You just need to take a look at the Western World to understand exactly why this is happening.
The majority of our society has turned into puppets for the corporations who crave their Nike shoes, Playstations, mobile phones and Macdonalds hamburgers.
The populace has gone retarded overnight - entertainment now consists of formulaic movie remakes, plastic music where rather than having music as integral to our culture over thousands of years, music is now plastic and disposable "sung" by artists under total corporate control, "reality TV" where the talentless are elevated to celebrity status...
People simply do not care anymore because even that human trait has been handed to the lawyers to sue somebody or some corporation when something goes wrong.
As a society, we are becoming more and more introverted - we don't socialise with our neighbours any more and we think that bringing up kids is about handing over responsibilities of parenthood to the teachers until they get home from school whereupon they're thrown a Macdonalds hamburger and sat if front of a games console for the evening. Then we wonder why teenage pregnancies, binge drinking and drugs are at an all time high...
The good thing about this is that either we continue this way until we destroy ourselves in which case we don't deserve to exist anyway or we rise up in revolt in the near future as we recognise how we've allowed ourselves to be coccooned and kept stupid for far too long...
Until we recognise that governments, law enforcement agencies, corporations and the RIAA are all just trying to control us, privacy is just one more (and possibly the last) facet of our lives that will disappear...
Because "people minus one" (at least) are gonna pay that much for it - the day I pay $7 for a beer (= £4 here in the UK) is the day beer gets served by the gallon.
Re:Kiss the blue screen goodbye?
on
Moving To Linux
·
· Score: 1
But hey, stereotypes are hard to lose I suppose.
I don't suppose you'd prefer "F*ck that annoying animated paperclip" then, would you?
How come Clippy, the one thing you want to crash, never does...
The only time I got a BSOD was on a Western Digital Hard Drive failure.
Even as a Linux user, I'll accept that Windows 2000 improves on NT4's BSODs to a very great degree.
However, the hard disk issues with Windows 2000 really pisses me off...
Why is it that I can make a Ghost backup of a Windows 9x system, migrate it to other PCs with some hardware differences, I can invariably boot it up and just load the drivers I need.
Yet with Windows 2000, I follow the proceedures of using sysprep first before Ghosting yet every time I migrate the image to a PC with a different hard disk partition size or manufacturer, it fatally blue screens.
Unfortunately, I find working at a computer on my coffee table (the usual location of a MAC, I understand) very strenuous on the spine...
Look, I don't use MACs but I respect that people like them. So can't all us smelly Linux geeks have a big group hug with all the MAC people in their Nautica gear, united in the knowledge that neither of our groups finance the great demon in Redmond.
...how is it that a software title that is guaranteed to sell by the millions, meaning that the cost of manufacturing each copy is very low, meaning that shops will buy hundreds of copies in at a discounted rate, is still given a standard price of $54.99 in the US/£34.99 in the UK unless there is some heavy price fixing going on...
Stores are ripping us all of over this... don't pirate it but don't buy it either unless you can find a lower price that reflects the likely sales of it.
Perhaps John Carmack would like to comment on that...
Because the USA is currently the single biggest consumer market there is, no government wants to lose trade links with the US and so they all ultimately fear becoming isolated from the US from a perspective of imports & exports.
The only chance of there being a bigger consumer market is if the EU totally harmonises and becomes a fully-integrated European State - unfortunately, the EU is in a complete shambles because each member nation can veto on just about any resolution knowing full well that once they veto, they risk becoming isolated from the remaining states. While I admire the Netherlands making a stand on EU patent law, for example, they just run the risk of corporations simply refusing to trade with them in the future.
If the EU was organised enough to make a united stand on software patents, I guarantee they would fail the world over because trade would be hindered where patent law still applied and the EU would have an advantage.
Unfortunately, all governments are corrupt and financed by back-handers from the corporations so software patents will be enforced in the EU, given time.
It's really important not to lose focus over this whole patent/DRM/DMCA issue.
No matter which country makes what laws, the lowest common denominator for all of them is you and I, the consumer. We are the people that hand over money for these products and if we don't hand over the money, the products don't sell and marketing people start dying from coronaries.
Whatever you or I do or say now, the fact is that the global corporations have western governments in the palm of their hands through political sponsorship, lobbying and backhanded bribes.
Added to that, those same corporations, through hype, marketing and advertising, have turned their products into cool or must have products, the possession of which, you are told, somehow elevates you above the rest of the human race who don't own that product.
As consumers, all we need to do is just get some focus back in our lives and look at the wider picture when we spend our money on products that are heaped with patents & DMCA. I'm not suggesting abstinence (I like gadgets, games and music as much as the next man) but we need to be sure what it is our money ultimately finances before we buy any products.
I'm in my early forties now and my time for cool and conformity is over. But I look at the generations of people beneath me and I feel sorry for them because the majority seem to have become the puppets of the marketeers - designer clothes, Nike trainers, latest mobile phones, plasticised music - a bottomless pit of disposable income for the corporations.
Again, I don't want to deny anyone the right to spend their money how they want to but we must keep driving the message home that every time you buy a product, there is a risk that your money ends up limiting someone's freedom - either someone in the Third World's right to a decent income or your own rights to fair usage of products.
It's only when we grow up as consumers that we can stop buying heavily patented products & force the corporations to change...
A number of benchmark tests have proven that, CPU cycle-for-cycle, a well configured UNIX or Linux server can outperform a Windows server in just about every server task there is.
Surely the base reason for this is that the UNIX pholosophy is not to waste valuable computing resource of GUIs and graphical processes when you don't need to. In other words, have your UNIX server running in a console mode, perhaps with a web server or X-Server running, and just do all your administration of that server either through the console or via a web interface or remote GUI session.
It's ridiculous the Microsoft still haven't released a non-GUI server variant of their OSes, especially when, in my experience, a large proportion of blue screens and crashes are as a result of something going wrong in the graphics sub-system somewhere.
The only logical conclusion I can come up with is that there is a conspiracy between Microsoft & hardware manufacturers for MS to constantly waste CPU cycles to ensure that everyone is forced to upgrade their hardware constantly.
This isn't about winning in terms of more users using Firefox than IE - that's irrelevant because Open Source is not about smashing Microsoft to a pulp but ensuring everyone has a choice.
If MS release a patch that unwelds IE from the rest of Windows into an independent browser (thus closing the major security holes in it) and makes it fully HTML/XHTML standards compliant, that would be good enough because then every web site would also have to be standards compliant and we could all browse all web sites no matter what OS or browser we are using.
Firefox has to impress me on its own merits if they want my loyalty
Please post your home address on Slashdot and we will ask the Firefox programmers to come over to your house and give you a personal demonstration. If they deliver the demonstration as a singing barber's shop quartet, will that impress you?
Is there any particular night of the week that's better for you?
Nobody, least of all the OSS "philosophers" give a damn about your "loyalty".
It's software, it's free, it's there but it's up to you to get off your butt and try it for yourself.
since foxfire accepts cookies, you DO have spyware installed on your machine.
Don't be a jerk and go read a book on the subject.
Cookies are essentially passive data files that can be pulled by a web server to track what sites you've been to, who you are, etc - they need an interaction between a web browser and a web server to do anything.
Spyware refers to an independent program that gets downloaded through a scripting hole or an email that runs as a task in Windows and "phones home" all manner of information about you to somebody somewhere. Deinstall IE and a spyware program will still be there running away merrily to itself.
If you're stupid enough to manually run an untrusted program you've downloaded in Mozilla then that's the only way it will dump spyware onto your PC.
As seen by the eventual release of Window XP SP2 you will see a new version of Windows that represents Microsofts new focus on security.
Absolute rubbish!!!
The only time XP SP2 will "cure the world of all known viruses" is if it includes a compulsory training course that teaches each and every dumb Joe Average Windows user how TCP/IP, the Internet & computer security actually works - and doesn't let them touch their PCs until they've passed a test on it!
Answer me this... how come every Windows using company is not affected by each virus & worm that comes out? How come many Windows home users never get a virus or worm?
The reason is that whilst Windows has poor security, a lot of very knowledgeable Windows admins out there "make the best of what they have" and managed to apply good, strong security policies to keep 99.99% of bad programs from their machines. It has nothing to do with service packs but everything to do with people who know what they are doing!
When MS release "SP2 to upgrade idiot PC owners to someone who understands a little how computers work", that's when things will start getting more secure, not before.
The development of TCP/IP allowed the ARPANet to happen (which later became the Internet follwing commercialisation in the late 80s).
UNIX-based servers formed the core of the ARPANet because TCP/IP has always been built into UNIX and UNIX was designed as a multi-user multi-platform network operating system.
Microsoft assumed that the world would use their poor quality NetBIOS/LanManager protocols until the early 90s when they were forced to include TCP/IP support into Windows - that was after they almost ruined Novell by worming their way into using IPX/SPX networking protocols.
In other words, a kludgy operating system had to be kludged even more to support TCP/IP. This is a legacy that has lived with MS since and while the support of TCP/IP has improved over the various Windows iterations, the fact is that the Windows architecture is not as suitable for Internet connectivity as UNIX.
Everything in UNIX is designed for simplicity - one program doing one task. If you need a network service, just turn it on - if you don't, turn it off.
Where UNIX has a weakness is the security model because, in ARPANet days, information was open and there was no need to secure servers. However, that has improved a thousandfold over the years with features like shadow passwords, better authentication models and secure protocols. The simplistic security model of "you, those you trust and the rest of the world" now works to it's advantage because it's very easy to apply to a system - the difficult part is knowing all the potential holes to apply it to that can only come from experience.
If Windows was not an Internet OS today, we would still have crackers and security exploits on UNIX. However, there would be less of it because fewer crackers would be clever enough to break into a UNIX system and whilst there might be the occasional worm program, email viruses simple would not exist.
So how is the/. community going to react when MS actually starts listening to the customer and adding true features like security, speed, efficiency?
I'm sure that a lot of the community will look upon MS a little more favourably if and when that happens.
However, the design of Windows is, in itself, flawed in terms of features like the registry (which ultimately limits speed & efficiency by virtue of its fragmentation and growth) and by the deep integration of apps and APIs that allow gateways deep into the operating system. There is therefore only so much that can be fixed in Windows - I suspect MS already know this which is why Longhorn will, I assume, be a big change architecturally from Windows.
On the other hand, it is not just security & efficiency that deters a large proportion of the Slashdot community from liking/supporting Microsoft. What is of more major concern, myself included, is the fact that MS want to take complete control of the PC platform from an OS perspective to the point where they, through DRM, will control what all of us can and cannot do with our PCs.
DRM is touted as a security technology but, beneath the hype, is simply a way of imposing a rental model on each and every user - Microsoft wants to be seen as a "utility company", renting software to their users because that means guaranteed income. That is the ultimate Microsoft goal.
Unfortunately, as a 21st century society, the majority of us are turning into mindless sheep who are more than happy to hand over our responsibilities to governments and corporations rather than accept those responsibilities ourselves - that includes the data on our PCs.
No, I'm not saying that all Microsoft users are mindless sheep because, if they were, MS would have no need to conceal their desires for control beneath clever marketing and I hope that as MS's plot gradually gets more uncovered, Windows users will make valued decisions as to whether or not to allow MS that level of control over what they do.
Myself, I've used DOS and Windows out of convenience but not because I particularly like either. Fortunately, I got exposed to UNIX quite early on in my career and moved into Linux quite naturally as a result. Now I use Linux about 70% of my time and I have vowed that Windows 2000 will be the last MS operating system I ever use unless there is a distinct policy change by Microsoft to adopt open file formats and protocols.
I can honestly say that the harder MS make it, the more I will fight to maintain my personal freedoms in computing - even to the point where if there was no choice other than Microsoft, I would trash my PCs and go live on an isolated island somewhere and back to pen and paper.
As far as I know "Push To Talk" is a feature that came out of G3/cellular networks, not as a result of SIP.
The fact is that the cellular providers, like Vodafone and Orange in the UK, are now totally in fear as to what WLANs and SIP is going to do to their profits as a result of their years of overcharging customers to make cellular calls - in future, just imagine going to a SIP provider (probably an ISP) and sending calls over cheap WLANs & the Internet from VoIP/SIP endpoints as opposed to expensive tariff G3 networks.
Anyone who lives in the UK will already have seen the adverts where a particular provider (Vodafone? I can't remember which one it is) is offering free calls between business cellular handsets now - purely because of their fear of revenue loss.
"Push to talk" is just another feature the G3 providers invented to try to keep the cellular gimmick alive - it just happens to work over SIP also.
Personally, I believe the cellular providers have ripped us all of with expensive tariffs for far too long now and it's good to see that they're going to have to fight for any penny of profit they get now.
This is Prostetnic Borg-o Gates of the Galactic Microsoft Planning Council.
We are about to build a Galactic Longhorn Expressway through your system and, regretably, your Open Source has been scheduled for demolition.
Plans have been on display at 1 Microsoft Way for 5 of your Earth years, locked in a filing cabinet in a disused lavatory with a sign on the front saying "Beware of the DMCA".
The demolition will take slighly more than 2 of your Earth decades, just as soon as we've got XP Service Pack 2 working.
Prostetnic Ballmer will be passing amongst you shortly with a collection box into which you may deposit your Linux CDs and free software floppy disks as part of the amnesty.
Slashdot Mirror
The majority of our society has turned into puppets for the corporations who crave their Nike shoes, Playstations, mobile phones and Macdonalds hamburgers.
The populace has gone retarded overnight - entertainment now consists of formulaic movie remakes, plastic music where rather than having music as integral to our culture over thousands of years, music is now plastic and disposable "sung" by artists under total corporate control, "reality TV" where the talentless are elevated to celebrity status...
People simply do not care anymore because even that human trait has been handed to the lawyers to sue somebody or some corporation when something goes wrong.
As a society, we are becoming more and more introverted - we don't socialise with our neighbours any more and we think that bringing up kids is about handing over responsibilities of parenthood to the teachers until they get home from school whereupon they're thrown a Macdonalds hamburger and sat if front of a games console for the evening. Then we wonder why teenage pregnancies, binge drinking and drugs are at an all time high...
The good thing about this is that either we continue this way until we destroy ourselves in which case we don't deserve to exist anyway or we rise up in revolt in the near future as we recognise how we've allowed ourselves to be coccooned and kept stupid for far too long...
Until we recognise that governments, law enforcement agencies, corporations and the RIAA are all just trying to control us, privacy is just one more (and possibly the last) facet of our lives that will disappear...
Who makes that operating system then?
Please don't pigeon-hole.
Because "people minus one" (at least) are gonna pay that much for it - the day I pay $7 for a beer (= £4 here in the UK) is the day beer gets served by the gallon.
I don't suppose you'd prefer "F*ck that annoying animated paperclip" then, would you?
How come Clippy, the one thing you want to crash, never does...
Big hug...
Ncurses???
None of that new-fangled "modern stuff" for me matey!!!
Green alphanumeric characters on a black screen with the occasional full stop, pipe or backtick and I'm happy...
Even as a Linux user, I'll accept that Windows 2000 improves on NT4's BSODs to a very great degree.
However, the hard disk issues with Windows 2000 really pisses me off...
Why is it that I can make a Ghost backup of a Windows 9x system, migrate it to other PCs with some hardware differences, I can invariably boot it up and just load the drivers I need.
Yet with Windows 2000, I follow the proceedures of using sysprep first before Ghosting yet every time I migrate the image to a PC with a different hard disk partition size or manufacturer, it fatally blue screens.
No, you can bloody well play xbill like the rest of us have to...
Since 1995 I've used Linux and I've never seen one blue screen. Not so much "kissing it goodbye", more like "blue screen of what?"
Look, I don't use MACs but I respect that people like them. So can't all us smelly Linux geeks have a big group hug with all the MAC people in their Nautica gear, united in the knowledge that neither of our groups finance the great demon in Redmond.
Stores are ripping us all of over this... don't pirate it but don't buy it either unless you can find a lower price that reflects the likely sales of it.
Perhaps John Carmack would like to comment on that...
Because the USA is currently the single biggest consumer market there is, no government wants to lose trade links with the US and so they all ultimately fear becoming isolated from the US from a perspective of imports & exports.
The only chance of there being a bigger consumer market is if the EU totally harmonises and becomes a fully-integrated European State - unfortunately, the EU is in a complete shambles because each member nation can veto on just about any resolution knowing full well that once they veto, they risk becoming isolated from the remaining states. While I admire the Netherlands making a stand on EU patent law, for example, they just run the risk of corporations simply refusing to trade with them in the future.
If the EU was organised enough to make a united stand on software patents, I guarantee they would fail the world over because trade would be hindered where patent law still applied and the EU would have an advantage.
Unfortunately, all governments are corrupt and financed by back-handers from the corporations so software patents will be enforced in the EU, given time.
It's really important not to lose focus over this whole patent/DRM/DMCA issue.
No matter which country makes what laws, the lowest common denominator for all of them is you and I, the consumer. We are the people that hand over money for these products and if we don't hand over the money, the products don't sell and marketing people start dying from coronaries.
Whatever you or I do or say now, the fact is that the global corporations have western governments in the palm of their hands through political sponsorship, lobbying and backhanded bribes.
Added to that, those same corporations, through hype, marketing and advertising, have turned their products into cool or must have products, the possession of which, you are told, somehow elevates you above the rest of the human race who don't own that product.
As consumers, all we need to do is just get some focus back in our lives and look at the wider picture when we spend our money on products that are heaped with patents & DMCA. I'm not suggesting abstinence (I like gadgets, games and music as much as the next man) but we need to be sure what it is our money ultimately finances before we buy any products.
I'm in my early forties now and my time for cool and conformity is over. But I look at the generations of people beneath me and I feel sorry for them because the majority seem to have become the puppets of the marketeers - designer clothes, Nike trainers, latest mobile phones, plasticised music - a bottomless pit of disposable income for the corporations.
Again, I don't want to deny anyone the right to spend their money how they want to but we must keep driving the message home that every time you buy a product, there is a risk that your money ends up limiting someone's freedom - either someone in the Third World's right to a decent income or your own rights to fair usage of products.
It's only when we grow up as consumers that we can stop buying heavily patented products & force the corporations to change...
To me, a good argument is the prime reson for coming here and the karma's nice but secondary.
If other's want karma that's up to them - in many way's I feel honoured to be plagiarised! :-)
A number of benchmark tests have proven that, CPU cycle-for-cycle, a well configured UNIX or Linux server can outperform a Windows server in just about every server task there is.
Surely the base reason for this is that the UNIX pholosophy is not to waste valuable computing resource of GUIs and graphical processes when you don't need to. In other words, have your UNIX server running in a console mode, perhaps with a web server or X-Server running, and just do all your administration of that server either through the console or via a web interface or remote GUI session.
It's ridiculous the Microsoft still haven't released a non-GUI server variant of their OSes, especially when, in my experience, a large proportion of blue screens and crashes are as a result of something going wrong in the graphics sub-system somewhere.
The only logical conclusion I can come up with is that there is a conspiracy between Microsoft & hardware manufacturers for MS to constantly waste CPU cycles to ensure that everyone is forced to upgrade their hardware constantly.
If MS release a patch that unwelds IE from the rest of Windows into an independent browser (thus closing the major security holes in it) and makes it fully HTML/XHTML standards compliant, that would be good enough because then every web site would also have to be standards compliant and we could all browse all web sites no matter what OS or browser we are using.
Please post your home address on Slashdot and we will ask the Firefox programmers to come over to your house and give you a personal demonstration. If they deliver the demonstration as a singing barber's shop quartet, will that impress you?
Is there any particular night of the week that's better for you?
Nobody, least of all the OSS "philosophers" give a damn about your "loyalty".
It's software, it's free, it's there but it's up to you to get off your butt and try it for yourself.
Don't be a jerk and go read a book on the subject.
Cookies are essentially passive data files that can be pulled by a web server to track what sites you've been to, who you are, etc - they need an interaction between a web browser and a web server to do anything.
Spyware refers to an independent program that gets downloaded through a scripting hole or an email that runs as a task in Windows and "phones home" all manner of information about you to somebody somewhere. Deinstall IE and a spyware program will still be there running away merrily to itself.
If you're stupid enough to manually run an untrusted program you've downloaded in Mozilla then that's the only way it will dump spyware onto your PC.
Absolute rubbish!!!
The only time XP SP2 will "cure the world of all known viruses" is if it includes a compulsory training course that teaches each and every dumb Joe Average Windows user how TCP/IP, the Internet & computer security actually works - and doesn't let them touch their PCs until they've passed a test on it!
Answer me this... how come every Windows using company is not affected by each virus & worm that comes out? How come many Windows home users never get a virus or worm?
The reason is that whilst Windows has poor security, a lot of very knowledgeable Windows admins out there "make the best of what they have" and managed to apply good, strong security policies to keep 99.99% of bad programs from their machines. It has nothing to do with service packs but everything to do with people who know what they are doing!
When MS release "SP2 to upgrade idiot PC owners to someone who understands a little how computers work", that's when things will start getting more secure, not before.
Not strictly true.
The development of TCP/IP allowed the ARPANet to happen (which later became the Internet follwing commercialisation in the late 80s).
UNIX-based servers formed the core of the ARPANet because TCP/IP has always been built into UNIX and UNIX was designed as a multi-user multi-platform network operating system.
Microsoft assumed that the world would use their poor quality NetBIOS/LanManager protocols until the early 90s when they were forced to include TCP/IP support into Windows - that was after they almost ruined Novell by worming their way into using IPX/SPX networking protocols.
In other words, a kludgy operating system had to be kludged even more to support TCP/IP. This is a legacy that has lived with MS since and while the support of TCP/IP has improved over the various Windows iterations, the fact is that the Windows architecture is not as suitable for Internet connectivity as UNIX.
Everything in UNIX is designed for simplicity - one program doing one task. If you need a network service, just turn it on - if you don't, turn it off.
Where UNIX has a weakness is the security model because, in ARPANet days, information was open and there was no need to secure servers. However, that has improved a thousandfold over the years with features like shadow passwords, better authentication models and secure protocols. The simplistic security model of "you, those you trust and the rest of the world" now works to it's advantage because it's very easy to apply to a system - the difficult part is knowing all the potential holes to apply it to that can only come from experience.
If Windows was not an Internet OS today, we would still have crackers and security exploits on UNIX. However, there would be less of it because fewer crackers would be clever enough to break into a UNIX system and whilst there might be the occasional worm program, email viruses simple would not exist.
I'm sure that a lot of the community will look upon MS a little more favourably if and when that happens.
However, the design of Windows is, in itself, flawed in terms of features like the registry (which ultimately limits speed & efficiency by virtue of its fragmentation and growth) and by the deep integration of apps and APIs that allow gateways deep into the operating system. There is therefore only so much that can be fixed in Windows - I suspect MS already know this which is why Longhorn will, I assume, be a big change architecturally from Windows.
On the other hand, it is not just security & efficiency that deters a large proportion of the Slashdot community from liking/supporting Microsoft. What is of more major concern, myself included, is the fact that MS want to take complete control of the PC platform from an OS perspective to the point where they, through DRM, will control what all of us can and cannot do with our PCs.
DRM is touted as a security technology but, beneath the hype, is simply a way of imposing a rental model on each and every user - Microsoft wants to be seen as a "utility company", renting software to their users because that means guaranteed income. That is the ultimate Microsoft goal.
Unfortunately, as a 21st century society, the majority of us are turning into mindless sheep who are more than happy to hand over our responsibilities to governments and corporations rather than accept those responsibilities ourselves - that includes the data on our PCs.
No, I'm not saying that all Microsoft users are mindless sheep because, if they were, MS would have no need to conceal their desires for control beneath clever marketing and I hope that as MS's plot gradually gets more uncovered, Windows users will make valued decisions as to whether or not to allow MS that level of control over what they do.
Myself, I've used DOS and Windows out of convenience but not because I particularly like either. Fortunately, I got exposed to UNIX quite early on in my career and moved into Linux quite naturally as a result. Now I use Linux about 70% of my time and I have vowed that Windows 2000 will be the last MS operating system I ever use unless there is a distinct policy change by Microsoft to adopt open file formats and protocols.
I can honestly say that the harder MS make it, the more I will fight to maintain my personal freedoms in computing - even to the point where if there was no choice other than Microsoft, I would trash my PCs and go live on an isolated island somewhere and back to pen and paper.
Now I'll have to wait a little while longer to have another Microsoft operating system to neither install or use...
The fact is that the cellular providers, like Vodafone and Orange in the UK, are now totally in fear as to what WLANs and SIP is going to do to their profits as a result of their years of overcharging customers to make cellular calls - in future, just imagine going to a SIP provider (probably an ISP) and sending calls over cheap WLANs & the Internet from VoIP/SIP endpoints as opposed to expensive tariff G3 networks.
Anyone who lives in the UK will already have seen the adverts where a particular provider (Vodafone? I can't remember which one it is) is offering free calls between business cellular handsets now - purely because of their fear of revenue loss.
"Push to talk" is just another feature the G3 providers invented to try to keep the cellular gimmick alive - it just happens to work over SIP also.
Personally, I believe the cellular providers have ripped us all of with expensive tariffs for far too long now and it's good to see that they're going to have to fight for any penny of profit they get now.
This is Prostetnic Borg-o Gates of the Galactic Microsoft Planning Council.
We are about to build a Galactic Longhorn Expressway through your system and, regretably, your Open Source has been scheduled for demolition.
Plans have been on display at 1 Microsoft Way for 5 of your Earth years, locked in a filing cabinet in a disused lavatory with a sign on the front saying "Beware of the DMCA".
The demolition will take slighly more than 2 of your Earth decades, just as soon as we've got XP Service Pack 2 working.
Prostetnic Ballmer will be passing amongst you shortly with a collection box into which you may deposit your Linux CDs and free software floppy disks as part of the amnesty.
Thank you for your time...
I suspect we'll have more "declarations of intent" from MS over the next couple of years so that we don't forget about Longhorn, like:
"Gates says 640GB should be enough memory for anyone running Longhorn"
"Ballmer dresses in a tu-tu and chants 'Longhorn' repeatedly on stage at an MS Developer conference"
"Microsoft say Longhorn will be more secure than Windows"
etc.
I don't know about "Longhorn" but thinking about it just gives me a "floppy"...