I just met some Mircosoft people who were talking about this thing. They said the hardware was just made by the usual people (HP, Acer,...) and only the software is MS. I'm sure linux and the gnu tools can be easily ported to the thing, since it seems to be IBM compatible. I wouldn't call this a "Microsoft product", as I don't call any `normal' PC a "Microsoft product".
``He's got it tough,'' said Walter Price, who helps manage $35 billion at Dresdner RCM Global Investors and holds Microsoft shares. ``I don't know what you do to protect your shareholders and preserve your market capitalization except to out-innovate the Linux community.''
Even if they would out-innovate GNU/Linux (which I find hard to imagine), the free software community will still not switch, since they care more about freedom than about having the technically best product.
Linux, along with Solaris, also came out ahead of Windows in terms of administration costs, despite the fact that it's less expensive to hire Windows system administrators. [...] The Windows technicians [...] only managed an average of 10 machines each, while Linux or Solaris admins can generally handle several times that.
That's something to tell the MS supporting people when they say their technicians are cheaper:-)
Microsoft: "Legal liability would cost the user greatly"
So if they pay the damages that people (and companies) have because of their bugs and raise the price for that, people would pay much more for the product? Somehow I have the feeling people having the damages (just about everyone I suppose) pay for it anyway, but not to Microsoft at the moment.
"The reasoning being more of plain economics than security or other reasons."
Sounds like their going for open source software, not free software. A nice coincidence is of course that they will end up with free software anyway, but "going for free software" is more what the people in Peru are trying to do IMO.
Two top tens out of different sections combined does not always make a top twenty. It usually doesn't. In this case, Windows should probably have had more than ten entries, while unix should have less.
I know the definition, but the general public doesn't. If the press says anything about hackers, they always mean crackers. And if the people read it, they don't look it up at dictionary.com. The result is that if the public hears about someone being a hacker, they think he's a criminal.
O'Donnell declined to specify the specific changes but said they include measures intended to boost security. "They (Microsoft's Xbox hardware team) know the hacker stuff that's out there, and they're always trying to increase security," she said.
Obviously, Microsoft abuses the fact that the public thinks "hacking" is breaking into systems, while the hackers here don't really have anything to do with cracking.
Perhaps the hacker's community should thing of changing their name, since these things can be really bad for our image.
From the GPL: You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.
In the article UnitedLinux is quoted saying the binaries are not freely distributable. Sounds like a license violation to me...
By the way, both links are dead by now.
Slashdot Mirror
I just met some Mircosoft people who were talking about this thing. They said the hardware was just made by the usual people (HP, Acer, ...) and only the software is MS. I'm sure linux and the gnu tools can be easily ported to the thing, since it seems to be IBM compatible. I wouldn't call this a "Microsoft product", as I don't call any `normal' PC a "Microsoft product".
Even if they would out-innovate GNU/Linux (which I find hard to imagine), the free software community will still not switch, since they care more about freedom than about having the technically best product.
Linux, along with Solaris, also came out ahead of Windows in terms of administration costs, despite the fact that it's less expensive to hire Windows system administrators.
:-)
[...]
The Windows technicians [...] only managed an average of 10 machines each, while Linux or Solaris admins can generally handle several times that.
That's something to tell the MS supporting people when they say their technicians are cheaper
Microsoft: "Legal liability would cost the user greatly"
So if they pay the damages that people (and companies) have because of their bugs and raise the price for that, people would pay much more for the product? Somehow I have the feeling people having the damages (just about everyone I suppose) pay for it anyway, but not to Microsoft at the moment.
"The reasoning being more of plain economics than security or other reasons."
Sounds like their going for open source software, not free software. A nice coincidence is of course that they will end up with free software anyway, but "going for free software" is more what the people in Peru are trying to do IMO.
Two top tens out of different sections combined does not always make a top twenty. It usually doesn't. In this case, Windows should probably have had more than ten entries, while unix should have less.
I know the definition, but the general public doesn't. If the press says anything about hackers, they always mean crackers. And if the people read it, they don't look it up at dictionary.com. The result is that if the public hears about someone being a hacker, they think he's a criminal.
From the article:
O'Donnell declined to specify the specific changes but said they include measures intended to boost security. "They (Microsoft's Xbox hardware team) know the hacker stuff that's out there, and they're always trying to increase security," she said.
Obviously, Microsoft abuses the fact that the public thinks "hacking" is breaking into systems, while the hackers here don't really have anything to do with cracking.
Perhaps the hacker's community should thing of changing their name, since these things can be really bad for our image.
From the GPL: You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License. In the article UnitedLinux is quoted saying the binaries are not freely distributable. Sounds like a license violation to me... By the way, both links are dead by now.