Try downloading ezppp. It's best feature is a debug mode that let's you watch the interaction with the remote computer in realtime. Then, you go back and tweak the settings in ezppp and try again until it works. It worked well for me when I was having problems. I can't recall where to download it, but a search engine should find it pretty quick.
A large market share doesn't mean you are a monopoly
This is taking the literal definition of a monopoly instead of the legal definition, which is a common misconception. The legal definition for anti-trust purposes is much less retrictive. A company can have as little as %60 market share and fall under anti-trust laws. Basically, what anti-trust laws do is create certain restrictions on companies with dominant market share in order to prevent them from hurting competition and therefore the consumer. Here are some actions that would be illegal.
1) Tying the sale of one product to the dominant product. While this would be legal for a non-dominant company it is illegal for a dominant one. I think this is true because I woudl kind of like Win98, but I don't want IE4 yet I still have to pay for it. (The differences between Win95 and Win98 without IE4 are minimal and don't justify $90 to me. So I don't buy it.)
2) Predatory pricing. This is the situation where if a potential competitor arises the monopolist can reduce their prices in the short-term to put the competitor out of business then recoup those losses when the monopoly position returns. This is actually illegal for everyone, but more so for a monopolist.
3) Monopoly pricing. Charging extra for products because you can. (I think Win98 is an example of this, when you compare it to Win95. The differences are minimal especially if you don't want IE4.)
Now in order for a company to fall under anti-trust law the requirements are fairly simple.
A) Dominant market share.
B) High barriers to entry of compaetitors into the market.
'B' is the hard one, and requires proof. because this is the one that prevents a competitor from springing up to take the dominant players place. The idea is that if a monopolist raises prices enough there is now enough incentive to take the risk of entering the market. but, if there are high barriers to entry that would require extremely high potential profits for someone to take the risk of entering the market the company is a monopolist regardless of who i left floating around at the edges of its market. So, the DoJ first needs to show that A and B are true which is a fairly easy task especially with MS own economist saying so during cross examination. Then, they need to show that MS did any of 1-3.
Slashdot effect another example.
on
Monday Quickies
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· Score: 1
I don't rememebr the link, but not long ago I went back and looked at the survey of favorite net personalities. I think it was on ZDnet someplace. When it first was posted here Jennie of Jennicam fame was by far the leader. Now number 1 in Linus closely followed by Jennie.
In reading this thread it makes me believe Quantum's study a little more. They are incorporating into their new drives some mechanism to prevent shock damage during shipping where the drive heads hit the disk during shipment. Apparently they did a study and found that the majority of dead drives were caused by this. They also found that the drive failure can occur months after the damage. This seems more likely than 3 out of 3 bad drives shipped to the same person. The other common denominator would be the UPS guy handling the package.
It will be interesting to see what happens over the next year with the new Quantum drives that are shipping with this protection.
The Celeron processor sounds like it could still kick K7 in the jock strap. With a full speed cache (albeit 128k), it can really rock when it comes down to games and such.
Wrong!
The K7 has a 128K full speed L1 cache. Put that on top of a moderately fast L2 and you have a screamer. Imagine a PII with a Celeron core, but better.
There seems to be the implication that having the wrong date will make the computer stop working. In most cases won't the computer just keep working, but just think it is Jan 1, 1900. Well, there might be somethign stranger if it can't roll 99 over to 00. It might become a0, or maybe just stay 99, or whatever the programme happened to do at the time.
The point I am making is that there seems to be the concept that everything will just stop working, which seems unlikely. It is more likely that things will work wrong, which in some cases might be equivalent to not working, but in a lot of cases probably isn't even close. Any ideas?
K7 and alpha have the exact same bus. The question is whether there will be an alpha that is in a slot A physical package. Even if Compaq or Samsung doesn't make a Slot A part. Another manufacturer might make daughter cards that could mount an alpha in slot A, and then provide the BIOS update for various motherboards. No one knows exactl what will happen, but it shoudl still be interesting.
Don't take your good fortune for granted.
on
Why Work Sucks
·
· Score: 1
A lot of the posts here are form the technical elite. I include myself among those. The people who went out and got the technical education and have the skills that, due to demand, give us more power over our employers than most. We are the ones benefitting from the current situation.
Should we feel guilty about that? Hell no. Should we be aware of what is happening to those not as fortunate to be where we are? Hell yes.
That could be us someday. Corporations realize we have them by the short and hairies right now. Why do you think there is this pursuit of increasing the Visas for technical workers? Why do corporations want more technically trained people out of colleges. Yes, they can't fill jobs, but on top of that they have to pay too much in order to fill them. If there were 1.2 people for every job, do you think they would be paying 23 year olds $70K per year. The highly skilled technical worker should never take his good fortune for granted. It can be taken away before you know it.
The real cure is probably not government regulation, but the cooling of MS practices caused by goverment scrutiny. What would MS have done had IBM or Oracle had supported Linux without the DOJ case?
They have high prices for an inferior product namely Windows 98. What do you get with Windows98 that you don't get with Win95?
Bug Fixes? They should be free to download. Drivers? Not worth much especially when hardware vendors supply most of them. FAT32? About the only thing worht getting, and it comes with Win95 OSR2. Improved Performance? This is marginal at best, not worth much to me. Integrated IE4? What if I don't like IE4, it is also free to download. Therefore should not add anythign to the price.
Therefore, tell me how you justify spending $90 for an upgrade that gives you next to nothing of real value over the previous version.
Well, let's consider the high cost of Windows 98. Things Win98 has that Win95 does not...
1) FAT32 = $10 2) Bug Fixes = Free (cost of media) 3) Minor performance enhancements = $10 4) More Drivers = $10 for the service, and the few that don't come with my hardware. 5) IE4 = Free (I use Netscape anyways.)
So, total value for Win98 $30 plus the cost of media. Wait, I have Win95 OSR2. Therefore, Win98 is worth $20 to me.
So, Win98 upgrade costs $90 for at best $30 worth of new software. Well, I would say a 300% mark up demonstrates overcharging for something that is basically a minor upgrade.
On another note Win95's internal designation in Windows 4.0. Win98's is Windows 4.1. I recall spending $10 for the DOS 6.0 to 6.22 upgrade. So, if you figure inflation and increased complexity $30 for a single point upgrade is about right.
The fact is there has been a big anti-microsoft backlash for quite a while and if you think that the govt and courts are going to effect real change faster than the market could by companies moving to alternative platforms, I think you are mistaken.
The government actually won't go faster, and even if it loses this case the government should maintain its scrutiny of Microsoft if only to keep them honest. I can't really say if MS actions violate anti-trust laws. But, I think scrutiny of MS needs to be maintained because at the very least they are right on the hairy edge of violating anti-trust laws. Probably the most difficult part is that most of MS clout comes from a perceived threat rather than overt threats or actions. Therefore, it is very hard to prove that they violated any laws. But, by keeping its eye on Microsoft the government nullifies the perceived threat and any overt threat from MS against a company that doesn't do what MS wants will quickly get MS spanked. This will allow the market to decide what lives and dies not MS.
Slashdot Mirror
Try downloading ezppp. It's best feature is a debug mode that let's you watch the interaction with the remote computer in realtime. Then, you go back and tweak the settings in ezppp and try again until it works. It worked well for me when I was having problems. I can't recall where to download it, but a search engine should find it pretty quick.
A large market share doesn't mean you are a monopoly
This is taking the literal definition of a monopoly instead of the legal definition, which is a common misconception. The legal definition for anti-trust purposes is much less retrictive. A company can have as little as %60 market share and fall under anti-trust laws. Basically, what anti-trust laws do is create certain restrictions on companies with dominant market share in order to prevent them from hurting competition and therefore the consumer. Here are some actions that would be illegal.
1) Tying the sale of one product to the dominant product. While this would be legal for a non-dominant company it is illegal for a dominant one. I think this is true because I woudl kind of like Win98, but I don't want IE4 yet I still have to pay for it. (The differences between Win95 and Win98 without IE4 are minimal and don't justify $90 to me. So I don't buy it.)
2) Predatory pricing. This is the situation where if a potential competitor arises the monopolist can reduce their prices in the short-term to put the competitor out of business then recoup those losses when the monopoly position returns. This is actually illegal for everyone, but more so for a monopolist.
3) Monopoly pricing. Charging extra for products because you can. (I think Win98 is an example of this, when you compare it to Win95. The differences are minimal especially if you don't want IE4.)
Now in order for a company to fall under anti-trust law the requirements are fairly simple.
A) Dominant market share.
B) High barriers to entry of compaetitors into the market.
'B' is the hard one, and requires proof. because this is the one that prevents a competitor from springing up to take the dominant players place. The idea is that if a monopolist raises prices enough there is now enough incentive to take the risk of entering the market. but, if there are high barriers to entry that would require extremely high potential profits for someone to take the risk of entering the market the company is a monopolist regardless of who i left floating around at the edges of its market. So, the DoJ first needs to show that A and B are true which is a fairly easy task especially with MS own economist saying so during cross examination. Then, they need to show that MS did any of 1-3.
I don't rememebr the link, but not long ago I went back and looked at the survey of favorite net personalities. I think it was on ZDnet someplace. When it first was posted here Jennie of Jennicam fame was by far the leader. Now number 1 in Linus closely followed by Jennie.
In reading this thread it makes me believe Quantum's study a little more. They are incorporating into their new drives some mechanism to prevent shock damage during shipping where the drive heads hit the disk during shipment. Apparently they did a study and found that the majority of dead drives were caused by this. They also found that the drive failure can occur months after the damage. This seems more likely than 3 out of 3 bad drives shipped to the same person.
The other common denominator would be the UPS guy handling the package.
It will be interesting to see what happens over the next year with the new Quantum drives that are shipping with this protection.
Dastardly
The Celeron processor sounds like it could still kick K7 in the jock strap. With a full speed cache (albeit 128k), it can really rock when it comes down to games and such.
Wrong!
The K7 has a 128K full speed L1 cache. Put that on top of a moderately fast L2 and you have a screamer. Imagine a PII with a Celeron core, but better.
Here is something I was wondering about Y2K.
There seems to be the implication that having the wrong date will make the computer stop working. In most cases won't the computer just keep working, but just think it is Jan 1, 1900. Well, there might be somethign stranger if it can't roll 99 over to 00. It might become a0, or maybe just stay 99, or whatever the programme happened to do at the time.
The point I am making is that there seems to be the concept that everything will just stop working, which seems unlikely. It is more likely that things will work wrong, which in some cases might be equivalent to not working, but in a lot of cases probably isn't even close. Any ideas?
K7 and alpha have the exact same bus. The question is whether there will be an alpha that is in a slot A physical package. Even if Compaq or Samsung doesn't make a Slot A part. Another manufacturer might make daughter cards that could mount an alpha in slot A, and then provide the BIOS update for various motherboards. No one knows exactl what will happen, but it shoudl still be interesting.
A lot of the posts here are form the technical elite. I include myself among those. The people who went out and got the technical education and have the skills that, due to demand, give us more power over our employers than most. We are the ones benefitting from the current situation.
Should we feel guilty about that? Hell no.
Should we be aware of what is happening to those not as fortunate to be where we are? Hell yes.
That could be us someday. Corporations realize we have them by the short and hairies right now. Why do you think there is this pursuit of increasing the Visas for technical workers? Why do corporations want more technically trained people out of colleges. Yes, they can't fill jobs, but on top of that they have to pay too much in order to fill them. If there were 1.2 people for every job, do you think they would be paying 23 year olds $70K per year. The highly skilled technical worker should never take his good fortune for granted. It can be taken away before you know it.
What utilities? And, why would I want them?
I haven't heard of any "features" of Win98 that would make it worth $90. So, please list these all important utilities that make it worth $90.
The real cure is probably not government regulation, but the cooling of MS practices caused by goverment scrutiny. What would MS have done had IBM or Oracle had supported Linux without the DOJ case?
They have high prices for an inferior product namely Windows 98. What do you get with Windows98 that you don't get with Win95?
Bug Fixes? They should be free to download.
Drivers? Not worth much especially when hardware vendors supply most of them.
FAT32? About the only thing worht getting, and it comes with Win95 OSR2.
Improved Performance? This is marginal at best, not worth much to me.
Integrated IE4? What if I don't like IE4, it is also free to download. Therefore should not add anythign to the price.
Therefore, tell me how you justify spending $90 for an upgrade that gives you next to nothing of real value over the previous version.
Well, let's consider the high cost of Windows 98.
Things Win98 has that Win95 does not...
1) FAT32 = $10
2) Bug Fixes = Free (cost of media)
3) Minor performance enhancements = $10
4) More Drivers = $10 for the service, and the few that don't come with my hardware.
5) IE4 = Free (I use Netscape anyways.)
So, total value for Win98 $30 plus the cost of media. Wait, I have Win95 OSR2. Therefore, Win98 is worth $20 to me.
So, Win98 upgrade costs $90 for at best $30 worth of new software. Well, I would say a 300% mark up demonstrates overcharging for something that is basically a minor upgrade.
On another note Win95's internal designation in Windows 4.0. Win98's is Windows 4.1. I recall spending $10 for the DOS 6.0 to 6.22 upgrade. So, if you figure inflation and increased complexity $30 for a single point upgrade is about right.
The fact is there has been a big anti-microsoft backlash for quite a while and if you
think that the govt and courts are going to effect real change faster than the market could
by companies moving to alternative platforms, I think you are mistaken.
The government actually won't go faster, and even if it loses this case the government should maintain its scrutiny of Microsoft if only to keep them honest. I can't really say if MS actions violate anti-trust laws. But, I think scrutiny of MS needs to be maintained because at the very least they are right on the hairy edge of violating anti-trust laws. Probably the most difficult part is that most of MS clout comes from a perceived threat rather than overt threats or actions. Therefore, it is very hard to prove that they violated any laws. But, by keeping its eye on Microsoft the government nullifies the perceived threat and any overt threat from MS against a company that doesn't do what MS wants will quickly get MS spanked. This will allow the market to decide what lives and dies not MS.