EV1 this a very bad move by funding SCO extorsion, by doing so they violated the GPL since it is not legal to restrict your rights that the original authors of software gave you under the GPL. I believe now any, GPL developer could file a lawsuit against EV1 for violating the GPL. It is best for all of us the enforcement of the GPL. One simple way to help enforce the GPL is buy boycotting all companies that violate the GPL, not only EV1, but any other company. SCO is evil in the sence they want to destroy the GPL, and EV1 made a selfish move hurting everyone for their own interest, maybe they took the SCO threat seriusly. but if that was the case it would have been better to go to an older kernel.
Comcast is not a good company, it does false advertizing. I used to have ATT @home, and the service was great, static IP, no need to pay for video, static IP, 1.5 Mbits/s down, and 256 Kbits/s up, and for the first 6 months is was $20 per month, then after the promotion it was $38 per month.
When Comcast took over they told me nothing would change, and it was clearly false, they stopped giving out static IP, I got to keep mine since I already had it, and the started to require to pay for video, and the regular price went up from $38 to $58 that is a 50% increase, and they told me there were no changes in the service.
Now they say unlimited bandwidth according to this article but it is clearly not unlimited.
The point I try to make is that you can not trust a company that lies to you for whatever reason, you lose your trust on them.
I dropped comcast a few months after they took over from ATT.
In case this helps I have kernel 0.99 dated 1993 on what I believed is the first or one of the first cdroms with linux, it is an yggdrasil distribution, I am not sure if it included the sources. Since cdroms are read only, and it is an original that might be useful evidence.
The high tech industry is hurting really bad right now, the dot coms have collapsed, unemployement is higher than ever in the tech industry, internet rates for example ATT with the merger of comcast have risen 50% this year alone, telocity goes out of bussines, it has been really bad, and to make the high tech industry hurt even more now we will have internet taxes, creating more unemployment, making a few more industries go out of bussiness, this is completely crazy.
The state will end up loosing money, if more industries keep going down, umemployement will continue to increase, and pleople once they do not have jobs they will pay no taxes.
what really needs to be done is cut on the war tax, and put that money for education, and for the unemployed, create more jobs which is needed very badly.
an internet tax will help to kill the few dot coms that are still surviving, what is the point to kill an industry that is doing very poorly.
stock on many industries have fallen bellow a dollar something never seen before, and many of them may not survive another tax.
First the energy crisis, then the collapse of the economy, then huge high tech unemployment, denial of third unemployement extension, and now an internet tax. How are high tech skilled people supused to survive with the high cost of living in the current situation ?. The politicions are crazy they should be fired for proposing such a selfish idea, most of them probably have never used the internet and see it as a source of income for their pockets.
Do not get me wrong income tax should be taxed heavely for large incomes, eliminate the tax loopholes, and not to tax other things, after all what is the point of double taxing, since if you already paid your taxes with your income, then when using that income which paid its taxes, paying taxes again is a bad idea.
if income tax is increased for large incomes, and purchase taxes eliminated, that state will end up with more money, and it will increase consuption, therefore creating jobs, and bussines about to go down could survive.
reason why cable is more popular in the USA.
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One of the best DSL providers was telocity, they offereed a lot for $39, like a static IP, and was working in direct competetion to the local phone companies like pacific bell. But now telocity (direct tv broadband is out of bussines).
In most cases for DSL you have to deal with the local phone company, and since a monopoly is equal to bad service and high prices most people do not want to take that route.
I had local phone services with US West in NM, and Pacific Bell in Calif, they both sucked bit time, now I have vonage and it is great, I can travel an d get to keep my phone number, but with vonage you need broadband, cable or DSL...
In the US ATT broadband offers cable service, and they also compete for local phone service therefore are trying to offer better customer service than the local phone companies. Since the ATT service is good, they have a class A (255**3 hosts), they are very big that could maybe explain why cable is more popular than DSL in the US, also ATT does not charge for cablemodem that you own, it is generally cheaper, better upload speed than DSL, and does not force you to buy their television service.
In other countries, for example in Mexico both DSL and cable are both monopolies, and probably both offer bad service, but for most people they already have phones, therefore getting DSL implies just one extra charge for those that already have the phone line, but in the case of cable in many countries the bandwidth available starts at modem speeds this is no exageration, for example the basic rate at www.cablemas.com mexico is 64 kbits/s versus 1500 kbits/s ATT in US, that is a factor of 25, and plus you are force you rent the cablemodem, and buy video service, in the US you do not have those restrictions.
but one of the main reasons is quality of service, in mexico my internet cable at times have been down for entire months, recently in was down an entire week and it is usual human error not equipment failure, in the USA in about a yar I probably had less than a week downtime altogether.
I would assume reliabitly is the reason cable is not popular in many countries. now my cable connection is working in mexico, but who knows for how long it may break at any minute.
I guess for third world countries modems will remain popular for a long time.
The general rule is that lack of competition implies bad service, and high prices, in most countries for both DSL and Cable.
For the small size ISP DSL and Cable are not options, the only 2 options are dial up lines and wireless networks. Lets hope wireless networks keep getting better, and they do not get destroyed by some future stupid law.
I had telecity and they were pretty good the service was reliable, you got an static IP, and routable, 1.5 Mbits/s down, and 128 Kbits/s up, for $40 a month it was a good service, and they provided an 800 toll free number free for dialup for backup.
before I had covad, which was terrible, one time I was down for 3 weeks and covad would not fix the problem which was on their end, they finally theatened to charge if the problem was at my end and I agreed, that's when they fixed the problem and with 3 weeks down, they wanted to bill the entire month.
Now I have ATT in California, and Cablemas which is a division of Cox in Tijuana mexico, border with San Diego.
ATT is very good, routable IP, good customer service, very reliable, very fast 1.5 Mbits down and 256 kbits/s up.
Cablemas is the worst I have seen, the instalation took 5 months, I have been down for weeks, the speed is really slow it was 256 kbips/s, now I was put behind a firewall with a non routable IP it really sucks, I can no longer receive calls with my vonage phone, download sucks at 5 Mbytes the download stops, ssh times out and you lose the connection after 2 minutes, they put a filter on sunday to filter internet, and my bandwidth became 0, after 4 days of massive complaining they remove the filter. you pay rent for the cable modem even if it is yours, you pay extra for not getting their video, it is about 25 times more expensive than ATT, 64kbits is the basic rate at about $38 dollars a months. It really sucks, a modem it is actually faster and more reliable in this case. I am so disapointed at cablemas and Cox (same company) for the very bad service they provide. it is so bad that I have put my own web site warning people of cablemas check it out at
http://www.cablemas.org.
They had a promotion and failed to honor it.
I am not very familiar with ISP services in mexico, but if someone tells me of a good alternative, I will switch. unlimited, with routable ip.
What I would really like it to put a wireless link with someone in San Diego (san ysidro, chula vista).
In summary: Telocity: very good. ATT: very good. covad: bad cablemas (cox): can not get much worse than this.
note, in the case of cablemas some people have routable ips some have private ips, the private one really suck, very slow connectionsw, I had a routable IP and without any warning I was switched, and now every so many minutes I get a new private IP every few minutes via hdcp, and everything stops workings in the meantime.
In the year 2000 I heard of some plans to tax the internet, then the economy of the US collapsed, now the economy is as bad as it can be, with no good indications of recovery. and now the government is planning on taxing the internet, this is plain crazy. How is the internet any different than mail order ?
Inter state tax is ilegal based on the constitution, do not let the goverment break the constitution.
People that leave in smaller cities will get screwed the most if this passes as a law.
The DMCA is a law that is not enforsable outside of US boundaries, since the internet is international, and it is causing huge problems to the open software industry.
HP is one example where instead of fixing a high risk security bug, decides to use the law to hide the bug and have their customers computers at the risk of the security hole, then I gues the way the law works if that HP customers can sue HP for selling defective software and hiding its bugs. But this is nonsence, the correct way and ethical way to proceed is to fix the bug, don't use the DMCA as a method of hiding the bugs, and let people know about the security problem so that they fix the bug as soon as a fix becomes available if it does.
The DMCA is a law that need to be overthown, same as the DRM laws that legislators are trying to pass.
The DMCA made many things that were legal and ethical legal, like posting research done on a product is ilegal now, reverse engineering which is needed for compatability purpuses is now ilegal, this is coorporate bullshit, it is time to challenge this nonsence laws, the problem is that the legal process to chalenge a law is very costly and it is out of reach for most of us.
So I guess one way around the bad laws, is using the good laws against it, for example getting organized and having lists of countries that enforce the DMCA, and the ones that do not.
I am planning on putting up a website in Mexico to avoid problemas with the DMCA, since right now even if I am correct on an issue, if a large corporate industry were to sue me for whatever reason, I would be destroyed do to the expenses involved in the defense process. Let me refrase that, if anyone of us were to be sued by whatever reasons by a large corporation, we would be destroyed, even if we were to win a case, the financial cost alone would be huge. What is really bad about this is that in the US it takes nothing to be sued (meaning you do not really have to do anything bad at all), reading the articles on newsgroups, slashdot, and other places. For example a russian programmer (Dimitro ) was arrested for writing code in Russia, in the USA, even though the code was legal in Russia, in other words the DMCA is going to be pushed beyond borders even in countries that do not support the DMCA, this is unacceptable.
In the case of HP, the person that found the bug did HP a favor, since it gave HP a chance to fix the bug, and HP saves money on debuging the OS since it is done for free, someone the wanted to do harm would use the exploit, and post it in a cracker newsgroup anonymous. But HP instead of saying thanks, threatens this person with a lawsuit. This is completely insane for a technology company.
www.consultorlinux.com linux consultant since 1992
A friend of mine had a problem with drives on a windows XP machine, somehow the drivers for the cdrom burner and the dvd rom got corrupted and would conflict with each other.
So at first I thought of downloading the drivers from an ftp or http site, when I finally located the location of the drivers, they were not available for XP, the site had a message saying this drivers come with XP.
But since windows XP was preinstalled, and it had no CD rom available, there was not much that could be done.
Installing the drivers again from the hard disk would just reproduce the problem, and due to the plug and play feature it would automatically install both drivers.
It was imposible to only install the dvd rom, or the cdrom burner alone. It was probably posible by going in the registry, but that is risky and it is probable not a good idea in general.
In general I would say to stay away from XP and use Linux, it is so much more friendly user, and it has no spyware. One you learn how to use Linux you will love it, if someone tells you it is more dificult than windows, it is simply not true.
For linux most of the configuration files are under/etc, the kernel sources in/usr/src/linux
to install a program, it is a single line: rpm -i program-i386.rpm
Lets say something goes wrong and the GUI is messed up, well you can always use CLI to fix the problem, with windows a reinstall if you have the CD otherwise a call to MS for another license, which is very costy.
In linux it is much easier to edit a file in/etc or in the home directory for a user, a file that is in plain ascii, readable by any editor, than to have to edit the windows registry wich are badly documented.
Lets say you want to install linux in a computer which already has an OS, well it is not a problem linux can be located on any disk, any partition, and it will not overwrite the boot sectors without asking you whant do you want to do, windows on the other hand will want to be on the first disk, and it will automatically overwrite the boot sectors if you are lucky, if you are not lucky it will overwrite your linux partition destroying all your data. Haven't check reacent versions of windows, but thats how it used to be. Linux never overwrote a windows partition, unless if I really wanted to do that.
Right now I have dual boot so that I can use my scanner, but as soon as I have an scanner that runs under linux, windows is gone for good.
One thing that in Linux is completely different than windows, is that in Linux the GUI is just a GUI, in other words it is very nice, and makes lifes easier, but linux works perfectly well and it is very usable without the GUI, windows has the GUI incorporated into the OS (political reasons in my opinion, to demolish the competition, remenber DR Dos), windows without the GUI is useless, you simply can not use it, if you don't believe try using windows without the GUI for something usefull, not possible.
In Linux you have the choice of using or not using the GUI, it is your choice. In windows it is M$ choice, not yours.
Some comments by a few here were that windows can do everything linux can, and that is not true.
Linux is true multiuser, windows is not. Linux can be booted over a network, were the kernel being run is on a remote machine, windows can not do this, and this is very usefull for diskless machines. in linux for doing a task you have many ways to acomplish the task, in windows you choice is limited. The bare minimun to run a current kernel (2.4.x) in a terminal is 16 MB, windows can not do that, even if you doble that amount. I could go on forever, the point is that linux is a lot more powerfull, and windows CAN NOT do everything can do.
In recent times there have been a lot of atacks against linux, and other open source software, like the DMCA, that I believe is a real treat, its intent of destruction, I believe due to the fact that linux is internationation it will not be destroyed, but it can slow down its progress. And then M$ taking avantage of proprietary technology, can make sure none of its software comply with industry standards, and if reverse engineering is ilegal, like the case with dvd roms, this will be a problem for linux created by politicians.
Now if you consider what you get with a full linux distribution vs windows, it is obvious that with linux you get much more software and of better quality, now in windows to get that type of functionality you would have to add thousands of dollars worth of software.
I thought that staroffice did have a java version in the days when it belonged to the german company called star div. What happened to the original java version ? Was that one the commercial version back then ?
now if wireless networks using 802.11b or a get popular, someone could make small ip phone that use the network that would be ideal.
As my economic situation recovers, I am planning on building a wireless network and then use an IP phone. no more need for traditional or celular phones.
for example: "We have prided ourselves on always being the cheapest guy on the block--we were going to be higher volume and lower priced than anybody else out there, whether it was Novell, Lotus or anybody else," said Ballmer,
That is complete nonsence, linux is free and has been around since 1991, when I started using it in 1992 it was already a lot better than windows windows was running back then 16 bit code while linux was already 32 bit code. not only that but linux is free as in freedom and in price that makes it double free, windows not only is expensive but requieres expensive licensing.
The comparison of windows vs linux is not a legitimatimate comparison, since they are comparing windows to linux running on a windows environment, a better comparison would be windows vs linux in a unix environment.
There are many things windows can not and it is not design to do that linux does really well. For example: 1. Diskless X terminals. 2. NFS version 3 support. 3. XFS JFS EXT3 journal filesystems 4. Comply to industry standards. 5. NIS support. sure windows has it, but have you ever checked how well it performs. it sucks. 6. user friendlyness, have you ever tryed installing windows in a disk that was not the primary IDE without getting the boot records destroyed. Linux can be installed in any partition with easyness. 7. multiuser, windows is not really multiuser, sure you can share printers and the filesystem with many other users but that does not make it a multiuser OS, how about sharing the CPU with the processes of other users.? Linux is a true multiuser OS. 8. Stability, I had linux servers up and running with an uptime of up to half a year, on overage a month, with windows at most the uptime is a day or 2. 9. CLI in linux is very powerfull, the GUI makes things even nicer, if there is a problem with the GUI you use the CLI and fix it, working remotely using a modem you use the CLI and can get a lot done. In windows the CLI is useless, not much you can do with only the CLI, you have to use the GUI, it is required, and if you are working remotely over a modem connection you can not use the windows GUI due to performance reasons, with X even with an slow connection there is always a solution like LBX for example. 10. performance on unix native tools is by far superior in linux, for example linux nfs is far better than windows nfs, however some comparisons are biased when done by microst because for a network filesystem comparison instead of making the comparison with nfs they compare with SMB (windows file sharing) and in the case of linux that is done using samba which is an application program so in linux is being done at a user level instead of a native hardware level like nfs would be. not really a fair comparison, if we were to choose all the tools that linux does natively at kernel level vs windows at user level windows would look terrible, but with windows being closed source it is hard to know if something is running at a user level (software) vs kernel (hardware). 11. the security of linux is far superior is not perfect but is much better, just read the bugtraq mailling list for this.
I am a linux consultant, have been providing linux support for many years. my web site where I am planning on putting there some linux related information in the near future is http://www.consultorlinux.com
linux is actually easier than windows for the technicall user, here is why: 1. when something breaks in windows, your only hope is that its gets fixed on the next service pack, and then after a few service packs the product gets abandonded like NT after service pack 6 forcing a costly update. on Linux you have the source and therefore can fix the problem, even for the non programmers usually a fix is available in rpm and the problem is disclosed, unlike windows the problem is kept secret from the average user. 2. any fix in windows requiered several reboots.
In linux you normaly do not need to reboot when updating software or fixing something, unless you are updating the kernel. 3. Security, linux is much more secure than windows by default, and it can be made even more secure. 4. The uptime in linux is far superior to the uptime in windows. 5. Some people claim X is slower than the windows gui, but this is not true, since it depends on the graphic chipset that is being used, and when you think of X think of total time something takes, for example changing the resolution is only 3 keystrokes, in most versions of windows this means rebooting after going in the control pannel. 6. usually hardware that does not work on linux, is because the manufactures do not provide the hardware specifications, and it is usually very poor hardware like winmodems, or bad scanners. for example I have an acer prisa scanner wich is very bad it does not work on linux, but on windows it is very slow and uses all the cpu of the system that why you are scanning you can not do anything else. 7. There are things that you can do in linux which would be very difficult in windows, for example setting up x terminals vs setting up windows terminals. 8.In linux you can update programs individualy, in windows in many cases this is not possible. for example in linux you can update the kernel, in windows this is not possible without updating the whole os. in linux you can update X and only X, in windows you can not update the GUI without updating the whole OS. 9. Viruses. In windows a virus can kill your OS. In linux the most damage a virus can do is limited to the files owned by that user. 10. Technicall support. Windows has only tech support from ms which is bad and costly, mostly you are on your own. For linux there are many distributors that offer tech support, and many independent consultants, for example http://wwww.consultorlinux.com offers linux tech support for very low fees, even free in some cases. Why is linux tech support better than windows, well most users that use linux is because they like the os, in windows for many years you could not buy a pc that was not bundled with windows, and history shows that the average user will use whatever he gets.
I have been using linux for 9 years, and I can see the huge progress linux has had over the years, today it is much more friendly user than in the old days, if you do not believe get your self a copy of SLS and compare that to red hat, and you will see the huge progress that modern linux distributions have made.
One of the biggest problems that linux faces is ms savotaging the stardards, for example ms tryied to destroy java, and created something that run on windows only, then web standards, for example the few times I see mozilla crash, I look at the source of the remote site and it is usually created with frontpage, and it does not display properly with any browser other than ie, filesystems, everyone knew how fat and vfat worked from a tech view, but then ms released ntfs and the linux gurus are figuring that out, by the time it is figured out ms will release something again with no specification of how it works with the goal of breaking compatability.
For those rare cases in that I need windows, I use vmware which is very good sadly they increased the price by 300%, the private version used to cost $100, now it does not exist instead the commercial version cost $300. another opcions are www.codeweavers.com, and free www.winehq.org
Linux is not that difficult to use por the average user assuming it was installed for them, the average user would have massive problems with windows if he/she had to do the installation from scratch.
And for the power user linux is much easier to use.
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EV1 this a very bad move by funding SCO extorsion,
by doing so they violated the GPL since it is not legal to restrict your rights that the original authors of software gave you under the GPL.
I believe now any, GPL developer could file a lawsuit against EV1 for violating the GPL.
It is best for all of us the enforcement of the GPL.
One simple way to help enforce the GPL is buy boycotting all companies that violate the GPL, not only EV1, but any other company.
SCO is evil in the sence they want to destroy the GPL, and EV1 made a selfish move hurting everyone for their own interest, maybe they took the SCO threat seriusly. but if that was the case it
would have been better to go to an older kernel.
Comcast is not a good company, it does false advertizing.
I used to have ATT @home, and the service was great, static IP, no need to pay for video, static IP, 1.5 Mbits/s down, and 256 Kbits/s up, and for the first 6 months is was $20 per month, then after the promotion it was $38 per month.
When Comcast took over they told me nothing would change, and it was clearly false, they stopped giving out static IP, I got to keep mine since I already had it, and the started to require to pay for video, and the regular price went up from $38 to $58 that is a 50% increase, and they told me there were no changes in the service.
Now they say unlimited bandwidth according to this article but it is clearly not unlimited.
The point I try to make is that you can not trust a company that lies to you for whatever reason, you lose your trust on them.
I dropped comcast a few months after they took over from ATT.
In case this helps I have kernel 0.99 dated 1993 on what I believed is the first or one of the first cdroms with linux, it is an yggdrasil distribution, I am not sure if it included the sources.
Since cdroms are read only, and it is an original that might be useful evidence.
The high tech industry is hurting really bad right now, the dot coms have collapsed, unemployement is higher than ever in the tech industry, internet rates for example ATT with the merger of comcast have risen 50% this year alone, telocity goes out of bussines, it has been really bad, and to make the high tech industry hurt even more now we will
have internet taxes, creating more unemployment, making a few more industries go out of bussiness, this is completely crazy.
The state will end up loosing money, if more industries keep going down, umemployement will continue to increase, and pleople once they do not have jobs they will pay no taxes.
what really needs to be done is cut on the war tax, and put that money for education, and for the unemployed, create more jobs which is needed very badly.
an internet tax will help to kill the few dot coms that are still surviving, what is the point to kill an industry that is doing very poorly.
stock on many industries have fallen bellow a dollar something never seen before, and many of them may not survive another tax.
First the energy crisis, then the collapse of the economy, then huge high tech unemployment, denial of third unemployement extension, and now an internet tax. How are high tech skilled people supused to survive with the high cost of living in the current situation ?. The politicions are crazy they should be fired for proposing such a selfish idea, most of them probably have never used the internet and see it as a source of income for their pockets.
Do not get me wrong income tax should be taxed heavely for large incomes, eliminate the tax loopholes, and not to tax other things, after all what is the point of double taxing, since if you already paid your taxes with your income, then when using that income which paid its taxes, paying taxes again is a bad idea.
if income tax is increased for large incomes, and purchase taxes eliminated, that state will end up with more money, and it will increase consuption, therefore creating jobs, and bussines about to go down could survive.
One of the best DSL providers was telocity, they offereed a lot for $39, like a static IP, and was working in direct competetion to the local phone companies like pacific bell. But now telocity (direct tv broadband is out of bussines).
In most cases for DSL you have to deal with the local phone company, and since a monopoly is equal to bad service and high prices most people do not want to take that route.
I had local phone services with US West in NM, and Pacific Bell in Calif, they both sucked bit time, now I have vonage and it is great, I can travel an d get to keep my phone number, but with vonage you need broadband, cable or DSL...
In the US ATT broadband offers cable service, and they also compete for local phone service therefore are trying to offer better customer service than the local phone companies. Since the ATT service is good, they have a class A (255**3 hosts), they are very big that could maybe explain why cable is more popular than DSL in the US, also ATT does not charge for cablemodem that you own, it is generally cheaper, better upload speed than DSL, and does not force you to buy their television service.
In other countries, for example in Mexico both DSL
and cable are both monopolies, and probably both offer bad service, but for most people they already have phones, therefore getting DSL implies just one extra charge for those that already have the phone line, but in the case of cable in many countries the bandwidth available starts at modem speeds this is no exageration, for example the basic rate at www.cablemas.com mexico is 64 kbits/s versus 1500 kbits/s ATT in US, that is a factor of 25, and plus you are force you rent the cablemodem, and buy video service, in the US you do not have those restrictions.
but one of the main reasons is quality of service, in mexico my internet cable at times have been down for entire months, recently in was down an entire week and it is usual human error not equipment failure, in the USA in about a yar I probably had less than a week downtime altogether.
I would assume reliabitly is the reason cable is not popular in many countries. now my cable connection is working in mexico, but who knows for how long it may break at any minute.
I guess for third world countries modems will remain popular for a long time.
The general rule is that lack of competition implies bad service, and high prices, in most countries for both DSL and Cable.
For the small size ISP DSL and Cable are not options, the only 2 options are dial up lines and wireless networks. Lets hope wireless networks keep getting better, and they do not get destroyed by some future stupid law.
I had telecity and they were pretty good the service was reliable, you got an static IP, and routable, 1.5 Mbits/s down, and 128 Kbits/s up, for $40 a month it was a good service, and they provided an 800 toll free number free for dialup for backup.
before I had covad, which was terrible, one time I was down for 3 weeks and covad would not fix the problem which was on their end, they finally theatened to charge if the problem was at my end and I agreed, that's when they fixed the problem and with 3 weeks down, they wanted to bill the entire month.
Now I have ATT in California, and Cablemas which is a division of Cox in Tijuana mexico, border with San Diego.
ATT is very good, routable IP, good customer service, very reliable, very fast 1.5 Mbits down and 256 kbits/s up.
Cablemas is the worst I have seen, the instalation took 5 months, I have been down for weeks, the speed is really slow it was 256 kbips/s, now I was put behind a firewall with a non routable IP it really sucks, I can no longer receive calls with my vonage phone, download sucks at 5 Mbytes the download stops, ssh times out and you lose the connection after 2 minutes, they put a filter on sunday to filter internet, and my bandwidth became 0, after 4 days of massive complaining they remove the filter. you pay rent for the cable modem even if it is yours, you pay extra for not getting their video, it is about 25 times more expensive than ATT, 64kbits is the basic rate at about $38 dollars a months. It really sucks, a modem it is actually faster and more reliable in this case.
I am so disapointed at cablemas and Cox (same company) for the very bad service they provide.
it is so bad that I have put my own web site warning people of cablemas check it out at
http://www.cablemas.org.
They had a promotion and failed to honor it.
I am not very familiar with ISP services in mexico, but if someone tells me of a good alternative, I will switch. unlimited, with routable ip.
What I would really like it to put a wireless link with someone in San Diego (san ysidro, chula vista).
In summary:
Telocity: very good.
ATT: very good.
covad: bad
cablemas (cox): can not get much worse than this.
note, in the case of cablemas some people have routable ips some have private ips, the private one really suck, very slow connectionsw, I had a routable IP and without any warning I was switched, and now every so many minutes I get a new private IP every few minutes via hdcp, and everything stops workings in the meantime.
In the year 2000 I heard of some plans to tax the internet, then the economy of the US collapsed, now the economy is as bad as it can be, with no good indications of recovery. and now the government is planning on taxing the internet, this is plain crazy.
How is the internet any different than mail order ?
Inter state tax is ilegal based on the constitution, do not let the goverment break the constitution.
People that leave in smaller cities will get screwed the most if this passes as a law.
The DMCA is a law that is not enforsable outside of US boundaries, since the internet is international, and it is causing huge problems to the open software industry.
HP is one example where instead of fixing a high risk security bug, decides to use the law to hide the bug and have their customers computers at the risk of the security hole, then I gues the way the law works if that HP customers can sue HP for selling defective software and hiding its bugs.
But this is nonsence, the correct way and ethical way to proceed is to fix the bug, don't use the DMCA as a method of hiding the bugs, and let people know about the security problem so that they fix the bug as soon as a fix becomes available if it does.
The DMCA is a law that need to be overthown, same as the DRM laws that legislators are trying to pass.
The DMCA made many things that were legal and ethical legal, like posting research done on a product is ilegal now, reverse engineering which is needed for compatability purpuses is now ilegal, this is coorporate bullshit, it is time to challenge this nonsence laws, the problem is that the legal process to chalenge a law is very costly and it is out of reach for most of us.
So I guess one way around the bad laws, is using the good laws against it, for example getting organized and having lists of countries that enforce the DMCA, and the ones that do not.
I am planning on putting up a website in Mexico to avoid problemas with the DMCA, since right now even if I am correct on an issue, if a large corporate industry were to sue me for whatever reason, I would be destroyed do to the expenses involved in the defense process.
Let me refrase that, if anyone of us were to be sued by whatever reasons by a large corporation, we would be destroyed, even if we were to win a case, the financial cost alone would be huge.
What is really bad about this is that in the US it takes nothing to be sued (meaning you do not really have to do anything bad at all), reading the articles on newsgroups, slashdot, and other places. For example a russian programmer (Dimitro ) was arrested for writing code in Russia, in the USA, even though the code was legal in Russia, in other words the DMCA is going to be pushed beyond borders even in countries that do not support the DMCA, this is unacceptable.
In the case of HP, the person that found the bug did HP a favor, since it gave HP a chance to fix the bug, and HP saves money on debuging the OS since it is done for free, someone the wanted to do harm would use the exploit, and post it in a cracker newsgroup anonymous. But HP instead of saying thanks, threatens this person with a lawsuit. This is completely insane for a technology company.
www.consultorlinux.com
linux consultant since 1992
A friend of mine had a problem with drives on a windows XP machine, somehow the drivers for the cdrom burner and the dvd rom got corrupted and would conflict with each other.
/etc, the kernel sources in /usr/src/linux
/etc
So at first I thought of downloading the drivers from an ftp or http site, when I finally located the location of the drivers, they were not available for XP, the site had a message saying this drivers come with XP.
But since windows XP was preinstalled, and it had no CD rom available, there was not much that could be done.
Installing the drivers again from the hard disk would just reproduce the problem, and due to the plug and play feature it would automatically install both drivers.
It was imposible to only install the dvd rom, or the cdrom burner alone. It was probably posible by going in the registry, but that is risky and it is probable not a good idea in general.
In general I would say to stay away from XP and use Linux, it is so much more friendly user, and it has no spyware. One you learn how to use Linux you will love it, if someone tells you it is more dificult than windows, it is simply not true.
For linux most of the configuration files are under
to install a program, it is a single line:
rpm -i program-i386.rpm
Lets say something goes wrong and the GUI is messed up, well you can always use CLI to fix the problem, with windows a reinstall if you have the CD otherwise a call to MS for another license, which is very costy.
In linux it is much easier to edit a file in
or in the home directory for a user, a file that is in plain ascii, readable by any editor, than to have to edit the windows registry wich are badly documented.
Lets say you want to install linux in a computer which already has an OS, well it is not a problem linux can be located on any disk, any partition, and it will not overwrite the boot sectors without asking you whant do you want to do, windows on the other hand will want to be on the first disk, and it will automatically overwrite the boot sectors if you are lucky, if you are not lucky it will overwrite your linux partition destroying all your data. Haven't check reacent versions of windows, but thats how it used to be. Linux never overwrote a windows partition, unless if I really wanted to do that.
Right now I have dual boot so that I can use my scanner, but as soon as I have an scanner that runs under linux, windows is gone for good.
One thing that in Linux is completely different than windows, is that in Linux the GUI is just a GUI, in other words it is very nice, and makes lifes easier, but linux works perfectly well and it is very usable without the GUI, windows has the GUI incorporated into the OS (political reasons in my opinion, to demolish the competition, remenber DR Dos), windows without the GUI is useless, you simply can not use it, if you don't believe try using windows without the GUI for something usefull, not possible.
In Linux you have the choice of using or not using the GUI, it is your choice.
In windows it is M$ choice, not yours.
Some comments by a few here were that windows can do everything linux can, and that is not true.
Linux is true multiuser, windows is not.
Linux can be booted over a network, were the kernel being run is on a remote machine, windows can not do this, and this is very usefull for diskless machines.
in linux for doing a task you have many ways to acomplish the task, in windows you choice is limited.
The bare minimun to run a current kernel (2.4.x) in a terminal is 16 MB, windows can not do that, even if you doble that amount.
I could go on forever, the point is that linux is a lot more powerfull, and windows CAN NOT do everything can do.
In recent times there have been a lot of atacks against linux, and other open source software, like the DMCA, that I believe is a real treat, its intent of destruction, I believe due to the fact that linux is internationation it will not be destroyed, but it can slow down its progress.
And then M$ taking avantage of proprietary technology, can make sure none of its software comply with industry standards, and if reverse engineering is ilegal, like the case with dvd roms, this will be a problem for linux created by politicians.
Now if you consider what you get with a full linux distribution vs windows, it is obvious that with linux you get much more software and of better quality, now in windows to get that type of functionality you would have to add thousands of dollars worth of software.
I thought that staroffice did have a java version in the days when it belonged to the german company called star div.
What happened to the original java version ?
Was that one the commercial version back then ?
use www.vonage.com which is an IP phone.
now if wireless networks using 802.11b or a get popular, someone could make small ip phone that use the network that would be ideal.
As my economic situation recovers, I am planning on building a wireless network and then use an IP phone. no more need for traditional or celular phones.
The article is very biosed.
for example:
"We have prided ourselves on always being the cheapest guy on the block--we were going to be higher volume and lower priced than anybody else out there, whether it was Novell, Lotus or anybody else," said Ballmer,
That is complete nonsence, linux is free and has been around since 1991, when I started using it in 1992 it was already a lot better than windows windows was running back then 16 bit code while linux was already 32 bit code. not only that but linux is free as in freedom and in price that makes it double free, windows not only is expensive but requieres expensive licensing.
The comparison of windows vs linux is not a legitimatimate comparison, since they are comparing windows to linux running on a windows environment, a better comparison would be windows vs linux in a unix environment.
There are many things windows can not and it is not design to do that linux does really well.
For example:
1. Diskless X terminals.
2. NFS version 3 support.
3. XFS JFS EXT3 journal filesystems
4. Comply to industry standards.
5. NIS support. sure windows has it, but have you ever checked how well it performs. it sucks.
6. user friendlyness, have you ever tryed installing windows in a disk that was not the primary IDE without getting the boot records destroyed. Linux can be installed in any partition with easyness.
7. multiuser, windows is not really multiuser, sure you can share printers and the filesystem with many other users but that does not make it a multiuser OS, how about sharing the CPU with the processes of other users.? Linux is a true multiuser OS.
8. Stability, I had linux servers up and running with an uptime of up to half a year, on overage a month, with windows at most the uptime is a day or 2.
9. CLI in linux is very powerfull, the GUI makes things even nicer, if there is a problem with the GUI you use the CLI and fix it, working remotely using a modem you use the CLI and can get a lot done. In windows the CLI is useless, not much you can do with only the CLI, you have to use the GUI, it is required, and if you are working remotely over a modem connection you can not use the windows GUI due to performance reasons, with X even with an slow connection there is always a solution like LBX for example.
10. performance on unix native tools is by far superior in linux, for example linux nfs is far better than windows nfs, however some comparisons are biased when done by microst because for a network filesystem comparison instead of making the comparison with nfs they compare with SMB (windows file sharing) and in the case of linux that is done using samba which is an application program so in linux is being done at a user level instead of a native hardware level like nfs would be. not really a fair comparison, if we were to choose all the tools that linux does natively at kernel level vs windows at user level windows would look terrible, but with windows being closed source it is hard to know if something is running at a user level (software) vs kernel (hardware).
11. the security of linux is far superior is not perfect but is much better, just read the bugtraq mailling list for this.
I am a linux consultant, have been providing linux support for many years. my web site where
I am planning on putting there some linux related information in the near future is http://www.consultorlinux.com
sergio
linux is actually easier than windows for the technicall user, here is why:
1. when something breaks in windows, your only hope is that its gets fixed on the next service pack, and then after a few service packs the product gets abandonded like NT after service pack 6 forcing a costly update.
on Linux you have the source and therefore can fix the problem, even for the non programmers usually a fix is available in rpm and the problem is disclosed, unlike windows the problem is kept secret from the average user.
2. any fix in windows requiered several reboots.
In linux you normaly do not need to reboot when updating software or fixing something, unless you are updating the kernel.
3. Security, linux is much more secure than windows by default, and it can be made even more secure.
4. The uptime in linux is far superior to the uptime in windows.
5. Some people claim X is slower than the windows gui, but this is not true, since it depends on the graphic chipset that is being used, and when you think of X think of total time something takes, for example changing the resolution is only 3 keystrokes, in most versions of windows this means rebooting after going in the control pannel.
6. usually hardware that does not work on linux, is because the manufactures do not provide the hardware specifications, and it is usually very poor hardware like winmodems, or bad scanners.
for example I have an acer prisa scanner wich is very bad it does not work on linux, but on windows it is very slow and uses all the cpu of the system that why you are scanning you can not do anything else.
7. There are things that you can do in linux which would be very difficult in windows, for example setting up x terminals vs setting up windows terminals.
8.In linux you can update programs individualy, in windows in many cases this is not possible.
for example in linux you can update the kernel, in windows this is not possible without updating the whole os.
in linux you can update X and only X, in windows you can not update the GUI without updating the whole OS.
9. Viruses.
In windows a virus can kill your OS.
In linux the most damage a virus can do is limited to the files owned by that user.
10. Technicall support.
Windows has only tech support from ms which is bad and costly, mostly you are on your own.
For linux there are many distributors that offer tech support, and many independent consultants, for example http://wwww.consultorlinux.com offers linux tech support for very low fees, even free in some cases.
Why is linux tech support better than windows, well most users that use linux is because they like the os, in windows for many years you could not buy a pc that was not bundled with windows, and history shows that the average user will use whatever he gets.
I have been using linux for 9 years, and I can see the huge progress linux has had over the years, today it is much more friendly user than in the old days, if you do not believe get your self a copy of SLS and compare that to red hat, and you will see the huge progress that modern linux distributions have made.
One of the biggest problems that linux faces is ms savotaging the stardards, for example ms tryied to destroy java, and created something that run on windows only, then web standards, for example the few times I see mozilla crash, I look at the source of the remote site and it is usually created with frontpage, and it does not display properly with any browser other than ie,
filesystems, everyone knew how fat and vfat worked from a tech view, but then ms released ntfs and the linux gurus are figuring that out, by the time it is figured out ms will release something again with no specification of how it works with the goal of breaking compatability.
For those rare cases in that I need windows,
I use vmware which is very good sadly they increased the price by 300%, the private version used to cost $100, now it does not exist instead the commercial version cost $300. another opcions are www.codeweavers.com, and free www.winehq.org
Linux is not that difficult to use por the average user assuming it was installed for them, the average user would have massive problems with windows if he/she had to do the installation from scratch.
And for the power user linux is much easier to use.