First, it has to be said that when you built your server room you should have planned that before the equipment ever went in. Hindsight.
I'll pat myself on the back here. In my 911 PSAP and dispatch center we have a room that houses the phone system, servers and radios. I have to imagine that this room generates far more heat than what you're dealing with because of the transmitters. There was no environmental control, not even vents. Systems would die or reboot without warning all year round but the problem got worse in the summer.
Nobody knew what to do. Like your situation, this room is in the middle of the building. Every amateur carpenter, electrician, HVAC tech in the police department looked at it and scratched their heads.
Then I came into the picture. Rather than wasting time thinking about the problem or asking Slashdot, I picked up the phone and called the local HVAC shop. In minutes I had not one but two qualified technicians with over 30 years of combined experience at my disposal. Two hours later I had a quote. Three weeks later the temperature and humidity in the room are constant and within tolerance. And we haven't had a single equipment failure since.
The system they installed uses the building water supply to cool air in a machine down the hall. The cool air is vented into the room and exhaust is vented up through the roof. That vent work is amazing, none of us non HVAC techs would have guessed it to be possible.
I know you all are thinking about computers, but I've had some radios that amazed me. When two-way radio equipment started getting microcontrollers in them everybody in the industry started to worry that they wouldn't take the abuse.
One of my customers, a mining company, had just taken delivery of a new GE radio system including MTL model portable radios. One of the foremen kept sending his radio in for repair and I couldn't find anything wrong with it. I went out to talk to him in person about the problems he was having and he told me that he was a die hard Motorola man, a GE radio simply wouldn't do and he didn't want it. No problem with the radio.
Some time after that he started throwing the radio around, throwing it away even. Someone would find it, send it in to me for repair. I would simply clean it up and give it back. This pissed off the foreman so he drove his pickup over it, several times. It came to me with broken knobs and a bent antenna, replaced them and all was well.
The next repair the forman swore was an accident. The radio fell out of his pocket as he walked in front of a Cat D-8 dozer. The dozer ran over the radio, again broken knobs and bent antenna.
After that the foreman was sold. A die hard GE man was born.
Boy was he pissed off when, a few months later, GE got out of the radio business and he had to start buying Motorola again.
I see some folks on here have mentioned Dreamweaver. I don't think I would want to purchase something when I could do it for free and keep the content free, and I want to teach my children the same. I also don't like the whole product activation thing.
My 8 year old boy has started doing his own site using Mozilla Composer. There are some tools on the web, counters and such, that generate HTML code and he's learned to cut and paste that code into his document. When he does he reads the code and tries to understand it, asking questions along the way.
There are plenty of ways to create web content, kids can use any of them. They will suprise you and you might even learn something from their work.
Note that we don't have a Windows based system anywhere in the house. Imagine a child, probing his/her way around the computer in the learning process. Tried that, got tired of fixing broken computers because the kids had screwed something up. My kids, 8 and 6, learn on their own Linux computer. I've had to do less sysadmin stuff to that box than most of the machines at work. They experiment along, lots of trial and error and theres no big panic when they screw something up. Both boys find themselves at home now on Solaris and FreeBSD machines too.
You're right that it would be game over. The end of the game for any ISP who eliminated customers like that. As has already been pointed out here, ISP's aren't in the business of denying access. ISP's are in the business of providing access for a profit. There is no benefit to them to disable customers.
Drop my PC in a pit and bury it? Such a thing would be crazy, especially if what you predict comes true. At that point my PC would even more valuable as a device which has improved reliability and security over what would then be common in the market. The freedom to produce applications and data on a machine free from DRM issues will make that machine even more valuable.
Even if what you say about routers comes to pass, it might not be a bad thing. With all of the spam, the popups, the advertising of porn in your face, maybe closing that off to only "trusted" computers is a good thing. At that point those of us who refuse to participate in "trusted computing" would be forced to use another network or subnetwork. Being a lesser market it should be free or nearly free of such garbage as the pushers of that content wouldn't be motivated to disturb us.
In any case, I still don't see it as all doom and gloom. They might force you to use the trusted computing crap. For many it will force them to look for alternatives. For me it will just prove yet again that I made the right choice long ago to use non-Microsoft products.
Freedom isn't ever easy. It takes work and a little sacrifice at times. This may be another one of those things.
Yes, well I think if you're a consumer of Microsoft products then you make your purchase both accepting and inviting that reaming.
Games? I wouldn't know much about that. My family has Sony and Nintendo systems, the kids share games with a bunch of other families in the neighborhood. I have heard that Microsoft does produce a game console but other than a casual glance at the store I've never seen anyone play one and don't know of anyone who actually bought one.
I guess where I'm at people are a little more attentive when they make a purchase. We have to be, nobody here makes a lot of money. When we spend what we have we look hard before we leap.
You said yourself that you can find laptops without Microsoft products. You could also purchase them with Microsoft products and then not use those products. It's your choice. If you're running Microsoft products because "it's difficult and annoying" to do otherwise, that's a choice you make. You obviously have an option but it's not important enough to you to take that other option. You obviously have determined that the reliability of the application, the security of your data, the rights to your applications and data and your freedom of choice are not worth the extra hassle. And that's ok, its your choice.
Take a look at the direction the thread has gone. Lots of talk now about Cisco and trusted computing involved in network hardware to limit access. No, they're not just talking about desktops.
One of the replies to me above even mentioned DRM in automotive applications, a valid concern.
But, in the spirit of what you say, it is a niche market. I believe that the majority of the comments here have been about desktop workstations for personal use at home. That's a niche market. And the sort of stuff you might have at home for you and your 16 year old to play on is quite different from a real business machine. A workstation for use in business....another niche. A workstation for engineering....another niche. The industry of computing machines is divided into niches or segments of which personal desktops for home use is but one.
As AC pointed out, BMW does make some hardware that runs Windows. They also make some that does not. I believe that one of their controllers I've worked with runs QNX or something similar.
As to the SGI workstation you have at home, I'm impressed. But one need not even go to that level. When you start talking about workstations for personal use there are a lot of lower end options available. And there always will be. Keep in mind that there was a time when such things didn't even exist. The market was created by hobbiests, guys in garages, college dropouts, geeks like you and I. If the circumstances (trusted computing or whatever) make it so that some folks don't want the "commercial" hardware, someone somewhere will roll their own. Another market will be born.
I'm at a loss as to how anyone can force you to run anything. Certainly they can make it inconveinent to do so.
Cisco can make all the trusted computing routers they like. The use of such a thing defeats the purpose of the internet as I understand it. There will be those within the network that won't insist on trusted computing and that should make way for...well, a subnet if you will.
Nobody forces you to do a thing. Where there is a will there is a way. A good example of that was some school punk in Finland who wanted to run Unix but didn't want to be forced to pay a lot of money that he didn't have. Next thing you know we have this big free OS thing going. I'm saying that the same sort of spirit can apply in getting around this trusted computing thing.
"it is flat-out IMPOSSIBLE to sell hardware if it can't run Windows."
To the best of my knowledge the following companies make hardware that does not run Windows (tm):
Sun IBM Apple Cray SGI NEC Honda BMW Gen eral Motors Ford Dictaphone Motorola Nokia
You get the picture. You're talking strictly about end user desktop hardware. Even in that niche market where Microsoft dominates, it is not impossible.
This "trusted computing" may be the one big thing that changes the domination of that market. From the tone of what I read, here and elsewhere, most people agree that this "trustworthy computing" is not a good thing. If that's the case then the issues surrounding it should drive the market to seek alternatives. Any company that offers an alternative should prosper.
And even if the masses act like lemmings, there will always be a market of those of us who just won't play that game. There will also be the market of those who, for business or security reasons, can't play that game. That should leave enough of a market for non-Microsoft controlled hardware. Enough of a market for some people to make decent livings and put thier kids through school.
Ya'll are so doom and gloom around here. Wake up and smell the coffee. Microsoft does not rule the entire world nor will they ever. Their marketing department may have you thinking so, but that's not the case. You may be surrounded by PC's running Windows but that's not the case for everyone, some of us live rich, full lives without it. A fork in the hardware is simply a fork in the hardware. Such forks already exist as I mentioned above, there are already plenty of computers that do not run Windows and life will continue to be that way.
"Yeah, it would be horrible if they had to use there brain to solve problems."
No shit. I believe it's actually against some law to teach that in school these days.
Worse yet would be requiring the teachers to use their brains to educate the children. What a life. Where else can you get 3 weekdays off per month for training and 3 months of vacation per year. I'm still anxious to find out what sort of refresher training one requires to teach K-6. God knows that elementary education is a fast paced and rapidly changing field.
Yes but parenting should take place at the parental level, not in the schools. The schools don't have the funding, time or resources necessary to handle this.
This comes down to a return on investment. With the amount of garbage on the internet and the amount of time and money required to properly filter it, internet access just isn't worth it. Children in classrooms get very little benefit from the connection, often times just an intranet will suffice. Rather than spending the money on internet connection, filtering and supervision the money would be better spent on things like books, facilities, teacher salaries and benchmark testing. The internet, in its present state, does little to support the end goal (education of children).
If it were not for the spammers, especially the porno spammers then it might be worth while to look for some educational benefit from the internet. Businesses are even finding that the liability of the internet often outweighs any benefit (I know several businesses who've given up on email due to spam).
I know plenty of adults who were never taken to the red light districts by their parents and still turned out fine. One does not have to be exposed to the pimps, the prostitutes, the drug dealers, the wife beaters or the gangs in order to become a normal adult. Avoiding those things does not make one a "socially maladjusted freak." I simply see no need to expose children to that in public schools, online or anywhere else.
I agree that kids should have access to computers and I would never want to take that away from them. The problem is the connection to the outside world.
You say to "filter it to a negligible level" but I'm thinking that's a relative term. For me, at no point is it acceptable for a class of children to see popups for penis enlargement, breast enhancement or pr0n. I'm talking about a tolerance of zero per school year.
The problem with an internet connection in the classroom is that, at this point, the supervision required isn't available. The funding that would have to be put into software, hardware and supervision would be better spent on other things as our schools are tight on money as it is. (That of course is due to other things like having a superintendent who makes $150K per year, etc.)
The fact is that commercial use of the internet has begun to edge out any educational use. Blind pushing of pornographic content for commercial gain has made the internet something that is no longer an option for our children without extreme and unreasonable measures for supervision.
It is exactly for that reason that I am now pushing to have internet access removed from local classrooms. The spam and popups have gotten so bad that my second grader sees these messages come up on their classroom computer several times a day. The school has a good IT department, lots of filters, and policy with the best intentions but they just can't keep up with it.
I used to be one of the most vocal about getting/keeping internet access in schools and public libraries. All that has changed now that the spammers have turned the net into the cesspool that it is.
What you have pointed out is correct. The more important question to ask is why the article even mentions the proposed US law against spam. How could that possibly have any impact against spam comming from Canada, India, China, Russia or anywhere else?
They can't do that without first changing the laws. And the US Congress can't help them there. I wish them the best of luck in expanding the spectrum, we could use lots more space.
Meanwhile I think they'll have to make due by juggling some allocation of spectrum.
Not freakin likely. I've been working in the radio communications industry for years. People continue to call it "wireless" and I keep installing more and more wires. I recently had to install a 5 GHz radio for a network link, Proxim advertised it as wireless and.....I shit you not....my boss was pissed off that the installation required me to go through the roof and run 75 feet of WIRE! "It's supposed to be wireless" he said.
I'm lucky to have DSL at home at all, I don't dare push it. Besides I get a certain joy in troubleshooting my ISP's problems. Usually I call and inform them of a problem, the cause and a solution before those idiots know what hit them. Not bad for a Linux hobbiest. It's fun in its own maddening way.
Here in Sandpoint, Idaho I've got DSL. The way they provide it is a bit strange. Verizon handles the transport at $32.50 per month for 768x128 but then you also have to choose from a list of about a dozen ISP's. The ISP I use gives me a static IP for only $22 per month. I think they also give me some mail boxes and http space but I do my own so I wouldn't know.
So for $54.50 per month I've got static IP and 768x128.
I do have numerous problems with my ISP as everything they do is Winblows based. They go down all too often for a variety of reasons. They are also a choke point that keeps me from full bandwidth, I know other people using other providers in the area who get faster service. Then again they're paying $5 to $20 more per month than I am.
As someone mentioned about SCO, the court will want to see that you've taken steps to protect the thing you've lost. So if you came into my court I would say "Mr. Power Company, did you know he could get free power like that just by living there? Did you attempt to purchase the property? No, then have a nice day"
"(we are after all partical physcists and not sys admins)"
No offence, but I'm just a radio tech and I can patch the linux kernel on a running machine in just a minute or two. If these are important machines (and they must be if you're that concerned with them being up to date)then maybe you should have a sysadmin taking care of them.
When you need legal work you hire a lawyer. When your car is broken you take it to a mechanic. When you need a tumor removed you see a surgeon. When you need whatever a partical physcist does done you see the partical physcist. Call me when your communication system needs work.
So when you've got computers that you rely on, and those computers need things like kernel patches, have a sysadmin come take care of it. He'll do it in less time and you can focus on your physics.
Go ahead and explain away. SCO stock is traded in New York and regulated by the SEC. Austrailia has no role in any of this.
Their government can demand explanations all they want. They may even get them. What's the expression they use there....it doesn't matter a pair of dingos kidneys.
Keep your eye on the bouncing ball. This isn't about software, OS, licenses or patents. This is all about a sucking sound in the bank vault.
Slashdot Mirror
First, it has to be said that when you built your server room you should have planned that before the equipment ever went in. Hindsight.
I'll pat myself on the back here. In my 911 PSAP and dispatch center we have a room that houses the phone system, servers and radios. I have to imagine that this room generates far more heat than what you're dealing with because of the transmitters. There was no environmental control, not even vents. Systems would die or reboot without warning all year round but the problem got worse in the summer.
Nobody knew what to do. Like your situation, this room is in the middle of the building. Every amateur carpenter, electrician, HVAC tech in the police department looked at it and scratched their heads.
Then I came into the picture. Rather than wasting time thinking about the problem or asking Slashdot, I picked up the phone and called the local HVAC shop. In minutes I had not one but two qualified technicians with over 30 years of combined experience at my disposal. Two hours later I had a quote. Three weeks later the temperature and humidity in the room are constant and within tolerance. And we haven't had a single equipment failure since.
The system they installed uses the building water supply to cool air in a machine down the hall. The cool air is vented into the room and exhaust is vented up through the roof. That vent work is amazing, none of us non HVAC techs would have guessed it to be possible.
Do yourself a huge favor and call in a pro.
I know you all are thinking about computers, but I've had some radios that amazed me. When two-way radio equipment started getting microcontrollers in them everybody in the industry started to worry that they wouldn't take the abuse.
One of my customers, a mining company, had just taken delivery of a new GE radio system including MTL model portable radios. One of the foremen kept sending his radio in for repair and I couldn't find anything wrong with it. I went out to talk to him in person about the problems he was having and he told me that he was a die hard Motorola man, a GE radio simply wouldn't do and he didn't want it. No problem with the radio.
Some time after that he started throwing the radio around, throwing it away even. Someone would find it, send it in to me for repair. I would simply clean it up and give it back. This pissed off the foreman so he drove his pickup over it, several times. It came to me with broken knobs and a bent antenna, replaced them and all was well.
The next repair the forman swore was an accident. The radio fell out of his pocket as he walked in front of a Cat D-8 dozer. The dozer ran over the radio, again broken knobs and bent antenna.
After that the foreman was sold. A die hard GE man was born.
Boy was he pissed off when, a few months later, GE got out of the radio business and he had to start buying Motorola again.
I see some folks on here have mentioned Dreamweaver. I don't think I would want to purchase something when I could do it for free and keep the content free, and I want to teach my children the same. I also don't like the whole product activation thing.
My 8 year old boy has started doing his own site using Mozilla Composer. There are some tools on the web, counters and such, that generate HTML code and he's learned to cut and paste that code into his document. When he does he reads the code and tries to understand it, asking questions along the way.
There are plenty of ways to create web content, kids can use any of them. They will suprise you and you might even learn something from their work.
Note that we don't have a Windows based system anywhere in the house. Imagine a child, probing his/her way around the computer in the learning process. Tried that, got tired of fixing broken computers because the kids had screwed something up. My kids, 8 and 6, learn on their own Linux computer. I've had to do less sysadmin stuff to that box than most of the machines at work. They experiment along, lots of trial and error and theres no big panic when they screw something up. Both boys find themselves at home now on Solaris and FreeBSD machines too.
So let the kid use the same tools you would use.
You're right that it would be game over. The end of the game for any ISP who eliminated customers like that. As has already been pointed out here, ISP's aren't in the business of denying access. ISP's are in the business of providing access for a profit. There is no benefit to them to disable customers.
Drop my PC in a pit and bury it? Such a thing would be crazy, especially if what you predict comes true. At that point my PC would even more valuable as a device which has improved reliability and security over what would then be common in the market. The freedom to produce applications and data on a machine free from DRM issues will make that machine even more valuable.
Even if what you say about routers comes to pass, it might not be a bad thing. With all of the spam, the popups, the advertising of porn in your face, maybe closing that off to only "trusted" computers is a good thing. At that point those of us who refuse to participate in "trusted computing" would be forced to use another network or subnetwork. Being a lesser market it should be free or nearly free of such garbage as the pushers of that content wouldn't be motivated to disturb us.
In any case, I still don't see it as all doom and gloom. They might force you to use the trusted computing crap. For many it will force them to look for alternatives. For me it will just prove yet again that I made the right choice long ago to use non-Microsoft products.
Freedom isn't ever easy. It takes work and a little sacrifice at times. This may be another one of those things.
Yes, well I think if you're a consumer of Microsoft products then you make your purchase both accepting and inviting that reaming.
Games? I wouldn't know much about that. My family has Sony and Nintendo systems, the kids share games with a bunch of other families in the neighborhood. I have heard that Microsoft does produce a game console but other than a casual glance at the store I've never seen anyone play one and don't know of anyone who actually bought one.
I guess where I'm at people are a little more attentive when they make a purchase. We have to be, nobody here makes a lot of money. When we spend what we have we look hard before we leap.
You said yourself that you can find laptops without Microsoft products. You could also purchase them with Microsoft products and then not use those products. It's your choice. If you're running Microsoft products because "it's difficult and annoying" to do otherwise, that's a choice you make. You obviously have an option but it's not important enough to you to take that other option. You obviously have determined that the reliability of the application, the security of your data, the rights to your applications and data and your freedom of choice are not worth the extra hassle. And that's ok, its your choice.
Take a look at the direction the thread has gone. Lots of talk now about Cisco and trusted computing involved in network hardware to limit access. No, they're not just talking about desktops.
One of the replies to me above even mentioned DRM in automotive applications, a valid concern.
But, in the spirit of what you say, it is a niche market. I believe that the majority of the comments here have been about desktop workstations for personal use at home. That's a niche market. And the sort of stuff you might have at home for you and your 16 year old to play on is quite different from a real business machine. A workstation for use in business....another niche. A workstation for engineering....another niche. The industry of computing machines is divided into niches or segments of which personal desktops for home use is but one.
As AC pointed out, BMW does make some hardware that runs Windows. They also make some that does not. I believe that one of their controllers I've worked with runs QNX or something similar.
As to the SGI workstation you have at home, I'm impressed. But one need not even go to that level. When you start talking about workstations for personal use there are a lot of lower end options available. And there always will be. Keep in mind that there was a time when such things didn't even exist. The market was created by hobbiests, guys in garages, college dropouts, geeks like you and I. If the circumstances (trusted computing or whatever) make it so that some folks don't want the "commercial" hardware, someone somewhere will roll their own. Another market will be born.
I'm at a loss as to how anyone can force you to run anything. Certainly they can make it inconveinent to do so.
Cisco can make all the trusted computing routers they like. The use of such a thing defeats the purpose of the internet as I understand it. There will be those within the network that won't insist on trusted computing and that should make way for...well, a subnet if you will.
Nobody forces you to do a thing. Where there is a will there is a way. A good example of that was some school punk in Finland who wanted to run Unix but didn't want to be forced to pay a lot of money that he didn't have. Next thing you know we have this big free OS thing going. I'm saying that the same sort of spirit can apply in getting around this trusted computing thing.
"it is flat-out IMPOSSIBLE to sell hardware if it can't run Windows."
n eral Motors
To the best of my knowledge the following companies make hardware that does not run Windows (tm):
Sun
IBM
Apple
Cray
SGI
NEC
Honda
BMW
Ge
Ford
Dictaphone
Motorola
Nokia
You get the picture. You're talking strictly about end user desktop hardware. Even in that niche market where Microsoft dominates, it is not impossible.
This "trusted computing" may be the one big thing that changes the domination of that market. From the tone of what I read, here and elsewhere, most people agree that this "trustworthy computing" is not a good thing. If that's the case then the issues surrounding it should drive the market to seek alternatives. Any company that offers an alternative should prosper.
And even if the masses act like lemmings, there will always be a market of those of us who just won't play that game. There will also be the market of those who, for business or security reasons, can't play that game. That should leave enough of a market for non-Microsoft controlled hardware. Enough of a market for some people to make decent livings and put thier kids through school.
Ya'll are so doom and gloom around here. Wake up and smell the coffee. Microsoft does not rule the entire world nor will they ever. Their marketing department may have you thinking so, but that's not the case. You may be surrounded by PC's running Windows but that's not the case for everyone, some of us live rich, full lives without it. A fork in the hardware is simply a fork in the hardware. Such forks already exist as I mentioned above, there are already plenty of computers that do not run Windows and life will continue to be that way.
"Yeah, it would be horrible if they had to use there brain to solve problems."
No shit. I believe it's actually against some law to teach that in school these days.
Worse yet would be requiring the teachers to use their brains to educate the children. What a life. Where else can you get 3 weekdays off per month for training and 3 months of vacation per year. I'm still anxious to find out what sort of refresher training one requires to teach K-6. God knows that elementary education is a fast paced and rapidly changing field.
Legal fees to determine potential liability for using discriminatory wording such as "Master/Slave": $34,426
Cost to terminate all IT hardware purchasing contracts and renegotiate: $238,492
Cost to remove all labels with the words "Master" and "Slave" from all existing county equipment: $4,643,893.24
Waking up to find out that you, Joe Sandoval, have been exposed before millions of Slashdot readers for the dumbass that you are: Priceless
"Insisting that vendors comply with the requirements in the memo makes the county look extremely, extremely foolish..."
That's ok, it's not the only thing that makes LA County look foolish. Sadly this is just one of many things.
Yes but parenting should take place at the parental level, not in the schools. The schools don't have the funding, time or resources necessary to handle this.
This comes down to a return on investment. With the amount of garbage on the internet and the amount of time and money required to properly filter it, internet access just isn't worth it. Children in classrooms get very little benefit from the connection, often times just an intranet will suffice. Rather than spending the money on internet connection, filtering and supervision the money would be better spent on things like books, facilities, teacher salaries and benchmark testing. The internet, in its present state, does little to support the end goal (education of children).
If it were not for the spammers, especially the porno spammers then it might be worth while to look for some educational benefit from the internet. Businesses are even finding that the liability of the internet often outweighs any benefit (I know several businesses who've given up on email due to spam).
I know plenty of adults who were never taken to the red light districts by their parents and still turned out fine. One does not have to be exposed to the pimps, the prostitutes, the drug dealers, the wife beaters or the gangs in order to become a normal adult. Avoiding those things does not make one a "socially maladjusted freak." I simply see no need to expose children to that in public schools, online or anywhere else.
I agree that kids should have access to computers and I would never want to take that away from them. The problem is the connection to the outside world.
You say to "filter it to a negligible level" but I'm thinking that's a relative term. For me, at no point is it acceptable for a class of children to see popups for penis enlargement, breast enhancement or pr0n. I'm talking about a tolerance of zero per school year.
The problem with an internet connection in the classroom is that, at this point, the supervision required isn't available. The funding that would have to be put into software, hardware and supervision would be better spent on other things as our schools are tight on money as it is. (That of course is due to other things like having a superintendent who makes $150K per year, etc.)
The fact is that commercial use of the internet has begun to edge out any educational use. Blind pushing of pornographic content for commercial gain has made the internet something that is no longer an option for our children without extreme and unreasonable measures for supervision.
"Back in the late 1800's, people who were annoying were called out in the street and shot at."
Only in Hollywood, and that was in the 1960's.
It is exactly for that reason that I am now pushing to have internet access removed from local classrooms. The spam and popups have gotten so bad that my second grader sees these messages come up on their classroom computer several times a day. The school has a good IT department, lots of filters, and policy with the best intentions but they just can't keep up with it.
I used to be one of the most vocal about getting/keeping internet access in schools and public libraries. All that has changed now that the spammers have turned the net into the cesspool that it is.
What you have pointed out is correct. The more important question to ask is why the article even mentions the proposed US law against spam. How could that possibly have any impact against spam comming from Canada, India, China, Russia or anywhere else?
"FCC will expand the wireless spectrum"
They can't do that without first changing the laws. And the US Congress can't help them there. I wish them the best of luck in expanding the spectrum, we could use lots more space.
Meanwhile I think they'll have to make due by juggling some allocation of spectrum.
Not freakin likely. I've been working in the radio communications industry for years. People continue to call it "wireless" and I keep installing more and more wires. I recently had to install a 5 GHz radio for a network link, Proxim advertised it as wireless and.....I shit you not....my boss was pissed off that the installation required me to go through the roof and run 75 feet of WIRE! "It's supposed to be wireless" he said.
He had a good point.
Right, like any of your sniveling is going to do any good. Oh sure, take them to small claims.
None of this matters. The execs and lawyers are about to take all the assets offshore. That much has been obvious from the start.
So now they violate copyright. Just what are you going to do about it that makes any difference?
Not a damn thing, that's what.
Several reasons:
1) I'm a county employee (i.e. broke)
2) I'm married.
I'm lucky to have DSL at home at all, I don't dare push it. Besides I get a certain joy in troubleshooting my ISP's problems. Usually I call and inform them of a problem, the cause and a solution before those idiots know what hit them. Not bad for a Linux hobbiest. It's fun in its own maddening way.
Here in Sandpoint, Idaho I've got DSL. The way they provide it is a bit strange. Verizon handles the transport at $32.50 per month for 768x128 but then you also have to choose from a list of about a dozen ISP's. The ISP I use gives me a static IP for only $22 per month. I think they also give me some mail boxes and http space but I do my own so I wouldn't know.
So for $54.50 per month I've got static IP and 768x128.
I do have numerous problems with my ISP as everything they do is Winblows based. They go down all too often for a variety of reasons. They are also a choke point that keeps me from full bandwidth, I know other people using other providers in the area who get faster service. Then again they're paying $5 to $20 more per month than I am.
As someone mentioned about SCO, the court will want to see that you've taken steps to protect the thing you've lost. So if you came into my court I would say "Mr. Power Company, did you know he could get free power like that just by living there? Did you attempt to purchase the property? No, then have a nice day"
"(we are after all partical physcists and not sys admins)"
No offence, but I'm just a radio tech and I can patch the linux kernel on a running machine in just a minute or two. If these are important machines (and they must be if you're that concerned with them being up to date)then maybe you should have a sysadmin taking care of them.
When you need legal work you hire a lawyer. When your car is broken you take it to a mechanic. When you need a tumor removed you see a surgeon. When you need whatever a partical physcist does done you see the partical physcist. Call me when your communication system needs work.
So when you've got computers that you rely on, and those computers need things like kernel patches, have a sysadmin come take care of it. He'll do it in less time and you can focus on your physics.
Go ahead and explain away. SCO stock is traded in New York and regulated by the SEC. Austrailia has no role in any of this.
Their government can demand explanations all they want. They may even get them. What's the expression they use there....it doesn't matter a pair of dingos kidneys.
Keep your eye on the bouncing ball. This isn't about software, OS, licenses or patents. This is all about a sucking sound in the bank vault.