I agree 100%. The fortune 100 company I work for has just chosen J2EE over.NOT (I am very glad). All those against it are the worst developers there and are only capable of developing in VB and ASP. MS has lowered the bar for programming too low IMO. It is fine to do that with a desktop for the average user, however do we really want softare developers of such low calibur? They obviously become MS zelots because MS is the only place they can look to where they do not need real programming skills.
At work we did a very detailed evaluation of the two products and.NOT offered nothing over J2EE..NOT does not run on any other platform other then winders and MS will do everything they can to keep it that way. Sure there are efforts like MONO, however it will always be a step or two behind.NOT becuse that is how MS will keep it. So with.NOT you are right back at vendor lock-in and proprietary crap..NOT offers no speed advantage over J2EE. And the big kicker for our enterprise is security. J2EE is encredibly secure with no know expliots that I have ever heard of..NOT will be just like every other MS product and will have tons of security holes. J2EE has also been proven over time to be very solid and secure..NOT has not proven anything yet. MS's marketing engine tries to make customers think.NOT has a much bigger following then it does. The only people using it are MS shops that are littered with sub-par programmers. In an enterprise of any size, J2EE is the only real option IMO.
Umm, WRONG. Just because the plain text will be in XML doesn't mean anything about being able to read all the proprietary formating Scheme in the XML. MS will NOT release that. So at best you will be able to get only the text from an office doc, which is not hard to do now. MS will not hand over thier cash cow. They are going to keep doing any unethical, monopolistic practices they can to keep MS office and MS's OS'es closed and as incompatible with anything else they can. As someone else said, they are willing to give you the razor, however they are going to kill you on the blades. They are goig to control who can make the blades, sell the blades and use the blades. Are you makiing an MS Razor compatible blade? Oh well, we are going to use some of our $40 Billion USD in cash reserves to sue you over "IP".
Drawback: it *would* be illegal to do so for underage buyers under current child-privacy laws, so there goes a big instant-gratification market segment.
So, instead of teens standing outside of a liquor store trying to get adults to buy them beer, we will have adults standing outside of the record store trying to get teens to buy us music. : )
You're right, it would. And doing that would get MS back in antitrust court even if Gates was President.
I don't think MS cares about that.
1. Use illegal strong-arm tactics to stifle competition
2. Use anti-competitive tactics to stifle competitiors
3. Get sued for being an Monopoly, pay about $50 million USD in costs
4. Profit $50 billion USD because of steps 1 and 2
5. Repeat
You can get any monkey to vote on what ever bill they have been paid the most to vote for. And they (congress) have not done a good job. What greatness have they done for America? Anyone can go and play the political game and take bribes for votes. Also, voting for another cogressman/woman, does no good, since they will just play the game as well. While there might be a few decent members of congress, I doubt it is higher then 10%.
Also, why would people need to stop working to vote? This is not 1890. We can setup a voting system where every American can cast their votes on laws through a computer system. Be that system in ther home or a publicly available system. Just think what system could be set up for $1 billion USD, that is 1/75th that of what the war in Iraq has cost. Why shouldn't I as an American have a say on what laws are passed? With a represented democracy, I have no say. I wrote to my congressman and his reply what that he did not agree with me on the issue. I was floored. Members of congress SHOULD NOT HAVE A VIEW. They are *supposed* to be carrying the majority voice of the people they represent. Yet in my 30 years of life, I have not had *ONE* law maker ask my opion or cast a poll of the people they represent on any specific bill. Instead, the pass laws that fit thier own agenda. This is not a nation for and by the governmnet, it is for and by the poeple, or at least it once was.
Oh, and by the way congress has *not* been keeping the USA runngin. It is the average American like me that works and does there part and pay taxes that keeps America going.
Everyone should be able to make up there own minds by a democratic vote of the people. The way it is now in the USA is we have 535 idiots in congress that pass laws that are paid for by big corporations. Congress are legally allowed to collect bribes for votes and call them "campaign contributions". How else do you think laws like the DMCA get passed? I think we need to change to a true democratic voting system instead of an represented democratic system, where every American can cast thier vote on a law. We can still have members of congress. However, thier job will be to propose laws, and then the American people can vote on the law. Remember, this country was started by the Poeple and for the People, who better knows what is best for the people then the People. Sadly, this once great nation has become a country by the people and for the governmnet.
Next, create a P2P app which allows you to post a file
Who creates this app? Who controls what features will and will not go into it? What OS does it run on? Do you see the problems? It will be MS media player only and you are forced to by an MS OS, no thanks.
When you post it, it gets placed on a portion of your HD which is encrypted and inaccessable.
Again, who has control over the encryption algorithm? They won't let it be open source. What OS will this "feature" be available on? What you are saying will take away more user choice then the DMCA will!
you have to digially sign an agreement which states that this is the only copy of the file in your possesion, and that you take responsibility in the event that you are lying.
This might work for people like you or I who have morals, but what about all the teeni-boppers who
won't car about the agreement?
Lastly, at the central server (yes, I would propose having one, to control the charges.) Implement a policy that watches for leeches.
Again, who wll build, own/maintain this server? MS, no thanks.
If you look at the real facts, the
Entertainment industry continues to
increase profit each year. At the same time
the numer of people sharing music is increasing.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see
that music sharing actually increases profit by generating consumer interest in a product.
However, it is the greedy thinking of the Entertainment industry and people like you that think they are loosing money, or if they could totally control music distribution, then they could squeeze out any extra profit they can from the general consumer.
I agree 100%. Our rights in the US are slowly being taken away. Little, by little. If they were to be taken away all at one time, the all the citizens of the US would be sure to put a stop to it. However, by taking just a little at a time, over the course of many years, most Americans don't notice, or don't think it a threat. I am all for a slashdot PAC, or any other means that can give the us Americans our voice back to be heard.
" Well, for many reasons, for one, our Samba server locked up and kicked everyone out for no reason yesterday..."
For every 1 Linux nightmare story I have 101 M$
nightmare stories. What about China Internet Attacked by Worm Virus? This affected an entire nation! Not just one country. Also, samba is NOT Linux, it is a program that uses a reverse engineered version of the SMB protocol. It's only purpose it to let a Linux box interact with a M$ Network. If you want to set up a stable Linux network, you don't use samba.
Basically what you are saying is that it is
ok to make the powerful more powerful and
make the weak, weaker. The USA was founded
on a system of checks-and-balances. Without
those, we have nothing to prevent the government
from getting out of control. IMHO, the government
is already out of control. Laws are made by
politicians that are allowed to receive "Funding"
from "Interested Parties". Basically it means
they can legally take a bribe for a vote. Do
you REALLY think a law like the DMCA would fly
with a panel of average Americans? No way. The
DMCA only benefits the RIAA by making the average
American a criminal before a crime has been
committed. Last I checked, entrapment was
against the law.
This means he is using HTML email to track when someone opens their email. How does it work? Simple. He can have a 1 pixel transparent image in the email that comes from HIS server. Then he has his weblogs that will list YOUR IP which is where the request came from. There are a few options to stop this type spam.
1. Use Linux and non-HMTL email. 2. If you don't have a clue and must use winblows
DO NOT USE ANY VERSION OF OUTLOOK. Use
Mozilla mail and disable images in HTML mail.
This way you will still be able to see your
HTML mail, just without the images. 3. See number 1.
Why doesn't someone view the source to one of his spam mails and give him som DDOS attack!
Amen my brother and well said! I am a programmer
for a large fortune 100 comapny and we are
constantly paying M$ to tell us about their
undocument/hidden API's/features. When I am
working on Linux/Solaris, things are so much
more easy to find and well documented. We just
finished a PeopleSoft implimentation running on
Solaris. While the system is expensive, it is
far less then an M$ solution with their
continual "upgrade", "bug fix" expenses. The
only REAL cost was the cost of training.
Trade is a two way street. With M$, it is a one way street. Japan and the US will always have goods/commodities that are traded. Look at all the cars Japan sends to the US. Not buying M$ software will have no effect on the US/Japan trade market. I can see your point of how trade if vital, however when it comes to software, that is a little different. There are also, _many_ other reason a foriegn govt. doesn't want M$ junk. There is the issue of trust. M$ was allowing the NSA to have a "backdoor" in win98/nt/2k.
http://www.beachcalifornia.com/privacy6.html ht tp://www.cypherspace.org/~adam/hacks/ms-nsa-key. html
How can the Japaneese govt. trust their most private data to closed sourced software. They don't know what the software is doing or what data is being transmitted back to M$.
"There's too many crack weenies and spammers out there already. I'd gladly give up some of my rights in exchange for a faster, more robust, and safer net to surf on."
There is no way American laws will stop crack
weeniees. It may help stop American crack weenies
however, the rest of the world doesn't live by
American laws. The only thing tigher American
laws do is take away our freedoms and give nothing
in return. The internet belongs to the world, and
for the most part we have to live with the
non-crack weenies and the crakc weenies.
Remember, those who would sacrifice freedom for security will get neither.
M$ does _nothing_ to suit thier users. Are you telling me their DRM crap is for users? What about them forcing users to agree to a new EULA that gives them the right to control/access your PC? If you don't agree to the EULA, well no new service pack for you. When they change protocals or API's it has nothing to do with their users. It is to allow them to knock off any competition. This way no other software is compatible and people have no choice but to use M$. Name _ONE_ great product/protocal/etc that M$ has come up with? Look at their SMB/NetBIOS crap. It is the most insecure networking protocol around. They took BSD sockets and made them not standard. I am a programmer and work with this everyday. To someone who has used win95/win98, yes, 2k/xp is a big leap forword in stabillity. M$ has been around _a lot_ longer then Linux. Linux on the other hand is very new in terms of an OS. It has advanced incredibly fast. It is more stable, robust, and most importantly, it is non-proprietary. I have yet to encounter one thing I can do in M$ that I cannot do in Linux. People whine that Linux is harder to setup/etc. This is just not true. It is just _different_. People are so use to the M$ way that Linux seems hard.
What? What _new_ technology has M$ made? They only steal technology from others, bastardize it, then pass it off as there own. Please enlighten us to the "Technology" that M$ has contributed to the world.
Maybe they are "LIGHT YEARS AHEAD" to someone that can only point and
click. I have used it and I was _not_ impressed. The auto completion
is nice, however there are tools to do this in Linux as well. Ajunta and
KDevelop are both _very_ nice IDE's the can stand their ground against
Visual Studio. When it comes to hard-core programming and not typing
some silly ASP Response.write stuff, Visual Studio doesn't cut it as an
editor. Emacs can use LISP to do just about anything. If you have some
major coding to do, visual studio falls short as an editor. But, most
M$ programmers are limited to VB and ASP, so there is not much to need
to know to program besides point and click and response.end.
Cut & Past will be a licensed web service through M$. For $0.25 (US)
you can cut text. The text will then be sent to an M$ server where it
will be "scanned" for correctness and inappropriate words (such as Linux)
will be removed. From there the "corrected" text will be sent back to your
PC where you can paste it for $0.25 (US).
Re:Gentoo is a great iso-linux distro
on
LFS 4.0 Released
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Gentoo is a good distro. Like any other distro it has it's pros and cons.
A pro would be compiling your own code usually gives you a faster system.
A con, well compiling your own system takes a while. Imagine trying to
maintain 4,000 Gentoo PC's with different hardware/software requirements?
It be pretty tuff. One thing I don't understand is why most Gentoo users
get so uptight about LFS. I have been using LFS for about 2 years and I
love the distro that LFS taught/me how to build. Gentoo is not about
building your own system. You are building a Gentoo systems the way
Gentoo sets things up. I hate the way Gentoo installs Apache/PHP.
I didn't like Gentoo's 1.2 install of Gnome, however Gentoo 1.4's
Gnome is better but it gets installed in/usr which to me is silly.
Sure I can go and muck around with ebuilds, but that takes time, just
as much if not more then doing an install on LFS and it is another
build system to learn. Linux is about choice, and some will choose
Gentoo, some Redhat. I like Gentoo and LFS. The one most
important thing to remember is that LFS IS NOT A DISTRO.
LFS is about teaching YOU how to build your own Linux system. How to
start with bare hardware and build a system from the ground up. Gentoo
is not about teaching or learning how to build a your own Linux system.
It is a distro like Redhat, mandrake, etc. Instead of using RPM's
compiled for 386, Gentoo will build software for you. Configuring some
files under/etc is NOT the same as building your own distro based on
the LFS books. With ANY distro there will be configuring. I think
Gentoo fits in nicely for a Linux Power User. Where one might get
bored with Redhat/Mandrake, Gentoo will help you "Kick it up a notch".
LFS taught me SO much about Linux, being a programmer, my skill
set has gone through the roof when it comes to programming under unix/linux.
I will always be grateful to Gerard Beekmans and him sharing his knowledge
of Linux with the world.
Jim Drabb
Programmer Analyst
Davenport, FL
This is not about software features. This is about open standards. The
main point is to not lock the Government into proprietary products that
would not allow them to choose a competing product. Being a programmer, I
for one do not want to see my Government locked into M$ and their
proprietary nightmare. Look at M$ Office. They have a closed source on the
document types and thus, the Government could not switch to a competitor
for office productivity without fear of loosing tons of documents. Sure,
there are other office suites that can read M$'s office docs, but not very
reliably. I think the main point is, The Government should only be allowed
to use applications and systems that use fully open standards. This will
give the Government of the USA the ability to choose which product is right
for the job. Be that product Open source or a proprietary product. We
cannot let our Government get locked into the proprietary "Gates" of hell.
After all, it is OUR tax dollars that good ole Gates is stealing by locking
the Gov into their proprietary junk and using non-competitive tactics.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree 100%. The fortune 100 company I work for has just chosen J2EE over .NOT (I am very glad). All those against it are the worst developers there and are only capable of developing in VB and ASP. MS has lowered the bar for programming too low IMO. It is fine to do that with a desktop for the average user, however do we really want softare developers of such low calibur? They obviously become MS zelots because MS is the only place they can look to where they do not need real programming skills.
.NOT offered nothing over J2EE. .NOT does not run on any other platform other then winders and MS will do everything they can to keep it that way. Sure there are efforts like MONO, however it will always be a step or two behind .NOT becuse that is how MS will keep it. So with .NOT you are right back at vendor lock-in and proprietary crap. .NOT offers no speed advantage over J2EE. And the big kicker for our enterprise is security. J2EE is encredibly secure with no know expliots that I have ever heard of. .NOT will be just like every other MS product and will have tons of security holes. J2EE has also been proven over time to be very solid and secure. .NOT has not proven anything yet. MS's marketing engine tries to make customers think .NOT has a much bigger following then it does. The only people using it are MS shops that are littered with sub-par programmers. In an enterprise of any size, J2EE is the only real option IMO.
At work we did a very detailed evaluation of the two products and
Umm, WRONG. Just because the plain text will be in XML doesn't mean anything about being able to read all the proprietary formating Scheme in the XML. MS will NOT release that. So at best you will be able to get only the text from an office doc, which is not hard to do now. MS will not hand over thier cash cow. They are going to keep doing any unethical, monopolistic practices they can to keep MS office and MS's OS'es closed and as incompatible with anything else they can. As someone else said, they are willing to give you the razor, however they are going to kill you on the blades. They are goig to control who can make the blades, sell the blades and use the blades. Are you makiing an MS Razor compatible blade? Oh well, we are going to use some of our $40 Billion USD in cash reserves to sue you over "IP".
Drawback: it *would* be illegal to do so for underage buyers under current child-privacy laws, so there goes a big instant-gratification market segment.
So, instead of teens standing outside of a liquor store trying to get adults to buy them beer, we will have adults standing outside of the record store trying to get teens to buy us music. : )
You're right, it would. And doing that would get MS back in antitrust court even if Gates was President.
I don't think MS cares about that.
1. Use illegal strong-arm tactics to stifle competition
2. Use anti-competitive tactics to stifle competitiors
3. Get sued for being an Monopoly, pay about $50 million USD in costs
4. Profit $50 billion USD because of steps 1 and 2
5. Repeat
You can get any monkey to vote on what ever bill they have been paid the most to vote for. And they (congress) have not done a good job. What greatness have they done for America? Anyone can go and play the political game and take bribes for votes. Also, voting for another cogressman/woman, does no good, since they will just play the game as well. While there might be a few decent members of congress, I doubt it is higher then 10%.
Also, why would people need to stop working to vote? This is not 1890. We can setup a voting system where every American can cast their votes on laws through a computer system. Be that system in ther home or a publicly available system. Just think what system could be set up for $1 billion USD, that is 1/75th that of what the war in Iraq has cost. Why shouldn't I as an American have a say on what laws are passed? With a represented democracy, I have no say. I wrote to my congressman and his reply what that he did not agree with me on the issue. I was floored. Members of congress SHOULD NOT HAVE A VIEW. They are *supposed* to be carrying the majority voice of the people they represent. Yet in my 30 years of life, I have not had *ONE* law maker ask my opion or cast a poll of the people they represent on any specific bill. Instead, the pass laws that fit thier own agenda. This is not a nation for and by the governmnet, it is for and by the poeple, or at least it once was.
Oh, and by the way congress has *not* been keeping the USA runngin. It is the average American like me that works and does there part and pay taxes that keeps America going.
It looks like they have been /.ed already. Hey are they using Linux?
http://web.tampabay.rr.com/jdrabb/images/sco.png
Everyone should be able to make up there own minds by a democratic vote of the people. The way it is now in the USA is we have 535 idiots in congress that pass laws that are paid for by big corporations. Congress are legally allowed to collect bribes for votes and call them "campaign contributions". How else do you think laws like the DMCA get passed? I think we need to change to a true democratic voting system instead of an represented democratic system, where every American can cast thier vote on a law. We can still have members of congress. However, thier job will be to propose laws, and then the American people can vote on the law. Remember, this country was started by the Poeple and for the People, who better knows what is best for the people then the People. Sadly, this once great nation has become a country by the people and for the governmnet.
Next, create a P2P app which allows you to post a file
Who creates this app? Who controls what features will and will not go into it? What OS does it run on? Do you see the problems? It will be MS media player only and you are forced to by an MS OS, no thanks.
When you post it, it gets placed on a portion of your HD which is encrypted and inaccessable.
Again, who has control over the encryption algorithm? They won't let it be open source. What OS will this "feature" be available on? What you are saying will take away more user choice then the DMCA will!
you have to digially sign an agreement which states that this is the only copy of the file in your possesion, and that you take responsibility in the event that you are lying.
This might work for people like you or I who have morals, but what about all the teeni-boppers who won't car about the agreement?
Lastly, at the central server (yes, I would propose having one, to control the charges.) Implement a policy that watches for leeches.
Again, who wll build, own/maintain this server? MS, no thanks.
>Why would they poke the T-Rex that is IBM with a stick, unless they think they can bring it down?
If a T-Rex was about to bite your head off, wouldn't you want to get one last punch or kick in?
If you look at the real facts, the Entertainment industry continues to increase profit each year. At the same time the numer of people sharing music is increasing. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that music sharing actually increases profit by generating consumer interest in a product.
However, it is the greedy thinking of the Entertainment industry and people like you that think they are loosing money, or if they could totally control music distribution, then they could squeeze out any extra profit they can from the general consumer.
I agree 100%. Our rights in the US are
slowly being taken away. Little, by little. If
they were to be taken away all at one time, the
all the citizens of the US would be sure to put
a stop to it. However, by taking just a little
at a time, over the course of many years, most
Americans don't notice, or don't think it
a threat. I am all for a slashdot PAC, or
any other means that can give the us Americans
our voice back to be heard.
" Well, for many reasons, for one, our Samba server locked up and kicked everyone out for no reason yesterday..."
For every 1 Linux nightmare story I have 101 M$ nightmare stories. What about China Internet Attacked by Worm Virus? This affected an entire nation! Not just one country. Also, samba is NOT Linux, it is a program that uses a reverse engineered version of the SMB protocol. It's only purpose it to let a Linux box interact with a M$ Network. If you want to set up a stable Linux network, you don't use samba.
Go to:
: //groups.yahoo.com/group/linux/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/redhat/
or
http
And I will be glad to help you as much as I
can.
--
James Drabb JR
Programmer Analyst
Darden Restaurants
Business Systems
Basically what you are saying is that it is ok to make the powerful more powerful and make the weak, weaker. The USA was founded on a system of checks-and-balances. Without those, we have nothing to prevent the government from getting out of control. IMHO, the government is already out of control. Laws are made by politicians that are allowed to receive "Funding" from "Interested Parties". Basically it means they can legally take a bribe for a vote. Do you REALLY think a law like the DMCA would fly with a panel of average Americans? No way. The DMCA only benefits the RIAA by making the average American a criminal before a crime has been committed. Last I checked, entrapment was against the law.
Right you are my friend. Amazon.com switched
nearly its entire computer network to Linux
Amozon-Linux
This means he is using HTML email to track
when someone opens their email. How does it
work? Simple. He can have a 1 pixel transparent
image in the email that comes from HIS server.
Then he has his weblogs that will list YOUR IP
which is where the request came from. There
are a few options to stop this type spam.
1. Use Linux and non-HMTL email.
2. If you don't have a clue and must use winblows
DO NOT USE ANY VERSION OF OUTLOOK. Use
Mozilla mail and disable images in HTML mail.
This way you will still be able to see your
HTML mail, just without the images.
3. See number 1.
Why doesn't someone view the source to one of
his spam mails and give him som DDOS attack!
Amen my brother and well said! I am a programmer for a large fortune 100 comapny and we are constantly paying M$ to tell us about their undocument/hidden API's/features. When I am working on Linux/Solaris, things are so much more easy to find and well documented. We just finished a PeopleSoft implimentation running on Solaris. While the system is expensive, it is far less then an M$ solution with their continual "upgrade", "bug fix" expenses. The only REAL cost was the cost of training.
Trade is a two way street. With M$, it is a one
t tp://www.cypherspace.org/~adam/hacks/ms-nsa-key. html
way street. Japan and the US will always have
goods/commodities that are traded. Look at all
the cars Japan sends to the US. Not buying M$
software will have no effect on the US/Japan
trade market. I can see your point of how trade
if vital, however when it comes to software, that
is a little different. There are also, _many_
other reason a foriegn govt. doesn't want M$
junk. There is the issue of trust. M$ was
allowing the NSA to have a "backdoor" in
win98/nt/2k.
http://www.beachcalifornia.com/privacy6.html
h
How can the Japaneese govt. trust their most
private data to closed sourced software. They
don't know what the software is doing or what
data is being transmitted back to M$.
"There's too many crack weenies and spammers out there already. I'd gladly give up some of my rights in exchange for a faster, more robust, and safer net to surf on." There is no way American laws will stop crack weeniees. It may help stop American crack weenies however, the rest of the world doesn't live by American laws. The only thing tigher American laws do is take away our freedoms and give nothing in return. The internet belongs to the world, and for the most part we have to live with the non-crack weenies and the crakc weenies. Remember, those who would sacrifice freedom for security will get neither.
M$ does _nothing_ to suit thier users.
Are you telling me their DRM crap is for users?
What about them forcing users to agree to a new
EULA that gives them the right to control/access
your PC? If you don't agree to the EULA, well
no new service pack for you. When they change
protocals or API's it has nothing to do with
their users. It is to allow them to knock
off any competition. This way no other software
is compatible and people have no choice but to
use M$. Name _ONE_ great product/protocal/etc that M$ has come up with? Look at their
SMB/NetBIOS crap. It is the most insecure
networking protocol around. They took BSD sockets and made them not standard. I am a programmer
and work with this everyday. To someone who
has used win95/win98, yes, 2k/xp is a big leap
forword in stabillity. M$ has been around
_a lot_ longer then Linux. Linux on the other
hand is very new in terms of an OS. It has advanced incredibly fast. It is more stable,
robust, and most importantly, it is non-proprietary. I have yet to encounter one
thing I can do in M$ that I cannot do in Linux.
People whine that Linux is harder to setup/etc.
This is just not true. It is just _different_.
People are so use to the M$ way that Linux
seems hard.
What? What _new_ technology has M$ made? They
only steal technology from others, bastardize it,
then pass it off as there own. Please enlighten us
to the "Technology" that M$ has contributed to the
world.
Maybe they are "LIGHT YEARS AHEAD" to someone that can only point and
click. I have used it and I was _not_ impressed. The auto completion
is nice, however there are tools to do this in Linux as well. Ajunta and
KDevelop are both _very_ nice IDE's the can stand their ground against
Visual Studio. When it comes to hard-core programming and not typing
some silly ASP Response.write stuff, Visual Studio doesn't cut it as an
editor. Emacs can use LISP to do just about anything. If you have some
major coding to do, visual studio falls short as an editor. But, most
M$ programmers are limited to VB and ASP, so there is not much to need
to know to program besides point and click and response.end.
Cut & Past will be a licensed web service through M$. For $0.25 (US)
you can cut text. The text will then be sent to an M$ server where it
will be "scanned" for correctness and inappropriate words (such as Linux)
will be removed. From there the "corrected" text will be sent back to your
PC where you can paste it for $0.25 (US).
Gentoo is a good distro. Like any other distro it has it's pros and cons. A pro would be compiling your own code usually gives you a faster system. A con, well compiling your own system takes a while. Imagine trying to maintain 4,000 Gentoo PC's with different hardware/software requirements? It be pretty tuff. One thing I don't understand is why most Gentoo users get so uptight about LFS. I have been using LFS for about 2 years and I love the distro that LFS taught /me how to build. Gentoo is not about
building your own system. You are building a Gentoo systems the way
Gentoo sets things up. I hate the way Gentoo installs Apache/PHP.
I didn't like Gentoo's 1.2 install of Gnome, however Gentoo 1.4's
Gnome is better but it gets installed in /usr which to me is silly.
Sure I can go and muck around with ebuilds, but that takes time, just
as much if not more then doing an install on LFS and it is another
build system to learn. Linux is about choice, and some will choose
Gentoo, some Redhat. I like Gentoo and LFS. The one most
important thing to remember is that LFS IS NOT A DISTRO.
LFS is about teaching YOU how to build your own Linux system. How to
start with bare hardware and build a system from the ground up. Gentoo
is not about teaching or learning how to build a your own Linux system.
It is a distro like Redhat, mandrake, etc. Instead of using RPM's
compiled for 386, Gentoo will build software for you. Configuring some
files under /etc is NOT the same as building your own distro based on
the LFS books. With ANY distro there will be configuring. I think
Gentoo fits in nicely for a Linux Power User. Where one might get
bored with Redhat/Mandrake, Gentoo will help you "Kick it up a notch".
LFS taught me SO much about Linux, being a programmer, my skill
set has gone through the roof when it comes to programming under unix/linux.
I will always be grateful to Gerard Beekmans and him sharing his knowledge
of Linux with the world.
Jim Drabb
Programmer Analyst
Davenport, FL
This is not about software features. This is about open standards. The
main point is to not lock the Government into proprietary products that
would not allow them to choose a competing product. Being a programmer, I
for one do not want to see my Government locked into M$ and their
proprietary nightmare. Look at M$ Office. They have a closed source on the
document types and thus, the Government could not switch to a competitor
for office productivity without fear of loosing tons of documents. Sure,
there are other office suites that can read M$'s office docs, but not very
reliably. I think the main point is, The Government should only be allowed
to use applications and systems that use fully open standards. This will
give the Government of the USA the ability to choose which product is right
for the job. Be that product Open source or a proprietary product. We
cannot let our Government get locked into the proprietary "Gates" of hell.
After all, it is OUR tax dollars that good ole Gates is stealing by locking
the Gov into their proprietary junk and using non-competitive tactics.