5.2 already cost $40 for business use. Compare this to MS Office which is over $200 for any use. Charging say, $40-$50 for StarOffice isn't a bad thing, particularly if doing this means they are able to place more copies of StaOffice 6.0 on the shelf beside MS Ofice XP. I believe the only reason 5.2 isn't on %25 of the business desktop in the windows world is because everyone sees MS Office, while mostly the linux community only sees Star Office.
Linux on the mainframe just doesn't compute.
Linux isn't designed to run in a virtual machine; implementation decisions that make sense on PC hardware don't fit well in a virtual machine.
Hate to say it but they're probably right. Linux is 32 bit code made to run on a 32 bit processor. Remember when the 386 came out? DOS ran slower on most 386's, but the new windows ran much faster on a 386 than a 286. While I haven't personally ported linux to a 64-bit processor, it seems likely that you would have more performance issues with the "upgrade." Take for example these benchmarks from
tomshardware.
These dual proccessor motherboards both scored worse in kernel compilations with both processors active! It was faster to run the kernel compilation on a single processor. While two 32-bit CPUs != 1 64-bit CPU, it does illustrate how a major hardware change can make linux (or indeed any OS) flounder around.
Microsoft is in competition with a Japanesse company. My understanding is that most of these controllers would be manufactured in Japan. From a business standpoint it makes sense. You lock your competitors out of your market. Unfortunately M$ can't be (rightfully) accused of abusing a monopoly in this case, because they have competition from Sony and Nintendo.
Re:Intel's approach
on
Inside Intel
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I agree. The reason the Athlon proccesors are so much faster in benchmarks isn't the clock-speed, but the memory bottle-neck. Athlon's run with half the level2 cache yet they still are faster. Why? 233 MHz front-side bus speed.
This is what patents are for! Patents are meant to be a temporary security to encourage companies and individuals to invent new technologies. Phillips, Pioneer, and Sony have a collective patent for their invention if you will of the DVD-player. If you or I had invented it and had the patent, you'd do the same thing they are. There is nothing unfair about requiring people to obey the laws, everyone is (should be) bound to them.
Not only did their visionary engineers invent the concept of hyperlinking
You didn't read the read article which plainly states that Prodigy has video-evidence of a man demonstrating hyperlinking in 1968.
their lawyers are not afraid to defend their intellectual property against scoundrels and freeloaders such as Prodigy
Since when did Prodigy become a freeloader? Perhaps I am mistaken but everything I've seen about them indicates to me that the internet would still be in its infancy if they hadn't struggled to build it.
Government doesn't have a reason to change, therefor, they won't. One of our biggest clients is a government body. They've been ingrained for a long time with Microsoft and just aren't going to switch from MS Office to say, Staroffice. Reasons for this are actually valid.
1) They are comfrotable and familiar with Word and Excell.
2) Some of their Access documents would be hard to render properly in Staroffice.
3) They've invested a ton of money into several Visual Basic programs that use Access as a back end.
As long as government agencies, departments, etc need things like that (which they've spent alot of money on to impliment), they are loath to switch.
Few people (read: International Olympic Committee) realize the power of the net. Those that do are often terriffied of it. The multi-million dollar corporations are as likely to be scared of internet broadcasts of the olympics as the IOC and justifiably so. The Olympics mean $$$$$$ and the threat of the net taking away money from the IOC and the television industry is real and growing everyday.
Eventually I believe all broadcasts of any kind (be it data, voice, radio, TV, etc.) will be linked to the net and this will disappear. As televisions and computers merge (a not-too-distant possibility in many wealthier households) television and internet companies will merge. We've already seen that with AOL/Time Warner haven't we?
When ABC, CBS, BBc, etc. begin to merge with broadband vendors, we'll see internet TV replace mainstream TV, but untill then, people with money will fight to keep the little man (in this case the net), out of his business.
First of all, to institute a federal mandate to require all votes to be cast over the internet would require an amendment to our Constitution, which currently gives the States the right to decide how they want people to vote (within limits). Assuming this is done (a herculean feat), securing the internet for voting shouldn't be that hard a thing to do really.
Imagine this, each county in every state runs their own VPN between the voting offices. Each VPN would feature a different encryption screen, and each vote would be encypted as well. This means that not only would every vote feature 128-bit encryption, the entire VPN would as well, making it impossible to know who placed what vote. Also, ballot stuffing could be eliminated because not only would you have to crack the VPN, you'd also have to submit a properly encoded vote in order for it to count. One misplaced 0 or 1 scratches the entire ordeal. Since the VPN's would only be up for one day, hackers would have little time to break the encryption.
Try PengAOL. It's a simple Linux client for AOL's service. I'm not sure how well it runs, but it would be worth a shot, no? Also, the software is developed by a company in France and I believe they have an ftp server in England (don't quote me on that). Should be easier than most things to download from ISDN in Europe. PengAOL.
I'm not terribly well informed on how these things work on chips currently. How much smaller will chips really become if you were to put several shafts to such a chain? And just how reliable would would of these chains be when hooked to multiple shafts? A friend of mine told me once that the chains weren't currently put on multiple shafts because they wouldn't handle the stress, so is this smaller chain really going to make chips smaller?
Disclaimer. I could be completely wrong on everything here. I am ignorant of circuitry.
Sources say the well-known humour columnist Dave barry phoned in his column today. When questioned why, he responded with saying:
"Well while I was waiting for the MSCE to finish with technical support, Buddy informed me it was a good idea. I'm glad I did. J.C. and Microsoft Technical support have informed me there is a prolbem with my popcorn, something about kernel.dll being corrupted and Windows XP 2002 would come out soon and correct the problem."
This is a highly difficult undertaking. Communication is the one and only reason to do such a thing. In effect, it would take at least a base station (as oppossed to a second satellite) on the moon's pole to make this work. This would be enough to filter out the radio transmission and only send/receive those that need to communicate with the bird.
First of all the bird would have to be placed a considerable distance from the moon to conteract not only its gravity, but also the Earth's. It is, in effect, in geosychronous orbit about the moon AND in orbit about the Earth as well.
The physics of this might not be as difficult as some think. It may involve something as simple as putting around Earth in the same orbit as the moon, only at a much greater distance to account for the moon's gravitational effects as well.
With this said, I highly doubt this will happen untill we can figure out a legitimate way of keeping low-maintenance satellites in orbit indefinately. I would much rather see any money going to this project be spent on researching some way to convert electricity (particularly solar energy) into direct thrust so no chemical fuel is needed to adjust satellite positions.
I concurr. This is likely a PR tool by the three companies. The article gives no details on how they intend to push this. By the time it hits the streets and Windows XP 2005 is out it couldn't compete in the PC marketplace. The OS battle is already raging. Familiarity is the sword M$ wields that keeps others from switching to Linux or *BSD.
I highly doubt a new OS to debute in 2005 for the stated purpose of moving high-volumes of data around via broadband will float. By that time M$ will have developed a highly proprietary OS (maybe with the support of the RIAA to enable stronger copy-protection). Give the linux community a year and we'll have that in spades.
I don't know that you can say Linus created an evolutionary piece of software since it was basically a clone of Unix, though one can argue the forms the Linux kernel has taken since its inception have been very evolutionary. Nor did he really create a revolutionary way of software development. OSS and the GPL were around before Linux, Linus simply made them popular.
What Linus did create was a kinship among software developers that blossomed into a community. This community formed distributions and companies to market their newly created softwares. I suppose he did create a new commerce system in which OSS was popular. For this he deserves an award for changing commerce and how people everywhere are viewing copyrights for software.
I find it sad to see how much tragedies shape our lives. Putting September 11 aside for a moment, the Intimidator was the most often searched for object/person in one month. It was a horrible terrible thing to have happened and it seems everyone became fascinated with it to an extent and began searching google for it.
Add to that September 11th. People again began searching for something that was gone only after it had been destroyed.
Why can't we as Americans.... as people, appreciated the wonderful things we have before they're gone?
At first this seems almost like a joke. Who would invest this much time and energy into such a fortress just to house data? Well... banks for one. Imagine banks from around the world storing their data here in a highly encrypted form, updated at least daily. it would require alot of bandwith to say the least, but wouldn't that security be worth it to investors?
Less crucial information that needn't be updated regularly could find a home here at a discounted price. Take for example, building plans. Every city, county, and State in America has a plan somewhere for every building its ever built that lists (among other things) the locations of all wiring and plumbing. This isn't terribly confidential information (though it very well may become so for large buildings with a realistic threat of terrorist attacks) and could be modestly encrypted with read access only granted to the owner.
Copyright owners might be interested in it as a way of saving back-ups of their paper-work that cannot be destroyed by some freak accident.
I for one don't like these ideas because they represent too many eggs in one basket. When information security is required, it is my personal belief that having it stored in a known location that every hacker in the world would drool over to get inside is a bad idea. History has shown, however, that not everyone (indeed few people) listen to me.
Looking at that title is likely to get alot of people stirred up, but here me out. Linux doesn't appeal to Harry Homeowner (and indirectly to large computer manufactorers) because it isn't stable. I'm not saying the OS isn't rock-solid, I'm saying it's transient. There is no single body overseeing development and that tends to make linux look like a hodgepodge of hacks and two-bit programs (no matter how good they really are). A linux development company (read: Eazel) might go out of business and yet development continue on (read: Nautilous) through independent programmers who love hacking on source code. This isn't appealing to the average user because they don't understand the simple fact that thousands of professionals who cut their teeth years ago learning the old-fashioned way (trial and error) can out-program M$'s staff.
They won't ever make a pubicly available format that can't be cracked. Remember the DVD encryption distaster? Some one found out how to break it and posted the code on the net. It was eventually taken down but the damage was done. There are too many good crackers out there for any standard copy-protection to stand up over time. It will soon be cracked and the cd's ripped and the music will be uploaded to the net. Nothing new here, just another attempt on an old theme. Good scientists know, when you repeat the same exepriment under the same conditions, you (all others being equal) get the same results.
Slashdot Mirror
5.2 already cost $40 for business use. Compare this to MS Office which is over $200 for any use. Charging say, $40-$50 for StarOffice isn't a bad thing, particularly if doing this means they are able to place more copies of StaOffice 6.0 on the shelf beside MS Ofice XP. I believe the only reason 5.2 isn't on %25 of the business desktop in the windows world is because everyone sees MS Office, while mostly the linux community only sees Star Office.
Hate to say it but they're probably right. Linux is 32 bit code made to run on a 32 bit processor. Remember when the 386 came out? DOS ran slower on most 386's, but the new windows ran much faster on a 386 than a 286. While I haven't personally ported linux to a 64-bit processor, it seems likely that you would have more performance issues with the "upgrade." Take for example these benchmarks from tomshardware.
These dual proccessor motherboards both scored worse in kernel compilations with both processors active! It was faster to run the kernel compilation on a single processor. While two 32-bit CPUs != 1 64-bit CPU, it does illustrate how a major hardware change can make linux (or indeed any OS) flounder around.
Microsoft is in competition with a Japanesse company. My understanding is that most of these controllers would be manufactured in Japan. From a business standpoint it makes sense. You lock your competitors out of your market. Unfortunately M$ can't be (rightfully) accused of abusing a monopoly in this case, because they have competition from Sony and Nintendo.
I agree. The reason the Athlon proccesors are so much faster in benchmarks isn't the clock-speed, but the memory bottle-neck. Athlon's run with half the level2 cache yet they still are faster. Why? 233 MHz front-side bus speed.
This is what patents are for! Patents are meant to be a temporary security to encourage companies and individuals to invent new technologies. Phillips, Pioneer, and Sony have a collective patent for their invention if you will of the DVD-player. If you or I had invented it and had the patent, you'd do the same thing they are. There is nothing unfair about requiring people to obey the laws, everyone is (should be) bound to them.
Get every geek on slashdot to ping flood 68.34.76.99! Better things than this have been /.'ed before!
Forgive my typo. "You didn't read the article"
You didn't read the read article which plainly states that Prodigy has video-evidence of a man demonstrating hyperlinking in 1968.
their lawyers are not afraid to defend their intellectual property against scoundrels and freeloaders such as Prodigy
Since when did Prodigy become a freeloader? Perhaps I am mistaken but everything I've seen about them indicates to me that the internet would still be in its infancy if they hadn't struggled to build it.
Everyone wants a log!
You're gonna love your log!
Everyone wants a log!
Log! Log!
Government doesn't have a reason to change, therefor, they won't. One of our biggest clients is a government body. They've been ingrained for a long time with Microsoft and just aren't going to switch from MS Office to say, Staroffice. Reasons for this are actually valid.
1) They are comfrotable and familiar with Word and Excell.
2) Some of their Access documents would be hard to render properly in Staroffice.
3) They've invested a ton of money into several Visual Basic programs that use Access as a back end.
As long as government agencies, departments, etc need things like that (which they've spent alot of money on to impliment), they are loath to switch.
Few people (read: International Olympic Committee) realize the power of the net. Those that do are often terriffied of it. The multi-million dollar corporations are as likely to be scared of internet broadcasts of the olympics as the IOC and justifiably so. The Olympics mean $$$$$$ and the threat of the net taking away money from the IOC and the television industry is real and growing everyday.
Eventually I believe all broadcasts of any kind (be it data, voice, radio, TV, etc.) will be linked to the net and this will disappear. As televisions and computers merge (a not-too-distant possibility in many wealthier households) television and internet companies will merge. We've already seen that with AOL/Time Warner haven't we?
When ABC, CBS, BBc, etc. begin to merge with broadband vendors, we'll see internet TV replace mainstream TV, but untill then, people with money will fight to keep the little man (in this case the net), out of his business.
First of all, to institute a federal mandate to require all votes to be cast over the internet would require an amendment to our Constitution, which currently gives the States the right to decide how they want people to vote (within limits). Assuming this is done (a herculean feat), securing the internet for voting shouldn't be that hard a thing to do really.
Imagine this, each county in every state runs their own VPN between the voting offices. Each VPN would feature a different encryption screen, and each vote would be encypted as well. This means that not only would every vote feature 128-bit encryption, the entire VPN would as well, making it impossible to know who placed what vote. Also, ballot stuffing could be eliminated because not only would you have to crack the VPN, you'd also have to submit a properly encoded vote in order for it to count. One misplaced 0 or 1 scratches the entire ordeal. Since the VPN's would only be up for one day, hackers would have little time to break the encryption.
Just a few thoughts.
What you're talking about is Lotus Notes. It's rather expensive, but does practiaclly everything you've mentioned and then some.
Try PengAOL. It's a simple Linux client for AOL's service. I'm not sure how well it runs, but it would be worth a shot, no? Also, the software is developed by a company in France and I believe they have an ftp server in England (don't quote me on that). Should be easier than most things to download from ISDN in Europe. PengAOL.
I'm not terribly well informed on how these things work on chips currently. How much smaller will chips really become if you were to put several shafts to such a chain? And just how reliable would would of these chains be when hooked to multiple shafts? A friend of mine told me once that the chains weren't currently put on multiple shafts because they wouldn't handle the stress, so is this smaller chain really going to make chips smaller?
Disclaimer. I could be completely wrong on everything here. I am ignorant of circuitry.
This just in!
Dave Berry phones in his weekly column!
Sources say the well-known humour columnist Dave barry phoned in his column today. When questioned why, he responded with saying:
"Well while I was waiting for the MSCE to finish with technical support, Buddy informed me it was a good idea. I'm glad I did. J.C. and Microsoft Technical support have informed me there is a prolbem with my popcorn, something about kernel.dll being corrupted and Windows XP 2002 would come out soon and correct the problem."
This is a highly difficult undertaking. Communication is the one and only reason to do such a thing. In effect, it would take at least a base station (as oppossed to a second satellite) on the moon's pole to make this work. This would be enough to filter out the radio transmission and only send/receive those that need to communicate with the bird.
First of all the bird would have to be placed a considerable distance from the moon to conteract not only its gravity, but also the Earth's. It is, in effect, in geosychronous orbit about the moon AND in orbit about the Earth as well.
The physics of this might not be as difficult as some think. It may involve something as simple as putting around Earth in the same orbit as the moon, only at a much greater distance to account for the moon's gravitational effects as well.
With this said, I highly doubt this will happen untill we can figure out a legitimate way of keeping low-maintenance satellites in orbit indefinately. I would much rather see any money going to this project be spent on researching some way to convert electricity (particularly solar energy) into direct thrust so no chemical fuel is needed to adjust satellite positions.
I concurr. This is likely a PR tool by the three companies. The article gives no details on how they intend to push this. By the time it hits the streets and Windows XP 2005 is out it couldn't compete in the PC marketplace. The OS battle is already raging. Familiarity is the sword M$ wields that keeps others from switching to Linux or *BSD.
I highly doubt a new OS to debute in 2005 for the stated purpose of moving high-volumes of data around via broadband will float. By that time M$ will have developed a highly proprietary OS (maybe with the support of the RIAA to enable stronger copy-protection). Give the linux community a year and we'll have that in spades.
I don't know that you can say Linus created an evolutionary piece of software since it was basically a clone of Unix, though one can argue the forms the Linux kernel has taken since its inception have been very evolutionary. Nor did he really create a revolutionary way of software development. OSS and the GPL were around before Linux, Linus simply made them popular.
What Linus did create was a kinship among software developers that blossomed into a community. This community formed distributions and companies to market their newly created softwares. I suppose he did create a new commerce system in which OSS was popular. For this he deserves an award for changing commerce and how people everywhere are viewing copyrights for software.
Cowboyneal!
I find it sad to see how much tragedies shape our lives. Putting September 11 aside for a moment, the Intimidator was the most often searched for object/person in one month. It was a horrible terrible thing to have happened and it seems everyone became fascinated with it to an extent and began searching google for it.
Add to that September 11th. People again began searching for something that was gone only after it had been destroyed.
Why can't we as Americans.... as people, appreciated the wonderful things we have before they're gone?
At first this seems almost like a joke. Who would invest this much time and energy into such a fortress just to house data? Well... banks for one. Imagine banks from around the world storing their data here in a highly encrypted form, updated at least daily. it would require alot of bandwith to say the least, but wouldn't that security be worth it to investors?
Less crucial information that needn't be updated regularly could find a home here at a discounted price. Take for example, building plans. Every city, county, and State in America has a plan somewhere for every building its ever built that lists (among other things) the locations of all wiring and plumbing. This isn't terribly confidential information (though it very well may become so for large buildings with a realistic threat of terrorist attacks) and could be modestly encrypted with read access only granted to the owner.
Copyright owners might be interested in it as a way of saving back-ups of their paper-work that cannot be destroyed by some freak accident.
I for one don't like these ideas because they represent too many eggs in one basket. When information security is required, it is my personal belief that having it stored in a known location that every hacker in the world would drool over to get inside is a bad idea. History has shown, however, that not everyone (indeed few people) listen to me.
This is a new world we live in and the rules and laws must change to meet the new era of information and communications. In this world we must change to allow for the net. Consider this; the possible number of people capable of defacing a website could soar into the millions and tens of millions within just a few years. Over the last 20 years I've seen the personal computer rise from a Mac with two 5.25" floppies to Athlon XPs. The number of people using computers has skyrocketed accordingly. It is very likely within 10 years that most people will have heard of Linux and at least a fourth of them compiled a kernel. With a staggering growth of knowledge comes a need to stim that growth in certain areas. Ten years ago a computer connected to the internet was almost 100% safe because no one had the knowledge and time to find security holes, much less exploit them. As the net grew and matured, more and more people flocked to it as a hobby and e-mail became popular. Enter MS Outlook and IIS, the largest security breeches known to mankind. These programs were designed so the stupid masses could use them. Everyone cheered and applauded that they were now able to check their e-mail through a Microsoft client, or run a webpage for their business using IIS. These two programs are marvelous in their functionallity. Both are filled with knobs and switches so they can do many many things. This flash is all show though when it came down to security. A small group of people began realizing these tools were readily exploitable. Thus began the great fall of the internet. Viruses and worms swept through the net, propogating in huge numbers. People began to doubt the securityu of the net and the dot-com boom left oh-so many offices vacant ghost towns, visited only occasionally by whisps of dust and an occasional mouse, searching for the droppings of a candy bar. From there the net rallied, pushing strong back against the script-kiddies with its new vorpal sword wielded by its champion, Tux! But one lone penguin can at best hope only to stimy the efforts of attackers who seek back-doors and loop-holes. The vast numbers are still enjoying the functionality of M$ while they suffer unjustly from attacks by faceless cowards. They think this is simply the price they pay for the net, as if the ent were some scrupulous being that existed solely for our detriment, feeding us the occasional nugget of gold to keep our avarice alive. These people view this almost philosophically. "We must endure these attacks and rebuild, for such is the nature of life." This philosophy is flawed! The nature of life is to live, not be lived upon! The net should not be used as some tool to fart on those you wish, forcing them into a sub-life on the net in which they constantly rebuild their empire the same time and time again, forgetting that the toolss exist to protect against such attacks. Now mroe than ever we realize that striking some one in the jugular is rather easy. It is time the people of the net become net-wise (to coin a term borrowed from Okefenoke Joe and made their businesses secure. It is time they began to close the back-doors, and look for solutions that are both functional and secure even if doing so requires allot of effort on their part. And it is time for prosecution of such activites. Now I know that the majority of people that force these attacks are minors, but juvenile dilenquits must be punished if their willful and immature actions inflict damages on other people. Police can't possibly hope to find and prosecute these people. Our police are horribly overworked as is. Also, attacks of this nature tend to cross state and national lines. The copy-right holders of many nations pushed the DMCA which was finally signed into law here in America, but why not do something multi-national that makes sense "net-wise"? How about a multi-national police force that exists solely to track down and prosecute net criminals, be they script-kiddies or international terrorists hell-bent on destroying our commerce by attacking national banks and treasuries? P.S. This may start a flame war. Such is NOT my intention.
Looking at that title is likely to get alot of people stirred up, but here me out. Linux doesn't appeal to Harry Homeowner (and indirectly to large computer manufactorers) because it isn't stable. I'm not saying the OS isn't rock-solid, I'm saying it's transient. There is no single body overseeing development and that tends to make linux look like a hodgepodge of hacks and two-bit programs (no matter how good they really are). A linux development company (read: Eazel) might go out of business and yet development continue on (read: Nautilous) through independent programmers who love hacking on source code. This isn't appealing to the average user because they don't understand the simple fact that thousands of professionals who cut their teeth years ago learning the old-fashioned way (trial and error) can out-program M$'s staff.
They won't ever make a pubicly available format that can't be cracked. Remember the DVD encryption distaster? Some one found out how to break it and posted the code on the net. It was eventually taken down but the damage was done. There are too many good crackers out there for any standard copy-protection to stand up over time. It will soon be cracked and the cd's ripped and the music will be uploaded to the net. Nothing new here, just another attempt on an old theme. Good scientists know, when you repeat the same exepriment under the same conditions, you (all others being equal) get the same results.