Connecting my Bluetooth GPRS phone to my Wi-Fi enabled mac laptop and adding a couple of routes would accomplish exactly this. Is this actually patentable?
How the hell is the trivial and obvious combination of widely available consumer technology patentable?
Will we need a patent license to plug a phone into a laptop, if the laptop has a Wifi card in it?
Will my zaurus w/GPRS card and built-in wifi be an infringing device?
I mean really, it's not like you need a pHD. to connect to two wireless networks at the same time on the same device.
First, get yourself a couple of Lego Mindstorms kits (so you have all the motors ans sensors you might require), and work up a useful collision-avoidin/path-cutting bot in your living room. maybe put it on a big sheet of paper, arm it with a felt-tip-pen, and tweak it's path-cutting algorithms like that.
Then, if you want to do more complex things - IR rangefinding, ultrasonics etc. strap a PalmPilot, Zaurus or some other PDS with IR on it and feed the midstorms controller unit with instructions from that.
Once you have it more-or-less foolproof (and you will probably want to run a wire round the maximum extents of your lawn and have a hall-effect or similar sensor pick up on it and kill the mower if it breaches that boundary) - then you can think about attaching a proper mower body and blade to it.
Then you'll probably want to port the whole thing to an embedded Linux u-Controller, and sell it for enormous profits.
You can find a drugs on the shelves of every gas station and convenience store, every supermarket and walmart etc. These people are DRUG DEALERS.
Thats right, Walmart and 7/11 are DRUG DEALERS. They, by definition, use DRUG DEALER TACTICS to push their product (e.g. they put them on a shelf and aggresively compete on price and/or convenience so people can buy them if they want them)
All these stores, and the people behind the counters, are DRUG DEALERS!
Thats right, they DEAL in DRUGS! oh the horror, that DRUGS might be AVAILABLE for PURCHASE.
Alcohol, aspirin, nasal decongestants, cough syrup - all of these things are DRUGS and when you buy them you buy them from a DRUG DEALER.
So if Microsoft wants to go before a court of law and claim that being compared to giant multinational pharmaceutical businesses (DRUG DEALERS), gas stations (also DRUG DEALERS), supermarkets (yes, DRUG DEALERS too) and, lets not forget the american institution of the DRUGSTORE - is defamation, well, i think they have a lot more money than sense.
I mean really, people have been working microbes and selectively breeding organisms for thousands of years.
Modern industrial processes and practices have essentially supressed the knowledge in the general population of how our foodstuffs, beverages, drugs and other products are produced, and attempt to disguise as completely as possible the materials, and biological processes that are used in their production.
As a result, when sucking back a 6-pack of beer we don't think about the bacteria and biological reactions necessary to make it.
We don't think, when eating cheese, that maybe we're exposing ourselves to potentially fatal biological agents.
When you light up a cigarette, you don't really think about the centuries of genetic engineering that has resulted in the smooth taste of your laramie.
Bacteria is bad because some bacteria will kill us? Is this really the US government's message?
That learning for yourself and practicing the same techniques that are some of the foundations of modern civilisation is somehow wrong?
If its not in a can or a plastic package with pretty branding, it can't be right?
If its not part of a commercial process, it should be banned?
This is a massive over-reaction by the government - A corporation doing exactly the same thing is not in breach of the law.
When Jesus Christ turned water into wine, was he a frickin bio-terrorist?
Whats ultimately needed is a standard ABI for the linux kernel - in this way drivers compiled for say, 2.4.8 would still work on 2.4.26.
Binary drivers (regardless of whether the source was available or not) could be distributed, and it would, in general, make it a lot easier for users to understand and manage the drivers present on their system.
However, this meets resistance because:
a) the linux kernel is rearchitected too often to preserve an ABI across more than 4 point-versions, it seems.
b) Kernel developers are unwary of giving manufacturers an easy way to ship binary drivers, thus making it easier for them to make the choice to withhold source. - Be aware it does not preclude this choice.
c) The idea is that all drivers are maintained as part of the kernel - breaking out driver development and support, with the associated organisational, management and security problems that poses is too big a risk to take - If all drivers were like NVidia drivers, for example, almost nothing could possibly work 'out of the box' in most Linux distributions because of licensing issues.
It should be remembered that Linux has not been built solely to provide a platform for people who are sick of Windows who want something that works exactly the same but for free, and as such, the goals of the kernel developers, and others associated with developing the core pieces of Linux, are often quite different to the average clueless user who 'just wants it to work'.
Personally, I think the right way to approach this is to maintain and promote a 'driver interfacing layer', which can be added by distros to the stock kernel, and provide a simple way to package and distribute binary drivers - similar in function to the NDISWrapper package for Windows network card drivers.
If binary Windows drivers can be wrapped and made to work with the kernel, surely this is a possibility for binary Linux drivers too.
Don't try and force a specific way of doing things on the kernel developers - if the idea has true technical merit, and offers real benefits to the user without compromising other aspects of the kernel, it will be adopted in time.
Because the vast majority of computer users prefer to run their mouths instead of helping to fix problems, and because nobody develops for the Mac.
Well, obviously some people develop for the Mac, but because Cocoa is unsupported on any other platform, that most of the professional Mac developers' core skills are in Carbon (an API with no future) and that the open source philosophy has attracted most of those who are left (i.e. those who are passionate enough to work for free) to Linux-focussed development, means that Mac-using developers who are actually working on Mac-oriented projects are few and far between, and generally not interested in porting software that doesn't already use (the admittedly very nice) Objective-C language, Cocoa API and tools, and nobody who doesnt already have a Mac is able to develop native applications for the Mac, even if they wanted to.
There are of course a few other options (Mac-native Qt for example, GNUStep) but neither of these is a good solution, and the general problem is that mac users are just that - users, and even the geeks who think MacOS X is great (like me) tend to develop for Linux, because of the vibrant community, which Apple actually used to have but has long since lost.
Apple thus far has been doing a really good job at providing the tools, the technology and the open attitude to bring that community back, but I don't see it today.
Its not like the GIMP Developers *don't want* to make a usable app, its that nobody who is bitterly complaining about how unusable the GIMP is seems to have the ability to produce a useful specification for how it *should* work.
By that I don't mean 'Rip off everything about Photoshop's UI and make the GIMP a lawsuit target', but rather start a project which provides a detailed set of interface conventions, specifications and mockups that will provide an easy way for the existing GIMP team, or a new team to put an artist-friendly face on the GIMP, and to serve as a guideline and UI spec for other atrist-friendly Open Source tools to conform to.
If the name should be changed, then suggest a new name as part of the project , instead of just saying 'The GIMP's name sucks, you should use something else'
Personally, I find GIMP 2.x quite usable, but Open Source is not about providing you a product, its about you participating in making a product.
If you don't realise that, or can't understand that, then i feel sorry for you, but you're whining is worthlesss if you can't even frame your complaints in a way that might get noticed by the GIMP developers (e.g. on the gimp-users mailing list)
Please shut up and go use photoshop.
If you don't want to help, then you really are better off paying for, or stealing a commercial product.
People's mentality is that the software they use is 'someone else's problem'.
Open Source doesnt work like that.
Until people realise that they have the ability to change their own software for the better, and get off their asses and do it, then they will of course be better served by paying for someone else to do this stuff for them.
Open Source owes you nothing.
So keep saying it will never catch on, keep saying it wont ever be as good as commercial alternatives, keep whining, bitching and moaning, i hope that wasting your time and energy like this makes you happy.
Meanwhile, the people who are actually working on Free/Open Source software will simply continue to get on with it, the same way they have been doing it, and quite successfully, for years now.
I can't really see what Sun has to gain from open-sourcing Java either.
The open-source community is more than capable of building it's own Java clone e.g. Kaffe and supporting Java technologies e.g. gcj if it wants to, and Sun have every right to hold onto their Java implementation, if they feel it best suits their business goals.
I know I am quite happy using the Java packages provided by Sun and IBM, and agree with McNealy in that IBM should shut their mouth about open source Java unless they are prepared to open source their technologies as well.
Sun is most likely concerned, and rightly so, about the prospect of IBM pulling an 'Eclipse' on the core JVM.
IBM is a ruthless, anti-competitive mega-corporation, and it is easy to forget that in light of the SCO debacle etc., where they are portrayed as the good guys.
I dont think the community at large has any real stake in this particular battle - The Java standards are open, we are free to implement them in whatever way we see fit. If you want to see open source Java, then support the open source Java efforts like Kaffe, and leave Sun alone.
Normally, i'm quite a Sun-detractor, but I think in this case, they are being unfairly beaten up on about an issue that is quite clearly a non-issue.
If you want Java you can get it for free, and if you want to implement a VM that runs Java code, you are also free to do that, supported by detailed information and specification by Sun.
I doubt most of the people baying for blood over this issue would have any interest in improving Java were it to be released as open source, and it's not like there arent plenty of existant open source Java-related projects that couldn't do with your help anyway.
And I can say that it the most obtuse, cryptic product I have ever had to wrestle with.
There was absolutely no way that 'normal' users were ever going to be able to make use of this product for the 'opportunistic encryption' the project aimed for, I honestly don't think you could design a more opaque and confusing piece of software if you were actually trying.
That being said, once you get over the configuration hurdles and realise you will have to employ script-based kludges to do simple things e.g. get it to route packets though multiple tunnels terminating on the same local IP address, it mostly works quite well.
Microsoft's console wasnt unsuccessful because of it had a hard drive, it was unsuccessful because nobody thinks Microsoft is in any way cool, fun or interesting.
Microsoft has taken the personal computer and made it into something that the average user is honestly scared of using.
People generally dont look at their computers as a powerful tool, but instead as something they are actually afraid to touch, lest it break.
'Microsoft' translates to 'fear and anxiety' in the mind of most people I know, and thats what is responsible for lackluster XBox sales, not the hardware.
Their previous strategy of just shovelling packages onto the CDs and not even bothering to test if they worked together was going so well.
I mean really, who *doesn't* want to spend a week identifying and ironing out all the bugs, and downloading several hundred megabytes of patches as soon as you install Mandrake Linux?
Surely thats part of the 'Mandrake user experience' that makes it such a wonderful product.
What are you trying to say, that if the paper is free it must be inferior?
I suppose next youre going to say something like:
'Ive been pounding the table here for a year or so saying theres no free lunch, and there is going to be a day of reckoning for every newspaper that thinks they are going to try and sell a free model.'
This might sound like an oddball choice of language for game programming, but since Perl has bindings for GTK, SDL and probably anything else you might want to use to construct a game, it has all the basics in place.
Documentation for the language is widepspread, copious and mature, and perl also makes a great general purpose language.
Also, Perl's syntax and language constructs tend to favour people who are exploring and playing, rather than implementing a rigid design they already have all mapped out in their head.
This sort of goes against what is considered good programming practice - you should be clear about what you want to implement before you implement it - but kids arent interested in what is good programming practice - it is far better to learn this yourself the hard way than to have a set of rigid doctrines bashed into you from the start, in my view.
Perl comfortably supports pretty much any approach you take to getting the job done, and thats just one reason why I love Perl and prefer it over more structured (but equally useful) languages like Python.
I have one of these in the store-room - my monitor died, but when i find another mac monitor she'll be up and running again.
I got Apache and Perl running on it, and it was a useful web server.
A/UX is an ancient and strange UNIX, but it has MacOS 6/7 compatibility, bundled X-Windows, and the IIfx is a pretty nice box for its age - I have 3 graphics cards in it.
Its interesting - Apple had the equivalent of MacOS X ('Real' UNIX underpinning the 'Classic' MacOS environment) over 10 years ago, but dropped it completely, before buying the same thing back off NeXT, at great expense and calling it 'New'
Am I wrong, or would 95% of each $699 SCO license fee go to Novell, since they retain ownership of Sys V UNIX?
Theres something fishy going on with SCO and Novell, with Novell coming out of this smelling like roses - I have to wonder if this whole SCO sham is simply a way to boost Novell's image as ' a good guy' at the expense of a company that was insignificant and dying anyway (SCO).
Anyone else finding it difficult to understand these dealings?
They are monopolistic, price-gouging wankers, and since the NZ government backed down and ran for the hills on local loop unbundling, the majority of New Zealanders will continue to be grossly overcharged for internet usage, phone service, and anything else Telecom can manage to gain a monopoly over.
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Connecting my Bluetooth GPRS phone to my Wi-Fi enabled mac laptop and adding a couple of routes would accomplish exactly this. Is this actually patentable?
How the hell is the trivial and obvious combination of widely available consumer technology patentable?
Will we need a patent license to plug a phone into a laptop, if the laptop has a Wifi card in it?
Will my zaurus w/GPRS card and built-in wifi be an infringing device?
I mean really, it's not like you need a pHD. to connect to two wireless networks at the same time on the same device.
Come on Bill, lets see you put your money (its not like you don't have enough of that) where your mouth is.
Your 48 hours starts now.
First, get yourself a couple of Lego Mindstorms kits (so you have all the motors ans sensors you might require), and work up a useful collision-avoidin/path-cutting bot in your living room. maybe put it on a big sheet of paper, arm it with a felt-tip-pen, and tweak it's path-cutting algorithms like that.
Then, if you want to do more complex things - IR rangefinding, ultrasonics etc. strap a PalmPilot, Zaurus or some other PDS with IR on it and feed the midstorms controller unit with instructions from that.
Once you have it more-or-less foolproof (and you will probably want to run a wire round the maximum extents of your lawn and have a hall-effect or similar sensor pick up on it and kill the mower if it breaches that boundary) - then you can think about attaching a proper mower body and blade to it.
Then you'll probably want to port the whole thing to an embedded Linux u-Controller, and sell it for enormous profits.
'DRUG DEALERS' is what Pfizer etc. are.
You can find a drugs on the shelves of every gas station and convenience store, every supermarket and walmart etc. These people are DRUG DEALERS.
Thats right, Walmart and 7/11 are DRUG DEALERS. They, by definition, use DRUG DEALER TACTICS to push their product (e.g. they put them on a shelf and aggresively compete on price and/or convenience so people can buy them if they want them)
All these stores, and the people behind the counters, are DRUG DEALERS!
Thats right, they DEAL in DRUGS! oh the horror, that DRUGS might be AVAILABLE for PURCHASE.
Alcohol, aspirin, nasal decongestants, cough syrup - all of these things are DRUGS and when you buy them you buy them from a DRUG DEALER.
So if Microsoft wants to go before a court of law and claim that being compared to giant multinational pharmaceutical businesses (DRUG DEALERS), gas stations (also DRUG DEALERS), supermarkets (yes, DRUG DEALERS too) and, lets not forget the american institution of the DRUGSTORE - is defamation, well, i think they have a lot more money than sense.
if its true.
"Of course, I didn't do anything illegal."
What has that got to do with it? You can still be raided by the FBI, your computers taken, and never returned.
It doesn't matter even slightly if you have done anything or not.
I mean really, people have been working microbes and selectively breeding organisms for thousands of years.
Modern industrial processes and practices have essentially supressed the knowledge in the general population of how our foodstuffs, beverages, drugs and other products are produced, and attempt to disguise as completely as possible the materials, and biological processes that are used in their production.
As a result, when sucking back a 6-pack of beer we don't think about the bacteria and biological reactions necessary to make it.
We don't think, when eating cheese, that maybe we're exposing ourselves to potentially fatal biological agents.
When you light up a cigarette, you don't really think about the centuries of genetic engineering that has resulted in the smooth taste of your laramie.
Bacteria is bad because some bacteria will kill us? Is this really the US government's message?
That learning for yourself and practicing the same techniques that are some of the foundations of modern civilisation is somehow wrong?
If its not in a can or a plastic package with pretty branding, it can't be right?
If its not part of a commercial process, it should be banned?
This is a massive over-reaction by the government - A corporation doing exactly the same thing is not in breach of the law.
When Jesus Christ turned water into wine, was he a frickin bio-terrorist?
Whats ultimately needed is a standard ABI for the linux kernel - in this way drivers compiled for say, 2.4.8 would still work on 2.4.26.
Binary drivers (regardless of whether the source was available or not) could be distributed, and it would, in general, make it a lot easier for users to understand and manage the drivers present on their system.
However, this meets resistance because:
a) the linux kernel is rearchitected too often to preserve an ABI across more than 4 point-versions, it seems.
b) Kernel developers are unwary of giving manufacturers an easy way to ship binary drivers, thus making it easier for them to make the choice to withhold source. - Be aware it does not preclude this choice.
c) The idea is that all drivers are maintained as part of the kernel - breaking out driver development and support, with the associated organisational, management and security problems that poses is too big a risk to take - If all drivers were like NVidia drivers, for example, almost nothing could possibly work 'out of the box' in most Linux distributions because of licensing issues.
It should be remembered that Linux has not been built solely to provide a platform for people who are sick of Windows who want something that works exactly the same but for free, and as such, the goals of the kernel developers, and others associated with developing the core pieces of Linux, are often quite different to the average clueless user who 'just wants it to work'.
Personally, I think the right way to approach this is to maintain and promote a 'driver interfacing layer', which can be added by distros to the stock kernel, and provide a simple way to package and distribute binary drivers - similar in function to the NDISWrapper package for Windows network card drivers.
If binary Windows drivers can be wrapped and made to work with the kernel, surely this is a possibility for binary Linux drivers too.
Don't try and force a specific way of doing things on the kernel developers - if the idea has true technical merit, and offers real benefits to the user without compromising other aspects of the kernel, it will be adopted in time.
Because the vast majority of computer users prefer to run their mouths instead of helping to fix problems, and because nobody develops for the Mac.
Well, obviously some people develop for the Mac, but because Cocoa is unsupported on any other platform, that most of the professional Mac developers' core skills are in Carbon (an API with no future) and that the open source philosophy has attracted most of those who are left (i.e. those who are passionate enough to work for free) to Linux-focussed development, means that Mac-using developers who are actually working on Mac-oriented projects are few and far between, and generally not interested in porting software that doesn't already use (the admittedly very nice) Objective-C language, Cocoa API and tools, and nobody who doesnt already have a Mac is able to develop native applications for the Mac, even if they wanted to.
There are of course a few other options (Mac-native Qt for example, GNUStep) but neither of these is a good solution, and the general problem is that mac users are just that - users, and even the geeks who think MacOS X is great (like me) tend to develop for Linux, because of the vibrant community, which Apple actually used to have but has long since lost.
Apple thus far has been doing a really good job at providing the tools, the technology and the open attitude to bring that community back, but I don't see it today.
Its not like the GIMP Developers *don't want* to make a usable app, its that nobody who is bitterly complaining about how unusable the GIMP is seems to have the ability to produce a useful specification for how it *should* work.
By that I don't mean 'Rip off everything about Photoshop's UI and make the GIMP a lawsuit target', but rather start a project which provides a detailed set of interface conventions, specifications and mockups that will provide an easy way for the existing GIMP team, or a new team to put an artist-friendly face on the GIMP, and to serve as a guideline and UI spec for other atrist-friendly Open Source tools to conform to.
If the name should be changed, then suggest a new name as part of the project , instead of just saying 'The GIMP's name sucks, you should use something else'
Personally, I find GIMP 2.x quite usable, but Open Source is not about providing you a product, its about you participating in making a product.
If you don't realise that, or can't understand that, then i feel sorry for you, but you're whining is worthlesss if you can't even frame your complaints in a way that might get noticed by the GIMP developers (e.g. on the gimp-users mailing list)
Please shut up and go use photoshop.
If you don't want to help, then you really are better off paying for, or stealing a commercial product.
People's mentality is that the software they use is 'someone else's problem'.
Open Source doesnt work like that.
Until people realise that they have the ability to change their own software for the better, and get off their asses and do it, then they will of course be better served by paying for someone else to do this stuff for them.
Open Source owes you nothing.
So keep saying it will never catch on, keep saying it wont ever be as good as commercial alternatives, keep whining, bitching and moaning, i hope that wasting your time and energy like this makes you happy.
Meanwhile, the people who are actually working on Free/Open Source software will simply continue to get on with it, the same way they have been doing it, and quite successfully, for years now.
I can't really see what Sun has to gain from open-sourcing Java either.
The open-source community is more than capable of building it's own Java clone e.g. Kaffe and supporting Java technologies e.g. gcj if it wants to, and Sun have every right to hold onto their Java implementation, if they feel it best suits their business goals.
I know I am quite happy using the Java packages provided by Sun and IBM, and agree with McNealy in that IBM should shut their mouth about open source Java unless they are prepared to open source their technologies as well.
Sun is most likely concerned, and rightly so, about the prospect of IBM pulling an 'Eclipse' on the core JVM.
IBM is a ruthless, anti-competitive mega-corporation, and it is easy to forget that in light of the SCO debacle etc., where they are portrayed as the good guys.
I dont think the community at large has any real stake in this particular battle - The Java standards are open, we are free to implement them in whatever way we see fit. If you want to see open source Java, then support the open source Java efforts like Kaffe, and leave Sun alone.
Normally, i'm quite a Sun-detractor, but I think in this case, they are being unfairly beaten up on about an issue that is quite clearly a non-issue.
If you want Java you can get it for free, and if you want to implement a VM that runs Java code, you are also free to do that, supported by detailed information and specification by Sun.
I doubt most of the people baying for blood over this issue would have any interest in improving Java were it to be released as open source, and it's not like there arent plenty of existant open source Java-related projects that couldn't do with your help anyway.
I've seen these CD Writers avaailable for some months now.
2 _0 1.asp
In fact I believe this is a Yamaha invention.
http://www.yamahamultimedia.com/yec/tech/discta
H.P couldn't innovate their way out of a wet paper bag.
And I can say that it the most obtuse, cryptic product I have ever had to wrestle with.
There was absolutely no way that 'normal' users were ever going to be able to make use of this product for the 'opportunistic encryption' the project aimed for, I honestly don't think you could design a more opaque and confusing piece of software if you were actually trying.
That being said, once you get over the configuration hurdles and realise you will have to employ script-based kludges to do simple things e.g. get it to route packets though multiple tunnels terminating on the same local IP address, it mostly works quite well.
Microsoft's console wasnt unsuccessful because of it had a hard drive, it was unsuccessful because nobody thinks Microsoft is in any way cool, fun or interesting.
Microsoft has taken the personal computer and made it into something that the average user is honestly scared of using.
People generally dont look at their computers as a powerful tool, but instead as something they are actually afraid to touch, lest it break.
'Microsoft' translates to 'fear and anxiety' in the mind of most people I know, and thats what is responsible for lackluster XBox sales, not the hardware.
Their previous strategy of just shovelling packages onto the CDs and not even bothering to test if they worked together was going so well.
I mean really, who *doesn't* want to spend a week identifying and ironing out all the bugs, and downloading several hundred megabytes of patches as soon as you install Mandrake Linux?
Surely thats part of the 'Mandrake user experience' that makes it such a wonderful product.
When yousa eesa nine hunner yersa olda, look as gooda you will no-sa, mmmmm?
What are you trying to say, that if the paper is free it must be inferior?
I suppose next youre going to say something like:
'Ive been pounding the table here for a year or so saying theres no free lunch, and there is going to be a day of reckoning for every newspaper that thinks they are going to try and sell a free model.'
This might sound like an oddball choice of language for game programming, but since Perl has bindings for GTK, SDL and probably anything else you might want to use to construct a game, it has all the basics in place.
Documentation for the language is widepspread, copious and mature, and perl also makes a great general purpose language.
Also, Perl's syntax and language constructs tend to favour people who are exploring and playing, rather than implementing a rigid design they already have all mapped out in their head.
This sort of goes against what is considered good programming practice - you should be clear about what you want to implement before you implement it - but kids arent interested in what is good programming practice - it is far better to learn this yourself the hard way than to have a set of rigid doctrines bashed into you from the start, in my view.
Perl comfortably supports pretty much any approach you take to getting the job done, and thats just one reason why I love Perl and prefer it over more structured (but equally useful) languages like Python.
I have one of these in the store-room - my monitor died, but when i find another mac monitor she'll be up and running again.
I got Apache and Perl running on it, and it was a useful web server.
A/UX is an ancient and strange UNIX, but it has MacOS 6/7 compatibility, bundled X-Windows, and the IIfx is a pretty nice box for its age - I have 3 graphics cards in it.
Its interesting - Apple had the equivalent of MacOS X ('Real' UNIX underpinning the 'Classic' MacOS environment) over 10 years ago, but dropped it completely, before buying the same thing back off NeXT, at great expense and calling it 'New'
Right, that makes more sense.
Thanks for that. Mod parent up.
Am I wrong, or would 95% of each $699 SCO license fee go to Novell, since they retain ownership of Sys V UNIX?
Theres something fishy going on with SCO and Novell, with Novell coming out of this smelling like roses - I have to wonder if this whole SCO sham is simply a way to boost Novell's image as ' a good guy' at the expense of a company that was insignificant and dying anyway (SCO).
Anyone else finding it difficult to understand these dealings?
They are monopolistic, price-gouging wankers, and since the NZ government backed down and ran for the hills on local loop unbundling, the majority of New Zealanders will continue to be grossly overcharged for internet usage, phone service, and anything else Telecom can manage to gain a monopoly over.
Nope, postgres doesnt work, since it relies on shared memory to work, and doesnt support multiple postmaster processes per database.
On the whole, the open-source databases' support for replication/clustering is poor to non-existent.
No, on Sun machines, when the NVRAM battery or something dies, they dont even give you the 'Press F1 to continue' option.
They just die, and refuse to boot at all.
So, no you'll never see an error like that, but then, that box wont come back up until you physically replace the NVRAM chip.