Reading the patent extract on Google, it sounded like it might cover the work-space pager that shows up in the tool-bar on most window-managers (or floats in the window on some others). CDE has been around since the mid-1990's (I first saw it in 1995 on HP-UX). So why suddenly file suit now? And why not against Sun/HP/IBM for using CDE for the last 12 years?
The patent is dated 1991. Do any of the old-timers remember if some of the pre-1991 window-managers (such as twm or uwm) had similiar features as prior art?
SCO execs will make more chairs
on
SCO Loses
·
· Score: 1
That's OK... If later cours find their claims were fraudulent, the SCO exectuives will be making chairs here.
Having an army is different from being willing to use it. The most telling part of your post is this:
In Europe many still remember all the horrible things of second world war and all the pain and suffering that was caused in the war, and thus see that Europe should not engage to wars in general and especially not build empires. What Europe is doing is building itself and spreading peace and prosperity to it's neighbours and other countries by increasing international trade and exchange and influencing governments of other countries by means of dialogue and diplomacy. Even though Europe nowadays seems more like house cat that just wants comfort for itself and others, it doesn't mean that it couldn't defend itself.
Its not a question of whether Europe could defend itself (which is doubtable), but would Europe defend itself, or would it effectively surrender immediately by trying to negotiate tribute when threatened.
Now as to whether they actually could defend themselves, I also doubt that. Once the shooting starts, a war in Europe would likely be a "come as you are" affair and not a protracted conflict allowing a build up. Preparation would be paramount. Right now, the Russian Army is probably inferior to the combined EU forces (although its doubtful there is such a thing as reliably "combined" EU forces). If Russia were to build up its forces (which it looks like it is going to do), will the EU also increase to maintain superiority? Is the EU prepared to spend a greater portion of its GDP on defense, when it is already close to bankrupt from social spending? Probably not because the people would riot in the streets if social spending were cut to fund defense. So I doubt the EU will be in a position to defend itself when the time comes
The Russians don't need to conquer you outright, they only need to intimidate you into submission. When Russia rattles its saber, Europe's response will likely be to "negotiate" tribute and "achieve peace in our time".
the EU has more than enough economic might to not have to deal with this crap
That is hilarious. Samarkand (a city state in Central Asia on the Silk Route) had tons of gold. Did that stop the Mongols from burning it to the ground in 1220 and enslaving the population? Nope, the gold only *attracted* attack because the Mongol Khan needed to pay his army. Putin needs to pay the people who keep him in power. Can you guess where he thinks he is going to get the gold? I'll give you guess, it starts with "E" and has its capital in Brussels.
Europe won't have to "deal with the crap" and "power plays over (your) head" when you can field an credible army and navy that has a credible will to fight so that other people are actually deterred by it. Until then, Europe will be dependent upon other world powers for its defense and subject to the whims, threats, and power plays of others.
Let me know how that economic might without an army is doing for you when the Mongols come thundering out of the east. Maybe they will only demand a gold ransom (i.e. make you pay higher prices for oil and natural gas). That might protect you.... until the gold runs out.
Lobbying, in itself, is not the problem. Lobbying in its pure form is nothing more than persuasion or advocacy. In fact, I would argue that lobbying is beneficial in a technically complex and diverse society where various groups need to have knowledgeable people pressing their case to lawmakers who could never be expert on the details themselves. Lobbying is important in a pluralistic democracy.
The problem is that the lobbyists can "bundle" donations in order to give fat checks to lawmakers. Bundling is a technique of pooling money from several donors to get around limits on individual donors.
Only one form of campaign finance reform will ever really work. All others will ALWAYS fail. The one that will work is to enact the following - Allow only registered voters who are eligible to vote for a candidate/issue may donate to that candidate/issue. Only registered voters in a district have any business influencing elections in that district. People from California, New York, or anywhere else have *NO* legitimate reason to donate to a candidate or referendum issue in Nebraska, but I would be willing to bet Nebraska Senators and Congressmen raise most of their cash from out-of-state interests. So there is the problem, and I've given the solution.
Of course nobody who is vested in the current system will ever go along with that proposal. It doesn't matter whether its the politicians or business groups, labor unions, or 'advocacy' groups like on both the left or right like the ACLU, AARP, or NRA. They all believe they have an interest in the current system.
You have a good point about the support with higher value equipment, but at this price he can afford to keep a few spares in the closet, or even have a few other complete units as a failover 'live' backup.
Most of your post is both interesting and informative, but you almost lost me with "the green revolution is one of fascism" part.
I guess I really have "drunk the kool-aid", because while I think you bring up some good information, I'm still convinced that modern farming is the savior of mankind and the planet (and no - I'm not engaging in hyperbole or saying that tongue-in-cheek) and here is why. While I'm reasonably sure that Amish farms individually have a smaller foot-print on the environment that a modern farm, I'm also certain that they are likely to have a drastically smaller yield-per-acre. That single fact (modern farming increases yields) has several consequences.
First, if we abandoned modern techniques, it would probably be nearly impossible to feed our current world (or even national) population using ancient practices given only our current acreage-under-crops. This means that we would have to expand the acreage into more marginal (and environmentally sensitive areas) or starve. In other words, it would accelerate the very environmental damage and deforestation that you decry.
Second, those labor-intensive practices would require a large part of our population to engage in (primitive) subsistence agriculture. I, for one, am not ready to give up my comfortable suburban existence to break sod behind a horse plow or do other back-breaking manual farm labor for a meager subsistence, and I doubt you are either. You are basically talking about the regression of civilization to subsistence agriculture.
Third, without the huge yields produced by modern practices that we place in storage every year, the world would be (even more) racked by famine. Except this time, there will be no relief shipments of previous surpluses.
Lastly, you are factually incorrect about your statement that "Agricultural runoff is implicated in the destruction of the tree life along the coastline near New Orleans, which in turn has been fingered as a likely cause of its destruction (nothing to mitigate the effects of the storms.)" The key factor has long been identified as building of levees along the Mississippi and its tributaries which means there is less silt picked up by the river during seasonal floods that is later deposited in the delta. Less silt means that the delta is no longer being built up and is now subject to ocean wave erosion. It also allows salt-water infiltration which kills the vegetation and in turn speeds the erosion even more. What the agricultural run-off *has* been implicated in, is the creation of the "dead-zone" off-shore (the fertilizers increase algae growth, which de-oxygenates the water).
BTW, when I google "supercropping", I get a bunch of hemp-growing links, which I guess explains some things about your post. I think perhaps you were referring to "inter-cropping". I may have drunk the kool-aid, but I am not smoking anything.
Everything about modern farming techniques is wrong! It's simply not a sustainable activity on its own. Depending on it for fuel will cause a crisis rapidly. Certain parts of the world cannot feed themselves today because of their agricultural activities in the past. The Amazon is approaching a crisis state in which it can no longer support itself and it collapses entirely - eliminating the source of some 25% of the planet's oxygen.
Your indictment of modern agriculture is wrong on several levels. IIRC, the Brazilian farmers are using traditional privative "slash-and-burn" farming techniques in the Amazon which is what is unsustainable. Basically, they cut down the forest, burn the wood (immediately releasing tons of CO2), till the ash into the soil and plant crops. Because they are *not* using modern techniques (fertilizers, soil conservation, etc), they quickly exhaust the soil after a few years and move on to another patch to slash-and-burn. Because they are not using modern farming methods, they get low-yields from high-acreage. It is privative subsistence farming that is not sustainable (unless you are of a Malthusian persuasion). Introducing modern techniques would increase the yield per acre and thereby reduce the need to cut down more forest.
Modern farming has led to a "green revolution" that has drastically increased food supply world-wide. Modern farming feeds more people on fewer acres. Modern farming can be sustainable with proper practices. Those practices are increasingly being adopted because farmers have recognized it is in their own interests to make the investment for the longer term (such as soil conservation).
However, I'll concede your basic point, ethanol from corn may not be the optimal solution. I particularly like your idea about fermenting the algae in the ABE process.
However, the cost of aluminum could be reduced by recycling it from the alumina using a process called fused salt electrolysis. The aluminum could be produced at competitive prices if the recycling process were carried out with electricity generated by a nuclear power plant or windmills. Because the electricity would not need to be distributed on the power grid, it would be less costly than power produced by plants connected to the grid, and the generators could be located in remote locations, which would be particularly important for a nuclear reactor to ease political and social concerns, Woodall said.
So their process uses as much power as they put in and they are basically hoping for free electricity to make it commercially viable. Because the anti-nuclear wackos are never going to let nuclear reactors to be built *anywhere at all*, the chances of building one cheaply is nil. Some folks even object to windmills and will tie then up in litigation forever. So forget that too. That leaves coal, natural gas, and oil (or hydro - but we don't build damns anymore, because it hurts the fish).
They might as well use the imaginary nuclear reactors to directly power electrolysis of water and skip the aluminum. I'm not sure that hauling around several hundred pounds of aluminum beads is any easier than hauling around compressed hydrogen.
If SUN could use pkg-get to bring the ease of apt-get to Solaris, lots of people would dance with joy. This would mean official repositories and better dependency management. Also, the Solaris serial-console text install routine does not seem to have the same level of granularity in package selection as the X-win install (especially on the companion CD). It would be nice if the install had a few ready special-purpose recipes a-la Debian tasksel. (Yes, I know about jumpstart/flash installs, but I only want to install one or two boxes and that's not worth setting up a jumpstart config, so it would be nice if the install CD prompted for package selection).
Now about perl. On Solaris it is compiled with SUN's compiler and make instead of gcc and gmake. That is not unexpected. But this causes lots of cpan packages to fail. Maybe that is cpan's fault for allowing gmake and gcc specific packages, but the result is that perl and cpan are seriously borked on Solaris. There is a perlgcc hack which works sometimes, but not all the time. I'm not sure what the fix is for that, but it is a serious PITA when you just want to grab a cpan pkg and get on with life.
Oh yeah, I shouldn't have to type "mount -F hsfs -o ro/dev/dsk/c0t6d0s2/cdrom" to mount a freaking cdrom and I shouldn't have to fiddle with vfstab or create my own little shell script alias for that. I should be able to just type "mount/cdrom" on a default install and have it work. It is those little types of polish that would make solaris a lot more usable.
I think SUN could probably do all the above without breaking the solaris kernel.
IANAL. But for criminal matters, I'm going to guess "yes" regardless of the number of times, if the email is itself part of a crime (such as a threat or fraud).
In civil matters, there is the theory of "sufficient connection" to establish jurisdiction. A single e-mail might not be enough, but if you are repeatedly offering goods and services to people in that state, then you are effectively doing business in that state and you have "sufficient connection" to be under the jurisdiction of its laws.
<aphorism>Ignorance of the Law is no Excuse</aphorism>
If you do business in a State (using the work 'state' expansively to mean both a nation and a U.S. state), you place yourself under that State's jurisdiction. Now the word 'business', like the phrase 'interstate commerce' is itself legally expansive. Using the telephone is interstate commerce or business. Selling something or even sending something over the wire to a person in any State means your a now voluntarily placing yourself under the jurisdiction of laws of the that State. Sorry, but as soon as the guy sent cracked IP to the US, he put himself voluntarily under US jurisdiction and legally became fair play for prosecution and extradition. If he had confined his activities solely to Australia, then he would have been outside of the US jurisdiction and only subject to Aussie law.
msshill: "So Bill, this world wide web thing is really starting to take off in the academic world. I think it's time we started making our own browser and include it with all installs of Windows."
billg: "That's the dumbest fucking idea I've heard since I've been at Microsoft. By contrast, over here is the best idea I've seen in a long time; its a new user-interface paradigm. I call it 'Bob'"
I *want* the bundled MS license. I'm almost certain to use the box as a dual boot system. I'm fully prepared to pay for the license, because I'll probably end up paying for it anyway since they have a history of charging the same or greater price for the linux boxes. With OEM pricing, it is usually transparent as part of the overall price of the box. That is OK with me since I want the software. But I don't want to have to pay the same price for a Linux box as for a Windows box and then have to go out and drop another $399 for a full install retail version of Vista Ultimate on top of what I've already paid.
Let me pay normally for the OEM installed Windows and pay a "slight-bit-more" for dual boot on Linux certified and supported hardware.
Linspire wins on this too. They now have a much bigger market for Click-n-Run with Dell and Ubuntu.
A while back there was a story about the Linspire Click-n-Run being ported to Ubuntu. Not a big technical leap since Linspire and Ubuntu and both Debian derivatives.
So now companies will probably pay to get top placement on CnR. I'll bet it will go like this --- when you open CnR to install a word processor, you'll probably see commercial software listed in the top several spots and you'll have to page down to see freeware like OpenOffice or AbiWord.
That is not necessarily a bad thing. Making money will get companies to write more software for Linux, which is a good thing because it will speed Linux adoption.
I can happily use Linux for most desktop stuff, but I still "need" Windows to play my games. I want to get the Linux certified hardware, but I also want OEM pricing on my Vista license. I don't want to have to go buy Vi$ta Ultimate retail.
So here is the dilemma: - I want the linux hardware and they will probably only offer it with Linux OS. But I want the Vista OS too at OEM pricing. If I buy the Vista box, that is a lost sale for Linux. If I buy the Linux box, I have to go spend extra money for Vista.
Hopefully Dell will offer pre-loaded dual boot or a Linux-ready box with Vista that will count as a "Linux" sale
I think you misunderstood the parent. He was not saying that MS itself reverse engineered but was saying that *other systems* that try to interact with MS have to achieve it via reverse engineering a la Samba. Other people have to guess at the MS protocols because the MS protocols are closed. Again, the classic example is Samba which implements a reverse engineered version of CIFS(SMB)/Active Directory. Compare to NFS from SUN or X from MIT X Consortium, both of which have fully published protocol specifications that anyone is free to implement royalty free.
Leopard is set to be fully UNIX compliant as Apple intends to submit Leopard and Leopard Server to the Open Group for certification. Certification will mean that software following the Single UNIX Specification can be compiled and run on Leopard without the need for any code modification.
So it will implement all the Single Unix Specification and POSIX requirements, which means a fully open API and a standard unix toolset.
As far as remote or mass admin goes, I would suspect that normal unix tools such as ssh, rsync, shell/perl scripts should apply.
"Extended Support" for XP will be until April 2014. So that is seven years. But long before that seven years, some hardware (some with XP from 2001) will start to die. The replacement hardware will be sold with Vista. Even if the replacement is 'naked' or wiped and installed with XP, some of the devices may not have XP drivers. Also some of the user software that runs on XP will probably become unsupported or abandon-ware before 2014.
I think the talk of holdouts 'never' installing Vista is bravado. Sooner or later they will be compelled to start supporting Vista or its successor (Blackcomb/Vienna). Maybe they will skip Vista and go to straight to Vienna (provided Vienna gets out the door before 2014, IIRC it is currently scheduled for 2009), but they can't stay with XP forever. The hardware and software won't allow it.
I don't think there is anything especially nefarious about a state agency and the RNC contracting for hosting with the same company. Big deal. They probably both buy stuff from Wal-Mart too. I think somebody with an axe to grind is leaping to a conclusion that simply is not merited by the evidence given here.
By now, the PC market is saturated and MS already has 90+ percent of it. Nearly everybody who needs or wants a PC already has one. This means that there will be little growth and the market is really based on replacement of older models with newer ones. MS already has a huge market share, so they can't grow by taking share away from the competition.
This does not mean MS or Vista are washed-up. It just means it is a mature market. MS and Vista are actually sitting pretty. They will continue to see 90+ percent of new computers running their stuff for the foreseeable future. But they simply won't have double-digit growth year over year, just a steady torrent of replacements.
Here a permanent fix: render SSNs worthless for financial transactions by making it illegal for any entity besides the IRS, SSA, you employer and your bank to ask for a SSN or keep a record of a SSN for any purpose other than tax collection and Social Security. The employer and bank would only be allowed use it for tax reporting purposes. The credit reporting companies, banks, and data brokers might howl, but too bad. They can use other data identifiers, or even better, learn to personally know their customers beyond a mechanically created credit score tied to a SSN.
Perhaps somebody who can translate medicalese into English can tell us if this would hold promise for other viruses such as influenza, rabies, yellow fever, etc that kill millions every year.
While AIDS is horrible and we all hope for a cure, I would like to see a more generalized anti-viral approach that would cure viral disease universally. Hopefully all the research expended on AIDS will have some cross-over applications.
IIRC, one of the parts of the Novell-Microsoft deal was that MS had to buy and resell 70K SuSe licenses.
Financial terms weren't disclosed, but involve various payments between the two companies, including Microsoft's paying Novell for a minimum of roughly 70,000 "coupons" that Microsoft corporate customers can convert into annual subscriptions to receive support for Suse Linux.
Coincidence? So who will Dell be buying those SuSe licenses from? Directly from Novell or a "third party reseller" (i.e MS)?
Slashdot Mirror
Reading the patent extract on Google, it sounded like it might cover the work-space pager that shows up in the tool-bar on most window-managers (or floats in the window on some others). CDE has been around since the mid-1990's (I first saw it in 1995 on HP-UX). So why suddenly file suit now? And why not against Sun/HP/IBM for using CDE for the last 12 years?
The patent is dated 1991. Do any of the old-timers remember if some of the pre-1991 window-managers (such as twm or uwm) had similiar features as prior art?
That's OK... If later cours find their claims were fraudulent, the SCO exectuives will be making chairs here.
Now as to whether they actually could defend themselves, I also doubt that. Once the shooting starts, a war in Europe would likely be a "come as you are" affair and not a protracted conflict allowing a build up. Preparation would be paramount. Right now, the Russian Army is probably inferior to the combined EU forces (although its doubtful there is such a thing as reliably "combined" EU forces). If Russia were to build up its forces (which it looks like it is going to do), will the EU also increase to maintain superiority? Is the EU prepared to spend a greater portion of its GDP on defense, when it is already close to bankrupt from social spending? Probably not because the people would riot in the streets if social spending were cut to fund defense. So I doubt the EU will be in a position to defend itself when the time comes
The Russians don't need to conquer you outright, they only need to intimidate you into submission. When Russia rattles its saber, Europe's response will likely be to "negotiate" tribute and "achieve peace in our time".
the EU has more than enough economic might to not have to deal with this crap
.... until the gold runs out.
That is hilarious. Samarkand (a city state in Central Asia on the Silk Route) had tons of gold. Did that stop the Mongols from burning it to the ground in 1220 and enslaving the population? Nope, the gold only *attracted* attack because the Mongol Khan needed to pay his army. Putin needs to pay the people who keep him in power. Can you guess where he thinks he is going to get the gold? I'll give you guess, it starts with "E" and has its capital in Brussels.
Europe won't have to "deal with the crap" and "power plays over (your) head" when you can field an credible army and navy that has a credible will to fight so that other people are actually deterred by it. Until then, Europe will be dependent upon other world powers for its defense and subject to the whims, threats, and power plays of others.
Let me know how that economic might without an army is doing for you when the Mongols come thundering out of the east. Maybe they will only demand a gold ransom (i.e. make you pay higher prices for oil and natural gas). That might protect you
Lobbying, in itself, is not the problem. Lobbying in its pure form is nothing more than persuasion or advocacy. In fact, I would argue that lobbying is beneficial in a technically complex and diverse society where various groups need to have knowledgeable people pressing their case to lawmakers who could never be expert on the details themselves. Lobbying is important in a pluralistic democracy.
The problem is that the lobbyists can "bundle" donations in order to give fat checks to lawmakers. Bundling is a technique of pooling money from several donors to get around limits on individual donors.
Only one form of campaign finance reform will ever really work. All others will ALWAYS fail. The one that will work is to enact the following - Allow only registered voters who are eligible to vote for a candidate/issue may donate to that candidate/issue. Only registered voters in a district have any business influencing elections in that district. People from California, New York, or anywhere else have *NO* legitimate reason to donate to a candidate or referendum issue in Nebraska, but I would be willing to bet Nebraska Senators and Congressmen raise most of their cash from out-of-state interests. So there is the problem, and I've given the solution.
Of course nobody who is vested in the current system will ever go along with that proposal. It doesn't matter whether its the politicians or business groups, labor unions, or 'advocacy' groups like on both the left or right like the ACLU, AARP, or NRA. They all believe they have an interest in the current system.
You have a good point about the support with higher value equipment, but at this price he can afford to keep a few spares in the closet, or even have a few other complete units as a failover 'live' backup.
Most of your post is both interesting and informative, but you almost lost me with "the green revolution is one of fascism" part.
I guess I really have "drunk the kool-aid", because while I think you bring up some good information, I'm still convinced that modern farming is the savior of mankind and the planet (and no - I'm not engaging in hyperbole or saying that tongue-in-cheek) and here is why. While I'm reasonably sure that Amish farms individually have a smaller foot-print on the environment that a modern farm, I'm also certain that they are likely to have a drastically smaller yield-per-acre. That single fact (modern farming increases yields) has several consequences.
First, if we abandoned modern techniques, it would probably be nearly impossible to feed our current world (or even national) population using ancient practices given only our current acreage-under-crops. This means that we would have to expand the acreage into more marginal (and environmentally sensitive areas) or starve. In other words, it would accelerate the very environmental damage and deforestation that you decry.
Second, those labor-intensive practices would require a large part of our population to engage in (primitive) subsistence agriculture. I, for one, am not ready to give up my comfortable suburban existence to break sod behind a horse plow or do other back-breaking manual farm labor for a meager subsistence, and I doubt you are either. You are basically talking about the regression of civilization to subsistence agriculture.
Third, without the huge yields produced by modern practices that we place in storage every year, the world would be (even more) racked by famine. Except this time, there will be no relief shipments of previous surpluses.
Lastly, you are factually incorrect about your statement that "Agricultural runoff is implicated in the destruction of the tree life along the coastline near New Orleans, which in turn has been fingered as a likely cause of its destruction (nothing to mitigate the effects of the storms.)" The key factor has long been identified as building of levees along the Mississippi and its tributaries which means there is less silt picked up by the river during seasonal floods that is later deposited in the delta. Less silt means that the delta is no longer being built up and is now subject to ocean wave erosion. It also allows salt-water infiltration which kills the vegetation and in turn speeds the erosion even more. What the agricultural run-off *has* been implicated in, is the creation of the "dead-zone" off-shore (the fertilizers increase algae growth, which de-oxygenates the water).
BTW, when I google "supercropping", I get a bunch of hemp-growing links, which I guess explains some things about your post. I think perhaps you were referring to "inter-cropping". I may have drunk the kool-aid, but I am not smoking anything.
Your indictment of modern agriculture is wrong on several levels. IIRC, the Brazilian farmers are using traditional privative "slash-and-burn" farming techniques in the Amazon which is what is unsustainable. Basically, they cut down the forest, burn the wood (immediately releasing tons of CO2), till the ash into the soil and plant crops. Because they are *not* using modern techniques (fertilizers, soil conservation, etc), they quickly exhaust the soil after a few years and move on to another patch to slash-and-burn. Because they are not using modern farming methods, they get low-yields from high-acreage. It is privative subsistence farming that is not sustainable (unless you are of a Malthusian persuasion). Introducing modern techniques would increase the yield per acre and thereby reduce the need to cut down more forest.
Modern farming has led to a "green revolution" that has drastically increased food supply world-wide. Modern farming feeds more people on fewer acres. Modern farming can be sustainable with proper practices. Those practices are increasingly being adopted because farmers have recognized it is in their own interests to make the investment for the longer term (such as soil conservation).
However, I'll concede your basic point, ethanol from corn may not be the optimal solution. I particularly like your idea about fermenting the algae in the ABE process.
So their process uses as much power as they put in and they are basically hoping for free electricity to make it commercially viable. Because the anti-nuclear wackos are never going to let nuclear reactors to be built *anywhere at all*, the chances of building one cheaply is nil. Some folks even object to windmills and will tie then up in litigation forever. So forget that too. That leaves coal, natural gas, and oil (or hydro - but we don't build damns anymore, because it hurts the fish).
They might as well use the imaginary nuclear reactors to directly power electrolysis of water and skip the aluminum. I'm not sure that hauling around several hundred pounds of aluminum beads is any easier than hauling around compressed hydrogen.
If SUN could use pkg-get to bring the ease of apt-get to Solaris, lots of people would dance with joy. This would mean official repositories and better dependency management. Also, the Solaris serial-console text install routine does not seem to have the same level of granularity in package selection as the X-win install (especially on the companion CD). It would be nice if the install had a few ready special-purpose recipes a-la Debian tasksel. (Yes, I know about jumpstart/flash installs, but I only want to install one or two boxes and that's not worth setting up a jumpstart config, so it would be nice if the install CD prompted for package selection).
/dev/dsk/c0t6d0s2 /cdrom" to mount a freaking cdrom and I shouldn't have to fiddle with vfstab or create my own little shell script alias for that. I should be able to just type "mount /cdrom" on a default install and have it work. It is those little types of polish that would make solaris a lot more usable.
Now about perl. On Solaris it is compiled with SUN's compiler and make instead of gcc and gmake. That is not unexpected. But this causes lots of cpan packages to fail. Maybe that is cpan's fault for allowing gmake and gcc specific packages, but the result is that perl and cpan are seriously borked on Solaris. There is a perlgcc hack which works sometimes, but not all the time. I'm not sure what the fix is for that, but it is a serious PITA when you just want to grab a cpan pkg and get on with life.
Oh yeah, I shouldn't have to type "mount -F hsfs -o ro
I think SUN could probably do all the above without breaking the solaris kernel.
IANAL. But for criminal matters, I'm going to guess "yes" regardless of the number of times, if the email is itself part of a crime (such as a threat or fraud).
In civil matters, there is the theory of "sufficient connection" to establish jurisdiction. A single e-mail might not be enough, but if you are repeatedly offering goods and services to people in that state, then you are effectively doing business in that state and you have "sufficient connection" to be under the jurisdiction of its laws.
If you do business in a State (using the work 'state' expansively to mean both a nation and a U.S. state), you place yourself under that State's jurisdiction. Now the word 'business', like the phrase 'interstate commerce' is itself legally expansive. Using the telephone is interstate commerce or business. Selling something or even sending something over the wire to a person in any State means your a now voluntarily placing yourself under the jurisdiction of laws of the that State. Sorry, but as soon as the guy sent cracked IP to the US, he put himself voluntarily under US jurisdiction and legally became fair play for prosecution and extradition. If he had confined his activities solely to Australia, then he would have been outside of the US jurisdiction and only subject to Aussie law.
I *want* the bundled MS license. I'm almost certain to use the box as a dual boot system. I'm fully prepared to pay for the license, because I'll probably end up paying for it anyway since they have a history of charging the same or greater price for the linux boxes. With OEM pricing, it is usually transparent as part of the overall price of the box. That is OK with me since I want the software. But I don't want to have to pay the same price for a Linux box as for a Windows box and then have to go out and drop another $399 for a full install retail version of Vista Ultimate on top of what I've already paid.
Let me pay normally for the OEM installed Windows and pay a "slight-bit-more" for dual boot on Linux certified and supported hardware.
Linspire wins on this too. They now have a much bigger market for Click-n-Run with Dell and Ubuntu.
A while back there was a story about the Linspire Click-n-Run being ported to Ubuntu. Not a big technical leap since Linspire and Ubuntu and both Debian derivatives.
So now companies will probably pay to get top placement on CnR. I'll bet it will go like this --- when you open CnR to install a word processor, you'll probably see commercial software listed in the top several spots and you'll have to page down to see freeware like OpenOffice or AbiWord.
That is not necessarily a bad thing. Making money will get companies to write more software for Linux, which is a good thing because it will speed Linux adoption.
I can happily use Linux for most desktop stuff, but I still "need" Windows to play my games. I want to get the Linux certified hardware, but I also want OEM pricing on my Vista license. I don't want to have to go buy Vi$ta Ultimate retail.
So here is the dilemma: - I want the linux hardware and they will probably only offer it with Linux OS. But I want the Vista OS too at OEM pricing. If I buy the Vista box, that is a lost sale for Linux. If I buy the Linux box, I have to go spend extra money for Vista.
Hopefully Dell will offer pre-loaded dual boot or a Linux-ready box with Vista that will count as a "Linux" sale
I think you misunderstood the parent. He was not saying that MS itself reverse engineered but was saying that *other systems* that try to interact with MS have to achieve it via reverse engineering a la Samba. Other people have to guess at the MS protocols because the MS protocols are closed. Again, the classic example is Samba which implements a reverse engineered version of CIFS(SMB)/Active Directory. Compare to NFS from SUN or X from MIT X Consortium, both of which have fully published protocol specifications that anyone is free to implement royalty free.
So it will implement all the Single Unix Specification and POSIX requirements, which means a fully open API and a standard unix toolset.
As far as remote or mass admin goes, I would suspect that normal unix tools such as ssh, rsync, shell/perl scripts should apply.
"Extended Support" for XP will be until April 2014. So that is seven years. But long before that seven years, some hardware (some with XP from 2001) will start to die. The replacement hardware will be sold with Vista. Even if the replacement is 'naked' or wiped and installed with XP, some of the devices may not have XP drivers. Also some of the user software that runs on XP will probably become unsupported or abandon-ware before 2014.
I think the talk of holdouts 'never' installing Vista is bravado. Sooner or later they will be compelled to start supporting Vista or its successor (Blackcomb/Vienna). Maybe they will skip Vista and go to straight to Vienna (provided Vienna gets out the door before 2014, IIRC it is currently scheduled for 2009), but they can't stay with XP forever. The hardware and software won't allow it.
Hey buddy! How about that lovable purple gorilla from Bonzai Software?
I don't think there is anything especially nefarious about a state agency and the RNC contracting for hosting with the same company. Big deal. They probably both buy stuff from Wal-Mart too. I think somebody with an axe to grind is leaping to a conclusion that simply is not merited by the evidence given here.
By now, the PC market is saturated and MS already has 90+ percent of it. Nearly everybody who needs or wants a PC already has one. This means that there will be little growth and the market is really based on replacement of older models with newer ones. MS already has a huge market share, so they can't grow by taking share away from the competition.
This does not mean MS or Vista are washed-up. It just means it is a mature market. MS and Vista are actually sitting pretty. They will continue to see 90+ percent of new computers running their stuff for the foreseeable future. But they simply won't have double-digit growth year over year, just a steady torrent of replacements.
Here a permanent fix: render SSNs worthless for financial transactions by making it illegal for any entity besides the IRS, SSA, you employer and your bank to ask for a SSN or keep a record of a SSN for any purpose other than tax collection and Social Security. The employer and bank would only be allowed use it for tax reporting purposes. The credit reporting companies, banks, and data brokers might howl, but too bad. They can use other data identifiers, or even better, learn to personally know their customers beyond a mechanically created credit score tied to a SSN.
Perhaps somebody who can translate medicalese into English can tell us if this would hold promise for other viruses such as influenza, rabies, yellow fever, etc that kill millions every year.
While AIDS is horrible and we all hope for a cure, I would like to see a more generalized anti-viral approach that would cure viral disease universally. Hopefully all the research expended on AIDS will have some cross-over applications.
IIRC, one of the parts of the Novell-Microsoft deal was that MS had to buy and resell 70K SuSe licenses.
Coincidence? So who will Dell be buying those SuSe licenses from? Directly from Novell or a "third party reseller" (i.e MS)?