Yes, I have an email address spambait@[my-isp.tld]. I use it when I sign up for anything. I expected it to get slammed by spam when I created it, but it hasn't had even one since I started it a year ago.
I keep thinking I should see if bait@[my-isp.tld] is free and seeing if it's getting all the spam that spambait is supposed to be getting. (But of course I don't really care.)
My "real" email, my_name@[my-isp.tld] is getting an occasional spam even though only my friends and family use it. I even get a couple of porn spams.:(
By the way, as has been pointed out the article is about directed inquiry emails. It talks about the assumption that someone else on the To: list will answer the question. But the spam I've accidentally looked at usually has just me in the To: field and the email is personalized for me with my name as guessed by the spambot software, so this article really has nothing to do with spam at all.
One might theorize that off-balance discs, cracked/scored/otherwise-damaged media, and just plain bad luck might cause things to go dangerously amiss even at current speeds.
I've been a bit paranoid about drives 32x and higher for a while now. When I'm working at a computer with one (I'm a tech), I'm conscious of where my eyes and face are in relation to the CD plane and keep my head away if my face is in the same plane.
I haven't had any CD's break in the drive, but I figure if it does the shrapnel can damn well break through the plastic front panel at those speeds. And I know I've seen cracked and abused CD's. It's just a matter of time before someone gets hurt.
I don't like the fast drives anyway. Anything over 8x or 16x spends too much time spinning up and makes too much noise. I got hold of an old SCSI NEC MultiSpin 6x CDROM and I swear that thing is faster than my 16x no-name IDE CDROM.
Re:Check this out
on
Forbes on Linux
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Netscape 4.7 wouldn't do anything, either. But I fired up the ole trusty {cough cough} IE 5.5 and there's a drop-down menu under business, the last entry being a big Microsoft logo that happens to end up directly above Linus Torvalds' highlighted name in the article.
Although I personally feel debian will stand the test of time, resisting red hat for supremacy.
Do you mean commercially? Did you pay for Debian? I didn't. I didn't pay for RedHat, either, but I hear they are selling a few copies here and there. The slashdot-referenced article earlier today about HP and Debian kept mentioning Debian for internal use.
Or do you mean stand the test of time as the geek's uber-distro?
From the article: Tux is wearing his special outfit in honor of the first annual 'wIndependence Day' -- a special celebration which takes place this year on July 4th.
I find it mildly disturbing to try to make a publicity event coincide with a national holiday, or at least in the way they are trying to borrow from the real holiday.
I'm not about to write my congressman about it or stage a protest, and I realize retailers run 4th of July sales for everything imaginable, but there's just something about the way they're co-opting the holiday that bothers me.
As long as we don't play with "fines to the middle, free parking gets the cash" rules. That was too cool when I was 8, but it sucks now that I'm 32. But $400 for landing on Go is okay.
And if AC gets the car, then I want the dog.
(Oops, i just got trolled and posted a bad, stupid, redundant joke. Oh well, this is my second day being a registered Slashdot user.)
Actually I think it's the Slashdot rush that's to blame: "I've got to get this typed and posted quickly before someone else says the same thing and I get modded down for being redundant!" So people (or at least I) make stupid grammar and spelling mistakes or just word ideas poorly.
"click the Windows Update item under the Start Menu once a week to keep your refrigerator up and running"
You're not taking this quite far enough:
Toaster: Please enter your Passport (TM) Login
(...)
Welcome, Jim! How do you want your toast today?
Me: (Selects light brown)
Toaster: Thank you, Jim! . ..
Jim, I'm sorry, but your XBox gaming subscription is two days late. I will be unable to prepare your toast until your account is in order. Choose an account to pay this from:
A) Checking
B) Savings
C) IRA withdrawal (early penalties apply)
D) Open a Microsoft(TM) World bank credit account! Jim, this is quick and easy, and the interest is only 42% APR. You won't pay anything for the first month, and all your home Microsoft appliances will automatically deduct their usage fees from this account!
Me: (Selecting A)
Toaster: . ..
Thank you! (. ..)
Jim! Please click here to update to Microsoft(TM) Toast 3.4c! For only a nominal increase in rental fee, this required upgrade (refer to your EULA), you get the added capability of Microsoft(TM) YummyToast, in which the EULA allows you to add cinnamon and sugar or a fruit spread instead (MS(TM) Refrigerator also requires upgrade for EULA to allow these items in Microsoft(TM) HomeNecessities); this is a vast improvement over last year's NumNumToast with butter, Microsoft(TM) "I can't believe I ever used anything else besides Microsoft VeggieTales vegetable oil spread!" or cream cheese.
Me: (Throws toaster accross room.)
Security System: Jim! I see your toaster is in need of service! I'll have your Microsoft(TM) MediaPhone dial support immediately! (Connection charges apply. Average hold time: 3 hours. Estimated time to technician visit: two weeks.)
Not to flame you here.. I think your post is well-reasoned.
Thank you.
Instead, I suspect the goal here is to simply punch holes in the financial hull of the goodship XBOX.
A noble goal! Seriously, I can buy that explanation, too.
You didn't say who you think is punching that hole. Sony? (Same industry) Apple? (General hatred; but they might have asked for Darwin-on-XBox) A Linux vendor? (Not sure how this would help IBM or Red Hat; can't think of who else has that much cash) Or maybe a PVR, satellite, or home automation vendor that thinks XBox & UltimateTV are the beginnings of a major Microsoft invasion into their turf? (Something I've believed since XBox came out. I think Microsoft wants to take over the entire house and has a plan--proably envisioning a Passport login for your toaster oven. "How do you want your toast today?")
AH! I know who! X-10.com! They have the money (they must; they can buy every pop-up, pop-under and side story ad on the internet), and they don't want Microsoft cameras that will plug into the XBox USB ports or via ethernet-wireless gateway. That's the ticket.
Seriously again, if it's the "disrupt Microsoft" strategy then is it a direct competitor of the XBox trying to kick them out of the market or another company that feels threatened in a different market and wants to punch Microsoft in a soft spot?
If you could develop an interface to the GPU and video memory, you could use the graphics chip in some rendering farms or for other, more generic vector calculations. Who says you have to use a video chip for playing games or even displaying graphics?
I'm going to wander quite outside my area of actual knowledge here, but what the heck, this is Slashdot.
GPU's are designed to render, rotate, etc. polygon models with bitmap skins, "tactile" textures, light, shadow and fog in real time. I'm not sure offhand if you can actually get the results of their mathematical calculations directly. I've seen screen captures and videos of 3D-rendered scenes (games), so you can at least capture the 2-D viewable result.
To render, say, a Pixar movie with the GPU probably wouldn't be feasible (in my uniformed assessment). Since the GPU's are designed for real time, I doubt they can render to production quality given any longer length of time. I was about to go on about the resolution not being enough for production, but if it's a cluster of XBox GPU's, then perhaps it could use one centralized 3D model and have each GPU render part of the scene, to be later stiched together. That would be cool if it could work, but I still doubt that the rendering quality would be sufficient and I wonder if a 3D scene rendered over an array of XBoxes would place light sources and reflective surfaces too far out of some of the GPUs' scopes to render properly.
As far as non-rendering work by the GPU, I seriously doubt 3D GPU's can be coerced to do general-purpose calculations like a CPU or FPU does.
Probably not worth it in the end, but it would be "fun".
I heartily agree there!
After my post, I'm a little more optimistic that this could be done in a much-less-than-Disney/Pixar/Dreamworks-quality way, and in a way that a group of XBoxer's could have a party and leave their cluster creating and stitching a homemade 3D video overnight.
I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean something like a 3x3 arrangement of 27" TV's set up to make one big picture?
If you're proposing using 1 XBox per TV for such a display using 3D rendering I think you'd need to have the master 3D model on one box, thereby using only one XBox CPU for real-time modelling (of course all GPU's would be jammin'); I can't imagine offhand how to implement a distributed 3D model and distributed display, or even if that's possible that the inter-XBox communication would be fast enough. Without the need for a mod chip and with using real-time high-performance 3D rendering I might imagine this working out cheaper than PC's with high-end 3D cards. (Not counting if you grab used PII's with AGP motherboards.)
However, if you're just using such an array for a 2D display I would imagine--since I'm too lazy to investigate--there exists a VGA-to-NTSC adapter that would drive a TV array from a video card, and I would suspect that it would be cheaper than 1 XBox per TV. (9 Xbox * $200 = $1800. Throw in hub and network & power cabling.) Add PC's, dual-head card or 2nd video cards as needed to scale up.
I'm not sure what else you might mean by "composite images." I was imagining a collage or blend of some sort, but that can be done before feeding it to a display adapter [array].
Nevertheless, to do it with XBoxes would be a geeky cool achievement if not necessarily "the best way".
I'm curious about your project. Do you have a link or description?
When cars were widely available, new laws certainly came into effect.
And with steam engines came the locomotives and a need for standardizing time across time zones.
Technology isn't as revolutionary as some make it out to be, but it does change things. A comparison is made to telephone calls in the article, but no RIAA was created to prevent me from playing Van Halen on my phone and letting you record it. Why? Quality, convenience blah blah, etc.
I think in the case of the internet and laws with regard to Intellectual Property, the existing laws are ambiguous and/or insufficient for today's reality.
Deep-linking, terms of use, digital music/video/software are in a new venue with the internet. Owning a song was an easier concept with piano rolls, LP's, tapes and even CD's, but now some companies are trying to take away usage rights from us with the new technology when the new technology makes usage easier.
The right to swing my fist ends at your nose, but the argument can be hard to define when I buy a product from you and you tell me I can only use it a certain way and I have no recourse if it breaks. (Copy protected CD's/DVD's/etc.) I don't recall any book publishers printing books with ink that will fade in a certain number of years or if you cross a regional border.
And I don't recall a phone number having terms of use that were revealed after you dialed it.
I don't want to troll into yet another IP/RIAA/MPAA/KaZaA/Napster/whatever debate, but I just want to acknowledge that there is need for new precedent in the internet media. It's not controllable or accountable in the same way as communication was in the past, and society and the legal systems have to deal with that.
A cluster of 1000 Xboxes would be mighty cheap computing power.
I'm too lazy to actually calculate this, but I have to wonder about the $$ feasibility of an XBox cluster. Okay, I could believe it's a better value to hack an XBox than to buy a PC for gaming, if you don't take future upgrades into account. (GeForce 6's and Radeon 12000's probably won't have a USB or ethernet interface; just a guess.)
But if you want to make the ubiquitous Beowulf cluster of XBoxen to crunch numbers, is it really more cost effective? Even if someone figures out how to put Linux on there without a hardware mod, you need to consider that the graphics and sound capabilities built-in won't be used in the cluster.
Don't compare an XBox cluster to a cluster of Linux gaming machines but to a cluster of bare-bones dual-cpu boxen or rackmount servers with no or minimal video, sound and i/o capability. Plus compare the power consumption, cooling and space requrements of the two since this becomes nontrivial with a cluster.
Plus, who with such high number-crunching needs would put up with the dearth of hardware support for Linux on XBox. You can't just swap out a motherboard, power supply or ethernet card on those puppies, at least not as easily as a desktop, tower or rack PC.
I don't think an XBox cluster is reasonably feasible beyond the geek in me saying "that's so cool that someone did that!" However for us Linux geeks and gamers I'd love to have Linux on XBoxes. (Not necessarily to own one, before you Linux Dreamcasters jump on me.)
Many people are still saying everyone loses money on consoles, but my perception from my readings is that only Microsoft is losing money on console sales right now.
If Linux could run on XBox, Linux games could be developed for it, and they should be easily ported to/from PS2 Linux, right? But PS2 will run Linux without hardware modification.
So an XBox version of Linux (GNU/XBox?) would increase the perceived market penetration of Linux-capable consoles, therefore increasing developer interest, therefore encouraging more console Linux games.
However, since the XBox needs a hardware mod, an end user who wants the new killer Linux console game will be more inclined to buy a PS2.
Plus, if my perception that XBox is the only console still bleeding cash at each sale, this would further hurt Microsoft and benefit Sony.
(Customary IANAL declaration) Since Sony is based in Japan, wouldn't it be more difficult for Microsoft to find a reason and venue sue them if/when it is revealed they are the money source?
It's good to see people who are making a difference in the open source world and not just criticize it!
------
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Your sig changes the whole mood of your post. Funny, though!
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, I have an email address spambait@[my-isp.tld]. I use it when I sign up for anything. I expected it to get slammed by spam when I created it, but it hasn't had even one since I started it a year ago.
:(
I keep thinking I should see if bait@[my-isp.tld] is free and seeing if it's getting all the spam that spambait is supposed to be getting. (But of course I don't really care.)
My "real" email, my_name@[my-isp.tld] is getting an occasional spam even though only my friends and family use it. I even get a couple of porn spams.
By the way, as has been pointed out the article is about directed inquiry emails. It talks about the assumption that someone else on the To: list will answer the question. But the spam I've accidentally looked at usually has just me in the To: field and the email is personalized for me with my name as guessed by the spambot software, so this article really has nothing to do with spam at all.
One might theorize that off-balance discs, cracked/scored/otherwise-damaged media, and just plain bad luck might cause things to go dangerously amiss even at current speeds.
I've been a bit paranoid about drives 32x and higher for a while now. When I'm working at a computer with one (I'm a tech), I'm conscious of where my eyes and face are in relation to the CD plane and keep my head away if my face is in the same plane.
I haven't had any CD's break in the drive, but I figure if it does the shrapnel can damn well break through the plastic front panel at those speeds. And I know I've seen cracked and abused CD's. It's just a matter of time before someone gets hurt.
I don't like the fast drives anyway. Anything over 8x or 16x spends too much time spinning up and makes too much noise. I got hold of an old SCSI NEC MultiSpin 6x CDROM and I swear that thing is faster than my 16x no-name IDE CDROM.
Netscape 4.7 wouldn't do anything, either. But I fired up the ole trusty {cough cough} IE 5.5 and there's a drop-down menu under business, the last entry being a big Microsoft logo that happens to end up directly above Linus Torvalds' highlighted name in the article.
I'm sure it's a conspiracy.
(P.S. I'm at work and use Mozilla 1.0 at home.)
Although I personally feel debian will stand the test of time, resisting red hat for supremacy.
Do you mean commercially? Did you pay for Debian? I didn't. I didn't pay for RedHat, either, but I hear they are selling a few copies here and there. The slashdot-referenced article earlier today about HP and Debian kept mentioning Debian for internal use.
Or do you mean stand the test of time as the geek's uber-distro?
Just Curious
And I thought I was wasting time karma whoring on Slashdot! ;)
Okay, Dilbert and Mobius Lego structures are geeky cool.
From the article: Tux is wearing his special outfit in honor of the first annual 'wIndependence Day' -- a special celebration which takes place this year on July 4th.
I find it mildly disturbing to try to make a publicity event coincide with a national holiday, or at least in the way they are trying to borrow from the real holiday.
I'm not about to write my congressman about it or stage a protest, and I realize retailers run 4th of July sales for everything imaginable, but there's just something about the way they're co-opting the holiday that bothers me.
Monopoly is not necessarily a bad thing.
As long as we don't play with "fines to the middle, free parking gets the cash" rules. That was too cool when I was 8, but it sucks now that I'm 32. But $400 for landing on Go is okay.
And if AC gets the car, then I want the dog.
(Oops, i just got trolled and posted a bad, stupid, redundant joke. Oh well, this is my second day being a registered Slashdot user.)
>>Damn the English language at times...
>A bad workman blames his tools.
Actually I think it's the Slashdot rush that's to blame: "I've got to get this typed and posted quickly before someone else says the same thing and I get modded down for being redundant!" So people (or at least I) make stupid grammar and spelling mistakes or just word ideas poorly.
Oh, okay, maybe it's our egos that are to blame.
Or blame Sue. After all, she made the cosutmes.
"click the Windows Update item under the Start Menu once a week to keep your refrigerator up and running"
.
. .)
You're not taking this quite far enough:
Toaster: Please enter your Passport (TM) Login
(...)
Welcome, Jim! How do you want your toast today?
Me: (Selects light brown)
Toaster: Thank you, Jim! . .
Jim, I'm sorry, but your XBox gaming subscription is two days late. I will be unable to prepare your toast until your account is in order. Choose an account to pay this from:
A) Checking
B) Savings
C) IRA withdrawal (early penalties apply)
D) Open a Microsoft(TM) World bank credit account! Jim, this is quick and easy, and the interest is only 42% APR. You won't pay anything for the first month, and all your home Microsoft appliances will automatically deduct their usage fees from this account!
Me: (Selecting A)
Toaster: . .
Thank you! (. .
Jim! Please click here to update to Microsoft(TM) Toast 3.4c! For only a nominal increase in rental fee, this required upgrade (refer to your EULA), you get the added capability of Microsoft(TM) YummyToast, in which the EULA allows you to add cinnamon and sugar or a fruit spread instead (MS(TM) Refrigerator also requires upgrade for EULA to allow these items in Microsoft(TM) HomeNecessities); this is a vast improvement over last year's NumNumToast with butter, Microsoft(TM) "I can't believe I ever used anything else besides Microsoft VeggieTales vegetable oil spread!" or cream cheese.
Me: (Throws toaster accross room.)
Security System: Jim! I see your toaster is in need of service! I'll have your Microsoft(TM) MediaPhone dial support immediately! (Connection charges apply. Average hold time: 3 hours. Estimated time to technician visit: two weeks.)
(Feel free to continue this story. -Jim)
"I worry about what I call feature creep [. . .]"
:-)
And I thought they were talking about Windows!
Or Office. I think "feature creep" just became my new favorite nickname for Clippy and friends.
Not to flame you here.. I think your post is well-reasoned.
Thank you.
Instead, I suspect the goal here is to simply punch holes in the financial hull of the goodship XBOX.
A noble goal! Seriously, I can buy that explanation, too.
You didn't say who you think is punching that hole. Sony? (Same industry) Apple? (General hatred; but they might have asked for Darwin-on-XBox) A Linux vendor? (Not sure how this would help IBM or Red Hat; can't think of who else has that much cash) Or maybe a PVR, satellite, or home automation vendor that thinks XBox & UltimateTV are the beginnings of a major Microsoft invasion into their turf? (Something I've believed since XBox came out. I think Microsoft wants to take over the entire house and has a plan--proably envisioning a Passport login for your toaster oven. "How do you want your toast today?")
AH! I know who! X-10.com! They have the money (they must; they can buy every pop-up, pop-under and side story ad on the internet), and they don't want Microsoft cameras that will plug into the XBox USB ports or via ethernet-wireless gateway. That's the ticket.
Seriously again, if it's the "disrupt Microsoft" strategy then is it a direct competitor of the XBox trying to kick them out of the market or another company that feels threatened in a different market and wants to punch Microsoft in a soft spot?
If you could develop an interface to the GPU and video memory, you could use the graphics chip in some rendering farms or for other, more generic vector calculations. Who says you have to use a video chip for playing games or even displaying graphics?
I'm going to wander quite outside my area of actual knowledge here, but what the heck, this is Slashdot.
GPU's are designed to render, rotate, etc. polygon models with bitmap skins, "tactile" textures, light, shadow and fog in real time. I'm not sure offhand if you can actually get the results of their mathematical calculations directly. I've seen screen captures and videos of 3D-rendered scenes (games), so you can at least capture the 2-D viewable result.
To render, say, a Pixar movie with the GPU probably wouldn't be feasible (in my uniformed assessment). Since the GPU's are designed for real time, I doubt they can render to production quality given any longer length of time. I was about to go on about the resolution not being enough for production, but if it's a cluster of XBox GPU's, then perhaps it could use one centralized 3D model and have each GPU render part of the scene, to be later stiched together. That would be cool if it could work, but I still doubt that the rendering quality would be sufficient and I wonder if a 3D scene rendered over an array of XBoxes would place light sources and reflective surfaces too far out of some of the GPUs' scopes to render properly.
As far as non-rendering work by the GPU, I seriously doubt 3D GPU's can be coerced to do general-purpose calculations like a CPU or FPU does.
Probably not worth it in the end, but it would be "fun".
I heartily agree there!
After my post, I'm a little more optimistic that this could be done in a much-less-than-Disney/Pixar/Dreamworks-quality way, and in a way that a group of XBoxer's could have a party and leave their cluster creating and stitching a homemade 3D video overnight.
What if the cluster is used to composite images.
I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean something like a 3x3 arrangement of 27" TV's set up to make one big picture?
If you're proposing using 1 XBox per TV for such a display using 3D rendering I think you'd need to have the master 3D model on one box, thereby using only one XBox CPU for real-time modelling (of course all GPU's would be jammin'); I can't imagine offhand how to implement a distributed 3D model and distributed display, or even if that's possible that the inter-XBox communication would be fast enough. Without the need for a mod chip and with using real-time high-performance 3D rendering I might imagine this working out cheaper than PC's with high-end 3D cards. (Not counting if you grab used PII's with AGP motherboards.)
However, if you're just using such an array for a 2D display I would imagine--since I'm too lazy to investigate--there exists a VGA-to-NTSC adapter that would drive a TV array from a video card, and I would suspect that it would be cheaper than 1 XBox per TV. (9 Xbox * $200 = $1800. Throw in hub and network & power cabling.) Add PC's, dual-head card or 2nd video cards as needed to scale up.
I'm not sure what else you might mean by "composite images." I was imagining a collage or blend of some sort, but that can be done before feeding it to a display adapter [array].
Nevertheless, to do it with XBoxes would be a geeky cool achievement if not necessarily "the best way".
I'm curious about your project. Do you have a link or description?
Me: I'll bet you all my Slashdot karma.
;)
WildcatJ: So, in other words, no?
Wait! I take that back! (I just got some Karma.)
(Even 3 mod points is not worth betting on MS against Linux hackers.)
When cars were widely available, new laws certainly came into effect.
And with steam engines came the locomotives and a need for standardizing time across time zones.
Technology isn't as revolutionary as some make it out to be, but it does change things. A comparison is made to telephone calls in the article, but no RIAA was created to prevent me from playing Van Halen on my phone and letting you record it. Why? Quality, convenience blah blah, etc.
I think in the case of the internet and laws with regard to Intellectual Property, the existing laws are ambiguous and/or insufficient for today's reality.
Deep-linking, terms of use, digital music/video/software are in a new venue with the internet. Owning a song was an easier concept with piano rolls, LP's, tapes and even CD's, but now some companies are trying to take away usage rights from us with the new technology when the new technology makes usage easier.
The right to swing my fist ends at your nose, but the argument can be hard to define when I buy a product from you and you tell me I can only use it a certain way and I have no recourse if it breaks. (Copy protected CD's/DVD's/etc.) I don't recall any book publishers printing books with ink that will fade in a certain number of years or if you cross a regional border.
And I don't recall a phone number having terms of use that were revealed after you dialed it.
I don't want to troll into yet another IP/RIAA/MPAA/KaZaA/Napster/whatever debate, but I just want to acknowledge that there is need for new precedent in the internet media. It's not controllable or accountable in the same way as communication was in the past, and society and the legal systems have to deal with that.
A cluster of 1000 Xboxes would be mighty cheap computing power.
I'm too lazy to actually calculate this, but I have to wonder about the $$ feasibility of an XBox cluster. Okay, I could believe it's a better value to hack an XBox than to buy a PC for gaming, if you don't take future upgrades into account. (GeForce 6's and Radeon 12000's probably won't have a USB or ethernet interface; just a guess.)
But if you want to make the ubiquitous Beowulf cluster of XBoxen to crunch numbers, is it really more cost effective? Even if someone figures out how to put Linux on there without a hardware mod, you need to consider that the graphics and sound capabilities built-in won't be used in the cluster.
Don't compare an XBox cluster to a cluster of Linux gaming machines but to a cluster of bare-bones dual-cpu boxen or rackmount servers with no or minimal video, sound and i/o capability. Plus compare the power consumption, cooling and space requrements of the two since this becomes nontrivial with a cluster.
Plus, who with such high number-crunching needs would put up with the dearth of hardware support for Linux on XBox. You can't just swap out a motherboard, power supply or ethernet card on those puppies, at least not as easily as a desktop, tower or rack PC.
I don't think an XBox cluster is reasonably feasible beyond the geek in me saying "that's so cool that someone did that!" However for us Linux geeks and gamers I'd love to have Linux on XBoxes. (Not necessarily to own one, before you Linux Dreamcasters jump on me.)
Project A:
Task 1: Replacement BIOS - $55,000
Task 2: Kernel and XFree drivers - 25,000
Task 3: Kernel logic: FATX and miscellaneous - 10,000
Task 4: XBE bootloader $10,000
Project B:
Run unsigned code on an Xbox without any hardware modification - $100,000
Running FreeCiv on an XBox: Priceless.
(Sorry, I had to. Hope nobody beat me to it.)
I was thinking of Sony.
Many people are still saying everyone loses money on consoles, but my perception from my readings is that only Microsoft is losing money on console sales right now.
If Linux could run on XBox, Linux games could be developed for it, and they should be easily ported to/from PS2 Linux, right? But PS2 will run Linux without hardware modification.
So an XBox version of Linux (GNU/XBox?) would increase the perceived market penetration of Linux-capable consoles, therefore increasing developer interest, therefore encouraging more console Linux games.
However, since the XBox needs a hardware mod, an end user who wants the new killer Linux console game will be more inclined to buy a PS2.
Plus, if my perception that XBox is the only console still bleeding cash at each sale, this would further hurt Microsoft and benefit Sony.
(Customary IANAL declaration) Since Sony is based in Japan, wouldn't it be more difficult for Microsoft to find a reason and venue sue them if/when it is revealed they are the money source?
My first Meta bet will be that the Linux hackers beat the MS people. Any takers?
I'll bet you all my Slashdot karma.
Especially since he's not just selling Snort; he's selling the experience: Sourcefire powered by Snort!
------
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Your sig changes the whole mood of your post. Funny, though!