Despicable? What a complete load of bollocks. University owns, maintains, supports a network. Finds some material violating copyright and revokes the privileges of the perprtrators to use that network.
See the difference between copying tapes on your own machine and passing MP3s around using college machines? Why should any college subsidise a taste for music, even at only 3-5M per track?
Don't think about it as "at the order of the RIAA" but "to avoid exposure to legal action by the RIAA". If you think it matters who is likely to win such action, ask yourself whether it would have hurt Diamond (public company) or RIAA (industry lobby group) more to contest the RIO? Now extend the question to involve the college. Should the college "take a stand" and be prepared to take on the RIAA, setting aside substantial sums to pay lawyers, or maybe decrease tuition fees, upgrade their network, get Korn to play in public space some time next summer?
When I was a student, (not just a few but several short years ago) the same kind of thing happened at my university, but it was for having copies of Comanche 3, Might & Magic IV and Doom that people were getting their accounts suspended. How about that, is that despicable too? At the time we laughed at those idiots who would go over quota with large games in their accounts - just another kind of Darwinism.
Your idea of privacy is somewhat warped. On your own machine, encrypted with 128 bits, not networked, is reasonably private. Take away the encryption and connect the machine to a network and that's not very private any more.
"irradiated" rats - how much radiation? Over what period of time? What is the different between short exposure to high levels of microwave radiation and long-term exposure to lower levels? At its extreme, it's the difference between cooking and what we get every day from ambient microwave radiation.
You can bet they didn't have the rats talking on actual cell phones to attempt to simulate real exposure. And as one other reader has said, rats have thinner skulls - I'll add to that by saying not just thinner, but totally different skulls. Electromagnetic radiation is affected by so many factors, like inductance, conductivity, reactivity, proximity, intensity - this begins to look like a very dodgy experiment. Hope they enjoyed the funding.
It's a great mental image if you think about a group of scientists working out new experiments like this. "Hey! We can use all that powdered milk that nobody drinks!" Real Far Side material.
Having said all that I like to use my hands-free mike whenever I can...
Content Neutrality is a myth. This morning on the drive in to work I listened to an advertisement pretending to be a talkback radio segment, in which a couple of redneck types talked up the Isuzu SUV while referring to a Nissan as an "extraterrestrial". (For the record - you wouldn't get me in either. Huge SUVs are for people with confidence problems. So sorry if anyone feels insulted by that statement.)
Lycos are in business. Everything you see on their site is an opportunity for self-promotion. What is this strategy but another attempt at advertisement? Lycos have been more than fair in including the link to the main page of the sites in question. Would it have been better if they had impartially listed every known Yahoo page, and relied on the user navigating to Yahoo home from there?
It reminds me of one of the rules in Dale Carnegie's book "How to Win Friends and Influence People" - never bad mouth a competitor. Instead explain why you're better. For a life insurance salesman he had a lot to teach...
The fact that this is news to Slashdot readers shows that if you know that a Yahoo exists, you're probably not going to search for it on lycos anyway!
Well thank K&R for that! Early in its life cycle I forked out way too much for a HP 620LX. A fairly competent machine, I was pretty impressed the first time I used it for reading email with my PC-card modem. I had a nice leather case, a classic silver Newton 2000 stylus and a 32M CF card for backups. All pretty hot technology back in early 1998.
Then after using it for a while I realized it kind of sucked... The keyboard was just not useful. Apart from being slow, Windows CE was also painfully ugly. What could be more clumsy than switching between a gnome-size keyboard and a more or less vertical stylus screen? Rather than color really adding to the experience it made the whole device look like Windows in 640x480 mode right after an install. First thing you do is install video drivers, right? Except that the HP never got any better.
Strangely enough the main reason I had paid so much for this thing was the color screen. It made web sites look nicer but not $800 nicer. Later that year I got involced with a Palm project and had to use a Palm III. The thing about the Palm is that it just works. No frills, just function.
The big worry was that Palm would lose in the marketplace to Windows CE. Windows CE had a lot more money behind it, and for a while looked like it might go through the Microsoft 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 cycle and finally mature into a barely acceptable but market dominating standard. Palm would go the way of the Amiga.
And now the only worry is that Palm don't submit to creeping featurism - what good is color if the device gets fat and slow? May as well have Windows CE then.
Another question is what good will color be? One friend says she would love to replace her File-o-fax with a Palm, but the photos can't be stored like they can on paper. If the screen is good enough, maybe it could replace the folio. What if they produce accurate 24-bit screens one day - a Palm could serve as a color chip! Hold it up to your wall to see how the new paint will look:-)
I'm going to see about getting those ROMs and ramp up my Palm programming again. It's a fun platform, and color adds a whole range of applications that will be needed in 2000.
Right now I am trying hard not to wonder where my Handspring order is, I know it will be here soon. And the HP620LX? I swapped it for something else. The guy who got it was ecstatic - but then he hadn't had to use it for months. I was happy to see it go. And of course I kept the Newton stylus. There hasn't been a better one made yet.
Actually, getting a coffee-resistant crotch is not so hard. Simply start out with water slightly above lukewarm, and tip a cup into your lap first thing every morning. If you make the water about half one degree hotter every day, soon you'll be able to withstand even fresh expresso poured steaming over the family jewels.
This is a great party trick. Once you are at the balls-of-steel stage, challenge an unpopular manager to an endurance contest. You'll be the life of the party.
Dell did, but it was only economically realistic after Microsoft stopped (were forced to stop) charging per-CPU license fees, regardless of the presence or otherwise of an installed MS OS being on the machine.
I agree with you about the memos. I would have thought that a free market meant that huge companies could and should crush the competition in order to continue making good returns for the sharholders. Insider trading likewise confuses - maybe if I had been born in the USA and grown up knowing about all this stuff it would seem natural.
Integration is wrong. Clearly it is anti-competitive, if that's what being overly competitive is going to be called in this case. If removing IE is going to demand time & knowledge that you don't have, you're likely to leave it there. Then it's easy to start wishing the extra 20-100M used by your preferred browser wasn't duplicated by IE. And when you start running out of disk space you have a clear choice for which gets the chop.
(Three months ago everyone in my company received email asking for all email older than a certain date to be destroyed - specifically mentioning Microsoft's problem with the DOJ.)
Think about how an organization works in selling a product like NT. Where does the feedback come from? A little comes from the cash register, where a slowdown in NT sales might be seen. Most comes from account managers who hear the devastating news that the account is already lost - to Linux.
Conclusions: Major accounts are being lost to Linux. Microsoft are already suffering. They are scared as hell of Linux. We can expect to see lots more comparative articles in various places.
Wait until the MS anti-Linux campaign hits your TV screen - then we will know they are truly beaten.
You are right about IE5 being a better browser - I'm forced to use both, because I have to use an intranet tool that won't work with IE5 - it's the _only_ problem IE5 has, whereas Nutscrape will crash daily if used for regular browsing - or more often.
Developer support is a great thing - I don't think the DOJ have a problem with that. If they did, Palm would be in serious trouble. If you'd like to see developer paradise, check them out.
If you truly believe that MS developer support is the only reason they are on top you are missing some information. Try reading "Accidental Empires" or "Startup" for some good background information on historical MS anti-competitive practises. Your comment regarding Dell is wrong; MS have engaged in licensing schemes specifically designed to act as disincentives to offering any other OS.
A central part of the case has been Microsoft internal emails using phrases like "crush Netscape"... The strategy used was to integrate IE with the OS. By splitting up the company they could separate the siamese twin that is Windows/IE, turning IE into something as easy to remove as Netscape is now. To some extent that could level the playing field.
... that Palm products were always overpriced (charge what the market will bear - smart!)... that 3Com are more than a little worried about the iminent entry into the market of Handspring. I'm waiting for an expandable Palm. Not to say that Palm isn't great, but I think Handspring's new line will be better.
Clearly, Senator Alston could not find his arse with both hands, and has conveniently forgotten that:
1. The Internet censorship laws exist for no other reason than to ensure the support of the puritanical Senator Brian Harradine in the Government's quest to pass legislation allowing the sale of a further portion of Telstra. Senator Harradine holds the balance of power in the senate, and can single-handedly reject legislation which the House of Representatives wishes to enact provided the rest of the senate votes along party lines. Hence this religious old Tasmanian holds a very big stick.
2. This legislation was universally opposed at the time it was debated by not only those electronics frontiers "maniacs" but the Australian Computer Society, every ISP, and numerous other professional bodies. Not that there was much debate - they not only rushed it through, they smokescreened it very effectively with "the republic debate" and the Olympic circus.
3. Lotus are now an irelevant producer of software which is almost universally reviled for its poor interface, sorry performance and general instability. Seriously, it's worse than anything Microsoft has done. It survives mainly because there are those IT manager types whose job security depends on nobody finding out about free, better alternatives, and there are those managers who still like to parrot buzzwords like "groupware".
Perhaps the minister was mistakenly talking to theatre groups or bankers on his recent visit - almost everyone I meet who is remotely connected with the net has a good laugh at my government's attempts to treat the net like television. It's not nice to hear my country compared to such freedom-loving nations as Singapore.
I could mention that Australian government departments use net-nanny software which blocks a seemingly random array of sites... I could quote the price of ISDN to residents in Australia... I could contrast some of the salaries that I used to earn in Australia to what software engineers typically make here... I could tell you that Australian companies do NOT give out options... but I'll just say that I am so happy I came to live in the bay area instead of staying in Melbourne. Australia is a great place - and one day I know I will live there again - but with just a little common sense it could be so much better. I look forward to the minister taking over the portfolio for say, agriculture.
Will they still use those stupid WinModems? An important point for those of us who remain OS-agnostic.
Right now I have a Thinkpad 600 (PII 266) and I'm very impressed. Great screen, good keyboard, easy to swap the HD, good battery life, decent built-in speakers, regular updates of BIOS & drivers, no problems with any OS I have tried, even response from tech support when it was needed - the only bad part is that modem.
Actually lots of things are faster than a PIII... from the humble overclocked Celeron to the screaming AMD Athlon, the PIII isn't even 2nd best any more.
2. It's bang-for-buck.
Athlon again! PIII must be the most money you can spend on an x86-compatible CPU right now.
3. You get to upgrade your motherboard if you buy one.
Same "advantage" if you go Athlon.
4. Nobody ever got fired for buying Intel.
Sadly, this is one of the big reasons this also-ran might turn into a leader.
and the most compelling reason to buy a PIII is...
5. It has a bigger number on it than the PII.
I would guess that most/. readers know enough to make that informed choice properly. For a lot of us the choice is possible, because we don't go buying pre-assembled systems from the big names. When will Dell/Compaq/HP begin offering Athlon to the masses? And will Intel FUD triumph, or is this really a turning point for AMD? Unless something new hits the market very soon I see my Celeron 300A being replaced by an Athlon system very soon.
I was in Tokyo in July of this year, and those 60" personal screen glasses are readily available - NTSC, no problems with US TV compatability. If you ever get there make sure to visit Akihabara - a five-block-or-so area full of every kind of electronic thing you can imagine, from the latest consumer DVD to junk shops with dismantled Mac parts or old NeXT boxes. Sony and Olympus are the two brands I tried, all work reasonably well, but if you're the 1000th person that day to try them out it can be an icky experience, especially in a humid Tokyo summer. They have vinyl pads for the forehead:-( Sony I think have one model, Olympus have three.
I could watch a movie quite happily with one of these - I was considering a portable DVD player with a wearable monitor for all the flying I have to do - but it's still not as good as a good 21" monitor for PC use. Apart from the clarity (will we ever see a "virtual" trinitron equivalent?) it is a little too heavy to wear for hours at a time.
Also consider the problem of someone getting your attention. No problem if you have headphones on, they can wave. If your eyes are covered... do you want someone tapping on your shoulder while you're totally immersed in Evil Dead?
Unfortunately there's still no substitute for large amounts of cash when it comes to viewing enjoyment.
Win2K is currently at "release candidate" stage if you get the MSDN subscription, or if your employer does. It's much improved over the beta, but of course is still bloated and ram-hungry. The point? Don't feel all warm and fuzzy just because the beta is lame, that's not the market will see. The "release candidate" is now faster to install than Win98, and had no problems with any of my hardware - except that ASUS don't have a driver out for their TNT2 products just yet. Linux still wins for a number of reasons, but for easy (i.e. without even thinking about it) USB and DVD in the home Win2K is a little more attractive right now. (And that CNN article on how tough Caldera was to install - that's positive as far as I'm concerned. He went out of his way to do stupid things, and STILL managed to end up with a working Linux system.)
OK, so it's nice hardware. I'd like one, and I could in fact go get one if I wanted. But - Apple don't ever see another dollar of mine until they deliver on the promise of a real operating system. You may have an Indycar in your garage, but unless you can drive like Fangio it won't do you any good. Same with the G4 - without real software you may as well have the go-kart that is the overclocked Celeron.
Exactly what I was going to post. We don't WANT Lotus products on Linux if they're going to be anything like the windows versions. You can bet that those IT clowns misguided enough to choose Notes wouldn't have the imagination to try Linux anyway. Would Notes be a good thing if it was written right? Only maybe, IMHO. What does it really do that email, news and an address book can't? Hey! Don't we have all those already?
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Despicable? What a complete load of bollocks. University owns, maintains, supports a network. Finds some material violating copyright and revokes the privileges of the perprtrators to use that network.
See the difference between copying tapes on your own machine and passing MP3s around using college machines? Why should any college subsidise a taste for music, even at only 3-5M per track?
Don't think about it as "at the order of the RIAA" but "to avoid exposure to legal action by the RIAA". If you think it matters who is likely to win such action, ask yourself whether it would have hurt Diamond (public company) or RIAA (industry lobby group) more to contest the RIO? Now extend the question to involve the college. Should the college "take a stand" and be prepared to take on the RIAA, setting aside substantial sums to pay lawyers, or maybe decrease tuition fees, upgrade their network, get Korn to play in public space some time next summer?
When I was a student, (not just a few but several short years ago) the same kind of thing happened at my university, but it was for having copies of Comanche 3, Might & Magic IV and Doom that people were getting their accounts suspended. How about that, is that despicable too? At the time we laughed at those idiots who would go over quota with large games in their accounts - just another kind of Darwinism.
Your idea of privacy is somewhat warped. On your own machine, encrypted with 128 bits, not networked, is reasonably private. Take away the encryption and connect the machine to a network and that's not very private any more.
Another scare story...
"irradiated" rats - how much radiation? Over what period of time? What is the different between short exposure to high levels of microwave radiation and long-term exposure to lower levels? At its extreme, it's the difference between cooking and what we get every day from ambient microwave radiation.
You can bet they didn't have the rats talking on actual cell phones to attempt to simulate real exposure. And as one other reader has said, rats have thinner skulls - I'll add to that by saying not just thinner, but totally different skulls. Electromagnetic radiation is affected by so many factors, like inductance, conductivity, reactivity, proximity, intensity - this begins to look like a very dodgy experiment. Hope they enjoyed the funding.
It's a great mental image if you think about a group of scientists working out new experiments like this. "Hey! We can use all that powdered milk that nobody drinks!" Real Far Side material.
Having said all that I like to use my hands-free mike whenever I can...
Content Neutrality is a myth. This morning on the drive in to work I listened to an advertisement pretending to be a talkback radio segment, in which a couple of redneck types talked up the Isuzu SUV while referring to a Nissan as an "extraterrestrial".
(For the record - you wouldn't get me in either. Huge SUVs are for people with confidence problems. So sorry if anyone feels insulted by that statement.)
Lycos are in business. Everything you see on their site is an opportunity for self-promotion. What is this strategy but another attempt at advertisement? Lycos have been more than fair in including the link to the main page of the sites in question. Would it have been better if they had impartially listed every known Yahoo page, and relied on the user navigating to Yahoo home from there?
It reminds me of one of the rules in Dale Carnegie's book "How to Win Friends and Influence People" - never bad mouth a competitor. Instead explain why you're better. For a life insurance salesman he had a lot to teach...
The fact that this is news to Slashdot readers shows that if you know that a Yahoo exists, you're probably not going to search for it on lycos anyway!
Well thank K&R for that! Early in its life cycle I forked out way too much for a HP 620LX. A fairly competent machine, I was pretty impressed the first time I used it for reading email with my PC-card modem. I had a nice leather case, a classic silver Newton 2000 stylus and a 32M CF card for backups. All pretty hot technology back in early 1998.
:-)
Then after using it for a while I realized it kind of sucked... The keyboard was just not useful. Apart from being slow, Windows CE was also painfully ugly. What could be more clumsy than switching between a gnome-size keyboard and a more or less vertical stylus screen? Rather than color really adding to the experience it made the whole device look like Windows in 640x480 mode right after an install. First thing you do is install video drivers, right? Except that the HP never got any better.
Strangely enough the main reason I had paid so much for this thing was the color screen. It made web sites look nicer but not $800 nicer.
Later that year I got involced with a Palm project and had to use a Palm III. The thing about the Palm is that it just works. No frills, just function.
The big worry was that Palm would lose in the marketplace to Windows CE. Windows CE had a lot more money behind it, and for a while looked like it might go through the Microsoft 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 cycle and finally mature into a barely acceptable but market dominating standard. Palm would go the way of the Amiga.
And now the only worry is that Palm don't submit to creeping featurism - what good is color if the device gets fat and slow? May as well have Windows CE then.
Another question is what good will color be? One friend says she would love to replace her File-o-fax with a Palm, but the photos can't be stored like they can on paper. If the screen is good enough, maybe it could replace the folio. What if they produce accurate 24-bit screens one day - a Palm could serve as a color chip! Hold it up to your wall to see how the new paint will look
I'm going to see about getting those ROMs and ramp up my Palm programming again. It's a fun platform, and color adds a whole range of applications that will be needed in 2000.
Right now I am trying hard not to wonder where my Handspring order is, I know it will be here soon.
And the HP620LX? I swapped it for something else. The guy who got it was ecstatic - but then he hadn't had to use it for months. I was happy to see it go. And of course I kept the Newton stylus. There hasn't been a better one made yet.
Actually, getting a coffee-resistant crotch is not so hard. Simply start out with water slightly above lukewarm, and tip a cup into your lap first thing every morning. If you make the water about half one degree hotter every day, soon you'll be able to withstand even fresh expresso poured steaming over the family jewels.
This is a great party trick. Once you are at the balls-of-steel stage, challenge an unpopular manager to an endurance contest. You'll be the life of the party.
Dell did, but it was only economically realistic after Microsoft stopped (were forced to stop) charging per-CPU license fees, regardless of the presence or otherwise of an installed MS OS being on the machine.
I agree with you about the memos. I would have thought that a free market meant that huge companies could and should crush the competition in order to continue making good returns for the sharholders. Insider trading likewise confuses - maybe if I had been born in the USA and grown up knowing about all this stuff it would seem natural.
Integration is wrong. Clearly it is anti-competitive, if that's what being overly competitive is going to be called in this case. If removing IE is going to demand time & knowledge that you don't have, you're likely to leave it there. Then it's easy to start wishing the extra 20-100M used by your preferred browser wasn't duplicated by IE. And when you start running out of disk space you have a clear choice for which gets the chop.
(Three months ago everyone in my company received email asking for all email older than a certain date to be destroyed - specifically mentioning Microsoft's problem with the DOJ.)
Think about how an organization works in selling a product like NT. Where does the feedback come from? A little comes from the cash register, where a slowdown in NT sales might be seen. Most comes from account managers who hear the devastating news that the account is already lost - to Linux.
Conclusions:
Major accounts are being lost to Linux.
Microsoft are already suffering.
They are scared as hell of Linux.
We can expect to see lots more comparative articles in various places.
Wait until the MS anti-Linux campaign hits your TV screen - then we will know they are truly beaten.
You are right about IE5 being a better browser - I'm forced to use both, because I have to use an intranet tool that won't work with IE5 - it's the _only_ problem IE5 has, whereas Nutscrape will crash daily if used for regular browsing - or more often.
Developer support is a great thing - I don't think the DOJ have a problem with that. If they did, Palm would be in serious trouble. If you'd like to see developer paradise, check them out.
If you truly believe that MS developer support is the only reason they are on top you are missing some information. Try reading "Accidental Empires" or "Startup" for some good background information on historical MS anti-competitive practises. Your comment regarding Dell is wrong; MS have engaged in licensing schemes specifically designed to act as disincentives to offering any other OS.
A central part of the case has been Microsoft internal emails using phrases like "crush Netscape"... The strategy used was to integrate IE with the OS. By splitting up the company they could separate the siamese twin that is Windows/IE, turning IE into something as easy to remove as Netscape is now. To some extent that could level the playing field.
... that Palm products were always overpriced (charge what the market will bear - smart!) ... that 3Com are more than a little worried about the iminent entry into the market of Handspring. I'm waiting for an expandable Palm. Not to say that Palm isn't great, but I think Handspring's new line will be better.
Weight loss? Sounds more like job loss :-)
1. The Internet censorship laws exist for no other reason than to ensure the support of the puritanical Senator Brian Harradine in the Government's quest to pass legislation allowing the sale of a further portion of Telstra. Senator Harradine holds the balance of power in the senate, and can single-handedly reject legislation which the House of Representatives wishes to enact provided the rest of the senate votes along party lines. Hence this religious old Tasmanian holds a very big stick.
2. This legislation was universally opposed at the time it was debated by not only those electronics frontiers "maniacs" but the Australian Computer Society, every ISP, and numerous other professional bodies. Not that there was much debate - they not only rushed it through, they smokescreened it very effectively with "the republic debate" and the Olympic circus.
3. Lotus are now an irelevant producer of software which is almost universally reviled for its poor interface, sorry performance and general instability. Seriously, it's worse than anything Microsoft has done. It survives mainly because there are those IT manager types whose job security depends on nobody finding out about free, better alternatives, and there are those managers who still like to parrot buzzwords like "groupware".
Perhaps the minister was mistakenly talking to theatre groups or bankers on his recent visit - almost everyone I meet who is remotely connected with the net has a good laugh at my government's attempts to treat the net like television. It's not nice to hear my country compared to such freedom-loving nations as Singapore.
I could mention that Australian government departments use net-nanny software which blocks a seemingly random array of sites... I could quote the price of ISDN to residents in Australia... I could contrast some of the salaries that I used to earn in Australia to what software engineers typically make here... I could tell you that Australian companies do NOT give out options... but I'll just say that I am so happy I came to live in the bay area instead of staying in Melbourne. Australia is a great place - and one day I know I will live there again - but with just a little common sense it could be so much better. I look forward to the minister taking over the portfolio for say, agriculture.
Will they still use those stupid WinModems? An important point for those of us who remain OS-agnostic.
Right now I have a Thinkpad 600 (PII 266) and I'm very impressed. Great screen, good keyboard, easy to swap the HD, good battery life, decent built-in speakers, regular updates of BIOS & drivers, no problems with any OS I have tried, even response from tech support when it was needed - the only bad part is that modem.
1. It's faster.
/. readers know enough to make that informed choice properly. For a lot of us the choice is possible, because we don't go buying pre-assembled systems from the big names. When will Dell/Compaq/HP begin offering Athlon to the masses? And will Intel FUD triumph, or is this really a turning point for AMD? Unless something new hits the market very soon I see my Celeron 300A being replaced by an Athlon system very soon.
Actually lots of things are faster than a PIII... from the humble overclocked Celeron to the screaming AMD Athlon, the PIII isn't even 2nd best any more.
2. It's bang-for-buck.
Athlon again! PIII must be the most money you can spend on an x86-compatible CPU right now.
3. You get to upgrade your motherboard if you buy one.
Same "advantage" if you go Athlon.
4. Nobody ever got fired for buying Intel.
Sadly, this is one of the big reasons this also-ran might turn into a leader.
and the most compelling reason to buy a PIII is...
5. It has a bigger number on it than the PII.
I would guess that most
I was in Tokyo in July of this year, and those 60" personal screen glasses are readily available - NTSC, no problems with US TV compatability. If you ever get there make sure to visit Akihabara - a five-block-or-so area full of every kind of electronic thing you can imagine, from the latest consumer DVD to junk shops with dismantled Mac parts or old NeXT boxes. Sony and Olympus are the two brands I tried, all work reasonably well, but if you're the 1000th person that day to try them out it can be an icky experience, especially in a humid Tokyo summer. They have vinyl pads for the forehead :-( Sony I think have one model, Olympus have three.
I could watch a movie quite happily with one of these - I was considering a portable DVD player with a wearable monitor for all the flying I have to do - but it's still not as good as a good 21" monitor for PC use. Apart from the clarity (will we ever see a "virtual" trinitron equivalent?) it is a little too heavy to wear for hours at a time.
Also consider the problem of someone getting your attention. No problem if you have headphones on, they can wave. If your eyes are covered... do you want someone tapping on your shoulder while you're totally immersed in Evil Dead?
Unfortunately there's still no substitute for large amounts of cash when it comes to viewing enjoyment.
Win2K is currently at "release candidate" stage if you get the MSDN subscription, or if your employer does. It's much improved over the beta, but of course is still bloated and ram-hungry. The point? Don't feel all warm and fuzzy just because the beta is lame, that's not the market will see. The "release candidate" is now faster to install than Win98, and had no problems with any of my hardware - except that ASUS don't have a driver out for their TNT2 products just yet. Linux still wins for a number of reasons, but for easy (i.e. without even thinking about it) USB and DVD in the home Win2K is a little more attractive right now. (And that CNN article on how tough Caldera was to install - that's positive as far as I'm concerned. He went out of his way to do stupid things, and STILL managed to end up with a working Linux system.)
The $499 price tag, for a start.
OK, so it's nice hardware. I'd like one, and I could in fact go get one if I wanted. But - Apple don't ever see another dollar of mine until they deliver on the promise of a real operating system. You may have an Indycar in your garage, but unless you can drive like Fangio it won't do you any good. Same with the G4 - without real software you may as well have the go-kart that is the overclocked Celeron.
Shuman - lying whore MS apologist. I sure hope any prospective employers read that article.
Exactly what I was going to post. We don't WANT Lotus products on Linux if they're going to be anything like the windows versions. You can bet that those IT clowns misguided enough to choose Notes wouldn't have the imagination to try Linux anyway.
Would Notes be a good thing if it was written right? Only maybe, IMHO. What does it really do that email, news and an address book can't? Hey! Don't we have all those already?