10 for x = 0 to 127 20 for y = 0 to 63 30 set (x,y) 40 next x,y 50 for x = 0 to 127 60 for x - 0 to 63 70 unset (x,y) 80 next y,x 90 goto 10
You could *SEE* it paint *EACH* pixel since it was so slow. Anyone remember "Big 5" and their TRS-80 games? I must have lost a weeks of my life to Defense Command.
In a move that shocked the industry, Microsoft has chosen once-leading hardware manufacturer Radio Shack to create retro-computers running The Windows OS Windows 2000. The new product will mesh the excellent hardware of Radio Shack with the world-class Windows 2000 to be released this November by Microsoft Corp.
Joe Blozzwell from Microsot states, "Users are looking for a new computing experience, and we think that should Radio Shack's old TRS-80 computer was ahead of it's time -- Users no longer want a white box, they want a silver and black box! They don't want a natural keyboard, either, they want a friendly, low-profile chicklet keyboard that the whole family can use."
Industry analysts praised the wisdom of this move today in a press conference. "We think that Microsoft's new TRS-80 venture will compete favorably with the new fashion consious computer users who have flocked to the iMac" said Zipp-Davis enterprise computing analyst Skippy Frotz.
"The Microsoft TRS-80 appeals to the users who want their computer to match their TV and home entertainment center" Gill Bates said "...and we won't stop adding internet features to the TRS-80. You have my word on it! We'll take this all the way to the supreme court!"
The TRS-80, once known as the trash-80 was one of the very early home computers, and it included multimedia capabilites including 128X64 1-bit graphics, and sound generated via the cassete output cable. It featured speedy access to programs stored on tape at 300 baud, and an external power supply.
"Yeah, makes sense, a trash OS for a new trash-80!", said Boris Jorgenssen, a supporter of the Free Linux, a fringe operating system that was developed by the Finnish student Linus Torvalds. " anyway, Radio Shack hasn't carried any good stuff for like 15 years. Nobody with half a brain buys computer stuff at Radio Shack. Anybody who shops at Radio Shack deserves to suffer through endless windows reboots and BSODs. My grandma doesn't even shop at Radio Shack!!! Dude... Fry's sucks, but it sucks like 1000 times less than Radio Shack."
Stock prices of Microsoft were up 15 points in heavy mid-day trading apparently affirming their belief that Radio Shack customers will readily accept Windows 2000running on new retro-computers with 300-baud network access and a chicklet keyboard.
Radio Shack sales consultant "Bob" said, "I'm really excited about this partnership! I imagine that Radio Shack is going to be a lot busier soon. I'm going to have to run the carpet sweeper a few more times a day, but that's okay. We're kicking off the deal by bringing back the Battery-of-the-month club, too! Make sure you get the nine-volts..."
In an related story, Clarence Brumb, a policical science graduate student at UCLA, presented his graduate thesis documenting the correlation of his posting of random rumors about Microsoft on stock trading boards, and charting the stock's gain on untrue, undocumented, or non-sensical rumors. "My conculsion is that the US stock market has become a giant pyramid scheme, and Microsoft stock is the at the top - a trader buys Microsoft, then posts speculative messages which cause others to blindly buy the stock, which causes the stock price to go up, repeat - Over and over."
There is a possibility that Radio Shack will change it's name to Microsoft Shack. This is confirmed by an anonymous posting on the underground site of Linux, http://www.slash.org, "My kewl friend who's dad is like a manager at Micro$oft says that they're going to kick out all of the Radio Shack ppl. and change the name of the stores to Microsoft Shack! that sukz:/"
Whatever the case, this journalist can guarantee that the future is full of exciting new services and service packs from the Shack. This journalist for one can't wait to enjoy the convenience of driving downtown to buy Office 2000 and Windows 2000 and to get the Microsoft catalog in the mail every month.
... if you have to use windows, vmware is the solution for the following reasons:
1) it boots/reboots faster than native windows 2) you can run multiple versions of windows on the same machine at the same time, so developers don't need 2 windows machines anymore (one to use while the other reboots...) 3) you can use vmware in logged transaction mode, so when your windows software upgrade hoses your system, you can exit the session and choose to discard all session changes and be back to your previous, less-unstable config. 4) vmware has no driver issues because it uses a GENERIC VIRTUAL MACHINE. You can finally mass deploy Windows NT with all apps installed by just copying over an entire drive image to any computer running vmware. 5) vmware on linux with Windows is sort of like Linux with training wheels -- makes it much easier to migrate users to linux and giving them some time to ween themselves from windows.
Can I get a patent on my great idea for a biodegradable phone?!?
Sheesh! Someone in the patent office is asleep at the wheel. Some people in the US gov't are asleep at the wheel as well.
US patents are issued for either 7,14, or 21 years.
That might have been appropriate in the 1800's to allow somebody to profit from their idea, but in 1999, even a 7 year patent on computing products is ABSURD!
Image if I would have patented the WEB BROWSER in 1985 and the US patent office would have issued a 21 year patent -- I'd still have 7 years of my patent left.
technology patents and especially internet or computer-related patents should be looked at VERY CAREFULLY and I suggest that they should be issued for 1,2, or 3 years instead of 7,14, or 21 years.
In the meantime, all you internet patent attorneys are probably loving this, huh? (enjoy it while it lasts...)
I've been following BeOS for a while. I went to their HQ and saw their demo. I got a 3.X cd and installed it. I've tinkered with it, and followed the development... so...
aside from BeOS being cool for video editing and "Neat" and good for non-geeks to use, who's going to buy it? Or... how's Be going to make any money?
Before they were targeting themselves as a niche product, but linux/unix apps are now available that do many of the things they were targeting as a niche market.
Be's refusal to go opensource with their OS source has made it inaccesible to many developers like myself who might have put significant effort into developing and porting to BeOS.
I just don't see how Be plans to make money... or why anybody should use it as opposed to unix or even windows or MacOS as a platform besides to be different.
:We can just put in a good all nighter and :get it working!
exactly... first to market. Perl is a great rapid development platform. get your idea prototyped first and running while everyone else waits for $LARGE_SOFTWARE_COMPANY's $PORTAL_SOLUTION or $WIRELESS_EVERYTHING_IN_A_BOX software to be finished, debugged, beta tested...
:We can charge ever higher maintenance fees as :more and more users depend on our brittle piece of junk lemme guess... you're a contract Windows NT support person?
okay, flames aside, I'll grant you that one-off apache-php-perl-$DATABASE solutions can easily become unmanageable, and there's probably more than a few companies who had their guru leave and weren't able to maintain their site.
I see that as their fault for not documenting everything, or requiring the developers to document it.
Perl's not the right choice for everything, but it's great for rapid deployment since you can use so much existing code. Nobody's forcing anybody to use PERL to beat their competitors to the market...
>So did you take a cut in pay.. no the managers got re-orged or got the boot.
>http://www.interix.com fist off, interix or exceed aren't free, and by the time I get exceed approved for 20 users, I could have upgraded them to linux.
all the interix stuff makes it painfully clear that Micros~1 never intended to be interoperable with unix, and didn't want file or app sharing. Jeez. look at how ultimately feeble the standard windows telnet is. Look at the lack of scripting in command.com and cmd.exe...
I'm pretty underwhelmed with interix and most PC xservers to be honest.. I'd be happy if the windows desktop supported x apps transparently and I could "xhost +backup1 server2 mail4 dev344" from a dos shell, telnet to a unix server from that dos shell without spawning a "telnet" windows app, set my display back and launch an app. -- oh, but that's exactly the level of interoperability that Micros~1 never wanted to achieve. Actually, I want to be able to use a nis/nis+ server for my NT logins without a hack.
When Micros~1 find someone who can implement all that functionality in a shipping version of windows as standard features, I'll consider revising my opinion.
xservers on windows: like putting lipstick on a pig.
>NT has had this for years, where have you been? running mission critical apps on unix with fantastic uptime.
>Hiding under the Unix rock? if that means remotely administering and monitoring hundreds of multiuser servers from your office, then... yes.
>if more Unix people would actually try NT... sorry, we have,we did, and finally our managers have stopped making us try to deploy on it... I developed a deathly serious allregic reaction to BSOD and rebooting, and I'm not going to try windows again until it includes a decent shell like bash, ksh, tcsh and an xserver.
When was the last time that anyone went to an imax theater and complained that the screen was too big?
When was the last time your went to see a movie that was playing in multiple theaters and tried to find the smallest screen the movie was playing on?
I think we're heading towards immersive computing, where your whole field of vision is your work/play or whatever you're doing. I like that.
but... as to the price, I could take 3 $1500 lcds, use Solaris or Xinerama and have a pretty decent clone of this setup and I could by a CAR with the spare change...
cool, but too expensive. Anyway, with windowing environments and digital video that don't REQUIRE a specific aspect ratio, expect to see more interesting shapes of flat displays.
... and why not have an ultra-hi-res VR headset? It's gotta be WAAAY cheaper, and more immersive.
you don't, but my desktop machine just slowly became more and more of a shared resource. It serves developers, so a once-in-a-blue-moon temporary service interruption is within acceptable bounds.
If I didn't have tons of other things to do (like posting on slashdot?), I'd move it into the datacenter on a console server.
I now have a linux desktop as well that's my primary desktop, but as a testament to my old sparc 20, it's virtually indestructable/unsinkable/uncrashable.
I believe that the sparc 20 is the 1955 Checker Cab of servers. so what if it's got a 60mhz cpu, it'll outlast all 'yer cheapo whitebox Pentium IIs!:)
let's talk about system uptime... let's talk about multiuser systems providing services to multiple machines and multiple users.
Windows BSOD means: "I'm totally Fu*ked - computer terminated all connections and processes. Three finger salute!"
netscape coredump means: "damn... how come linux netscape crashes so much. "
I've had X crash (solaris running development enlightement comes to mind...) on a machine that serves NFS to a dozen systems and hosts a web and ftp site. The display was totally hosed. The system had zombie processe, but apache, wu-ftpd, nfsd were all working fine....
I left the system that way for 2 weeks to schedule downtime that wouldn't affect users.
now, a unix system panic is more like BSOD. I've experienced maybe a dozen or so system panics out of thousands of unix servers, most of which were due to very pre-release OS versions or hardware failures.
... so 2 BSODs a month seem like an awful lot to me. Aren't you ashamed that you've been conditioned to think that 2 BSOD's a month is GOOD!?!
it's a lame poll to start with. It guides the voters more than an IDC survey. Linux has bugs -- look at the changelogs for any kernel version. Solaris has bugs -- what kernel patch level are you running?
It's now fashionable to hate Micros~1 and BillGa~1, just like it's fashionable to promote linux and take a no-idea linux startup public in hopes of getting rich off the IPO.
.. I dare you to name *ANY* software product that hasn't had a lot of bugs at one time or another. (but for products other than windows, they tend to get fixed...;)
and like so many ppl here have pointed out, the masses may 'dis' windows publicly, but they're (happily?) clicking away at their word docs, upgrading their service packs, and installing security patches for MSIE all the while.
I love unix and linux in particular, but I honestly don't look forward to the day that braindead windows users become braindead linux users who will be calling brainded support folk who used to support windows for help...
I can hear it now:
"hello $MAJOR_HARDWARE_VENDOR support? My new computer with linux doesn't run right... I can't install the cool game from the cd that my friend let me borrow -- nothing happens when I click on setup.exe... did you try to reboot?" --- "My friend mailed me a cuuute little program that is supposed to make a sheep bounce all around my screen, but I can't get it to work.... help!" --- "I don't want to have to log on... can I just have it AUTOMATICALLY log itself in when I reboot?" --- "my ATI_ALL_IN_WONDER, winprinter, winmodem, winscanner, usb keyboard, usb mouse, XIRCOM pcmcia network card, and parallel port ZIP disk didn't install right... I can't seem to find the "add new hardware" section under the control panel..." --- "who is root?... and why is he running things on my computer?"
yeah. I have to agree that it was too much work to compile from src (esp on linux...), I felt like I should be getting paid...
... anyway once it was running it looks pretty nice, but I'd like to feel that there was significant momentum behind it before I dump all of my financial data into it.
... like the gtk stuff... the could ditch a lot of crud with gtk/gnome bindings, what are they waiting for? gtk1.3? gnome2.0? and a lot of the nonstandard stuff that it requires to compile doesn't seem to be well maintained either.
Would be easier to start from scratch and write gnome-cash?
maybe they should change the name to PatheticCash?
Of course the email spam harvesters attempt to filter out nospam and SPAM and...
I bet that some of the slashdot readers are also spam kings and queens... and anyone who can work with REGEXPs can come up with some nice rules to unmask email addresses on online posts.
so, how do you discourage spam and encourage human to human contact? Well, I suggest something unconventional that is not likely to be part of a spammers email address unmasking algorithms.
There are a number of hurdles that the wireless industry needs to get over before wireless communication can make significant progress.
1) protocols. We need a SINGLE global WIRELESS VOICE protocol. CDMA is technically superior for MANY reasons, but for political reasons, there is a profusion of GSM and TDMA all over the world. CDMA makes the best use of wireless bandwidth, and that's significant. Also, we need WAP to take off BIG. (Micros~1 still isn't backing Bluetooth, either)
2) standardized cellular frequencies. The world is really in trouble when it comes to spectrum allocation. Go into 5 or 6 countries and look at what frequencies are public, owned by the military, government, reserved, etc.. and you'll see what I mean. -- we need a powerful global group to (re)allocate global frequencies
3) price - The cost for cellular calls is still artificially high from the days when all the phone companies lost TONS of money from people who pirated analog cellphone identies with scanners and phone reprogrammers. The prices haven't come down yet...
4) subscription plans. C'mon is anybody *NOT* confused by all the stupd options plans? It's like all the tax attorneys got hired by the cellular providers..
okay, so how STALE is the pre0.3 release of slashdot code that's available for download??
C'mon, those of us who've watched/. since the inception can tell that *LOTS* of neat stuff has been added and *NOT* released.
Why? Could it be due to andover.net not wanting to dilute slashdot by enabling more of us to set up our own personal slashdot-like sites?
well, I've got news for you, squishdot for zope provides a pretty good forum that's ridiculously simple to set up.
Why not release the RECENT slashdot code and let the slashdot community work on improving it as well?
... or is Slashdot now an opensource-for-profit site that advocates that everyone except themselves release their sourcecode and make money only from support?
Personally, I think that/. needs a new angle to stay ahead of the pack... dynamic news forums are about as revolutionary as portals nowadays.
I think that if/. is making money with advertising and IPOs, then ALL contributors should recieve some sort of compensation. How about something like US $0.50 credit for each positive moderation on users posts? Ten cents for meta-moderating? $20 for writing an opinion piece... $2 for submitting a story that gets used. ...
Why should I donate my time and thoughts *FOR FREE* to a *COMMERCIAL* operation?
But who's to say what new TLD's they create? And.. what about those people who will say that their name is their property, REGARDLESS OF WHAT.EXTENSION it has.
...and of course every company with money would just go out and register all the names and sell them back to the companies all over again.
I mean, if people can claim that they own rights to their company name TRANSLATED into other languages.com then.. image all the permutations.
so let's say that hello.com claims that they have the emminent domain (?) right to these: hello.net hello.org hello.edu hello.gov hola.com nihao.com hello.sex ...
how would companies feel about seeing these sites:
ibm.sex coke.set whitehouse.sex
basically, we have to face the reality that EVERYBODY wants a.com address. That's prime real estate.
You snoozed. You lost.
Go look for domains for sale on ebay, and maybe you can get a few short, unpronouncable ones really cheap.
Get ready for the made-up word company names: glorps.com? c1-66.com? reallyhard2remember.com?
Bah! The truth is that people are just now starting to realize that.com is big business, and they're (we're?) all kicking themselves for not having had the foresight to register food.com, pets.com, news.com, cbs.com, etc... six or seven years ago.
Waa! Waa! somebody was quicker and smarter than me and stole my god-given right to own $MY_COMPANY_NAME.com .
Waa! Waa! I want to live in Beverly Hills, but I can't afford it. Please, Mr. Government... make them lower the rent in Beverly Hills... I have a RIGHT to live there
Waa! Waa! Somebody beat me to San Francisco and found all of the gold that I was supposed to find. Please, Mr. Government, make them share the gold they found.
Waa! Waa! The DeBeers family owns all of the diamonds in the world, and keeps the prices artificially high. Please, Mr Government, take at least half of the diamonds away from the DeBeers family so that I can buy lots of cheap diamonds.
Waa! Waa! The US Land Grant Act gave all of the good Silicon Valley land away FOR FREE many years ago, and I didn't get any. Please, Mr Government, take away the land from the Big companies in the silicon valley and re-apportion it, and give some to me.
Waa! Waa! All of the 3 character domain combinations are already registered and I didn't get $MY_INITIALS.[com,org,net] . How can I continue living?
Waa! Waa! BBC wanted bbc.com really bad, so they paid a million dollars for it, and now they're happy
How much do you think I'd have to pay BBC to get BBC.com from them?
Decent linux palm desktop= jpilot - just like the windows one. search freshmeat.
I disagree that everyone needs to have windows. Granted, I did install windows in vmware, and I can use vnc to bring up a windows desktop from a lab machines, but honestly, I just don't ever find a need or use for windows anymore.
- I've got gnome/enlightenment/xscreensaver for all my eye candy. - I've got staroffice, wvHtml, xlHtml for decoding msOffice-encrypyed information. - I write just about everything in vi using plain text, or netscape's html editor, or via a web-app - I write a script to do anything that I need to do more than 5 times. - opensource unix apps, perl, and shell scripts just keep increasing my productivity. Now I can pretty much prototype an app fast than I can find a commercial solution - I sync my pilot on linux and solaris using jpilot - I bought a playstation for playing games - I've got xmame if I ever missed wasting my cpu cycles on playing games. - nobody where I work shares files using CIFS much anymore 'cause it's about as reliable as the list of servers you get when you click on 'network neighborhood'... everyone uses ftp or http, but I do have samba if I need to share stuff with windows-stricken coworkers.
Hey, I'm a unix sysadmin, and I figured that if *I* can't live without windows then maybe nobody can. When I shut off my last windows box, there were a few difficult times, but it's been surprisingly easy to not go back, and I'm a lot more productive.
It's not for everyone yet though. I'm not sure whether I'm ready to move my dad to linux -- he has a hard enough time with windows, but he's the one that's asking about linux 'cause win95 hangs and crashes so often.
Gee, have you noticed how our favorite opensource sites have started linking to the "ANDOVER.NET PARTNER SITES" and not to the other opensource sites?
here's an example: appwatch.com - not a bad site at all, and yeah so maybe freshmeat did it first, but is andover.net keeping them (and anyone else who's not in their clutches) out of the opensource spotlight?
when nobody's making MILLIONS of dollars from opensource stuff, it's easy to stay fair and impartial, but when the people running the sites have to answer to management and not the opensource community, things change:(
:(
It all sort of sucks. Those of us who haven't made our millions off opensource yet and still code/compile/etc becuase we actually LOVE to do it seem to be the ones getting the short end of the stick while other get rich from our work.
maybe slasldot/andover should offer a financial reward for slashdotters who post stories and moderate... that seems plenty fair to me. Share and enjoy, right?
It's easy to ask for features if you're not a programmer, and it's easy to complain that there are too many library dependencies on stuff like gnome or enlightenment or anything else.
but... it's hard to explain to a non-developer about how difficult it really would be to merge kde and gnome apps.
I don't even know where to start... but anyway, it would be possible for new libraries to be written that would include *supersets* of functions handled by current libraries, and then you could ask developers to write to those libraries, and over time, things might get a little more homogeneous.
BUT... since much of the code is written by developers who aren't getting paid, you'll never be able to enforce any of these rules.
... now all we need is VxFS and VxVM for LINUX. (oh yeah, and raw devices;)
anyway... This is good because a lot of large shops won't consider downloading sourcecode and compiling it on their MISSION CRITICAL production servers (or.. their "sysadmins" are merely operators who don't feel comfortable building source "you mean you have to pay extra for the compiler??";)
so, this is good for linux in the following way:
-- Samba gains credibility as a file serving solution -- samba development progresses -- Large customers get their commercial support from a vendor they're already doing business with -- selling samba on linux to management gets *much* easier (hey, veritas is using it, and their customers are running it on large Sun servers!)
So, smile, and enjoy the smell of the Windows empire slowly burning to the ground.
Hey, fewer and fewer people are going to be willing to spend $2000 for a computer, $150 for a joystick, $200 for a new graphics card, $150 for decent speakers *JUST* to *PLAY*GAMES*.
People will be more likely to tolerate a lag to load a game when they have access to newer games on cheaper hardware. (witness how willingly linux users download ISO images over PPP!)
As to computers for gaming machines, I got tired of having to upgrade my OS/drivers/hardware every few months just to play a game.
... and I only had *one* joystick, so 2 player games were difficult.
You can get a playstation or N64 for $99, and there are tons of games that just work, don't need to be installed, configured, uninstalled, reinstalled, upgraded, etc.
I switched. I'll never waste time futzing around on my computer for games again.
Face it, *CONSUMERS* want SIMPLE, CHEAP, DISPOSABLE APPLIANCES. Slashdot users aren't representative of the general populace that will decide the success
RE: Symlinks -- if the API could support a symlink, why not add the feature?? Oh, could it be because Micros~1 can't figure out what to call it (can't use symlink... that's a unix term, can't use shortcut...)
RE: Buggy NFS... If Micros~1 cared about security or not supporting imperfect file sharing protocols, it would have NEVER adopted lanman/smb/cifs (which is a security NIGHTMARE!!), and... how come Windows supported Novell protocols from the beginning, but not UNIX (HINT: Unix incompatibility was a designed-in FEATURE of Windows, until recently when that became unreasonable)
RE: Trusted version of Linux... I'm not a Linux bigot. I'll use *ANY* unix. If I need the security of a trusted version, I can use special versions of Solaris or Tru64 unix. Use linux where it makes sense. Windows locks you into a single vendor who can change directions and abandon your strategy (witness Alpha) and you're left with no recourse.
Nothing is perfect, but Windows just can't compete with the collective strength of the Various versions of UNIX offered by Various vendors who cater to various markets.
Use the right tools for the right task, and don't lock yourself into a single-vendor relationship. That's it, Plain and simple.
Slashdot Mirror
10 for x = 0 to 127
20 for y = 0 to 63
30 set (x,y)
40 next x,y
50 for x = 0 to 127
60 for x - 0 to 63
70 unset (x,y)
80 next y,x
90 goto 10
You could *SEE* it paint *EACH* pixel since it was so slow. Anyone remember "Big 5" and their TRS-80 games? I must have lost a weeks of my life to Defense Command.
Newsflash:
...and we won't stop adding internet features to the TRS-80. You have my word on it! We'll take this all the way to the supreme court!"
:/"
In a move that shocked the industry, Microsoft has chosen once-leading hardware manufacturer Radio Shack to create retro-computers running The Windows OS Windows 2000. The new product will mesh the excellent hardware of Radio Shack with the world-class Windows 2000 to be released this November by Microsoft Corp.
Joe Blozzwell from Microsot states, "Users are looking for a new computing experience, and we think that should Radio Shack's old TRS-80 computer was ahead of it's time -- Users no longer want a white box, they want a silver and black box! They don't want a natural keyboard, either, they want a friendly, low-profile chicklet keyboard that the whole family can use."
Industry analysts praised the wisdom of this move today in a press conference. "We think that Microsoft's new TRS-80 venture will compete favorably with the new fashion consious computer users who have flocked to the iMac" said Zipp-Davis enterprise computing analyst Skippy Frotz.
"The Microsoft TRS-80 appeals to the users who want their computer to match their TV and home entertainment center" Gill Bates said "
The TRS-80, once known as the trash-80 was one of the very early home computers, and it included multimedia capabilites including 128X64 1-bit graphics, and sound generated via the cassete output cable. It featured speedy access to programs stored on tape at 300 baud, and an external power supply.
"Yeah, makes sense, a trash OS for a new trash-80!", said Boris Jorgenssen, a supporter of the Free Linux, a fringe operating system that was developed by the Finnish student Linus Torvalds. " anyway, Radio Shack hasn't carried any good stuff for like 15 years. Nobody with half a brain buys computer stuff at Radio Shack. Anybody who shops at Radio Shack deserves to suffer through endless windows reboots and BSODs. My grandma doesn't even shop at Radio Shack!!! Dude... Fry's sucks, but it sucks like 1000 times less than Radio Shack."
Stock prices of Microsoft were up 15 points in heavy mid-day trading apparently affirming their belief that Radio Shack customers will readily accept Windows 2000running on new retro-computers with 300-baud network access and a chicklet keyboard.
Radio Shack sales consultant "Bob" said, "I'm really excited about this partnership! I imagine that Radio Shack is going to be a lot busier soon. I'm going to have to run the carpet sweeper a few more times a day, but that's okay. We're kicking off the deal by bringing back the Battery-of-the-month club, too! Make sure you get the nine-volts..."
In an related story, Clarence Brumb, a policical science graduate student at UCLA, presented his graduate thesis documenting the correlation of his posting of random rumors about Microsoft on stock trading boards, and charting the stock's gain on untrue, undocumented, or non-sensical rumors. "My conculsion is that the US stock market has become a giant pyramid scheme, and Microsoft stock is the at the top - a trader buys Microsoft, then posts speculative messages which cause others to blindly buy the stock, which causes the stock price to go up, repeat - Over and over."
There is a possibility that Radio Shack will change it's name to Microsoft Shack. This is confirmed by an anonymous posting on the underground site of Linux, http://www.slash.org, "My kewl friend who's dad is like a manager at Micro$oft says that they're going to kick out all of the Radio Shack ppl. and change the name of the stores to Microsoft Shack! that sukz
Whatever the case, this journalist can guarantee that the future is full of exciting new services and service packs from the Shack. This journalist for one can't wait to enjoy the convenience of driving downtown to buy Office 2000 and Windows 2000 and to get the Microsoft catalog in the mail every month.
###
... if you have to use windows, vmware is the solution for the following reasons:
1) it boots/reboots faster than native windows
2) you can run multiple versions of windows on the same machine at the same time, so developers don't need 2 windows machines anymore (one to use while the other reboots...)
3) you can use vmware in logged transaction mode, so when your windows software upgrade hoses your system, you can exit the session and choose to discard all session changes and be back to your previous, less-unstable config.
4) vmware has no driver issues because it uses a GENERIC VIRTUAL MACHINE. You can finally mass deploy Windows NT with all apps installed by just copying over an entire drive image to any computer running vmware.
5) vmware on linux with Windows is sort of like Linux with training wheels -- makes it much easier to migrate users to linux and giving them some time to ween themselves from windows.
Can I get a patent on my great idea for a biodegradable phone?!?
Sheesh! Someone in the patent office is asleep at the wheel. Some people in the US gov't are asleep at the wheel as well.
US patents are issued for either 7,14, or 21 years.
That might have been appropriate in the 1800's to allow somebody to profit from their idea, but in 1999, even a 7 year patent on computing products is ABSURD!
Image if I would have patented the WEB BROWSER in 1985 and the US patent office would have issued a 21 year patent -- I'd still have 7 years of my patent left.
technology patents and especially internet or computer-related patents should be looked at VERY CAREFULLY and I suggest that they should be issued for 1,2, or 3 years instead of 7,14, or 21 years.
In the meantime, all you internet patent attorneys are probably loving this, huh? (enjoy it while it lasts...)
I've been following BeOS for a while. I went to their HQ and saw their demo. I got a 3.X cd and installed it. I've tinkered with it, and followed the development... so...
aside from BeOS being cool for video editing and "Neat" and good for non-geeks to use, who's going to buy it? Or... how's Be going to make any money?
Before they were targeting themselves as a niche product, but linux/unix apps are now available that do many of the things they were targeting as a niche market.
Be's refusal to go opensource with their OS source has made it inaccesible to many developers like myself who might have put significant effort into developing and porting to BeOS.
I just don't see how Be plans to make money... or why anybody should use it as opposed to unix or even windows or MacOS as a platform besides to be different.
:We can just put in a good all nighter and
:get it working!
exactly... first to market. Perl is a great rapid development platform. get your idea prototyped first and running while everyone else waits for $LARGE_SOFTWARE_COMPANY's $PORTAL_SOLUTION or $WIRELESS_EVERYTHING_IN_A_BOX software to be finished, debugged, beta tested...
:We can charge ever higher maintenance fees as
:more and more users depend on our brittle piece of junk
lemme guess... you're a contract Windows NT support person?
okay, flames aside, I'll grant you that one-off apache-php-perl-$DATABASE solutions can easily become unmanageable, and there's probably more than a few companies who had their guru leave and weren't able to maintain their site.
I see that as their fault for not documenting everything, or requiring the developers to document it.
Perl's not the right choice for everything, but it's great for rapid deployment since you can use so much existing code. Nobody's forcing anybody to use PERL to beat their competitors to the market...
>So did you take a cut in pay..
no the managers got re-orged or got the boot.
>http://www.interix.com
fist off, interix or exceed aren't free, and by the time I get exceed approved for 20 users, I could have upgraded them to linux.
all the interix stuff makes it painfully clear that Micros~1 never intended to be interoperable with unix, and didn't want file or app sharing. Jeez. look at how ultimately feeble the standard windows telnet is. Look at the lack of scripting in command.com and cmd.exe...
I'm pretty underwhelmed with interix and most PC xservers to be honest.. I'd be happy if the windows desktop supported x apps transparently and I could "xhost +backup1 server2 mail4 dev344" from a dos shell, telnet to a unix server from that dos shell without spawning a "telnet" windows app, set my display back and launch an app. -- oh, but that's exactly the level of interoperability that Micros~1 never wanted to achieve. Actually, I want to be able to use a nis/nis+ server for my NT logins without a hack.
When Micros~1 find someone who can implement all that functionality in a shipping version of windows as standard features, I'll consider revising my opinion.
xservers on windows: like putting lipstick on a pig.
>NT has had this for years, where have you been?
... yes.
running mission critical apps on unix with fantastic uptime.
>Hiding under the Unix rock?
if that means remotely administering and monitoring hundreds of multiuser servers from your office, then
>if more Unix people would actually try NT...
sorry, we have,we did, and finally our managers have stopped making us try to deploy on it... I developed a deathly serious allregic reaction to BSOD and rebooting, and I'm not going to try windows again until it includes a decent shell like bash, ksh, tcsh and an xserver.
When was the last time that anyone went to an imax theater and complained that the screen was too big?
When was the last time your went to see a movie that was playing in multiple theaters and tried to find the smallest screen the movie was playing on?
I think we're heading towards immersive computing, where your whole field of vision is your work/play or whatever you're doing. I like that.
but... as to the price, I could take 3 $1500 lcds, use Solaris or Xinerama and have a pretty decent clone of this setup and I could by a CAR with the spare change...
cool, but too expensive. Anyway, with windowing environments and digital video that don't REQUIRE a specific aspect ratio, expect to see more interesting shapes of flat displays.
... and why not have an ultra-hi-res VR headset? It's gotta be WAAAY cheaper, and more immersive.
you don't, but my desktop machine just slowly became more and more of a shared resource. It serves developers, so a once-in-a-blue-moon temporary service interruption is within acceptable bounds.
:)
If I didn't have tons of other things to do (like posting on slashdot?), I'd move it into the datacenter on a console server.
I now have a linux desktop as well that's my primary desktop, but as a testament to my old sparc 20, it's virtually indestructable/unsinkable/uncrashable.
I believe that the sparc 20 is the 1955 Checker Cab of servers. so what if it's got a 60mhz cpu, it'll outlast all 'yer cheapo whitebox Pentium IIs!
Okay... mr condescending unix here...
let's talk about system uptime...
let's talk about multiuser systems providing services to multiple machines and multiple users.
Windows BSOD means: "I'm totally Fu*ked - computer terminated all connections and processes. Three finger salute!"
netscape coredump means: "damn... how come linux netscape crashes so much. "
I've had X crash (solaris running development enlightement comes to mind...) on a machine that serves NFS to a dozen systems and hosts a web and ftp site. The display was totally hosed. The system had zombie processe, but apache, wu-ftpd, nfsd were all working fine....
I left the system that way for 2 weeks to schedule downtime that wouldn't affect users.
now, a unix system panic is more like BSOD. I've experienced maybe a dozen or so system panics out of thousands of unix servers, most of which were due to very pre-release OS versions or hardware failures.
... so 2 BSODs a month seem like an awful lot to me. Aren't you ashamed that you've been conditioned to think that 2 BSOD's a month is GOOD!?!
okay.... I tried it again, and I guess it and java have matures quite a bit since the last time I tried it.
:(
only one problem with moneydance... it's *SHAREWARE*.... can't install it on an nfs server...
it's a lame poll to start with. It guides the voters more than an IDC survey. Linux has bugs -- look at the changelogs for any kernel version. Solaris has bugs -- what kernel patch level are you running?
... and why is he running things on my computer?"
It's now fashionable to hate Micros~1 and BillGa~1, just like it's fashionable to promote linux and take a no-idea linux startup public in hopes of getting rich off the IPO.
.. I dare you to name *ANY* software product that hasn't had a lot of bugs at one time or another. (but for products other than windows, they tend to get fixed...;)
and like so many ppl here have pointed out, the masses may 'dis' windows publicly, but they're (happily?) clicking away at their word docs, upgrading their service packs, and installing security patches for MSIE all the while.
I love unix and linux in particular, but I honestly don't look forward to the day that braindead windows users become braindead linux users who will be calling brainded support folk who used to support windows for help...
I can hear it now:
"hello $MAJOR_HARDWARE_VENDOR support? My new computer with linux doesn't run right... I can't install the cool game from the cd that my friend let me borrow -- nothing happens when I click on setup.exe... did you try to reboot?"
---
"My friend mailed me a cuuute little program that is supposed to make a sheep bounce all around my screen, but I can't get it to work.... help!"
---
"I don't want to have to log on... can I just have it AUTOMATICALLY log itself in when I reboot?"
---
"my ATI_ALL_IN_WONDER, winprinter, winmodem, winscanner, usb keyboard, usb mouse, XIRCOM pcmcia network card, and parallel port ZIP disk didn't install right... I can't seem to find the "add new hardware" section under the control panel..."
---
"who is root?
yeah. I have to agree that it was too much work to compile from src (esp on linux...), I felt like I should be getting paid...
/usr/local/share/gnucash/scm/bootstrap.scm
... anyway once it was running it looks pretty nice, but I'd like to feel that there was significant momentum behind it before I dump all of my financial data into it.
... like the gtk stuff... the could ditch a lot of crud with gtk/gnome bindings, what are they waiting for? gtk1.3? gnome2.0? and a lot of the nonstandard stuff that it requires to compile doesn't seem to be well maintained either.
Would be easier to start from scratch and write gnome-cash?
maybe they should change the name to PatheticCash?
gnucash: bootstrap file is
(Register #(Register foo 50-foo boolean foo something # # #f #f #f #f))
Of course the email spam harvesters attempt to filter out nospam and SPAM and ...
I bet that some of the slashdot readers are also spam kings and queens... and anyone who can work with REGEXPs can come up with some nice rules to unmask email addresses on online posts.
so, how do you discourage spam and encourage human to human contact? Well, I suggest something unconventional that is not likely to be part of a spammers email address unmasking algorithms.
... they want to make money.
There are a number of hurdles that the wireless industry needs to get over before wireless communication can make significant progress.
1) protocols. We need a SINGLE global WIRELESS VOICE protocol. CDMA is technically superior for MANY reasons, but for political reasons, there is a profusion of GSM and TDMA all over the world. CDMA makes the best use of wireless bandwidth, and that's significant. Also, we need WAP to take off BIG. (Micros~1 still isn't backing Bluetooth, either)
2) standardized cellular frequencies. The world is really in trouble when it comes to spectrum allocation. Go into 5 or 6 countries and look at what frequencies are public, owned by the military, government, reserved, etc.. and you'll see what I mean. -- we need a powerful global group to (re)allocate global frequencies
3) price - The cost for cellular calls is still artificially high from the days when all the phone companies lost TONS of money from people who pirated analog cellphone identies with scanners and phone reprogrammers. The prices haven't come down yet...
4) subscription plans. C'mon is anybody *NOT* confused by all the stupd options plans? It's like all the tax attorneys got hired by the cellular providers..
okay, so how STALE is the pre0.3 release of slashdot code that's available for download??
/. since the inception can tell that *LOTS* of neat stuff has been added and *NOT* released.
/. needs a new angle to stay ahead of the pack... dynamic news forums are about as revolutionary as portals nowadays.
/. is making money with advertising and IPOs, then ALL contributors should recieve some sort of compensation. How about something like US $0.50 credit for each positive moderation on users posts? Ten cents for meta-moderating? $20 for writing an opinion piece... $2 for submitting a story that gets used.
C'mon, those of us who've watched
Why? Could it be due to andover.net not wanting to dilute slashdot by enabling more of us to set up our own personal slashdot-like sites?
well, I've got news for you, squishdot for zope provides a pretty good forum that's ridiculously simple to set up.
Why not release the RECENT slashdot code and let the slashdot community work on improving it as well?
... or is Slashdot now an opensource-for-profit site that advocates that everyone except themselves release their sourcecode and make money only from support?
Personally, I think that
I think that if
...
Why should I donate my time and thoughts *FOR FREE* to a *COMMERCIAL* operation?
But who's to say what new TLD's they create? And.. what about those people who will say that their name is their property, REGARDLESS OF WHAT .EXTENSION it has.
.. image all the permutations.
.com address. That's prime real estate.
...and of course every company with money would just go out and register all the names and sell them back to the companies all over again.
I mean, if people can claim that they own rights to their company name TRANSLATED into other languages.com then
so let's say that hello.com claims that they have the emminent domain (?) right to these:
hello.net
hello.org
hello.edu
hello.gov
hola.com
nihao.com
hello.sex
...
how would companies feel about seeing these sites:
ibm.sex
coke.set
whitehouse.sex
basically, we have to face the reality that EVERYBODY wants a
You snoozed. You lost.
Go look for domains for sale on ebay, and maybe you can get a few short, unpronouncable ones really cheap.
Get ready for the made-up word company names:
glorps.com? c1-66.com? reallyhard2remember.com?
Bah! The truth is that people are just now starting to realize that .com is big business, and they're (we're?) all kicking themselves for not having had the foresight to register food.com, pets.com, news.com, cbs.com, etc... six or seven years ago.
Waa! Waa! somebody was quicker and smarter than me and stole my god-given right to own $MY_COMPANY_NAME.com .
Waa! Waa! I want to live in Beverly Hills, but I can't afford it. Please, Mr. Government... make them lower the rent in Beverly Hills... I have a RIGHT to live there
Waa! Waa! Somebody beat me to San Francisco and found all of the gold that I was supposed to find. Please, Mr. Government, make them share the gold they found.
Waa! Waa! The DeBeers family owns all of the diamonds in the world, and keeps the prices artificially high. Please, Mr Government, take at least half of the diamonds away from the DeBeers family so that I can buy lots of cheap diamonds.
Waa! Waa! The US Land Grant Act gave all of the good Silicon Valley land away FOR FREE many years ago, and I didn't get any. Please, Mr Government, take away the land from the Big companies in the silicon valley and re-apportion it, and give some to me.
Waa! Waa! All of the 3 character domain combinations are already registered and I didn't get $MY_INITIALS.[com,org,net] . How can I continue living?
Waa! Waa! BBC wanted bbc.com really bad, so they paid a million dollars for it, and now they're happy
How much do you think I'd have to pay BBC to get BBC.com from them?
Are you starting to get the picture?
Decent linux palm desktop= jpilot - just like the windows one. search freshmeat.
... everyone uses ftp or http, but I do have samba if I need to share stuff with windows-stricken coworkers.
I disagree that everyone needs to have windows. Granted, I did install windows in vmware, and I can use vnc to bring up a windows desktop from a lab machines, but honestly, I just don't ever find a need or use for windows anymore.
- I've got gnome/enlightenment/xscreensaver for all my eye candy.
- I've got staroffice, wvHtml, xlHtml for decoding msOffice-encrypyed information.
- I write just about everything in vi using plain text, or netscape's html editor, or via a web-app
- I write a script to do anything that I need to do more than 5 times.
- opensource unix apps, perl, and shell scripts just keep increasing my productivity. Now I can pretty much prototype an app fast than I can find a commercial solution
- I sync my pilot on linux and solaris using jpilot
- I bought a playstation for playing games
- I've got xmame if I ever missed wasting my cpu cycles on playing games.
- nobody where I work shares files using CIFS much anymore 'cause it's about as reliable as the list of servers you get when you click on 'network neighborhood'
Hey, I'm a unix sysadmin, and I figured that if *I* can't live without windows then maybe nobody can. When I shut off my last windows box, there were a few difficult times, but it's been surprisingly easy to not go back, and I'm a lot more productive.
It's not for everyone yet though. I'm not sure whether I'm ready to move my dad to linux -- he has a hard enough time with windows, but he's the one that's asking about linux 'cause win95 hangs and crashes so often.
Gee, have you noticed how our favorite opensource sites have started linking to the "ANDOVER.NET PARTNER SITES" and not to the other opensource sites?
:(
here's an example: appwatch.com - not a bad site at all, and yeah so maybe freshmeat did it first, but is andover.net keeping them (and anyone else who's not in their clutches) out of the opensource spotlight?
when nobody's making MILLIONS of dollars from opensource stuff, it's easy to stay fair and impartial, but when the people running the sites have to answer to management and not the opensource community, things change
:(
It all sort of sucks. Those of us who haven't made our millions off opensource yet and still code/compile/etc becuase we actually LOVE to do it seem to be the ones getting the short end of the stick while other get rich from our work.
maybe slasldot/andover should offer a financial reward for slashdotters who post stories and moderate... that seems plenty fair to me. Share and enjoy, right?
It's easy to ask for features if you're not a programmer, and it's easy to complain that there are too many library dependencies on stuff like gnome or enlightenment or anything else.
but... it's hard to explain to a non-developer about how difficult it really would be to merge kde and gnome apps.
I don't even know where to start... but anyway, it would be possible for new libraries to be written that would include *supersets* of functions handled by current libraries, and then you could ask developers to write to those libraries, and over time, things might get a little more homogeneous.
BUT... since much of the code is written by developers who aren't getting paid, you'll never be able to enforce any of these rules.
life never gets simpler.
... now all we need is VxFS and VxVM for LINUX. ;)
;)
(oh yeah, and raw devices
anyway... This is good because a lot of large shops won't consider downloading sourcecode and compiling it on their MISSION CRITICAL production servers (or.. their "sysadmins" are merely operators who don't feel comfortable building source "you mean you have to pay extra for the compiler??"
so, this is good for linux in the following way:
-- Samba gains credibility as a file serving solution
-- samba development progresses
-- Large customers get their commercial support from a vendor they're already doing business with
-- selling samba on linux to management gets *much* easier (hey, veritas is using it, and their customers are running it on large Sun servers!)
So, smile, and enjoy the smell of the Windows empire slowly burning to the ground.
Hey, fewer and fewer people are going to be willing to spend $2000 for a computer, $150 for a joystick, $200 for a new graphics card, $150 for decent speakers *JUST* to *PLAY*GAMES*.
People will be more likely to tolerate a lag to load a game when they have access to newer games on cheaper hardware. (witness how willingly linux users download ISO images over PPP!)
As to computers for gaming machines, I got tired of having to upgrade my OS/drivers/hardware every few months just to play a game.
... and I only had *one* joystick, so 2 player games were difficult.
You can get a playstation or N64 for $99, and there are tons of games that just work, don't need to be installed, configured, uninstalled, reinstalled, upgraded, etc.
I switched. I'll never waste time futzing around on my computer for games again.
Face it, *CONSUMERS* want SIMPLE, CHEAP, DISPOSABLE APPLIANCES. Slashdot users aren't representative of the general populace that will decide the success
RE: Symlinks -- if the API could support a symlink, why not add the feature?? Oh, could it be because Micros~1 can't figure out what to call it (can't use symlink... that's a unix term, can't use shortcut...)
RE: Buggy NFS... If Micros~1 cared about security or not supporting imperfect file sharing protocols, it would have NEVER adopted lanman/smb/cifs (which is a security NIGHTMARE!!), and... how come Windows supported Novell protocols from the beginning, but not UNIX (HINT: Unix incompatibility was a designed-in FEATURE of Windows, until recently when that became unreasonable)
RE: Trusted version of Linux... I'm not a Linux bigot. I'll use *ANY* unix. If I need the security of a trusted version, I can use special versions of Solaris or Tru64 unix. Use linux where it makes sense. Windows locks you into a single vendor who can change directions and abandon your strategy (witness Alpha) and you're left with no recourse.
Nothing is perfect, but Windows just can't compete with the collective strength of the Various versions of UNIX offered by Various vendors who cater to various markets.
Use the right tools for the right task, and don't lock yourself into a single-vendor relationship. That's it, Plain and simple.