No its not correct to think it will never be true. However, without objective evidence to show that this major technological transfomation is going to be different form past major technical advances, is being an alarmist.
Transposons are natural . . . but that doesn't mean that they don't cause problems.
Very true but They do lots of good things as well sometimes its important to migrate genes form one species to another. It can prevent mass extinctions. The issue is as the parent poster points out is nature has a system that is very very complex and over the long haull it never has failed, which is not to say there are no short term problems. There are extinctions all the time there is also speciation happening all the time. Transgenics reak of all of humanities biggest bungles when tinkering with nature. It operates outside the system and thats bad because when the system is as complex as it is we are not equiped to understand it, so its best to leave the rules in force.
Look at the problems we have had with damns and oxygen content, we changed something we did not understand in a way that could not happen naturally. We thought though what we did know and planed for the negative impacts for things like silting, but when large resevars casued the water to cool, it held less oxygen and its really changed the fish populations in some rivers, we were caught with our pants down.
I am all for research, and development of gene technology, but I think tech like what is being discuesed in this artice is the way to go because it still holds us within natures restraints. We could still screw up but the conseqenses will be limmited and changes are the natural system has a play for dealing with them. Transgenics creats stuff that could never otherwise happen and that is far more risky.
Again Star Trek is becoming reality. STTNG had an episode with little robo-tools called Exocomps(sp) they were supposed to be able to build new neural pathways within themselves and become better tools as they practiced with specific tasks.
Eventually they generated so many pathways they becaume aware, and intelligent. I doubt we have to fear that from chips at this junkture but its comming.
The problem is that, there is no reason to think that these things are not know before they are published. There are networks of black hats out that that know things and keep them quiet. By not publising an expoit as soon as its know we increase the time these people have to use these exploits totally unchecked. At least if a vulnerability gets published then the responsible parties are forced to fix the problem due to constant harrassment and the marginalization of their products. In the mean time where truely sensetive stuff is concerned there is the short term workaround of shutting down the box or stopping the vulnerable service.
The question is which would you rather have, constant minor service interruptions due to having to shut stuff off untill its pached and dissruptions by script kiddes or would you rather have a North Korea takeing their time to develop a super worm the exploit an unkown bug and catching losts of admin running really key systens complete y off gaurd all at the same time, portentially creating utter pandamonium.
I don't know about the rest of you but I would rather swat script kiddies then be knifed in the back in a dark room.
Right, because it makes since to sacrifice the 3 Billion dollors worth of economic steam just to enfoce Kyoto so we can actually lower the rate of global warming by 1% which is likely a natural occurance that we are speeding up in an insignifigant way. Most resonobly attainable emmisons reduction goals would have NO MEANINGFUL impact on the enviornment, over just keeping current standards. They will be a huge economic burdon. To really "stop polluting" you would drive the economy to a screeching halt.
In either case that means lost jobs. Less money availble to solve other problems like hunger and develop cures for medical problems, liberate the middle east, protect morons like you from yourselves and the terrorist alike, educate your children, the list goes on. So please understand there is no we might as well argument to be made here, its more of a we should'nt unless type of situation. Unless we are reasonbly sure we are damaging ocean currents and screwing up the climate it makes no sense to certainly RUIN many people well being over it.
What is called for is some money and time to conduct real unbiased studies and learn what we can, and to get all the people spewing forth the "bad science" on both sides of this issue to sit down shutup and move over for legitimate study. Then maybe in another 30 years when we have some really information we make INFORMED decisions on how to procede.
Yea, I have to agree that would be the right tool for the job. That said this is slashdot, if there is a way to do it for twice the price, through expensive computer equipment they will find way, even if it works only half as well as the traditional solution.
I wonder if the legal quagmire around rebroadcasting comes into play when you are effectively transmitting the net radio station on the air from your access point.
So you were one of those Lamers who used string. Shoot man, Flag signals were the way to go, my and my buds cut best all you loosers using string by like 12 bits/day. We once managed to transfer 5.3K thats right K.
How do people get away with publishing this BS windows sound support has nothing to do with windows it has everything to do with that is what the sound chip makers release drivers, for. I'd love to see how good hardware support would be if Mickyshaft had to write all their own drivers. I think the level of hardware support is incredible on Linux given the fact that the community has had to reverse engineer the hardware and write the drivers with no help form the manufactures in most cases.
Now lets talk about Windows 95 for a moment sall we since he used it as an example. Go to CompUSA and grab the most expensive newest sound card off the shelf that has linux support. Good Luck trying to get it to work on Windows 95, betcha the drivers require a later version and you're screwed. Now find an old Linux 2.0 system (that should be about where the kernel was in 95) Chances are the drivers been back ported already or if not its probably relatively simple to do so yourself if you know some C given OSS has been pretty stable for quite sometime.
So Fred Langa why don't you compare the systems on a level playing field and see what results you get. Most off the shelf desktops have $20 sound cards at best these days, Fred because you can't get the stock card to work it should not be a show stopper for Linux. Did you decide not to buy a PC because you can't just plug in that Apple Writer? Why pass up Linux because your cheap crap sound card won't work.
Maybe I am missing something but if your going to "fake" your death why do you need the electricity? You could say arrange the outlet to be nonpowered and use regular water. If I were going to fake my death I would rather use inexpensive water to do it rather then high priced fire suppression chemistry, that way I can keep my money in order to start a new life with it.
I would say in all those instances IRC is still public, unless you are using some kinda of encryption on the information you are sending. IRC is not like a phone call that is circuit switched. To overhear a phone call someone has to deliberately tap the wire. IRC though is clear text over a large distributed network you do not control. Its more comaparable to talking to each other with smoke signals. The conversation is between the two of you but anyone with eyes can see what is being said.
Amen, this is why BLs are evil. They people running and using them are allowing the spamers to win. They basicly ensure that the only people who can run MTAs are very large organizations that can be sure they are on everyones whitelist and will never be black listed and the dertermined spammers who can change it up enough and remain a moving target. The only thing BLs accomplish is screwing the little guy.
Makeing Linux totaly point and click and simple to configure would not make it less secure. (Please note I don't want to see what I just wrote actually happen). If we can be honest and stop trolling for a seccond recent versions of windows have had the potential to be very secure. Most these huge worms and the like we becasue machines were badly misconfigured and we running al sorts of services that were not needed by those users. The rest of the big windows holes have been result of people being loged in as Administrators all the time. Granted wholes such as the one in the help system should not happen but, they really can't hurt you if you are not an admin or a power user.
This issue here is that if you make it easy people just sit down and use it. If you don't make it easy they have to read the documentation and while they are learning the bare minimum of how to do the setup they also get the theory of how to do it right. GNU/Linux could be a security night mare if you let some noobie build your server, and he makes the permissions on everything 777. The thing many windows users do stip stuff like that becasue its easy enough for them just to click around unill it works. Most *nix users don't do stuff like that because all the noobies can even figure out how to login untill they read the docs, and when they do the learn what stuff is for and how it *should* be used.
Actually some sort of universal internet currency is not a bad idea at all. It could opererate just like any forigen currency with an exchange rate that responds to market forces. It might also make the tax rules very interesting both for consumers and google. Maybe they can buy a small island some place and claim to be their own small nation, where each cluster node is treated as a citizen. Wait maybe I am getting ahead of myself, but a separate web currency would be nice. It would make doing business on the net truely universal. You would not have to even think about what country the e-store you were buying from is in, other then for shipping cost reasons. It could really open a huge market, and make it much easier for small shops to operate internationally since they would only have to beable to accept the local currency and googolians.
Tom's Hardware has a good article on what WINFS is and what its all about. I can't imagine that most people are going to use "virtual folders" to do anything other then confuse themselves.
I would not worry about it. WIN/FS is not an fs at all. It is nothing more then a meta database, system service. Its only a file system in terms of marketing speak. As far as how data is stored on the disk it is just NTFS, nothing new. There is no reason why it could not be implemented on Linux or any other operating system. The only reason it won't work on fat is you need some file system features like extended artibutes so you can flags files to facilitate sorting them with the meata database. Actually if you did someting like UMSDOS does and kept an external data file and then just hid it with the driver then you could implement on a less advanced file system. So in short WINFS is nothing more then additional bloatware that most people won't use and those who do will missuse to the point where it becomes entirely useless and only creates more overhead on the system.
Its not possibly do to other factors like the jobless rate being up and consumer confidence being low, and their product is a luxury item. Its not possible that people are simply to interested in what is happening in the world and the nation to spend their time on traditional pop-culture. Nope there are no valid reasons why CD sales would be down. How are other luxory items and goods doing, is the sale of $5 per glass coffee products down from last year, high end clothing, and other such itms how are they doing. I am willing to bet that sales of lots of things people *really don't need* have been hurt.
A computer is a tool you should know how to use it. If find this diser to remain ignorant and not need to understand how things work pethetic. I can set hardware up on linux and do stuff that takes noobs and hour inside of 30 secs, why because I know how the software plays and how lots of the hardware plays. The noobs either wine line you and leave or they learn and love it because the command line IS FASTER if you know the commands. If you know how the software layers work and iterplay you can usual guess correctly what must be done for new software and hardware and it takes no time eith. As a developer, or so you claim to be, you should know alot about that stuff otherwise you CS degree must have come form clown college. Evem if your not educated as a developer there is nothing stopping you from learning other then your apparent diser not too. That is the sign of a lazy mind my friend. I bet your the type of fellow who pays someone else to service the lawn mower because your to ignorant to change the oil yourself. You can't be bothered to open the owners manual look at what kinda oil the thing users and figure out which way the screw cap turns. One of our nations greatest authors, Emerson, spent alot of time on "Self Reliance" and the satisfaction there in. If the computer does not work FIX IT, debug the code, your a developer why can't you do it? Maybe you migh feel good about your self haveing solved your own problem and possible contributed to the community. Its that or you can just hand another hard earned $90 to Bill G. so you can use the same pice of software for another year but enjoy the pretty new pictures and support for it.
Figures this is an AC post. Who are you 544159? Troll back is the worst example of everything it frequently complains about. This guy, 544159, makes all sorts of blanket statements about how other posters are wrong and expects us to buy into his crap just because he is at Harvard. He has even on occasion poket fun and people and told them they should leave Harvard for Community College. Let me tell you I know lots of people in Community college who could best almost anyone in just about any acedemic contest, and I would stake my saveings they could beat this guy. Troll back is no more valid then anyother post and unless 544159 is willing to dig some evidence before he calls other peoples claims baisless. I will happly cite his own publications for my evidence.
I think you are being overly hard on him. He is basicly acting to protect himself and his own something most people would do.
SCO is behaving just like the Mob once did in this country, still does to some degree, and continues to do other places about the world. SCO is basicly asking you to pay for protection. The situation is simple we will indemnify you from everone else if you pay up, however if you don't pay you also have more to fear from us then anyone else. People pay the guys who collect from the mob because they know the law can't protect them. The law has so far failed to do anything about the threat from SCO, so its a reasonble to feel like if SCO is threating you its something you need to deal with or bad things could befall you business. Its not so easy to sit back and call BS on SCO when you are the victim of their campaign of terror. So sure he paied up and kept quiet about it untill two things happened. One it began to look more and more like SCO really is just a paper tiger the law can protect him and two SCO began to inflict exactly the kind of abuse he paid them not to do apon him.
I think the backlash falls perfectly into this analogy as well. People are peeved at him because by paying off the Mob/SCO he is infact supporting and encoraging the criminal element that every one else on the block is so afraid of wether they admit it or not and further endangering those who chose not to play ball.
Now the man is feeling a bit safer and can understand and appreciate the cries and resoning of other. He wants to defect to our side. I am not saying we should be fool hardy and welcome him with open arms, he still could proove to be in SCOs poket, but I think its unfair to turn him away as well. Its also stupid to trun him away when we need all the alies we can get, and his most recent statements are potentially very damaging to SCOs strategy.
>>If true, does that mean Wine will be able to soon >>run ALL Windows apps perfectly?
This has nothing to do with the desktop code, the sanction is on the server code. That means the RPC, AD, CIFS, Exchange realted stuff. So what is means is Samba can emulate an 2003 server perfectly function in all modes and enteract with other windows servers just as if it was one. It means that OGo can speak to Outlook clients directly without plugins for the outlook client, important stuff like that. Desktop OS is a peanuts issue wether you use alternate/open desktops or not in a larger bussiness your IT software buget gets blown first in the server room then on development tools. The desktop really is small potatos to most business and the economy in general, which is not to say the its not extreemly valuable to individuals or worth persueing.
Slashdot Mirror
No its not correct to think it will never be true. However, without objective evidence to show that this major technological transfomation is going to be different form past major technical advances, is being an alarmist.
Transposons are natural . . . but that doesn't mean that they don't cause problems.
Very true but They do lots of good things as well sometimes its important to migrate genes form one species to another. It can prevent mass extinctions. The issue is as the parent poster points out is nature has a system that is very very complex and over the long haull it never has failed, which is not to say there are no short term problems. There are extinctions all the time there is also speciation happening all the time. Transgenics reak of all of humanities biggest bungles when tinkering with nature. It operates outside the system and thats bad because when the system is as complex as it is we are not equiped to understand it, so its best to leave the rules in force.
Look at the problems we have had with damns and oxygen content, we changed something we did not understand in a way that could not happen naturally. We thought though what we did know and planed for the negative impacts for things like silting, but when large resevars casued the water to cool, it held less oxygen and its really changed the fish populations in some rivers, we were caught with our pants down.
I am all for research, and development of gene technology, but I think tech like what is being discuesed in this artice is the way to go because it still holds us within natures restraints. We could still screw up but the conseqenses will be limmited and changes are the natural system has a play for dealing with them. Transgenics creats stuff that could never otherwise happen and that is far more risky.
"Used PAM to login to a Linux box lately? "
No thank God.
*Slackware Rules*
Again Star Trek is becoming reality. STTNG had an episode with little robo-tools called Exocomps(sp) they were supposed to be able to build new neural pathways within themselves and become better tools as they practiced with specific tasks.
Eventually they generated so many pathways they becaume aware, and intelligent. I doubt we have to fear that from chips at this junkture but its comming.
Actually they use a variation of that technology all the time in modern machines, not so often cars but it has been done. Its called "the fly wheel"
I'm a NERD.
I'll think too much about anything possible.
Anyways, I was just stating the obvious.
The problem is that, there is no reason to think that these things are not know before they are published. There are networks of black hats out that that know things and keep them quiet. By not publising an expoit as soon as its know we increase the time these people have to use these exploits totally unchecked. At least if a vulnerability gets published then the responsible parties are forced to fix the problem due to constant harrassment and the marginalization of their products. In the mean time where truely sensetive stuff is concerned there is the short term workaround of shutting down the box or stopping the vulnerable service.
The question is which would you rather have, constant minor service interruptions due to having to shut stuff off untill its pached and dissruptions by script kiddes or would you rather have a North Korea takeing their time to develop a super worm the exploit an unkown bug and catching losts of admin running really key systens complete y off gaurd all at the same time, portentially creating utter pandamonium.
I don't know about the rest of you but I would rather swat script kiddies then be knifed in the back in a dark room.
Right, because it makes since to sacrifice the 3 Billion dollors worth of economic steam just to enfoce Kyoto so we can actually lower the rate of global warming by 1% which is likely a natural occurance that we are speeding up in an insignifigant way. Most resonobly attainable emmisons reduction goals would have NO MEANINGFUL impact on the enviornment, over just keeping current standards. They will be a huge economic burdon. To really "stop polluting" you would drive the economy to a screeching halt.
In either case that means lost jobs. Less money availble to solve other problems like hunger and develop cures for medical problems, liberate the middle east, protect morons like you from yourselves and the terrorist alike, educate your children, the list goes on. So please understand there is no we might as well argument to be made here, its more of a we should'nt unless type of situation. Unless we are reasonbly sure we are damaging ocean currents and screwing up the climate it makes no sense to certainly RUIN many people well being over it.
What is called for is some money and time to conduct real unbiased studies and learn what we can, and to get all the people spewing forth the "bad science" on both sides of this issue to sit down shutup and move over for legitimate study. Then maybe in another 30 years when we have some really information we make INFORMED decisions on how to procede.
Yea, I have to agree that would be the right tool for the job. That said this is slashdot, if there is a way to do it for twice the price, through expensive computer equipment they will find way, even if it works only half as well as the traditional solution.
I wonder if the legal quagmire around rebroadcasting comes into play when you are effectively transmitting the net radio station on the air from your access point.
So you were one of those Lamers who used string. Shoot man, Flag signals were the way to go, my and my buds cut best all you loosers using string by like 12 bits/day. We once managed to transfer 5.3K thats right K.
How do people get away with publishing this BS windows sound support has nothing to do with windows it has everything to do with that is what the sound chip makers release drivers, for. I'd love to see how good hardware support would be if Mickyshaft had to write all their own drivers. I think the level of hardware support is incredible on Linux given the fact that the community has had to reverse engineer the hardware and write the drivers with no help form the manufactures in most cases.
Now lets talk about Windows 95 for a moment sall we since he used it as an example. Go to CompUSA and grab the most expensive newest sound card off the shelf that has linux support. Good Luck trying to get it to work on Windows 95, betcha the drivers require a later version and you're screwed. Now find an old Linux 2.0 system (that should be about where the kernel was in 95) Chances are the drivers been back ported already or if not its probably relatively simple to do so yourself if you know some C given OSS has been pretty stable for quite sometime.
So Fred Langa why don't you compare the systems on a level playing field and see what results you get. Most off the shelf desktops have $20 sound cards at best these days, Fred because you can't get the stock card to work it should not be a show stopper for Linux. Did you decide not to buy a PC because you can't just plug in that Apple Writer? Why pass up Linux because your cheap crap sound card won't work.
Maybe I am missing something but if your going to "fake" your death why do you need the electricity? You could say arrange the outlet to be nonpowered and use regular water. If I were going to fake my death I would rather use inexpensive water to do it rather then high priced fire suppression chemistry, that way I can keep my money in order to start a new life with it.
I would say in all those instances IRC is still public, unless you are using some kinda of encryption on the information you are sending. IRC is not like a phone call that is circuit switched. To overhear a phone call someone has to deliberately tap the wire. IRC though is clear text over a large distributed network you do not control. Its more comaparable to talking to each other with smoke signals. The conversation is between the two of you but anyone with eyes can see what is being said.
Those other products are not as good as ours...no really we are better, ... so buy our stuff.
What would you expect him to say other then that. That would be like 7UP saying "sure Sprite gets the job done".
Amen, this is why BLs are evil. They people running and using them are allowing the spamers to win. They basicly ensure that the only people who can run MTAs are very large organizations that can be sure they are on everyones whitelist and will never be black listed and the dertermined spammers who can change it up enough and remain a moving target. The only thing BLs accomplish is screwing the little guy.
Makeing Linux totaly point and click and simple to configure would not make it less secure. (Please note I don't want to see what I just wrote actually happen). If we can be honest and stop trolling for a seccond recent versions of windows have had the potential to be very secure. Most these huge worms and the like we becasue machines were badly misconfigured and we running al sorts of services that were not needed by those users. The rest of the big windows holes have been result of people being loged in as Administrators all the time. Granted wholes such as the one in the help system should not happen but, they really can't hurt you if you are not an admin or a power user.
This issue here is that if you make it easy people just sit down and use it. If you don't make it easy they have to read the documentation and while they are learning the bare minimum of how to do the setup they also get the theory of how to do it right. GNU/Linux could be a security night mare if you let some noobie build your server, and he makes the permissions on everything 777.
The thing many windows users do stip stuff like that becasue its easy enough for them just to click around unill it works. Most *nix users don't do stuff like that because all the noobies can even figure out how to login untill they read the docs, and when they do the learn what stuff is for and how it *should* be used.
Actually some sort of universal internet currency is not a bad idea at all. It could opererate just like any forigen currency with an exchange rate that responds to market forces. It might also make the tax rules very interesting both for consumers and google. Maybe they can buy a small island some place and claim to be their own small nation, where each cluster node is treated as a citizen. Wait maybe I am getting ahead of myself, but a separate web currency would be nice. It would make doing business on the net truely universal. You would not have to even think about what country the e-store you were buying from is in, other then for shipping cost reasons. It could really open a huge market, and make it much easier for small shops to operate internationally since they would only have to beable to accept the local currency and googolians.
Tom's Hardware has a good article on what WINFS is and what its all about. I can't imagine that most people are going to use "virtual folders" to do anything other then confuse themselves.
d ex .html
http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/20040129/in
I would not worry about it. WIN/FS is not an fs at all. It is nothing more then a meta database, system service. Its only a file system in terms of marketing speak. As far as how data is stored on the disk it is just NTFS, nothing new. There is no reason why it could not be implemented on Linux or any other operating system. The only reason it won't work on fat is you need some file system features like extended artibutes so you can flags files to facilitate sorting them with the meata database. Actually if you did someting like UMSDOS does and kept an external data file and then just hid it with the driver then you could implement on a less advanced file system. So in short WINFS is nothing more then additional bloatware that most people won't use and those who do will missuse to the point where it becomes entirely useless and only creates more overhead on the system.
Its not possibly do to other factors like the jobless rate being up and consumer confidence being low, and their product is a luxury item. Its not possible that people are simply to interested in what is happening in the world and the nation to spend their time on traditional pop-culture. Nope there are no valid reasons why CD sales would be down. How are other luxory items and goods doing, is the sale of $5 per glass coffee products down from last year, high end clothing, and other such itms how are they doing. I am willing to bet that sales of lots of things people *really don't need* have been hurt.
A computer is a tool you should know how to use it. If find this diser to remain ignorant and not need to understand how things work pethetic. I can set hardware up on linux and do stuff that takes noobs and hour inside of 30 secs, why because I know how the software plays and how lots of the hardware plays. The noobs either wine line you and leave or they learn and love it because the command line IS FASTER if you know the commands. If you know how the software layers work and iterplay you can usual guess correctly what must be done for new software and hardware and it takes no time eith. As a developer, or so you claim to be, you should know alot about that stuff otherwise you CS degree must have come form clown college. Evem if your not educated as a developer there is nothing stopping you from learning other then your apparent diser not too. That is the sign of a lazy mind my friend. I bet your the type of fellow who pays someone else to service the lawn mower because your to ignorant to change the oil yourself. You can't be bothered to open the owners manual look at what kinda oil the thing users and figure out which way the screw cap turns. One of our nations greatest authors, Emerson, spent alot of time on "Self Reliance" and the satisfaction there in. If the computer does not work FIX IT, debug the code, your a developer why can't you do it? Maybe you migh feel good about your self haveing solved your own problem and possible contributed to the community. Its that or you can just hand another hard earned $90 to Bill G. so you can use the same pice of software for another year but enjoy the pretty new pictures and support for it.
Figures this is an AC post. Who are you 544159? Troll back is the worst example of everything it frequently complains about. This guy, 544159, makes all sorts of blanket statements about how other posters are wrong and expects us to buy into his crap just because he is at Harvard. He has even on occasion poket fun and people and told them they should leave Harvard for Community College. Let me tell you I know lots of people in Community college who could best almost anyone in just about any acedemic contest, and I would stake my saveings they could beat this guy. Troll back is no more valid then anyother post and unless 544159 is willing to dig some evidence before he calls other peoples claims baisless. I will happly cite his own publications for my evidence.
I think you are being overly hard on him. He is basicly acting to protect himself and his own something most people would do.
SCO is behaving just like the Mob once did in this country, still does to some degree, and continues to do other places about the world. SCO is basicly asking you to pay for protection. The situation is simple we will indemnify you from everone else if you pay up, however if you don't pay you also have more to fear from us then anyone else. People pay the guys who collect from the mob because they know the law can't protect them. The law has so far failed to do anything about the threat from SCO, so its a reasonble to feel like if SCO is threating you its something you need to deal with or bad things could befall you business. Its not so easy to sit back and call BS on SCO when you are the victim of their campaign of terror. So sure he paied up and kept quiet about it untill two things happened. One it began to look more and more like SCO really is just a paper tiger the law can protect him and two SCO began to inflict exactly the kind of abuse he paid them not to do apon him.
I think the backlash falls perfectly into this analogy as well. People are peeved at him because by paying off the Mob/SCO he is infact supporting and encoraging the criminal element that every one else on the block is so afraid of wether they admit it or not and further endangering those who chose not to play ball.
Now the man is feeling a bit safer and can understand and appreciate the cries and resoning of other. He wants to defect to our side. I am not saying we should be fool hardy and welcome him with open arms, he still could proove to be in SCOs poket, but I think its unfair to turn him away as well. Its also stupid to trun him away when we need all the alies we can get, and his most recent statements are potentially very damaging to SCOs strategy.
>>If true, does that mean Wine will be able to soon >>run ALL Windows apps perfectly?
This has nothing to do with the desktop code, the sanction is on the server code. That means the RPC, AD, CIFS, Exchange realted stuff. So what is means is Samba can emulate an 2003 server perfectly function in all modes and enteract with other windows servers just as if it was one. It means that OGo can speak to Outlook clients directly without plugins for the outlook client, important stuff like that. Desktop OS is a peanuts issue wether you use alternate/open desktops or not in a larger bussiness your IT software buget gets blown first in the server room then on development tools. The desktop really is small potatos to most business and the economy in general, which is not to say the its not extreemly valuable to individuals or worth persueing.