If they're getting the code hidden by court ordainment, then there's the likelyhood that they will have 'professional witnesses' analyze the code. I wonder: who might these 'professionals' be, how will they be selected, will they be competent and knowledgeable (since I'm assuming they'll have to be 'impartial', it's unlikely they have any knowledge even of the fact that there's a large amount of public domain UNIX code out there from the 1970's), and what is the potential that they might be financially corrupted (being as it's much easier to buy off 10 people for $10,000 (or 10k in stock) each, than thousands of people at any price).
I'm by no means a hardcore gamer (for instance, I haven't even touched my gaming machine in over a month - and I don't have a console other than the NES). The thing is, I get incredibly bored with most RTS games within 10 to 15 minutes due to their sameness and lack of anything different. I played WarCraft 1 and 2 nearly obsessively, and Starcraft nearly as much - they were all fairly large leaps gameplay quality over anything prior and anything at the time. I'd say they've got most RTSs beat now.
Don't even start on me with FPS games - I played CS with friends for years, but stopped doing that about 2 years ago when other games were LAN party preference (So that would put me in at starting CS at beta 5.0 or so, yeah). Other than 'revolutionary' games like Quake classic (which I was addicted to that for months, despite the 'warped time' nature of dialup that often resulted in getting fragged and not knowing about it for 10 seconds. Games such as RTCW don't introduce anything new; BF1942 does, and it looks interesting, but just not enough to get me to put down money for it right now.
Deus Ex was an incredible game - and we all know what they've done with that, those asshat ratbastard fools. My only hope in that reguard is another sequel done properly; that's just a dream, though.
I find myself nitpicking the inadequacies in most games nowadays. It's not hard to. Take C&C Generals, for instance. How was the AI in that game any different than what was available in the =very= original Command and Conquer? It isn't. And, despite all the 'cool' 3D rendered models and cutscenes, Generals still wasn't as graphically intense or as richly written (in terms of story, graphics, and the like), or as well acted as its earliest Westwood predecessor. To say nothing of the horrible voice acting in Generals vs C&C. That's sad. And it's painfully common. I've not seen a game as rich and immersive as Mechwarrior II/Descent I/II/Blizzard's *Craft games in years.
Why not? Is it that people think multiplayer is the end-all and they no longer need to design good single player games? I don't know about anyone else, but single player mode is what gets me drawn into the game and addicted - multiplayer is an attempt to fulfill that addiction. Not only that, but if I just jump into multiplayer, I'll get my ass handed to me for a while until I get up to speed. Some of us like being able to 'win' right off the bat - games are supposed to be fun, afterall, and not all of us are gaming savants.
Erm. You must have been using a different KDE than I have been.
I'm running KDE 3.1.4 on Debian sid. I have been for quite a while - basically since 3.0 came out.
Prior to 3.0, (both KDE 1 and KDE 2 releases), I had KDE installed - but I didn't use it. Why? Several reasons. The main reason was it was much, much too slow. It would lag the system up something horrid. Additionally, version 1 was quite unstable, and version 2 was only marginally better in most respects. KDE has done nothing but improve in everything but memory footprint, and that's a negligible concern.
I might also want to mention that I'm using the same hardware now that I used when KDE 1 and KDE 2 were available. At the time, I used Enlightenment because it was faster. I'm back on KDE 3+ until I find something better.
No doubt. She makes 2000 - 4000 a mother fucking week?! Or at least made. At any rate, it's incredible. If she's now going bankrupt, she must've been supporting everyone in her white-trash household with that money - my wife and I certainly wouldn't be going bankrupt anytime soon if we made 2k$/week for as short as 6 months or so. (That's 50,000!)
I've got about as much sympathy for her as I have for one of the 9-11 hijackers. Maybe even less, since he actually thinks she deserves it. "Poor me!"
Being unemployed, I can certainly say that that kind of money looks appealing. (Granted, it's not such a mecca of bounty anymore, but still...) Going deeper and deeper into debt just to eat isn't terribly fun. Just the same, such moral corruption is inexcuseable. Talk about divorced from reality.
If we do that, we'll just give credibility to the BSA, which doesn't even have as much merit as the RIAA. Evil is evil, even if you're employing it for your own good.
Besides, I'd not be surprised if the BSA has a substantial investment in the spam business.
I don't know about anyone else, but I personally would miss the hobbit-battle at the end against the orcs. There's just something cool about little guys getting all ferocious and kicking the ass of bigger, evil types. I can just imagine a line of hobbits lined up with pitchforks and rakes, charging at half a dozen orcs, and the orcs turning to run. Good stuff.:)
I imagine that this end battle is what Lucas shaped his Endor battle after, to a degree - at least in concept. Little 'cute' guys kicking the asses of much bigger, more agressive baddies in a humorous manner.
I have a similar situation. It doesn't cost much at all to do such things, if its planned out properly, instead of going about it in a haphazard manner.
If that's the case, you havent' been doing your job for the last 3 years.
You should have been helping them upgrade to modern hardware gradually. With that gradual change, you might be able to work a single, and them multiple copies of newer OSes.
That's utterly ridiculous looking! It's disgusting. But not in, "oh, sex" disgusting. It's disgusting in more of an "Anna Nicole Smith Show" sort of way. I can understand bouncing breasts - that's something any guy can relate to. I'm just wondering WTF those things on her chest are.
Er, I don't know about you, but I distinctly recall Macs being the desireable computer item when I was younger. Nobody wanted a PC: they were ugly, didn't do anything cool, and were just for writing text documents. There was marginal appeal of using a PC for games - but that was in DOS, not Windows. Windows 3.x had nothing at all on MacOS.
MS Bob was neutered into Clippy due to user research, and then Clippy was removed due to the same.
Er, has the fact that those things existed in the first place due to "user interface research" crossed your mind? It took them, what, 2, 3, 4 product versions to get rid of the errors of their 'research'?
Sure, XP is now themeable, and you can modify little GUI artifacts more easily. But the default is fucked up, and quite a divergence from anything previous; there should have least been an option. As it stands, you've got to dig through things to fix what they 'enhanced'. Win2k was close to on track in those regards - KISS.
Oh, and as for KDE: I don't use it because in order to use it, I'd have to dump nearly every piece of software that I do use. Show me a KDE.EXE that can replace EXPLORER.EXE, and I'll use it.
Your ignorance proceeds you. I doubt you've even used linux - there are no such thing as.exe's in linux-land. (I'm assuming you weren't speaking figuratively, being as you haven't previously.)
Let's reverse the scenario: name one thing that MS Explorer can do that KDE's Konqueror (the file manager/web browser) can't do.
Konqueror can browse local filesystems. It can browse remote filesystems via SSH as if they -were- local. It can browse FTP archives without a hastle (unlike the hideous load-time for IE.) It can do file previews in any number of fashions, on local or remote file systems. It can have a split-view browsing and/or file management view. It has built-in translation access, HTML validation, and various other features via websites such as babelfish. It has various profile settings -just- for Konq, per user - so that you can have seperate layouts per task. You can customize default keystrokes to be whatever you want. You can change your browser identification. It can run SWF, java, javascript and the like. It can convert its bookmarks to Netscape and/or Mozilla bookmarks. It can import bookmarks from half a dozen Mozilla-based browser, Opera, and IE. It has a sane and flexible MIME file association 'editor', with reasonable defaults. You can set whether or not fonts will 'wrap' or be trunkated by the file manager's view. The list is exhaustive. Konq can even block pop-up adds! (Not as if that's anything to boast about. It's simply a minimal requirement for a modern browser.) There are dozens of more features than I'm listing. Nearly every one of these isn't in IE.
As far as 'dumping nearly every piece of software that you use'... well, yeah. You likely do that already - going from PS 5 to PS 5.5, etc. Most of the major applications will work in WINE quite well, anyway. You really have very little to bitch about. Media players in linux are quite superior to those of Windows. Granted, there are soft spots, such as audio editing, but unless you have a bone to pick or some uncommon requirements, that's not a matter of concern.
Usability is THE REASON (well, ok, marketing too, to a lesser degree) that Windows runs 90%+ of the world's PC's.
Bollix. You've got to be insane, foolish, or simply quite misinformed to believe that.
Look at the competitors for MS Windows when it first came out. There was OS/2, as well as several other contenders I can't immidiately recall. OS/2 (and its Warp kin) are vastly more "useable" than windows. It crashed less, it had more features, and what's more, it was much more technologically advanced that the earlier MS Windows. useable
adj 1: fit or ready for use or service;
2: able to be put to use; "usable byproducts" syn: usable
3: convenient for use or disposal;
Look at each of those 3 definitions. None of them are met by what MS Windows is, or has been. Every single release has been buggy, unstable, and/or security ridden the point where it causes serious setbacks for its users. Maybe you forget how much Win9x crashed.
The only way that MS Windows could be considered 'useable' is in the 3rd definition, since it's goddamn everywhere - it doesn't take much effort to find a Windows machine. However, if you consider the hastle often involved in -making- it ready from scratch (compared to say, linux), your 'useability' goes down drastically.
But really, what is 'useability' and what is 'flexibility'? Isn't the main thing you want out of your computer the ability to do what you want with it?
Let's compare another definition for a word you throw about as if you know the meaning.
Flexible Flex"i*ble, a. L. flexibilis: cf. F. flexible.
1. Capable of being flexed or bent; admitting of being turned, bowed, or twisted, without breaking; pliable; yielding to pressure; not stiff or brittle. (The other definitions are nearly identical in meaning.)
Now, would you consider flexibility a desireable goal in an OS? Would you like it to not break when you try and do things? I think so. Thus, flexibility in design and use is what you want. Flexibility has nothing to do with doing 'everything under the sun' (which is more a goal of MS and Windows, than linux, if you'd use your head). It's about doing things properly.
The only reason you diss linux is due to your insecurities. I've given KDE setups to people completely unfamiliar with computers, and they've had absolutely no problems. If you're so inept to even give linux a shot (IE, get familiar with it), you've got nowhere to stand from. People don't just 'know' things inately, like how to use a Windows computer. YOu didn't just 'know' how to ride a bike, or 'know' how to walk, as simple and as 'innate' as those things are. You had to learn them like everyone else.
I couldn't have said it better myself. Precisely what I tried to say in an earlier post, but I've got SARS or something, and am a bit under the weather.
In nearly every scenario, you can trace the cause of something to its origin by determining who benefits the most from it. In this case,
Does linux benefit from this DDoS? No. Does IBM's case benefit? No. Does the linux community? No. Do 1337 kiddies? No. (They don't get the credit - "linux hippies" get the "credit") Does SCO? Yes. They'll likely try to get an extension on their court order, just as earlier predicted here on slashdot.
If I were in the FBI and looking into this scenario, I'd first look at SCO's accounting very, very carefully. My guess is that there's a debit of several dozen (hundred?) thousand for something like "Consulting Services" made within the last couple weeks.
How many open-source developers you know that conduct large-scale usability tests? How many open-source developers go around interviewing end users?
None. Why? One potential reason is because it's not needed. Ever consider that all the 'usability tests' that MS conducts are a bunch of shit? Look at the two 'major' - supposed - outcomes of such research: MS Bob and Windows XP's graphical interface. All that this illustrates is that MS found people are dumb, and that MS doesn't think most folks are capable of too terribly much, mentally. So make it simple to the point where it loses practicality for the marginal number of people that are skilled.
Consider that when an open source developer is using software, and he finds a problem, or he sees a feature he wants, he impliments it. It has happened on Windows, too, with projects like WindowBlinds and AfterStep. People want more features, so they write them themselves - and quite a few people will use them. Sure, most people don't (they just use the 'vanilla' configuration), but it's necessary to have that flexibility in the framework; otherwise there will be no innovation. The benefit to a system like linux is that flexibility is there due to the openness and availability of the source code: nothing needs to be reverse engineered.
When the developer and product consumer is the same, open-source makes much more sense to me.
Er, correct me if I'm wrong, but developers are not a higher form of life than everyone else. They are no smarter than anyone else. They, like everyone else, has a personal opinion and personal way of relating to their environment; considering that most developers are human, I'm guessing that such interfaces would generally be understandable enough for someone of similar origin to figure out. If not, that's of no fallacy of the interface itself, but of the user: there are more options. If you -need- MS Windows and can't 'adapt' to KDE's interface (which is undeniably more full-featured), then stay with MS Windows -it's what you were initially introduced to, and it's what you're more familiar with. Simple enough, quit bitching. That doesn't mean that other designs are worse. Look at the forever-going battle over the GUIs of Windows vs. MacOS - they both think their own is superior.
Not everyone is a Type A, Type C, or Type Z. Some of us are Type 1, Type 0, and Type 01010110.
It makes sense to me that they would claim it's a "SYN flood" simply because SYN has a similar sound to "sin" - it sounds evil! A "ping" flood sounds about as threatening to the average person as a pair of daffy duck children's socks.
I find it likely that the "DDoS" was someone internally opening an attachment with a virus, which then propigated to every (windows) system on the network; the virus may have had a payload that said, "upload all.doc files to x.x.x.x"... so they killed the external link that the internal network uses.
-They took everything down to install MS Windows Advanced Server 2004
- The guy that took over for the sysadmin, after they fired him, tripped and spilled coffee all over the cisco rack. They're waiting for replacements, shipped Express.
My guess is whatever company that was simply wanted to milk another 50 grand or so out of their operation. Web hosting? Colo? Data storage? Surely enough money was coming in to pay you.
The pathetic thing is, when hardware starts to reach the end of its lifetime, that 1 admin is going to be sweating bullets. Particularly if it was all purchased at the same time - he'll be way over-worked. (As if he probably isn't already.) I pitty him having to apply patches to every one of those 400 boxen.
Slashdot Mirror
If they're getting the code hidden by court ordainment, then there's the likelyhood that they will have 'professional witnesses' analyze the code. I wonder: who might these 'professionals' be, how will they be selected, will they be competent and knowledgeable (since I'm assuming they'll have to be 'impartial', it's unlikely they have any knowledge even of the fact that there's a large amount of public domain UNIX code out there from the 1970's), and what is the potential that they might be financially corrupted (being as it's much easier to buy off 10 people for $10,000 (or 10k in stock) each, than thousands of people at any price).
Erm, for some of us, it doesn't even take that.
I'm by no means a hardcore gamer (for instance, I haven't even touched my gaming machine in over a month - and I don't have a console other than the NES). The thing is, I get incredibly bored with most RTS games within 10 to 15 minutes due to their sameness and lack of anything different. I played WarCraft 1 and 2 nearly obsessively, and Starcraft nearly as much - they were all fairly large leaps gameplay quality over anything prior and anything at the time. I'd say they've got most RTSs beat now.
Don't even start on me with FPS games - I played CS with friends for years, but stopped doing that about 2 years ago when other games were LAN party preference (So that would put me in at starting CS at beta 5.0 or so, yeah). Other than 'revolutionary' games like Quake classic (which I was addicted to that for months, despite the 'warped time' nature of dialup that often resulted in getting fragged and not knowing about it for 10 seconds. Games such as RTCW don't introduce anything new; BF1942 does, and it looks interesting, but just not enough to get me to put down money for it right now.
Deus Ex was an incredible game - and we all know what they've done with that, those asshat ratbastard fools. My only hope in that reguard is another sequel done properly; that's just a dream, though.
I find myself nitpicking the inadequacies in most games nowadays. It's not hard to. Take C&C Generals, for instance. How was the AI in that game any different than what was available in the =very= original Command and Conquer? It isn't. And, despite all the 'cool' 3D rendered models and cutscenes, Generals still wasn't as graphically intense or as richly written (in terms of story, graphics, and the like), or as well acted as its earliest Westwood predecessor. To say nothing of the horrible voice acting in Generals vs C&C. That's sad. And it's painfully common. I've not seen a game as rich and immersive as Mechwarrior II/Descent I/II/Blizzard's *Craft games in years.
Why not? Is it that people think multiplayer is the end-all and they no longer need to design good single player games? I don't know about anyone else, but single player mode is what gets me drawn into the game and addicted - multiplayer is an attempt to fulfill that addiction. Not only that, but if I just jump into multiplayer, I'll get my ass handed to me for a while until I get up to speed. Some of us like being able to 'win' right off the bat - games are supposed to be fun, afterall, and not all of us are gaming savants.
Why do I feel like a shrinking demographic?
dear god that had to be intentional.
one probably posted it after a good long cuddle last night with the other, and the other was a bit slow on the uptake.
Erm. You must have been using a different KDE than I have been.
I'm running KDE 3.1.4 on Debian sid. I have been for quite a while - basically since 3.0 came out.
Prior to 3.0, (both KDE 1 and KDE 2 releases), I had KDE installed - but I didn't use it. Why? Several reasons. The main reason was it was much, much too slow. It would lag the system up something horrid. Additionally, version 1 was quite unstable, and version 2 was only marginally better in most respects. KDE has done nothing but improve in everything but memory footprint, and that's a negligible concern.
I might also want to mention that I'm using the same hardware now that I used when KDE 1 and KDE 2 were available. At the time, I used Enlightenment because it was faster. I'm back on KDE 3+ until I find something better.
No doubt. She makes 2000 - 4000 a mother fucking week ?! Or at least made. At any rate, it's incredible. If she's now going bankrupt, she must've been supporting everyone in her white-trash household with that money - my wife and I certainly wouldn't be going bankrupt anytime soon if we made 2k$/week for as short as 6 months or so. (That's 50,000!)
I've got about as much sympathy for her as I have for one of the 9-11 hijackers. Maybe even less, since he actually thinks she deserves it. "Poor me!"
Being unemployed, I can certainly say that that kind of money looks appealing. (Granted, it's not such a mecca of bounty anymore, but still...) Going deeper and deeper into debt just to eat isn't terribly fun. Just the same, such moral corruption is inexcuseable. Talk about divorced from reality.
If we do that, we'll just give credibility to the BSA, which doesn't even have as much merit as the RIAA. Evil is evil, even if you're employing it for your own good.
Besides, I'd not be surprised if the BSA has a substantial investment in the spam business.
An error occured while loading http://sff.redlightning.net/:
Timeout on server
Connection was to sff.redlightning.net at port 80
Must be a matrix of 0,0 then.
I don't know about anyone else, but I personally would miss the hobbit-battle at the end against the orcs. There's just something cool about little guys getting all ferocious and kicking the ass of bigger, evil types. I can just imagine a line of hobbits lined up with pitchforks and rakes, charging at half a dozen orcs, and the orcs turning to run. Good stuff. :)
I imagine that this end battle is what Lucas shaped his Endor battle after, to a degree - at least in concept. Little 'cute' guys kicking the asses of much bigger, more agressive baddies in a humorous manner.
I'm guessing this means that all the EA employees that went to the film will no longer have jobs; this is probably their severance package. :)
I have a similar situation. It doesn't cost much at all to do such things, if its planned out properly, instead of going about it in a haphazard manner.
If that's the case, you havent' been doing your job for the last 3 years.
You should have been helping them upgrade to modern hardware gradually. With that gradual change, you might be able to work a single, and them multiple copies of newer OSes.
That's utterly ridiculous looking! It's disgusting. But not in, "oh, sex" disgusting. It's disgusting in more of an "Anna Nicole Smith Show" sort of way. I can understand bouncing breasts - that's something any guy can relate to. I'm just wondering WTF those things on her chest are.
Er, I don't know about you, but I distinctly recall Macs being the desireable computer item when I was younger. Nobody wanted a PC: they were ugly, didn't do anything cool, and were just for writing text documents. There was marginal appeal of using a PC for games - but that was in DOS, not Windows. Windows 3.x had nothing at all on MacOS.
You obviously don't use Windows.
.exe's in linux-land. (I'm assuming you weren't speaking figuratively, being as you haven't previously.)
MS Bob was neutered into Clippy due to user research, and then Clippy was removed due to the same.
Er, has the fact that those things existed in the first place due to "user interface research" crossed your mind? It took them, what, 2, 3, 4 product versions to get rid of the errors of their 'research'?
Sure, XP is now themeable, and you can modify little GUI artifacts more easily. But the default is fucked up, and quite a divergence from anything previous; there should have least been an option. As it stands, you've got to dig through things to fix what they 'enhanced'. Win2k was close to on track in those regards - KISS.
Oh, and as for KDE: I don't use it because in order to use it, I'd have to dump nearly every piece of software that I do use. Show me a KDE.EXE that can replace EXPLORER.EXE, and I'll use it.
Your ignorance proceeds you. I doubt you've even used linux - there are no such thing as
Let's reverse the scenario: name one thing that MS Explorer can do that KDE's Konqueror (the file manager/web browser) can't do.
Konqueror can browse local filesystems. It can browse remote filesystems via SSH as if they -were- local. It can browse FTP archives without a hastle (unlike the hideous load-time for IE.) It can do file previews in any number of fashions, on local or remote file systems. It can have a split-view browsing and/or file management view. It has built-in translation access, HTML validation, and various other features via websites such as babelfish. It has various profile settings -just- for Konq, per user - so that you can have seperate layouts per task. You can customize default keystrokes to be whatever you want. You can change your browser identification. It can run SWF, java, javascript and the like. It can convert its bookmarks to Netscape and/or Mozilla bookmarks. It can import bookmarks from half a dozen Mozilla-based browser, Opera, and IE. It has a sane and flexible MIME file association 'editor', with reasonable defaults. You can set whether or not fonts will 'wrap' or be trunkated by the file manager's view. The list is exhaustive. Konq can even block pop-up adds! (Not as if that's anything to boast about. It's simply a minimal requirement for a modern browser.) There are dozens of more features than I'm listing. Nearly every one of these isn't in IE.
As far as 'dumping nearly every piece of software that you use'... well, yeah. You likely do that already - going from PS 5 to PS 5.5, etc. Most of the major applications will work in WINE quite well, anyway. You really have very little to bitch about. Media players in linux are quite superior to those of Windows. Granted, there are soft spots, such as audio editing, but unless you have a bone to pick or some uncommon requirements, that's not a matter of concern.
Usability is THE REASON (well, ok, marketing too, to a lesser degree) that Windows runs 90%+ of the world's PC's.
Bollix. You've got to be insane, foolish, or simply quite misinformed to believe that.
Look at the competitors for MS Windows when it first came out. There was OS/2, as well as several other contenders I can't immidiately recall. OS/2 (and its Warp kin) are vastly more "useable" than windows. It crashed less, it had more features, and what's more, it was much more technologically advanced that the earlier MS Windows.
useable
adj 1: fit or ready for use or service;
2: able to be put to use; "usable byproducts" syn: usable
3: convenient for use or disposal;
Look at each of those 3 definitions. None of them are met by what MS Windows is, or has been. Every single release has been buggy, unstable, and/or security ridden the point where it causes serious setbacks for its users. Maybe you forget how much Win9x crashed.
The only way that MS Windows could be considered 'useable' is in the 3rd definition, since it's goddamn everywhere - it doesn't take much effort to find a Windows machine. However, if you consider the hastle often involved in -making- it ready from scratch (compared to say, linux), your 'useability' goes down drastically.
But really, what is 'useability' and what is 'flexibility'? Isn't the main thing you want out of your computer the ability to do what you want with it?
Let's compare another definition for a word you throw about as if you know the meaning.
Flexible Flex"i*ble, a. L. flexibilis: cf. F. flexible.
1. Capable of being flexed or bent; admitting of being turned, bowed, or twisted, without breaking; pliable; yielding to pressure; not stiff or brittle.
(The other definitions are nearly identical in meaning.)
Now, would you consider flexibility a desireable goal in an OS? Would you like it to not break when you try and do things? I think so. Thus, flexibility in design and use is what you want. Flexibility has nothing to do with doing 'everything under the sun' (which is more a goal of MS and Windows, than linux, if you'd use your head). It's about doing things properly.
The only reason you diss linux is due to your insecurities. I've given KDE setups to people completely unfamiliar with computers, and they've had absolutely no problems. If you're so inept to even give linux a shot (IE, get familiar with it), you've got nowhere to stand from. People don't just 'know' things inately, like how to use a Windows computer. YOu didn't just 'know' how to ride a bike, or 'know' how to walk, as simple and as 'innate' as those things are. You had to learn them like everyone else.
I couldn't have said it better myself. Precisely what I tried to say in an earlier post, but I've got SARS or something, and am a bit under the weather.
This is so obvious it's not even funny.
In nearly every scenario, you can trace the cause of something to its origin by determining who benefits the most from it. In this case,
Does linux benefit from this DDoS? No.
Does IBM's case benefit? No.
Does the linux community? No.
Do 1337 kiddies? No. (They don't get the credit - "linux hippies" get the "credit")
Does SCO? Yes. They'll likely try to get an extension on their court order, just as earlier predicted here on slashdot.
If I were in the FBI and looking into this scenario, I'd first look at SCO's accounting very, very carefully. My guess is that there's a debit of several dozen (hundred?) thousand for something like "Consulting Services" made within the last couple weeks.
How many open-source developers you know that conduct large-scale usability tests? How many open-source developers go around interviewing end users?
None. Why? One potential reason is because it's not needed. Ever consider that all the 'usability tests' that MS conducts are a bunch of shit? Look at the two 'major' - supposed - outcomes of such research: MS Bob and Windows XP's graphical interface. All that this illustrates is that MS found people are dumb, and that MS doesn't think most folks are capable of too terribly much, mentally. So make it simple to the point where it loses practicality for the marginal number of people that are skilled.
Consider that when an open source developer is using software, and he finds a problem, or he sees a feature he wants, he impliments it. It has happened on Windows, too, with projects like WindowBlinds and AfterStep. People want more features, so they write them themselves - and quite a few people will use them. Sure, most people don't (they just use the 'vanilla' configuration), but it's necessary to have that flexibility in the framework; otherwise there will be no innovation. The benefit to a system like linux is that flexibility is there due to the openness and availability of the source code: nothing needs to be reverse engineered.
When the developer and product consumer is the same, open-source makes much more sense to me.
Er, correct me if I'm wrong, but developers are not a higher form of life than everyone else. They are no smarter than anyone else. They, like everyone else, has a personal opinion and personal way of relating to their environment; considering that most developers are human, I'm guessing that such interfaces would generally be understandable enough for someone of similar origin to figure out. If not, that's of no fallacy of the interface itself, but of the user: there are more options. If you -need- MS Windows and can't 'adapt' to KDE's interface (which is undeniably more full-featured), then stay with MS Windows -it's what you were initially introduced to, and it's what you're more familiar with. Simple enough, quit bitching. That doesn't mean that other designs are worse. Look at the forever-going battle over the GUIs of Windows vs. MacOS - they both think their own is superior.
Not everyone is a Type A, Type C, or Type Z. Some of us are Type 1, Type 0, and Type 01010110.
I think this is where the X Consortium comes in and calls MS on the use of "Windows" - after all, the X Window System was around a long time prior.
That is exactly what I thought before clicking the link to view the article - "This must be yet another piece of Dvorak feces."
But it was worse, much worse. He had some points - and then forgot about them while he flamed. Classic straw man tactics. Poorly done.
It makes sense to me that they would claim it's a "SYN flood" simply because SYN has a similar sound to "sin" - it sounds evil! A "ping" flood sounds about as threatening to the average person as a pair of daffy duck children's socks.
I find it likely that the "DDoS" was someone internally opening an attachment with a virus, which then propigated to every (windows) system on the network; the virus may have had a payload that said, "upload all .doc files to x.x.x.x"... so they killed the external link that the internal network uses.
Just a thought.
-SCO sold all their servers to increase revenue.
-They took everything down to install MS Windows Advanced Server 2004
- The guy that took over for the sysadmin, after they fired him, tripped and spilled coffee all over the cisco rack. They're waiting for replacements, shipped Express.
- Daryl opened an attachment
That sucks hardcore.
My guess is whatever company that was simply wanted to milk another 50 grand or so out of their operation. Web hosting? Colo? Data storage? Surely enough money was coming in to pay you.
The pathetic thing is, when hardware starts to reach the end of its lifetime, that 1 admin is going to be sweating bullets. Particularly if it was all purchased at the same time - he'll be way over-worked. (As if he probably isn't already.) I pitty him having to apply patches to every one of those 400 boxen.
Er, Windows 98SE is still the defacto gaming OS?
I know of nobody that uses 98 anymore. Nor anyone that has for a couple of years, many of them gamers.
get with the times, man!