Text mode is higher resolution then 320x240. But if your BIOS shows some graphic during POST, it won't be any better even with a completely new BIOS type unless all the graphics card makers also agree upon a standard interface for high color, high resolution graphics on boot.
Most modern BIOS's boot very quickly. With a "normal" workstation setup with a single IDE hard disk and a CD-ROM drive, it often takes under three seconds before it starts to read the OS from the hard disk.
A new BIOS firmware won't help much in either of those cases. And if you have SCSI controllers and all that jazz, it will take just as long as before to detect all the drives.
I'm not saying that improving the BIOS isn't something that doesn't need to be done, but none of the features you mentioned will be improved.
However, that does not mean that part of the "deal" with the SCO vs IBM lawsuits won't be "And since this matter is settled, you must drop your countersuit."
No shit MS Office has IE. Does everyone that uses their mac always use it? Is it the default browser that comes with OSX?
It's all about defaults. If every Mac that ships sets Safari or whatever else as default, that's what Mac users will use, and everything else is an "addon" that people never really like as much as default.
And I don't really care about MacOS 9 or lower - it's all about the now.
I've never been a Mac fan, and I'll probably never buy one, but since it's a completely different non-windows OS, and runs different core software like browsers - it's good for the whole.
The more people that use Macs, the more people that will be browsing web sites without IE, and the more websites that won't rely on IE-only functionality.
Truthfully though, it hasn't been a problem running Mozilla for 98% of the sites I visit. And I don't only visit sites like Slashdot - I go to a lot of sites that the masses visit as well. No browser string faking, no activeX plug-ins. Just straight Mozilla, and it works great.
All we need to do is chisel down those last 2% and we'll be living large.
With all the visible security problems in Windows and IE these days - more and more people are getting sick and tired of it. Some people are seeking alternative Browsers, more every day. It's not the obscure security bugs that people care about or even know about it's the ones that allow spyware to be installed causing them to have to call friends, family, support people and generally have a terrible time using their computers.
Any other industry- Computers, cars, home electronics, food, sports equipment, etc. distributes their own damned products. The prices are set based on quality of product, features of product, and many times the brand name - but almost never by a controlling body such as OPEC or the RIAA.
RIAA claims to help by opening distribution channels and promoting material but it's not necessary these days. So, they instead attempt to make it more difficult for non-RIAA labels to distribute and sue 10 year olds for downloading a song - while screwing lots of people out of a lot of money.
All the while charging $19 for a damned CD when it costs even LESS now then it ever did to produce. (Can you say pennies?)
To those sweet 3D LCD screens once they become more commonplace. Think about how cool that would be!
My bedroom doesn't have much in the way of windows, so this would be awesome. With the prices of LCD's dropping the way they are, anyone could do this.
And if you used normal VGA/DVI screens, not weird custom signal ones like ones he has, it would be super easy to do.
We get them too. (And the right terminology is "Premiere Customer" heh)
They are useless. We'll get an e-mail from our TAM saying "We're going to release a bunch of patches for a bunch of stuff. There's no ETA - it should be soon. Thanks."
Since patching Windows and other MS stuff frequently is just a part of the system now a days, it really doesn't matter if you know a few days ahead of time. They don't give us the patches any sooner then anyone else, so it doesn't make us less vulnerable. They don't give us specifics, just that "A patch to RRAS will be released soon to address a vulnerability."
This is anti-MS FUD. I'm a Linux lover and MS hater just like the next guy on slashdot, but this crap is just as bad as the crap Balmer spits out every time he opens the pie hole. Rise above!
Fair enough, but you didn't address the final point of a good spam filter.
Like I said, amavisd + spamassassin + dspam make for a killer spam filter. I run a mail server for about 10 friends and family, and the thing works so well that you'd think you were using a new mail account. I used to get upwards of 200 spams a day, now I see one every week, maybe.
It's worth the initial effort, and you'd be able to stop monkying around with two mail accounts. (or at the very least, your spam box would remain empty.)
Perhaps it was the first movie filmed entirely on blue screen, but some others are right up there like the new star wars movies.
The thing is, CG is awesome and it really looks fantastic now, but it often has a detrimental effect on how the movie is played out - the way the characters interact with the sets, the way the camera work is done, etc.
Don't get me wrong - it's just as hard or harder to direct a CG scene or movie. The animation takes real skill and talent and the directors still have to direct the animated characters.
I guess I'm split down the middle. I like CG a lot but I also like good old sets and camera work. I think CG is better suited to compliment the movie, not become the movie.
Then, since it "works so well to prevent piracy" (with no numbers to back anything up) they will do it on HBO movies. Then, the'll allow Disney to expire everyone's copy of "Beauty and the Beast" sitting on their PVR's because they are going to re-release it again.
When you're dealing with a company like TiVO, you're pretty much fucked. They started out as a "This is a fucking awesome device, give me two!" company, but now they're a lot bigger, they have a lot of vested interest from the media companies, and they WILL bow down to them.
I predict that we'll just start to see more PVR's. TiVO and this other one will just be two of the many. There's really nothing stopping people from making these things. They'll have "Unrestricted PVR's" for sale.
If you don't give your address to anyone, how useful is your account?
The truth is, your account WILL be found. One of your buddies will get an outlook virus, and spoof your address. Or someone will "reply to all" and include a mailing list. Or anything.
You still have to deal with your spam mailbox, so you might as well just make another folder in your mailbox and put your good mail there.
The best solution, at this point in time, is a good spam filter. Really, these things are amazing. Amavisd-net + spamassassin + dspam work wonderfully. I've put very little effort into setting the system up and I am blocking easily 99.9% of my spam, and I've gotten one false positive (from an AOL account) out of the last 25,000 messages incoming. When you have a good filter, you don't need to worry so much about spam.
It sucks, I agree. And we SHOULDN'T need to put up with this shit. But, we do.
Exchange is XML based with a database back-end. It's got a very nice web front end and can be configured any way you'd like. AND, you can use Outlook if you want.
No typing @domain.com. No viruses. No spam. Gee, those things sure are easy to provide when you have 200 users and no internet e-mail connection.
Did you guys actually read his nonsense? He makes so many generalizations about "Linux" that it's basically all bullshit.
He says "On Linux, you single click to run a program." "On Linux, when you double click the title bar, the window shades instead of min/maximize." WTF?! What does he mean "On Linux"? On Mandrake, SuSE, and any other machine with KDE, these options aren't default. Did he write this in 1994?
Bah, with a whole article filled with this crap, I don't know how anyone could take him seriously.
Yea, so I saw my instead of ms, but the point is still valid - the reaons someone would want the source code, not because they might want to change it, but because someone ELSE can.
I guess I read a few posts related to using mySQL in this context and I just hit reply on the one where he said MS. Oh well.
The only *reason* your company can even USE mySQL right now is because it's open source. If it wasn't, nobody would have been using it for the past years, nobody would be working to improve it..
It's popular and as good as it is now because it's open source. And I forsee mySQL just continuing to improve until it's right up there with the top enterprise DB's.
So no, I don't need to crack open the source code to use my database, but I use mySQL because I *could*, because other people *do*, and because mySQL AB will never be able to squash mySQL just because they want to.
And so the rule of business is to screw everyone every chance you get?
Naa. I don't think so. While many *people* DO practice business this way (and they ARE people - PEOPLE screw you, the business doesn't act on it's own) there's also a great many that do not. Just because Microsoft is a very large company doesn't mean they are off the hook in the ethical department.
Of course. But the Windows system is already in place and running, and that's not going to change because we have a full-on IT staff supporting it. The point I'm trying to make is that support contracts are one thing but if you have the staff in-house that can support the product, it can be just as good or better. You don't always NEED vendor support for everything.
We have a premiere support contract for our Microsoft crap - it's very expensive and we don't use it much. The only time we DO use it is because we come accross issues that only MS can fix. With OSS you don't really get into those situations.
They aren't just "a business" they are the utterly dominant presence in all-things-computers. They should act responsiby with that power; instead they use each and every little god-damned thing they can think of to put their own proprietary stuff out there with hooks that give MS complete control.
I definately see the future of IT moving more and more towards "Do it yourself" methodologies over "Let microsoft do it" ones. Management has really been babied in the last decade with the "click it and it will run" type of systems and anything not "out of the box" is frowned upon. The thing is, these solutions just don't work as well as they used to.
If you want the system to work for your business, you're going to have to tailor it to your business. The more this trend continues, the more OSS/Linux type systems will be considered.
I like Linux as an Operating System for sure, but I also like the idea behind it - the open community base. I've had problems with Microsoft software, with Novell software, etc - and I've had a *bitch* of a time getting something fixed or working like it's supposed to. On the other hand, while a Linux-type system may be more work to set up initially, any problems I've ever had have been resolved very quickly via the absurd amount of documentation, forum posts, web pages, and mailing lists (where *developers* actually help people as well as the userbase.) "Google Support" should not be underestimated!
I work in a Windows shop. Well, okay, we have a whole IBM AIX side of the company that runs the Peoplesoft stuff, but for all the rest of the company it's Windows. We tie peoplesoft and pretty much everything else you can think of into Active Directory. It works.
But there's places where I can see Linux boxes excelling where other software falls short. One of them is our Spam "solution." It was very expensive and it doesn't work for shit. 80% accuracy, maybe. Lots of false positives. In 2002, it was really cool shit. But that's the problem - things change fast when it comes to certain things like Spam and when you pay $50,000 for a license to filter spam you don't want to upgrade or change softwares every six months.
Enter OSS - My (*gasp*) spamassassin+dspam+amavisd-new is easily doing 99.99% of the spam with extremely low occurances of false positives. Is it supported? Nope. Wait, yes it is. I SUPPORT IT.
Some companies are all about support, support, support. They don't trust their IT staff, they consider them expendable. I don't work at a company like that. They put weight in our abilities. If you can make a good case for an OSS solution, one where you can support it yourself and train others, it will be seriously considered. Apparently there's other companies like this too, since a lot of places are running Linux now and not all of them use RedHat Enterprise.
"Don't get me wrong - the software rental model is horrific, and that battle needs to be fought here and now. But for god's sake, let's pick the right target before unloading on it."
Damned straight.
I think the average consumer is willing to do a "subscription" on some platforms - MMORPG's require pretty high cost maintenence of the data centers and technical support, Internet access costs money to get it into your house, and cell phones of course require a bit of infrastructure as well. Of course, all these things could be a lot cheaper and still provide plenty of profit, but I digress..
When it comes to total rental however, people just don't like it. I mean, if people liked the idea of not actually owning what they have, all those "Rent-a-center" places would be a lot more popular then the hold-in-the-wall places that they are.
As a general rule people might not be too computer savy but whe the software starts hitting the wallet every month people will look for alternatives.
Slashdot Mirror
And as soon as everyone agrees on following the vesa standard properly, we'll get right on that.
Text mode is higher resolution then 320x240. But if your BIOS shows some graphic during POST, it won't be any better even with a completely new BIOS type unless all the graphics card makers also agree upon a standard interface for high color, high resolution graphics on boot.
Most modern BIOS's boot very quickly. With a "normal" workstation setup with a single IDE hard disk and a CD-ROM drive, it often takes under three seconds before it starts to read the OS from the hard disk.
A new BIOS firmware won't help much in either of those cases. And if you have SCSI controllers and all that jazz, it will take just as long as before to detect all the drives.
I'm not saying that improving the BIOS isn't something that doesn't need to be done, but none of the features you mentioned will be improved.
However, that does not mean that part of the "deal" with the SCO vs IBM lawsuits won't be "And since this matter is settled, you must drop your countersuit."
It's happened lots of times.
No shit MS Office has IE. Does everyone that uses their mac always use it? Is it the default browser that comes with OSX?
It's all about defaults. If every Mac that ships sets Safari or whatever else as default, that's what Mac users will use, and everything else is an "addon" that people never really like as much as default.
And I don't really care about MacOS 9 or lower - it's all about the now.
I've never been a Mac fan, and I'll probably never buy one, but since it's a completely different non-windows OS, and runs different core software like browsers - it's good for the whole.
The more people that use Macs, the more people that will be browsing web sites without IE, and the more websites that won't rely on IE-only functionality.
Truthfully though, it hasn't been a problem running Mozilla for 98% of the sites I visit. And I don't only visit sites like Slashdot - I go to a lot of sites that the masses visit as well. No browser string faking, no activeX plug-ins. Just straight Mozilla, and it works great.
All we need to do is chisel down those last 2% and we'll be living large.
With all the visible security problems in Windows and IE these days - more and more people are getting sick and tired of it. Some people are seeking alternative Browsers, more every day. It's not the obscure security bugs that people care about or even know about it's the ones that allow spyware to be installed causing them to have to call friends, family, support people and generally have a terrible time using their computers.
So.. GO MACS! And.. GO IE BUGS!
Any other industry- Computers, cars, home electronics, food, sports equipment, etc. distributes their own damned products. The prices are set based on quality of product, features of product, and many times the brand name - but almost never by a controlling body such as OPEC or the RIAA.
RIAA claims to help by opening distribution channels and promoting material but it's not necessary these days. So, they instead attempt to make it more difficult for non-RIAA labels to distribute and sue 10 year olds for downloading a song - while screwing lots of people out of a lot of money.
All the while charging $19 for a damned CD when it costs even LESS now then it ever did to produce. (Can you say pennies?)
To those sweet 3D LCD screens once they become more commonplace. Think about how cool that would be!
My bedroom doesn't have much in the way of windows, so this would be awesome. With the prices of LCD's dropping the way they are, anyone could do this.
And if you used normal VGA/DVI screens, not weird custom signal ones like ones he has, it would be super easy to do.
Good job!
We get them too. (And the right terminology is "Premiere Customer" heh)
They are useless. We'll get an e-mail from our TAM saying "We're going to release a bunch of patches for a bunch of stuff. There's no ETA - it should be soon. Thanks."
Since patching Windows and other MS stuff frequently is just a part of the system now a days, it really doesn't matter if you know a few days ahead of time. They don't give us the patches any sooner then anyone else, so it doesn't make us less vulnerable. They don't give us specifics, just that "A patch to RRAS will be released soon to address a vulnerability."
This is anti-MS FUD. I'm a Linux lover and MS hater just like the next guy on slashdot, but this crap is just as bad as the crap Balmer spits out every time he opens the pie hole. Rise above!
Fair enough, but you didn't address the final point of a good spam filter.
Like I said, amavisd + spamassassin + dspam make for a killer spam filter. I run a mail server for about 10 friends and family, and the thing works so well that you'd think you were using a new mail account. I used to get upwards of 200 spams a day, now I see one every week, maybe.
It's worth the initial effort, and you'd be able to stop monkying around with two mail accounts. (or at the very least, your spam box would remain empty.)
Perhaps it was the first movie filmed entirely on blue screen, but some others are right up there like the new star wars movies.
The thing is, CG is awesome and it really looks fantastic now, but it often has a detrimental effect on how the movie is played out - the way the characters interact with the sets, the way the camera work is done, etc.
Don't get me wrong - it's just as hard or harder to direct a CG scene or movie. The animation takes real skill and talent and the directors still have to direct the animated characters.
I guess I'm split down the middle. I like CG a lot but I also like good old sets and camera work. I think CG is better suited to compliment the movie, not become the movie.
The thing is, it will start with PPV.
Then, since it "works so well to prevent piracy" (with no numbers to back anything up) they will do it on HBO movies. Then, the'll allow Disney to expire everyone's copy of "Beauty and the Beast" sitting on their PVR's because they are going to re-release it again.
When you're dealing with a company like TiVO, you're pretty much fucked. They started out as a "This is a fucking awesome device, give me two!" company, but now they're a lot bigger, they have a lot of vested interest from the media companies, and they WILL bow down to them.
I predict that we'll just start to see more PVR's. TiVO and this other one will just be two of the many. There's really nothing stopping people from making these things. They'll have "Unrestricted PVR's" for sale.
If you don't give your address to anyone, how useful is your account?
The truth is, your account WILL be found. One of your buddies will get an outlook virus, and spoof your address. Or someone will "reply to all" and include a mailing list. Or anything.
You still have to deal with your spam mailbox, so you might as well just make another folder in your mailbox and put your good mail there.
The best solution, at this point in time, is a good spam filter. Really, these things are amazing. Amavisd-net + spamassassin + dspam work wonderfully. I've put very little effort into setting the system up and I am blocking easily 99.9% of my spam, and I've gotten one false positive (from an AOL account) out of the last 25,000 messages incoming. When you have a good filter, you don't need to worry so much about spam.
It sucks, I agree. And we SHOULDN'T need to put up with this shit. But, we do.
Exchange is XML based with a database back-end. It's got a very nice web front end and can be configured any way you'd like. AND, you can use Outlook if you want.
No typing @domain.com. No viruses. No spam. Gee, those things sure are easy to provide when you have 200 users and no internet e-mail connection.
Did you guys actually read his nonsense? He makes so many generalizations about "Linux" that it's basically all bullshit.
He says "On Linux, you single click to run a program." "On Linux, when you double click the title bar, the window shades instead of min/maximize." WTF?! What does he mean "On Linux"? On Mandrake, SuSE, and any other machine with KDE, these options aren't default. Did he write this in 1994?
Bah, with a whole article filled with this crap, I don't know how anyone could take him seriously.
If I could mod your post as -1 Bullshit I would.
Your little anecdote is almost as original as saying "Dude I gave my friend pop rocks and pepsi and he EXPLODED! True story!"
Yea, so I saw my instead of ms, but the point is still valid - the reaons someone would want the source code, not because they might want to change it, but because someone ELSE can.
I guess I read a few posts related to using mySQL in this context and I just hit reply on the one where he said MS. Oh well.
The only *reason* your company can even USE mySQL right now is because it's open source. If it wasn't, nobody would have been using it for the past years, nobody would be working to improve it..
It's popular and as good as it is now because it's open source. And I forsee mySQL just continuing to improve until it's right up there with the top enterprise DB's.
So no, I don't need to crack open the source code to use my database, but I use mySQL because I *could*, because other people *do*, and because mySQL AB will never be able to squash mySQL just because they want to.
It is one of my duties, yes.
And so the rule of business is to screw everyone every chance you get?
Naa. I don't think so. While many *people* DO practice business this way (and they ARE people - PEOPLE screw you, the business doesn't act on it's own) there's also a great many that do not. Just because Microsoft is a very large company doesn't mean they are off the hook in the ethical department.
Of course. But the Windows system is already in place and running, and that's not going to change because we have a full-on IT staff supporting it. The point I'm trying to make is that support contracts are one thing but if you have the staff in-house that can support the product, it can be just as good or better. You don't always NEED vendor support for everything.
We have a premiere support contract for our Microsoft crap - it's very expensive and we don't use it much. The only time we DO use it is because we come accross issues that only MS can fix. With OSS you don't really get into those situations.
They aren't just "a business" they are the utterly dominant presence in all-things-computers. They should act responsiby with that power; instead they use each and every little god-damned thing they can think of to put their own proprietary stuff out there with hooks that give MS complete control.
I definately see the future of IT moving more and more towards "Do it yourself" methodologies over "Let microsoft do it" ones. Management has really been babied in the last decade with the "click it and it will run" type of systems and anything not "out of the box" is frowned upon. The thing is, these solutions just don't work as well as they used to.
If you want the system to work for your business, you're going to have to tailor it to your business. The more this trend continues, the more OSS/Linux type systems will be considered.
I like Linux as an Operating System for sure, but I also like the idea behind it - the open community base. I've had problems with Microsoft software, with Novell software, etc - and I've had a *bitch* of a time getting something fixed or working like it's supposed to. On the other hand, while a Linux-type system may be more work to set up initially, any problems I've ever had have been resolved very quickly via the absurd amount of documentation, forum posts, web pages, and mailing lists (where *developers* actually help people as well as the userbase.) "Google Support" should not be underestimated!
I work in a Windows shop. Well, okay, we have a whole IBM AIX side of the company that runs the Peoplesoft stuff, but for all the rest of the company it's Windows. We tie peoplesoft and pretty much everything else you can think of into Active Directory. It works.
But there's places where I can see Linux boxes excelling where other software falls short. One of them is our Spam "solution." It was very expensive and it doesn't work for shit. 80% accuracy, maybe. Lots of false positives. In 2002, it was really cool shit. But that's the problem - things change fast when it comes to certain things like Spam and when you pay $50,000 for a license to filter spam you don't want to upgrade or change softwares every six months.
Enter OSS - My (*gasp*) spamassassin+dspam+amavisd-new is easily doing 99.99% of the spam with extremely low occurances of false positives. Is it supported? Nope. Wait, yes it is. I SUPPORT IT.
Some companies are all about support, support, support. They don't trust their IT staff, they consider them expendable. I don't work at a company like that. They put weight in our abilities. If you can make a good case for an OSS solution, one where you can support it yourself and train others, it will be seriously considered. Apparently there's other companies like this too, since a lot of places are running Linux now and not all of them use RedHat Enterprise.
"Don't get me wrong - the software rental model is horrific, and that battle needs to be fought here and now. But for god's sake, let's pick the right target before unloading on it."
Damned straight.
I think the average consumer is willing to do a "subscription" on some platforms - MMORPG's require pretty high cost maintenence of the data centers and technical support, Internet access costs money to get it into your house, and cell phones of course require a bit of infrastructure as well. Of course, all these things could be a lot cheaper and still provide plenty of profit, but I digress..
When it comes to total rental however, people just don't like it. I mean, if people liked the idea of not actually owning what they have, all those "Rent-a-center" places would be a lot more popular then the hold-in-the-wall places that they are.
As a general rule people might not be too computer savy but whe the software starts hitting the wallet every month people will look for alternatives.
You don't own it now - if you did, you could do whatever you wanted with it; modify it, sell it to someone else, etc.
The only thing this will do is "expire" your software rendering it unusable after a time - which is the part that I think really sucks ass.