Please don't call them 'proprietary'. Almost all software and services available use open protocols, even MS Netmeeting. Most of the time, reference implementations are available open-source. They won't help you use unsupported clients, but that doesn't mean it's 'proprietary'.
software that lets you call from the internet to an actual phone... Does anyone know software like this?
Sure. Most protocols have allowances for a link to the pots network. They're usually called 'gateways'. The reason you don't see many voip-to-pots services offerred is that you end up having to pay for the land line that you use to connect to the pots network anyways, which negates most savings of voip. Vonage costs more than a land line; and you have to have a broadband internet connection *on top* of that. It doesn't make sense unless you do *a lot* of long distance calling and voice quality isn't really an issue for those calls.
What would need to happen to get software like this to work?
It works now. What would need to happen to get this to become economical? An act of God. Or Congress. Or, possibly, if the Baby Bells lost their minds and decided that VoIP was the way to go. Of course they won't do that until a strong Palladium-type system is in place to *guarantee* that their encrypted protocols can't be cracked to allow interoperability with competitors' products.
circumvented its local carrier and reduced monthly service fees from $530,000 to a mere $6,000 by using voice over IP technology
Great. Did they do it with Windows Server 2003? 'Cause I was under the impression that the only way to save 'millions of dollars' on IT these days was to fire your staff and oursource everything to overpriced monopolies.
Gibraltar is a Debian-based CD firewall distribution. It is freely available and I use it on several boxes. There is supposed to be an upcoming version with a web interface that will cost around $100.
Are you kidding? Do you actually realize what percentage of the computer-using population doesn't know how to double-click?
That double-click-slowly-to-rename thing is one of the worst OS features that MS ever came up with. Go ahead, you try to explain it to someone over the age of 40. I dare you.
but how long is it until everyone has a mandatory GPS chip implanted at birth?
That'll never happen. No one will ever *have* to get a Social Security number when they're born. It's a completely *voluntary* program.
Remember boys & girls, 'slippery slope' arguments are invalid when you use them to argue against tyrrannical government intrusion into basic human rights. You can continue to use them for 'anti-terrorism' purposes, however.
Don't say that SCO requires 'no maintenance'. It might not get any, but, trust me, it requires some. The sad truth is that most companies are accustommed to having their computers crash and not work right. It's *accepted*.
I just got done working in a very similar situation to that which you describe. The Openserver box required maintenance. It just didn't get any. Processes had to be killed every few days. They were used to rebooting the system once every few months. *No* patches had been applied since the OS was installed (not even Y2K stuff, lol). As for serial terminals, everyone prayed to the lightning gods during spring and fall thunderstorms; hoping that their terminal wouldn't be the next one fried. The server even caught fire once, or so I was told.
They were supposed to run database integrity checks every few months, but those were never done. They just wondered why errors cropped-up in their reports and stock files and usually attributted it to 'those darn computers' that never work right.
This company was in the same position WRT their supplier switching everything to Windows. It's just an excuse to sell more licenses and overpriced consulting. Their consultants will probably be switching those same systems to Linux in about five years, with another round of hardware and software upgrades.
It could allow Linux to compete with or even surpass OSX and Longhorn.
...on new systems that insist on having 2ghz processors with only 128mb ram.
Vector graphics aren't really new; they're just really hard to do right. Along with Macromedia Flash, Corel Draw and Adobe Illustrator are native vector drawing programs.
There was supposedly a lot of ACPI stuff added to 2.4.22; and all the drivers were reworked to better support ACPI in 2.6. I haven't tried either, so I could be wrong.
it felt like trying to talk about genital warts or something.
That's what we need. Education. Public service ads that ask kids "Have you talked to your parents about viruses? Don't you think you should?" and say things like "Adults *want* internet boundries. Be a responsible teenager and punish them when they install malware."
So why does the retailer mark up CDs so much more than paperback books? And why do record clubs such as Columbia House charge so much for shipping and handling?
Because they can. I don't think it's the retailers that mark CDs up, rather the record companies; otherwise, there would be *someplace* to buy a CD for less than $12.
Shipping charges *never* represent actual costs. Most companies jack up the shipping charge to supplement profits but actually have bulk rates with UPS.
It's still better than Gnome, though. By 'better', I mean 'doesn't crash when I click on things' and 'has more than a couple of customization options'.
Sid (Testing) has KDE 3
It's included on the Knoppix CD and it seems pretty stable from what little I've used it.
Those are good points. But don't think that the music industry doesn't repackage their product in several different formats as well. Greatest hits CDs, singles (if you can still find them), not to mention the fact that every hit song automatically gets 'remade' after ten or so years. Also, try using your Dark Side of the Moon record on a CD player; I've bought that one more than a couple of times. Plus, songs are licensed for use in everything from movies to TV shows to elevator music. And as far as I know, radio stations *pay* to use their music; that isn't a 'cost' for the record companies. But really the most important factor is the fact that a $4 paperback weighs twice as much as a CD, so your '$3 distribution cost' argument is completely bogus.
they are responsible for that as long as the user is on their net
Sure, responsible for *removing* it (the computer), not *fixing* it. Any customer who expects their ISP to constantly fix their bug-ridden crap is a customer that that ISP would be better-off without.
If I can't have my 'unlimited' bandwidth as advertised, I'll be damned if I'm going to subsidize some idiot with an open spam relay.
Since when did it become the ISP's responsibility to deal with everyone's viruses and trojans?
Remind me to short all of the national ISP's for allowing that perception to arise. They'd be digging their own graves trying to support all the security holes in the MS products that 95% of people insist on using. Just ask Packard Bell.
There is a difference between lazy and using all the available resources at your disposal.
Good job: you redefined the argument to give your side the advantage. While some 'using available resources' is not 'lazy' and even some 'lazy' is not 'cheating', all 'cheating' is 'lazy'.
In Latin, I used to record class lectures. It just so happens that, most of the time, the teacher would spend the class period translating our homework. I used all resources at my disposal and listened to the class lecture a second time at home before doing the homework. I got lazy quite a few times and skipped out on the homework, but I never *once* cheated and merely copied down the teacher's translation. At national competitions, I fared quite well in reading comprehension and to this day I can understand almost anything written in Latin.
You're right: most college classes are bullshit. 80% of everybody cheats. Just don't assume that the people you argue with here are a part of that 80%.
the security of files comes from properly configured and admined win servers, not from the clients.
The clients are always the weak link. Everyone from script-kiddies to the FBI knows this. It's hard to secure files when they have to traverse the network. Besides, don't pretend that a 'properly configured win server' is any different from a Windows workstation when it comes to security: they're the same OS.
There might be some freeware projects out there, but none of them come close to the completeness of a commercial product.
I've had some experience with those 'complete' commercial security products. Let me tell you, they are *far* from complete and even *farther* from secure. I wouldn't trust any security system that I didn't build from scratch, or at least from source. M.U.S.C.L.E. is a good place to start.
rpm -i -v i-hope-this-is-the-package-i-think-it-is.rpm, and then watching two screens of missing dependencies scroll past them.
I could only deal with a couple months of RPM dependency hell before I switched to Debian. Rumor has it that apt works with RPMs, also.
Besides, your point is moot since *all* Linux distributions come with *several* browsers and several hundred other programs pre-installed. That's more than anyone can say for Windows.
As someone who's worked on SCO systems, I'd say that would be the best thing anyone has ever done for SCO users. There isn't a single SCO application provider that hasn't already started supporting Linux.
People joke about the ancient feature-set of current SCO products, but even the stability and reliability of what's SCO offers is something out of the mid-nineties. (As in, mid-nineties *Microsoft* software)
Most of SCO's customers, being small-scale retail/manufacturing, generally have little or no IT support and only know as much as their (overpriced) SCO crack-dealers tell them. I'd bet that most of them are still running serial terminals.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, cause if there's something they don't have, it's ignorant confidence in the validity of their claims :)
Please don't call them 'proprietary'. Almost all software and services available use open protocols, even MS Netmeeting. Most of the time, reference implementations are available open-source. They won't help you use unsupported clients, but that doesn't mean it's 'proprietary'.
software that lets you call from the internet to an actual phone... Does anyone know software like this?
Sure. Most protocols have allowances for a link to the pots network. They're usually called 'gateways'. The reason you don't see many voip-to-pots services offerred is that you end up having to pay for the land line that you use to connect to the pots network anyways, which negates most savings of voip. Vonage costs more than a land line; and you have to have a broadband internet connection *on top* of that. It doesn't make sense unless you do *a lot* of long distance calling and voice quality isn't really an issue for those calls.
What would need to happen to get software like this to work?
It works now. What would need to happen to get this to become economical? An act of God. Or Congress. Or, possibly, if the Baby Bells lost their minds and decided that VoIP was the way to go. Of course they won't do that until a strong Palladium-type system is in place to *guarantee* that their encrypted protocols can't be cracked to allow interoperability with competitors' products.
circumvented its local carrier and reduced monthly service fees from $530,000 to a mere $6,000 by using voice over IP technology
Great. Did they do it with Windows Server 2003? 'Cause I was under the impression that the only way to save 'millions of dollars' on IT these days was to fire your staff and oursource everything to overpriced monopolies.
Gibraltar is a Debian-based CD firewall distribution. It is freely available and I use it on several boxes. There is supposed to be an upcoming version with a web interface that will cost around $100.
Are you kidding? Do you actually realize what percentage of the computer-using population doesn't know how to double-click?
That double-click-slowly-to-rename thing is one of the worst OS features that MS ever came up with. Go ahead, you try to explain it to someone over the age of 40. I dare you.
but how long is it until everyone has a mandatory GPS chip implanted at birth?
That'll never happen.
No one will ever *have* to get a Social Security number when they're born. It's a completely *voluntary* program.
Remember boys & girls, 'slippery slope' arguments are invalid when you use them to argue against tyrrannical government intrusion into basic human rights. You can continue to use them for 'anti-terrorism' purposes, however.
I'm sure they'll just find a way to sneak an RFID circuit into it somehow.
Don't say that SCO requires 'no maintenance'. It might not get any, but, trust me, it requires some. The sad truth is that most companies are accustommed to having their computers crash and not work right. It's *accepted*.
I just got done working in a very similar situation to that which you describe. The Openserver box required maintenance. It just didn't get any. Processes had to be killed every few days. They were used to rebooting the system once every few months. *No* patches had been applied since the OS was installed (not even Y2K stuff, lol). As for serial terminals, everyone prayed to the lightning gods during spring and fall thunderstorms; hoping that their terminal wouldn't be the next one fried. The server even caught fire once, or so I was told.
They were supposed to run database integrity checks every few months, but those were never done. They just wondered why errors cropped-up in their reports and stock files and usually attributted it to 'those darn computers' that never work right.
This company was in the same position WRT their supplier switching everything to Windows. It's just an excuse to sell more licenses and overpriced consulting. Their consultants will probably be switching those same systems to Linux in about five years, with another round of hardware and software upgrades.
The IT industry is a mess because PHBs made it a mess. If the typical life of a middle manager involved:
1) working for a temp service,
2) changing jobs every six months,
3) being expected to re-learn your entire job every two years to stay up with 'technology',
4) having a 4 year degree become useless two months after you graduate because of said technology 'upgrades',
5) being on-call 24/7 to do side jobs at your bosses' home,
6) having your job outsourced to third world countries;
7) and, in general, being completely ignored and mistrusted on every piece of advice you give,
they wouldn't have so much extra time to learn a few buzzwords and second-guess their 'expert' staff or find ways to replace them with MSCE monkeys.
vi is the best.
This is obviously a troll. How can we take anything this person says seriously?
...on new systems that insist on having 2ghz processors with only 128mb ram.
Vector graphics aren't really new; they're just really hard to do right. Along with Macromedia Flash, Corel Draw and Adobe Illustrator are native vector drawing programs.
I'm not being pedantic, just informative
Google sez: The Philips driver has multiple camera support.
Remember you'll have to choose the camera based on the 'chipset', not the brand name.
There was supposedly a lot of ACPI stuff added to 2.4.22; and all the drivers were reworked to better support ACPI in 2.6. I haven't tried either, so I could be wrong.
it felt like trying to talk about genital warts or something.
That's what we need. Education. Public service ads that ask kids "Have you talked to your parents about viruses? Don't you think you should?" and say things like "Adults *want* internet boundries. Be a responsible teenager and punish them when they install malware."
So why does the retailer mark up CDs so much more than paperback books? And why do record clubs such as Columbia House charge so much for shipping and handling?
Because they can. I don't think it's the retailers that mark CDs up, rather the record companies; otherwise, there would be *someplace* to buy a CD for less than $12.
Shipping charges *never* represent actual costs. Most companies jack up the shipping charge to supplement profits but actually have bulk rates with UPS.
Debian Stable comes with KDE 2
It's still better than Gnome, though. By 'better', I mean 'doesn't crash when I click on things' and 'has more than a couple of customization options'.
Sid (Testing) has KDE 3
It's included on the Knoppix CD and it seems pretty stable from what little I've used it.
4) GOTO 6
5) Profit!
6) Bankruptcy
Those are good points. But don't think that the music industry doesn't repackage their product in several different formats as well. Greatest hits CDs, singles (if you can still find them), not to mention the fact that every hit song automatically gets 'remade' after ten or so years. Also, try using your Dark Side of the Moon record on a CD player; I've bought that one more than a couple of times. Plus, songs are licensed for use in everything from movies to TV shows to elevator music. And as far as I know, radio stations *pay* to use their music; that isn't a 'cost' for the record companies. But really the most important factor is the fact that a $4 paperback weighs twice as much as a CD, so your '$3 distribution cost' argument is completely bogus.
they are responsible for that as long as the user is on their net
Sure, responsible for *removing* it (the computer), not *fixing* it. Any customer who expects their ISP to constantly fix their bug-ridden crap is a customer that that ISP would be better-off without.
If I can't have my 'unlimited' bandwidth as advertised, I'll be damned if I'm going to subsidize some idiot with an open spam relay.
Why would your friend complain to his ISP?
Since when did it become the ISP's responsibility to deal with everyone's viruses and trojans?
Remind me to short all of the national ISP's for allowing that perception to arise. They'd be digging their own graves trying to support all the security holes in the MS products that 95% of people insist on using. Just ask Packard Bell.
There is a difference between lazy and using all the available resources at your disposal.
Good job: you redefined the argument to give your side the advantage. While some 'using available resources' is not 'lazy' and even some 'lazy' is not 'cheating', all 'cheating' is 'lazy'.
In Latin, I used to record class lectures. It just so happens that, most of the time, the teacher would spend the class period translating our homework. I used all resources at my disposal and listened to the class lecture a second time at home before doing the homework. I got lazy quite a few times and skipped out on the homework, but I never *once* cheated and merely copied down the teacher's translation. At national competitions, I fared quite well in reading comprehension and to this day I can understand almost anything written in Latin.
You're right: most college classes are bullshit. 80% of everybody cheats. Just don't assume that the people you argue with here are a part of that 80%.
the security of files comes from properly configured and admined win servers, not from the clients.
The clients are always the weak link. Everyone from script-kiddies to the FBI knows this. It's hard to secure files when they have to traverse the network. Besides, don't pretend that a 'properly configured win server' is any different from a Windows workstation when it comes to security: they're the same OS.
There might be some freeware projects out there, but none of them come close to the completeness of a commercial product.
I've had some experience with those 'complete' commercial security products. Let me tell you, they are *far* from complete and even *farther* from secure. I wouldn't trust any security system that I didn't build from scratch, or at least from source. M.U.S.C.L.E. is a good place to start.
rpm -i -v i-hope-this-is-the-package-i-think-it-is.rpm, and then watching two screens of missing dependencies scroll past them.
I could only deal with a couple months of RPM dependency hell before I switched to Debian. Rumor has it that apt works with RPMs, also.
Besides, your point is moot since *all* Linux distributions come with *several* browsers and several hundred other programs pre-installed. That's more than anyone can say for Windows.
As someone who's worked on SCO systems, I'd say that would be the best thing anyone has ever done for SCO users. There isn't a single SCO application provider that hasn't already started supporting Linux.
People joke about the ancient feature-set of current SCO products, but even the stability and reliability of what's SCO offers is something out of the mid-nineties. (As in, mid-nineties *Microsoft* software)
Most of SCO's customers, being small-scale retail/manufacturing, generally have little or no IT support and only know as much as their (overpriced) SCO crack-dealers tell them. I'd bet that most of them are still running serial terminals.