First off, Spyware didn't even exist at the time that Windows 98 was made. I would suggest that if you are being infected on a clean install, that you trash your stolen copy of the OS and go buy a real one. ISO downloads are quite often infected by spyware, trojans and such. So I wouldn't be surprised if you were having that problem.
You forgot one thing, MS doesn't sell the hardware you suggest that they have an interest in you buying. They don't have anything to gain by you purchasing a new PC. They have a lot more to gain by addingthis to their existing OS's and reaping the public gratitude for it as the ONLY OS manufacturer to do so. How could anyone possibly bash them for providing a solution that everyone else wants you to buy? I am sure some people will find some way to complain about it, but the reality is that it cannot hurt the situation with respect to the spyware problem, it can only help.
Typically Microsoft buys a company so that they can take the technology and add it to their existing products. I would guess the at some point in the future we would see some anti-spyware tools as a part of the Windows OS family. That would be a typical MS move.
I am fasinated by Honda's commitment to bring this technology to it's logic end without any potential for a profit in the near future. I am more fasinated with Honda's project than I am with anything that NASA is doing here in the USA. I think our president has lost touch with what makes Americans hearts and minds swoon and what they envision as necessary technologies to progress into the future. Honda has that vision. Honda has my attention. I wish that our country had something as wonderful as ASIMO is to showcase as a result of our hard work. I would rather see all of those billions that are earmarked for the Mars project(s) go to something like this instead. That would be a real thing to admire in my eyes.
I have to agree on your bug definition question. The install base of Windows is so wide and the hardware so varied, many of the so called bugs are simply hardware and software errors caused by the users themselves.
The other problem, related to above, is that new hardware comes to th market and everyone expects that the previously written software should support it without a flaw.
And, furthermore, many people seem to consider a feature that is not there, i.e. no right click menu on an item, a bug. If that is the case, then Linux is loaded so full of bugs that you can see the software through the mass of bugs. There is so much that is not supported or is simply not there that I can't do half of the things I set out to with my Linux installations. Don't get me wrong, I like Linux and use it where it is suitable. I don't use it where it is not suitable and scream 'bugs!'
I don't disagree with what you are saying about what the company does. BUT... There is no way you can convince me that the report is not biased. It has to be biased based on the facts alone. There is no way that any company who expects to survive until the next year is going to release any report that states that the work they do is pointless. In this case, migrating people to Linux or Open Source. If the 'study' found the facts to be in MS's favor do you think they would be published? Not if the CEO wants to be employed very long. It simply is not going to happen. Therefore the report is biased on a high level at the least. The other type of bias, that I feel, is involved in this 'study' is the purposeful disinclusion of numbers that should be included, such as the cost of the migration itself, (what is a company going to charge for the migration?). The second, and very large, cost is going to be retraining of the staff that supports the installation. The company that is migrating is assumed to have a staff that is at least semiknowledgable about their current installation. They will have to learn the 'new' stuff somewhere and at someone's expense. The other cost is that of subsequent software installations. What is the extra cost of trying to get the high level specialized package you need to work in your new environment? Will it even work at all? Is there a substitute that I am forced to use with a new middleware layer to interpret it into my new environment, (likely not). These are costs that have all been convieniently left out of the 'study'. Am I going to have to hire two more people because the ones I have are now tied up trying to figure out if new things are going to work right? There are so many variables that it is not acceptable in the board room or in a VP's office to present and use a study done by a firm such as Cybersource as justification. YOu would be fired or laughed out of a job. If not, then I would be concerned as to whether the company you work for is going to be around very long, because the decision making process is obviously broken.
SGI didn't go anywhere. Who told you they were gone? They are wrong. They are very much alive and doing better than ever. I don't understand who started the rumor, but it hasn't any basis in fact at all. You should see what they are doing with Jet fighters recently. If you only knew!
What? If think that you are speaking in an abcense if information there. I still work with the company and they are doing great! You speak as though SGI is dead. NOT! They are very very much alive and very healthy. You may not be aware of many of the projects as they are either classified or are not public knowledge. They did not lose to SUNHP or IBM. In fact they squared beat all of those companies out of some extremely lucrative contracts as late as last month. What are you talking about buddy?
I have to agree. I read this and was a bit mistified. I work with and have worked with SGI stuff for years and years. Even their current stuff. They even still write some pretty cool software too, (which I can't talk about due to Gov. Classification). In fact I see more SGI stuff now than I did 10 years ago. They are definetly firmly in the Fed's back pocket. I am sure they are in maore areas, just by the stuff I see, I know it has to be applied elsewhere. In fact there are several Slashdot articles I have read where I think, "If they only knew what was really out there". SGI rocks BIG TIME dudes, (Today more than ever)!
You have to look at who did the study, a firm that makes their living by pushing open source ware. That's like putting stock in a Microsoft TCO study. I am surprised to see Linux firms (and Slashdot) stooping to the low levels that MS and others have done in heralding studies that they conducted themselves. It means NOTHING to the people who are not currently using that product. They take one look at who conducted the study and throw it in the trash. To soap box this 'study', like slashdot is doing, does nothing but undermine the cause they say they are fighting for.
Come on, I want to see this stuff (Open Source) take off, but not with tactics like these. This will make Open Source slathered with the same marketing nonsense that we have to plow through to buy the right commercial ware. The beauty of Open Source has been that there is not all of the 'puffing up' of the products capabilities as in commercial software. "Yea we can do that too!" type of stuff, only to find out that there are extra costs buried in the implementation and/or it can only really do that if you also buy this. When Open Source ware takes that path, it seriously degrades the believability of the product line.
I have actually installed a few Speech to Text systems in some major hospitals to reduce the workload of the transcriptionist staff. This technology actually works and works very well. I could not read the slashdotted article, so I am not sure of the direction that it is taking, but I will tell you it works well. The engines we used were from the Dragon software and are wrapped in a complex learning system and a SQL database backend. The doctors have to spend a few hours up front 'talking' to the system so that it can 'learn' their speech patterns. After that it has an accuracy rate of 95%. The last 5% of the errors are caught by a reduced transcriptionist staff. The savings are huge to the hospital(s) and there are no longer delays in getting the medical records filed in a timely fashion. Win Win situation.
I believe that you will find that turning off your email server to stop spam has been patented as the intellectual knowledge of Microsoft. You are in violation of that patent if you turn your server off for that reason. It is my understanding that they have hired RIAA to go after the low life criminals who are stealing this precious intellectual knowledge and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.
The glaring problem is that a word in English may have a completely different meaning in another language. The new Wordnet format is assuming that a single word has a single meaning across all languages.
I won't challenge you on which machine is better, PC or Mac. I will state a fact though. Gamespy is dumping Macs because it costs them more money than they make supporting them. The install base simply does not exist to support the continuation of Mac gaming under the gamespy umbrella. Again I am not bashing the Macs at all. It simply has come down to a dollars issue.
I will however take a moment to bash some of the Mac users though. They whine about not being able to play a specific game on their Macs all of the time. That, to me, is like buying an xbox and complaining that you can't play nintendo games on them. Well perhaps you should consider buying the platform that the software exists on if that's what you want to do, rather than buy the wrong thing and p1ss and whine and moan about no one writing games for the mac. The Mac is a great machine, it's just not for mainline games.
hmmm... interesting viewpoint. I always looked at the subsequent 'models' of those pieces of s*&t as 'attempts' to make something real. If you insist on calling THAT a generation, then there isn't any hope for you my friend.
Your tag line made me think. If we eventually could share our thoughts with each other with these kind of devices, would that be considered a 'peer to peer' network? If you shared music with your friend via the 'thinking cap' would you be violating copyright? Would RIAA come after you?!
It is bound to happen sooner or later. The translation of the 'thought' word. (or would that be 'Thunk'). The real problem is that each person's brian is wired individually and uniquely. Each person would have to 'learn' how to converse with the interface. Some would not be able to do this at all as their brains do not function in a manner that is compatable. I would offer autisitic individuals as an extreme example. Now there would be a relly cool project to build a device that WAS compatable with a savant level autistic person. Lawnmower man all over again!
Yea! Mix a little bluetooth technology with this and you could do wonders walking down the street! But then, eventually, someone would hack your thinking cap and crash your 'brain' software. A REAL brain freeze!
But,.. You are in a coma and this is all a simulation. We have been testing on you for several years now. Does it not seem real to you? The slashdot forum is the only way we have found so far to communicate with you. Can you hear us? Hello!?
(try to keep those dirty thoughts to yourself from now on, you really embarrased your mother last time she was here to visit you.)
Secondly, I have NT4 servers that have run 1000days or more without a single reboot and that is a real unstable platform in my book. I have several Win2K servers that have never gone done since their install. Some of those are at least 3 years old. The point is, that there are installation of any system that will run practically forever and there are some that will break continuously. Unix has an astronomically small install base when compared to Windows machines and the hardware Unix is installed on has a very narrow range to it. Windows is at the other extreme. It has a huge install base and the hardware is different on almost every machineit is installed on. I personally think that is pretty good. NOt excellent, by any means, but pretty good for how fast everything has changed over the last 20 years. I hope linux will someday rival that, but it has a ways to go.
lol, that's a wacked comparison dude. That's like comparing a 18 wheel tractor trailer to a pickup truck. Let's at least be fair about comparing the products to equals in the market place.
Slashdot Mirror
First off, Spyware didn't even exist at the time that Windows 98 was made. I would suggest that if you are being infected on a clean install, that you trash your stolen copy of the OS and go buy a real one. ISO downloads are quite often infected by spyware, trojans and such. So I wouldn't be surprised if you were having that problem.
You forgot one thing, MS doesn't sell the hardware you suggest that they have an interest in you buying. They don't have anything to gain by you purchasing a new PC. They have a lot more to gain by addingthis to their existing OS's and reaping the public gratitude for it as the ONLY OS manufacturer to do so. How could anyone possibly bash them for providing a solution that everyone else wants you to buy? I am sure some people will find some way to complain about it, but the reality is that it cannot hurt the situation with respect to the spyware problem, it can only help.
Typically Microsoft buys a company so that they can take the technology and add it to their existing products. I would guess the at some point in the future we would see some anti-spyware tools as a part of the Windows OS family. That would be a typical MS move.
I am fasinated by Honda's commitment to bring this technology to it's logic end without any potential for a profit in the near future. I am more fasinated with Honda's project than I am with anything that NASA is doing here in the USA. I think our president has lost touch with what makes Americans hearts and minds swoon and what they envision as necessary technologies to progress into the future. Honda has that vision. Honda has my attention. I wish that our country had something as wonderful as ASIMO is to showcase as a result of our hard work. I would rather see all of those billions that are earmarked for the Mars project(s) go to something like this instead. That would be a real thing to admire in my eyes.
Male or Female? ;)
I have to agree on your bug definition question. The install base of Windows is so wide and the hardware so varied, many of the so called bugs are simply hardware and software errors caused by the users themselves.
The other problem, related to above, is that new hardware comes to th market and everyone expects that the previously written software should support it without a flaw.
And, furthermore, many people seem to consider a feature that is not there, i.e. no right click menu on an item, a bug. If that is the case, then Linux is loaded so full of bugs that you can see the software through the mass of bugs. There is so much that is not supported or is simply not there that I can't do half of the things I set out to with my Linux installations. Don't get me wrong, I like Linux and use it where it is suitable. I don't use it where it is not suitable and scream 'bugs!'
I don't disagree with what you are saying about what the company does. BUT... There is no way you can convince me that the report is not biased. It has to be biased based on the facts alone. There is no way that any company who expects to survive until the next year is going to release any report that states that the work they do is pointless. In this case, migrating people to Linux or Open Source. If the 'study' found the facts to be in MS's favor do you think they would be published? Not if the CEO wants to be employed very long. It simply is not going to happen. Therefore the report is biased on a high level at the least. The other type of bias, that I feel, is involved in this 'study' is the purposeful disinclusion of numbers that should be included, such as the cost of the migration itself, (what is a company going to charge for the migration?). The second, and very large, cost is going to be retraining of the staff that supports the installation. The company that is migrating is assumed to have a staff that is at least semiknowledgable about their current installation. They will have to learn the 'new' stuff somewhere and at someone's expense. The other cost is that of subsequent software installations. What is the extra cost of trying to get the high level specialized package you need to work in your new environment? Will it even work at all? Is there a substitute that I am forced to use with a new middleware layer to interpret it into my new environment, (likely not). These are costs that have all been convieniently left out of the 'study'. Am I going to have to hire two more people because the ones I have are now tied up trying to figure out if new things are going to work right? There are so many variables that it is not acceptable in the board room or in a VP's office to present and use a study done by a firm such as Cybersource as justification. YOu would be fired or laughed out of a job. If not, then I would be concerned as to whether the company you work for is going to be around very long, because the decision making process is obviously broken.
SGI didn't go anywhere. Who told you they were gone? They are wrong. They are very much alive and doing better than ever. I don't understand who started the rumor, but it hasn't any basis in fact at all. You should see what they are doing with Jet fighters recently. If you only knew!
What? If think that you are speaking in an abcense if information there. I still work with the company and they are doing great! You speak as though SGI is dead. NOT! They are very very much alive and very healthy. You may not be aware of many of the projects as they are either classified or are not public knowledge. They did not lose to SUNHP or IBM. In fact they squared beat all of those companies out of some extremely lucrative contracts as late as last month. What are you talking about buddy?
I have to agree. I read this and was a bit mistified. I work with and have worked with SGI stuff for years and years. Even their current stuff. They even still write some pretty cool software too, (which I can't talk about due to Gov. Classification). In fact I see more SGI stuff now than I did 10 years ago. They are definetly firmly in the Fed's back pocket. I am sure they are in maore areas, just by the stuff I see, I know it has to be applied elsewhere. In fact there are several Slashdot articles I have read where I think, "If they only knew what was really out there". SGI rocks BIG TIME dudes, (Today more than ever)!
You have to look at who did the study, a firm that makes their living by pushing open source ware. That's like putting stock in a Microsoft TCO study. I am surprised to see Linux firms (and Slashdot) stooping to the low levels that MS and others have done in heralding studies that they conducted themselves. It means NOTHING to the people who are not currently using that product. They take one look at who conducted the study and throw it in the trash. To soap box this 'study', like slashdot is doing, does nothing but undermine the cause they say they are fighting for.
Come on, I want to see this stuff (Open Source) take off, but not with tactics like these. This will make Open Source slathered with the same marketing nonsense that we have to plow through to buy the right commercial ware. The beauty of Open Source has been that there is not all of the 'puffing up' of the products capabilities as in commercial software. "Yea we can do that too!" type of stuff, only to find out that there are extra costs buried in the implementation and/or it can only really do that if you also buy this. When Open Source ware takes that path, it seriously degrades the believability of the product line.
I have actually installed a few Speech to Text systems in some major hospitals to reduce the workload of the transcriptionist staff. This technology actually works and works very well. I could not read the slashdotted article, so I am not sure of the direction that it is taking, but I will tell you it works well. The engines we used were from the Dragon software and are wrapped in a complex learning system and a SQL database backend. The doctors have to spend a few hours up front 'talking' to the system so that it can 'learn' their speech patterns. After that it has an accuracy rate of 95%. The last 5% of the errors are caught by a reduced transcriptionist staff. The savings are huge to the hospital(s) and there are no longer delays in getting the medical records filed in a timely fashion. Win Win situation.
I believe that you will find that turning off your email server to stop spam has been patented as the intellectual knowledge of Microsoft. You are in violation of that patent if you turn your server off for that reason. It is my understanding that they have hired RIAA to go after the low life criminals who are stealing this precious intellectual knowledge and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.
The glaring problem is that a word in English may have a completely different meaning in another language. The new Wordnet format is assuming that a single word has a single meaning across all languages.
I won't challenge you on which machine is better, PC or Mac. I will state a fact though. Gamespy is dumping Macs because it costs them more money than they make supporting them. The install base simply does not exist to support the continuation of Mac gaming under the gamespy umbrella. Again I am not bashing the Macs at all. It simply has come down to a dollars issue.
I will however take a moment to bash some of the Mac users though. They whine about not being able to play a specific game on their Macs all of the time. That, to me, is like buying an xbox and complaining that you can't play nintendo games on them. Well perhaps you should consider buying the platform that the software exists on if that's what you want to do, rather than buy the wrong thing and p1ss and whine and moan about no one writing games for the mac. The Mac is a great machine, it's just not for mainline games.
hmmm... interesting viewpoint. I always looked at the subsequent 'models' of those pieces of s*&t as 'attempts' to make something real. If you insist on calling THAT a generation, then there isn't any hope for you my friend.
Yea! Peer to Peer Thinking cap porn networks. Now that would give a whole new meaning to Sexually Transmitted Diseases.
Yea! and when your bidirectional helmet 'Locks up', we will call it a 'Brain Freeze'!
I had a virus once that remapped my keyboard. It was totally screwwed up. I think they should call the first 'thinking cap' virus 'Brain Freeze'
Your tag line made me think. If we eventually could share our thoughts with each other with these kind of devices, would that be considered a 'peer to peer' network? If you shared music with your friend via the 'thinking cap' would you be violating copyright? Would RIAA come after you?!
It is bound to happen sooner or later. The translation of the 'thought' word. (or would that be 'Thunk'). The real problem is that each person's brian is wired individually and uniquely. Each person would have to 'learn' how to converse with the interface. Some would not be able to do this at all as their brains do not function in a manner that is compatable. I would offer autisitic individuals as an extreme example. Now there would be a relly cool project to build a device that WAS compatable with a savant level autistic person. Lawnmower man all over again!
Yea! Mix a little bluetooth technology with this and you could do wonders walking down the street! But then, eventually, someone would hack your thinking cap and crash your 'brain' software. A REAL brain freeze!
But, .. You are in a coma and this is all a simulation. We have been testing on you for several years now. Does it not seem real to you? The slashdot forum is the only way we have found so far to communicate with you.
Can you hear us?
Hello!?
(try to keep those dirty thoughts to yourself from now on, you really embarrased your mother last time she was here to visit you.)
Secondly, I have NT4 servers that have run 1000days or more without a single reboot and that is a real unstable platform in my book. I have several Win2K servers that have never gone done since their install. Some of those are at least 3 years old. The point is, that there are installation of any system that will run practically forever and there are some that will break continuously. Unix has an astronomically small install base when compared to Windows machines and the hardware Unix is installed on has a very narrow range to it. Windows is at the other extreme. It has a huge install base and the hardware is different on almost every machineit is installed on. I personally think that is pretty good. NOt excellent, by any means, but pretty good for how fast everything has changed over the last 20 years. I hope linux will someday rival that, but it has a ways to go.
lol, that's a wacked comparison dude. That's like comparing a 18 wheel tractor trailer to a pickup truck. Let's at least be fair about comparing the products to equals in the market place.