When you're in an unequal partnership with a company the size of Microsoft, you have very little or no leverage to insist on clauses like that.
Well, I don't think anybody forced them at gunpoint to partner with Microsoft in the first place. As a lot of other people already said in this thread: If you go play with the devil you better wear asbestos pants.
I'm afraid not. It's quite simple: You first use the money that is physically there, and when that's gone because no more money comes in and you have to pay the rent and eat and other frivolous things, some day even with the best money management it just runs out. So in the next step you try to use up all the credit you can get. It's that easy.
4. And now, the craziest proposal *drum roll* Encourage IBM to buy Sun and Macromedia. Push them to open source a fork of the JDK and JDK EE under the GPL as a reference copy, submit the specs to ISO for everything from the basic java packages to the EE specs. To further hurt MS on the desktop, they could open source Dreamweaver similar to how QT is open sourced.
Yeah. Great idea. IIRC there used to be some huge company years ago that dominated the whole market for everything connected with mechanical and electronic calculations from even before WWII until the advent of the PC. Incidently they also were named IBM. So you just want to revive the largest mega-monopoly of all times to fight MS ?
As most of us are real Internet junkies, let's go where modern intercontinental telecommunications began:
Le Radom is the European side of the first intercontinental satellite link between Europe and the US. It is an absolutely fascinating building like a huge white ball (they told us there you could fit the Paris Arc de Triumph (sp?) in there) containing the not less impressing antenna itself, nicely illuminated and sitting beside France Telecoms Museum for Telecommuncations.
Conventiently it is also placed in the absolutely scenic northern Brittany near the city of Lannion, which is always worth a trip.
Well, if you start to think with everything you or someone else in your society does of the risk of it being a potential target for terrorists, then the only thing left for you is to build a big, bad abc weapon-proof shelter and move in immediately.
On the other hand, most parts of the world have seen their fair share of terrorism over last the couple of decades, innocent people died all over Europe in bombed passenger trains, bombed aircrafts, blasted buildings, the Munich Octoberfest bombing from 1980 and other atrocious terrorist attacks without the development of these countries stopping dead because of that.
So yes, there will be further terrorist attacks, I'm afraid, and no, you will neither prevent them by banning large cities, nor air travel nor maglev trains.
Most computers of that aera didn't have fans, e.g. the legendary C64, C128 etc., on one hand because the CPUs back then didn't get that hot (even PCs up to 486's didn't necessarily need active cooling), on the other hand because a lot of heat generating components (harddrives, high-end graphics cards, other drives) were either external or had not been invented yet or just didn't generate that much heat because they were much much less powerful (and sadly more power in most components means more heat generation). At least as long as we talk of microcomputers (no, your PDP or VAX or tube-based computer doesn't count here).
But it is a little bit daring to compare the heat generated by systems from 20 years ago with today's systems without admitting that today's systems are so much more powerful that most of us back then never would have dreamed of ever owning such a system.
Eager to allay fears about the scope of Palladium, Biddle insisted that the impetus behind Palladium was solely to secure digital entertainment content and that he knew of no way that it could be used for the enforcement of software licensing. This assurance was made while he spoke on a panel at the USENIX Symposium.
Uhm... isn't that exactly what everyone is fussing about in regards to Palladium ? The fear that it will be the death of fair use ? They even admit that it is to be used for DRM.
But was is so wrong in enforcing software licensing(=preventing theft of ones product) ? If you want to use MS software, buy it, if you don't want to use it or don't have the money use open source. But apparently people are not interested in protecting their exitisting consumer rights (=fair use of stuff they have bought) but in protecting their stolen free beer (=pirated software). Thanks for giving the industriy a great argument pro Palladium.
Many if not most of those who did survive probably owe their good fortune to one of the first "computers"
And a lots of those who died owe this to the predecessors to the "modern" universal computer: Only the intense use of so-called Hollerith machines sold in large quantities by IBM through its German subsidiary enabled the Nazis to perform the arrest, imprisonment and mass-murder of Jews and other people both in Germany and the occupied countries as well as their logistics operations during WW II in such a technical perfection. (The excellent book "IBM and the Holocaust gives a detailed account about this).
Which clearly shows that technical innovation, as anything else, can be used to good or evil.
I have to agree with the reviewer's sentiment that they should have included Gnome in SuSE.
At least in the German version of SuSE 8.1 Pro I got here they include GNOME, both 1.x and 2. You can choose both GNOMEs and truckloads of GNOME packages on install, and you can also decide later if you want to have kdm or gdm as your login manager. You can also directly log into a GNOME 2 session from the kdm they preinstall. How much more GNOME support does one need ?
Even NT4 prompts you for an Administrator password on install. Ok, you can use a blank one, but the same should be possible on any operating system I know including most Linux distros. And even on all common Unices there is a well known default for the admin username. That can certainly be changed, but the same applies to NT.
You are certainly right that a lot of people use questionable system setups out of sheer lazyness or ignorance, but this is more a problem of the average of people using common customer OSses vs. more technically inclined users using Linux or a BSD.
AFAIK there is currently no OS that protects you against being an idiot.;-)
Cool. I didn't know this. But still I do not understand where the benefit lies for encrypting network traffic between one's ethernet interface and the ADSL modem, or did I get it completely wrong and they encrypt the traffic on the network side between the ADSL modem and the port in the switching center ?
You are sure you do not think of PPPoE (PPP over Ethernet) which is the common protocol between a client computer and a DSL modem ? I never heard of using PPTP (who should be listening on the cabel between your computer and the modem anyway ?). But maybe we are just backwards over here...
(oops, the browser ate my login, sorry for the same post as AC).
The main reason I hope Apple don't switch to x86 is because PPC is different (different is good) and frankly, x86 is a fucked up architecture - it's a 20+ year old architecture that's been kludged over and over.
In almost every discussion that involves PowerPC vs. x86 sooner or later this sentiment comes up. Ok, it may be right or not - but HOW DO YOU TELL ? Are you programming assembler on any of these platforms ? Or do you tell by looking at the chip ? */me opens up his G4 tower, pries away the cooler.. hm... does the same to his Duron...* looks quite the same... a rectangular piece of something looking technical on some kind of socket...
Are you really knowing about a relevant difference or are you just babbling some marketing fluff you heard somewhere without having a clue ?
I mean - Unix (used as a basis for OS X) is a 20+ year old architecture that's been kludged over and over - does that mean that OS X sucks ? What about Linux ? Different is good - so why not run Plan 9 - that's as different as it can get, I think. But both are not really valid arguments for or against any platform IMO.
What I forgot to write was, that I've heard more people considering to buy licenses for the Linux version than for the Windows version.
IMO the reason for that is that in this very special case of VMWare a lot of people want to buy or buy the Linux version to run Windows apps on their Linux machines, not only to get a virtual machine for testing and development. The incentive to do so is much less for people running Windows. I don't know too many applications that do only run on Linux that don't also run in some form or the other on Windows or have at least adequate counterparts there.
So VMWare might be a bad example, as it is very special (and both on Linux and Windows an excellent product).
Maybe I'm a little slow here (almost 2.30 am over here again *sigh*), but:
If I got it right, they buy eMacs from Apple, put in the drive, and ship it on. So it IS an Apple eMac plus the Superdrive that isn't from Apple, a point that should be absolutely clear to the buyer (which is the reason they go to Zettybyte in the first place). It's not that they take some crap parts of their own, stuff them in a faked eMac case and sell it as an original eMac to unsuspecting customers. So I don't see any problems calling the eMacs what they are, eMacs.
Admitted, the warranty question is tricky. OTOH, I don't know how invasive swapping the drive is for the machine, but if it is just a question of taking out one drive and putting in the other, in a professional way in a professional workshop (no welding, no cutting things, whatever bad things one can do to a computer), the question really is if this really voids the warranty.
At least by German law, e.g. doing the same to a G4 tower shouldn't void the warranty as the drive (as well as PCI cards, RAM etc.) is meant to be end-user swappable by design (if not, adding parts to your new Mac or PC like more RAM, PCI cards, whatsoever would always void the warranty. Some PC companies over here tried to pull that stunt a couple of years ago and failed miserably in court, as a PC (and a G4 tower just the same) are designed with the purpose of changing parts in mind). So the core question is: Is the drive in the eMac meant to be changed by a customer or not ? The warranty for the superdrive certainly has to come from Zettybyte, but come on, where is the problem ? It can't be that expensive for Apple phone support to tell exactly that to people, and they made money by selling the original system in the first place anyway.
In any case I don't like Apple's behaviour in that case. It is one of those somewhat childish wannabe-big brother attempts of Apple to dictate to their customers what they should buy and what they should use in, on or with their computers. When will they start going after retailers selling Macs with RAM-upgrades, graphics cards or other stuff not from Apple (exactly same situation and a AFAIK not very uncommon practise) ?
OK, perhaps ERP is too big a word, let's just say financial software (accounting, warehouse, some logistics, that kind of stuff). Compiere indeed looks interesting, but the problem is that (at least in Germany) all accounting software should have some kind of certification from the federal finance authorities. You certainly also can use other software (it's a should), but be prepared to run into deep trouble with the tax people once they find out about it and your business processes are more complex than perhaps selling five PC per week (at least that's what I'm told by usually quite knowledgeable people, I'm not an accountant).
Also in my experience it pays to have a really good support at hand that can also visit you on-site for your financial software as soon as you need any kind of customization (which is needed quite soon). I am a great open source fan, but with financial stuff I really would prefer getting some commercial services (there are dozends of popular and well-supported products of all sizes for Win32, but almost none for Linux). It's like trying to fix the brakes of your car by yourself if you're not a professional mechanic. It might work out, but you also could die very fast. IMO it's a big difference if your Web site gets a small hickup or if you manage to fuck up your company's whole accounting data (you don't need to be Enron or WorldCom to be dead as a company if that ever happens).
Starts out quite soon. ERP anyone ? I tried to find a useful ERP solution for a medium sized business running on Linux, but besides obscure stuff noone seems to know and to use and SAP (which is way too big and way too costly for the purpose) I turned up nothing.
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When you're in an unequal partnership with a company the size of Microsoft, you have very little or no leverage to insist on clauses like that.
Well, I don't think anybody forced them at gunpoint to partner with Microsoft in the first place. As a lot of other people already said in this thread: If you go play with the devil you better wear asbestos pants.
Do I win? Do I? Whoohoo!
I'm afraid not. It's quite simple: You first use the money that is physically there, and when that's gone because no more money comes in and you have to pay the rent and eat and other frivolous things, some day even with the best money management it just runs out. So in the next step you try to use up all the credit you can get. It's that easy.
* stole TCP/IP stack 'cause they couldn't write a decent stack of their own
Repeat after me: ONE CANNOT STEAL BSD LICENSED SOFTWARE. ONE CANNOT STEAL BSD LICENSED SOFTWARE .
4. And now, the craziest proposal *drum roll* Encourage IBM to buy Sun and Macromedia. Push them to open source a fork of the JDK and JDK EE under the GPL as a reference copy, submit the specs to ISO for everything from the basic java packages to the EE specs. To further hurt MS on the desktop, they could open source Dreamweaver similar to how QT is open sourced.
Yeah. Great idea. IIRC there used to be some huge company years ago that dominated the whole market for everything connected with mechanical and electronic calculations from even before WWII until the advent of the PC. Incidently they also were named IBM. So you just want to revive the largest mega-monopoly of all times to fight MS ?
As most of us are real Internet junkies, let's go where modern intercontinental telecommunications began:
Le Radom is the European side of the first intercontinental satellite link between Europe and the US. It is an absolutely fascinating building like a huge white ball (they told us there you could fit the Paris Arc de Triumph (sp?) in there) containing the not less impressing antenna itself, nicely illuminated and sitting beside France Telecoms Museum for Telecommuncations.
Conventiently it is also placed in the absolutely scenic northern Brittany near the city of Lannion, which is always worth a trip.
Well, if you start to think with everything you or someone else in your society does of the risk of it being a potential target for terrorists, then the only thing left for you is to build a big, bad abc weapon-proof shelter and move in immediately.
On the other hand, most parts of the world have seen their fair share of terrorism over last the couple of decades, innocent people died all over Europe in bombed passenger trains, bombed aircrafts, blasted buildings, the Munich Octoberfest bombing from 1980 and other atrocious terrorist attacks without the development of these countries stopping dead because of that.
So yes, there will be further terrorist attacks, I'm afraid, and no, you will neither prevent them by banning large cities, nor air travel nor maglev trains.
Which part of "properly cut off from the outside world" you didn't understand ?
Most if not all of the items you listed are more or less meaningless on a non-networked, isolated system.
Most computers of that aera didn't have fans, e.g. the legendary C64, C128 etc., on one hand because the CPUs back then didn't get that hot (even PCs up to 486's didn't necessarily need active cooling), on the other hand because a lot of heat generating components (harddrives, high-end graphics cards, other drives) were either external or had not been invented yet or just didn't generate that much heat because they were much much less powerful (and sadly more power in most components means more heat generation). At least as long as we talk of microcomputers (no, your PDP or VAX or tube-based computer doesn't count here).
But it is a little bit daring to compare the heat generated by systems from 20 years ago with today's systems without admitting that today's systems are so much more powerful that most of us back then never would have dreamed of ever owning such a system.
Eager to allay fears about the scope of Palladium, Biddle insisted that the impetus behind Palladium was solely to secure digital entertainment content and that he knew of no way that it could be used for the enforcement of software licensing. This assurance was made while he spoke on a panel at the USENIX Symposium.
Uhm... isn't that exactly what everyone is fussing about in regards to Palladium ? The fear that it will be the death of fair use ? They even admit that it is to be used for DRM.
But was is so wrong in enforcing software licensing(=preventing theft of ones product) ? If you want to use MS software, buy it, if you don't want to use it or don't have the money use open source. But apparently people are not interested in protecting their exitisting consumer rights (=fair use of stuff they have bought) but in protecting their stolen free beer (=pirated software). Thanks for giving the industriy a great argument pro Palladium.
You forgot:
;->
Fry that penguin !
... until you happen to log out in the meantime. Screen would do that job... (as said before)
... which didn't hinder them to offer RPMs almost immediately for free download, of course...
Many if not most of those who did survive probably owe their good fortune to one of the first "computers"
And a lots of those who died owe this to the predecessors to the "modern" universal computer: Only the intense use of so-called Hollerith machines sold in large quantities by IBM through its German subsidiary enabled the Nazis to perform the arrest, imprisonment and mass-murder of Jews and other people both in Germany and the occupied countries as well as their logistics operations during WW II in such a technical perfection. (The excellent book "IBM and the Holocaust gives a detailed account about this).
Which clearly shows that technical innovation, as anything else, can be used to good or evil.
I have to agree with the reviewer's sentiment that they should have included Gnome in SuSE.
At least in the German version of SuSE 8.1 Pro I got here they include GNOME, both 1.x and 2. You can choose both GNOMEs and truckloads of GNOME packages on install, and you can also decide later if you want to have kdm or gdm as your login manager. You can also directly log into a GNOME 2 session from the kdm they preinstall. How much more GNOME support does one need ?
Both GNOME and KDE are already available on OSX via fink.
Even NT4 prompts you for an Administrator password on install. Ok, you can use a blank one, but the same should be possible on any operating system I know including most Linux distros. And even on all common Unices there is a well known default for the admin username. That can certainly be changed, but the same applies to NT.
;-)
You are certainly right that a lot of people use questionable system setups out of sheer lazyness or ignorance, but this is more a problem of the average of people using common customer OSses vs. more technically inclined users using Linux or a BSD.
AFAIK there is currently no OS that protects you against being an idiot.
Cool. I didn't know this. But still I do not understand where the benefit lies for encrypting network traffic between one's ethernet interface and the ADSL modem, or did I get it completely wrong and they encrypt the traffic on the network side between the ADSL modem and the port in the switching center ?
You are sure you do not think of PPPoE (PPP over Ethernet) which is the common protocol between a client computer and a DSL modem ? I never heard of using PPTP (who should be listening on the cabel between your computer and the modem anyway ?). But maybe we are just backwards over here...
(oops, the browser ate my login, sorry for the same post as AC).
The main reason I hope Apple don't switch to x86 is because PPC is different (different is good) and frankly, x86 is a fucked up architecture - it's a 20+ year old architecture that's been kludged over and over.
In almost every discussion that involves PowerPC vs. x86 sooner or later this sentiment comes up. Ok, it may be right or not - but HOW DO YOU TELL ? Are you programming assembler on any of these platforms ? Or do you tell by looking at the chip ? */me opens up his G4 tower, pries away the cooler.. hm... does the same to his Duron...* looks quite the same... a rectangular piece of something looking technical on some kind of socket...
Are you really knowing about a relevant difference or are you just babbling some marketing fluff you heard somewhere without having a clue ?
I mean - Unix (used as a basis for OS X) is a 20+ year old architecture that's been kludged over and over - does that mean that OS X sucks ? What about Linux ? Different is good - so why not run Plan 9 - that's as different as it can get, I think. But both are not really valid arguments for or against any platform IMO.
What I forgot to write was, that I've heard more people considering to buy licenses for the Linux version than for the Windows version.
IMO the reason for that is that in this very special case of VMWare a lot of people want to buy or buy the Linux version to run Windows apps on their Linux machines, not only to get a virtual machine for testing and development. The incentive to do so is much less for people running Windows. I don't know too many applications that do only run on Linux that don't also run in some form or the other on Windows or have at least adequate counterparts there.
So VMWare might be a bad example, as it is very special (and both on Linux and Windows an excellent product).
Well - then never mind. Obviously overlooked the irony tags. Sorry then :-)
... just think of the ratings when one of em blows someone away!! And we would get to see it!!
Kewwll!!
Yeah. Unbelievably cool. Want to volunteer ?
Maybe I'm a little slow here (almost 2.30 am over here again *sigh*), but:
If I got it right, they buy eMacs from Apple, put in the drive, and ship it on. So it IS an Apple eMac plus the Superdrive that isn't from Apple, a point that should be absolutely clear to the buyer (which is the reason they go to Zettybyte in the first place). It's not that they take some crap parts of their own, stuff them in a faked eMac case and sell it as an original eMac to unsuspecting customers. So I don't see any problems calling the eMacs what they are, eMacs.
Admitted, the warranty question is tricky. OTOH, I don't know how invasive swapping the drive is for the machine, but if it is just a question of taking out one drive and putting in the other, in a professional way in a professional workshop (no welding, no cutting things, whatever bad things one can do to a computer), the question really is if this really voids the warranty.
At least by German law, e.g. doing the same to a G4 tower shouldn't void the warranty as the drive (as well as PCI cards, RAM etc.) is meant to be end-user swappable by design (if not, adding parts to your new Mac or PC like more RAM, PCI cards, whatsoever would always void the warranty. Some PC companies over here tried to pull that stunt a couple of years ago and failed miserably in court, as a PC (and a G4 tower just the same) are designed with the purpose of changing parts in mind). So the core question is: Is the drive in the eMac meant to be changed by a customer or not ? The warranty for the superdrive certainly has to come from Zettybyte, but come on, where is the problem ? It can't be that expensive for Apple phone support to tell exactly that to people, and they made money by selling the original system in the first place anyway.
In any case I don't like Apple's behaviour in that case. It is one of those somewhat childish wannabe-big brother attempts of Apple to dictate to their customers what they should buy and what they should use in, on or with their computers. When will they start going after retailers selling Macs with RAM-upgrades, graphics cards or other stuff not from Apple (exactly same situation and a AFAIK not very uncommon practise) ?
OK, perhaps ERP is too big a word, let's just say financial software (accounting, warehouse, some logistics, that kind of stuff). Compiere indeed looks interesting, but the problem is that (at least in Germany) all accounting software should have some kind of certification from the federal finance authorities. You certainly also can use other software (it's a should), but be prepared to run into deep trouble with the tax people once they find out about it and your business processes are more complex than perhaps selling five PC per week (at least that's what I'm told by usually quite knowledgeable people, I'm not an accountant).
Also in my experience it pays to have a really good support at hand that can also visit you on-site for your financial software as soon as you need any kind of customization (which is needed quite soon). I am a great open source fan, but with financial stuff I really would prefer getting some commercial services (there are dozends of popular and well-supported products of all sizes for Win32, but almost none for Linux). It's like trying to fix the brakes of your car by yourself if you're not a professional mechanic. It might work out, but you also could die very fast. IMO it's a big difference if your Web site gets a small hickup or if you manage to fuck up your company's whole accounting data (you don't need to be Enron or WorldCom to be dead as a company if that ever happens).
Starts out quite soon. ERP anyone ? I tried to find a
useful ERP solution for a medium sized business running on Linux, but besides obscure stuff noone seems to know and to use and SAP (which is way too big and way too costly for the purpose) I turned up nothing.