Great software solves the customers problem (functionality), is light weight enough to serve their needs for a few years (scalable), does not crash nor lose data (reliable), addresses the problem before it gets out of control (timely), and provides more benefits than it cost (ROI.)
Microsoft has never delivered a "great" piece of software, and never will. Their model is not based on "great" software, it barely qualifies as meeting one out of five in most cases. Their model is based on "deliver overpriced crap, then charge more for the upgrade."
To me that is called "fraud" and "theft", not a "great" product.
You have to wonder if there is a politician in the world that has a functioning brain cell. Why in the world would the EC even consider following the broken disaster that is the US patent process?
I'm also expecting a push from the US to "simplify" world patents a few years after that by "consolidating" the patent databases. Of course then they can claim that the whole world is subject to this insanity, and try to extort revenue from global industry.
It's not surprising the EC politicians don't see that endgame. Like most politicians, they don't look beyond buying enough votes for the next election.
Or you could let your ISP know that you expect to be sending out an unusual amount of traffic and why.
There are very, very few situations where a normal person is going to be sending out hundreds of messages per hour.
If you have a real need to send that kind of volume on a regular basis, I'd say it pretty much has to be either commercial or non-profit use, neither of which is considered "personal".
The theory of being able to go anywhere and do whatever you like does not alter the fact that a businessman in a suit is going to get mugged in the ghetto, nor that someone dressed in urban styles is going to be harassed and probably arrested in a middle-upper class suburban neighbourhood.
Sure you have the right to be there, but that doesn't change the reality that you don't fit in. If you stand out, you are suspicious. Period.
So they're vocal. 99% of buyers go to Dell, IBM, HP/Compaq, etc. and buy a canned system.
They don't select a fancy video card. They don't buy more/better memory, faster harddrives, etc. They buy a canned computer that has parts with good reviews, or which they can afford.
The only people who get custom systems are either bitheads themselves, or they have friends who are bitheads that won't let them waste their money on a canned system.
It's amazing how many people think that being loud and obnoxious means they matter. *LOL*
My mistake -- I was sure I'd read somewhere that the issue was identifying online users.
Regardless of that, I happen to agree with forcing people to identify themselves when they are being questioned. If the reason for questioning is bogus, that's another issue, but there is absolutely no justification for hiding who you are from the police unless you are involved in something you shouldn't be.
There is no such thing as "privacy" in public, so I really wish the so-called "privacy advocates" would start focusing on useful personal information privacy instead of theoretical bullshit that goes against the grain of any civilized society.
No where in the world would I expect to be able to tell a police officer to go screw themselves when they demand to know who I am and to see id (if available) to prove it. There is a huge difference between identifying people who may or may not be involved in a crime, and harassing people who are just walking down the street.
Even the example of the black man in the white neighbourhood is valid, especially when you eliminate the heavy racial BS and use an example like someone in biker leathers or street-punk clothes in an area they obviously don't live. If you stand out for whatever reason around an area with a crime scene, you are going to get questioned. If you don't look like you belong, some "Community Watch" member will report you, and the police will investigate.
It has nothing to do with your right to privacy, and everything to do with the community's right to know who and why someone is where they don't seem to belong.
After a 911 call, there is plenty of probable cause for questioning and investigation. I find it asinine that anyone would think they should be able to walk away from potential involvement by just refusing to identify themselves.
Were that allowed, you can bet that the first ones to use it as an excuse to have charges tossed would be the very criminals the police are supposed to be arresting.
Yes, it could become a situation for abuse. Yes, people could be arrested for refusing to identify themselves. So what?
I want the police to arrest your ignorant arse if you look like you might be casing the area for breakins, or trying to find a drug dealer, or trying to find a hooker, or trying to cause any problems in my community. If you won't even give your name to the police, damned straight I want your butt tossed in a car and dragged out of the area. I wouldn't trust anyone who refused to tell me their name, and I don't expect the police to do so, either.
I'm quite certain that even a 1% estimate exagerrates the number of overclockers rather significantly. Sure they spend more money on their systems than regular users, but not on the CPU -- it's going to the latest bleeding edge 3D accelerators, the fastest CAS2 memory they can find, the fastest HDD's they can find, etc.
If most overclockers were busy overclocking the fastest CPU's Intel sells, maybe it would make a difference, but most overclockers are trying to get that bleeding-edge performance without paying the bleeding-edge price. Intel loses nothing by stopping the practice.
We're also getting well into the hardware performance ranges where overclocking by even 10% is a major accomplishment that requires very serious cooling. It's not like the PII/III days when you could get as much as a 50% boost over the rated speed (rare, but it did happen.)
Even most overclocking fanatics I've known over the years don't bother overclocking their latest systems. It's not worth the risk of frying the CPU and destabilizing the system for less than a 10% performance boost when you can go with a dualie board of cheaper CPUs instead.
At least in Florida, if an officer asks you to identify yourself as part of any investigation, you need to answer. Fail to answer, and you are obstructing justice, arrested, and then legally forced to answer.
This has been the case for as long as I can remember, and is true in Canada as well.
All they've done is clarify that you have no more rights online than you do on the street. Perfectly reasonable, and those of you who think they are "owed" anonymity need to grow up.
I run behind a firewall as well. Last time I did a WinXP install (not that long, unfortunately), I had no problems.
But I don't install or enable any services during an initial installation, just the core OS. I don't do anything but install manufacturer's drivers before installing an anti-virus product.
After the anti-virus is fully updated, then I start dealing with Windows updates.
At no point have I ever had to disable hardware or software firewalls to install Windows updates. I have no idea why they continue to insanely recommend you remove all your security just to download updates -- you don't need to.
In fact, the only time I shut down the antivirus is during a disconnected defrag. And there is no way to disable the hardware firewall.
If you're connecting directly to the net with a Windows box, you're just getting what you deserve. Either hide it behind a hardware firewall, or accept the fact that you're just another spambot-in-waiting.
Many companies won't consider candidates without certs, even though they know they get certified deadwood more often than they get talent.
I have met a grand total of two MCSE's in almost 5 years who had any skills whatsoever. Both of them were good before they took the certs -- the certs were just so they could get their foot in the door for contracts.
I have never asked anyone about their certs in an interview. I have never hired anyone who thought their certs should impress me, nor recommended that anyone be hired on basis of their certs.
In fact, I specifically prefer to recommend those who've bootstrapped their skills by learning on their own. They'll be far better able to deal with learning the business environment than someone who can memorize the right answers for a cert, but who has never learned how to think about the use of technology.
No, the sheeple will contentedly line up to have their pockets raped, provided they can instantly have the latest 30 seconds of digital clipping noise and shiny video. If they had spines, the RIAA wouldn't have succeeded with screwing everyone to the tune of $10-12 profit (or more) on every CD they paid a whopping $1.25 to manufacture and package.
If getting ripped off for an 80% profit margin wasn't enough to wake the sheeple up, why would you think they'll raise a stink about DRM?
Most of them are even uneducated enough to think it's a problem with their "old" CD player, and will spend even more money fixing a "problem" that never was.
For the most part I'd agree, except that many large ISP's are notorious for making it virtually impossible to get a service back after they've blocked it.
My ISP here has been pretty good about working with me on any technical issues that have come up, which has been rather refreshing compared to the useless "support" from Rogers or AT&T. There is a great deal to be said for smaller vendors who still understand service, even if it costs a bit more.
I just note that you had nothing to say about the cameras in the poor and crime ridden districts. It's clear you think "rights" are only for the rich, and that's just sad
It is hardly a "nonsensical" argument. I don't do anything on public streets that I worry about anyone seeing because it's public.
The crime rate in the inner city is actually quite high for pickpockets and muggings, especially for tourists who don't realize they're only a few blocks from some of the worst districts in the city.
If a camera on a lamp post means that one of the many pickpockets or muggers gets taken off the streets, then I have absolutely no problem with being watched, any more than I do with the security cameras in a bank's ATM lobby.
Were the tapes to be used for surveillance purposes other than cutting down street crime, I'd have an issue with it. Sure it's subject to abuse -- the same as every other authority granted to law enforcement. Suggest a way to prevent the abuse instead of obstinately refusing to consider a valuable tool for reducing street crime.
The terrorism angle actually has some validity -- shutting down the tunnels and bridges around the Baltimore area would cripple the movement of people and goods along the east coast. As it would take months to repair those facilities, the economic damage would be rather severe if it happened.
There already are plenty of city areas with surveillance cameras that are infested with drug problems. What is so bloody special about the inner city that it shouldn't have the same facilities? Are the people stuck in the drug-infested areas any less deserving of their rights than you, just because you're down town?
I spent a few months living in the area they're planning to install the cameras, maybe 5-7 years ago.
During the day it was a decent enough area, but at night it was crawling with street people, drunks, drug dealers, and hookers. My apartment was 6-7 blocks from the harbour itself, and you could pretty much count on it being all of 2-3 minutes before you'd hear the sirens from John Hopkins after you'd hear the gunshots. Thursday-Sunday night from about 10PM to 5PM, you'd hear gunshots at random, usually 4-5 per night.
The sixteen year old hooker working half a block from a church on Easter Sunday was really the final kicker to showing how bad the area really is once you get past the glossy day-time business setting.
I never had problems, but I also never went outside after 10PM with anything better than an old T-shirt and jeans. It was real obvious that dressing any better would be asking for trouble.
Cameras are a nuisance, but lets not forget this is predominantly a business district, not a residential area. What, precisely, would you expect to be doing that you need to even care that there is street surveillance?
Or is the offense more that a so-called "regular" part of a city now needs the same kind of monitoring as the worst crack districts?
Actually if you are using full-featured drivers for a properly supported card, the 3D processing capabilities often are used to some degree.
Historically the calculation overhead of windowing systems were low enough that 2D acceleration was nice, but not necessary. The problem is people keep adding all these gaming-style enhancements but they don't bother programming any sort of alternate code path to use the available features.
The other thing people keep forgetting is that there are a large number of users who will never be using these new "features" because they're using screen readers, font magnifiers, and alternative input systems. It is far more important to service the full breadth of the user community than to service a few eye candy addicts, but it's not the first time the community has fallen prey to "ain't it cool" while useful functionality falls behind.
By the way, 2D cards were not designed to implement transparency, fading, etc. 2D acceleration is vector/poly drawing, fill routines, hardware clipping, bit-blit, etc. If you only have one drawing plane, what would a transparency function show behind it?
I think the intent of your argument is correct, but I don't think it's a very good example.
The established customer base would normally be part of the purchased corporate valuation, as the value of an established business includes it's reputation, customer base, and projected established revenues. The value of the physical assets is often trivial compared to the established market presence.
Err, no. I've used more window managers under various *nix systems over the years than I care to count including Openview, Motif, Openlook, DCE, fvwm2, blackbox, WindowMaker, KDE2, KDE3, and Gnome.
They all run fine if you shut off the extra eye candy, fade/slide effects, transparency, skinning images, etc.
There are no CD player docklets on my desktop, nor midi managers, MP3 rippers, or anything else that wants to periodically check to see if it needs to do anything. If I need it, I'll start the app required at that time.
In other words, modern window managers give you the option of leaving all the glitzy CPU-wasting eye and ear candy enabled, or you can have it fast. Even WindowsXP has the same problem -- you have to shut all the junk off before it'll respond with any kind of speed.
As to memory requirements, I'll just point out that the window managers being compared don't include all the audio and internet hooks that KDE or Gnome do. Modern users expect those hooks, and they take space. Get over it.
Exactly -- there is a money trail from the "vendor" to the spam house to pay for the advertising. Why isn't the government chasing down the spam, faking purchases, and arresting the business owners for use of spam advertising once they've been tracked down?
I'm sure they'll claim it was an advertising agency doing so without their knowledge, so have them provide the information necessary to lock up the mythical agency owners instead/as well.
Stopping the spamemrs themselves cannot be done any more than the DEA will ever actually eliminate inner city crack problems by targetting street dealers instead of high-level shippers. You have to cut off a problem at it's source, and spam is mostly a symptom of slimy "business" owners who think the law doesn't apply to their business.
Then again, the federal government in the US has hardly done anything to discourage that attitude. What happened to the Microsoft penalties after conviction? How much jail time have energy industry executives done for their recent frauds? Or the accounting firms that enabled the "mismanagement"?
Anyone waiting for the Russian and Chinese governments to change to get rid of the spam needs to get over the fantasy. What advantage is there for Russia or China to enact laws blocking the sale of spam services or spamnets and incur the cost of enforcement when it's bringing money in to their countries?
That hope is as naive as expecting the south american countries "owned" by the cocaine lords to eliminate an industry (however distasteful) that brings hundreds of millions (if not billions) into countries with small to non-existant industrial economies.
That is one way to approach it, but if you can get a cluster solution that provides the same effective performance, the final decision ends up based on total cost of the solution to provide the needed performance.
That's why you need to be able to toggle kernel options, switch between different VM models, scheduling models, etc. The core of the system remains the same, but the kernel gets tweaked for the system duties and software stack it'll be running.
Instead of switching entire platforms to change the performance profile, you'd just tweak the kernel modules to best leverage the hardware available (whether existing or new.)
Put equivalent priced hardware from IBM, HP, and Sun in a head-to-head competition, and any one of the vendors will provide a business solution for fairly comparable prices. Corporations buy service capacity advantages, not technical advantages.
True enough -- Linux just happens to be a particularly widely available implementation of various open standards such as POSIX APIs, shell, thread processing, etc. AIX, Solaris, HP-UX, Irix, etc. provide their own implementations of those same APIs.
Within reason I don't care what the kernel and vendor are -- I care about the tools that sit on top of it and the programming APIs used to create applications and services. Were Microsoft to provide those APIs instead of trying to force proprietary (but equivalent) APIs, they might even find they have a shot at the data center.
I don't know that it's even an issue of what a kernel/OS "is good at". Businesses buy hardware to service a need -- in the vast majority of cases the details of a particular OS' benefits don't matter to the business. As long as it is stable and backed by a solid vendor with good support and maintenance, customers don't care much who provides it.
Eventually IBM et. al. will abandon the proprietary kernels because it's not a profitable business. It's far cheaper to ensure a shared core has all the functionality needed, with the ability to turn off bits and pieces you don't want or need. That way the individual vendors only provide hardware-specific support and perhaps a handful of their own admin/maintenance tools. Far, far cheaper than developing and maintaining "proprietary features" which aren't even a selling point with most of your customer base.
Who cares about one vendor's add-a-user tool versus another when the authentication and authorization are actually on another server that might not even run the same OS? Who cares that it's fully pre-emptive or a fine-grained network stack, provided it does the job? What does one particular vendor's backup facilities matter when your drives are in EMC or equivalent data servers?
Good idea! The ISP configures their own routers, so there really is no reason they couldn't put such infected ports in a sandbox that only allows downloads of the OS and security software needed to repair the machine.
But as to knowledge, that is the customer's problem. I don't have the equipment or training to replace the brakes on my car, but that doesn't mean I'm not responsible for their maintenance. It just means I have to hire someone to do the work for me.
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No, that is functional software.
Great software solves the customers problem (functionality), is light weight enough to serve their needs for a few years (scalable), does not crash nor lose data (reliable), addresses the problem before it gets out of control (timely), and provides more benefits than it cost (ROI.)
Microsoft has never delivered a "great" piece of software, and never will. Their model is not based on "great" software, it barely qualifies as meeting one out of five in most cases. Their model is based on "deliver overpriced crap, then charge more for the upgrade."
To me that is called "fraud" and "theft", not a "great" product.
You have to wonder if there is a politician in the world that has a functioning brain cell. Why in the world would the EC even consider following the broken disaster that is the US patent process?
I'm also expecting a push from the US to "simplify" world patents a few years after that by "consolidating" the patent databases. Of course then they can claim that the whole world is subject to this insanity, and try to extort revenue from global industry.
It's not surprising the EC politicians don't see that endgame. Like most politicians, they don't look beyond buying enough votes for the next election.
Or you could let your ISP know that you expect to be sending out an unusual amount of traffic and why.
There are very, very few situations where a normal person is going to be sending out hundreds of messages per hour.
If you have a real need to send that kind of volume on a regular basis, I'd say it pretty much has to be either commercial or non-profit use, neither of which is considered "personal".
The theory of being able to go anywhere and do whatever you like does not alter the fact that a businessman in a suit is going to get mugged in the ghetto, nor that someone dressed in urban styles is going to be harassed and probably arrested in a middle-upper class suburban neighbourhood.
Sure you have the right to be there, but that doesn't change the reality that you don't fit in. If you stand out, you are suspicious. Period.
So they're vocal. 99% of buyers go to Dell, IBM, HP/Compaq, etc. and buy a canned system.
They don't select a fancy video card. They don't buy more/better memory, faster harddrives, etc. They buy a canned computer that has parts with good reviews, or which they can afford.
The only people who get custom systems are either bitheads themselves, or they have friends who are bitheads that won't let them waste their money on a canned system.
It's amazing how many people think that being loud and obnoxious means they matter. *LOL*
My mistake -- I was sure I'd read somewhere that the issue was identifying online users.
Regardless of that, I happen to agree with forcing people to identify themselves when they are being questioned. If the reason for questioning is bogus, that's another issue, but there is absolutely no justification for hiding who you are from the police unless you are involved in something you shouldn't be.
There is no such thing as "privacy" in public, so I really wish the so-called "privacy advocates" would start focusing on useful personal information privacy instead of theoretical bullshit that goes against the grain of any civilized society.
No where in the world would I expect to be able to tell a police officer to go screw themselves when they demand to know who I am and to see id (if available) to prove it. There is a huge difference between identifying people who may or may not be involved in a crime, and harassing people who are just walking down the street.
Even the example of the black man in the white neighbourhood is valid, especially when you eliminate the heavy racial BS and use an example like someone in biker leathers or street-punk clothes in an area they obviously don't live. If you stand out for whatever reason around an area with a crime scene, you are going to get questioned. If you don't look like you belong, some "Community Watch" member will report you, and the police will investigate.
It has nothing to do with your right to privacy, and everything to do with the community's right to know who and why someone is where they don't seem to belong.
After a 911 call, there is plenty of probable cause for questioning and investigation. I find it asinine that anyone would think they should be able to walk away from potential involvement by just refusing to identify themselves.
Were that allowed, you can bet that the first ones to use it as an excuse to have charges tossed would be the very criminals the police are supposed to be arresting.
Yes, it could become a situation for abuse. Yes, people could be arrested for refusing to identify themselves. So what?
I want the police to arrest your ignorant arse if you look like you might be casing the area for breakins, or trying to find a drug dealer, or trying to find a hooker, or trying to cause any problems in my community. If you won't even give your name to the police, damned straight I want your butt tossed in a car and dragged out of the area. I wouldn't trust anyone who refused to tell me their name, and I don't expect the police to do so, either.
I'm quite certain that even a 1% estimate exagerrates the number of overclockers rather significantly. Sure they spend more money on their systems than regular users, but not on the CPU -- it's going to the latest bleeding edge 3D accelerators, the fastest CAS2 memory they can find, the fastest HDD's they can find, etc.
If most overclockers were busy overclocking the fastest CPU's Intel sells, maybe it would make a difference, but most overclockers are trying to get that bleeding-edge performance without paying the bleeding-edge price. Intel loses nothing by stopping the practice.
We're also getting well into the hardware performance ranges where overclocking by even 10% is a major accomplishment that requires very serious cooling. It's not like the PII/III days when you could get as much as a 50% boost over the rated speed (rare, but it did happen.)
Even most overclocking fanatics I've known over the years don't bother overclocking their latest systems. It's not worth the risk of frying the CPU and destabilizing the system for less than a 10% performance boost when you can go with a dualie board of cheaper CPUs instead.
At least in Florida, if an officer asks you to identify yourself as part of any investigation, you need to answer. Fail to answer, and you are obstructing justice, arrested, and then legally forced to answer.
This has been the case for as long as I can remember, and is true in Canada as well.
All they've done is clarify that you have no more rights online than you do on the street. Perfectly reasonable, and those of you who think they are "owed" anonymity need to grow up.
I run behind a firewall as well. Last time I did a WinXP install (not that long, unfortunately), I had no problems.
But I don't install or enable any services during an initial installation, just the core OS. I don't do anything but install manufacturer's drivers before installing an anti-virus product.
After the anti-virus is fully updated, then I start dealing with Windows updates.
At no point have I ever had to disable hardware or software firewalls to install Windows updates. I have no idea why they continue to insanely recommend you remove all your security just to download updates -- you don't need to.
In fact, the only time I shut down the antivirus is during a disconnected defrag. And there is no way to disable the hardware firewall.
If you're connecting directly to the net with a Windows box, you're just getting what you deserve. Either hide it behind a hardware firewall, or accept the fact that you're just another spambot-in-waiting.
Actually that's why I spec'd $1.25. The actual CD and cover run roughly $0.85.
Many companies won't consider candidates without certs, even though they know they get certified deadwood more often than they get talent.
I have met a grand total of two MCSE's in almost 5 years who had any skills whatsoever. Both of them were good before they took the certs -- the certs were just so they could get their foot in the door for contracts.
I have never asked anyone about their certs in an interview. I have never hired anyone who thought their certs should impress me, nor recommended that anyone be hired on basis of their certs.
In fact, I specifically prefer to recommend those who've bootstrapped their skills by learning on their own. They'll be far better able to deal with learning the business environment than someone who can memorize the right answers for a cert, but who has never learned how to think about the use of technology.
No, the sheeple will contentedly line up to have their pockets raped, provided they can instantly have the latest 30 seconds of digital clipping noise and shiny video. If they had spines, the RIAA wouldn't have succeeded with screwing everyone to the tune of $10-12 profit (or more) on every CD they paid a whopping $1.25 to manufacture and package.
If getting ripped off for an 80% profit margin wasn't enough to wake the sheeple up, why would you think they'll raise a stink about DRM?
Most of them are even uneducated enough to think it's a problem with their "old" CD player, and will spend even more money fixing a "problem" that never was.
For the most part I'd agree, except that many large ISP's are notorious for making it virtually impossible to get a service back after they've blocked it.
My ISP here has been pretty good about working with me on any technical issues that have come up, which has been rather refreshing compared to the useless "support" from Rogers or AT&T. There is a great deal to be said for smaller vendors who still understand service, even if it costs a bit more.
I just note that you had nothing to say about the cameras in the poor and crime ridden districts. It's clear you think "rights" are only for the rich, and that's just sad
It is hardly a "nonsensical" argument. I don't do anything on public streets that I worry about anyone seeing because it's public.
The crime rate in the inner city is actually quite high for pickpockets and muggings, especially for tourists who don't realize they're only a few blocks from some of the worst districts in the city.
If a camera on a lamp post means that one of the many pickpockets or muggers gets taken off the streets, then I have absolutely no problem with being watched, any more than I do with the security cameras in a bank's ATM lobby.
Were the tapes to be used for surveillance purposes other than cutting down street crime, I'd have an issue with it. Sure it's subject to abuse -- the same as every other authority granted to law enforcement. Suggest a way to prevent the abuse instead of obstinately refusing to consider a valuable tool for reducing street crime.
The terrorism angle actually has some validity -- shutting down the tunnels and bridges around the Baltimore area would cripple the movement of people and goods along the east coast. As it would take months to repair those facilities, the economic damage would be rather severe if it happened.
There already are plenty of city areas with surveillance cameras that are infested with drug problems. What is so bloody special about the inner city that it shouldn't have the same facilities? Are the people stuck in the drug-infested areas any less deserving of their rights than you, just because you're down town?
I spent a few months living in the area they're planning to install the cameras, maybe 5-7 years ago.
During the day it was a decent enough area, but at night it was crawling with street people, drunks, drug dealers, and hookers. My apartment was 6-7 blocks from the harbour itself, and you could pretty much count on it being all of 2-3 minutes before you'd hear the sirens from John Hopkins after you'd hear the gunshots. Thursday-Sunday night from about 10PM to 5PM, you'd hear gunshots at random, usually 4-5 per night.
The sixteen year old hooker working half a block from a church on Easter Sunday was really the final kicker to showing how bad the area really is once you get past the glossy day-time business setting.
I never had problems, but I also never went outside after 10PM with anything better than an old T-shirt and jeans. It was real obvious that dressing any better would be asking for trouble.
Cameras are a nuisance, but lets not forget this is predominantly a business district, not a residential area. What, precisely, would you expect to be doing that you need to even care that there is street surveillance?
Or is the offense more that a so-called "regular" part of a city now needs the same kind of monitoring as the worst crack districts?
Did I say "asset"? No, I said corporate valuation. Check what that term means before you say an established market and client base aren't relevant.
Actually if you are using full-featured drivers for a properly supported card, the 3D processing capabilities often are used to some degree.
Historically the calculation overhead of windowing systems were low enough that 2D acceleration was nice, but not necessary. The problem is people keep adding all these gaming-style enhancements but they don't bother programming any sort of alternate code path to use the available features.
The other thing people keep forgetting is that there are a large number of users who will never be using these new "features" because they're using screen readers, font magnifiers, and alternative input systems. It is far more important to service the full breadth of the user community than to service a few eye candy addicts, but it's not the first time the community has fallen prey to "ain't it cool" while useful functionality falls behind.
By the way, 2D cards were not designed to implement transparency, fading, etc. 2D acceleration is vector/poly drawing, fill routines, hardware clipping, bit-blit, etc. If you only have one drawing plane, what would a transparency function show behind it?
I think the intent of your argument is correct, but I don't think it's a very good example.
The established customer base would normally be part of the purchased corporate valuation, as the value of an established business includes it's reputation, customer base, and projected established revenues. The value of the physical assets is often trivial compared to the established market presence.
Your entire comparison was just flagged as useless. You need to run the systems on the same hardware for your comparison to have any meaning.
Err, no. I've used more window managers under various *nix systems over the years than I care to count including Openview, Motif, Openlook, DCE, fvwm2, blackbox, WindowMaker, KDE2, KDE3, and Gnome.
They all run fine if you shut off the extra eye candy, fade/slide effects, transparency, skinning images, etc.
There are no CD player docklets on my desktop, nor midi managers, MP3 rippers, or anything else that wants to periodically check to see if it needs to do anything. If I need it, I'll start the app required at that time.
In other words, modern window managers give you the option of leaving all the glitzy CPU-wasting eye and ear candy enabled, or you can have it fast. Even WindowsXP has the same problem -- you have to shut all the junk off before it'll respond with any kind of speed.
As to memory requirements, I'll just point out that the window managers being compared don't include all the audio and internet hooks that KDE or Gnome do. Modern users expect those hooks, and they take space. Get over it.
Exactly -- there is a money trail from the "vendor" to the spam house to pay for the advertising. Why isn't the government chasing down the spam, faking purchases, and arresting the business owners for use of spam advertising once they've been tracked down?
I'm sure they'll claim it was an advertising agency doing so without their knowledge, so have them provide the information necessary to lock up the mythical agency owners instead/as well.
Stopping the spamemrs themselves cannot be done any more than the DEA will ever actually eliminate inner city crack problems by targetting street dealers instead of high-level shippers. You have to cut off a problem at it's source, and spam is mostly a symptom of slimy "business" owners who think the law doesn't apply to their business.
Then again, the federal government in the US has hardly done anything to discourage that attitude. What happened to the Microsoft penalties after conviction? How much jail time have energy industry executives done for their recent frauds? Or the accounting firms that enabled the "mismanagement"?
Anyone waiting for the Russian and Chinese governments to change to get rid of the spam needs to get over the fantasy. What advantage is there for Russia or China to enact laws blocking the sale of spam services or spamnets and incur the cost of enforcement when it's bringing money in to their countries?
That hope is as naive as expecting the south american countries "owned" by the cocaine lords to eliminate an industry (however distasteful) that brings hundreds of millions (if not billions) into countries with small to non-existant industrial economies.
That is one way to approach it, but if you can get a cluster solution that provides the same effective performance, the final decision ends up based on total cost of the solution to provide the needed performance.
That's why you need to be able to toggle kernel options, switch between different VM models, scheduling models, etc. The core of the system remains the same, but the kernel gets tweaked for the system duties and software stack it'll be running.
Instead of switching entire platforms to change the performance profile, you'd just tweak the kernel modules to best leverage the hardware available (whether existing or new.)
Put equivalent priced hardware from IBM, HP, and Sun in a head-to-head competition, and any one of the vendors will provide a business solution for fairly comparable prices. Corporations buy service capacity advantages, not technical advantages.
True enough -- Linux just happens to be a particularly widely available implementation of various open standards such as POSIX APIs, shell, thread processing, etc. AIX, Solaris, HP-UX, Irix, etc. provide their own implementations of those same APIs.
Within reason I don't care what the kernel and vendor are -- I care about the tools that sit on top of it and the programming APIs used to create applications and services. Were Microsoft to provide those APIs instead of trying to force proprietary (but equivalent) APIs, they might even find they have a shot at the data center.
I don't know that it's even an issue of what a kernel/OS "is good at". Businesses buy hardware to service a need -- in the vast majority of cases the details of a particular OS' benefits don't matter to the business. As long as it is stable and backed by a solid vendor with good support and maintenance, customers don't care much who provides it.
Eventually IBM et. al. will abandon the proprietary kernels because it's not a profitable business. It's far cheaper to ensure a shared core has all the functionality needed, with the ability to turn off bits and pieces you don't want or need. That way the individual vendors only provide hardware-specific support and perhaps a handful of their own admin/maintenance tools. Far, far cheaper than developing and maintaining "proprietary features" which aren't even a selling point with most of your customer base.
Who cares about one vendor's add-a-user tool versus another when the authentication and authorization are actually on another server that might not even run the same OS? Who cares that it's fully pre-emptive or a fine-grained network stack, provided it does the job? What does one particular vendor's backup facilities matter when your drives are in EMC or equivalent data servers?
Good idea! The ISP configures their own routers, so there really is no reason they couldn't put such infected ports in a sandbox that only allows downloads of the OS and security software needed to repair the machine.
But as to knowledge, that is the customer's problem. I don't have the equipment or training to replace the brakes on my car, but that doesn't mean I'm not responsible for their maintenance. It just means I have to hire someone to do the work for me.