"break out of the Windows shell to the underlying lower-level functions
What, so average users can break their PDA as well as their desktop computer? Give me a break. There are some hacks to do certain things, and the Toshiba e800 supports 480x640 resolution (aka VGA). Microsoft announced support for many different screen form factors for the next version of Windows Mobile at the last PDC.
As for why a Pocket PC needs a 406Mhz CPU, you the poster is clearly trying to equate a desktop computer's CPU (which is a CISC/RISC hybrid) with a PDA's CPU (which is completely RISC). The XScale CPU's are actually less efficient than the older StrongARM CPUs (which ran at 206Mhz), so the extra Mhz is needed (the main advantage of the XScale units is the ability to reduce the speed to save power (a la SpeedStep)).
The major problem with SuSE is that you have to buy the CDs to get the distribution... or wait a month or two to get a download-only crippled install. Some of us like to play with various Linux distros and don't want to have to go out and buy each and every one to see which one's the best.
I'm personally hoping Novell changes the distribution methods for SuSE.
We've seen the same thing here in Canada. The Canadian dollar has really gained in strength over the past year, but a lot of prices stayed the same. Only recently have prices come more in line (Apple recently revised their prices to more closely match the exchange rate... 2 months ago they were outrageously out-of-whack. Apple is but one example - most other computer companies were the same)
However, I would never use the SpamCop blacklist for completely blocking e-mail - only filtering. Why? Any one "possible spam" message processed through its system lands the server on the blacklist - which means one user that sends out a spam message (or even a message that someone thinks is spam or unwanted) that is then processed as spam through SpamCop puts the mail server onto the blacklist. The server will not be removed for a minimum of 24 hours.
This means that systems that are active against thwarting spammers can still end up on the blacklist for 24 hours (or longer - you can report e-mail for up to 3 days after it was sent).
That actually happened to me. I was given layoff notice, at which point I went for another job, same pay grade, same thing I had been doing... to be told that I was unqualified to do the job (which was the same job I had been doing!).
I eventually got the job (I work in a unionized environment, and the moronic managers who tried to pull that one got overruled), but it does happen.
Novell's QA and UI teams must be either a) non-existant or b) incompetent, because I've never had so much trouble with any software as I have had with Novell software. Their latest NetWare client breaks the "lock workstation" functionality in Win2k, and slows down systems to a crawl. GroupWise takes over all MAPI stuff on the computer, and is poorly written - you're lucky that Outlook will even work after you've installed the GroupWise client (that is, you're lucky if it'll even work with GroupWise, because after you install it you can't use Outlook for anything else but GroupWise as it completely hijacks MAPI). Oh, and the GroupWise client has a UI that makes me think of Windows 3.1.
The latest NetWare server version went up and down 5 times a day for MONTHS until Novell could finally fix the problems.
Personally, I think IBM would pass - it would take too much work to integrate the products, and IBM programmers would be lucky to figure out the crappy code they'd get from Novell.
They exploited a known feature in the DNS system, and abused their monopoly. There's no innovation there - just an abuse of a government-granted monopoly position.
Had they actually proposed something innovative, and proposed it as an RFC (even if it was an Informational RFC), then maybe things would be different. Instead, they decide to do something that was not contemplated by the IAB for the standard.
The Internet is built on standards - and sometimes standards can be slow to change because of the sheer number of different systems involved. You can't expect things like DNS standards to change overnight.
They've gotta work to improve their image with customers and vendors, and really prove that they've got excellent drivers and good performance, with support to back it up. Otherwise, the vendors are going to go with either nVidia or ATI - because they know they can sell cards based on the brand recognition of chips from those two companies, and basically have to do very little work to sell them. With S3? They've gotta design a new card for a new chipset, and promote the hell out of it to get it into systems (and to get consumers to purchase it or want it in their new systems).
S3's gonna have to do a lot of ads in magazines, get good, solid review units out to tech mags, vendors, and OEMs, and produce a cookie-cutter card design that basically requires no work on the part of the OEM.
He's bashed every Pocket PC he's ever reviewed - even while other reviewers praise the device, he bashes it.
I think he's got an anti-Microsoft bias, or just doesn't use the Pocket PC long enough to get used to the differences between it and a Palm.
Microsoft went the ECMA route because it's faster and easier to get an ECMA standard passed than to go the ISO route, and once ECMA has passed the standard it's a heck of a lot easier to get it standardized by ISO.
C# and the CLI are both ECMA and ISO standards. See ECMA and ISO/IEC C# and Common Language Infrastructure Standards.
C# - ECMA-334, ISO/IEC 23270
CLI - ECMA-335, ISO/IEC 23271
CLI Technical Report - ECMA TR84, ISO/IEC 23272
When you get to OSes (ie servers) that have a heavy interaction layer with outside parties (ie the Internet), there are bound to be millions of lines of code in there. They can cause range from area-specific breaches (ie destroy contents on IIS) to operating-system wide breaches. Also, if the server is running at a high enough security level in the system, it alone can cause operating-system wide breaches.
Most of the "critical fixes" Microsoft has put out have been for IE and their servers (Exchange, IIS, etc.), and not for the core OS itself (with the exception of the RPC vulnerability, which you can consider part of the core OS even though it runs as a service).
As long as there are people creating software, there will always be security bugs in the operating system. You just can't go over millions of lines of code and spot every bug that can result in a security breach - especially if two portions of code combined are the reason for the breach (those two pieces of code can be hundreds of thousands of lines of code apart).
I predict that they'll certify an operating system secure... and then the next day a security alert will be announced for it.
Microsoft has come a long way from their old operating systems - Windows Server 2003 is much more secure, but no operating system will ever be 100% secure as long as there are hackers out there to test every possible vulnerability... and the fact that there are administrators out there that may not secure the OS down and make stupid configuration errors.
Check out Palm Digital Media at http://www.palmdigitalmedia.com - they've got readers for the Pocket PC, Palm, Mac, and Windows, and the DRM scheme is completely unobtrusive (enter the credit card number you used to purchase the book with to unlock it). It's the only eBooks I buy.
(the prices are pretty good too)
Probably would have cost more than $12,000 in legal fees if it went to trial. The RIAA is threatening lawsuits and bullying people into accepting settlements, because they KNOW that the people they're going after can't afford the legal fees to take a case to trial.
Sure, you can tax the manufacture of disks, but how do you tax the creation of software? Do you tax it based on lines of code, on size, or do you tax the number of copies created? And how do you determine all of the above?
I'm sure the businesses are already paying taxes (business income tax, sales tax on what they buy and sell directly, etc.), and their employees are also paying taxes, so who cares if they don't get to make a few bucks off of manufacturing a couple of CD's?
Toronto has the 401: the busiest highway in North America (18 lanes of traffic in some areas). Traffic in Toronto beats any other city hands-down for sheer volume and incidences of traffic jams.
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What, so average users can break their PDA as well as their desktop computer? Give me a break. There are some hacks to do certain things, and the Toshiba e800 supports 480x640 resolution (aka VGA). Microsoft announced support for many different screen form factors for the next version of Windows Mobile at the last PDC.
As for why a Pocket PC needs a 406Mhz CPU, you the poster is clearly trying to equate a desktop computer's CPU (which is a CISC/RISC hybrid) with a PDA's CPU (which is completely RISC). The XScale CPU's are actually less efficient than the older StrongARM CPUs (which ran at 206Mhz), so the extra Mhz is needed (the main advantage of the XScale units is the ability to reduce the speed to save power (a la SpeedStep)).
I'm personally hoping Novell changes the distribution methods for SuSE.
We've seen the same thing here in Canada. The Canadian dollar has really gained in strength over the past year, but a lot of prices stayed the same. Only recently have prices come more in line (Apple recently revised their prices to more closely match the exchange rate... 2 months ago they were outrageously out-of-whack. Apple is but one example - most other computer companies were the same)
As bad as people may hate Microsoft or Media Player, it does support multiple players and platforms - not just the iPod. A list is available at http://windowsmedia.com/9series/Personalization/Co olDevices.asp.
However, I would never use the SpamCop blacklist for completely blocking e-mail - only filtering. Why? Any one "possible spam" message processed through its system lands the server on the blacklist - which means one user that sends out a spam message (or even a message that someone thinks is spam or unwanted) that is then processed as spam through SpamCop puts the mail server onto the blacklist. The server will not be removed for a minimum of 24 hours.
This means that systems that are active against thwarting spammers can still end up on the blacklist for 24 hours (or longer - you can report e-mail for up to 3 days after it was sent).
That actually happened to me. I was given layoff notice, at which point I went for another job, same pay grade, same thing I had been doing... to be told that I was unqualified to do the job (which was the same job I had been doing!). I eventually got the job (I work in a unionized environment, and the moronic managers who tried to pull that one got overruled), but it does happen.
Novell's QA and UI teams must be either a) non-existant or b) incompetent, because I've never had so much trouble with any software as I have had with Novell software. Their latest NetWare client breaks the "lock workstation" functionality in Win2k, and slows down systems to a crawl. GroupWise takes over all MAPI stuff on the computer, and is poorly written - you're lucky that Outlook will even work after you've installed the GroupWise client (that is, you're lucky if it'll even work with GroupWise, because after you install it you can't use Outlook for anything else but GroupWise as it completely hijacks MAPI). Oh, and the GroupWise client has a UI that makes me think of Windows 3.1. The latest NetWare server version went up and down 5 times a day for MONTHS until Novell could finally fix the problems. Personally, I think IBM would pass - it would take too much work to integrate the products, and IBM programmers would be lucky to figure out the crappy code they'd get from Novell.
They exploited a known feature in the DNS system, and abused their monopoly. There's no innovation there - just an abuse of a government-granted monopoly position. Had they actually proposed something innovative, and proposed it as an RFC (even if it was an Informational RFC), then maybe things would be different. Instead, they decide to do something that was not contemplated by the IAB for the standard. The Internet is built on standards - and sometimes standards can be slow to change because of the sheer number of different systems involved. You can't expect things like DNS standards to change overnight.
They've gotta work to improve their image with customers and vendors, and really prove that they've got excellent drivers and good performance, with support to back it up. Otherwise, the vendors are going to go with either nVidia or ATI - because they know they can sell cards based on the brand recognition of chips from those two companies, and basically have to do very little work to sell them. With S3? They've gotta design a new card for a new chipset, and promote the hell out of it to get it into systems (and to get consumers to purchase it or want it in their new systems). S3's gonna have to do a lot of ads in magazines, get good, solid review units out to tech mags, vendors, and OEMs, and produce a cookie-cutter card design that basically requires no work on the part of the OEM.
He's bashed every Pocket PC he's ever reviewed - even while other reviewers praise the device, he bashes it. I think he's got an anti-Microsoft bias, or just doesn't use the Pocket PC long enough to get used to the differences between it and a Palm.
Microsoft went the ECMA route because it's faster and easier to get an ECMA standard passed than to go the ISO route, and once ECMA has passed the standard it's a heck of a lot easier to get it standardized by ISO. C# and the CLI are both ECMA and ISO standards. See ECMA and ISO/IEC C# and Common Language Infrastructure Standards. C# - ECMA-334, ISO/IEC 23270 CLI - ECMA-335, ISO/IEC 23271 CLI Technical Report - ECMA TR84, ISO/IEC 23272
When you get to OSes (ie servers) that have a heavy interaction layer with outside parties (ie the Internet), there are bound to be millions of lines of code in there. They can cause range from area-specific breaches (ie destroy contents on IIS) to operating-system wide breaches. Also, if the server is running at a high enough security level in the system, it alone can cause operating-system wide breaches. Most of the "critical fixes" Microsoft has put out have been for IE and their servers (Exchange, IIS, etc.), and not for the core OS itself (with the exception of the RPC vulnerability, which you can consider part of the core OS even though it runs as a service).
As long as there are people creating software, there will always be security bugs in the operating system. You just can't go over millions of lines of code and spot every bug that can result in a security breach - especially if two portions of code combined are the reason for the breach (those two pieces of code can be hundreds of thousands of lines of code apart). I predict that they'll certify an operating system secure... and then the next day a security alert will be announced for it. Microsoft has come a long way from their old operating systems - Windows Server 2003 is much more secure, but no operating system will ever be 100% secure as long as there are hackers out there to test every possible vulnerability... and the fact that there are administrators out there that may not secure the OS down and make stupid configuration errors.
Check out Palm Digital Media at http://www.palmdigitalmedia.com - they've got readers for the Pocket PC, Palm, Mac, and Windows, and the DRM scheme is completely unobtrusive (enter the credit card number you used to purchase the book with to unlock it). It's the only eBooks I buy. (the prices are pretty good too)
Probably would have cost more than $12,000 in legal fees if it went to trial. The RIAA is threatening lawsuits and bullying people into accepting settlements, because they KNOW that the people they're going after can't afford the legal fees to take a case to trial.
Sure, you can tax the manufacture of disks, but how do you tax the creation of software? Do you tax it based on lines of code, on size, or do you tax the number of copies created? And how do you determine all of the above? I'm sure the businesses are already paying taxes (business income tax, sales tax on what they buy and sell directly, etc.), and their employees are also paying taxes, so who cares if they don't get to make a few bucks off of manufacturing a couple of CD's?
Toronto has the 401: the busiest highway in North America (18 lanes of traffic in some areas). Traffic in Toronto beats any other city hands-down for sheer volume and incidences of traffic jams.