If MS took the price up to $500 for Windows 98, everyone would get madly screwed, because, where else would you turn for what Windows has to offer to home users?... They could charge $50 for a full Windows 98 CD, and that is way too much!
You are saying that $50 is too much to pay for software that offers value to home users unmatched by any other OS? This makes no sense whatsoever, unless what you are really asking for is a handout.
Whatever Microsoft may be guilty of, they haven't dominated the market to the point where no other computing platform exists for home users. You are free to buy a Mac, or run BeOS, or Linux, or a Commodore 64. Of course they can't run Windows software as well as Windows can (yet), but is Microsoft to be blamed for that?
It disturbs me to see folks on Slashdot distort facts and make us Linux users (yes, I am one) look like a bunch of anti-capitalist crybabies.
Bill Joy: object-oriented programming works by adding new packages and by extending existing objects with new subclasses/sub-objects. if you extend in this way, the sensible way, then compatibility is easy. don't get hung up on compatibility.
this modular extension mechanism, by the way, is what makes writing in java about four times the productivity of c++/c, which are too low-level to get the benefits.
To say that all extensions to an existing API can be done by subclassing is to live in an object-oriented la-la-land.
You can only subclass what's there in the first place. Creating APIs that are general enough to be extended for any possible application in the future is really difficult and rare. Many of Sun's Java APIs are great for the 80% of applications that the designers had in mind when they wrote them. But try extending them in some novel way and you're wishing you could muck with the proprietary code under the hood, quite possibly violating Sun's definition of compatibility.
Seems to me that the other main reason why Apple backed down (in addition to the large backlash) was because they hadn't yet taken customers' money and thus still had an incentive to please them.
My own experience in dealing with store.apple.com a few months back is that the salesdroid was willing to bend over backwards to please me only until the moment my credit card was charged. While writing up my order she claimed her computer "wasn't letting her" put in the price she'd quoted me a day earlier, but my credit card would be refunded the difference.
Well, the computer arrived and of course my card was charged the higher price, sans refund. I called the salesperson, who was apparently overcome with amnesia, claiming that the price in the computer was the final selling price and that I'd have to provide written documentation of any promised refund. Hello? Written documentation? They didn't even send me a written receipt until two months later!
Anyway, I'm still an Apple fan but would think twice before ordering from store.apple.com again. Congrats to those who were un-screwed in the latest fiasco.
Yes, you can use your Linux box as an answering machine. I am using a USRobotics 56K Internal Voice Faxmodem with vgetty on RedHat 5.2 to answer calls, recognize touch-tones (DTMF), and record and play audio files.
Yes, you can do text-to-speech/voice synthesis too. I am using Festival to read email over the phone using the above setup.
I don't think there's any viable speech-to-text telephony solution for Linux, but I'd be happy to be proved wrong on that one.
Slashdot Mirror
You are saying that $50 is too much to pay for software that offers value to home users unmatched by any other OS? This makes no sense whatsoever, unless what you are really asking for is a handout.
Whatever Microsoft may be guilty of, they haven't dominated the market to the point where no other computing platform exists for home users. You are free to buy a Mac, or run BeOS, or Linux, or a Commodore 64. Of course they can't run Windows software as well as Windows can (yet), but is Microsoft to be blamed for that?
It disturbs me to see folks on Slashdot distort facts and make us Linux users (yes, I am one) look like a bunch of anti-capitalist crybabies.
Bill Joy: object-oriented programming works by adding new packages and by extending existing objects with new subclasses/sub-objects. if you extend in this way, the sensible way, then compatibility is easy. don't get hung up on compatibility.
this modular extension mechanism, by the way, is what makes writing in java about four times the productivity of c++/c, which are too low-level to get the benefits.
To say that all extensions to an existing API can be done by subclassing is to live in an object-oriented la-la-land.
You can only subclass what's there in the first place. Creating APIs that are general enough to be extended for any possible application in the future is really difficult and rare. Many of Sun's Java APIs are great for the 80% of applications that the designers had in mind when they wrote them. But try extending them in some novel way and you're wishing you could muck with the proprietary code under the hood, quite possibly violating Sun's definition of compatibility.
My own experience in dealing with store.apple.com a few months back is that the salesdroid was willing to bend over backwards to please me only until the moment my credit card was charged. While writing up my order she claimed her computer "wasn't letting her" put in the price she'd quoted me a day earlier, but my credit card would be refunded the difference.
Well, the computer arrived and of course my card was charged the higher price, sans refund. I called the salesperson, who was apparently overcome with amnesia, claiming that the price in the computer was the final selling price and that I'd have to provide written documentation of any promised refund. Hello? Written documentation? They didn't even send me a written receipt until two months later!
Anyway, I'm still an Apple fan but would think twice before ordering from store.apple.com again. Congrats to those who were un-screwed in the latest fiasco.
Yes, you can use your Linux box as an answering machine. I am using a USRobotics 56K Internal Voice Faxmodem with vgetty on RedHat 5.2 to answer calls, recognize touch-tones (DTMF), and record and play audio files.
Yes, you can do text-to-speech/voice synthesis too. I am using Festival to read email over the phone using the above setup.
I don't think there's any viable speech-to-text telephony solution for Linux, but I'd be happy to be proved wrong on that one.