Well, A.C., it's pretty clear that you "missed out" on the point here.
Of course the Internet is far more capable overall than BBSes, because of the infrastructure and speed. But some of the functionality was certainly lost in the translation.
BBS software like Wildcat! (the program I used) made it relatively easy to set up a full community, with message boards, file areas, chat, announcements, and a consistent navigation/menu system. Most Web sites still don't offer it all, and it's more difficult to find a single software package that handles the whole task.
Speed? Many of us are still using modems (no cable TV where I live, and I'm too far from a CO for DSL). That means my access speed to the Internet is the same as it is to a BBS. All of the overhead of HTML/PPP/FTP... is cumulative. I can pull up the information I'm looking for in a good text-based BBS faster than a Web site laden with useless navigational graphics.
The problem, of course, is that the Internet is always a local call. That is what spelled the death of the dialup BBS.
I see a whole lot of people complaining that their favorite BBS isn't on the list. Don't bitch at the guy because he worked to build a list of 70,000 BBSs and yours isn't there. Help him out!
There's an email link (bbslist@textfiles.com) for sending updates. I just sent him an email telling him about two BBSs I used to run that aren't on the list. Why don't y'all do the same?
My first reaction to this was, "this is the same IBM my father used to work for?" I remember Dad coming home from work one day in the early 70s and announcing that he was now going to be allowed to wear light blue shirts - they didn't have to be white anymore! A very conservative company, driven by the numbers.
Now, think about this little campaign. Ad space is expensive. It costs money to print up the ads, and to place them on billboards, park benches, bus stops, or whereever. By fining them $500, the city of San Francisco has effectively put a price on sidewalk advertising, and it's bloody cheap. The stencil couldn't have cost too much to make, and they can do a lot of sidewalks with it.
Another poster compared this with SPAM. I can see the connection, I suppose, but if IBM pays the $500 fine, then that will cover the cleanup expenses, and I have a feeling they budgeted for it all along.
So, this was actually a carefully thought-out strategy, focused on the numbers and free publicity, with a light-hearted twist to keep it different. Anyone remember the IBM commercials with the cast of M*A*S*H (for the PS/2, IIRC)? We're definitely looking at the same company!
tarsi210 wrote, " They're not likely to please the audiophile in your midst for hi-fi applications, and anyone watching something like Matrix on them should be shot."
How, exactly, does one watch the Matrix on a speaker?
Sheldon wrote, "Don't you think you are confusing some things?"
No. But perhaps I didn't explain it well enough for you to understand.
"Microsoft essentially will have two embedded OS systems to sell. Whistler/XP embedded, and WinCE."
True, but if you actually read my message, I'm referring mostly to the vast majority of devices that have no use for a fancy GUI, so we're talking about WinCE here. From my point-of-view, an embedded system is just a component of the product-- and a relatively invisible one at that. Everyone knows there's some kind of pump moving refrigerant around in your fridge, but nobody really cares what make or model it is. Unless the GUI is the focal point of the device (as in a new-generation cellphone or a PDA), why put in WinXP/embedded and have the higher cost, slower boot time, increased memory, and so forth?
"WinCE is intended for small devices with a simple GUI interface. So your point #2 conflicts with your later claim that we're talking about CE."
No conflict at all. I said that the GUI is a big part of the selling point of Windows. If you're using a non-GUI environment, this advantage evaporates. Where's the conflict in that?
"I see anti-Microsoft people do this a lot, where they take all the negatives of six different products and combine them to prove Microsoft sucks."
I see blindly pro-Microsoft people do this a lot, where they don't bother to read the arguments to even determine whether the writer is pro or con. I didn't say that Microsoft sucks. I said that the factors that make Microsoft Windows a success on the desktop don't contribute to making it a success as an embedded system.
There are some Microsoft products I really like. I think VB is a fantastic UI prototyping tool, faster than any other I've used. Microsoft Word (when you turn off the "we know what you really wanted" features) may be the greatest word processor of all time. But I find their business tactics reprehensible and I think Windows is not sufficiently stable to be my operating system of choice. Does this make me an anti-Microsoft person? If so, it makes me one with a well-considered opinion based on over 20 years of experience working with the company and its products.
enkeller wrote, "You're missing the point about the Microsoft advantage in my opinion... Microsoft is a household name."
Remember the topic. We're talking about embedded systems here. Sure, a PDA might say "Made for Windows CE" on it, but that's a tiny fraction of the market. Quick, what OS kernel powers the antilock brakes in your car? Your fancy calculator watch? The power supply cycling for the burn-in ovens at the chip factory? Your synthesizer keyboard? Your multi-line caller-ID 100-number-memory desk phone? Your MP3 player?
How many makers of that kind of device are going to pay an extra license fee just to put Microsoft's logo on the box? Who cares what OS is inside, as long as it works? (And I hope nobody ever puts Microsoft Windows CE inside a car engine or breaks, or "Windows crashed" will have a whole new meaning)
What are Microsoft's big advantages for desktop computering, and how do they apply to embedded computing?
Lots of applications: Who cares, in an embedded environment? Typically, the actual code that's running is all custom.
Cool easy-to-learn GUI: There is no GUI in many (most?) embedded environments. A few pushbuttons and possibly a small display. No advantage for Microsoft here.
Widespread deployment (compatibility): There's nothing to be compatible with in an embedded device except possibly network standards, in which Linux is more standards-compliant anyway.
Add in overall OS stability (Linux beats Windows by a mile) and the ability to customize the kernel to fit your particular embedded application, and I don't see the fit of WinCE in any non-GUI embedded environment. Linux, OTOH, is a great match. I wish I'd had it when I was doing embedded realtime code and had to roll my own mini-OS.
supabeast wrote, "Unstable OSs are pretty much a thing of the past with Windows on the PC."
I guess you don't put much of a load on your Windows system, then. I've been developing code, Web sites, and other goodies under Win2K for almost a year, and while it's a lot more stable than Win98 (which crashes or must be rebooted at least once a day under heavy use), there's no stinking way you could call it "stable."
A stable OS is one that doesn't get flaky when an application (like Microsoft Internet Explorer, for example) crashes and burns. A stable OS is one where a bug in the program I'm developing doesn't require me to remove the batteries in my notebook computer in order to un-crowbar it (I've had Netscape do this to Win2K also).
Say what you wish about the Xbox. I don't know enough about its architecture to have an opinion. But if you say, "Stability is no longer an issue" referring to Windows, you must not be using the same OS the rest of us are.
I think it's great that he recognizes who is and who isn't significant competition for RedHat.
Let's do the math here. Let's say he finds a RedHat competitor that makes $10M per year selling a Linux distro. Through targeted, aggressive marketing, he takes away half their business. He's just increased RedHat's sales by 5%.
Now let's say he targets Microsoft. If he takes away just a tiny fraction of Microsoft's business, he can increase RedHat by 100% or more.
Never target the little competitors (unless you're the big guy and you want to prevent them from challenging you). Always target the big guys. As Willy Sutton might say-- that's where the money is.
Having some mathematical training, I learned that the definition of "fact" is not, in fact (!), dependent on whether I believe it. Or whether anyone else believes it, for that matter.
He says things like, "The individuals who control the largest amount of property are without exception corporations", and then expects us to believe anything else he says. The largest private landowner in the U.S. is an individual named Ted Turner, not a corporation. I think that might constitute an exception.
The whole rant is based on the jaded belief that corporations are big bad things and people are small good things. The little family business down the street might well be a corporation. Are they bad? That big developer who destroyed your whole neighborhood might well just be an individual. Is he good?
There are shades of gray. There are good people with money and bad people without money. Deal with it!
Why is it that the American dream is to start a business and make money, but when you do it you've "sold out" and become an "evil corporation"?
This site omits what I thought was one of Apple's best puns.
When I got my first Apple///, it came with a pre-release version of their new operating system. On the front cover of the manual, it was plainly labeled as the Sophisticated Operating System, or Apple SOS.
I still have that manual, and a couple of Apple///s, too.
Basically what you're saying is that if you leave your keyring on your main hard drive, it's as secure as your passphrase. This has been a recurring theme in computing since the first password-protected login.
People write down passwords, or tell them to techs, or choose stupid ones. A properly-chosen passphrase isn't going to fall to a dictionary attack. If it's long enough, and uses enough tricks (odd punctuation and capitalization, intentional misspellings, non-words...), then it should do the trick. Why do I say that when we know perfectly well that it's still crackable?
A security system offers inconvenience to those attempting to bypass it. Put together a big parallel processing array, and use up a whole bunch of CPU cycles, and you could crack anything encrypted on my system, but who cares? Who's going to go to that much trouble for my piddly little secrets?
Face it, we don't need Tempest shielding and floppies stored in safes for our personal information. Businesses may be a different story, but it still depends on the type of secret and the size of the business.
It's true that you have always been able to buy a Windows-less computer, but that's not the whole picture.
One of the defining points of the monopoly issue is that any computer company that wished to ship Windows on any of its systems was, at one time, told that they could pay a very high price (much higher than their competitors), or they could pay a "per computer shipped" fee that was much lower. The second option meant that they paid for Windows whether it was on the computer or not!
This was one of the (many) factors that killed OS/2. IBM realized that they were paying for Windows whether they shipped it or not, but if they didn't use that license, they either had to price their computers so much higher than competitors that it would badly hurt sales, or they'd have to stop offering Windows at all, which would have just about killed their PC business.
The suit, therefore, isn't about saying, "you had to buy Windows." It's about saying, "you had to pay for Windows whether you bought it or not."
I set up a network that had Macintoshes talking to Novell Netware over 10 years ago, and ran it for quite some time. We used AppleTalk then, and I have no idea whether they've replaced it with TCP/IP by now (for many good reasons).
Yes, there were some issues. We had to install an AppleTalk card in a Novell server and configure it. Took me a few hours. The Win3.x machines we were running at the time couldn't deal with the Mac filenames. It put a bit of a load on the server.
For goodness' sake, you're talking about three Macs here! I think the benefits of providing those Macs email, filesharing and printer sharing across the network (yes, we shared Apple LaserWriters between Wintel and Mac machines) far outweigh a few hours' work to hook it up.
Your net admins probably know little about Macs and just don't want to put in the effort. Tell them it really isn't a big deal.
I fail to understand the hype about this "new" peer-to-peer stuff. In 1983/84, I set up a group of Apollo workstations. There was no server. Symbolic links allowed the hard disks on the workstations to act like one big disk, so everything appeared local to everyone. There was no server. That was over 17 years ago. What's "new" about it?
Oh, goody. PCs won't be "second-class citizens" anymore. Hmm. In 1996, the PCs (mostly Pentiums, but including a 486 or two) in my small company were all connected to the net. One of the Win95 machines ran an IRC server. Linux boxes ran FTP and various Java client and server apps and bots. The only tasks reserved for the "big servers" (Suns) were DNS, RealAudio (which I later ran from a Pentium as well), and the main Web site. Everything else was distributed, and mostly to PCs.
So it's not new, and it's not innovative. What's the big deal?
I don't see any real ethical problem for Joe User to have all the pirated apps he wants, but businesses really ought to pay for their software.
So, in other words, it's okay for individuals to steal, but not corporations? Sheesh. That's pathetic.
It's also pathetic (and ridiculous) to assert that corporations should pay because they have all the money. Obviously, you've never incorporated a business. When I was running my first incorporated startup, I and my three employees didn't have a whole lot of money, either. It got better as the company grew, but I don't feel the laws should be different for a person that files incorporation papers than for the one who operates as a sole proprietorship. Either something's legal, or it's not.
There's a difference between having a problem with Microsoft enforcing license agreements (which I don't), having a problem with the licenses in the first place (which I do), and having a problem with how they're enforcing the licenses (which I also do).
It's great to hear that some of the Linux-related companies are not suffering from that dot-com disease that says, "profits don't matter -- only market share and total sales." It's like the Japanese semiconductor companies in the 1980's ("we may lose a nickel on each chip, but we'll make it up in volume").
Unfortunately, as these companies crash and burn, they're hurting other businesses in the market, too. Take servers and routers. If you're looking to expand your business right now, are you going to buy new equipment from VA Linux and Cisco when you can get close-to-new stuff from bankruptcy auctions at dot-coms for pennies on the dollar? Nope.
It's going to take a while for the ripples to die out from all of the dead companies run by people who didn't understand the basic tenets of profit and loss.
Will somebody please explain this "all your base are belong to us" thing? I've seen it all over/. and even on Foxtrot, but I haven't yet talked to anyone who can tell me where the heck it came from.
My question is, what does this do to every other lawsuit claiming a website, movie, video game or song lead someone to a violent act?
I see a difference between a video game that portrays violence in an abstract (albeit realistic) setting, and a Web site that active encourages murder. If the owners of the site had offered a nickel for each doctor killed, that would be considered "murder for hire," which is quite illegal. They asked for the doctors to be murdered, but left out the nickel.
Much fuss is made about the search engines needing to "fix the problem" of not being able to index sites like microsoft.com because the pages are dynamically generated. Is this really a problem?
Microsoft (or whatever over dynamic site you wish to pick) chose to make their content unindexable. Don't try to make it someone else's problem. Let people who use the search engines find third-party information instead. If the site designers wanted their site in the search engines, it would be there. Many of the sites built with ColdFusion or ASP contain basically static information anyway, and making them dynamic just reduces your traffic.
Sites like Slashdot are dynamic. A search engine can't be expected to keep up with something that changes every 30 seconds. However, making all of the archives static HTML allows them to be searchable by the engines and takes some load off the server, to boot.
I went for a "best of both worlds" approach on my personal site by writing a perl site generator. Each time I update the site, I re-run the site generator, which takes about a minute. My server carries a lighter load, but I still have "dynamic" links to related articles and such that the site generator builds.
There are a lot of variables! The software manuals I wrote were strictly "work for hire." It was part of my job and I got my regular salary.
The first two independent books I wrote were self-published, meaning I had to do everything: writing, editing, illustrating, selecting paper and cover stock, working with the printer, indexing, cover art, marketing, promotion, getting an ISBN... I make a lot more money per book on those, but it devours much too much time.
My most recent book was a straight royalty basis with a publisher. If you need cash up-front (an advance), then expect your royalty to be smaller. If you're willing to share in the risk, they'll pay better. I was asking for more than they wanted to pay, and we finally agreed on a minimum quantity. Until that many are sold, I get a standard royalty. After tha minimum, my royalty goes up. It was nice having someone else take care of all the details, although the book didn't look exactly as I would have done it myself.
The bottom line is: if you've done some writing before (tech writing, white papers, articles...), you'll have some idea how long it takes you. Figure out the number of hours you're probably going to put in, divide into what they're offering, and see if it makes you happy.
Don't forget to ask who creates the index (a high-quality index can easily take a couple of days of work), who does screen shots and illustrations (if any), who formats the text, how many free "author copies" you get (ask for lots, since it doesn't cost them much and you can always sell some of them), whether they'll guarantee minimum royalties (in case the book doesn't sell well), and their marketing plan (see what they're going to spend on peddling the book).
Watch out for penalties on missed deadlines, percentage royalties with no minimum (if they sell books cheap, you hardly make anything), royalties based on "net" sales (you have no control over their marketing costs).
There appear to be some very valid points here. I make a point of switching back-and-forth between the most liberal radio station in my area and the most conservative, deliberately exposing myself to both points of view (the middle ground comes from other media). The two points the author appears to have missed are:
Moderation systems like Slashdot's are radically different from net nanny filtering because users have the opportunity to configure how they apply, not just the filtering criteria. I can choose to ignore moderation entirely, showing all posts, or to set various cutoff points and sorting methods. I enjoy seeing opposing points of view, but appreciate methods for filtering out anonymous cowards and some trolls (good trolling is humorous, insightful, and enjoyable to read).
Second, the homogenization of news is hardly something new. If I choose to read Windows NT Magazine instead of Linux Journal, I'm not going to read much pro-Linux information, am I? We already have a lot of control over what we see, and the changes brought by the customization of places like My Yahoo or Slashdot are parts of a long-standing trend, not something new and revolutionary.
I'd love to find a notebook that can replace my old one. It has two things that you just don't see anymore:
A VHS composite video output. This lets you plug it directly into a television set to put on a presentation for a small group, and it's great for playing games with the whole family.
Two serial ports. I know. I'm probably the only one that has a use for two serial ports plus the modem. Maybe one of these days the manufacturers of the realtime equipment my wife and I use will switch to USB, but they haven't yet.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, A.C., it's pretty clear that you "missed out" on the point here.
Of course the Internet is far more capable overall than BBSes, because of the infrastructure and speed. But some of the functionality was certainly lost in the translation.
BBS software like Wildcat! (the program I used) made it relatively easy to set up a full community, with message boards, file areas, chat, announcements, and a consistent navigation/menu system. Most Web sites still don't offer it all, and it's more difficult to find a single software package that handles the whole task.
Speed? Many of us are still using modems (no cable TV where I live, and I'm too far from a CO for DSL). That means my access speed to the Internet is the same as it is to a BBS. All of the overhead of HTML/PPP/FTP... is cumulative. I can pull up the information I'm looking for in a good text-based BBS faster than a Web site laden with useless navigational graphics.
The problem, of course, is that the Internet is always a local call. That is what spelled the death of the dialup BBS.
I see a whole lot of people complaining that their favorite BBS isn't on the list. Don't bitch at the guy because he worked to build a list of 70,000 BBSs and yours isn't there. Help him out!
There's an email link (bbslist@textfiles.com) for sending updates. I just sent him an email telling him about two BBSs I used to run that aren't on the list. Why don't y'all do the same?
motorsabbath wrote, "I wonder why I got -1 trolled for that"
Beats me, but I just metamodded the two guys who "troll -1"ed you as "unfair."
My first reaction to this was, "this is the same IBM my father used to work for?" I remember Dad coming home from work one day in the early 70s and announcing that he was now going to be allowed to wear light blue shirts - they didn't have to be white anymore! A very conservative company, driven by the numbers.
Now, think about this little campaign. Ad space is expensive. It costs money to print up the ads, and to place them on billboards, park benches, bus stops, or whereever. By fining them $500, the city of San Francisco has effectively put a price on sidewalk advertising, and it's bloody cheap. The stencil couldn't have cost too much to make, and they can do a lot of sidewalks with it.
Another poster compared this with SPAM. I can see the connection, I suppose, but if IBM pays the $500 fine, then that will cover the cleanup expenses, and I have a feeling they budgeted for it all along.
So, this was actually a carefully thought-out strategy, focused on the numbers and free publicity, with a light-hearted twist to keep it different. Anyone remember the IBM commercials with the cast of M*A*S*H (for the PS/2, IIRC)? We're definitely looking at the same company!
tarsi210 wrote, " They're not likely to please the audiophile in your midst for hi-fi applications, and anyone watching something like Matrix on them should be shot."
How, exactly, does one watch the Matrix on a speaker?
Sheldon wrote, "Don't you think you are confusing some things?"
No. But perhaps I didn't explain it well enough for you to understand.
"Microsoft essentially will have two embedded OS systems to sell. Whistler/XP embedded, and WinCE."
True, but if you actually read my message, I'm referring mostly to the vast majority of devices that have no use for a fancy GUI, so we're talking about WinCE here. From my point-of-view, an embedded system is just a component of the product-- and a relatively invisible one at that. Everyone knows there's some kind of pump moving refrigerant around in your fridge, but nobody really cares what make or model it is. Unless the GUI is the focal point of the device (as in a new-generation cellphone or a PDA), why put in WinXP/embedded and have the higher cost, slower boot time, increased memory, and so forth?
"WinCE is intended for small devices with a simple GUI interface. So your point #2 conflicts with your later claim that we're talking about CE."
No conflict at all. I said that the GUI is a big part of the selling point of Windows. If you're using a non-GUI environment, this advantage evaporates. Where's the conflict in that?
"I see anti-Microsoft people do this a lot, where they take all the negatives of six different products and combine them to prove Microsoft sucks."
I see blindly pro-Microsoft people do this a lot, where they don't bother to read the arguments to even determine whether the writer is pro or con. I didn't say that Microsoft sucks. I said that the factors that make Microsoft Windows a success on the desktop don't contribute to making it a success as an embedded system.
There are some Microsoft products I really like. I think VB is a fantastic UI prototyping tool, faster than any other I've used. Microsoft Word (when you turn off the "we know what you really wanted" features) may be the greatest word processor of all time. But I find their business tactics reprehensible and I think Windows is not sufficiently stable to be my operating system of choice. Does this make me an anti-Microsoft person? If so, it makes me one with a well-considered opinion based on over 20 years of experience working with the company and its products.
enkeller wrote, "You're missing the point about the Microsoft advantage in my opinion ... Microsoft is a household name."
Remember the topic. We're talking about embedded systems here. Sure, a PDA might say "Made for Windows CE" on it, but that's a tiny fraction of the market. Quick, what OS kernel powers the antilock brakes in your car? Your fancy calculator watch? The power supply cycling for the burn-in ovens at the chip factory? Your synthesizer keyboard? Your multi-line caller-ID 100-number-memory desk phone? Your MP3 player?
How many makers of that kind of device are going to pay an extra license fee just to put Microsoft's logo on the box? Who cares what OS is inside, as long as it works? (And I hope nobody ever puts Microsoft Windows CE inside a car engine or breaks, or "Windows crashed" will have a whole new meaning)
What are Microsoft's big advantages for desktop computering, and how do they apply to embedded computing?
Add in overall OS stability (Linux beats Windows by a mile) and the ability to customize the kernel to fit your particular embedded application, and I don't see the fit of WinCE in any non-GUI embedded environment. Linux, OTOH, is a great match. I wish I'd had it when I was doing embedded realtime code and had to roll my own mini-OS.
supabeast wrote, "Unstable OSs are pretty much a thing of the past with Windows on the PC."
I guess you don't put much of a load on your Windows system, then. I've been developing code, Web sites, and other goodies under Win2K for almost a year, and while it's a lot more stable than Win98 (which crashes or must be rebooted at least once a day under heavy use), there's no stinking way you could call it "stable."
A stable OS is one that doesn't get flaky when an application (like Microsoft Internet Explorer, for example) crashes and burns. A stable OS is one where a bug in the program I'm developing doesn't require me to remove the batteries in my notebook computer in order to un-crowbar it (I've had Netscape do this to Win2K also).
Say what you wish about the Xbox. I don't know enough about its architecture to have an opinion. But if you say, "Stability is no longer an issue" referring to Windows, you must not be using the same OS the rest of us are.
I think it's great that he recognizes who is and who isn't significant competition for RedHat.
Let's do the math here. Let's say he finds a RedHat competitor that makes $10M per year selling a Linux distro. Through targeted, aggressive marketing, he takes away half their business. He's just increased RedHat's sales by 5%.
Now let's say he targets Microsoft. If he takes away just a tiny fraction of Microsoft's business, he can increase RedHat by 100% or more.
Never target the little competitors (unless you're the big guy and you want to prevent them from challenging you). Always target the big guys. As Willy Sutton might say-- that's where the money is.
Having some mathematical training, I learned that the definition of "fact" is not, in fact (!), dependent on whether I believe it. Or whether anyone else believes it, for that matter.
He says things like, "The individuals who control the largest amount of property are without exception corporations", and then expects us to believe anything else he says. The largest private landowner in the U.S. is an individual named Ted Turner, not a corporation. I think that might constitute an exception.
The whole rant is based on the jaded belief that corporations are big bad things and people are small good things. The little family business down the street might well be a corporation. Are they bad? That big developer who destroyed your whole neighborhood might well just be an individual. Is he good?
There are shades of gray. There are good people with money and bad people without money. Deal with it!
Why is it that the American dream is to start a business and make money, but when you do it you've "sold out" and become an "evil corporation"?
The cost per copy of Windows 3.1 to IBM was $11.
What was the cost per copy of Windows 9x? Actually, cost per computer sold whether it had Windows 9x on it or not?
This site omits what I thought was one of Apple's best puns.
When I got my first Apple///, it came with a pre-release version of their new operating system. On the front cover of the manual, it was plainly labeled as the Sophisticated Operating System, or Apple SOS.
I still have that manual, and a couple of Apple///s, too.
Basically what you're saying is that if you leave your keyring on your main hard drive, it's as secure as your passphrase. This has been a recurring theme in computing since the first password-protected login.
People write down passwords, or tell them to techs, or choose stupid ones. A properly-chosen passphrase isn't going to fall to a dictionary attack. If it's long enough, and uses enough tricks (odd punctuation and capitalization, intentional misspellings, non-words...), then it should do the trick. Why do I say that when we know perfectly well that it's still crackable?
A security system offers inconvenience to those attempting to bypass it. Put together a big parallel processing array, and use up a whole bunch of CPU cycles, and you could crack anything encrypted on my system, but who cares? Who's going to go to that much trouble for my piddly little secrets?
Face it, we don't need Tempest shielding and floppies stored in safes for our personal information. Businesses may be a different story, but it still depends on the type of secret and the size of the business.
It's true that you have always been able to buy a Windows-less computer, but that's not the whole picture.
One of the defining points of the monopoly issue is that any computer company that wished to ship Windows on any of its systems was, at one time, told that they could pay a very high price (much higher than their competitors), or they could pay a "per computer shipped" fee that was much lower. The second option meant that they paid for Windows whether it was on the computer or not!
This was one of the (many) factors that killed OS/2. IBM realized that they were paying for Windows whether they shipped it or not, but if they didn't use that license, they either had to price their computers so much higher than competitors that it would badly hurt sales, or they'd have to stop offering Windows at all, which would have just about killed their PC business.
The suit, therefore, isn't about saying, "you had to buy Windows." It's about saying, "you had to pay for Windows whether you bought it or not."
I set up a network that had Macintoshes talking to Novell Netware over 10 years ago, and ran it for quite some time. We used AppleTalk then, and I have no idea whether they've replaced it with TCP/IP by now (for many good reasons).
Yes, there were some issues. We had to install an AppleTalk card in a Novell server and configure it. Took me a few hours. The Win3.x machines we were running at the time couldn't deal with the Mac filenames. It put a bit of a load on the server.
For goodness' sake, you're talking about three Macs here! I think the benefits of providing those Macs email, filesharing and printer sharing across the network (yes, we shared Apple LaserWriters between Wintel and Mac machines) far outweigh a few hours' work to hook it up.
Your net admins probably know little about Macs and just don't want to put in the effort. Tell them it really isn't a big deal.
I fail to understand the hype about this "new" peer-to-peer stuff. In 1983/84, I set up a group of Apollo workstations. There was no server. Symbolic links allowed the hard disks on the workstations to act like one big disk, so everything appeared local to everyone. There was no server. That was over 17 years ago. What's "new" about it?
Oh, goody. PCs won't be "second-class citizens" anymore. Hmm. In 1996, the PCs (mostly Pentiums, but including a 486 or two) in my small company were all connected to the net. One of the Win95 machines ran an IRC server. Linux boxes ran FTP and various Java client and server apps and bots. The only tasks reserved for the "big servers" (Suns) were DNS, RealAudio (which I later ran from a Pentium as well), and the main Web site. Everything else was distributed, and mostly to PCs.
So it's not new, and it's not innovative. What's the big deal?
I don't see any real ethical problem for Joe User to have all the pirated apps he wants, but businesses really ought to pay for their software.
So, in other words, it's okay for individuals to steal, but not corporations? Sheesh. That's pathetic.
It's also pathetic (and ridiculous) to assert that corporations should pay because they have all the money. Obviously, you've never incorporated a business. When I was running my first incorporated startup, I and my three employees didn't have a whole lot of money, either. It got better as the company grew, but I don't feel the laws should be different for a person that files incorporation papers than for the one who operates as a sole proprietorship. Either something's legal, or it's not.
There's a difference between having a problem with Microsoft enforcing license agreements (which I don't), having a problem with the licenses in the first place (which I do), and having a problem with how they're enforcing the licenses (which I also do).
It's great to hear that some of the Linux-related companies are not suffering from that dot-com disease that says, "profits don't matter -- only market share and total sales." It's like the Japanese semiconductor companies in the 1980's ("we may lose a nickel on each chip, but we'll make it up in volume"). Unfortunately, as these companies crash and burn, they're hurting other businesses in the market, too. Take servers and routers. If you're looking to expand your business right now, are you going to buy new equipment from VA Linux and Cisco when you can get close-to-new stuff from bankruptcy auctions at dot-coms for pennies on the dollar? Nope. It's going to take a while for the ripples to die out from all of the dead companies run by people who didn't understand the basic tenets of profit and loss.
Will somebody please explain this "all your base are belong to us" thing? I've seen it all over /. and even on Foxtrot, but I haven't yet talked to anyone who can tell me where the heck it came from.
My question is, what does this do to every other lawsuit claiming a website, movie, video game or song lead someone to a violent act?
I see a difference between a video game that portrays violence in an abstract (albeit realistic) setting, and a Web site that active encourages murder. If the owners of the site had offered a nickel for each doctor killed, that would be considered "murder for hire," which is quite illegal. They asked for the doctors to be murdered, but left out the nickel.
Much fuss is made about the search engines needing to "fix the problem" of not being able to index sites like microsoft.com because the pages are dynamically generated. Is this really a problem?
Microsoft (or whatever over dynamic site you wish to pick) chose to make their content unindexable. Don't try to make it someone else's problem. Let people who use the search engines find third-party information instead. If the site designers wanted their site in the search engines, it would be there. Many of the sites built with ColdFusion or ASP contain basically static information anyway, and making them dynamic just reduces your traffic.
Sites like Slashdot are dynamic. A search engine can't be expected to keep up with something that changes every 30 seconds. However, making all of the archives static HTML allows them to be searchable by the engines and takes some load off the server, to boot.
I went for a "best of both worlds" approach on my personal site by writing a perl site generator. Each time I update the site, I re-run the site generator, which takes about a minute. My server carries a lighter load, but I still have "dynamic" links to related articles and such that the site generator builds.
There are a lot of variables! The software manuals I wrote were strictly "work for hire." It was part of my job and I got my regular salary.
The first two independent books I wrote were self-published, meaning I had to do everything: writing, editing, illustrating, selecting paper and cover stock, working with the printer, indexing, cover art, marketing, promotion, getting an ISBN... I make a lot more money per book on those, but it devours much too much time.
My most recent book was a straight royalty basis with a publisher. If you need cash up-front (an advance), then expect your royalty to be smaller. If you're willing to share in the risk, they'll pay better. I was asking for more than they wanted to pay, and we finally agreed on a minimum quantity. Until that many are sold, I get a standard royalty. After tha minimum, my royalty goes up. It was nice having someone else take care of all the details, although the book didn't look exactly as I would have done it myself.
The bottom line is: if you've done some writing before (tech writing, white papers, articles...), you'll have some idea how long it takes you. Figure out the number of hours you're probably going to put in, divide into what they're offering, and see if it makes you happy.
Don't forget to ask who creates the index (a high-quality index can easily take a couple of days of work), who does screen shots and illustrations (if any), who formats the text, how many free "author copies" you get (ask for lots, since it doesn't cost them much and you can always sell some of them), whether they'll guarantee minimum royalties (in case the book doesn't sell well), and their marketing plan (see what they're going to spend on peddling the book).
Watch out for penalties on missed deadlines, percentage royalties with no minimum (if they sell books cheap, you hardly make anything), royalties based on "net" sales (you have no control over their marketing costs).
There appear to be some very valid points here. I make a point of switching back-and-forth between the most liberal radio station in my area and the most conservative, deliberately exposing myself to both points of view (the middle ground comes from other media). The two points the author appears to have missed are:
Moderation systems like Slashdot's are radically different from net nanny filtering because users have the opportunity to configure how they apply, not just the filtering criteria. I can choose to ignore moderation entirely, showing all posts, or to set various cutoff points and sorting methods. I enjoy seeing opposing points of view, but appreciate methods for filtering out anonymous cowards and some trolls (good trolling is humorous, insightful, and enjoyable to read).
Second, the homogenization of news is hardly something new. If I choose to read Windows NT Magazine instead of Linux Journal, I'm not going to read much pro-Linux information, am I? We already have a lot of control over what we see, and the changes brought by the customization of places like My Yahoo or Slashdot are parts of a long-standing trend, not something new and revolutionary.
I'd love to find a notebook that can replace my old one. It has two things that you just don't see anymore:
A VHS composite video output. This lets you plug it directly into a television set to put on a presentation for a small group, and it's great for playing games with the whole family.
Two serial ports. I know. I'm probably the only one that has a use for two serial ports plus the modem. Maybe one of these days the manufacturers of the realtime equipment my wife and I use will switch to USB, but they haven't yet.