But the real reason, is that Microsoft wants developers to start using these technologies as soon as possible. If they back-port it to XP, there are already millions of potential customers for software built on the foundation.
That's certainly one possibility. Another is that they are planning to take a run at getting end users on some sort of subscription based upgrade plan. That would undercut the folks using cracked versions of Windows and fits with their plans to limit access to currently "free" downloads.
Something isn't adding up because it costs considerably more to run an electric heating element (in a water heater for example) then it does to create the same amount of heat with natural gas even though electricity is 100% effecient at least from the point where it enters the heating device and gas is less than 100%.
Telemarketers probably don't call 900 numbers but I've been toying with something similar. It seems like you could take a page from the "porn dialer" people and get a number in some country where the phone company charges very high fees and is willing to pass on a cut to you for generating traffic on their lines. As long as it "looks" like a normal US # it might take the marketers a while to catch on.
think it's you. It's fairly easy to go off network.. try going to Canada some day.
Well, if you're going to Canada you've got bigger problems than just going off network, like figuring out how to get your typically fat American butt into those little tiny iglues:)
Do you have any evidence that they actually stand behind their guarantee? Most guarantees have holes big enough to drive a truck through and software vendors arn't exactly known for standing behind their products. Try reading the "$50,000 equipment warrantee" on a surge protector some time if you want an idea of what I mean.
Please show me 1 foreign citizen who has been physically detained in their home country and transported to the US to face a civil suit. It just doesn't happen.
1. Ask Slashdot how to make money on OSS 2. Summerize the responses. 3. Line up some infomercial time on the SF channel. 4. Proffit! 5. Put steps 1-4 above on a blank piece of paper. 6. Line more infomercial time. 7. More Proffit!
Every small software vendor I know has to do support. If you really don't want to do support at all you really should just get a regular job. If you just want to limit it to non-stupid support issues then provide good documentation and make sure your fees for support high enough to acomplish that.
And why I, the customer, would ever buy support from you when I can pay 70$ to RedHat and buy support for 100s of programs?
It really depends on the program and how important it is to you. I use an accounting package called SQL-Ledger. The author gives the program away under the GPL but sells the manual as well as various levels of support and custom programming. The base price for 1 year of email + phone support as well as manual updates costs $190. That's obviously out of the range of a home user but for any business with 3 or more computers that's peanuts compared to anything else out there. The one time I needed support (some custom templates of mine broke after an upgrade) I got a response the same day complete with a script that took care of my problem. Would RH support this program on their $70/year plan? I don't know but I seriously doubt they could be as thorough as the author and they definately couldn't have supplied the manual for that price.
One easy solution could be to declare that a pure software product cannot infringe on patents
The law all of this is about already attempts something similar but it's easily circumvented. Instead of patenting just the software you can patent "this software combined with a computer" and problem solved.
There are cases where software patents are valid. For example, a new, intuitive interface that cost a great deal of money develop.
What makes you think that is deserving of a patent? Are companies going to stop trying to make their interfaces better just because they can't stop others from taking their UI ideas? That hasn't stopped anyone so far. How exactly does being able to do one thing and then just sit back forever better (in terms of encouraging progress in arts and science) than being forced to keep on innovating in order to stay ahead? What do you think the state of spreadsheet software would be like today if someone had patented the whole concept of laying out data in the form of, well of a spreadsheet?
Serers will have a firewall. Home comptuers won't, but what's the point then?
And when some worm implementing this attack rides inside of the firewall on a laptop or some removable media and attacks from the inside?
Re:Silly question about Asterisk@home
on
Build Your Own PBX
·
· Score: 1
I havn't used packet8 but they look like a fairly standard voip provider so you should be able to connect to them directly with Asterisk rather than using another FXO and plugging into their box. If not, I'd personally switch to a provider that is more Asterisk friendly.
In my case, when someone leaves a message I have a text message with their caller ID info sent to my cell phone. For me it's the perfect compromise between forwarding all my calls (far too many interruptions) and missing out on calls until it's far too late to do anything about them.
You can just use a regular phone line or a voip line if you prefer. No need to talk to the phone company. Busy signals for incoming calls are the phone companies problem, you don't have to worry about that. In a simple case you might have your Asterisk box pick up on the second ring (caller ID comes in between ring 1 & 2) and ask the caller to "press 1 for Jack, 2 for Jill etc. When the caller makes a selection you then ring the phone distinctivly (ie. different kind of ring for different people) and if noone answers the call goes to voice mail.
Re:Silly question about Asterisk@home
on
Build Your Own PBX
·
· Score: 1
It looks like you'd only need 1 FXO (for your telco line) and 1 FXS for your standard phone. A Sipura SPA-3000 would provide both of those quite nicely.
One mistake a lot of small business make at first is to assume that telecommuters will use their personal home computers. Don't. It creates way too many conflicts when it comes to maintence responsibilities. The company should spring for a decent laptop (so you can bring it to the office when you need to be there) and it should remain their property.
Other possible items:
Seperate phone line or cell phone.
Decent Fax machine
Internet access, If they won't pay your entire DSL bill cosider upgrading to the best reasonably priced broadband connection you can get (preferably with a fixed IP) and ask them to pay the difference between that and the basic rate.
WiMAX will be out soon, and is a far better solution for this problem.
In case you havn't noticed the pattern yet there's ALLWAYS something better just around the corner. Then it comes out and is expensive, unreliable, and often a bit of a disappointment performance wise. Then the tech. matures and comes down in price but by the there's something even better just around the corner. Lather, rinse, repeat.
These Muni WiFi projects are ill conceived and expensive. I know this, but if I'm not in the majority in my community, I'm stuck paying for it.
Yeah, that's how democracy works. If you really think you're smarter than everyone else maybe you should run for office?
Open Office doesn't have the same feature set as MS office. Maybe you consider that "identical to", but for most people of one program (or suite) lacks feature the other one has, then it isn't as good.
Sure but in this case BOTH suites have features that are lacking in the other. By your definition neither is as good as the other. You mention that OO doesn't have an Access equivilant but does MS Office integrate seemlessly with a wide variety of external database products such as Postgress? Being able to create custom reports based on your accounting or POS DB and integrating that data into other documents rather than fighting with Crystal Reports is a godsend. If you want to colaborate with a friend who doesn't have MS Office (or has an older version) can you give him/her a copy?
Likewise with Gimp, while it clearly isn't as good of a solution for pro use, for the vast majority of users the "best" tool is the one they actually have spent some time learning.
That sounds backwards to me. At the city level anyone who really cares can have quite a bit of influence over how things are done. You can attend meetings, take your council-critters out for a beer and have a real conversation etc. If worse comes to worse a person can probably move outside of the city limits without giving up their job. At the state level you're just 1 voice in millions. I'm not crazy about cities forming monopolies on services like this but it the citizens who actually live there that should be making that decision.
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That's certainly one possibility. Another is that they are planning to take a run at getting end users on some sort of subscription based upgrade plan. That would undercut the folks using cracked versions of Windows and fits with their plans to limit access to currently "free" downloads.
Something isn't adding up because it costs considerably more to run an electric heating element (in a water heater for example) then it does to create the same amount of heat with natural gas even though electricity is 100% effecient at least from the point where it enters the heating device and gas is less than 100%.
Telemarketers probably don't call 900 numbers but I've been toying with something similar. It seems like you could take a page from the "porn dialer" people and get a number in some country where the phone company charges very high fees and is willing to pass on a cut to you for generating traffic on their lines. As long as it "looks" like a normal US # it might take the marketers a while to catch on.
Well, if you're going to Canada you've got bigger problems than just going off network, like figuring out how to get your typically fat American butt into those little tiny iglues:)
Do you have any evidence that they actually stand behind their guarantee? Most guarantees have holes big enough to drive a truck through and software vendors arn't exactly known for standing behind their products. Try reading the "$50,000 equipment warrantee" on a surge protector some time if you want an idea of what I mean.
Please show me 1 foreign citizen who has been physically detained in their home country and transported to the US to face a civil suit. It just doesn't happen.
Libel is a CIVIL matter in the US so there is no danger of anyone getting dragged off to court in the US to stand trial for it.
1. Ask Slashdot how to make money on OSS
2. Summerize the responses.
3. Line up some infomercial time on the SF channel.
4. Proffit!
5. Put steps 1-4 above on a blank piece of paper.
6. Line more infomercial time.
7. More Proffit!
Every small software vendor I know has to do support. If you really don't want to do support at all you really should just get a regular job. If you just want to limit it to non-stupid support issues then provide good documentation and make sure your fees for support high enough to acomplish that.
It really depends on the program and how important it is to you. I use an accounting package called SQL-Ledger. The author gives the program away under the GPL but sells the manual as well as various levels of support and custom programming. The base price for 1 year of email + phone support as well as manual updates costs $190. That's obviously out of the range of a home user but for any business with 3 or more computers that's peanuts compared to anything else out there. The one time I needed support (some custom templates of mine broke after an upgrade) I got a response the same day complete with a script that took care of my problem. Would RH support this program on their $70/year plan? I don't know but I seriously doubt they could be as thorough as the author and they definately couldn't have supplied the manual for that price.
The law all of this is about already attempts something similar but it's easily circumvented. Instead of patenting just the software you can patent "this software combined with a computer" and problem solved.
I'm pretty sure I could draw a picture of an apple and print it on a label if that makes the Apple folks happy
What makes you think that is deserving of a patent? Are companies going to stop trying to make their interfaces better just because they can't stop others from taking their UI ideas? That hasn't stopped anyone so far. How exactly does being able to do one thing and then just sit back forever better (in terms of encouraging progress in arts and science) than being forced to keep on innovating in order to stay ahead? What do you think the state of spreadsheet software would be like today if someone had patented the whole concept of laying out data in the form of, well of a spreadsheet?
There are plenty of small ISPs doing wireless, what makes you think this sort of thing needs to be done by the city?
I just tried this against a WinXP SP1 box running under VMware and so far it seems unaffected. Finally, something that DOESN't work under VMware:)
And when some worm implementing this attack rides inside of the firewall on a laptop or some removable media and attacks from the inside?
I havn't used packet8 but they look like a fairly standard voip provider so you should be able to connect to them directly with Asterisk rather than using another FXO and plugging into their box. If not, I'd personally switch to a provider that is more Asterisk friendly.
In my case, when someone leaves a message I have a text message with their caller ID info sent to my cell phone. For me it's the perfect compromise between forwarding all my calls (far too many interruptions) and missing out on calls until it's far too late to do anything about them.
You can just use a regular phone line or a voip line if you prefer. No need to talk to the phone company. Busy signals for incoming calls are the phone companies problem, you don't have to worry about that. In a simple case you might have your Asterisk box pick up on the second ring (caller ID comes in between ring 1 & 2) and ask the caller to "press 1 for Jack, 2 for Jill etc. When the caller makes a selection you then ring the phone distinctivly (ie. different kind of ring for different people) and if noone answers the call goes to voice mail.
It looks like you'd only need 1 FXO (for your telco line) and 1 FXS for your standard phone. A Sipura SPA-3000 would provide both of those quite nicely.
One mistake a lot of small business make at first is to assume that telecommuters will use their personal home computers. Don't. It creates way too many conflicts when it comes to maintence responsibilities. The company should spring for a decent laptop (so you can bring it to the office when you need to be there) and it should remain their property.
Other possible items:
Seperate phone line or cell phone.
Decent Fax machine
Internet access, If they won't pay your entire DSL bill cosider upgrading to the best reasonably priced broadband connection you can get (preferably with a fixed IP) and ask them to pay the difference between that and the basic rate.
In case you havn't noticed the pattern yet there's ALLWAYS something better just around the corner. Then it comes out and is expensive, unreliable, and often a bit of a disappointment performance wise. Then the tech. matures and comes down in price but by the there's something even better just around the corner. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Yeah, that's how democracy works. If you really think you're smarter than everyone else maybe you should run for office?
Sure but in this case BOTH suites have features that are lacking in the other. By your definition neither is as good as the other. You mention that OO doesn't have an Access equivilant but does MS Office integrate seemlessly with a wide variety of external database products such as Postgress? Being able to create custom reports based on your accounting or POS DB and integrating that data into other documents rather than fighting with Crystal Reports is a godsend. If you want to colaborate with a friend who doesn't have MS Office (or has an older version) can you give him/her a copy?
Likewise with Gimp, while it clearly isn't as good of a solution for pro use, for the vast majority of users the "best" tool is the one they actually have spent some time learning.
That sounds backwards to me. At the city level anyone who really cares can have quite a bit of influence over how things are done. You can attend meetings, take your council-critters out for a beer and have a real conversation etc. If worse comes to worse a person can probably move outside of the city limits without giving up their job. At the state level you're just 1 voice in millions. I'm not crazy about cities forming monopolies on services like this but it the citizens who actually live there that should be making that decision.
That's probably just as well. I've seen WindowsUpdate decide to automatically update drivers and promptly break the machine.