I want to know how you think this will alleviate poverty? Better education implies that there are jobs and opportunities to take advantage of such education. Unfortunately this is not always the case - even within some countries. I have travelled in many countries where this idea makes some sense and others where it would be a waste of money.
Education only makes sense where: 1) there is a growing middle class and positive economic growth rate; and 2) where the majority of the poor are not engaged in a subsistence economy.
The $100 could be better spent elsewhere in these places.
In the FAQS section of the linked site it is described how they were working with this laptop in some village in Cambodia without electricity and that it was the brightest item in the house at night!
Now I know they can hopefully recharge the batteries by solar cell but when dealing with people who need the basics of existence doesn't this sound just like a great idea from an ivory tower academic?
What happens when parts need replacement? WiFi? This just sounds stupid.
/. is really circling the drain regarding enlightned debate.
It is so tiresome to see everybody screaming about OSS providing freedom to choose software tools - but it is only good when the choice is excersized in favour of Linux. The instant a choice is made to MS (god forbid) the hue and cry appears condemning those regressive bastards as idiots or dupes.
Don't offer choice if you are pushing an agenda. It is their choice, they tried something different - and it did not work out for them. Lets stop getting the knickers in a twist simply because someone went against the/. orthodoxy.
An interesting read. But very interesting for what was left unsaid as well. There was a fair amount of pain associated with the switch - aggravated by rolling out a new application simultaneously. The slowdowns and the associated costs are glossed over but I wonder how the business side feels about this change to only 25% of the entire infrastructure.
The time window seems fairly broad as well. No one disputes that lots of cheaper intel servers can do the same job as big iron. THe question is how many does it take and what happens with the applications involved.
Quite telling is the comment that they needed every bit of support possible. Although it is great that one CIO bit the bullet here....there is an ominous side to this story which means that few others will follow suit.
Though it is nice that you can switch infrastructure without anyone knowing or caring I think that is the exception rather than the rule. Any company where Management, at least in IS, keeps tabs on things will not be so easy.
I work in Finance where regulators appear annually and change managment is strictly enforced. As much as I like the idea of adding some OSS the case I would have to make to justify such a move is too great. Like it or not my firm is tied to Microsoft and - God Forbid - running on Server 2003 has been actually quite nice. Because both the box applications and in-house solutions require MS I wont see any MySQL or BSD running on servers anytime soon.
However, taking care of a medium-sized MS network has been quite nice. And I would never have thought I'd say that! Lock users down with global policies and spyware is not a problem.
Around 6 months ago, IBM filed their motion for summary judgement which all/.'rs hailed as the end of the lawsuit. I guess it was not granted as this continues....
I am tired of the surmise. Everybody has an opinion but nobody knows the facts. *sigh* Guess I am just being optimistic these days. Until there is some sort of final determination in this case I see more wishful thinking on these forums than illumination.
And in the event SCO prevails... I cannot wait to see the postings on how the legal system sucks since SCO clearly never had a case from the beginning - et cetera.
Lets just chill until this farce is COMPLETELY over - then dissect it all you want.
Is it me or is this browser godawful slow? I alway head to firefox since it takes 5 times longer to load a page in Konquerer. Does anyone use it with better results?
Yes its a P4 with plenty of RAM. And Firefox runs quickly. Otherwise KDE seems fine -albeit a bit tougher for the average user to configure than OSX or MS.
I used WP from the DOS version and really liked it. I only stopped using it after Novell acquired it and created WP or Windows and the horrible office suite bundle. They certainly messed up a fine product and sent it straight into the toilet. It was barely usable and completely unstable. And the install was a blast with random insertions of any of 36 floppy disks.
WordPerfect was the market leader prior to this and although I think they would have eventually lost to Office, Novell's efforts accomplished this in a few years where it should have been around longer. But they fucked it up so bad users deserted in impossibly huge numbers.
Then, after achieving this, they practically gave it to Corel. I have no problems with Novell's NOS product but they have not had a good track record with other apps at all.
MS did not need to flex any muscle here - Novell's incompetence did all the work!
Only willfully ignorant, politically obstinate, religiously prejudiced, and embarrassingly gullible people would have modded this stupid comment insightful.
People are entitled to their own opinion here. And your arrogance in assuming that anyone who voted for Bush is wrong and idiotic just indicates what a shallow and pathetic fool you are. BTW I voted against Bush but I will not play the PC game which is evidence of arrested development.
Please do not rely on a litigant's motion papers to prove a point. These are documents made to persuade a judge and as such are nearly advertisements.
Wishful thinking aside, until the judge GRANTS IBM's motion nothing is settled. I am sure SCO's motions look pretty too - - it is not as if both sides lack for decent lawyers. In most cases anyway a judge will let the jury decide. Summary judgements are rarely granted unless discovery has proven a FACTUAL point which does not need to litigated. Defendents always file these motions which are sometimes useful in limiting the scope of the lawsuit but rarely result in a complete win.
McNealy will not know what to do with himself now that he has no evil enemy to focus on. His single-minded approach to MSFT certainly did not help Sun much.
As Linux and IBM eats away Sun's marketshare I would bet that Java is the one profit center Sun will need to nuture and protect. Solaris will not do it for them anymore. At this point Sun cannot afford to open-source Java.
Hmmm. Windows did not crush WordPerfect. Novell's pathetic attempt to assemble an office suite to challenge MS (which was building momentum at the time) was the real reason. I have stuck with WP from DOS and when Novell released WordPerfect for Windows the product was so bad people defected to Office.
MS may have buried Netscape but that does not make them responsible for every Company/application failure. Yes they use hardball tactics. But the Sherman Act was designed for Railroads and Big Oil a long time ago. The provisions work well for price-fixing and vertical industry integration. It is NOT designed for modern industry. Business is competitive - where do you draw the line.
The court judgment relied on "tying" to find monopolistic behavior - certainly the weakest and most subjective of all the tests the Act contemplates.
Do not think for a moment that is the roles were reversed that another company would not use the same business model. Yelling about monopoly at this point is just a cop out. IBM, GE have done the same and got lucky. The MS judge was determined to get MS and, despite his incredible remarks during the trial, did.
The legal search service is LEXIS (or Lexis/Nexis). The only question on infringement is whether a reasonable person (defined as anyone unconnected with/.) might confuse the name with the company holding the original trademark.
So if you start using "appell" Steve Jobs will come after you and successfully too. Under US law MS had a good case here.
This appears to be a quite biased rant. Simply put - both parties do everything possible to give themselves an edge. And no one who has not actually worked in the political environment in DC should assume anything about "how things work." It does not even seem to matter anymore which party is in office -- the only change is the focus. As we decry "predatory menace" let us not forget that a proliferation of government agencies with administrative rule-making capabilities has a greater negative impact on freedoms than statute. They are even worse since they occur without any real public discourse.
Until I see a politician who actually stands for less government and true fiscal resposibility (Not as campaign slogans but real conviction) it matters not what party they belong to. They all suck and are beholden to the same power brokers. But why waste time. No one gets elected for promising less and democracy will pander to average citizens who refuse to think for themselves.
Business as usual. Move on and hope our children and grandchildren won't have to foot the bill.
Complex corporate litigation has long discovery phases. There is a lot at stake and a lot of investigation is necessary to ready the case for trial.
Discovery can also be used to harass and often is... so don't get wishful re: motions to delay or limit discovery. Discovery rules are very broad unlike evidentiary rules used at trial and the discovery phase is where attorneys bill most of their time. Much factual evidence must be assessed before any big decisions are made. Right now is just tactical posturing.
This is nowhere near over unless settlement or dismissal happens. This is very unlikely this early in discovery.
Actually, SCO is simply asserting what it considers to be a legal right over the software via licensing. Their legal arguments would be weaker if they did not take steps to protect their IP. Please note I am NOT taking SCO's side here but these events are perfectly reasonable from a legal point of view as strategic posturing.
Courts are just a forum for dispute resolution - don't confuse this with justice.... an entirely different concept.
Just goes to show that noone takes Mac seriously enough to wirte worms for it. I am sure that Apple does release patches and updates which require restart.
You can overpay many times or just once!
Unions do not help in the long run. Historically, unions have not prevented the decline of industries like steel or automotive and arguably hastened their demise by driving up labour costs and preventing dismissal of bad workers. It does benefit members for short term by increasing the scale of "looking out for #1"
This will not stop job exports! It may well speed the process up. Corporations are increasingly forced to lower costs and outsourcing is one way to do this.
Its nice that a law professor decided to analyze this lawsuit from 50,000 feet, but he has no access to evidence in the case so his ideas are really more of an OP-ED piece.
Even a cursory history of the expert professors (most of whom have never actually litigated in a courtroom) which have filled the news channels over the last few years would show an astounding ability to make pronouncements which turned out to be wrong. The OJ Simpson case is a great example. But there they were reporting on a trial as it unfolded. Here we only have the filed complaint and media posturing by affected parties. Hardly an informed base on which to fully analyze litigation. (and a very complex one)
The professor certainly knows the law, but he does not know the facts - without which he has only 1/2 the equation.
Untils we get more information stuff like this is only surmise - regardless of who says it.
Slashdot Mirror
I want to know how you think this will alleviate poverty? Better education implies that there are jobs and opportunities to take advantage of such education. Unfortunately this is not always the case - even within some countries. I have travelled in many countries where this idea makes some sense and others where it would be a waste of money. Education only makes sense where: 1) there is a growing middle class and positive economic growth rate; and 2) where the majority of the poor are not engaged in a subsistence economy. The $100 could be better spent elsewhere in these places.
In the FAQS section of the linked site it is described how they were working with this laptop in some village in Cambodia without electricity and that it was the brightest item in the house at night!
Now I know they can hopefully recharge the batteries by solar cell but when dealing with people who need the basics of existence doesn't this sound just like a great idea from an ivory tower academic?
What happens when parts need replacement? WiFi? This just sounds stupid.
Aw C'mon. Isn't it self-evident that anyone who purchases an Apple is clued-in and superior by definition?
I, for one, find it typical of /. and find it even more intiguing that your post got moderated higher as well:)
/. is really circling the drain regarding enlightned debate.
/. orthodoxy.
It is so tiresome to see everybody screaming about OSS providing freedom to choose software tools - but it is only good when the choice is excersized in favour of Linux. The instant a choice is made to MS (god forbid) the hue and cry appears condemning those regressive bastards as idiots or dupes.
Don't offer choice if you are pushing an agenda. It is their choice, they tried something different - and it did not work out for them. Lets stop getting the knickers in a twist simply because someone went against the
A corporation moving off of Linux to Microsoft! The Sky must be falling.
Let the flamefest commence....
An interesting read. But very interesting for what was left unsaid as well. There was a fair amount of pain associated with the switch - aggravated by rolling out a new application simultaneously. The slowdowns and the associated costs are glossed over but I wonder how the business side feels about this change to only 25% of the entire infrastructure.
The time window seems fairly broad as well. No one disputes that lots of cheaper intel servers can do the same job as big iron. THe question is how many does it take and what happens with the applications involved.
Quite telling is the comment that they needed every bit of support possible. Although it is great that one CIO bit the bullet here....there is an ominous side to this story which means that few others will follow suit.
Though it is nice that you can switch infrastructure without anyone knowing or caring I think that is the exception rather than the rule. Any company where Management, at least in IS, keeps tabs on things will not be so easy.
I work in Finance where regulators appear annually and change managment is strictly enforced. As much as I like the idea of adding some OSS the case I would have to make to justify such a move is too great. Like it or not my firm is tied to Microsoft and - God Forbid - running on Server 2003 has been actually quite nice. Because both the box applications and in-house solutions require MS I wont see any MySQL or BSD running on servers anytime soon.
However, taking care of a medium-sized MS network has been quite nice. And I would never have thought I'd say that! Lock users down with global policies and spyware is not a problem.
Around 6 months ago, IBM filed their motion for summary judgement which all /.'rs hailed as the end of the lawsuit. I guess it was not granted as this continues....
I am tired of the surmise. Everybody has an opinion but nobody knows the facts. *sigh* Guess I am just being optimistic these days. Until there is some sort of final determination in this case I see more wishful thinking on these forums than illumination.
And in the event SCO prevails... I cannot wait to see the postings on how the legal system sucks since SCO clearly never had a case from the beginning - et cetera.
Lets just chill until this farce is COMPLETELY over - then dissect it all you want.
It must be pretty close.
Is it me or is this browser godawful slow? I alway head to firefox since it takes 5 times longer to load a page in Konquerer. Does anyone use it with better results?
Yes its a P4 with plenty of RAM. And Firefox runs quickly. Otherwise KDE seems fine -albeit a bit tougher for the average user to configure than OSX or MS.
Putting any box on the Internet without hardening or firewall is so ridiculous I cannot believe this was posted by any reasonable person.
Hell I would not do this with a default Redhat or Debian install either.
Just plain stupid.
I used WP from the DOS version and really liked it. I only stopped using it after Novell acquired it and created WP or Windows and the horrible office suite bundle. They certainly messed up a fine product and sent it straight into the toilet. It was barely usable and completely unstable. And the install was a blast with random insertions of any of 36 floppy disks.
WordPerfect was the market leader prior to this and although I think they would have eventually lost to Office, Novell's efforts accomplished this in a few years where it should have been around longer. But they fucked it up so bad users deserted in impossibly huge numbers.
Then, after achieving this, they practically gave it to Corel. I have no problems with Novell's NOS product but they have not had a good track record with other apps at all.
MS did not need to flex any muscle here - Novell's incompetence did all the work!
Only willfully ignorant, politically obstinate, religiously prejudiced, and embarrassingly gullible people would have modded this stupid comment insightful.
People are entitled to their own opinion here. And your arrogance in assuming that anyone who voted for Bush is wrong and idiotic just indicates what a shallow and pathetic fool you are. BTW I voted against Bush but I will not play the PC game which is evidence of arrested development.
Please do not rely on a litigant's motion papers to prove a point. These are documents made to persuade a judge and as such are nearly advertisements. Wishful thinking aside, until the judge GRANTS IBM's motion nothing is settled. I am sure SCO's motions look pretty too - - it is not as if both sides lack for decent lawyers. In most cases anyway a judge will let the jury decide. Summary judgements are rarely granted unless discovery has proven a FACTUAL point which does not need to litigated. Defendents always file these motions which are sometimes useful in limiting the scope of the lawsuit but rarely result in a complete win.
McNealy will not know what to do with himself now that he has no evil enemy to focus on. His single-minded approach to MSFT certainly did not help Sun much.
As Linux and IBM eats away Sun's marketshare I would bet that Java is the one profit center Sun will need to nuture and protect. Solaris will not do it for them anymore. At this point Sun cannot afford to open-source Java.
Hmmm. Windows did not crush WordPerfect. Novell's pathetic attempt to assemble an office suite to challenge MS (which was building momentum at the time) was the real reason. I have stuck with WP from DOS and when Novell released WordPerfect for Windows the product was so bad people defected to Office.
MS may have buried Netscape but that does not make them responsible for every Company/application failure. Yes they use hardball tactics. But the Sherman Act was designed for Railroads and Big Oil a long time ago. The provisions work well for price-fixing and vertical industry integration. It is NOT designed for modern industry. Business is competitive - where do you draw the line.
The court judgment relied on "tying" to find monopolistic behavior - certainly the weakest and most subjective of all the tests the Act contemplates.
Do not think for a moment that is the roles were reversed that another company would not use the same business model. Yelling about monopoly at this point is just a cop out. IBM, GE have done the same and got lucky. The MS judge was determined to get MS and, despite his incredible remarks during the trial, did.
The legal search service is LEXIS (or Lexis/Nexis). The only question on infringement is whether a reasonable person (defined as anyone unconnected with /.) might confuse the name with the company holding the original trademark.
So if you start using "appell" Steve Jobs will come after you and successfully too. Under US law MS had a good case here.
This appears to be a quite biased rant. Simply put - both parties do everything possible to give themselves an edge. And no one who has not actually worked in the political environment in DC should assume anything about "how things work." It does not even seem to matter anymore which party is in office -- the only change is the focus. As we decry "predatory menace" let us not forget that a proliferation of government agencies with administrative rule-making capabilities has a greater negative impact on freedoms than statute. They are even worse since they occur without any real public discourse. Until I see a politician who actually stands for less government and true fiscal resposibility (Not as campaign slogans but real conviction) it matters not what party they belong to. They all suck and are beholden to the same power brokers. But why waste time. No one gets elected for promising less and democracy will pander to average citizens who refuse to think for themselves. Business as usual. Move on and hope our children and grandchildren won't have to foot the bill.
Complex corporate litigation has long discovery phases. There is a lot at stake and a lot of investigation is necessary to ready the case for trial.
Discovery can also be used to harass and often is... so don't get wishful re: motions to delay or limit discovery. Discovery rules are very broad unlike evidentiary rules used at trial and the discovery phase is where attorneys bill most of their time. Much factual evidence must be assessed before any big decisions are made. Right now is just tactical posturing.
This is nowhere near over unless settlement or dismissal happens. This is very unlikely this early in discovery.
Actually, SCO is simply asserting what it considers to be a legal right over the software via licensing. Their legal arguments would be weaker if they did not take steps to protect their IP. Please note I am NOT taking SCO's side here but these events are perfectly reasonable from a legal point of view as strategic posturing.
Courts are just a forum for dispute resolution - don't confuse this with justice.... an entirely different concept.
Just goes to show that noone takes Mac seriously enough to wirte worms for it. I am sure that Apple does release patches and updates which require restart. You can overpay many times or just once!
Unions do not help in the long run. Historically, unions have not prevented the decline of industries like steel or automotive and arguably hastened their demise by driving up labour costs and preventing dismissal of bad workers. It does benefit members for short term by increasing the scale of "looking out for #1"
This will not stop job exports! It may well speed the process up. Corporations are increasingly forced to lower costs and outsourcing is one way to do this.
Uhhh. Mandrake is not yet out of bankruptcy. If the new release sells well they may be out of bankruptcy by year end.
Its nice that a law professor decided to analyze this lawsuit from 50,000 feet, but he has no access to evidence in the case so his ideas are really more of an OP-ED piece.
Even a cursory history of the expert professors (most of whom have never actually litigated in a courtroom) which have filled the news channels over the last few years would show an astounding ability to make pronouncements which turned out to be wrong. The OJ Simpson case is a great example. But there they were reporting on a trial as it unfolded. Here we only have the filed complaint and media posturing by affected parties. Hardly an informed base on which to fully analyze litigation. (and a very complex one)
The professor certainly knows the law, but he does not know the facts - without which he has only 1/2 the equation.
Untils we get more information stuff like this is only surmise - regardless of who says it.