japan is one thing. the rest of asia is quite a different thing.
I know because i spend 9 hours a day providing technical support to greater asia and the pacific rim. Japan is very westernized when compared to the rest of asia. i also highly doubt 1% of asian's in general have even heard of wal-mart. if wal-mart expands into china you can bet your ass they will be controlled by the gov't. just like everything else is in mainland china.
Im trying really hard not to troll you, but do you work for MS or something ? 'cause if you do perhaps your time would be better spent making sure shit is patched than posting on/.
if you dont perhaps you should stop saying you know what goes on inside their company. I have known people who have worked for MS, i have known people who worked for companies that were aquired by MS. All of these people say the same thing about patches and general releases: you go through a ton of yellow and red tape to get something done. this is why it takes forever for MS to acknowledge a bug, and then patch it. provided they dont deny it exsists based on marketing crap.
To quote: "MS TRIES to make sure that their patches don't break 3rd party apps."
Bullshit ! MS only tests for apps that have parent companies they get along with (also known has, they haven't tried to start a monopoly in that market yet.). As a matter of fact they were convicted in court of releasing patches that BROKE third party functionality on PURPOSE.
Gentoo is a Linux from Scratch based distro, as such it is what you make of it. I know quite a few people who are running gentoo who have no intention of upgrading to 2.6 until at least the majority of reports confirm that shit is for the most part working.
mplayer plug in. why ? because i have yet to see a video it wont recognize and play correctly. including wmv, quicktime, real, and this crappy ass flash trailer. and it also works fine behind proxies.
obligatory linux taunt:
Go Linux its your birthday !!!
Go Linux its your birthday !!!
i agree with the lock sentiment but are your windows made of bullet proof glass ? (or some other smash proof variety ?) because if they are not then the door lock is useless.
"The harder it is to get in, the more dangerous are those who do get in. On the other hand, you have to be a helluva target for them to bother with you."
point taken and conceded, and i like the analogy. however i dont think to many of us fear the ultra skilled cat-burglars or the uber-crackers they have much better things to do than to attack my website or steal from my house. the person we fear is the people who dont have any real concept of what they are doing, and are more likely to destroy property than to steal/use it. the only way to prevent these types of criminals in both the real world and cyber is to send their ass to a real prison, and charge them with a REAL crime. like B&E or larceny. dont make the whole thing seem like a fairy tale by charging them with 5000 counts of cyber crime, make it real by charging them with 5 etc.... the more tangible the threat the less likely they are to commit the crime. for instance a burglar is less likely to rob a home with a dog than a home with a gun, for the simple reason that they KNOW there is a dog in the house. they dont know there is a gun.
The point remains straight forward enough. no matter how secure you think you are, your not.
the only way to fix up the neighborhood is to police it. ignoring it and trying to build fort knox wont do anything but attract more crackers to attacking you.
Now you have a large choice, and while people wont immediately replace an OS they might over time..... (also since over 50% of microsofts Os's is made up by older OS's (ME and 98 IIRC) this invalidates your point.)
For instance back in 99 or 2000 you could buy a p3 server (which would still be plenty usable today) from just about anyone, however not to many major manufacturors were offering linux as an OS (and arguably nobody wanted to run it) so you buy the server, bring it to the NOC or datacentre and wham bam your off and running. two years or so later the market goes into the toilet and spending is reduced, you now have to upgrade some of the stuff on the server (such as the webserver or email server) do you:
a. lock yourself into microsofts new and improved licensing (that will have you bent over a barrell if your not a huge company)
b. overpay for a product that offers little incentive to use compared to the cheaper competition.
c. go with a cheaper alternative that is making large headway in the market.
A TON of CIO's (something to the ilk of 73% were planning on using linux more extensivly in the fiscal 2003 year) and admins are choosing C, because of A and B and even if the percentage is 10% that is still a very large chunk of people that would generate a 20% shift. (minus 10 from ms add 10 to linux et all)
I work for Sun, yet you dont catch me spewing marketing crap all over the place about Sun.
And taking the above stats into account what percentage of Ms systems run Apache ? even if you figure 40% of the apache total (in this case 27%) you still come up with only 50 percent, figure in people changing error pages adn responses and your at LESS than 50%. which is what i stated in my original post.
*also not to be a major PITA about it or anything but netcraft (or any other webserver survey) is wildly inaccurate and incredibly subjective.
Sorry that doesnt gauge accurately what percentage of servers run what OS. It states what percentage of servers SHIP with X OS, which consequently has diddly squat (despite what billy has you believe) to do with my point. has a matter of fact you couldnt accurately gauge what percentage of servers run what OS since a large percentage of admins block such information.
As an example I have three systems I admin that when I purchased them had fully licensed versions of either NT4 or 2000, (they even still have the stickers on them from the vendor.) however they are currently running redhat es and SuSe AS respectivly. this is not taken into account in those claims, nor could it be since the error pages are customized and the kernels are patched to reply with a fingerprint to match the requesting OS (among other things).
I make no argument that MS probably still has a very large market share in the server arena (~40-60%) however there are a ton of systems running old crufty OS's and obscure OS's as well as unix's and what not. right now Linux and windows probably account for ~80% of the market with unix pulling in the majority of the rest.
There is no such thing as Utopian security. IF your hooked in your vulnerable. period.
I don't know why people make such a big deal out of security for computers. Think about it. In real life things aren't very secure, I could break into most homes and steal things, or break things if i wanted to. but I don't. Why ? the threat of punishment, and not-so-common sense.
If your a person who has deviant desires why wouldn't you break into a house ? VISIBLE security that would make punishment (ie jail) more likely would be the major reason. its not that the house is burglar proof, its that society has come to deal with criminals in the most effective way possible, and it doesn't usually hinder the average person. I think this is what we are lacking with computers, a clear cut enforcer. a "police" type body that could enforce laws such as "cracking and entering". and programs similar to an ADT-type of alarm system. We need a real solution. and Utopian code is not it. and making absurd laws are not it either.
"If the Internet is used by a criminal to steal from people by means of credit card fraud, the government can and should prosecute that criminal. Criminals have to be punished, no matter what channel of communication or infrastructure is used in the crime. "
I think your missing the point, i dont think brick-and-mortar governments know enough about cyber space to police it, as such something should be done to create a body, legislative, legal or other to police the internet. No government should try to police the internet because the internet is alot more qide reaching than any government. Think of it in terms of international waters or airspace, they aren't subject to one governments obscure and retarded laws, they are subject to the internationally agreed upon laws because the area is internationally used.
"The government should try to find a subtle balance, punishing real cyber crimes that harm honest internet-user, while still respecting civil rights like privacy and free speech."
maybe before the government went "senator for rent" on us this would have been possible, but now this wont happen. to much money to be made from selling peoples private information.
"You simply can't solve society's problems by focusing on them one by one, starting with the great ones. You could begin by establishing world peace and putting all your resources in that, but then the people being robbed on the street would feel abandoned by the government, not doing anything about petty crime. (Wait, isn't that happening already?) The only way to deal with problems is when they arise, and, as impractical as it may sound, all at once. And cyber crime is a real problem."
Really ? haven't we been doing it that way since the begining of civilization ? isnt it about time for a change ? last time i checked we were all suffering because our government fucked up something at somepoint and thats acceptable to a certain point. But the US gov't was founded with the idea that it would always try to improve itself and serve its citizens. I for one DO NOT feel very served. As a matter of fact i feel more violated and betrayed everyday BECAUSE of the government. Most people who pay attention to the laws being passed and the bullshit flowing out of washington feel the same way unless they are upper class.
"Why don't we take the money they spend on the military and put it to some good use, like education?
The Pentagon is the only institution in the US that gets more than 1 billion dollars a year. On top of that, it is also the only institution that doesn't have to open the books for auditing. They spend the money, no questions asked..."
Well i agree here, the military should open its books and have a severly reduced budget. However let me add another few things to reduce/reconfigure to that list:
1. The NSA.
2. the FBI.
3. The CIA
All three of their budgets are considered "black Budgets" and are hence classified just like the military and the homeland security department (which will be on that list as soon as they start full operations). But you know what the kicker is ? According to an article in the NYT back in '94 the budgets were allocated something like this:
$3.1 billion for the CIA
$10.4 billion for the Army, Navy, Air Force
and Marines special-operations units
$13.2 billion for the NSA/NRO/DIA
How scary is it that the NSA (which is arguably the most "top secret" agency in the world) had a budget of close to or more than the military ? (margin for error was +/- 4bill).
"We did the right thing over here, wheather our reasons were accurate or not."
No argument about weather we did the "right thing" or not, because that is a matter of perspective.
The united states gov't is not the worlds police, and they shouldnt have done this without world wide support simply because we ARE NOT the worlds police and it seems mighty hypocritical to go and overthrow oil boy (saddam) while letting cigar boy (castro) run an outfit for longer than saddam only 300 miles off our shore. not to mention the hundreds of other corrupt governments in africa and south america or the pacific rim.
but to get back on topic..... I never said anything detrimental about the US, i simply stated a fact. We (being the US) cannot keep our own troops or citizens from being killed. so we dedicate resources that could be better used elsewhere to stop spam and credit card fraud ? This was a political move, and i am calling it such because that is exactly WHY they did this. saying "We are saving people from murder, and terrorism" doesnt have the buzz it once did, so they move to this instead...... never having solved this first problem.
YEAH ! because crime in the real world doesnt exist or cause anyone problems.
We cant keep our troops from getting killed, we cant stop people from ramming planes into buildings and we cant stop CHILDREN from doing drugs, shooting each other, and "sharing" copyrighted materials. yet somehow arresting far less than 1% of the "cyber" criminals out there is somehow a great thing. right. somehow i fail to be amazed.
why dont we take the money they spent on this nice government action and put it to some good use, like education.
The government (any)cannot and should not police the internet since the internet is NOT owned by the government.
i personally think an international organization seperate from real world government should be created from elected (prefferably knowledgeable, unlike the people currently trying to ruin/run the internet) people who then govern cyber space. using a universal set of laws to prosecute people. its the only way this will be fair to all 6 billion people on this planet.
" The reason we cannot have fast wireless networking is because there isn't enough usable spectrum to go around. Just think about it: 100mbps of bandwidth requires more than 100MHz of bandwidth. Just to give you an idea, it would include everything from shortwave to the FM broadcast bands.
The only way you can get huge swaths of spectrum like that is at extremely high frequencies -- tens of GHz. And frequencies above a few GHz are strictly line-of-sight, and are usable mainly for satellites (as long as there aren't any trees in the way)."
This is kind of similar to what i was thinking the problem was..... thanks for the clarification.
Actually to be more specific the FCC limits the spectrum, which limits how many devices/how much data can be sent accross the air effectively. for instance there is nothing that i could use or purchase that would give me a 10mi radius of access with 100mb speeds, nothing even close.
speed over a short distance is not the issue. speed over a long distance is the issue. many people dont live close to cities (esp in the south and midwest.) so the technology/freq. used to transmit the data must be able to penetrate long distances without much loss. currently AFAIK these freq. are reserved mostly for military use.
of course i might be slightly off. if you or someone else could care to explain to me what currently publicly usable freq./tech could be used for long range high speed connections (10m plus) i would be all ears......
the gov't is subsidizing this much the way our gov't subsidizes roads, and gives tax breaks to companies to lay fiber optics in rural areas etc.
We can have all of the infrastructure we want, its not helping me. I pay 45/month for a 3mbps connection, and i dont have choice since its the only high speed provider in my area. just like phone companies and cable companies, ISP's are turning into a local gov't approved monopoly, its a friggin joke.
"We have the freedom of choice, we dont have to wait for our government to decide how fast we should access our networks"
Oh yes we do. its just done in a less obvious way. its called regulation. why dont you call your congressman and ask him to get up the FCC's ass and ask them why they are limiting wireless speeds ? (and make no mistake about it wireless is the ONLY way we will get increased speed in the US, the population density doesnt justify wiring the entire country with gigE or fiber)
I agree that them realizing that OOo was better than SO 6 was big, but most of the original SO wasnt even written by Sun.
Besides i dont think performance will be a very large issue since these systems are being geared towards "office use". Not to mention that most people preffer features as opposed to minor speed increases. this is evident simply by looking at the current desktop demographics.
I'm not much for getting into a holy war about things i dont use much. and i dont use office suites at all.
Well Staroffice and the JVM/JRE integration is key. blackdown is crap compared to the performance of Suns JRE's.
but support is the big thing. Mandrake offers nothing even close in support terms to what sun can offer. The only Company that could compete with what Sun can offer is IBM. and IBM is not backing mandrake. at this point this decision is going to come down to redhat vs SuSe. and it seems like everyone is siding with SuSe right now.
Not to go over board with propaganda (I work for Sun).
The Simple reason is: its cheaper to buy this from us than the cost to develop an equivelant setup.
The more in depth reason is: because star office is better than openoffice (MOST of the code is the same, not all) they would have to license a JRE to include in their distro, and they wouldnt have the support structure that Sun has.
Slashdot Mirror
japan is one thing. the rest of asia is quite a different thing.
I know because i spend 9 hours a day providing technical support to greater asia and the pacific rim. Japan is very westernized when compared to the rest of asia. i also highly doubt 1% of asian's in general have even heard of wal-mart. if wal-mart expands into china you can bet your ass they will be controlled by the gov't. just like everything else is in mainland china.
Im trying really hard not to troll you, but do you work for MS or something ? 'cause if you do perhaps your time would be better spent making sure shit is patched than posting on /.
if you dont perhaps you should stop saying you know what goes on inside their company. I have known people who have worked for MS, i have known people who worked for companies that were aquired by MS. All of these people say the same thing about patches and general releases: you go through a ton of yellow and red tape to get something done. this is why it takes forever for MS to acknowledge a bug, and then patch it. provided they dont deny it exsists based on marketing crap.
To quote: "MS TRIES to make sure that their patches don't break 3rd party apps."
Bullshit ! MS only tests for apps that have parent companies they get along with (also known has, they haven't tried to start a monopoly in that market yet.). As a matter of fact they were convicted in court of releasing patches that BROKE third party functionality on PURPOSE.
Who ever modded you as insightful was an ass.
here goes my karma ......
Gentoo is a Linux from Scratch based distro, as such it is what you make of it. I know quite a few people who are running gentoo who have no intention of upgrading to 2.6 until at least the majority of reports confirm that shit is for the most part working.
mplayer plug in. why ? because i have yet to see a video it wont recognize and play correctly. including wmv, quicktime, real, and this crappy ass flash trailer. and it also works fine behind proxies.
obligatory linux taunt:
Go Linux its your birthday !!!
Go Linux its your birthday !!!
i agree with the lock sentiment but are your windows made of bullet proof glass ? (or some other smash proof variety ?) because if they are not then the door lock is useless.
.... the more tangible the threat the less likely they are to commit the crime. for instance a burglar is less likely to rob a home with a dog than a home with a gun, for the simple reason that they KNOW there is a dog in the house. they dont know there is a gun.
"The harder it is to get in, the more dangerous are those who do get in. On the other hand, you have to be a helluva target for them to bother with you."
point taken and conceded, and i like the analogy. however i dont think to many of us fear the ultra skilled cat-burglars or the uber-crackers they have much better things to do than to attack my website or steal from my house. the person we fear is the people who dont have any real concept of what they are doing, and are more likely to destroy property than to steal/use it. the only way to prevent these types of criminals in both the real world and cyber is to send their ass to a real prison, and charge them with a REAL crime. like B&E or larceny. dont make the whole thing seem like a fairy tale by charging them with 5000 counts of cyber crime, make it real by charging them with 5 etc
The point remains straight forward enough. no matter how secure you think you are, your not.
the only way to fix up the neighborhood is to police it. ignoring it and trying to build fort knox wont do anything but attract more crackers to attacking you.
Now you have a large choice, and while people wont immediately replace an OS they might over time ..... (also since over 50% of microsofts Os's is made up by older OS's (ME and 98 IIRC) this invalidates your point.)
For instance back in 99 or 2000 you could buy a p3 server (which would still be plenty usable today) from just about anyone, however not to many major manufacturors were offering linux as an OS (and arguably nobody wanted to run it) so you buy the server, bring it to the NOC or datacentre and wham bam your off and running. two years or so later the market goes into the toilet and spending is reduced, you now have to upgrade some of the stuff on the server (such as the webserver or email server) do you:
a. lock yourself into microsofts new and improved licensing (that will have you bent over a barrell if your not a huge company)
b. overpay for a product that offers little incentive to use compared to the cheaper competition.
c. go with a cheaper alternative that is making large headway in the market.
A TON of CIO's (something to the ilk of 73% were planning on using linux more extensivly in the fiscal 2003 year) and admins are choosing C, because of A and B and even if the percentage is 10% that is still a very large chunk of people that would generate a 20% shift. (minus 10 from ms add 10 to linux et all)
I work for Sun, yet you dont catch me spewing marketing crap all over the place about Sun.
And taking the above stats into account what percentage of Ms systems run Apache ? even if you figure 40% of the apache total (in this case 27%) you still come up with only 50 percent, figure in people changing error pages adn responses and your at LESS than 50%. which is what i stated in my original post.
*also not to be a major PITA about it or anything but netcraft (or any other webserver survey) is wildly inaccurate and incredibly subjective.
Sorry that doesnt gauge accurately what percentage of servers run what OS. It states what percentage of servers SHIP with X OS, which consequently has diddly squat (despite what billy has you believe) to do with my point. has a matter of fact you couldnt accurately gauge what percentage of servers run what OS since a large percentage of admins block such information.
As an example I have three systems I admin that when I purchased them had fully licensed versions of either NT4 or 2000, (they even still have the stickers on them from the vendor.) however they are currently running redhat es and SuSe AS respectivly. this is not taken into account in those claims, nor could it be since the error pages are customized and the kernels are patched to reply with a fingerprint to match the requesting OS (among other things).
I make no argument that MS probably still has a very large market share in the server arena (~40-60%) however there are a ton of systems running old crufty OS's and obscure OS's as well as unix's and what not. right now Linux and windows probably account for ~80% of the market with unix pulling in the majority of the rest.
"Windows also has a much bigger chunk of the server market than Linux. Linux is around 20-25%, Windows is at more than 50%"
.)
care to back that up with real proof ? (not some marketing release from some microsoft funded company
Say it with me ....
There is no such thing as Utopian security. IF your hooked in your vulnerable. period.
I don't know why people make such a big deal out of security for computers. Think about it. In real life things aren't very secure, I could break into most homes and steal things, or break things if i wanted to. but I don't. Why ? the threat of punishment, and not-so-common sense.
If your a person who has deviant desires why wouldn't you break into a house ? VISIBLE security that would make punishment (ie jail) more likely would be the major reason. its not that the house is burglar proof, its that society has come to deal with criminals in the most effective way possible, and it doesn't usually hinder the average person. I think this is what we are lacking with computers, a clear cut enforcer. a "police" type body that could enforce laws such as "cracking and entering". and programs similar to an ADT-type of alarm system. We need a real solution. and Utopian code is not it. and making absurd laws are not it either.
typical /. rant ......
..... they are trying to make money off of us poor hard working soul's ......
....
.... ....) ....
....
So we should boycott the reviewers
taking it one step further
we should boycott movies
(another person chimes in
P2: YEAH !!!
P3: but then we cant see liv or natalie
All in unison: DOH!!!
I think that sums up our options
..... this isn't a drama.
.....
....
So Long as there are no EWOK's in it
So long as they dont leave hundreds of questions left unanswered so they can seem smart
get those two right and your off to a good start.
"If the Internet is used by a criminal to steal from people by means of credit card fraud, the government can and should prosecute that criminal. Criminals have to be punished, no matter what channel of communication or infrastructure is used in the crime. "
I think your missing the point, i dont think brick-and-mortar governments know enough about cyber space to police it, as such something should be done to create a body, legislative, legal or other to police the internet. No government should try to police the internet because the internet is alot more qide reaching than any government. Think of it in terms of international waters or airspace, they aren't subject to one governments obscure and retarded laws, they are subject to the internationally agreed upon laws because the area is internationally used.
"The government should try to find a subtle balance, punishing real cyber crimes that harm honest internet-user, while still respecting civil rights like privacy and free speech."
maybe before the government went "senator for rent" on us this would have been possible, but now this wont happen. to much money to be made from selling peoples private information.
"You simply can't solve society's problems by focusing on them one by one, starting with the great ones. You could begin by establishing world peace and putting all your resources in that, but then the people being robbed on the street would feel abandoned by the government, not doing anything about petty crime. (Wait, isn't that happening already?) The only way to deal with problems is when they arise, and, as impractical as it may sound, all at once. And cyber crime is a real problem."
Really ? haven't we been doing it that way since the begining of civilization ? isnt it about time for a change ? last time i checked we were all suffering because our government fucked up something at somepoint and thats acceptable to a certain point. But the US gov't was founded with the idea that it would always try to improve itself and serve its citizens. I for one DO NOT feel very served. As a matter of fact i feel more violated and betrayed everyday BECAUSE of the government. Most people who pay attention to the laws being passed and the bullshit flowing out of washington feel the same way unless they are upper class.
"Why don't we take the money they spend on the military and put it to some good use, like education? The Pentagon is the only institution in the US that gets more than 1 billion dollars a year. On top of that, it is also the only institution that doesn't have to open the books for auditing. They spend the money, no questions asked..."
Well i agree here, the military should open its books and have a severly reduced budget. However let me add another few things to reduce/reconfigure to that list:
1. The NSA.
2. the FBI.
3. The CIA
All three of their budgets are considered "black Budgets" and are hence classified just like the military and the homeland security department (which will be on that list as soon as they start full operations). But you know what the kicker is ? According to an article in the NYT back in '94 the budgets were allocated something like this:
$3.1 billion for the CIA
$10.4 billion for the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines special-operations units
$13.2 billion for the NSA/NRO/DIA
How scary is it that the NSA (which is arguably the most "top secret" agency in the world) had a budget of close to or more than the military ? (margin for error was +/- 4bill).
"We did the right thing over here, wheather our reasons were accurate or not."
..... I never said anything detrimental about the US, i simply stated a fact. We (being the US) cannot keep our own troops or citizens from being killed. so we dedicate resources that could be better used elsewhere to stop spam and credit card fraud ? This was a political move, and i am calling it such because that is exactly WHY they did this. saying "We are saving people from murder, and terrorism" doesnt have the buzz it once did, so they move to this instead ...... never having solved this first problem.
No argument about weather we did the "right thing" or not, because that is a matter of perspective.
The united states gov't is not the worlds police, and they shouldnt have done this without world wide support simply because we ARE NOT the worlds police and it seems mighty hypocritical to go and overthrow oil boy (saddam) while letting cigar boy (castro) run an outfit for longer than saddam only 300 miles off our shore. not to mention the hundreds of other corrupt governments in africa and south america or the pacific rim.
but to get back on topic
YEAH ! because crime in the real world doesnt exist or cause anyone problems.
We cant keep our troops from getting killed, we cant stop people from ramming planes into buildings and we cant stop CHILDREN from doing drugs, shooting each other, and "sharing" copyrighted materials. yet somehow arresting far less than 1% of the "cyber" criminals out there is somehow a great thing. right. somehow i fail to be amazed.
why dont we take the money they spent on this nice government action and put it to some good use, like education.
The government (any)cannot and should not police the internet since the internet is NOT owned by the government.
i personally think an international organization seperate from real world government should be created from elected (prefferably knowledgeable, unlike the people currently trying to ruin/run the internet) people who then govern cyber space. using a universal set of laws to prosecute people. its the only way this will be fair to all 6 billion people on this planet.
Cool. thanks for the info. I'll have to read up on some of that stuff. (not that i can afford it ;-))
Mod parent as informative.
" The reason we cannot have fast wireless networking is because there isn't enough usable spectrum to go around. Just think about it: 100mbps of bandwidth requires more than 100MHz of bandwidth. Just to give you an idea, it would include everything from shortwave to the FM broadcast bands. The only way you can get huge swaths of spectrum like that is at extremely high frequencies -- tens of GHz. And frequencies above a few GHz are strictly line-of-sight, and are usable mainly for satellites (as long as there aren't any trees in the way)."
..... thanks for the clarification.
This is kind of similar to what i was thinking the problem was
Actually to be more specific the FCC limits the spectrum, which limits how many devices/how much data can be sent accross the air effectively. for instance there is nothing that i could use or purchase that would give me a 10mi radius of access with 100mb speeds, nothing even close.
......
speed over a short distance is not the issue. speed over a long distance is the issue. many people dont live close to cities (esp in the south and midwest.) so the technology/freq. used to transmit the data must be able to penetrate long distances without much loss. currently AFAIK these freq. are reserved mostly for military use.
of course i might be slightly off. if you or someone else could care to explain to me what currently publicly usable freq./tech could be used for long range high speed connections (10m plus) i would be all ears
the gov't is subsidizing this much the way our gov't subsidizes roads, and gives tax breaks to companies to lay fiber optics in rural areas etc.
We can have all of the infrastructure we want, its not helping me. I pay 45/month for a 3mbps connection, and i dont have choice since its the only high speed provider in my area. just like phone companies and cable companies, ISP's are turning into a local gov't approved monopoly, its a friggin joke.
"We have the freedom of choice, we dont have to wait for our government to decide how fast we should access our networks"
Oh yes we do. its just done in a less obvious way. its called regulation. why dont you call your congressman and ask him to get up the FCC's ass and ask them why they are limiting wireless speeds ? (and make no mistake about it wireless is the ONLY way we will get increased speed in the US, the population density doesnt justify wiring the entire country with gigE or fiber)
I agree that them realizing that OOo was better than SO 6 was big, but most of the original SO wasnt even written by Sun.
Besides i dont think performance will be a very large issue since these systems are being geared towards "office use". Not to mention that most people preffer features as opposed to minor speed increases. this is evident simply by looking at the current desktop demographics.
I'm not much for getting into a holy war about things i dont use much. and i dont use office suites at all.
Well Staroffice and the JVM/JRE integration is key. blackdown is crap compared to the performance of Suns JRE's.
but support is the big thing. Mandrake offers nothing even close in support terms to what sun can offer. The only Company that could compete with what Sun can offer is IBM. and IBM is not backing mandrake. at this point this decision is going to come down to redhat vs SuSe. and it seems like everyone is siding with SuSe right now.
Not to go over board with propaganda (I work for Sun).
The Simple reason is: its cheaper to buy this from us than the cost to develop an equivelant setup.
The more in depth reason is: because star office is better than openoffice (MOST of the code is the same, not all) they would have to license a JRE to include in their distro, and they wouldnt have the support structure that Sun has.
Its based on SuSe so it will be based on RPM.