For me, Windows 2000 Professional has been the easiest installation I've ever done--even easier than Windows XP.
My Linux adventure: Download RedHat ISOs. Burn RedHat ISOs. Install...core dump to a screen with a page of C++ code and some message about invalid memory allocation. Download Mandrake ISOs. Burn Mandrake ISO. Install Linux. Boot to KDE. Have no idea what to do next because I don't know where to put drivers, or even where to configure TCP/IP settings...so it ends here with a pretty GUI and built in apps but nothing else.
Windows 2000 Professional upgrading from 98SE was about as lengthy but ended up working properly. Install, CD-Key, convert to NTFS, reboot 3 times, start installing device drivers, then reinstall all my applications because over 2/3 of them stopped working when the new OS came. No data was lost.
A fresh 2K Pro install can go from blank hard drive to fully operational system (all hardware installed) in an hour MAX, with 3 "user intervention required" type prompts (locale settings, computer/domain name, CD-Key), and 3 reboots. Win2K detected my DHCP server automatically, grabbed an appropriate IP address, and I went to the Internet and downloaded the proper drivers. 2 reboots later, I was up and running with the latest Detenators, Creative drivers, etc.
Maybe he had wierd hardware, or lots of it, but a 2K Pro installation is hardly a stressful or time consuming experience.
Was nVidia losing money, or just not gaining money as fast as before?
For such a powerful company, it would take a LOT to make them drop into the red. Half of all modern computers and about 1/3 to 1/4 of older ones have an nVidia chip in them...the other half have an ATI chip.
With that much of a market and user base, they've got no danger of financial difficulty.
I am definately going to remember this. It might work at a place where there are NT4 terminals that authenticate off a domain, but local administrators have unrestricted access.
I don't know about Final Fantasy, but back in the 1920s and 30s (Possibly earlier, 1910s-20s?) the United States Army Air Corps was involved in flying what amounted to airborne aircraft carriers.
These massive blimp-type airships held 3 or 4 small reconissance/fighter planes, single engine propeller models, that were docked and undocked via a loading crane and a trapeze hanger type assembly. The planes would approach the hanger, get very close vertically, stall, and cut engines, falling onto the crane, at which point they would be lifted inside. Similar to a protoss Carrier if you're a fan of StarCraft.
There were, I believe, 3 of these in operation. One over the west coast, one over the great lakes, and one over the east coast.
Two were destroyed in storms when their ballast devices malfunctioned and did not properly equalize the pressure of the lift cells. The third hit the top of a building and was also destroyed.
About 10 years ago, the Navy was able to recover a single fighter plane from one of these airborne carriers that had crashed in the pacific ocean. The problem was that the only thing holding it together was pressure, because they were so light (to keep weight down.) and it was destroyed while being brought to the surface.
National Geographic magazine had an article about 7 years ago featuring these ships. Maybe take a look.
I'm using an IBM 4019 laser printer. This printer is easily nearly as old as I am -- it was originally hooked up to some type of a 286, than an IBM PS/2, and now to my system.
The 2MB of onboard RAM isn't a lot, and it only has 3 fonts onboard, but the toner cartridge (While costing about $100) is good for between 10,000 and 15,000 pages.
I believe the printer cost $999 when new. It hasn't needed a single replacement part (not even new toner -- same toner it came with) since purchase. Of course, your mileage may vary. Older equipment seems to have been designed to last longer because it was more expensive -- you couldn't afford to replace a printer if it broke, you got it fixed, and they designed them not to break.
Now a days, everything is field replaceable -- which usually means swap the whole unit out for a working one. Cheaper that way.
What would the consequences be of Verisign, InterNIC, and the like addressing providers simply ignoring ICANN?
ICANN doesn't have physical control of any servers. They can legislate away but if the regulations they impose are so far fetched that nobody will impliment them, they've got no real power.
I don't think the USDoC would care that much, either, honestly.
This type of advertising campaign, for me, is more of a 'turn on' to the product than a commercial. It's a real life demonstration of the product's capabilities in a setting you'd use them...think infomercial cept live.
Plus, because you don't know you're being targetedly-advertised to, you're more receptive to the idea. Adds have the problem of overcoming the psycological barrier of "being sold", whereas a tourist who needs his picture taken, and also happens to have an elite new digital camera/cell phone that you want to know more about, is more effective. It leaves more of an impression.
Impression is what advertisers are after, at the bottom line.
Have you considered finding two seperate packages that save their data in a customizable format to a database?
Set both packages to save to the format the database will use. The beauty of a database is that the front end's using it don't have to be identical as long as they all talk to it the same way.
Rather than getting two identical copies of the interface for two opposite operating systems, why not get two different programs and just make sure they speak the same language to the database?
If this is even possible with commercial help-desk software.
At my high school, each user gets approximately 2 gigs of space on the central server. For 1200 students, that's 2400 GB of storage they've got somewhere...
I trust it implicitly. It's an easy way to share files with my friends at school (gave my best friend my login which he used to leave papers for me to proof read for him, trade notes across different classrooms, etc.) The only problem was when I was logged in during a server failure and my account glitched, and it crosslinked my share with another kid's share, somehow literally merging our files...one of my c++ programs had my code at the beginning and his code at the end, and a word doc appeared with two different topics in it.
I haven't used floppies since I got the share space--floppies are stolen by cheat-hungry classmates, break, are corrupted, etc.
Instead of having media readers on IDE or USB, which requires a valuable channel, or for most people like me with many pheriphials, a USB hub, put a floppy-controler multimedia reader in it's place. Capable of at the least reading SmartMedia and CF.
SM and CF cards are available in decent sizes at reasonable prices--the only comprable devices presently are USB Flash drives, which are rediculously expensive for their capicity, probably becaue they need the USB interface AND memory in such a small package.
I believe that there was/is a company that made something to the tune of a "FlashPath" adapter. You put a SmartMedia card in, and put the adapter in your floppy drive...well if the floppy drive is able to read it with the addition of a form factor changing device, how hard would it be to make it read SM and CF natively?
If one of these devices existed in semi-uniquity, I would purchase a 512MB CF card for $300 or so, or a smaller one for about half that amount, as opposed to about $500 for a half-gig USB drive, and $1k for a 1-gig one.
Either a botched upgrade to the kernel itself, or a hardware glitch (Video driver isn't right...SCSI controller craps out...drive fails while in use...NIC unseated during installation of cable...) have been the only problems I've seen.
When I had low-quality (I mean LOW quality) video hardware, I got IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL errors while playing games all the time, but with the upgrade to a brand new GeForce3, there have been no problems.
Win2K seems to have gotten software stability down pretty well.
Would it not be that difficult to assign say 2 area codes to cell phones, and have a different dialing structure for them?
My understanding is: Dialed area code sends the call to that area code's computer systems and passes the rest of the number along unused.
The target area code's system then picks the exchange and extension and routes the call there...only one operation is required on the dialing system side.
Why not make cell phones use a different dialing structure? Give them the 987 area code or something else equally memorable and presently unused, and an 8 or 9 digit phone number.
I.e. 1-987-provider(2)-geographic(2)-extension(4)
1-987-02-14-4817. Most people would probably write it 1-987-0214-4817, which is a little closer to what we're used to seeing.
With that system there are 100 * 100 * 1000 == 10 million possible numbers (I estimate.)
Solved an area code problem right there. The only issue might be the proper routing of the signal to an uplink site...Provider and Geographic would still have to be routed by the land-line, but the geographic portion could probably be routed by the cellular company, rather than the telco.
Hmm, what a good idea--It's very difficult to purchase a plain cell phone _sans_ service plan these days.
I'd like to give a cell phone to my friend as a gift...he certainly has use for it, but doesn't want a phone tied to a service plan he can't afford yet. I'd buy him a cheap phone that can be put on whatever network he'd want.
Prepaid isn't an option...cuz prepaid phones are pretty gay. They sound so "lower class" as told to me by every person I know who owns a prepaid phone. Plus, if you're going to be a light user, either get a plan where the minutes roll over each month//or// get a plan with very limited minutes anyways. You'll probably get a phone free...
I disagree about Kyocera phones being less "appealing."
When I subscribed to a cell-phone plan, I had the choice of a Nokia series phone, the kind with the internal antenna, which I felt like I was going to break, and couldn't customize very much.
Or, the choice of a Kyocera Q1900, the equally low-end model offered by another company.
It's about an inch taller and slightly heavier, and it fells MUCH less flimsy. It's long enough to go from my ear to relatively near my mouth that I am heard well on the other end, has a retractable antenna (but operates well enough with it down), switchable faceplates, Internet service, and a very verstaile contacts and SMS features.
More expensive phones like the Motorola StarTac phone are just too complicated -- it's almost like a computer, with all the features it has, and it doesn't need to be like that. Granted, it does fold up really small...But that aside, a cell phone is a cell phone, I picked mine based on reviews that said it got better signal quality.
I'll take a comparatively rectangular Kyocera phone with an antenna that can transmit from the center of a movie theatre or mall, or in the sub-basement bagage claim of an airport, rather than the best looking Nokia with a weak internal antenna that can't transmit through the wall of my own house.
Much of the sound of your own voice while speaking is not sound waves traveling back in through your ears -- they are the result of vibrations of your skull from speaking.
This will probably operate on the same principle -- a 51HZ beam at one waveform and a 50Hz at an opposite will partially cancel, and you get a 1Hz resonance inside your skull, which you hear much as you would your own voice while speaking.
I use Maple -- it's a comparatively inexpensive (I got an Academic version of it for free from a university, actually.) and it's easy to use, while still powerful.
Nobody is comparing it to Mathematica or Matlab...but it's still good.
>>>Of course, given the complexity of >>>implementing any reasonable licensing scheme >>>with commercial software, it's ultimately >>>going to be easier to adopt open-source >>>solutions like Linux.
Possibly easier to adopt but certainly not easier to support. Linux is a hassal enough when I try to support a single workstation that was going to be a Windows replacement...Plus, on new hardware, Linux seems to lag a bit or require tricks to get it working right. In addition, it's less tolerant of abuse than Windows is -- what generates kernel panics or unuseable kernels in Linux generates a bluescreen you can boot "safe mode" to repair, but Linux (to my knowledge) doesn't have a "safe mode" to fix something if you screwed it up.
Please note that I am not bashing Linux -- I see your point 100% about it being easier to roll out from a licensing standpoint, but the support nightmare and confusion of Windows users wouldn't be worth it. Linux has a ways to go before it can truely replace Windows in every environment -- but it is approaching the time when it will be a real competitor, not just a hobbiest's OS. Even in the passed year, it's come a long way.
Educational (at least publically-funded primary and secondary schools, i.e. high school) institutions frequently lack cash--so as a result, they either use pirated software (dangerous and illegal) or simply do without necessary software (i.e. half the machines don't have MS Word because they can't afford licenses for them.)
By allowing the software companies to write off software used in nonprofit institutions, they are in essence getting the same thing as if they sold the profit--only the number goes on the other end of the stack, on the debt side, and cancels a part of it. It keeps them happy (there is a simulated positive cash flow), and keeps the nonprofit organizations happy because they don't have to spend as much on licenses.
Perhaps if a large software manufactuerer were willing to announce such a policy in the United States...If you're an educational organization, catalog the number of pirated copies of Microsoft software, and send it, along with a copy of a certificate of tax excception and a signed affidavit of compliance to Microsoft Piracy...the promise being MS won't take action against you for the declared copies. Forget to declare some, and you're in trouble...
The Malaysian government has a very different stance than we have here in the US, but it seems to be one that will be beneficial for all parties involved.
There's nothing wrong with having a server with a powerful, easy to use GUI.
When you're not doing anything, the GUI isn't going to suck cycles anyway. And if you have a server in such a bad situation that you have to get up from your terminal and actually walk to its rack, *many* racks have a KVM built right in.
Displaying something on the screen would ease troubleshooting, increase response to downtime, and make it more enjoyable for server technicians.
Just because Windows has a GUI doesn't mean it doesn't also have a command line that is easily accessable and readily useable, either.
PNGs are comparatively huge, but a Progressive PNG24 that is in the 1.3MB range still loads in about 3 seconds on my system.
It had a sort of "fade in" effect, and I could actually watch the browser rendering alternate lines at different lengths to fill in the image...what exactly it was doing sort of confuses me, but however it did, for a massive file, the transfer time was negligibly more than that of a Jpeg saved in high-quality (about 80%) mode.
As for quality, I (think) PNG is a lossless compression scheme, if it even uses compression, so there should be no technical reasons the images would look worse.
I suppose the title could be talking about early adopters of Microsoft products, but that's not quite my intention.:)
The company that thinks of an idea that may be used widely later has the responsibility to patent it. The younger the technology is, the easier it is to get away with un-necessarely broad patent language, because people aren't aware of the number of uses that can fall within a patent's grounds.
My official recommendation for the situation is that tech patents granted in the last 5 years be reviewed by a panal of experts...patent lawyers from the government (FTC, department of commerce), paid consultants, and computer professionals from promonant comporations, i.e. Cisco Systems, IBM Corp, Microsoft, etc. to review their scope and reword them if necessary.
Note that it wouldn't be a party to get rid of tech patents, but to refine the existing ones as to nail down exactly what's protected and what isn't.
Bay Networks owns the patent, and as such, it is their responsibility to enforce it. Now, if they're nice, they could grant the authors if IPFilter a royalty-free license to use their intellectual property, but because IPFilter is an open source project, that is in effect granting the entire world permission to use it, and that is something Bay doesn't want. Hence, they need to stop the entire thing.
Conclusion: Yet another example of the shortcomings of the United States patent system. Sure, it's better than anything else in the world--but that doesn't mean it's perfect. Far from it, infact.
You're only a customer if you pay for a product, or have a legal license to use the product free of charge. I.e. Windows XP NFR copies...you're a customer even though you didn't pay for it.
People who are involved in trading music/movies on the Internet are, for the most point in time, either fully aware that it is copyright infringement (I hesitate to say stealing because I don't really believe it is, but it is copyright infringement) or are vaguely aware that there's something "grey" about it.
It's within the (RI/MP)AA's right to go after the individuals who are responsible for copyright violations, which they are doing--rather than try to increase prices on movies, institute DRM, etc. If a large-scale sharing user knows that if he gets caught, he'll have his bandwidth taken away, that'll be a decent deterrant. Similar to the Windows XP preview editions and Microsoft IRC spiders-anyone running Windows XP and an fserv at the same time was given a nice little message, courtesy NET SEND, warning them not to share software illegally. (I personally know two people this happened to.)
Besides, the gnutella network isn't all it's talked up to be, anyway. I run a very fast DSL connection (1536/512 up/down) but STILL can't maintain more than 3 Gnutella network connections or pull more than 2kb/sec. I get transfers on IRC over 50kb/sec and direct from web sites in the 150kb/sec range...Gnutella as long since stopped being useful to me.
Besides, everyone knows the REALLY good movies are found in IRC FServs in the distro group channels, or on FTP servers--not on Gnutella. All you'll find on Gnutella are fakes and porn.
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For me, Windows 2000 Professional has been the easiest installation I've ever done--even easier than Windows XP.
My Linux adventure: Download RedHat ISOs. Burn RedHat ISOs. Install...core dump to a screen with a page of C++ code and some message about invalid memory allocation. Download Mandrake ISOs. Burn Mandrake ISO. Install Linux. Boot to KDE. Have no idea what to do next because I don't know where to put drivers, or even where to configure TCP/IP settings...so it ends here with a pretty GUI and built in apps but nothing else.
Windows 2000 Professional upgrading from 98SE was about as lengthy but ended up working properly. Install, CD-Key, convert to NTFS, reboot 3 times, start installing device drivers, then reinstall all my applications because over 2/3 of them stopped working when the new OS came. No data was lost.
A fresh 2K Pro install can go from blank hard drive to fully operational system (all hardware installed) in an hour MAX, with 3 "user intervention required" type prompts (locale settings, computer/domain name, CD-Key), and 3 reboots. Win2K detected my DHCP server automatically, grabbed an appropriate IP address, and I went to the Internet and downloaded the proper drivers. 2 reboots later, I was up and running with the latest Detenators, Creative drivers, etc.
Maybe he had wierd hardware, or lots of it, but a 2K Pro installation is hardly a stressful or time consuming experience.
Was nVidia losing money, or just not gaining money as fast as before?
For such a powerful company, it would take a LOT to make them drop into the red. Half of all modern computers and about 1/3 to 1/4 of older ones have an nVidia chip in them...the other half have an ATI chip.
With that much of a market and user base, they've got no danger of financial difficulty.
I am definately going to remember this. It might work at a place where there are NT4 terminals that authenticate off a domain, but local administrators have unrestricted access.
I don't know about Final Fantasy, but back in the 1920s and 30s (Possibly earlier, 1910s-20s?) the United States Army Air Corps was involved in flying what amounted to airborne aircraft carriers.
These massive blimp-type airships held 3 or 4 small reconissance/fighter planes, single engine propeller models, that were docked and undocked via a loading crane and a trapeze hanger type assembly. The planes would approach the hanger, get very close vertically, stall, and cut engines, falling onto the crane, at which point they would be lifted inside. Similar to a protoss Carrier if you're a fan of StarCraft.
There were, I believe, 3 of these in operation. One over the west coast, one over the great lakes, and one over the east coast.
Two were destroyed in storms when their ballast devices malfunctioned and did not properly equalize the pressure of the lift cells. The third hit the top of a building and was also destroyed.
About 10 years ago, the Navy was able to recover a single fighter plane from one of these airborne carriers that had crashed in the pacific ocean. The problem was that the only thing holding it together was pressure, because they were so light (to keep weight down.) and it was destroyed while being brought to the surface.
National Geographic magazine had an article about 7 years ago featuring these ships. Maybe take a look.
I'm using an IBM 4019 laser printer. This printer is easily nearly as old as I am -- it was originally hooked up to some type of a 286, than an IBM PS/2, and now to my system.
The 2MB of onboard RAM isn't a lot, and it only has 3 fonts onboard, but the toner cartridge (While costing about $100) is good for between 10,000 and 15,000 pages.
I believe the printer cost $999 when new. It hasn't needed a single replacement part (not even new toner -- same toner it came with) since purchase. Of course, your mileage may vary. Older equipment seems to have been designed to last longer because it was more expensive -- you couldn't afford to replace a printer if it broke, you got it fixed, and they designed them not to break.
Now a days, everything is field replaceable -- which usually means swap the whole unit out for a working one. Cheaper that way.
What would the consequences be of Verisign, InterNIC, and the like addressing providers simply ignoring ICANN?
ICANN doesn't have physical control of any servers. They can legislate away but if the regulations they impose are so far fetched that nobody will impliment them, they've got no real power.
I don't think the USDoC would care that much, either, honestly.
This type of advertising campaign, for me, is more of a 'turn on' to the product than a commercial. It's a real life demonstration of the product's capabilities in a setting you'd use them...think infomercial cept live.
Plus, because you don't know you're being targetedly-advertised to, you're more receptive to the idea. Adds have the problem of overcoming the psycological barrier of "being sold", whereas a tourist who needs his picture taken, and also happens to have an elite new digital camera/cell phone that you want to know more about, is more effective. It leaves more of an impression.
Impression is what advertisers are after, at the bottom line.
Seriously.
Have you considered finding two seperate packages that save their data in a customizable format to a database?
Set both packages to save to the format the database will use. The beauty of a database is that the front end's using it don't have to be identical as long as they all talk to it the same way.
Rather than getting two identical copies of the interface for two opposite operating systems, why not get two different programs and just make sure they speak the same language to the database?
If this is even possible with commercial help-desk software.
At my high school, each user gets approximately 2 gigs of space on the central server. For 1200 students, that's 2400 GB of storage they've got somewhere...
I trust it implicitly. It's an easy way to share files with my friends at school (gave my best friend my login which he used to leave papers for me to proof read for him, trade notes across different classrooms, etc.) The only problem was when I was logged in during a server failure and my account glitched, and it crosslinked my share with another kid's share, somehow literally merging our files...one of my c++ programs had my code at the beginning and his code at the end, and a word doc appeared with two different topics in it.
I haven't used floppies since I got the share space--floppies are stolen by cheat-hungry classmates, break, are corrupted, etc.
Instead of having media readers on IDE or USB, which requires a valuable channel, or for most people like me with many pheriphials, a USB hub, put a floppy-controler multimedia reader in it's place. Capable of at the least reading SmartMedia and CF.
SM and CF cards are available in decent sizes at reasonable prices--the only comprable devices presently are USB Flash drives, which are rediculously expensive for their capicity, probably becaue they need the USB interface AND memory in such a small package.
I believe that there was/is a company that made something to the tune of a "FlashPath" adapter. You put a SmartMedia card in, and put the adapter in your floppy drive...well if the floppy drive is able to read it with the addition of a form factor changing device, how hard would it be to make it read SM and CF natively?
If one of these devices existed in semi-uniquity, I would purchase a 512MB CF card for $300 or so, or a smaller one for about half that amount, as opposed to about $500 for a half-gig USB drive, and $1k for a 1-gig one.
Either a botched upgrade to the kernel itself, or a hardware glitch (Video driver isn't right...SCSI controller craps out...drive fails while in use...NIC unseated during installation of cable...) have been the only problems I've seen.
When I had low-quality (I mean LOW quality) video hardware, I got IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL errors while playing games all the time, but with the upgrade to a brand new GeForce3, there have been no problems.
Win2K seems to have gotten software stability down pretty well.
Would it not be that difficult to assign say 2 area codes to cell phones, and have a different dialing structure for them?
My understanding is: Dialed area code sends the call to that area code's computer systems and passes the rest of the number along unused.
The target area code's system then picks the exchange and extension and routes the call there...only one operation is required on the dialing system side.
Why not make cell phones use a different dialing structure? Give them the 987 area code or something else equally memorable and presently unused, and an 8 or 9 digit phone number.
I.e. 1-987-provider(2)-geographic(2)-extension(4)
1-987-02-14-4817. Most people would probably write it 1-987-0214-4817, which is a little closer to what we're used to seeing.
With that system there are 100 * 100 * 1000 == 10 million possible numbers (I estimate.)
Solved an area code problem right there. The only issue might be the proper routing of the signal to an uplink site...Provider and Geographic would still have to be routed by the land-line, but the geographic portion could probably be routed by the cellular company, rather than the telco.
Hmm, what a good idea--It's very difficult to purchase a plain cell phone _sans_ service plan these days.
//or// get a plan with very limited minutes anyways. You'll probably get a phone free...
I'd like to give a cell phone to my friend as a gift...he certainly has use for it, but doesn't want a phone tied to a service plan he can't afford yet. I'd buy him a cheap phone that can be put on whatever network he'd want.
Prepaid isn't an option...cuz prepaid phones are pretty gay. They sound so "lower class" as told to me by every person I know who owns a prepaid phone. Plus, if you're going to be a light user, either get a plan where the minutes roll over each month
I disagree about Kyocera phones being less "appealing."
When I subscribed to a cell-phone plan, I had the choice of a Nokia series phone, the kind with the internal antenna, which I felt like I was going to break, and couldn't customize very much.
Or, the choice of a Kyocera Q1900, the equally low-end model offered by another company.
It's about an inch taller and slightly heavier, and it fells MUCH less flimsy. It's long enough to go from my ear to relatively near my mouth that I am heard well on the other end, has a retractable antenna (but operates well enough with it down), switchable faceplates, Internet service, and a very verstaile contacts and SMS features.
More expensive phones like the Motorola StarTac phone are just too complicated -- it's almost like a computer, with all the features it has, and it doesn't need to be like that. Granted, it does fold up really small...But that aside, a cell phone is a cell phone, I picked mine based on reviews that said it got better signal quality.
I'll take a comparatively rectangular Kyocera phone with an antenna that can transmit from the center of a movie theatre or mall, or in the sub-basement bagage claim of an airport, rather than the best looking Nokia with a weak internal antenna that can't transmit through the wall of my own house.
Much of the sound of your own voice while speaking is not sound waves traveling back in through your ears -- they are the result of vibrations of your skull from speaking.
This will probably operate on the same principle -- a 51HZ beam at one waveform and a 50Hz at an opposite will partially cancel, and you get a 1Hz resonance inside your skull, which you hear much as you would your own voice while speaking.
I use Maple -- it's a comparatively inexpensive (I got an Academic version of it for free from a university, actually.) and it's easy to use, while still powerful.
Nobody is comparing it to Mathematica or Matlab...but it's still good.
>>>Of course, given the complexity of >>>implementing any reasonable licensing scheme >>>with commercial software, it's ultimately >>>going to be easier to adopt open-source >>>solutions like Linux.
Possibly easier to adopt but certainly not easier to support. Linux is a hassal enough when I try to support a single workstation that was going to be a Windows replacement...Plus, on new hardware, Linux seems to lag a bit or require tricks to get it working right. In addition, it's less tolerant of abuse than Windows is -- what generates kernel panics or unuseable kernels in Linux generates a bluescreen you can boot "safe mode" to repair, but Linux (to my knowledge) doesn't have a "safe mode" to fix something if you screwed it up.
Please note that I am not bashing Linux -- I see your point 100% about it being easier to roll out from a licensing standpoint, but the support nightmare and confusion of Windows users wouldn't be worth it. Linux has a ways to go before it can truely replace Windows in every environment -- but it is approaching the time when it will be a real competitor, not just a hobbiest's OS. Even in the passed year, it's come a long way.
Educational (at least publically-funded primary and secondary schools, i.e. high school) institutions frequently lack cash--so as a result, they either use pirated software (dangerous and illegal) or simply do without necessary software (i.e. half the machines don't have MS Word because they can't afford licenses for them.)
By allowing the software companies to write off software used in nonprofit institutions, they are in essence getting the same thing as if they sold the profit--only the number goes on the other end of the stack, on the debt side, and cancels a part of it. It keeps them happy (there is a simulated positive cash flow), and keeps the nonprofit organizations happy because they don't have to spend as much on licenses.
Perhaps if a large software manufactuerer were willing to announce such a policy in the United States...If you're an educational organization, catalog the number of pirated copies of Microsoft software, and send it, along with a copy of a certificate of tax excception and a signed affidavit of compliance to Microsoft Piracy...the promise being MS won't take action against you for the declared copies. Forget to declare some, and you're in trouble...
The Malaysian government has a very different stance than we have here in the US, but it seems to be one that will be beneficial for all parties involved.
There's nothing wrong with having a server with a powerful, easy to use GUI.
When you're not doing anything, the GUI isn't going to suck cycles anyway. And if you have a server in such a bad situation that you have to get up from your terminal and actually walk to its rack, *many* racks have a KVM built right in.
Displaying something on the screen would ease troubleshooting, increase response to downtime, and make it more enjoyable for server technicians.
Just because Windows has a GUI doesn't mean it doesn't also have a command line that is easily accessable and readily useable, either.
PNGs are comparatively huge, but a Progressive PNG24 that is in the 1.3MB range still loads in about 3 seconds on my system.
It had a sort of "fade in" effect, and I could actually watch the browser rendering alternate lines at different lengths to fill in the image...what exactly it was doing sort of confuses me, but however it did, for a massive file, the transfer time was negligibly more than that of a Jpeg saved in high-quality (about 80%) mode.
As for quality, I (think) PNG is a lossless compression scheme, if it even uses compression, so there should be no technical reasons the images would look worse.
Isn't the Intel processor called Xeon not XeNon?
I think there's an extra N in there---but I'm not sure.
HOW, exactly, is my post redundant, when it was the FIRST POST IN THE THREAD that actually said anything MEANINGFUL?
Moderators need to moderate starting with OLDEST FIRST, not newest first.
I suppose the title could be talking about early adopters of Microsoft products, but that's not quite my intention. :)
The company that thinks of an idea that may be used widely later has the responsibility to patent it. The younger the technology is, the easier it is to get away with un-necessarely broad patent language, because people aren't aware of the number of uses that can fall within a patent's grounds.
My official recommendation for the situation is that tech patents granted in the last 5 years be reviewed by a panal of experts...patent lawyers from the government (FTC, department of commerce), paid consultants, and computer professionals from promonant comporations, i.e. Cisco Systems, IBM Corp, Microsoft, etc. to review their scope and reword them if necessary.
Note that it wouldn't be a party to get rid of tech patents, but to refine the existing ones as to nail down exactly what's protected and what isn't.
Bay Networks owns the patent, and as such, it is their responsibility to enforce it. Now, if they're nice, they could grant the authors if IPFilter a royalty-free license to use their intellectual property, but because IPFilter is an open source project, that is in effect granting the entire world permission to use it, and that is something Bay doesn't want. Hence, they need to stop the entire thing.
Conclusion: Yet another example of the shortcomings of the United States patent system. Sure, it's better than anything else in the world--but that doesn't mean it's perfect. Far from it, infact.
You're only a customer if you pay for a product, or have a legal license to use the product free of charge. I.e. Windows XP NFR copies...you're a customer even though you didn't pay for it.
People who are involved in trading music/movies on the Internet are, for the most point in time, either fully aware that it is copyright infringement (I hesitate to say stealing because I don't really believe it is, but it is copyright infringement) or are vaguely aware that there's something "grey" about it.
It's within the (RI/MP)AA's right to go after the individuals who are responsible for copyright violations, which they are doing--rather than try to increase prices on movies, institute DRM, etc. If a large-scale sharing user knows that if he gets caught, he'll have his bandwidth taken away, that'll be a decent deterrant. Similar to the Windows XP preview editions and Microsoft IRC spiders-anyone running Windows XP and an fserv at the same time was given a nice little message, courtesy NET SEND, warning them not to share software illegally. (I personally know two people this happened to.)
Besides, the gnutella network isn't all it's talked up to be, anyway. I run a very fast DSL connection (1536/512 up/down) but STILL can't maintain more than 3 Gnutella network connections or pull more than 2kb/sec. I get transfers on IRC over 50kb/sec and direct from web sites in the 150kb/sec range...Gnutella as long since stopped being useful to me.
Besides, everyone knows the REALLY good movies are found in IRC FServs in the distro group channels, or on FTP servers--not on Gnutella. All you'll find on Gnutella are fakes and porn.
Tinfoil wrapped around the reciever should do a decent job of blocking/scrambling the signal so that it's meaningless.
For bonus points, wrap it, put inside a metal box, and wrap again.
GPS isn't strong, but you have to be thorough in blocking the signals, because there's 3 or more satellites in contact with it at all times.