Distributed computing of any kind is complex and not something to be undertaken with no experience or assistance. Hire someone who knows their stuff to help you out. Being with a business case and don't be surprised if running your own cloud turns out not to be the way to go.
I know something for absolutely certain, American CEO's and stockholder's are the most short-sighted and unimaginative on the planet.
That's because the system is set up in such a way that it rewards such short-sightedness. You see they aren't as short-sighted as you think. They're looking out for their own long term interests. It's just that the CEO's long term wealth is completely disconnected from the company's. So a CEO can actually end up being fired with a much smaller golden parachute and a bad reputation for doing the right thing by the company because his next quarter profits are down.
You might as well blame a farm pig for being fat. The system needs changing, and no I'm not an economist so I don't have the answers. I just know when something's broken.
To me, a killer app is one which makes you absolutely want it, even if it means making a different hardware decision. You know, like how Halo is a killer app for XBox
Perhaps to you that's what it means, but to the rest of the world its a new must have application that is innovative and gives the world a new capability. It is the new capability that makes users switch vendors and buy new product. A spreadsheet is a killer app for the PC for example. It offered finance types a new fancy automated calculator (and eventually charter) which was easy to use. Those vendors that could offer a good spreadsheet had significant advantage over those that couldn't.
Halo on the other hand is just another game. It may be a game you want enough to buy new hardware but where's the innovation and lack of competition to warrant calling it a killer app???
I have bar code scanning on my latest phone. It doesn't work. The camera just keeps going in and out of focus. Having never had much to do with barcodes in my IT work, I decided to look at open source bar code readers and scanned in the bar codes on a few things (like my son's birth certificate). I looked and the standards and my own scans quickly found that often the number was often printed right beneath the barcode. Barcodes were made when computers were slow and had trouble doing OCR. They're a lot better now. Bar code scanning is still useful to some degree but to call it a killer app is a bit much.
"Remembering 50 Years of (and Leading Up To) the Internet".. whatever, the fuck, that means.
It means I walked barefoot in the snow to go to school and fight in WWII when I was a little boy and the dinosuars roamed the earth. Now get off my lawn. You don't know how easy you have it!
Acting like DRM will go away if you cry about it is childish. It will only go away by becoming invisible. Nobody seems to know that iPhone apps are protected with DRM
Well I guess I must be no one because I won't touch an iphone with a barge pole and I won't even look at it closely while I know it's got DRM.
By the way do you realize the irony in complaining that gamers are childish???
Apple carries DRM like the Ring.
Do you know which ring Apple can shove it's DRM in?
DRM is ALWAYS about someone other than the paying consumer controlling the product. As such it is always flawed and that's no minor gripe. It's the difference between buying and renting an item for use according to a narrow and non-negotiable set of conditions. Be honest! You have a vested interest in seeing DRM succeed.
I've been a computer gamer since 1983, and this not being able to buy things because of stuff put there to stop piracy is a new experience for me
I'm also a developer. Unlike many I didn't jump on a badwagon of Vista haters - I was one of the original Vista haters. I was really looking forward to Micrsoft Flight Sim X being a huge fan of 2004. Only they screwed the pooch on that one and not just with DRM (though that is why I didn't buy it) - the way they kept breaking backward compatibility on every minor release and splintered one of the largest modding communities on the planet. Most additional aircraft you can think of can be downloaded or bought for 2004 but commerical and free devs have had a hell of a time with X. Anyway with its phone home DRM and the removal of features that in 2004 encouraged its use at educational institutions and museums I could see the writing on the wall. I have a couple of decent machines that run Vista, and I bought a whole stack of games that are a couple of years old. Greed is killing the PC gaming industry and I don't need the latest brain dead games just because they have pretty graphics. The price of entry for Vista and DX10 ain't worth it when for a fraction of the financial cost I can stick to XP and DX9 and save my frustrations with flawed games and operating systems built upon a premise of self-entitlement and greed.
I'm not at all surprised that findings don't get published. The only way to force them to be published would be to make it a condition of doing the study or a legal requirement. The pharm companies couldn't care less that patients die - they prefer the competition wastes time repeating the same tests rather than taking advantage of the work they've already done.
The entire way that the medical system works really needs a shake up. Other industries with less at stake have more stringent quality control processes. The medical profession has medical boards that amount to little more than exclusive clubs. The amount of shit I've heard about in the last few years would be beyond belief had I not experienced some of the incredible incompetence I've seen first hand that have done harm to me and mine. At this point I no longer consider it safe to take medical advice without reviewing it and researching it thoroughly using every corner of the internet at my disposal - from Google to Pubmed. Sure, if it's life and death and requires immediate attention, you have no alternative but to take what expert care a doctor can provide then and there without questioning it. However for anything where you have more than a few hours to make a decision trusting a doctor - particularly a specialist, and particularly a doctor you don't know well - is quite like playing Russian roulette.
I'm sure there will be a few in the medical profession who read this and think "Not another one who self diagnoses". To them a big "fuck you". When I can get doctors that can check the fucking contraindications on a medication before repeatedly upping the dosage (and almost killing someone dear to me) or doctors who aren't quick to try to scare me into doing unnecessary surgery assuring me I'd be crippled long ago if I didn't get it done, then I'll think about trusting my doctor to get it right. As it is I've even had a GP fuck up something as simple as removing ear wax.
Sometimes I start to wonder to myself that the only difference between the USA and China is that over there they know they aren't free while over here we're just duped into thinking that we are until we actually break a law.
Yeah they put you into prison for stuff like killing, robbing or raping people. I was shocked! Shocked I tell you!
You're making the same mistake a lot of people do when talking about freedom. Freedom doesn't mean you get to do whatever the hell you want to with complete disregard for negative effects on society. Freedom means you have a choice in what you do WHILE STILL PLAYING NICE WITH OTHERS.
I know I'm not ready to explain to my 5 year old what a message about "H0t Yung $luts ReadY 2 Suk C0K" is really all about.
Sex in advertising is so pervasive now that you can't afford not to explain to your child. Where I live their are billboards on the major highways advertising nasal sprays that are suppose to magically make your sex life better.
Explain at their level. This doesn't mean he/she needs a detailed definition of each word. Just that some advertising is bad, uses bad words and bad ideas and sells things that are bad for people to part them with their money. Teach your child to stay away from all of that.
Teach them that while some things are for grownups they're not all good for you and that the hassle of working out what is and isn't good for you is a part of growing up they don't have to deal with yet. (ie don't make it sound like a good thing being kept from the kids just so the grown ups can enjoy it).
They're going to learn about and be exposed to these things anyway. YOU have the power to make that learning and exposure less traumatic and to do it in a way that preserves some semblance of a childhood without futile efforts to keep them in the dark or repress their curiosity and learning.
...in marketing. Make something difficult to understand to get people interested, put a lot of words around it. Doesn't matter what you're doing, the aim is to get people intrigued as to what the fuck you're on about.
Why don't you just fucking fund the projects already and quit with the sleight of hand and weasel words.
To this day the only software Google have put out that I've found better than the competition is their search engine. I'm sure there are other niche products but I hate Chrome, can't stand Piccasa, and won't give up my privacy for GMail. Google groups has deteriorated since Google bought Deja. If they want to put out something mind blowing, stop talking and fucking do it already.
All joking aside this kind of childish rant isn't very good for slashdot. Does slashdot aspire to be "News for nerds" or "old stories for trolls to bitch about"?
I'm out of the house 13 hours a day 5 days a week. I get home and I have chores and a new born to deal with.
When I get to play a game, I don't want to play the crap games at 640x480. Also my game genre of choice flight simulation. Sure you can get away with a cheap crappy video card...if you like stick figures.
If you buy a cheaper car, it usually still gets you from A to B. However you don't buy a cheaper car if you're planning o haul a large boat. Its not suitable. Likewise light weight graphics cards aren't suitable for some tasks. Cheap graphics cards are fine if you're not into games or high end CAD/Photo/Video editing.
I can't believe your post got modded up like that.
We already have that. We have Red Hat (RPM) based distros and Debian (APT) based distros.
You're confusing package formats with distributions. When software moves between each seamlessly requiring the same steps and instructions exactly on each distro that uses that package format, with no extra effort from end users or developers, then what you say will be true.
There has also been a lot of talk about LSB that could help unification (which, honestly IMO is not needed and will just be a waste of work on distros for a failed standard)
LSB is certainly NOT what I'm talking about. I'm talking about everyone downloading and installing the same software when they talk about Linux. I'm talking about a wide variety of companies hosting that same software. Nothing's more compatible with a distro than another copy of that distro (assuming similar config)
I can't see Apple wanting OS X to become dominant. They make $$$ of of hardware sales to fanboys. The die-hard Mac fans. Apple honestly wouldn't be able to keep up with the demand if Macs had 25% or more of the marketshare.
I think you're hallucinating. They couldn't cope with such demand today but if they have the ability to capture that kind of market share in a way that allows them to grow sustainably I'd bet body parts they'd take it. They'd still produce an elite line of hardware and focus on selling that of course. The 2 aren't incompatible.
Much as how Ferrari doesn't want us all to be driving Ferraris, it loses the prestige of driving one.
That's where you spin off a new company to cater for a different segment of the market so you don't dillute the brand. Do you really think business men running Ferrari wouldn't jump at the chance at running a second company catering for lower end cars (assuming that's a profitable market segment)?
Ummm... How is that bad? There are dozens of versions of Apache, one for each OS, yet it still manages to be a unified server.
I really need to answer that question on slashdot??? It's bad because there's effort in maintaining multiple versions, customising to various systems etc. That's time and effort wasted. Why do you think installers and exes on Windows are seen as simpler? (and even then users don't like going to the effort of understanding and running the installer).
My wife reacts aphylactically to even trace amounts of a number of spices and especially to garlic and onion. The fact that she can easily stop breathing and has been hospitalised on more than one ocassion means nothing comes into the house that can affect her, and that I also can't eat those foods because if I forgot and kissed her that could literally in the worst case end her life. Our rule is if I'm likely to be around her in a 24 hour period I stay away from food that's wrong for her.
Fortunately she's a fantastic cook. (I eat a little too well). Lasgne, Canneloni, Lemon or Oyster chicken, steak and veg, home made pizza. I don't miss out. The thing is because we don't eat out I find that if she goes away and I do indulge I feel ill. Mostly because we don't use a lot of fat and oil in our cooking. (We use way too many carbs because they're easy and tasty and are trying to change that). KFC in particular makes me feel really sick if I eat it. By contrast the chicken we make at home tastes great. On the rare occassions that we have fried the chicken my wife's batter is much nicer and it takes more of it to make me feel ill. Likewise takeaway pizza just tastes like pure crap compared to pizza made on a nice base with a bread maker. There are still meals I love that I'll eat if I'm not around my wife - kebab and the odd burger are high on the list - but in general junk food is just that when you're use to good stuff. Now the good stuff takes a lot more effort to make, isn't that much cheaper (especially when you factor in waste), but since we have to make the time anyway I'm glad we don't eat a lot of rubbish. If I could wave my magic wand and make her allergies disappear I would - but that's because I don't like her in danger, for convenience, not because I'd trade home made for KFC.
Hand it over to the IAU instead! They'll come up with a ruling that redefines domains similar to this one.
(1) A domain [1] is a name mapping to an IP address range that (a) is located in the United States, (b) is big enough for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit (with law suites).
(2) A "dwarf domain" is a is a name mapping to an IP address range that (a) is in the United States, (b) is big enough for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape [2], (c) has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit (with law suites), and (d) is not a porn site.
(3) All other names mapping to an IP address [3], except porn sites, in the USSun shall be referred to collectively as "Small Fish" and are to be eaten by bigger fish.
* sending "inappropriate and offensive sexual materials"
Doesn't this list make him sound like a pretty typical Slashdotter?
Okay, the rest of your points I can understand given how some people troll, but I must be using slashdot very differently to regarding this last point. The closest I could think of is getting into a verbal slinging where the insults are of a sexual nature. I think I need to go throw up and wash my hands now.
If Linux/Unix does actually "take off" and become widely adopted, there is no way that this fragmentation among dozens of distros can continue. One or at most 2 will become defacto standards and the others will fade away. What I hope is that the best features of each make it into these unified distros. For example though I've never used it I keep hearing that ZFS is a fantastic file system. If so I hope it makes it into Linux and into the unified distros.
Will the Solaris product remain as a niche even after this happens? It doesn't matter.
Of course this is just one possiblity. MacOS could become dominant. Vista or a successor may recapture and consolidate market position. In the worst case scenario the desktop and server segments become so fragmented that you'll have dozens of versions of each app - 1 per OS.
Slashdot Mirror
Distributed computing of any kind is complex and not something to be undertaken with no experience or assistance. Hire someone who knows their stuff to help you out. Being with a business case and don't be surprised if running your own cloud turns out not to be the way to go.
I know something for absolutely certain, American CEO's and stockholder's are the most short-sighted and unimaginative on the planet.
That's because the system is set up in such a way that it rewards such short-sightedness. You see they aren't as short-sighted as you think. They're looking out for their own long term interests. It's just that the CEO's long term wealth is completely disconnected from the company's. So a CEO can actually end up being fired with a much smaller golden parachute and a bad reputation for doing the right thing by the company because his next quarter profits are down.
You might as well blame a farm pig for being fat. The system needs changing, and no I'm not an economist so I don't have the answers. I just know when something's broken.
To me, a killer app is one which makes you absolutely want it, even if it means making a different hardware decision. You know, like how Halo is a killer app for XBox
Perhaps to you that's what it means, but to the rest of the world its a new must have application that is innovative and gives the world a new capability. It is the new capability that makes users switch vendors and buy new product. A spreadsheet is a killer app for the PC for example. It offered finance types a new fancy automated calculator (and eventually charter) which was easy to use. Those vendors that could offer a good spreadsheet had significant advantage over those that couldn't.
Halo on the other hand is just another game. It may be a game you want enough to buy new hardware but where's the innovation and lack of competition to warrant calling it a killer app???
...to call users who don't understand or care about Apple DRM blind. Think of how insulting it is to the blind.
I'd like to weigh in and say that I'm AGAINST having youth in 2008. If we can't eliminate them I at least want them off my lawn!
I have bar code scanning on my latest phone. It doesn't work. The camera just keeps going in and out of focus. Having never had much to do with barcodes in my IT work, I decided to look at open source bar code readers and scanned in the bar codes on a few things (like my son's birth certificate). I looked and the standards and my own scans quickly found that often the number was often printed right beneath the barcode. Barcodes were made when computers were slow and had trouble doing OCR. They're a lot better now. Bar code scanning is still useful to some degree but to call it a killer app is a bit much.
"Remembering 50 Years of (and Leading Up To) the Internet" .. whatever, the fuck, that means.
It means I walked barefoot in the snow to go to school and fight in WWII when I was a little boy and the dinosuars roamed the earth. Now get off my lawn. You don't know how easy you have it!
Acting like DRM will go away if you cry about it is childish. It will only go away by becoming invisible. Nobody seems to know that iPhone apps are protected with DRM
Well I guess I must be no one because I won't touch an iphone with a barge pole and I won't even look at it closely while I know it's got DRM.
By the way do you realize the irony in complaining that gamers are childish???
Apple carries DRM like the Ring.
Do you know which ring Apple can shove it's DRM in?
DRM is ALWAYS about someone other than the paying consumer controlling the product. As such it is always flawed and that's no minor gripe. It's the difference between buying and renting an item for use according to a narrow and non-negotiable set of conditions. Be honest! You have a vested interest in seeing DRM succeed.
I've been a computer gamer since 1983, and this not being able to buy things because of stuff put there to stop piracy is a new experience for me
I'm also a developer. Unlike many I didn't jump on a badwagon of Vista haters - I was one of the original Vista haters. I was really looking forward to Micrsoft Flight Sim X being a huge fan of 2004. Only they screwed the pooch on that one and not just with DRM (though that is why I didn't buy it) - the way they kept breaking backward compatibility on every minor release and splintered one of the largest modding communities on the planet. Most additional aircraft you can think of can be downloaded or bought for 2004 but commerical and free devs have had a hell of a time with X. Anyway with its phone home DRM and the removal of features that in 2004 encouraged its use at educational institutions and museums I could see the writing on the wall. I have a couple of decent machines that run Vista, and I bought a whole stack of games that are a couple of years old. Greed is killing the PC gaming industry and I don't need the latest brain dead games just because they have pretty graphics. The price of entry for Vista and DX10 ain't worth it when for a fraction of the financial cost I can stick to XP and DX9 and save my frustrations with flawed games and operating systems built upon a premise of self-entitlement and greed.
Digg: It's like Slashdot if concussed monkeys took over.
So what you're saying is it's absolutely 100% identical? ;-)
I'm not at all surprised that findings don't get published. The only way to force them to be published would be to make it a condition of doing the study or a legal requirement. The pharm companies couldn't care less that patients die - they prefer the competition wastes time repeating the same tests rather than taking advantage of the work they've already done.
The entire way that the medical system works really needs a shake up. Other industries with less at stake have more stringent quality control processes. The medical profession has medical boards that amount to little more than exclusive clubs. The amount of shit I've heard about in the last few years would be beyond belief had I not experienced some of the incredible incompetence I've seen first hand that have done harm to me and mine. At this point I no longer consider it safe to take medical advice without reviewing it and researching it thoroughly using every corner of the internet at my disposal - from Google to Pubmed. Sure, if it's life and death and requires immediate attention, you have no alternative but to take what expert care a doctor can provide then and there without questioning it. However for anything where you have more than a few hours to make a decision trusting a doctor - particularly a specialist, and particularly a doctor you don't know well - is quite like playing Russian roulette.
I'm sure there will be a few in the medical profession who read this and think "Not another one who self diagnoses". To them a big "fuck you". When I can get doctors that can check the fucking contraindications on a medication before repeatedly upping the dosage (and almost killing someone dear to me) or doctors who aren't quick to try to scare me into doing unnecessary surgery assuring me I'd be crippled long ago if I didn't get it done, then I'll think about trusting my doctor to get it right. As it is I've even had a GP fuck up something as simple as removing ear wax.
Sometimes I start to wonder to myself that the only difference between the USA and China is that over there they know they aren't free while over here we're just duped into thinking that we are until we actually break a law.
Yeah they put you into prison for stuff like killing, robbing or raping people. I was shocked! Shocked I tell you!
You're making the same mistake a lot of people do when talking about freedom. Freedom doesn't mean you get to do whatever the hell you want to with complete disregard for negative effects on society. Freedom means you have a choice in what you do WHILE STILL PLAYING NICE WITH OTHERS.
I know I'm not ready to explain to my 5 year old what a message about "H0t Yung $luts ReadY 2 Suk C0K" is really all about.
Sex in advertising is so pervasive now that you can't afford not to explain to your child. Where I live their are billboards on the major highways advertising nasal sprays that are suppose to magically make your sex life better.
Explain at their level. This doesn't mean he/she needs a detailed definition of each word. Just that some advertising is bad, uses bad words and bad ideas and sells things that are bad for people to part them with their money. Teach your child to stay away from all of that.
Teach them that while some things are for grownups they're not all good for you and that the hassle of working out what is and isn't good for you is a part of growing up they don't have to deal with yet. (ie don't make it sound like a good thing being kept from the kids just so the grown ups can enjoy it).
They're going to learn about and be exposed to these things anyway. YOU have the power to make that learning and exposure less traumatic and to do it in a way that preserves some semblance of a childhood without futile efforts to keep them in the dark or repress their curiosity and learning.
...in marketing. Make something difficult to understand to get people interested, put a lot of words around it. Doesn't matter what you're doing, the aim is to get people intrigued as to what the fuck you're on about.
Why don't you just fucking fund the projects already and quit with the sleight of hand and weasel words.
To this day the only software Google have put out that I've found better than the competition is their search engine. I'm sure there are other niche products but I hate Chrome, can't stand Piccasa, and won't give up my privacy for GMail. Google groups has deteriorated since Google bought Deja. If they want to put out something mind blowing, stop talking and fucking do it already.
I particularly liked:
"Others see this as yet another example of their crumbling hegemony or indolence as their empire burns."
Here's an interesting concept the editors may wish to take a look at some time
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/objectivity
All joking aside this kind of childish rant isn't very good for slashdot. Does slashdot aspire to be "News for nerds" or "old stories for trolls to bitch about"?
We invented koalas and Crocodile Dundee. What better credentials could you ask for?
Oh the irony! I live in Sydney.
I'm out of the house 13 hours a day 5 days a week. I get home and I have chores and a new born to deal with.
When I get to play a game, I don't want to play the crap games at 640x480. Also my game genre of choice flight simulation. Sure you can get away with a cheap crappy video card...if you like stick figures.
If you buy a cheaper car, it usually still gets you from A to B. However you don't buy a cheaper car if you're planning o haul a large boat. Its not suitable. Likewise light weight graphics cards aren't suitable for some tasks. Cheap graphics cards are fine if you're not into games or high end CAD/Photo/Video editing.
You're right. Here's an idea for safe browsing. Call it the "one time coffee shop" method.
1. Go to coffee shop & browse away
2. after surfing, torch the coffee house.
You can only do this once per coffee shop. Sadly, Starbucks doesn't supply computers since there's an abundance of said shops.
I solved that problem by taking my laptop to each of the coffee shops.
I can't believe your post got modded up like that.
We already have that. We have Red Hat (RPM) based distros and Debian (APT) based distros.
You're confusing package formats with distributions. When software moves between each seamlessly requiring the same steps and instructions exactly on each distro that uses that package format, with no extra effort from end users or developers, then what you say will be true.
There has also been a lot of talk about LSB that could help unification (which, honestly IMO is not needed and will just be a waste of work on distros for a failed standard)
LSB is certainly NOT what I'm talking about. I'm talking about everyone downloading and installing the same software when they talk about Linux. I'm talking about a wide variety of companies hosting that same software. Nothing's more compatible with a distro than another copy of that distro (assuming similar config)
I can't see Apple wanting OS X to become dominant. They make $$$ of of hardware sales to fanboys. The die-hard Mac fans. Apple honestly wouldn't be able to keep up with the demand if Macs had 25% or more of the marketshare.
I think you're hallucinating. They couldn't cope with such demand today but if they have the ability to capture that kind of market share in a way that allows them to grow sustainably I'd bet body parts they'd take it. They'd still produce an elite line of hardware and focus on selling that of course. The 2 aren't incompatible.
Much as how Ferrari doesn't want us all to be driving Ferraris, it loses the prestige of driving one.
That's where you spin off a new company to cater for a different segment of the market so you don't dillute the brand. Do you really think business men running Ferrari wouldn't jump at the chance at running a second company catering for lower end cars (assuming that's a profitable market segment)?
Ummm... How is that bad? There are dozens of versions of Apache, one for each OS, yet it still manages to be a unified server.
I really need to answer that question on slashdot??? It's bad because there's effort in maintaining multiple versions, customising to various systems etc. That's time and effort wasted. Why do you think installers and exes on Windows are seen as simpler? (and even then users don't like going to the effort of understanding and running the installer).
My wife reacts aphylactically to even trace amounts of a number of spices and especially to garlic and onion. The fact that she can easily stop breathing and has been hospitalised on more than one ocassion means nothing comes into the house that can affect her, and that I also can't eat those foods because if I forgot and kissed her that could literally in the worst case end her life. Our rule is if I'm likely to be around her in a 24 hour period I stay away from food that's wrong for her.
Fortunately she's a fantastic cook. (I eat a little too well). Lasgne, Canneloni, Lemon or Oyster chicken, steak and veg, home made pizza. I don't miss out. The thing is because we don't eat out I find that if she goes away and I do indulge I feel ill. Mostly because we don't use a lot of fat and oil in our cooking. (We use way too many carbs because they're easy and tasty and are trying to change that). KFC in particular makes me feel really sick if I eat it. By contrast the chicken we make at home tastes great. On the rare occassions that we have fried the chicken my wife's batter is much nicer and it takes more of it to make me feel ill. Likewise takeaway pizza just tastes like pure crap compared to pizza made on a nice base with a bread maker. There are still meals I love that I'll eat if I'm not around my wife - kebab and the odd burger are high on the list - but in general junk food is just that when you're use to good stuff. Now the good stuff takes a lot more effort to make, isn't that much cheaper (especially when you factor in waste), but since we have to make the time anyway I'm glad we don't eat a lot of rubbish. If I could wave my magic wand and make her allergies disappear I would - but that's because I don't like her in danger, for convenience, not because I'd trade home made for KFC.
in contrast, michael moore is still going around the country without getting clubbed to death accidentally by a lone police officer in usa.
You mean that he has money, and russian whistleblowers don't?
Hand it over to the IAU instead! They'll come up with a ruling that redefines domains similar to this one.
(1) A domain [1] is a name mapping to an IP address range that (a) is located in the United States, (b) is big enough for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit (with law suites).
(2) A "dwarf domain" is a is a name mapping to an IP address range that (a) is in the United States, (b) is big enough for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape [2], (c) has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit (with law suites), and (d) is not a porn site.
(3) All other names mapping to an IP address [3], except porn sites, in the USSun shall be referred to collectively as "Small Fish" and are to be eaten by bigger fish.
For more information, see this helpful drawing:
http://i28.tinypic.com/2m7xd85.jpg
I didn't understand the diagram until I sat down and re-drew it with cars instead of stars.
* sending "inappropriate and offensive sexual materials"
Doesn't this list make him sound like a pretty typical Slashdotter?
Okay, the rest of your points I can understand given how some people troll, but I must be using slashdot very differently to regarding this last point. The closest I could think of is getting into a verbal slinging where the insults are of a sexual nature. I think I need to go throw up and wash my hands now.
If Linux/Unix does actually "take off" and become widely adopted, there is no way that this fragmentation among dozens of distros can continue. One or at most 2 will become defacto standards and the others will fade away. What I hope is that the best features of each make it into these unified distros. For example though I've never used it I keep hearing that ZFS is a fantastic file system. If so I hope it makes it into Linux and into the unified distros.
Will the Solaris product remain as a niche even after this happens? It doesn't matter.
Of course this is just one possiblity. MacOS could become dominant. Vista or a successor may recapture and consolidate market position. In the worst case scenario the desktop and server segments become so fragmented that you'll have dozens of versions of each app - 1 per OS.