I run an overclocked Celeron 300 at 450 MHz with great success for well over a year. I've had no problems with stability and it seems to handle all of my software.
I'm not one who is timid about taking a measured risk in the pursuit of performance. My home server is a dog running at 200MHz. It may be a good candidate for replacement with a dual AMD server. I do want to be sure that it would be stable and run Linux, however.
I have never run AMD before so I'm interested in hearing any pointers both on the hardware side and on the OS side. ie Does Linux handle AMD straight out of the box or do I need to compile a special kernel?
"A monopoly exists only when there is no choice, not when its not taken."
Blatantly false. A monopoly occurs when one company has an overwhelming predominance in a market. A monopoly is not in and of itself illegal. But leveraging the power that goes with a monopoly is illegal. The courts have already ruled that Microsoft has a monopoly and has used its monopoly power to kill competition in order that it might maintain that monopoly. So your position makes no sense.
Bundling software in an operating system that has an overwhelming predominance makes competing products irrelevant so it too can easily fall into category of abusing a monopoly power to extend into other areas.
"If they sent you a "fine" I'd recommend blowing your nose with it."
That's not the way it will come down. When you agree to a Microsoft license you agree to allow them to audit you if they have reason to believe that you are in violation of their software licensing. That's were the BSA comes in.
If you have a business and one of your employees reports to the BSA that you are running illegal copies of software that comes from a company that is represented by the BSA, they may come knocking on your door with a couple of federal marshals and a search warrant.
I think this conversation is pointless. You are in denial. MS isn't in the OS business???? The last time I checked 98% of PCs in the entire world were running Microsoft OS.
Bundling software with their OS doesn't kill competition!? What's the point....
Next time you see Alice tell her to come up out of the rabbit hole, will ya?
"Internet services" do exist already. Microsoft may want to create new services but they are also using their monopoly power to gain market shares in existing areas. Let's take an example. Look at the instant messaging area. XP bundles Microsoft's instant messenger into it's load. I don't believe that they bundle ICQ or AOL's instant messenger.
Did you know that if you buy a computer with XP that a message box prompting you to sign up for Microsoft's Passport service will appear? If you ignore it, it will go away but come back again and again. And if you keep ignoring it that XP will eventually disable the MSN explorer and instant messenger?
Look at the article that just appeared on slashdot that talks about the XP license which prohibits products other than from Microsoft's from being used to remotely control an XP workstation.
You bet they use their monopoly power to extend in other areas. The fact that they may create a new service does not mean that the use of their monopoly power to kill competition isn't illegal.
>>As long as the Justice Department is getting it's giant Federal dick lubed by Microsoft the cycle will continue.
>Thats really intelligent.
That statement was born out of my frustration with the entire situation.
Re:Never ending cycle (Score:2) by danheskett on Sunday March 17, @08:29PM (#3178680) (User #178529 Info | http://slashdot.org/) As long as the Justice Department is getting it's giant Federal dick lubed by Microsoft the cycle will continue.
Thats really intelligent.
First, MS will forfeit much of their "ill-gotten" gains in civil court - its nearly assured.
Second, for the Government to effectively recover a lot of that money they need to prove causation and tangible harm to consumers. This issue is largely overlooked. Proving that by any reasonable mesure is nearly impossible.
>Finally, MS can expand where ever it wants. They have no monopoly to leverage in Internet Services. Therefore, there can be no new violations.
They have a monopoly in the PC OS area that they can illegally leverage to expand into the internet services area. That's the whole point.
What good is punishing Microsoft it they keep even some of their ill-gotton gains? If I steal $25,000.00 and get a $10,000.00 fine but get to keep my stolen booty is that a deterant?
Microsoft is now using the gains it made illegally to expand into internet services and other areas. There will be new violations. There will be new victims. There will be new lawsuits.
As long as the Justice Department is getting it's giant Federal dick lubed by Microsoft the cycle will continue.
I remember when OS/2 came out. I was working at a large computer
center. We ran mostly main frames and a few mini-computers.
This was back in the DOS days and it had just become obvious that PCs were going to
become big. Really big. Microsoft had come out with it's awful
Windows 1.0 and then Windows for workgroups.
We evaluated OS/2, it was much closer to true multi-tasking
then WFW and superior in a lot of other ways. I couldn't understand
why, given the superiority of OS/2, management wanted WFW. I think
that management just wanted to "go with the flow" because Microsoft pretty
much controlled the desktop already with MS DOS. The fact that OS/2
was superior was irrelevant.
Did management make the right choice? One could argue that they
did being that OS/2 languished. But one could also argue that it
was a self-fullfilling prophesy.
I think that it is human nature to try to back the company with the
advantage rather than take a chance and back the company with the better
product.
The advantage that Microsoft had was that their name was already associated
with PC operating systems. IBM was (and is) a big name too but it was associated
with mainframes.
Sharp has a sweet looking PDA with embedded Linux but WOW, pricey!
Between $500.00 and $600.00.
I'm talking about the Zaurus SL-5500 SL-5500. But at that
price I doubt that the census people will be packing them around.
If you want to take a look at one you'll find it here.
It's amazing how much technology has changed. I wonder if they'll
have a "Get the hell off my property and leave me alone!" checkbox.
I'm not known for my sympathy toward "email marketers." I think we are all fairly familiar with the irritation that these few individuals can cause so I won't go into a rant about why I'm not sympathetic.
Washington State also has anti-spamming laws that have stood up in Washington State Supreme Court. The way the laws are written, however, seems to punish people who are deceptive and use mass email. It requires that the subject line be deceptive and/or the return address be fake.
So, if Mr. Smith wants to email 10,000 Washington residents to try to sell them swamp land in Florida that's OK as long as he says so in the header and he gives a valid return email address. He doesn't have to ever check that email address for complaints but it has got to be valid. I don't think the law even requires him to remove people from his mailing list but I could be wrong about that.
I agree with the author that you should always be able to remove any program completely leaving no little surprises behind. However, notifying people that it is about to install a driver, service, or daemon might be too much. Most people won't even know what a driver, service, or daemon is, so what would you say to them?
"About to install a daemon in your system... Do you really want to do this? DO YOU!!"
hehe Ok maybe it wouldn't go like that but most people won't be sure how to respond. All they want is for the program to do the job that they paid their money for it to do.
Not telling people about installing spyware should be a crime. The fact that information is being passed out of my PC without my approval is theft. It doesn't matter if it's my credit card number or a list of sites that I visit. It should not be up to corporations to decide what is to be considered private information on my PC. I can handle that job, thank you very much.
I use to believe that companies that gave their software freely would still receive enough support from the "grateful" thousands (sometimes millions) to survive.
But with the demise of Blender and the cries for help from Mandrake that are being met mostly by a lot of "I'll use Mandrake but I'll never pay for it. That's what open source is all about so if they fail they fail..." replies, I don't think so anymore.
I just don't believe that a company that produces free software can make it in a community that is mostly devoid of compassion or common sense or whatever it is that will make a person take out their wallet and send so cold hard case to a company that provides them with a service even though they don't gain anything extra by doing so.
What should be leaned but won't from the failures of companies like this is that you may not gain anything extra by sending in some of your money but, in the long run, you will lose if you don't.
I'm just really bummed out to realize that we will always carry the Microsoft yoke because as a society we are incapable of breaking out of the box and doing what it takes to support the people who would empower us all.
I work in a building full of lawyers and judges. After reading your post I asked one of the judges if the law applied only to the federal government. He told me that you are mistaken. This law definitely applies to state government as well. He also mentioned that in addition the Freedom of Information act, there are state laws.
As far a just walking in to a State agency and requesting copies of email I may have been unclear although I did say that there was a charge and waiting period.
Finally, I don't know about most states and mandated policies but in my state each agency is responsible for its own policies.
It seems to me that people that are harmed by buggy software that is run by other people should have legal recourse. For example if I'm running a secure Linux web site and Mr. Smith is running IIS and he gets hacked by some worm that then fires off a DOS against my site from his server. Should not I be able to sue Mr. Smith and Microsoft for the loss of my business?
Accountability seems to make sense, especially on the surface. It could have a major chilling effect if it is applied to an open source project with many contributors, however.
Turn around the situation and assume that an open source product is at fault. Who would be liable?
The email for my State government is covered under the freedom of information act.
What this means is that anyone can walk into any State agency and under this act require that the agency provide copies of it's email.
There is a charge to cover costs and a waiting period to allow the information to be gathered.
This can cause real problems for agencies that delete email without a policy covering the removal of this information. Basically, if the agency deletes email without such a policy they can be required to "recover" their email. If they don't have the expertise to do so they can be required to contract out to a company who does have the ability. This could cost them tens of thousands of dollars.
Better to have a policy and to stay within the guidelines!
Most MP3s are music files that have been ripped from copyrighted CDs and traded. I was listing a few types of common behavior that I have noticed among the "give it to me for free" community.
"I use Mandrake, but I for one do not plan to send them anything. And I plan to continue using Mandrake, for free, because that is exactly what their business model calls for."
Translation: I am a low-life leach who will never contribute to a company suppling valued software, even if I use it, as long as I'm not forced to do so.
"If open-source is a viable business model, as is so often argued here, then it deserves to be judged by hard, cold, business metrics - namely, whether companies based on this model can survive on their merits alone."
Translation: my narrow minded opinion is that "open-source" must be free (as in beer). And I would NEVER consider donating money to the cause unless I am forced to do so.
"Contrary and au-courant opinions aside, it appears that most companies based on this model CAN'T survive, and Mandrake appears to be just one in what is a growing list of failures. Consumers AND the capital markets appear to have spoken somewhat decisively on Mandrake."
Translation: I must justify my cheap, tight fisted, parasitically attitude.
"And if Mandrake ultimately ends up surviving, by measure of donations/contributions, I'll judge it as a feasible example of a charity case. Because it seems clear that Mandrake is not going to survive on the merit of the saleability of its products and can only survive by appeals to the goodwill of the open-source community."
Translation: Mandrake is good enough for me to use but if it fails financially then it's products cannot sell and must depend on the goodwill of the open-source community. I have no such goodwill and will leach off of the company until it fails, never considering that supporting the company might be the right thing to do.
"But the long-term problem is (and it IS a long-term problem, not a short-term one as the source post claims), the community only has so much pocket change to give to so many panhandlers."
Translation: In order to justify my position I will liken the Mandrake company to "panhandlers."
"There is no reason to suspect that a bit of cash here and now is going to somehow change the fundamental, underlying economic reality that there aren't many people willing to pay for software which by rights they don't have to pay for."
Translation: I like being forced to pay huge prices for Microsoft products and will never support the open-source business model.
Slashdot Mirror
I run an overclocked Celeron 300 at 450 MHz with great success for well over a year. I've had no problems with stability and it seems to handle all of my software.
I'm not one who is timid about taking a measured risk in the pursuit of performance. My home server is a dog running at 200MHz. It may be a good candidate for replacement with a dual AMD server. I do want to be sure that it would be stable and run Linux, however.
I have never run AMD before so I'm interested in hearing any pointers both on the hardware side and on the OS side. ie Does Linux handle AMD straight out of the box or do I need to compile a special kernel?
"A monopoly exists only when there is no choice, not when its not taken."
Blatantly false. A monopoly occurs when one company has an overwhelming predominance in a market. A monopoly is not in and of itself illegal. But leveraging the power that goes with a monopoly is illegal. The courts have already ruled that Microsoft has a monopoly and has used its monopoly power to kill competition in order that it might maintain that monopoly. So your position makes no sense.
Bundling software in an operating system that has an overwhelming predominance makes competing products irrelevant so it too can easily fall into category of abusing a monopoly power to extend into other areas.
"If they sent you a "fine" I'd recommend blowing your nose with it."
That's not the way it will come down. When you agree to a Microsoft license you agree to allow them to audit you if they have reason to believe that you are in violation of their software licensing. That's were the BSA comes in.
If you have a business and one of your employees reports to the BSA that you are running illegal copies of software that comes from a company that is represented by the BSA, they may come knocking on your door with a couple of federal marshals and a search warrant.
I think this conversation is pointless. You are in denial. MS isn't in the OS business???? The last time I checked 98% of PCs in the entire world were running Microsoft OS.
Bundling software with their OS doesn't kill competition!? What's the point....
Next time you see Alice tell her to come up out of the rabbit hole, will ya?
I don't think I'm the one missing the point here.
"Internet services" do exist already. Microsoft may want to create new services but they are also using their monopoly power to gain market shares in existing areas. Let's take an example. Look at the instant messaging area. XP bundles Microsoft's instant messenger into it's load. I don't believe that they bundle ICQ or AOL's instant messenger.
Did you know that if you buy a computer with XP that a message box prompting you to sign up for Microsoft's Passport service will appear? If you ignore it, it will go away but come back again and again. And if you keep ignoring it that XP will eventually disable the MSN explorer and instant messenger?
Look at the article that just appeared on slashdot that talks about the XP license which prohibits products other than from Microsoft's from being used to remotely control an XP workstation.
You bet they use their monopoly power to extend in other areas. The fact that they may create a new service does not mean that the use of their monopoly power to kill competition isn't illegal.
>>As long as the Justice Department is getting it's giant Federal dick lubed by Microsoft the cycle will continue.
>Thats really intelligent.
That statement was born out of my frustration with the entire situation.
Re:Never ending cycle (Score:2)
by danheskett on Sunday March 17, @08:29PM (#3178680)
(User #178529 Info | http://slashdot.org/)
As long as the Justice Department is getting it's giant Federal dick lubed by Microsoft the cycle will continue.
Thats really intelligent.
First, MS will forfeit much of their "ill-gotten" gains in civil court - its nearly assured.
Second, for the Government to effectively recover a lot of that money they need to prove causation and tangible harm to consumers. This issue is largely overlooked. Proving that by any reasonable mesure is nearly impossible.
>Finally, MS can expand where ever it wants. They have no monopoly to leverage in Internet Services. Therefore, there can be no new violations.
They have a monopoly in the PC OS area that they can illegally leverage to expand into the internet services area. That's the whole point.
What good is punishing Microsoft it they keep even some of their ill-gotton gains? If I steal $25,000.00 and get a $10,000.00 fine but get to keep my stolen booty is that a deterant?
Microsoft is now using the gains it made illegally to expand into internet services and other areas. There will be new violations. There will be new victims. There will be new lawsuits.
As long as the Justice Department is getting it's giant Federal dick lubed by Microsoft the cycle will continue.
We evaluated OS/2, it was much closer to true multi-tasking then WFW and superior in a lot of other ways. I couldn't understand why, given the superiority of OS/2, management wanted WFW. I think that management just wanted to "go with the flow" because Microsoft pretty much controlled the desktop already with MS DOS. The fact that OS/2 was superior was irrelevant.
Did management make the right choice? One could argue that they did being that OS/2 languished. But one could also argue that it was a self-fullfilling prophesy.
I think that it is human nature to try to back the company with the advantage rather than take a chance and back the company with the better product.
The advantage that Microsoft had was that their name was already associated with PC operating systems. IBM was (and is) a big name too but it was associated with mainframes.
I'm talking about the Zaurus SL-5500 SL-5500. But at that price I doubt that the census people will be packing them around. If you want to take a look at one you'll find it here.
It's amazing how much technology has changed. I wonder if they'll have a "Get the hell off my property and leave me alone!" checkbox.
Yeah, I can hardly wait until next month when I can hide my own Easter eggs!
I'm not known for my sympathy toward "email marketers." I think we are all fairly familiar with the irritation that these few individuals can cause so I won't go into a rant about why I'm not sympathetic.
Washington State also has anti-spamming laws that have stood up in Washington State Supreme Court. The way the laws are written, however, seems to punish people who are deceptive and use mass email. It requires that the subject line be deceptive and/or the return address be fake.
So, if Mr. Smith wants to email 10,000 Washington residents to try to sell them swamp land in Florida that's OK as long as he says so in the header and he gives a valid return email address. He doesn't have to ever check that email address for complaints but it has got to be valid. I don't think the law even requires him to remove people from his mailing list but I could be wrong about that.
'cause I think I'm of the age that most of my memory is leaking all over the floor....
Now where did I put that mop and bucket?
I agree with the author that you should always be able to remove any program completely leaving no little surprises behind. However, notifying people that it is about to install a driver, service, or daemon might be too much. Most people won't even know what a driver, service, or daemon is, so what would you say to them?
"About to install a daemon in your system... Do you really want to do this? DO YOU!!"
hehe Ok maybe it wouldn't go like that but most people won't be sure how to respond. All they want is for the program to do the job that they paid their money for it to do.
Not telling people about installing spyware should be a crime. The fact that information is being passed out of my PC without my approval is theft. It doesn't matter if it's my credit card number or a list of sites that I visit. It should not be up to corporations to decide what is to be considered private information on my PC. I can handle that job, thank you very much.
I'm on a business trip in Paris. My wife flys in to be with me. Fourteen hours later I show up at the airport.
Wife: "Where the hell have you been!!!"
Me: "server was slow..."
I use to believe that companies that gave their software freely would still receive enough support from the "grateful" thousands (sometimes millions) to survive.
But with the demise of Blender and the cries for help from Mandrake that are being met mostly by a lot of "I'll use Mandrake but I'll never pay for it. That's what open source is all about so if they fail they fail..." replies, I don't think so anymore.
I just don't believe that a company that produces free software can make it in a community that is mostly devoid of compassion or common sense or whatever it is that will make a person take out their wallet and send so cold hard case to a company that provides them with a service even though they don't gain anything extra by doing so.
What should be leaned but won't from the failures of companies like this is that you may not gain anything extra by sending in some of your money but, in the long run, you will lose if you don't.
I'm just really bummed out to realize that we will always carry the Microsoft yoke because as a society we are incapable of breaking out of the box and doing what it takes to support the people who would empower us all.
I work in a building full of lawyers and judges. After reading your post I asked one of the judges if the law applied only to the federal government. He told me that you are mistaken. This law definitely applies to state government as well. He also mentioned that in addition the Freedom of Information act, there are state laws.
As far a just walking in to a State agency and requesting copies of email I may have been unclear although I did say that there was a charge and waiting period.
Finally, I don't know about most states and mandated policies but in my state each agency is responsible for its own policies.
It seems to me that people that are harmed by buggy software that is run by other people should have legal recourse. For example if I'm running a secure Linux web site and Mr. Smith is running IIS and he gets hacked by some worm that then fires off a DOS against my site from his server. Should not I be able to sue Mr. Smith and Microsoft for the loss of my business?
Accountability seems to make sense, especially on the surface. It could have a major chilling effect if it is applied to an open source project with many contributors, however.
Turn around the situation and assume that an open source product is at fault. Who would be liable?
The email for my State government is covered under the freedom of information act.
What this means is that anyone can walk into any State agency and under this act require that the agency provide copies of it's email.
There is a charge to cover costs and a waiting period to allow the information to be gathered.
This can cause real problems for agencies that delete email without a policy covering the removal of this information. Basically, if the agency deletes email without such a policy they can be required to "recover" their email. If they don't have the expertise to do so they can be required to contract out to a company who does have the ability. This could cost them tens of thousands of dollars.
Better to have a policy and to stay within the guidelines!
Now if we could just get them to move that tax a little north.... Say to Redmond....
As I understand it, Bnetd does not use the Battle.Net network at all.
Players meet on the Bnetd server then the Bnetd server facilitates a point to point gaming session. So the Battle.Net server isn't involved at all.
Oh, I see. You're not talking about the ones that ARE. You're talking about the ones that AREN'T.
LOL
Most MP3s are music files that have been ripped from copyrighted CDs and traded. I was listing a few types of common behavior that I have noticed among the "give it to me for free" community.
IBM is putting 1 BILLION dollars into Linux and open source software.
Being "Free as in beer" is not what makes Linux great.
Choice is what makes Linux great. It's worth supporting. Unless, of course, you really like being forced to use Microsoft's products.
I assume that you are trolling but I'll bite.
"I use Mandrake, but I for one do not plan to send them anything. And I plan to continue using Mandrake, for free, because that is exactly what their business model calls for."
Translation: I am a low-life leach who will never contribute to a company suppling valued software, even if I use it, as long as I'm not forced to do so.
"If open-source is a viable business model, as is so often argued here, then it deserves to be judged by hard, cold, business metrics - namely, whether companies based on this model can survive on their merits alone."
Translation: my narrow minded opinion is that "open-source" must be free (as in beer). And I would NEVER consider donating money to the cause unless I am forced to do so.
"Contrary and au-courant opinions aside, it appears that most companies based on this model CAN'T survive, and Mandrake appears to be just one in what is a growing list of failures. Consumers AND the capital markets appear to have spoken somewhat decisively on Mandrake."
Translation: I must justify my cheap, tight fisted, parasitically attitude.
"And if Mandrake ultimately ends up surviving, by measure of donations/contributions, I'll judge it as a feasible example of a charity case. Because it seems clear that Mandrake is not going to survive on the merit of the saleability of its products and can only survive by appeals to the goodwill of the open-source community."
Translation: Mandrake is good enough for me to use but if it fails financially then it's products cannot sell and must depend on the goodwill of the open-source community. I have no such goodwill and will leach off of the company until it fails, never considering that supporting the company might be the right thing to do.
"But the long-term problem is (and it IS a long-term problem, not a short-term one as the source post claims), the community only has so much pocket change to give to so many panhandlers."
Translation: In order to justify my position I will liken the Mandrake company to "panhandlers."
"There is no reason to suspect that a bit of cash here and now is going to somehow change the fundamental, underlying economic reality that there aren't many people willing to pay for software which by rights they don't have to pay for."
Translation: I like being forced to pay huge prices for Microsoft products and will never support the open-source business model.