Here's a suggestion for an ogranization forced into this agreement. Call their bluff. Count up all the machines - macs included, pay the ransom, then sue microsoft for breach of contract. After all, a contractually mandated count was made, a contractually mandated fee was paid, yet that number of copies of the licensed programs are not running. Clearly microsoft has not lived up to its part of the bargain.
If nothing else, a judge will laugh the agreement out of court.
Imagine if, a hundred years ago, the buggy whip manufacturing association and foreseen this day, and managed to convince the Congress that it must preserve their industry by law. That Henry Ford! He must be imprisoned for ruining our industry!
The major record companies (and less so, the major motion picture studios) are the buggy whip manufacturers of our day. At one time, record production was expensive. Large, expensive equipment was needed to mass produce musical recordings. An artist really had no choice but to sign up with a major label. A lot of maney was spent to manufacture and distribute music.
Today, the manufacture and distribution of music costs next to nothing. Yet the major record labels are charging more money than ever for their services.
The major record labels have had their day, just as the buggy whip manufacturers had their day. No one mourns the loss of the horse and buggy -- or almost no one. The major record labels' fate is the same.
They might try to legislate their place in the market, but even if they do, artists will eventually realize that the major record labels offer them nothing anymore.
I'm not sure how far it would get, but one argument I'd like to see is the equal protection argument. For example, under this bill, posession of some devices which can duplicate a copyrighted work are criminal, and posession of others are commonplace. CD Burners and PCs in one case, and photocopy machines in the other. I would argue that photocopy machines make it possible to duplicate copyrighted works, and posession thereof should be considered under the 14th amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
It may not carry a lot of weight, but it does move the argument from various abstract points into constitutional grounds.
If posession of devices which can duplicate copyrighted musical performances are illegal, then posession of devices which can dupicate copyrighted sheet music and lyrics should be illegal as well. Posession, sale and transport of devices which can duplicate copyrighted newspaper articles should be criminalized.
There are any number of devices, posession of which should be criminalized under the 14th amendment... photocopy devices... facimile machines... camcorders... pencils... pens... photographic film...
I think a 14th amendment argument could be made on two fronts. First, because an unauthorized duplicate of a copyrighted work is digital, it is to no greater or lesser degree illegal. An analog copy would be just as illegal. The device which enables such illegal activity should be equally criminalized. Second, because an unauthorized duplicate of a copyrighted work is music, it is to no greater or lesser degree illegal than an unauthorized duplicate of a copyrighted book.
Timeouts are a bad idea. I have several systems set up which are in remote locations, providing various straightforward services, which are not being maintained by anybody. They are headless, power up into an operational mode when reset, and would cause a severe headache if I had to visit them on a regualr basis for no reason other than someone else thought it would be a good idea.
Thanks, but no thanks.
About the only concession I'd make on this point is if there could be a configuration flag at compile time. If a vendor chooses to recompile utilities with the timeout enabled, that's fine, as long as I can recompile the same utilities with the timeout turned off.
it doesn't matter what excuse microsoft uses to proclaim HTTP dead, microsoft will simply proclaim it. By that time, microsoft internet software, like internet explorer and internet information server, will have already quietly been enabled with MS-WWW-P which is, of course, prorietary, secret, DMCA protected, etc.,etc. When Bill throws the switch, all non-microsoft web entities will cease to function. At least as far as all of the microsoft-only lemmings can tell.
W3C refuses to give Bill the keys to the Net? Make W3C irrelevant. Make a new net. Make an ALL-MS-IE-IIS-ALL-THE-TIME net. Why not? From Bill's point of view, are there really any other players? Why waste a lot of time with standards? Look how well its working with MS-Office...
It might be a good thing... The rest of us will suddenly live in what we've been striving for all along -- a microsoft-free net. At least until Microsoft buys cisco...
Leave it M$ to try the heavy handed approach first. "Let's just block all non-M$ products!" There are a lot of stupid ideas in the world. I am always amazed that at some product review meeting, someone brought up that idea, and his boss said, "YES! That's what we'll do!"
There's a better way.
Instead of detecting browsers and being blatent about it, just use some M$-only, proprietary, copyrighted, DMCA copy protected, magic HTML or XML on every page. Surprisingly, only M$ IE 6.whatever can render it. When someone clicks on the "This page doesn't look right" button, a dialog box pops up and explains that the viewer has forgotten to download the latest Microsoft software. And its free!
And since they've already been way too blatant and clumsy, the community will not even notice the next time. Almost anything will seem subtle now.
Joe Lemming will not know or care what's going on. He will click "OK" and his M$N pages will be better than ever. Thanks to Microsoft.
On the other hand, M$ has no qualms about forcing customers to purchase a second copy of Windows when they want to install a peripheral that their OEM copy didn't include.
I've been in electronics and computers for years, but never directly in the broadcast industry. These days I work peripherally with a radio and TV studio (but not a broadcaster). Frame syncs are a bad example because they only pause for a few milliseconds - although most do have a freeze frame, that is, "pause" button... old slo-mo machines are better because they could paude and record up to about 30 seconds of program.
Every radio station on the planet has been using the seven second delay for decades. those machines took a live signal and delayed it for later use. their entire reason for existnace was to be able to "pause" the live program when necessary, "skip" over portions of the live program, and then "catch up" after the fact. By 1992, all of the newer ones were digital. They all used disk drives. Nothing new here, except the price, the UI, the target market.
Every TV station on the planet had (and still has) boxes called frame syncs. Again recent ones are digital. They take a live signal, delay it, and replay it for the convenience of the viewer. The same could be said of old slow-motion machines used at live events. They even recorded their video on disks...
The fact that TIVO has more than seven seconds of buffer makes it an evolved product based upon similar devices in use for decades. That they store audio and video digitaly is evolutionary as well, and predates 1992.
On a more basic level, FIFO buffers have been used ever since there were clocked digital circuits. That the digital bit stream contains live video is mere circumstance. FIFOs predate 1992 as well.
Back in the early '80s, "microprocessors" were the rage of the electronics industry.
I worked at a modem company at the time.
The higher-ups didn't want to bother with this newfangled stuff, so it filtered down to me.
I designed the control and diagnostic portions of our newest product.
Being the most straightforward portion, it was finished early. Other portions weren't as far along, and the big trade show was coming up.
The marketting guys had to had to had to show this box off. Couldn't we just bolt a box together and make the lights blink on and off?
Well, I couldn't resist.
Being microprocessor controlled. it was easy to make the lights blink on and off, but what fun would that be?
So I wrote a program which would flash the lights on and off by sending morse code.
TX: Knock knock
RX: Who's there?
TX: Milgo
RX: Milgo who?
Milgo who? Get it? (Milgo was one of the big modem companies back then and one of our competitors.)
I didn't get to go to the trade show, and I never heard anything back from our marketting guys, so I'll never know whether anyone even noticed.
I often imagine how it might have gone though...
Salesman: Good morning. This is our latest product...
Customer: Shhhhhhh...
Salesman: It has eleven thousand new features...
Customer: SHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
After a few seconds of silently staring at the demonstration units, the customer laughs out loud and walks away.
Everyone was expecting that Code Red would pick up where it left off. That's not the case because people forget a few Microsoft Windows facts-of-life:
Code Red was memory based.
Re-booting clears out Code Red
When was the last time your Microsoft Windows server lasted a week without re-booting?
I know people who re-boot their machines daily, "just in case."
The few machines which do have uptimes sufficient for the worm to last from the last cycle are starting all over again from scratch. The same thing will happen next time.
SmartTags is just another anoying feature that'll drive users away from IE.
Drive users away? To what?
I don't know how many times I've heard people say that they would prefer to use another browser, but that they "have to" use the M$ product.
Fear not...
This delay is just a delay.
SmartTags will be back.
It will be interesting to see what happens when the first IE6.1 click on AOL.COM produces a smart link that wasn't there in the original copyrighted page. (or maybe a RIAA member's copyrighted page)
I think that if M$ proclaims some kind of "copyrights don't pertain to this use," then I guess the floodgates will open on all of M$' various coptrighted material...
M$ says, "you can modify your web page to disable them."
There are a billion or so web pages out there. M$ knows this. M$ knows that no one is going to modify a billion old web pages. Therefore, "you can disable them" becomes meaningless because no one will.
The more socially acceptable plan - where a header enables tags - would never never achieve any market penetration for the same reason. No one is going to alter any of those billion old pages. Further, no one is going to add it to new pages.
The only way for M$ to impose this on society is the way they did it. Just because its being pulled today, doesn;t mean that it won't reappear in 6.1 or so. Plus, M$ will have an additional reason to make you upgrade to 6.1 - SmarterTags!
I'm a Covad (and therefore C&P or Bell Atlantic or Verizon or whatever they change their name to next) customer in the Maryland DC suburbs. My DSL line alone probably makes up a significant portion of those bug reports. Between the repeated Verizon no-shows at installation time (which I had to leave work for); to periodic downtime for a few hours; to sudden loss of service which required Covad to drop the bitrate to get back on the air. Verizon's solution: 'Duh, Idunno." I wish I had an alternative to telephone company involvement...
While smart tags can be easily turned off, and might even be turned off by default, what would make anyone beileve that there isn't a one-liner VB or javascript or ActiveX which will turn it back on?
Another idea occurs to me - it seems it is not necessary, in this case, to prove anything about DeCSS one way or the other. This case is about hypertext links on the web.
The argument against free speech is, paraphrasing, you are not free to shout "Fire" in a crowded movie theatre. Granted. But that doesn't prevent someone fron talking about shouting "Fire" in a crowded movie theatre.
The court needn't concern itself with whether DeCSS' existance is, or is not, legal. Either way, talking about DeCSS is permitted.
The entire point of the first amendment of the constitution is to allow the free discussion of ideas. The intent being political ideas which might not be in concert with whatever government might be in power. But free speech is free speech. I can talk about conflict with the government, but not about playing a DVD on my linux box?
I think if I were arguing the DeCSS case, I would insist that the MPAA prove it. They would have to demonstrate that a movie could be decoded and stored on a hard drive and then burned onto another DVD. It could be demonstrated, but then I would argue that a DVD duplicator (or DVD duplication service) would have done the same thing at less expense. Then, my argument would be that anyone looking to steal copyrighted material would not go the DeCss route, and therefore DeCSS does not enable copyright violation.
(I suppose that the flaw here is that the argument is not that DeCSS is the best way to steal copyrighted work, just that it IS a way to steal copyrighted work.)
Other "violations" like frame grabs or clips or even copying the enirety of the movie onto my own hard drive, are all "fair use," and/or covered and explicitly allowed by the Home Audio Recording Act.
I work on Capitol Hill, and have met with NSI staff several times. They have a one track mind, and that is that THEY own the internet. They really really believe it. They lobby Congress continuously to codify NSI's ownership of the internet name space. They think that they thought it up. They do not understand the government-created-monopoly vs. regulation equation. The NSF funded their entire buildup and then they complain about NSF limiting their registration fees.
I'm no fan of ICANN, but anything is better than NSI.
The same thing happened to me and is still happeining today to a friend of mine here in the DC suburbs.
I ordered service from Speakeasy (because of thier friendly service agreements). Speakeasy ordered DSL from Covad. Covad ordered a line from Bell Atlantic. BA missed their first two appointments to set up my line. Eventually, after about three weeks of delays, they got around to it.
At the same time, my brother ordered DSL directly from BA. His line was in the same week. Who could have predicted that?
BA was sued in NY for this and settled out of court. Since then, my friend (who also ordered service through Speakeasy) is still waiting. BA has missed three appointments, and when they did finally showed up, screwed it up. Details, suprisingly, are hard to come by. So, two months later, he is back to square one.
BA's intentions and incentives are not hard to figure out. I suppose that the NY settlement only obligated BA to equitably service customers in NY. We might have to take them to court in every state they operate in... More lawyers making money...
- jeff -
P.S. With a lot of DSL companies, you own the DSL modem. Your ISP, Covad, and BA (or equiv.) have no obligation when lightning or power surges fry your modem. Remember to install line and power spike supressors on your DSL equipment.
Here's another way, but requires the assistance of some kernel hackers.
On my old Sun Sparc 2s, when you pull the video board, they run to the serial port. No magic hardware. A quick poll during initialization and if there's no video then swap out the console write and keyboard read routines and/or pointers.
BREAK was also used on HP3000s back when I used to run some of them. They may still work that way.
I run a couple of headless machines. Whenever they need some reconfiguration or troubleshooting, I have to lug them back to a nearby monitor. Some other people I know run their serial ports into terminal servers so that they can telnet to the console ports of multiple machines even when the machine itself won't respond to a telnet.
Headless operation doesn't seem to be very hard to add to the boot process, and it would help out a lot of us who operate machines in that mode.
Someone said, "I don't want to change distros when I change MB." You might have to anyway. You might need a different on-board ethernet driver. Or on-board SCSI driver. Or on-board video driver...
All this really is, is a standard distribution with patches and the right drivers configured from the start. Every MB already comes with its little config floppy and its little diagnostic utility floppy. Why not ship a full blown OS while they're at it?
I really don't see the problem. As always, you can load up your favorite version. Everyone gets so excited every time a new vendor ships Red Hat disks with a box. I think that's great too, but some prefer SuSE. Others prefer Debian. I still like Slackware. We have to re-install everything even if RH came pre-installed.
This is a great way for a newbie to load up Linux with a good chance of success. (S)he won't have to worry about recompiling and drivers and libraries and modules and patches and all the stuff which the rest of us have figured out already.
The world is getting too excited about this one and only configuration where NT manages to beat other software. Mindcraft said it themselves when they said that other tests (where the client's product didn't win) were never published.
Obviously, in different configurations, different results can be expected. The moral of the story is that if you throw enough money at an NT system, you will be able to exceed the performance of the lower-cost, higher-reliability Linux system.
"People will spend millions of dollars, [implementing strategies based on such information], and the last thing I want to do is spread fear, uncertainty and doubt in their minds."
This is Microsofts' standard operating procedure. Of course he doesn't want to announce a patch. He'd much prefer forcing customers to buy more unwanted Microsoft products. Think about it... Millions of bug-fix downloads, or millions of extorted software sales... If *I* were a Microsoft Vice President, it would be a pretty easy business decision...
They do the same thing with Windows NT - Rather than fixing it so that it is reliable enough to run customers' applications, Microsoft encourages you to buy two or three. One for each application. And people do. Microsoft has no presure or incentive whatsoever to produce quality products.
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Here's a suggestion for an ogranization forced into this agreement. Call their bluff. Count up all the machines - macs included, pay the ransom, then sue microsoft for breach of contract. After all, a contractually mandated count was made, a contractually mandated fee was paid, yet that number of copies of the licensed programs are not running. Clearly microsoft has not lived up to its part of the bargain.
If nothing else, a judge will laugh the agreement out of court.
Imagine if, a hundred years ago, the buggy whip manufacturing association and foreseen this day, and managed to convince the Congress that it must preserve their industry by law. That Henry Ford! He must be imprisoned for ruining our industry!
The major record companies (and less so, the major motion picture studios) are the buggy whip manufacturers of our day. At one time, record production was expensive. Large, expensive equipment was needed to mass produce musical recordings. An artist really had no choice but to sign up with a major label. A lot of maney was spent to manufacture and distribute music.
Today, the manufacture and distribution of music costs next to nothing. Yet the major record labels are charging more money than ever for their services.
The major record labels have had their day, just as the buggy whip manufacturers had their day. No one mourns the loss of the horse and buggy -- or almost no one. The major record labels' fate is the same.
They might try to legislate their place in the market, but even if they do, artists will eventually realize that the major record labels offer them nothing anymore.
It may not carry a lot of weight, but it does move the argument from various abstract points into constitutional grounds.
If posession of devices which can duplicate copyrighted musical performances are illegal, then posession of devices which can dupicate copyrighted sheet music and lyrics should be illegal as well. Posession, sale and transport of devices which can duplicate copyrighted newspaper articles should be criminalized.
There are any number of devices, posession of which should be criminalized under the 14th amendment... photocopy devices... facimile machines... camcorders... pencils... pens... photographic film...
I think a 14th amendment argument could be made on two fronts. First, because an unauthorized duplicate of a copyrighted work is digital, it is to no greater or lesser degree illegal. An analog copy would be just as illegal. The device which enables such illegal activity should be equally criminalized. Second, because an unauthorized duplicate of a copyrighted work is music, it is to no greater or lesser degree illegal than an unauthorized duplicate of a copyrighted book.
-- Two more cents from Jeff
Timeouts are a bad idea. I have several systems set up which are in remote locations, providing various straightforward services, which are not being maintained by anybody. They are headless, power up into an operational mode when reset, and would cause a severe headache if I had to visit them on a regualr basis for no reason other than someone else thought it would be a good idea.
Thanks, but no thanks.
About the only concession I'd make on this point is if there could be a configuration flag at compile time. If a vendor chooses to recompile utilities with the timeout enabled, that's fine, as long as I can recompile the same utilities with the timeout turned off.
it doesn't matter what excuse microsoft uses to proclaim HTTP dead, microsoft will simply proclaim it. By that time, microsoft internet software, like internet explorer and internet information server, will have already quietly been enabled with MS-WWW-P which is, of course, prorietary, secret, DMCA protected, etc.,etc. When Bill throws the switch, all non-microsoft web entities will cease to function. At least as far as all of the microsoft-only lemmings can tell.
W3C refuses to give Bill the keys to the Net? Make W3C irrelevant. Make a new net. Make an ALL-MS-IE-IIS-ALL-THE-TIME net. Why not? From Bill's point of view, are there really any other players? Why waste a lot of time with standards? Look how well its working with MS-Office...
It might be a good thing... The rest of us will suddenly live in what we've been striving for all along -- a microsoft-free net. At least until Microsoft buys cisco...
Leave it M$ to try the heavy handed approach first. "Let's just block all non-M$ products!" There are a lot of stupid ideas in the world. I am always amazed that at some product review meeting, someone brought up that idea, and his boss said, "YES! That's what we'll do!"
There's a better way.
Instead of detecting browsers and being blatent about it, just use some M$-only, proprietary, copyrighted, DMCA copy protected, magic HTML or XML on every page. Surprisingly, only M$ IE 6.whatever can render it. When someone clicks on the "This page doesn't look right" button, a dialog box pops up and explains that the viewer has forgotten to download the latest Microsoft software. And its free!
And since they've already been way too blatant and clumsy, the community will not even notice the next time. Almost anything will seem subtle now.
Joe Lemming will not know or care what's going on. He will click "OK" and his M$N pages will be better than ever. Thanks to Microsoft.
On the other hand, M$ has no qualms about forcing customers to purchase a second copy of Windows when they want to install a peripheral that their OEM copy didn't include.
No, I don't - what's the frame sync patent story?
I've been in electronics and computers for years, but never directly in the broadcast industry. These days I work peripherally with a radio and TV studio (but not a broadcaster). Frame syncs are a bad example because they only pause for a few milliseconds - although most do have a freeze frame, that is, "pause" button... old slo-mo machines are better because they could paude and record up to about 30 seconds of program.
There will be buckets full of prior art.
Every radio station on the planet has been using the seven second delay for decades. those machines took a live signal and delayed it for later use. their entire reason for existnace was to be able to "pause" the live program when necessary, "skip" over portions of the live program, and then "catch up" after the fact. By 1992, all of the newer ones were digital. They all used disk drives. Nothing new here, except the price, the UI, the target market.
Every TV station on the planet had (and still has) boxes called frame syncs. Again recent ones are digital. They take a live signal, delay it, and replay it for the convenience of the viewer. The same could be said of old slow-motion machines used at live events. They even recorded their video on disks...
The fact that TIVO has more than seven seconds of buffer makes it an evolved product based upon similar devices in use for decades. That they store audio and video digitaly is evolutionary as well, and predates 1992.
On a more basic level, FIFO buffers have been used ever since there were clocked digital circuits. That the digital bit stream contains live video is mere circumstance. FIFOs predate 1992 as well.
Just another stupid patent.
No, but you can make /default.ida a CGI script which just sleeeeeeeeeeeeeps. Of course, that ties up your network resources too...
The marketting guys had to had to had to show this box off. Couldn't we just bolt a box together and make the lights blink on and off?
Well, I couldn't resist. Being microprocessor controlled. it was easy to make the lights blink on and off, but what fun would that be? So I wrote a program which would flash the lights on and off by sending morse code.
RX: Who's there?
TX: Milgo
RX: Milgo who?
Milgo who? Get it? (Milgo was one of the big modem companies back then and one of our competitors.)
I didn't get to go to the trade show, and I never heard anything back from our marketting guys, so I'll never know whether anyone even noticed. I often imagine how it might have gone though...
Customer: Shhhhhhh...
Salesman: It has eleven thousand new features...
Customer: SHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
After a few seconds of silently staring at the demonstration units, the customer laughs out loud and walks away.
Alas, I'll never know...
Code Red was memory based.
Re-booting clears out Code Red
When was the last time your Microsoft Windows server lasted a week without re-booting? I know people who re-boot their machines daily, "just in case."
The few machines which do have uptimes sufficient for the worm to last from the last cycle are starting all over again from scratch. The same thing will happen next time.
Drive users away? To what?
I don't know how many times I've heard people say that they would prefer to use another browser, but that they "have to" use the M$ product.
Fear not... This delay is just a delay. SmartTags will be back.
It will be interesting to see what happens when the first IE6.1 click on AOL.COM produces a smart link that wasn't there in the original copyrighted page. (or maybe a RIAA member's copyrighted page)
I think that if M$ proclaims some kind of "copyrights don't pertain to this use," then I guess the floodgates will open on all of M$' various coptrighted material...
just a thought...
Everyone misses the point.
M$ says, "you can modify your web page to disable them."
There are a billion or so web pages out there. M$ knows this. M$ knows that no one is going to modify a billion old web pages. Therefore, "you can disable them" becomes meaningless because no one will.
The more socially acceptable plan - where a header enables tags - would never never achieve any market penetration for the same reason. No one is going to alter any of those billion old pages. Further, no one is going to add it to new pages.
The only way for M$ to impose this on society is the way they did it. Just because its being pulled today, doesn;t mean that it won't reappear in 6.1 or so. Plus, M$ will have an additional reason to make you upgrade to 6.1 - SmarterTags!
Don't worry - they'll be back.
I'm a Covad (and therefore C&P or Bell Atlantic or Verizon or whatever they change their name to next) customer in the Maryland DC suburbs. My DSL line alone probably makes up a significant portion of those bug reports. Between the repeated Verizon no-shows at installation time (which I had to leave work for); to periodic downtime for a few hours; to sudden loss of service which required Covad to drop the bitrate to get back on the air. Verizon's solution: 'Duh, Idunno." I wish I had an alternative to telephone company involvement...
While smart tags can be easily turned off, and might even be turned off by default, what would make anyone beileve that there isn't a one-liner VB or javascript or ActiveX which will turn it back on?
Another idea occurs to me - it seems it is not necessary, in this case, to prove anything about DeCSS one way or the other. This case is about hypertext links on the web.
The argument against free speech is, paraphrasing, you are not free to shout "Fire" in a crowded movie theatre. Granted. But that doesn't prevent someone fron talking about shouting "Fire" in a crowded movie theatre.
The court needn't concern itself with whether DeCSS' existance is, or is not, legal. Either way, talking about DeCSS is permitted.
The entire point of the first amendment of the constitution is to allow the free discussion of ideas. The intent being political ideas which might not be in concert with whatever government might be in power. But free speech is free speech. I can talk about conflict with the government, but not about playing a DVD on my linux box?
I think if I were arguing the DeCSS case, I would insist that the MPAA prove it. They would have to demonstrate that a movie could be decoded and stored on a hard drive and then burned onto another DVD. It could be demonstrated, but then I would argue that a DVD duplicator (or DVD duplication service) would have done the same thing at less expense. Then, my argument would be that anyone looking to steal copyrighted material would not go the DeCss route, and therefore DeCSS does not enable copyright violation.
(I suppose that the flaw here is that the argument is not that DeCSS is the best way to steal copyrighted work, just that it IS a way to steal copyrighted work.)
Other "violations" like frame grabs or clips or even copying the enirety of the movie onto my own hard drive, are all "fair use," and/or covered and explicitly allowed by the Home Audio Recording Act.
Two cents from Jeff
I'm no fan of ICANN, but anything is better than NSI.
...only if you've never used APL.
The same thing happened to me and is still happeining today to a friend of mine here in the DC suburbs.
I ordered service from Speakeasy (because of thier friendly service agreements). Speakeasy ordered DSL from Covad. Covad ordered a line from Bell Atlantic. BA missed their first two appointments to set up my line. Eventually, after about three weeks of delays, they got around to it.
At the same time, my brother ordered DSL directly from BA. His line was in the same week. Who could have predicted that?
BA was sued in NY for this and settled out of court. Since then, my friend (who also ordered service through Speakeasy) is still waiting. BA has missed three appointments, and when they did finally showed up, screwed it up. Details, suprisingly, are hard to come by. So, two months later, he is back to square one.
BA's intentions and incentives are not hard to figure out. I suppose that the NY settlement only obligated BA to equitably service customers in NY. We might have to take them to court in every state they operate in... More lawyers making money...
- jeff -
P.S. With a lot of DSL companies, you own the DSL modem. Your ISP, Covad, and BA (or equiv.) have no obligation when lightning or power surges fry your modem. Remember to install line and power spike supressors on your DSL equipment.
Here's another way, but requires the assistance of some kernel hackers.
On my old Sun Sparc 2s, when you pull the video board, they run to the serial port. No magic hardware. A quick poll during initialization and if there's no video then swap out the console write and keyboard read routines and/or pointers.
BREAK was also used on HP3000s back when I used to run some of them. They may still work that way.
I run a couple of headless machines. Whenever they need some reconfiguration or troubleshooting, I have to lug them back to a nearby monitor. Some other people I know run their serial ports into terminal servers so that they can telnet to the console ports of multiple machines even when the machine itself won't respond to a telnet.
Headless operation doesn't seem to be very hard to add to the boot process, and it would help out a lot of us who operate machines in that mode.
- jeff -
Why not? I like it.
Someone said, "I don't want to change distros when I change MB." You might have to anyway. You might need a different on-board ethernet driver. Or on-board SCSI driver. Or on-board video driver...
All this really is, is a standard distribution with patches and the right drivers configured from the start. Every MB already comes with its little config floppy and its little diagnostic utility floppy. Why not ship a full blown OS while they're at it?
I really don't see the problem. As always, you can load up your favorite version. Everyone gets so excited every time a new vendor ships Red Hat disks with a box. I think that's great too, but some prefer SuSE. Others prefer Debian. I still like Slackware. We have to re-install everything even if RH came pre-installed.
This is a great way for a newbie to load up Linux with a good chance of success. (S)he won't have to worry about recompiling and drivers and libraries and modules and patches and all the stuff which the rest of us have figured out already.
Obviously, in different configurations, different results can be expected. The moral of the story is that if you throw enough money at an NT system, you will be able to exceed the performance of the lower-cost, higher-reliability Linux system.
This is Microsofts' standard operating procedure. Of course he doesn't want to announce a patch. He'd much prefer forcing customers to buy more unwanted Microsoft products. Think about it... Millions of bug-fix downloads, or millions of extorted software sales... If *I* were a Microsoft Vice President, it would be a pretty easy business decision...
They do the same thing with Windows NT - Rather than fixing it so that it is reliable enough to run customers' applications, Microsoft encourages you to buy two or three. One for each application. And people do. Microsoft has no presure or incentive whatsoever to produce quality products.