Hej! Sweden's a nice place and the people are friendly. My biggest beefs about moving there would be the outrageous costs of alcohol and gasoline... well, that and having to watch NHL games at 1 in the morning.
Kang: It's true! We are aliens! But what are you going to do about it? It's a two party system! You have to vote for one of us! Man in Crowd: Well, I'm just going to vote for a third party! Kang: Go ahead! Throw your vote away!! HA HA HA HA!!!
Even if you survive the crash, you'd die of hypothermia in a few hours. I don't know if you've ever swam in the North Atlantic but I spent a few days at the beach in Nova Scotia in the middle of August and let me assure you that the water was not much over 60F. You die when your body core temp reaches 80F. In 60F water, you've got about 3 hours of survival time immersed. So, in an ideal scenario, unless the rescuers get to you in under 3 hours, you're gonna die anyhow.
I didn't even think of the "revocation" piece of the puzzle. What are your options once your key has been revoked? Buy a new mobo? Will we be seeing "revoked" PC mobos for sale "on the cheap" on eBay in a few years?
The "trust" occurs below the OS, at the BIOS level. So you could modify Bochs to fake a trusted BIOS but you'd still need a valid key to ping against the key servers. Regardless, DRM sucks.
Huh?... but the MS zealots made it very clear to me that "the purpose of an OS" was to provide a web browser and a media player. I had started thinking AIX wasn't an OS because it didn't bundle a browser and a media player.
It's about 1 1/4% of their cash reserves, not even 1Q's cash flow. A more appropriate fine would have been a full 10% of their cash reserves. The tobacco industry has been nailed with $B fines, no reason MS shouldn't have their hand slapped just as hard.
Hang on there, this is only for "its portfolio of business desktop and notebook PCs", the key word here being "business". This means we won't be seeing HP Linux PCs at BestBuy / CircuitCity in the near term at least.
The best one I've found is AllOfMP3. It was recommended on/. a while back in a thread and I (nervously) decided to check it out. I put $10 into my account via PayPal and ordered a bunch of MP3 encoded tunes. Haven't looked back since. Tracks wind up costing you around $0.10 a piece for high bitrate encodings and there's absolutely no DRM. The draw back (or positive depending on how you look at it) is that they're based in Russia. I'll vouch that they won't steal your money but I can't vouch for the "to the letter" legality of it. Most of the arguments I've heard is that the RIAA tried to shut them down but lost the case in the Russian court system. Those issues aside, the selection is pretty good but it's definitely more Top 40 stuff. The biggest plus is that there are a lot of international artists that we would only have access to through expensive "imports" state-side.
Not really, a 512MB flash RAM module is probably around $20 in volume. That's a significant cost savings. The other issue is that there's money to be made selling "memory modules". That's money MS left on the table with the XB1. I wouldn't hold my breath awaiting an HD in the XB2.
Great post, let me add that this is the crux of my disgust against Microsoft as well. If MS is truly the best OS software out there, then let's see MS unbundle the OS from OEM hardware. When Joe Sixpack walks into BestBuy, he buys a bare system and gets the option of paying $200 for XP or $30 for Linux. That's a free market. When MS *colludes* with Dell to sell a bundled system, it's no longer a free market, it's an oligopoly and no self-respecting free market advocate could say that that's a good thing.
If MS apologists had their way we'd be paying Standard Oil $8 a gallon for gas and AT&T $5 a minute for our long distance calls.
user_pref("general.useragent.override", "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows 98)");
because I need to get into a single (poorly) designed site for work, so I show up as IE on every other site even though I'm using Moz. This isn't something that's in my realm of control to change and from what I hear, a lot of people are forced to do the same. I would imagine that an extra 3-4% could be added to that Moz/NS stat based on this kind of assenine web authoring alone. Moz really needs to add a Konq-like useragent override so we can set that string for site specific instances.
... there's nothing shameful with things like construction or plumbing. Hell, the plumber out here can command more per hour than I can fixing PCs.
I had a plumber out here about a month ago and I footed a $690 bill for about 4 hours of work. Granted it was a shitty job to do (pun intended) but that's still well over $150 an hour. Even worse, when you need a plumber, you NEED a plumber. I'd also say he's pretty safe to assume his job won't be outsourced to India any time soon. There are licensing rules so there's some courses to take but I imagine that the money is still as good if not better than $100K.
There's nothing wrong with selling open source software. Seriously. If somebody wants to give away their software with freely modifiable sources, fantastic. If somebody want to sell their software with freely modifiable sources, also great. If somebody wants to sell their software and not provide any source code, not so great. So long as SuSE remains *open*, I'll keep buying it. If they ever try to take that "open" part away, I'll switch.
- Yep, you need to get your hands on DeCSS (not easy for the uninitiated) but playback shouldn't be choppy. You video output was probably set to software renderer. I use directfb or sdl (depends on the driver caps) and it works fine.
- Which scanner? There are a few cheap Lexmark ones that don't work but most high end scanners work with Sane.
- Did you check the MTU size? I'd try disabling it since I've seen that be a source of problems.
- Ok, the only explaination here is that you don't have an nVIDIA or ATI based vid card. I run UT, Quake, NWN, RTCW, ET, etc under Lin with no problems.
- Granted. There's the web based TurboTax that works but for a real native solution (at least in the US) there's nothing like this at the individual level.
Ok, all that aside, if you're a hard core gamer, don't bother trying to switch to Linux (yet at least). Yeah, there are solutions like WineX but it's far from perfect. The rest of the items on your list should all be workable. I use Win4Lin for Windows only ware that I am forced to contend with (anybody from WebEx reading this!) and I'm sure you can run window Tax software under it.
Well RedHat's out of the retail box business, that's old news -but- I think it's pretty cool that CompUSA has a boxed FreeBSD set! I'll admit I didn't believe you at first but then I looked it up online just to be certain and they have the PowerPak 5.1 set. Anyhow, to get back on subject, CompUSA does sell SuSE as well.
I'm with you there. Since Sun decided to use SuSE as the basis for the JDS, we have two big software houses pushing the SuSE binary base. Hopefully, SuSE will take over the desktop space that RH abandonned (ok, there's still the RH Workstation edition).
My biggest outstanding desktop beef is that Netlock/Apani's Contivity VPN product for Nortel gateways doesn't work with kernel's above 2.4.20. Of course, this is because Apani's development leads suck, not Linux itself. If there was an alternative way to connect to a Nortel Contivity VPN gateway (and I've searched far and wide) I'd drop them in a blink.
Not really, I always get the Professional Update DVD set that's ~$60. I moved beyond the point of needing a boxed distro a few years ago but having everything on a DVD is so damned convenient that I always purchase it. Otherwise, search around for a torrent of 9.1 after it's released. You probably won't find the DVD iso floating around due to it's size but the CD isos are pretty easy to find.
The answer are two things called "seizure of assets" and "incarceration", governments, contrary to popular belief, have the authority to seize assets in order to cover fines, and beyond that, they can toss those in charge's asses in jail. That means any money and securities in european banks, properties in europe, etc. Beyond that, next time Billy or Stevie land on the continent, they can look forward to spending some time visiting with Milosevic. Microsoft may act like they're above the law but they most certainly aren't.
XOrg could end up becoming the new de-facto X11 implementation
It's a little early to make that kind of prediction. However, the key is compatibility. If XORG maintains full compatibility such that it's still X11 and we can just a recompile and go on our merry way, then anything is possible. Personally, I don't think people care which code base their X server uses so long as it's an X11 server. Reality is that the XF86 group will wake up an smell the coffee sooner rather than later, they're expendable, they just don't know it yet.
You really need to qualify that with "All *I* need...". I write Java server apps that get deployed on AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, Linux, and (sigh) Win2K. I have Q/A review the binary set once and the *same* binary set goes out to all our users unchanged. I like C++ a lot but the multi-platform aspect of Java (do not say "distribute the source and let them compile it", it's not my call) is a huge feature.
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Hej! Sweden's a nice place and the people are friendly. My biggest beefs about moving there would be the outrageous costs of alcohol and gasoline ... well, that and having to watch NHL games at 1 in the morning.
Obligatory Simpson's quote:
Kang: It's true! We are aliens! But what are you going to do about it? It's a two party system! You have to vote for one of us!
Man in Crowd: Well, I'm just going to vote for a third party!
Kang: Go ahead! Throw your vote away!! HA HA HA HA!!!
Looking at the screenshots I was thinking the same thing! K3B is probably the closest thing to Nero Linux has right now.
At DOS-times, computers cost about 5000$
... and that was in 1985 dollars! If you adjust that for inflation and that's close to $8600 in today's dollars.
Even if you survive the crash, you'd die of hypothermia in a few hours. I don't know if you've ever swam in the North Atlantic but I spent a few days at the beach in Nova Scotia in the middle of August and let me assure you that the water was not much over 60F. You die when your body core temp reaches 80F. In 60F water, you've got about 3 hours of survival time immersed. So, in an ideal scenario, unless the rescuers get to you in under 3 hours, you're gonna die anyhow.
I didn't even think of the "revocation" piece of the puzzle. What are your options once your key has been revoked? Buy a new mobo? Will we be seeing "revoked" PC mobos for sale "on the cheap" on eBay in a few years?
The "trust" occurs below the OS, at the BIOS level. So you could modify Bochs to fake a trusted BIOS but you'd still need a valid key to ping against the key servers. Regardless, DRM sucks.
Huh? ... but the MS zealots made it very clear to me that "the purpose of an OS" was to provide a web browser and a media player. I had started thinking AIX wasn't an OS because it didn't bundle a browser and a media player.
It's about 1 1/4% of their cash reserves, not even 1Q's cash flow. A more appropriate fine would have been a full 10% of their cash reserves. The tobacco industry has been nailed with $B fines, no reason MS shouldn't have their hand slapped just as hard.
Hang on there, this is only for "its portfolio of business desktop and notebook PCs", the key word here being "business". This means we won't be seeing HP Linux PCs at BestBuy / CircuitCity in the near term at least.
The best one I've found is AllOfMP3. It was recommended on /. a while back in a thread and I (nervously) decided to check it out. I put $10 into my account via PayPal and ordered a bunch of MP3 encoded tunes. Haven't looked back since. Tracks wind up costing you around $0.10 a piece for high bitrate encodings and there's absolutely no DRM. The draw back (or positive depending on how you look at it) is that they're based in Russia. I'll vouch that they won't steal your money but I can't vouch for the "to the letter" legality of it. Most of the arguments I've heard is that the RIAA tried to shut them down but lost the case in the Russian court system. Those issues aside, the selection is pretty good but it's definitely more Top 40 stuff. The biggest plus is that there are a lot of international artists that we would only have access to through expensive "imports" state-side.
Not really, a 512MB flash RAM module is probably around $20 in volume. That's a significant cost savings. The other issue is that there's money to be made selling "memory modules". That's money MS left on the table with the XB1. I wouldn't hold my breath awaiting an HD in the XB2.
Great post, let me add that this is the crux of my disgust against Microsoft as well. If MS is truly the best OS software out there, then let's see MS unbundle the OS from OEM hardware. When Joe Sixpack walks into BestBuy, he buys a bare system and gets the option of paying $200 for XP or $30 for Linux. That's a free market. When MS *colludes* with Dell to sell a bundled system, it's no longer a free market, it's an oligopoly and no self-respecting free market advocate could say that that's a good thing.
If MS apologists had their way we'd be paying Standard Oil $8 a gallon for gas and AT&T $5 a minute for our long distance calls.
Except that my user.js has this in it:
user_pref("general.useragent.override", "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows 98)");
because I need to get into a single (poorly) designed site for work, so I show up as IE on every other site even though I'm using Moz. This isn't something that's in my realm of control to change and from what I hear, a lot of people are forced to do the same. I would imagine that an extra 3-4% could be added to that Moz/NS stat based on this kind of assenine web authoring alone. Moz really needs to add a Konq-like useragent override so we can set that string for site specific instances.
I had a plumber out here about a month ago and I footed a $690 bill for about 4 hours of work. Granted it was a shitty job to do (pun intended) but that's still well over $150 an hour. Even worse, when you need a plumber, you NEED a plumber. I'd also say he's pretty safe to assume his job won't be outsourced to India any time soon. There are licensing rules so there's some courses to take but I imagine that the money is still as good if not better than $100K.
There's nothing wrong with selling open source software. Seriously. If somebody wants to give away their software with freely modifiable sources, fantastic. If somebody want to sell their software with freely modifiable sources, also great. If somebody wants to sell their software and not provide any source code, not so great. So long as SuSE remains *open*, I'll keep buying it. If they ever try to take that "open" part away, I'll switch.
Ok, I think you're legit so ...
- Yep, you need to get your hands on DeCSS (not easy for the uninitiated) but playback shouldn't be choppy. You video output was probably set to software renderer. I use directfb or sdl (depends on the driver caps) and it works fine.
- Which scanner? There are a few cheap Lexmark ones that don't work but most high end scanners work with Sane.
- Did you check the MTU size? I'd try disabling it since I've seen that be a source of problems.
- Ok, the only explaination here is that you don't have an nVIDIA or ATI based vid card. I run UT, Quake, NWN, RTCW, ET, etc under Lin with no problems.
- Granted. There's the web based TurboTax that works but for a real native solution (at least in the US) there's nothing like this at the individual level.
Ok, all that aside, if you're a hard core gamer, don't bother trying to switch to Linux (yet at least). Yeah, there are solutions like WineX but it's far from perfect. The rest of the items on your list should all be workable. I use Win4Lin for Windows only ware that I am forced to contend with (anybody from WebEx reading this!) and I'm sure you can run window Tax software under it.
Well RedHat's out of the retail box business, that's old news -but- I think it's pretty cool that CompUSA has a boxed FreeBSD set! I'll admit I didn't believe you at first but then I looked it up online just to be certain and they have the PowerPak 5.1 set. Anyhow, to get back on subject, CompUSA does sell SuSE as well.
I'm with you there. Since Sun decided to use SuSE as the basis for the JDS, we have two big software houses pushing the SuSE binary base. Hopefully, SuSE will take over the desktop space that RH abandonned (ok, there's still the RH Workstation edition).
My biggest outstanding desktop beef is that Netlock/Apani's Contivity VPN product for Nortel gateways doesn't work with kernel's above 2.4.20. Of course, this is because Apani's development leads suck, not Linux itself. If there was an alternative way to connect to a Nortel Contivity VPN gateway (and I've searched far and wide) I'd drop them in a blink.
Not really, I always get the Professional Update DVD set that's ~$60. I moved beyond the point of needing a boxed distro a few years ago but having everything on a DVD is so damned convenient that I always purchase it. Otherwise, search around for a torrent of 9.1 after it's released. You probably won't find the DVD iso floating around due to it's size but the CD isos are pretty easy to find.
The answer are two things called "seizure of assets" and "incarceration", governments, contrary to popular belief, have the authority to seize assets in order to cover fines, and beyond that, they can toss those in charge's asses in jail. That means any money and securities in european banks, properties in europe, etc. Beyond that, next time Billy or Stevie land on the continent, they can look forward to spending some time visiting with Milosevic. Microsoft may act like they're above the law but they most certainly aren't.
Touche!!!
XOrg could end up becoming the new de-facto X11 implementation
It's a little early to make that kind of prediction. However, the key is compatibility. If XORG maintains full compatibility such that it's still X11 and we can just a recompile and go on our merry way, then anything is possible. Personally, I don't think people care which code base their X server uses so long as it's an X11 server. Reality is that the XF86 group will wake up an smell the coffee sooner rather than later, they're expendable, they just don't know it yet.
You really need to qualify that with "All *I* need ...". I write Java server apps that get deployed on AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, Linux, and (sigh) Win2K. I have Q/A review the binary set once and the *same* binary set goes out to all our users unchanged. I like C++ a lot but the multi-platform aspect of Java (do not say "distribute the source and let them compile it", it's not my call) is a huge feature.
IANALE but here's a great site put together by lawyers: chillingeffects.org
Looks like the answer is yes but the court determines how much SCOMayo gets, not SCOMayo.