poor taste *AND* absolutely no point whatsoever to make, not to mention the fact that you're completely WRONG.
:))
The United States constitution grants copyrights to those who innovate and/or bring some positive benefit to society. This copyright does not belong to the individual or company in question, but to society itself. In return, the government grants said company/individual a temporary exclusive right to sell these materials, but must grant the purchasers of these copyrighted materials certain fair usage rights. The copyrights were supposed to expire within 20 years of the author's death. Thanks to Disney's shameless lobbying, that copyright is being continuously extended.
So you're wrong about fair use. Copyrighted materials in fact belong to society as a whole, and they are being LENT to the companies/individuals in question for a limited time and with limited priviledges. So our right to fair use is a RIGHT, guaranteed under the constitution.
If you wish to reply with more B.S. please do. I'd love to see your karma drop by another two points
Is it is just me or does the entire legal system and all corporations fail to understand the meaning of the phrase "Fair Use"?
It seems awfully excessive for this law to apply to ALL software. Applying this law to mission-critical enterprise server software makes a great deal of sense. Applying it to a small program like a text editor would be outrageous.
Also, will this law apply to consumer software as well as corporate software? If somebody hacks into my computer through a chess program that I'm running on Windows 98 while I'm connected to the internet, that doesn't constitute a breach of national security. If some cyber-terrorist breaks into the White House enterprise server and starts deleting critical government files, that's a different story altogether.
I'm betting that due to M$'s lobbying, this won't pass. After all, Gates' good buddy Dubya (George W. Bush) can veto any law that he wants, even if it managed to pass both houses of Congress. M$ would go out of business if this bill became law and were properly implemented. That's why it won't pass.
Looks like M$ hasn't bothered hiring lobbyists in Korea yet, like they have in most Western countries....
I don't use cable for TV *OR* internet. In my two previous apartments, I got cable for free, but found that I hardly watched it at all. In my new apartment, I decided not to get cable at all, and I don't miss it at all.
I pay $45 (Canadian) incl. tax for my DSL. The quality of service has started a precipitous decline, but, apparently, so has cable. I can cancel my DSL at any time, but if I got cable, I would have been locked in for a year, and would have had to pay the installation fees, and, as far as I know, would have had to buy the cable modem too.
It's surprising how hooked people can get on TV when they have, but how little they need it when it's gone. More people should do what I did and break the habbit. All the news and info I need are right here, on the internet.
If the federal judge accepts the DOJ-M$ "settlement", then none of this will matter.
.NET vs Java, etc... then preventing that company from dominating a single segment of the economy: education, will be practically meaningless.
The potential impact of Microsoft getting off virtually scot-free by the DOJ will overwhealm the positive impact of this settlement being struck down.
Should Microsoft be allowed to continue these exclusive arrangements with OEM's, the leveraging of Windows into other margets, gauging for Office, leaving out Java support in XP as well as plguins for IE, forcing users to ask for permission to upgrade their PCs on XP home edition, rigging ZD Net polls on
How many entrepreneurs have been dissuaded or discouraged from writing software because of Microsoft stiffling innovation? (hardly any commerical companies make consumer operating systems anymore) How many once dynamic and cutting-edge products have stagnated once Microsoft gained a 90% share? If they dominate more of the industry, we're going to see even more inferior products. The only good software M$ ever came up with was when they had to compete with another company.
Having the school settlement struck down is a small victory, one that pales in comparison to the potential losses that would occur if the colluded DOJ settlement is accepted.
I am not preaching linux, mac, or any other OS, just don't support microsoft!
:)
Easier said than done. M$ has exclusive contracts with all the large OEM's that effectively FORCE all their customers to pay for a copy of Windows, whether or not they choose to install the system. They will refuse to sell you a "naked PC".
In order to avoid giving money to Microsoft, you would have to either go to a smaller OEM that would be willing to sell you a naked PC, or a PC installed with another OS *OR* buy the parts and assemble the system yourself.
Of course, you could make up for the money you've been forced to pay for your OEM Windows by pirating M$ Office and copying it profusely to give to your friends
It IS news. Somebody's selling you a product and they want you to but it from them. What could be more newsworthy than that? :)
The question is, what is that 1% based on? If you're talking about people buying a shrink-wrapped version of it at a BusinessDepot, I wholeheartedly agree. If you're talking about people who DOWNLOAD Linux for free, I disagree.
:)
For instance, I have used 4 distributions/versions of Linux so far, yet I have only paid for one of them. The rest I've either copied from someone else, or downloaded the ISO's from the distro's site.
I'm sure if you factor those free versions of Linux, the percentage of Linux users comes closer to 5%.
Ironically, right now, I'm using the distro that I paid for, so you can count me among the 1%
I agree that despite its technical merits, Linux will remain a geek-only operating system in 2002. However, that could change in 2003 once people get *REALLY* fed up with M$.
(Of course, the stock market is the vilest entity ever created. This is here, and gambling is illegal?!)
Obviously, you don't understand the vast importance of capital markets to our economic system.
Without properly functioning capital markets, the right companies would not get the financing they need to start up or to maintain their operations. Wasteful, badly managed companies would not be punished for their intransigence with, among other things, the threat of reduced financing, bank collateral or a takeover to eliminate their incompetent management. Successful companies and wise investors with foresight would not be rewarded for their initiative and risk-taking.
If stock markets were eliminated, I would be your my life savings that the global economy would plunge into an economic depression several times greater than the one in the 30's.
I'm a Canadian who would like to comment on this joke of a settlement. What can I do? Will they still accept comments from me if I'm not a US citizen?
With Mozilla and StarOffice, Linux now has a world-class browser and office suite. KDE as a GUI is good enough to compete with Windows. With distributions like Mandrake, installing and configuring hardware is easy and painless. There are programs to enable you to play and rip MP3's, burn CD's, chat, ICQ clones, games ,etc... Everything is in place EXCEPT for an easy and hassle-proof software install system.
.configure, make and make install, as well as changing my PATH to point to /usr/local/bin BEFORE /usr/bin (so as to run 6.0 before 5.8) and create an icon on my KDE QuickLauch.
Let me use an example. I recently downloaded Vim 6.0, and proceeded to install it on both my Windows and Linux boxes. On Windows, all I had to do was double click on the EXE file and the program, including the shortcuts, was installed and ready to go in no time. On Linux, I had to download a source tarball, dump it into a directory, run
Vim works just fine on my Linux box, and I found the install the be relatively straightforward. However, I'm confortable in a command-line environment, most newbies are not.
RPM is a bold attempt at making the install process, but it is fraught with problems and dependencies. For example, just for fun (don't flame me, I don't use RPM's), I tried to install the latest version of Mozilla (Moz 8.0 was the package in my distribution) with the RPM file from the site. I ran rpm -U and it complained about having to upgrade each COMPONENT of mozilla (mail, chat, etc) before upgrading the whole thing. I tried uninstalling it. It told me I had to uninstall all related packages first, including GNOME. Since I use KDE, I decided to do it. Only THEN was I able to install the 0.9.5 RPM. Now, needless to say, I simply grab the tarball for the latest distribution on dump it into a directory.
Somebody needs to come up with an accepted, standardized protocol to install new programs or upgrade existing ones onto an existing distribution that doesn't involve compiling from source or using RPM files. Mind you, the option to compile from source should remain for the advanced users.
At least I had the guts not to hide behind "Anonymous Coward".
So because I have no university degree I'm suddenly considered useless? I studyed long and hard to change careers from banking. I took a 9-month intensive IT course which was at times very hectic. The J2CP exam was no joke, neither was the 60% of my knowledge that I learned without formal training on the job in my first 2 months, or the first month of my new job, in which I had to learn yet ANOTHER new set of skills and development tools with almost no training whatsoever.
Are we suddenly going to stop rewarding initiative, independent learning, flexibility and gumption, and only give credit to people who were lucky enough to figure out their career paths in their late teens, unlike me? Proposterous!
3. People who use KDE don't care about mozilla, they use Konq.
I'm a KDE user and Mozilla is my browser of choice. Konqueror just doesn't render pages the way I expect my browser to.
If the Mozilla team can straighten out some of the plug in problems (for example, it takes some voodoo before java actually works), or at least come up with a definitive install procedure, we'll be rockin'.
.dll files from your JavaSoft directory in Windows to the Mozilla plug-ins directory. For Linux, you just do a symlink to the java2/plugin/i386/ns600/libjava.oji.so directory in the mozilla plugins directory. For all other plug-ins, just copy and paste all the files in your Netscape 4.7x directory to the Mozilla plugins directory (Windows AND Linux).
With Java it's simple. You just copy all the
For Java installation instructions, go to:
Release Notes: Known Problems: Java
It seems all these problems have already been solved in Netscape 6.2, at least for the Windows version.
When will they replace the Mozilla icon in Windows with the lizard that they use in Linux? What *IS* the Windows icon supposed to be, anyway?
I was walking in downtown Montreal last Friday night and as I passed by the Paramount movie theatre, I saw three guys standing on the sidewalk wearing strange uniforms and a backpack upon which was attached a long pipe that mounted an flat-panel screen that was showing X-Box demos. It was freezing cold that night too.
Also, as I walked by the local Blockbuster, I noticed there were TWO ENTIRE empty rows with shelves reserved for X-Box games. M$ must be paying Blockbuster a lot of money to promote an unproven product.
If they can port GNOME to Solaris and offer users a choice between the two desktops, why can't they port KDE as well, which, IMHO, is far superior to GNOME?
With the increasing rivalry and competition between AOL and Microsoft, along with the speculation about AOL replacing IE with Gekko, I'm wondering if it's only a matter of time before AOL comes up with its OWN operating system to compete with Windows.
They certain have the distribution clout and the customers. They have the financial resources. The only thing that would stand in their way is the engineering of the OS. They could try to pull an Apple and put their front end on top of FreeBSD, but even that would take time, unless they've already secretly begun.
BTW, this is just pure speculation. I really have no idea what AOL is thinking.
I've had some real problems with 8.1, and decided to downgrade to 8.0. I had real problems getting my CDROM and Floppy to mount automatically. I had to mount them manually everytime I wanted to use them. I couldn't get my CDWriter to work at ALL.
At one point, I couldn't view my desktop, or any of the icons, in either GNOME or KDE.
Finally, I just said the hell with it and went back to 8.0. Hopefully, they will have fixed the bugs by 8.2.
I have managed to at least partially convert my System Admin, who just happens to sit beside me at work. He runs FreeBSD and stubbornly stuck with Netscape, before giving it a try today :)
I use the browser AND mail client as my default applications, and they just keep getting better and better.
IE may have slightly more features and functionality, but it has stagnated as a product and may in fact be declining due to M$ removing plug-in and Java support. They have done this because they believe they have a monopoly in browsers, but they're wrong. All Mozilla has to do is add a few new features (expanding upon ideas like disabling pop-up windows) on top of what's already there, and it will be a markedly superior browser. I think this project has enough momentum to continue long past version 1.0, and I believe there's enough creative energy on the development team to come up with a long list of new features to leave IE in the dust once and for all.
AOL seems to be very aggressive in promoting Netscape 6.1. For instance, there's a Netscape banner at the top of cnn.com. If AOL can, at the very least, convince Netscape 4.7 users to upgrade to 6.1, it will have done the Mozilla project a huge favour.
The browser wars are far from over.
"People don't like change."
:D
:)
Sad, but true. I myself have changed a lot. I recently got myself Mandrake 8.0 and have been steadilty leaning myself off of Windows. As soon as I get sick of my old DOS games and get Linux DVD software that works, I won't need to use that inferior OS anymore
Then again, I found my motivation to change in my blind hatred of M$, Gates and Balmer. Without it, I doubt I would have given Linux a chance. Most people seem to like M$ for some odd reason.
Those who can adapt and learn will always do well in society, because most people can't. Adaptability and flexibility is a rare commodity in today's workplace. Now I just have to convince my boss of that at my next 6-month review
I presently use Bell Canada's Sympatico High Speed Internet here in Montreal, and it uses PPPoE. The service is pretty reliable, as long as I'm using the Mandrake 8.0 access software, and not the Windows Access Manager. Still, the access software I use now seems to be specific to the Mandrake 8.0 distribution, and I'm not sure if other distributions have such easy DSL access software. The access software still won't let me connect to my DSL automatically, even when I change the settings. I work for an ISP that competes with Bell Canada. They've just offered ADSL service, but, as far as I know, haven't gotten any customers because they're charging more than Bell. One of my coworkers was telling me there's a way to get a static IP address for ADSL access. I'll have to ask him about it again.