Please quote your sources. Any other numbers you quote just sound like they have been pulled from your lower torso. The numbers I quote are actually higher than the numbers quoted in the report. Less than half of one percent (1 in 200 people) is in a homosexual relationship. I would suggest to you that any homosexuals who are not in a stable relationship are probably not considering marriage, just as people who have never married don't care about divorce courts.
My point was that most people will vote for the government that promises more money to their bottom line. If by looking at patents and realising that something needs to be done to improve innovation and bring down prices of consumer goods, then there will be votes in it.
It isn't a matter of deploying patches. Deployment of software is one of the main functions of a large network. It's a matter of choosing the patches.
If you have 200 core software packages on your big network and a huge number of one offs, then the patch must play nicely with 200 packages. Does it? Lets check. (test against app 1, tick, test against app 2...) OK now deploy and hope it does not break too many one offs.
And currently IBMs Nasgul, err... legal team, are circling to * Kick head into the ground. "AT&T gave us an irrevocable licence to do the hell what we want" * Head stomped in. "IBM own all the code it donated under the terms of the GPL to Linux" * Grabbed by the throat and raised up. "Novell owns your source code, you just own the business of selling it" * Falcon punched right in the womb. "Hey, looky here, you've stolen GPL code that we own the copyright to. Fix it or lose LKP" * Knocked to the ground, where IBM will say to Novell, "You want to buy this peice of trash?" To which Novell will take one look at the Sys5 code and say "We grant a BSD licence to it all"
And then that will be the end of that. Darl will be lucky to avoid the pump and dump scandle.
If anyone could put pressure on the hardware market, it would be Dell. Imagine for a moment that Dell decreed that they would no longer purchase hardware from anyone who did not document their hardware in such a way that an open driver could be written. (hell, let's get the BSD crowd on side too). Dell then say to random video card manufacturers, "can you do it?". They reply "Yes. because it means we make $BIGNUM sales to you".
If it's a choice between releasing your trade secrets and going broke, most companies will have their specs on the front page of the "wall street journal".
The Open Source crowd get what they want. (libre drivers) Dell get what they want, (more PC sales to that noisy rabble who affect corporate sales), the hardware manufacturers get what they want, (big contracts with Dell) so everyone is happy. With the exception of some chair chucker from redmond.
This may be translated as flame bait. Goodbye karma, it was fun.
If I can come up with a scientific test that proves or disproves the existance of a supernatural being. The test is put forward for peer review and the results are verified from reputable sources. If the test shows evidence of a supernatural being, will this change the opinion of the fact accepting athiest.
I have not come up with such a test. But I pose it as a hypothetical.
Mistake 1. The EU functions as a soverign body. They could happily levy a fee on any software "not invented here" This would show their "toughness"
Mistake 2. This is not a joke. This is justice being applied firmly to the behind of a company that is guilt of abusing it's monopoly advantage.
Mistake 3. This is not about how innovative their patents are. This is how innovative their protocols are. A patent can be taken out on a implementation of a protocol, but not the protocol itself. What the EU is saying is that the protocols are nothing special because they tend to follow the KISS principal.
Mistake 4. The EU represents a large percentage of MS customers. If the EU are trying to protect it's people from being abused under a monopoly, then the EU is doing it's job. If this is at the cost of MS shareholders, what matter is that to the EU? It isn't even a European company.
Having used PHP, Perl, SQL HTML, and CSS on various projects all at once, I have to say that whilst the syntax of Perl is fairly bad, once you mix php script with html and SQL you end up with an unreadable mess. There is no escape from this. I have reformatted my code any number of ways to get "easy to read" code out of php, and I can't do it.
The down side of this is that I tend to write small easy tasks in php and big complex tasks in Perl. Simply because Perl is able to be formatted in a reasonably readable format.
Yes I will admit that Python lays out better than Perl. I just have allergies to white space dependant languages. I've tried. $DEITY knows. But I cannot get the hang of formatting my code the "Python Way". This is my shortfalling, not Python's.
Toss your AU$270 calculator away. Any number devided by itself is equal to 1. How many 5s in 5? 1. how many 0s in 0? still 1.
The guy in the article just got his proofs wrong. Division is a short cut for looped subtraction. So "25 divided by 5" is the same as "how many times can we take 5 from 25 and still have a number equal to or greater than 0?" On this basis we can then ask "how many times can we take 0 from any number that isn't 0 and still have a number equal to or greater than 0" and the answer is infinite. So rather than trying to do an infinite loop, your cheap calculator spits out an error which because of the lack of indication of number system used causes you confusion.
Thailand should embrace open source as a way to get Microsoft and others off their back.
Hmm. Interesting theory. I'd suggest that using open source software is a great way of attracting Microsoft's attention. See the recent NOVL deal. The massachussis open documentation kerfuffle, and any number of other examples where people kicked the tyres of FOSS only to have Microsoft threaten and cajole them back into the fold.
And as far as intranets go, great. Company X can use whatever they like as part of their standard build. If they are developing for an intranet, then it makes sense to use the company approved browser.
If however they are developing for the "Intarweb" (as my boss so affectionaltely calls it) then any sane developer is going to ask for as may browsers as they can cram on a test environment. What's that? No test environment? You mean you are testing on your production system? Please note the rapidly evaporating sympathy.
Since quite a few browsers are free or come with the OS, then there should be no excuse to their install as it costs the company nothing but time, and results in good feelings from customers who get the information that they want without jumping through browser war hoops. Can a developer develop for all the quirks? No. They should be programming for a standards based page, and add checks for the top 3 browsers (based on their own stats, not those of some tech journal) to remove error.
Does this mean that "MyFavoriteBrowser" is left out in the cold? Possibly, if it's render engine is not up to par. This is the way of things.
A commercial company has to build intellectual property, while the GPL, by its very nature, does not allow intellectual property to be built, making the two approaches fundamentally incompatible, Muglia said.
Why? What does intellectual property gain a company unless they can cash in on it? Microsoft's version of a truce would be "We can use GPL software, and not have to share it." That is why they like the BSD licence. They can get away with grabbing something they have found and add it to their own distributions without having to share anything else.
Nothing prevents a company, or a single person from releasing software under a commercial licence or a GPL. I have written software under both. One product was tailored for a particular organisation and the other was for general consumption. One released under You Shall Not Share terms, and the other under the GPL. So far no conflict. I own the copyright on both programs, and can do what I like with them. The only catch is that I can't prevent other people playing with the GPL version and extending it. Pandora's box has been opened.
In another 9 months somebody else at MS will say "Wouldn't it be nice if the GPL was a BSD thing. Then we could stop this silly fight." I in turn would state "Wouldn't it be nice if Windows Vista be released under the GPL so that all that clever software would be able to be used for the common good. Then we could produce a better Linux and a better Windows."
People will always need help to use these tools. That is where the cash will be. In courses, tailoring and help lines. Software, once it is written, is written.
I pulled the +10% number from thin air. Investment * 2 is also fair and reasonable. I suppose I wanted to make sure that the company makes some profit before giving up the rights. The exact amount can be argued and set appropriately.
The IRA would not need to monitor the profits from each work, Each organisation that wishes to maintain copyright must submit how much they made off their copyrighted work in a year. If they fail to log that amount, then by default they lose their rights to the work. (If you are interested in keeping it, then you fill in the paperwork.) The IRA would do audits on organisations who claim copyright income, and if these audits look bad, then they can alter the profit received, or in an extreme case of abuse release the document as public domain rendering the company with no rights to it.
CCFC is a good idea. I like the 14(+14) year idea of copyright. The problem is that it is voluntary. If we could alter the law so that new works were released under 14(+14) terms, then I think Copyright law would be much more serving of the "Common Good".
Sadly, whilst the thiefs of culture have the ear of the lawmakers, there is little chance of change. The fun will start when the companies that create media players (DVD, MP3, Electronic book, etc.) work out that there is more money in keeping consumers happy than there is in keeping studios happy. ("You will supply your content in this userfriendly format, or miss out on $BIGNUM sales"). Then the Entertainment industry, who used to make players and got rid of that market, will realise that they are parasites off the Electronics industry, the Artists, and consumers.
And perhaps this should be the new direction of Intellectual Property law should go. When you apply for copyright or patent protection, you apply for it for the time it takes you to make your money back. (plus 10% if you like) You now have the jump on the competition, have retreived your R&D dollars, or cash it took to write, record and promote your work of art. You are happy.
The Record company is happy, because they own the rights to the song until they make back their money plus 10%. They can then build an industry around value adding. (Buy the film clip from us and get the ring tone free.) That is because it is much more convenient to get the music from the original record company than elsewhere.
The "Common Good" is happy, because once you have made your cash back, they can then use your product in whatever form seems good to them, allowing the convenient handing on of memes. This would dramatically reduce the time it takes for knowledge to reach the public domain, which is where the majority of knowledge (in my stuck up opinion) should be.
I have found the runas command a handy feature to deal with the niggling programs that insist on running as an administrator. That way the user gets to know that they are doing something potentially dangerous, and allows the user to sit on their hands a bit. On Linux sudo has the same effect.
The cute thing about runas is that it takes minimal skills to set it up. Open the shortcut and add runas "command" and you're done.
One thing that could take Linux to the next level of desktop functionality would be "Automagical Backups" provided by the distributions for desktop users
Lemme see 1) Create a/backup partition with read only access to all but backup users at install. 2) Create a cron job that copies the data accross on a weekly basis from the/home directory 3) Promote as a tasty feature 4) ??? 5) Profit.
Yes, yes it's not an ideal solution, and you would have to set it up so that users could do off site backups such as burn DVDs monthly, or use a USB HDD, or whatever, but it would become a tad more crash resistant. Having looked at my (fairly) standard Ubuntu desktop, I notice NO BACKUP SOFTWARE of any sort included in the menu. (Yes, I know that I can open a terminal, and tar to my hearts content, but that is because I have a tad more IT clue than the majority of computer users) If we are going to train users to look after their data, we have to make it easy on the Joe Sixpacks of the world.
Easy to use backup software should be installed by default. I think it's time I wrote a bit of code to do all of this.
Thankyou for your honesty. I know plenty of IT people in your situation. I throw blunt objects at them frequently. Some advice.
People are reasonably easy to understand. Just provide them with the tools they need to do their job and a direction to follow. Then check in on them from time to time to make sure they are heading where you want them to. This is the hard part. TRUST THEM. Yes, every now and again they will stuff up, but give them space to do that and then the encouragement to have another go. Also remeber it is your job to run interference for these people. They don't need your boss on their tail. They need YOU.
As for promotion to 'management' to pay you more. If they paid you more than the cap without being in management, they devalue managers. This is something that managers don't wish to do. It would lead to people being paid based on productivity and even out the pay scales.
eg. I am a widget maker that can manufacture 1000 widgets a month. My manager is bad. With a good manager, I could manufacture 1100 widgets a month. if that manager was in charge of 20 widget makers, then the company can afford to pay that manager twice my salary minus profit margin. This would reflect badly on the bad boss. He would complain of being treated unfairly and demand twice my wage because he holds the same position as a good manager.
Now if I build a jig that allows me to double my personal production, I expect there to be no flow on to the managers income.
But since the managers are all friends with the bean counters and have duped the world into beliveing their propaganda, we will never see this. The fact they won't pay you more is just feeding their propaganda machine, without which they would not be able to drive their nice shiny new car.
Lessee 30 Minutes to install XP from Disc. 20 to install Office. Another 70 minutes to get all the drivers that are not "Automagical". A quick run through the virus checker (15 minutes to install update and do a check) and a quick run through the Windows Update Manager. (1.5 hours on a reasonable link.) Now if you want any other apps on top of this, then yes 5 hours is fair.
I must admit that I only do this once for any hardware config at my site, and then use Ghost to do the hard yards for me.
Dropping on an operating system is the easy bit. Getting something a customer can use takes time.
If I put a 351 motor in a compact car, then it may well not be street legal. Just as if I put a fancy lable over the top of the DVD, the DVD may not play properly. IF someone wants to shell out for a car they can't drive on the road, or a DVD that does not play, and I give them no illusions that they are fit for that purpose, then there is no worries about exchanging cash for a product they desire. No matter how silly it appears to you.
I still don't get the market for phones with digital cameras in them. But that's just me.
btw, Never apologise for bad english on slashdot. It only encourages the pedants. And for every pedant who is going to correct you there will be one to correct them. If only we could generate power from this infinite loop of pedantry.
If the Government taxes everything (100% tax rate) and supplies 100% of "All services you will ever want." Then you get something like socialism.
A Capitalistic system would not work, but a system could be made to work with everyone being an employee of the state and everyone receiving all they needed from it.
OK it might not be "The best system" but it show the paradox up for what it is.
Worms have a horrid tendancy to get out of control. I wrote one to modify some settings on my LAN. In 3 months time it had persecuted a national WAN. Fortunately it din't try to do anything that could not be fixed reasonably quickly, and I was eventually able to kill the blighter off using self extermination code. But a net worm, is NOT A GOOD WAY OF UPGRADING. the little beasies have a habit of getting out of control, no matter what you do.
(yes I was young and stupid when I wrote the code in question and learned much from it)
Slashdot Mirror
Please quote your sources. Any other numbers you quote just sound like they have been pulled from your lower torso. The numbers I quote are actually higher than the numbers quoted in the report. Less than half of one percent (1 in 200 people) is in a homosexual relationship. I would suggest to you that any homosexuals who are not in a stable relationship are probably not considering marriage, just as people who have never married don't care about divorce courts.
My point was that most people will vote for the government that promises more money to their bottom line. If by looking at patents and realising that something needs to be done to improve innovation and bring down prices of consumer goods, then there will be votes in it.
Homosexuality. 1% of the population. http://elecpress.monash.edu.au/pnp/cart/download/f ree.php?paper=38 Ignorable as a minority group.
Abortion. Probably a lot bigger issue than gay marriages.
Patent law reform saves you $5 off your next drug purchase? Major vote winner.
It isn't a matter of deploying patches. Deployment of software is one of the main functions of a large network. It's a matter of choosing the patches.
If you have 200 core software packages on your big network and a huge number of one offs, then the patch must play nicely with 200 packages. Does it? Lets check. (test against app 1, tick, test against app 2 ...) OK now deploy and hope it does not break too many one offs.
Hmm, a software company approves another software company's software.
Nope. Can't see it happening.
And currently IBMs Nasgul, err... legal team, are circling to
* Kick head into the ground. "AT&T gave us an irrevocable licence to do the hell what we want"
* Head stomped in. "IBM own all the code it donated under the terms of the GPL to Linux"
* Grabbed by the throat and raised up. "Novell owns your source code, you just own the business of selling it"
* Falcon punched right in the womb. "Hey, looky here, you've stolen GPL code that we own the copyright to. Fix it or lose LKP"
* Knocked to the ground, where IBM will say to Novell, "You want to buy this peice of trash?" To which Novell will take one look at the Sys5 code and say "We grant a BSD licence to it all"
And then that will be the end of that. Darl will be lucky to avoid the pump and dump scandle.
If anyone could put pressure on the hardware market, it would be Dell. Imagine for a moment that Dell decreed that they would no longer purchase hardware from anyone who did not document their hardware in such a way that an open driver could be written. (hell, let's get the BSD crowd on side too). Dell then say to random video card manufacturers, "can you do it?". They reply "Yes. because it means we make $BIGNUM sales to you".
If it's a choice between releasing your trade secrets and going broke, most companies will have their specs on the front page of the "wall street journal".
The Open Source crowd get what they want. (libre drivers) Dell get what they want, (more PC sales to that noisy rabble who affect corporate sales), the hardware manufacturers get what they want, (big contracts with Dell) so everyone is happy. With the exception of some chair chucker from redmond.
This may be translated as flame bait. Goodbye karma, it was fun.
If I can come up with a scientific test that proves or disproves the existance of a supernatural being. The test is put forward for peer review and the results are verified from reputable sources. If the test shows evidence of a supernatural being, will this change the opinion of the fact accepting athiest.
I have not come up with such a test. But I pose it as a hypothetical.
Mistake 1. The EU functions as a soverign body. They could happily levy a fee on any software "not invented here" This would show their "toughness"
Mistake 2. This is not a joke. This is justice being applied firmly to the behind of a company that is guilt of abusing it's monopoly advantage.
Mistake 3. This is not about how innovative their patents are. This is how innovative their protocols are. A patent can be taken out on a implementation of a protocol, but not the protocol itself. What the EU is saying is that the protocols are nothing special because they tend to follow the KISS principal.
Mistake 4. The EU represents a large percentage of MS customers. If the EU are trying to protect it's people from being abused under a monopoly, then the EU is doing it's job. If this is at the cost of MS shareholders, what matter is that to the EU? It isn't even a European company.
Must try harder.
That is one "hot potato" we don't talk about.
(bites)
Having used PHP, Perl, SQL HTML, and CSS on various projects all at once, I have to say that whilst the syntax of Perl is fairly bad, once you mix php script with html and SQL you end up with an unreadable mess. There is no escape from this. I have reformatted my code any number of ways to get "easy to read" code out of php, and I can't do it.
The down side of this is that I tend to write small easy tasks in php and big complex tasks in Perl. Simply because Perl is able to be formatted in a reasonably readable format.
Yes I will admit that Python lays out better than Perl. I just have allergies to white space dependant languages. I've tried. $DEITY knows. But I cannot get the hang of formatting my code the "Python Way". This is my shortfalling, not Python's.
Toss your AU$270 calculator away. Any number devided by itself is equal to 1. How many 5s in 5? 1. how many 0s in 0? still 1.
The guy in the article just got his proofs wrong. Division is a short cut for looped subtraction. So "25 divided by 5" is the same as "how many times can we take 5 from 25 and still have a number equal to or greater than 0?" On this basis we can then ask "how many times can we take 0 from any number that isn't 0 and still have a number equal to or greater than 0" and the answer is infinite. So rather than trying to do an infinite loop, your cheap calculator spits out an error which because of the lack of indication of number system used causes you confusion.
You would probabably be better with an abacus.
Hmm. Interesting theory. I'd suggest that using open source software is a great way of attracting Microsoft's attention. See the recent NOVL deal. The massachussis open documentation kerfuffle, and any number of other examples where people kicked the tyres of FOSS only to have Microsoft threaten and cajole them back into the fold.
And as far as intranets go, great. Company X can use whatever they like as part of their standard build. If they are developing for an intranet, then it makes sense to use the company approved browser.
If however they are developing for the "Intarweb" (as my boss so affectionaltely calls it) then any sane developer is going to ask for as may browsers as they can cram on a test environment. What's that? No test environment? You mean you are testing on your production system? Please note the rapidly evaporating sympathy.
Since quite a few browsers are free or come with the OS, then there should be no excuse to their install as it costs the company nothing but time, and results in good feelings from customers who get the information that they want without jumping through browser war hoops. Can a developer develop for all the quirks? No. They should be programming for a standards based page, and add checks for the top 3 browsers (based on their own stats, not those of some tech journal) to remove error.
Does this mean that "MyFavoriteBrowser" is left out in the cold? Possibly, if it's render engine is not up to par. This is the way of things.
Oh great. And here is me who just converted all their relatives to ubuntu to avoid the hassle. NOW you suggest it. /pouts
Why? What does intellectual property gain a company unless they can cash in on it? Microsoft's version of a truce would be "We can use GPL software, and not have to share it." That is why they like the BSD licence. They can get away with grabbing something they have found and add it to their own distributions without having to share anything else.
Nothing prevents a company, or a single person from releasing software under a commercial licence or a GPL. I have written software under both. One product was tailored for a particular organisation and the other was for general consumption. One released under You Shall Not Share terms, and the other under the GPL. So far no conflict. I own the copyright on both programs, and can do what I like with them. The only catch is that I can't prevent other people playing with the GPL version and extending it. Pandora's box has been opened.
In another 9 months somebody else at MS will say "Wouldn't it be nice if the GPL was a BSD thing. Then we could stop this silly fight." I in turn would state "Wouldn't it be nice if Windows Vista be released under the GPL so that all that clever software would be able to be used for the common good. Then we could produce a better Linux and a better Windows."
People will always need help to use these tools. That is where the cash will be. In courses, tailoring and help lines. Software, once it is written, is written.
I pulled the +10% number from thin air. Investment * 2 is also fair and reasonable. I suppose I wanted to make sure that the company makes some profit before giving up the rights. The exact amount can be argued and set appropriately.
The IRA would not need to monitor the profits from each work, Each organisation that wishes to maintain copyright must submit how much they made off their copyrighted work in a year. If they fail to log that amount, then by default they lose their rights to the work. (If you are interested in keeping it, then you fill in the paperwork.) The IRA would do audits on organisations who claim copyright income, and if these audits look bad, then they can alter the profit received, or in an extreme case of abuse release the document as public domain rendering the company with no rights to it.
CCFC is a good idea. I like the 14(+14) year idea of copyright. The problem is that it is voluntary. If we could alter the law so that new works were released under 14(+14) terms, then I think Copyright law would be much more serving of the "Common Good".
Sadly, whilst the thiefs of culture have the ear of the lawmakers, there is little chance of change. The fun will start when the companies that create media players (DVD, MP3, Electronic book, etc.) work out that there is more money in keeping consumers happy than there is in keeping studios happy. ("You will supply your content in this userfriendly format, or miss out on $BIGNUM sales"). Then the Entertainment industry, who used to make players and got rid of that market, will realise that they are parasites off the Electronics industry, the Artists, and consumers.
And perhaps this should be the new direction of Intellectual Property law should go. When you apply for copyright or patent protection, you apply for it for the time it takes you to make your money back. (plus 10% if you like) You now have the jump on the competition, have retreived your R&D dollars, or cash it took to write, record and promote your work of art. You are happy.
The Record company is happy, because they own the rights to the song until they make back their money plus 10%. They can then build an industry around value adding. (Buy the film clip from us and get the ring tone free.) That is because it is much more convenient to get the music from the original record company than elsewhere.
The "Common Good" is happy, because once you have made your cash back, they can then use your product in whatever form seems good to them, allowing the convenient handing on of memes. This would dramatically reduce the time it takes for knowledge to reach the public domain, which is where the majority of knowledge (in my stuck up opinion) should be.
I have found the runas command a handy feature to deal with the niggling programs that insist on running as an administrator. That way the user gets to know that they are doing something potentially dangerous, and allows the user to sit on their hands a bit. On Linux sudo has the same effect.
/backup partition with read only access to all but backup users at install. /home directory
The cute thing about runas is that it takes minimal skills to set it up. Open the shortcut and add runas "command" and you're done.
One thing that could take Linux to the next level of desktop functionality would be "Automagical Backups" provided by the distributions for desktop users
Lemme see
1) Create a
2) Create a cron job that copies the data accross on a weekly basis from the
3) Promote as a tasty feature
4) ???
5) Profit.
Yes, yes it's not an ideal solution, and you would have to set it up so that users could do off site backups such as burn DVDs monthly, or use a USB HDD, or whatever, but it would become a tad more crash resistant. Having looked at my (fairly) standard Ubuntu desktop, I notice NO BACKUP SOFTWARE of any sort included in the menu. (Yes, I know that I can open a terminal, and tar to my hearts content, but that is because I have a tad more IT clue than the majority of computer users) If we are going to train users to look after their data, we have to make it easy on the Joe Sixpacks of the world.
Easy to use backup software should be installed by default. I think it's time I wrote a bit of code to do all of this.
Thankyou for your honesty. I know plenty of IT people in your situation. I throw blunt objects at them frequently. Some advice.
People are reasonably easy to understand. Just provide them with the tools they need to do their job and a direction to follow. Then check in on them from time to time to make sure they are heading where you want them to. This is the hard part. TRUST THEM. Yes, every now and again they will stuff up, but give them space to do that and then the encouragement to have another go. Also remeber it is your job to run interference for these people. They don't need your boss on their tail. They need YOU.
As for promotion to 'management' to pay you more. If they paid you more than the cap without being in management, they devalue managers. This is something that managers don't wish to do. It would lead to people being paid based on productivity and even out the pay scales.
eg. I am a widget maker that can manufacture 1000 widgets a month. My manager is bad. With a good manager, I could manufacture 1100 widgets a month. if that manager was in charge of 20 widget makers, then the company can afford to pay that manager twice my salary minus profit margin. This would reflect badly on the bad boss. He would complain of being treated unfairly and demand twice my wage because he holds the same position as a good manager.
Now if I build a jig that allows me to double my personal production, I expect there to be no flow on to the managers income.
But since the managers are all friends with the bean counters and have duped the world into beliveing their propaganda, we will never see this. The fact they won't pay you more is just feeding their propaganda machine, without which they would not be able to drive their nice shiny new car.
Lessee 30 Minutes to install XP from Disc. 20 to install Office. Another 70 minutes to get all the drivers that are not "Automagical". A quick run through the virus checker (15 minutes to install update and do a check) and a quick run through the Windows Update Manager. (1.5 hours on a reasonable link.) Now if you want any other apps on top of this, then yes 5 hours is fair.
I must admit that I only do this once for any hardware config at my site, and then use Ghost to do the hard yards for me.
Dropping on an operating system is the easy bit. Getting something a customer can use takes time.
If I put a 351 motor in a compact car, then it may well not be street legal. Just as if I put a fancy lable over the top of the DVD, the DVD may not play properly. IF someone wants to shell out for a car they can't drive on the road, or a DVD that does not play, and I give them no illusions that they are fit for that purpose, then there is no worries about exchanging cash for a product they desire. No matter how silly it appears to you.
I still don't get the market for phones with digital cameras in them. But that's just me.
Good story. I like it.
btw, Never apologise for bad english on slashdot. It only encourages the pedants. And for every pedant who is going to correct you there will be one to correct them. If only we could generate power from this infinite loop of pedantry.
If the Government taxes everything (100% tax rate) and supplies 100% of "All services you will ever want." Then you get something like socialism.
A Capitalistic system would not work, but a system could be made to work with everyone being an employee of the state and everyone receiving all they needed from it.
OK it might not be "The best system" but it show the paradox up for what it is.
Worms have a horrid tendancy to get out of control. I wrote one to modify some settings on my LAN. In 3 months time it had persecuted a national WAN. Fortunately it din't try to do anything that could not be fixed reasonably quickly, and I was eventually able to kill the blighter off using self extermination code. But a net worm, is NOT A GOOD WAY OF UPGRADING. the little beasies have a habit of getting out of control, no matter what you do.
(yes I was young and stupid when I wrote the code in question and learned much from it)
try http://ubuntuguide.org/. Kinda handy for all the addons that one needs to be happy.