Perhaps if they'd spent less time farting around with building campuses and more time on building their market, they'd be in better shape. After all - if you let your employees go, who's going to look at the trees?
Do you think this is isolated to Sun? This is SOP for companies in the U.S. Unfortunately, Wall Street gets pissy if you don't do things like this; investors have become increasingly dependent upon bling without considering things like products and customer base.
It's sad that Sun is doing it but you cannot single them out. Everyone from top to bottom is pulling the same garbage.
Google: "You are all individuals." Slashdot: "We are all individuals. Now, about a gig of email." Google: "It's just a joke. April's Fools? It's April, you're fools." Slashdot: "I do not think you have properly examined all the possible avenues for abuse--" Google: "IT'S A JOKE. IT'S A FUCKING JOKE. DO YOU NOT HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR?" Slashdot: "--where someone can use this tremendous amount of space for genera file storage in an attempt--" Google: "Joke. Wokka wokka? Hey, look, SCO is threatening IP litigation!" Slashdot: "--to,WHAT? Where? Quickly, man your posts..."
I'm going to presume most countries are similar to the US in this respect, especial regarding AOL. Please forgive any differences...
AOL spams snail mail at their own cost. Spammers spam e-mail at the cost of those who operate the mail servers.
You pay. Snail mail is subsidized by the government. Heavily. If people knew what it actually cost to mail a letter, they'd have a fit. Bulk mail actually costs less (because it's bulk) even though "bulk" mail is mostly UCS. So in fact, YOU are paying more for it than if you were sending me a similar package.
Doesn't it make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside?
The U.S. government makes it federal crimes to compete with the Post Office and your mail box is federal property, even though you are responsible for purchasing and maintaining it. If these barriers were removed and people were allowed to choose freely, we could cut spam down tremendously: everything people are recommending for email spam could be applied to snail mail spam--author verification, valid return addresses, etc. But none of this will happen as long as the government is the only player. There was a reason for government rule in this area 150 years ago, but not anymore. Any jackass can start a local postal company and should be able to.
Maybe that's why they prefer to install from source? For instance some distros like to install all config files in/etc, all binaries in/usr/local/bin, all libs in/usr/libs, etc. Some people would rather have everything separated by topic or by package, for instance everything pertaining to apache goes to/usr/local/apache, everything that belogs to PostgreSQL goes to/usr/local/postgres, etc.
And how much time is spent doing all of this? Even with dpkg or rpm, you run into problems (I've not messed with portage). One of my complaints of FreeBSD was having to compile everything from source--yeah, it ran fast, but it was a pain to maintain. Perhaps for a hobbyist this might be an enjoyable experience, but I think one of the underlying principles of *nix (and computing in general) is laziness--don't redo something someone else has already done.
Unless I need to add/remove an option not included by the default package or fix a bottleneck, I leave the package alone. For one or two machines, compiling everything from source can be a significant improvement. For 200 machines of varying architecture, I'll stick with someone else's effort and my laziness.
Sun's servers are still highly respected and sought for mission critical stuff.
Absolutely. Religious wars aside, there are some things which Solaris/sparc can do that Linux/x86 cannot, or not as well. The same is true in reverse.
Much of the issue is hardware; Sparc is a long tested server platform which is highly scalable. x86 is much cheaper, but how many companies buy 64-way x86 boxes? Presuming they exist as I've never heard of one. Lots of companies buy 64-way Sparcs. In time, x86 may overtake Sparc. I don't believe so, not without some serious reworking of the x86 architecture, but right now Sun is the choice for large servers.
As much as people complain about Solaris, it is a solid OS and provides great stability that Linux has not yet met (RedHat and SuSE are too unstable, Debian is not as commercially popular). The US Army uses Solaris on x86 for their tank targeting computers.
People want Sun to fail because McNealy is unfriendly. He can really be a prick sometimes, but his company makes very good product and supports that product. This is not the Microsoft of *nix.
I seriously doubt they own all the code in the Java codebase.
Really? What is your indication they don't? I'm unaware of any copyrights/patents to the Sun Java code outside of Sun.
And yeah, if IBM is actually prodding Sun to open up Java source while they actually own the rights that prevent Sun from doing so, and Sun can't even mention that because of the license, that would be somewhat ironic, no? I guess some vestiges of the old IBM live on...
If Sun suddenly dies (as many have been doing in the industry), who is left to maintain the code?
Likely, someone would buy the company and all of its assets, seeing a very profitable future in owning the rights to a popular language, OS, and hardware platform.
Don't say "Oh that won't happen." We've heard that before -- and it did.
FUD and balderdash. People have been waiting for Sun to fail for 20 years. They haven't. Why not? Because they're not as stupid as people think. They do stay behind the curve, but they're always savvy enough to catch up without getting left behind.
There is ZERO evidence of Sun failing in the forseable future. Even in that imaginary situation, someone would come in and buy the assets. FUD.
This, I would assume, is a reason why there are so many of us unhappy (I am not unhappy, which is why I work constantly) - but we don't get over time for the >40 hrs/week worked - do the other "happier" professions qualify for overtime? I believe at least one of them does.
Examine the labor laws--there are lots of IT people who should be getting paid overtime but are not; I think the cap is ~50k per year, where they can exempt you. 50k is more than most (all?) tech support, more than a lot of NOC jobs, more than entry (and some mid) level programming and sysadmin jobs.
IT people should unionize; that's how other professions (blue and white collar) make sure they don't get taken advantage of. Unfortunately, most IT people I've known have a very negative view of unions because of bogus info in the news. The only reason nurses and teachers don't get taken advantage of more is because they're unionized.
Re:Yes, yes, yes, Apple's dying, blah blah blah
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Why iPod Can't Save Apple
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Yes, yes, yes, Apple's about to bite to dust, we've been hearing that for years.
They have been saying this for years about lots of outsiders and upstarts who bucked convention. Sun has been on the verge of failure for 20 years, Linux for 10, BSD et al.
Who are They? Opposing business interests or the media pundits who have the same stakes. Media has stopped being about objective reporting: everyone wants to be the first to break the big story, they want to provide information (speculation) the other guy doesn't have, and they want to be right. What happens? They make spurious statements in support of heavy players. Why? Not because the heavy player has a better product or model, but because heavy players have more money, they're more established, and by virtue of inertia tend to last longer than upstarts.
From the article: In the past, Mr. Soto says he has sent out spam himself, but he doesn't any more for fear of the increasing multitude of federal and state spam regulations now on the books.
The problem here is he doesn't comprehend and/or care that spam hurts consumers. This isn't just a hobby for him, it was a part-time business. People shouldn't dismiss him as some eccentric old man, there's no ambiguity here: he was previously an unlawful spammer and he encourages unlawful spammers. He is the problem.
Short of making it illegal to buy from unlawful spammers or public humiliation (I'm sure he will get plenty, now), I don't know of a way to get buyers to stop.
Windows also has ease of use and ease of hardware integration...
You can't tell me that Linux is easier to use and install hardware drivers for than Windows.
As many people will attest, Linux works quite well out of the box. I think you are refering to the fact that hardware manufacturers often write WinXX drivers but not Linux drivers; this is entirely a market share decision, based on limited developer time. Windows, natively, does not support hardware better than Linux. I would argue Linux does, because I have gotten far more random BSOD's from Windows. One of my biggest complaints with Win2k was how sloooooow it got as I added additional hardware. Linux was not as easily encumbered.
While I know that we are all Windows haters it does do quite a few things rather well. It isn't used by so many people because it is *completely* inferior. It serves its purpose.
I don't think it does anything "rather well"; it does the bare minimum. People have accepted Windows' flaws because they have to, but the flaws are tremendous.
The reason WinXX is so popular is primarily because of marketing; it wasn't "better" than OS/2, it was better marketed. Over time, people who did not use computers ran Microsoft software because that was what came loaded on OEM boxes. OEM's loaded Microsoft software because that is what people wanted for compatibility with their friends. It had nothing to do with Windows being a better product.
What a damning indictment of capitalism when you can automatically presume that any large company is unethical by default. That's it's impossible to grow a company without playing dirty.
No, he said it's impossible to grow that big without being partially dirty. I always love that people criticise "big government" while believing corporations don't have the same faults, or vice versa. Power corrupts.
It is a proven fact Microsoft has played dirty, often blatantly illegal. When you view companies of that size, there is a preponderance of evidence that they have all done something dirty. No one is claiming they are the mafia, but they've all done things which were unethical even if they weren't always illegal.
As for Capitalism, it's broken by design; it requires third-party regulation by force else the bigger powers will bully the smaller powers and so on down the line. I won't speak for other countries, but regulation in the U.S. can't keep up with innovation and so you often get bad regulation or no regulation. Hence how Microsoft, and plenty of others, managed to continue for so long unchecked. From what I've seen, other nations have the exact same problem.
I like watching porn on my TV more than I like watching it on my computer
Burn [xs]vcd's, or dvd's if you want to go to the expense. While I might pay for a physical copy of a movie, I despise pay-per-view: it's more costly than a rental from Blockbuster/Netflix and I can get less use out of it.
Lastly, to be honest, I've found porn downloads via, say, Kazaa to be fraught with disappointment.
I have found P2P to be very poor lately (I stopped using for more than a year). Newsgroups will give you much better speed, more descriptions, etc. The only advantage to P2P is finding rare files--there are plenty of movies/books/music that are not in print and can cost a small fortune if/when you find it. While finding it on P2P can also be very difficult, you can automate the search/download process.
I notice that Anandtech describe an 800MHz machine as "chugging along". Hardly. One of my older machines is an 800MHz Athlon Thunderbird machine with 256MB RAM and a 40GB disk. It runs GNOME and WinXP without any problems and continues to be extremely responsive and perfectly adequate for the vast majority of tasks I throw at it (except Games).
I think they were referencing games, or more intensive programs than a word processor.
I have an Intel P3 733 w/ 192MB, and it's ok for basic tasks, but it gets bogged down pretty quick and it won't run many recent games (though I'll admit much of the latter is my video card). For a general web/office machine, sub 1GHz is fine, but it won't do much more than that, especially running Win2k/XP.
Red Hat will have to continue releasing any GPL'ed code in the same way they always have. You may not get any proprietary software, but I can't think of anything that was, in base Red Hat.
I'm less concerned with the "no new Red Hat" than with "You've got two months to upgrade". Many vendors only support what RH supports, so vendors may no longer support their products on the free system, and that's a big headache for SA's.
[The following is a comment I sent to Forbes via their on-line comment system.]
Your article "Linux's Hit Men" is completely misrepresentative of Linux and other software companies. The article was either written by a) someone not familiar with software companies and their practices or b) someone who already disliked Linux and was finding reasons to support that idea.
The Free Software Foundation is enforcing its license; this is no different than what commercial software companies have been doing for years. SCO, Microsoft, Sun, IBM, et al. have used licenses to limit what could be done with their software and often crush business who innovated with it. However, the FSF is not seeking money nor to "burn down your house" (what an incredibly prejudicial and ignorant remark); the FSF is asking that companies abide by the license: either share code built on top of GPL code, or don't use GPL code. This is entirely fair.
Additionally, this is far from expensive. The article notes that mySQL donated $25,000 to the FSF, and OpenTV paid $65,000 after a dispute over a number of months; if any commercial company were suing to uphold a license, they often deal in the millions of dollars. SCO's current campaign is to sue for hundreds of dollars for each copy of Linux in commercial use--$700 x 1,000 Linux systems = $700,000; I think that is far greater than $65,000.
With a sneer, the article reports that the FSF created a Compliance Lab to enforce their license; this ignores the Business Software Alliance, created by Microsoft and other commercial vendors which exists solely to find infringing companies and sue them for milliones. IBM has a reported practice where it lists possibly infringing copyrights for a company and settles out of court; while the offending company is often not infringing all the listed copyrights, it is cheaper to settle than and earn a reprieve for any possible infringements they may have that IBM has not yet found.
Was the author completely ignorant that commercial software companies do all the things for which he chastises the FSF, or did he simply not care?
The Free Software Foundation wrote the GPL to allow collaboration and development by ensuring that all development would be open; if someone is not willing to abide by the rules, the least they can do is to stop using the software.
It's just a shame that more people don't know, or don't care, about small labels and independent artists.
Since I listen to a fair bit of music that is never heard on the radio (the genre is, the artists aren't), I wanted to make sure none of their labels belonged to the RIAA so I would feel comfortable buying their music. Only one artist didn't. Even your "independent" artists and labels still belong to the RIAA--until the artists stand up and refuse to work for the labels, and the labels withdraw from the RIAA, this will continue. And I will not buy any more music.
I boycott MLB and everything related to them because of the crap from players and owners; now I watch school and local leagues. You'll never change the major players like Britney Spears or Eminem or Madonna, but if you write a smaller artist and tell them you won't buy their music (or download it, jackass) until they remove themselves from the RIAA, they'll jump. They have to be more responsive because they need the few customers they have.
Do something! The RIAA is getting fed by kids who have all this money and horrible taste in music--I know plenty of you have kids, don't let them buy RIAA music and don't let them download it. Introduce them to something worthwhile. And if you find a worthwhile artist who belongs to the RIAA, talk to them about it.
It's illegal if They say it's illegal
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Get Paid To Crack?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Same goes for computer access. You are perfectly legal in hacking a system PROVIDED you have permission. If it belongs to you or if the rightful owner has gtiven you permisson, go nuts. It is only a crime when you do it without permission.
Beware people with benevolent intentions, as they usually become malevolent when they realize 1) you are smarter than they are, 2) they bought an insecure product, 3) they fear you. While this contest may be on the up and up, the information they are seeking is worth far more than $250 and could easily turn into criminal investigations whether they intend them to or not.
If someone can get my library records without my knowledge, sniffing some packets is child's play.
sit on a vinyl folding chair.
Pour your 180F coffee in your lap.
sit for 90 seconds.
That's what happened to the old lady.
So McDonald's was being punished because the woman was too old and decrepit to move after she clumsilly spilled an exceptionally hot liquid on herself? It was her fault. No one made her buy the coffee. Everyone knew how hot it was because they requested it that way. She spilled it on herself and she didn't clean it up fast enough or properly enough. People need to take responsibility for their own incompetence. The general masses refuse to force the issue because then they would be held accountable for their stupid mistakes, but that can't be true. It's always someone else's fault. Someone else always has to pay.
Actually, it's my understanding that long before the case was settled, McD's had already dropped the temp.
IIRC, they didn't. They didn't view it as their error, so they saw no reason to drop the temp of what people wanted. I'm almost certain they had not dropped the temp when I spilled it on myself.
Yet you apparently think the "consumers" of child porn--the ultimate reason for its existence, and for the exploitation of helpless innocent children--are blameless to the extent we can't even consider them "creeps" if they are friends or relatives?
First off, someone who views kiddie porn is not a consumer; a consumer has to pay for it.
Second, the point is that a lot of people otherwise viewed as normal (or even exemplary) do some pretty disgusting things. You would be amazed at all of the creeps out there.
And while viewing child porn is disgusting, it should not be illegal (reading, viewing, etc. should never be illegal). What should be forcefully prosecuted is people who make, sell, or buy child porn because they are all involved with the actual exploitation. Some weirdo viewing it for free shouldn't be prosecuted because he has done nothing to with children being exploited.
It's like prosecuting people for reading or publishing books on how to make bombs or decode DVD's; prosecute the people who actually commit crimes, not ancilliary things that may have nothing to do with the real crime.
1) Jury awards $2.9 million against McDonalds because their coffee was too hot.
2) You have discovered McDonalds coffee is no longer too hot.
No, genius, I spilled it on myself twice before the case was settled. Say it with me: logical flow.
And for your edification, the jury awarded $2.9 million because they were as uncompromisingly stupid as the old woman who sued--McDonald's coffee was that hot because people wanted it that hot and people complained when it wasn't.
$2.9 million is an absurd amount for almost any individual claim, but for an 89 year old woman? How was her quality of life compromised? God meant her to spill it closer to her heart so he could free up her apartment.
What happened to the Opt In Class Action?
I think that would be a violation of your legal rights. So who's going door to door to see if anyone ever used register.com to allow them to opt out in case they wish to bring their own lawsuit?
Usually things are sent via snail mail, as Register.com should have valid contacts for all people affected. These things are also well publicized for the purpose of finding all people in the class.
IANAL, but ignorance of the class action lawsuit is a valid argument for preempting the settlement and you would allowed to proceed individually.
It is impossible to receive 3rd degree burns from hot water. 3rd degree burns imply that the skin is burnt away with charred and blackened tissue. What she got was a 1st or 2nd degree burn.
Every account I have ever read listed them as 3rd degree, which is incredulous. I do understand she received skin grafts because of the burns. She was also 89, which was a contributing factor.
The women received 3rd degree burns and had to go to a hospital. By pushing their coffee temperature to an extreme, well beyond industry practice, McDonald's created a hazard. The lawsuit is not so stupid in that context.
Coffee is supposed to be hot, and on anyone but that stupid woman it would not have caused 3rd degree burns. How do I know? I poured McDonald's coffee on myself twice (both straight from the pot, not after it had been poured) and I only received one minor burn which was barely visible once it healed.
People contend McDonald's was being arrogant for refusing to settle--imagine if someone sued you after they came into your home and stuck a steak knife in their hand, blaming it was your fault for keeping the knife that sharp. You'd be arrogant too, and blame it completely on the "victim".
Slashdot Mirror
Do you think this is isolated to Sun? This is SOP for companies in the U.S. Unfortunately, Wall Street gets pissy if you don't do things like this; investors have become increasingly dependent upon bling without considering things like products and customer base.
It's sad that Sun is doing it but you cannot single them out. Everyone from top to bottom is pulling the same garbage.
Google: "You are all individuals."
Slashdot: "We are all individuals. Now, about a gig of email."
Google: "It's just a joke. April's Fools? It's April, you're fools."
Slashdot: "I do not think you have properly examined all the possible avenues for abuse--"
Google: "IT'S A JOKE. IT'S A FUCKING JOKE. DO YOU NOT HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR?"
Slashdot: "--where someone can use this tremendous amount of space for genera file storage in an attempt--"
Google: "Joke. Wokka wokka? Hey, look, SCO is threatening IP litigation!"
Slashdot: "--to,WHAT? Where? Quickly, man your posts..."
AOL spams snail mail at their own cost. Spammers spam e-mail at the cost of those who operate the mail servers.
You pay. Snail mail is subsidized by the government. Heavily. If people knew what it actually cost to mail a letter, they'd have a fit. Bulk mail actually costs less (because it's bulk) even though "bulk" mail is mostly UCS. So in fact, YOU are paying more for it than if you were sending me a similar package.
Doesn't it make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside?
The U.S. government makes it federal crimes to compete with the Post Office and your mail box is federal property, even though you are responsible for purchasing and maintaining it. If these barriers were removed and people were allowed to choose freely, we could cut spam down tremendously: everything people are recommending for email spam could be applied to snail mail spam--author verification, valid return addresses, etc. But none of this will happen as long as the government is the only player. There was a reason for government rule in this area 150 years ago, but not anymore. Any jackass can start a local postal company and should be able to.
And how much time is spent doing all of this? Even with dpkg or rpm, you run into problems (I've not messed with portage). One of my complaints of FreeBSD was having to compile everything from source--yeah, it ran fast, but it was a pain to maintain. Perhaps for a hobbyist this might be an enjoyable experience, but I think one of the underlying principles of *nix (and computing in general) is laziness--don't redo something someone else has already done.
Unless I need to add/remove an option not included by the default package or fix a bottleneck, I leave the package alone. For one or two machines, compiling everything from source can be a significant improvement. For 200 machines of varying architecture, I'll stick with someone else's effort and my laziness.
Absolutely. Religious wars aside, there are some things which Solaris/sparc can do that Linux/x86 cannot, or not as well. The same is true in reverse.
Much of the issue is hardware; Sparc is a long tested server platform which is highly scalable. x86 is much cheaper, but how many companies buy 64-way x86 boxes? Presuming they exist as I've never heard of one. Lots of companies buy 64-way Sparcs. In time, x86 may overtake Sparc. I don't believe so, not without some serious reworking of the x86 architecture, but right now Sun is the choice for large servers.
As much as people complain about Solaris, it is a solid OS and provides great stability that Linux has not yet met (RedHat and SuSE are too unstable, Debian is not as commercially popular). The US Army uses Solaris on x86 for their tank targeting computers.
People want Sun to fail because McNealy is unfriendly. He can really be a prick sometimes, but his company makes very good product and supports that product. This is not the Microsoft of *nix.
Really? What is your indication they don't? I'm unaware of any copyrights/patents to the Sun Java code outside of Sun.
And yeah, if IBM is actually prodding Sun to open up Java source while they actually own the rights that prevent Sun from doing so, and Sun can't even mention that because of the license, that would be somewhat ironic, no? I guess some vestiges of the old IBM live on...
Remember to wrap your whole head to get full protection.
Likely, someone would buy the company and all of its assets, seeing a very profitable future in owning the rights to a popular language, OS, and hardware platform.
Don't say "Oh that won't happen." We've heard that before -- and it did.
FUD and balderdash. People have been waiting for Sun to fail for 20 years. They haven't. Why not? Because they're not as stupid as people think. They do stay behind the curve, but they're always savvy enough to catch up without getting left behind.
There is ZERO evidence of Sun failing in the forseable future. Even in that imaginary situation, someone would come in and buy the assets. FUD.
Examine the labor laws--there are lots of IT people who should be getting paid overtime but are not; I think the cap is ~50k per year, where they can exempt you. 50k is more than most (all?) tech support, more than a lot of NOC jobs, more than entry (and some mid) level programming and sysadmin jobs.
IT people should unionize; that's how other professions (blue and white collar) make sure they don't get taken advantage of. Unfortunately, most IT people I've known have a very negative view of unions because of bogus info in the news. The only reason nurses and teachers don't get taken advantage of more is because they're unionized.
They have been saying this for years about lots of outsiders and upstarts who bucked convention. Sun has been on the verge of failure for 20 years, Linux for 10, BSD et al.
Who are They? Opposing business interests or the media pundits who have the same stakes. Media has stopped being about objective reporting: everyone wants to be the first to break the big story, they want to provide information (speculation) the other guy doesn't have, and they want to be right. What happens? They make spurious statements in support of heavy players. Why? Not because the heavy player has a better product or model, but because heavy players have more money, they're more established, and by virtue of inertia tend to last longer than upstarts.
Media schmucks are as guilty of FUD as anyone.
In the past, Mr. Soto says he has sent out spam himself, but he doesn't any more for fear of the increasing multitude of federal and state spam regulations now on the books.
The problem here is he doesn't comprehend and/or care that spam hurts consumers. This isn't just a hobby for him, it was a part-time business. People shouldn't dismiss him as some eccentric old man, there's no ambiguity here: he was previously an unlawful spammer and he encourages unlawful spammers. He is the problem.
Short of making it illegal to buy from unlawful spammers or public humiliation (I'm sure he will get plenty, now), I don't know of a way to get buyers to stop.
You can't tell me that Linux is easier to use and install hardware drivers for than Windows.
As many people will attest, Linux works quite well out of the box. I think you are refering to the fact that hardware manufacturers often write WinXX drivers but not Linux drivers; this is entirely a market share decision, based on limited developer time. Windows, natively, does not support hardware better than Linux. I would argue Linux does, because I have gotten far more random BSOD's from Windows. One of my biggest complaints with Win2k was how sloooooow it got as I added additional hardware. Linux was not as easily encumbered.
While I know that we are all Windows haters it does do quite a few things rather well. It isn't used by so many people because it is *completely* inferior. It serves its purpose.
I don't think it does anything "rather well"; it does the bare minimum. People have accepted Windows' flaws because they have to, but the flaws are tremendous.
The reason WinXX is so popular is primarily because of marketing; it wasn't "better" than OS/2, it was better marketed. Over time, people who did not use computers ran Microsoft software because that was what came loaded on OEM boxes. OEM's loaded Microsoft software because that is what people wanted for compatibility with their friends. It had nothing to do with Windows being a better product.
No, he said it's impossible to grow that big without being partially dirty. I always love that people criticise "big government" while believing corporations don't have the same faults, or vice versa. Power corrupts.
It is a proven fact Microsoft has played dirty, often blatantly illegal. When you view companies of that size, there is a preponderance of evidence that they have all done something dirty. No one is claiming they are the mafia, but they've all done things which were unethical even if they weren't always illegal.
As for Capitalism, it's broken by design; it requires third-party regulation by force else the bigger powers will bully the smaller powers and so on down the line. I won't speak for other countries, but regulation in the U.S. can't keep up with innovation and so you often get bad regulation or no regulation. Hence how Microsoft, and plenty of others, managed to continue for so long unchecked. From what I've seen, other nations have the exact same problem.
Burn [xs]vcd's, or dvd's if you want to go to the expense. While I might pay for a physical copy of a movie, I despise pay-per-view: it's more costly than a rental from Blockbuster/Netflix and I can get less use out of it.
Lastly, to be honest, I've found porn downloads via, say, Kazaa to be fraught with disappointment.
I have found P2P to be very poor lately (I stopped using for more than a year). Newsgroups will give you much better speed, more descriptions, etc. The only advantage to P2P is finding rare files--there are plenty of movies/books/music that are not in print and can cost a small fortune if/when you find it. While finding it on P2P can also be very difficult, you can automate the search/download process.
No, usually that's "get off in it".
I think they were referencing games, or more intensive programs than a word processor.
I have an Intel P3 733 w/ 192MB, and it's ok for basic tasks, but it gets bogged down pretty quick and it won't run many recent games (though I'll admit much of the latter is my video card). For a general web/office machine, sub 1GHz is fine, but it won't do much more than that, especially running Win2k/XP.
Red Hat will have to continue releasing any GPL'ed code in the same way they always have. You may not get any proprietary software, but I can't think of anything that was, in base Red Hat.
I'm less concerned with the "no new Red Hat" than with "You've got two months to upgrade". Many vendors only support what RH supports, so vendors may no longer support their products on the free system, and that's a big headache for SA's.
Your article "Linux's Hit Men" is completely misrepresentative of Linux and other software companies. The article was either written by a) someone not familiar with software companies and their practices or b) someone who already disliked Linux and was finding reasons to support that idea.
The Free Software Foundation is enforcing its license; this is no different than what commercial software companies have been doing for years. SCO, Microsoft, Sun, IBM, et al. have used licenses to limit what could be done with their software and often crush business who innovated with it. However, the FSF is not seeking money nor to "burn down your house" (what an incredibly prejudicial and ignorant remark); the FSF is asking that companies abide by the license: either share code built on top of GPL code, or don't use GPL code. This is entirely fair.
Additionally, this is far from expensive. The article notes that mySQL donated $25,000 to the FSF, and OpenTV paid $65,000 after a dispute over a number of months; if any commercial company were suing to uphold a license, they often deal in the millions of dollars. SCO's current campaign is to sue for hundreds of dollars for each copy of Linux in commercial use--$700 x 1,000 Linux systems = $700,000; I think that is far greater than $65,000.
With a sneer, the article reports that the FSF created a Compliance Lab to enforce their license; this ignores the Business Software Alliance, created by Microsoft and other commercial vendors which exists solely to find infringing companies and sue them for milliones. IBM has a reported practice where it lists possibly infringing copyrights for a company and settles out of court; while the offending company is often not infringing all the listed copyrights, it is cheaper to settle than and earn a reprieve for any possible infringements they may have that IBM has not yet found.
Was the author completely ignorant that commercial software companies do all the things for which he chastises the FSF, or did he simply not care?
The Free Software Foundation wrote the GPL to allow collaboration and development by ensuring that all development would be open; if someone is not willing to abide by the rules, the least they can do is to stop using the software.
I think that's entirely fair.
Since I listen to a fair bit of music that is never heard on the radio (the genre is, the artists aren't), I wanted to make sure none of their labels belonged to the RIAA so I would feel comfortable buying their music. Only one artist didn't. Even your "independent" artists and labels still belong to the RIAA--until the artists stand up and refuse to work for the labels, and the labels withdraw from the RIAA, this will continue. And I will not buy any more music.
I boycott MLB and everything related to them because of the crap from players and owners; now I watch school and local leagues. You'll never change the major players like Britney Spears or Eminem or Madonna, but if you write a smaller artist and tell them you won't buy their music (or download it, jackass) until they remove themselves from the RIAA, they'll jump. They have to be more responsive because they need the few customers they have.
Do something! The RIAA is getting fed by kids who have all this money and horrible taste in music--I know plenty of you have kids, don't let them buy RIAA music and don't let them download it. Introduce them to something worthwhile. And if you find a worthwhile artist who belongs to the RIAA, talk to them about it.
Tell that to Randal Schwartz. Because he did not obtain permission for each individual action, he was convicted of Computer Crime. You can email his perl bot for more info.
Beware people with benevolent intentions, as they usually become malevolent when they realize 1) you are smarter than they are, 2) they bought an insecure product, 3) they fear you. While this contest may be on the up and up, the information they are seeking is worth far more than $250 and could easily turn into criminal investigations whether they intend them to or not.
If someone can get my library records without my knowledge, sniffing some packets is child's play.
Pour your 180F coffee in your lap.
sit for 90 seconds.
That's what happened to the old lady.
So McDonald's was being punished because the woman was too old and decrepit to move after she clumsilly spilled an exceptionally hot liquid on herself? It was her fault. No one made her buy the coffee. Everyone knew how hot it was because they requested it that way. She spilled it on herself and she didn't clean it up fast enough or properly enough. People need to take responsibility for their own incompetence. The general masses refuse to force the issue because then they would be held accountable for their stupid mistakes, but that can't be true. It's always someone else's fault. Someone else always has to pay.
Actually, it's my understanding that long before the case was settled, McD's had already dropped the temp.
IIRC, they didn't. They didn't view it as their error, so they saw no reason to drop the temp of what people wanted. I'm almost certain they had not dropped the temp when I spilled it on myself.
I suppose you've never heard of "Driving While Black"?
First off, someone who views kiddie porn is not a consumer; a consumer has to pay for it.
Second, the point is that a lot of people otherwise viewed as normal (or even exemplary) do some pretty disgusting things. You would be amazed at all of the creeps out there.
And while viewing child porn is disgusting, it should not be illegal (reading, viewing, etc. should never be illegal). What should be forcefully prosecuted is people who make, sell, or buy child porn because they are all involved with the actual exploitation. Some weirdo viewing it for free shouldn't be prosecuted because he has done nothing to with children being exploited.
It's like prosecuting people for reading or publishing books on how to make bombs or decode DVD's; prosecute the people who actually commit crimes, not ancilliary things that may have nothing to do with the real crime.
2) You have discovered McDonalds coffee is no longer too hot.
No, genius, I spilled it on myself twice before the case was settled. Say it with me: logical flow.
And for your edification, the jury awarded $2.9 million because they were as uncompromisingly stupid as the old woman who sued--McDonald's coffee was that hot because people wanted it that hot and people complained when it wasn't.
$2.9 million is an absurd amount for almost any individual claim, but for an 89 year old woman? How was her quality of life compromised? God meant her to spill it closer to her heart so he could free up her apartment.
I think that would be a violation of your legal rights. So who's going door to door to see if anyone ever used register.com to allow them to opt out in case they wish to bring their own lawsuit?
Usually things are sent via snail mail, as Register.com should have valid contacts for all people affected. These things are also well publicized for the purpose of finding all people in the class.
IANAL, but ignorance of the class action lawsuit is a valid argument for preempting the settlement and you would allowed to proceed individually.
Every account I have ever read listed them as 3rd degree, which is incredulous. I do understand she received skin grafts because of the burns. She was also 89, which was a contributing factor.
Coffee is supposed to be hot, and on anyone but that stupid woman it would not have caused 3rd degree burns. How do I know? I poured McDonald's coffee on myself twice (both straight from the pot, not after it had been poured) and I only received one minor burn which was barely visible once it healed.
People contend McDonald's was being arrogant for refusing to settle--imagine if someone sued you after they came into your home and stuck a steak knife in their hand, blaming it was your fault for keeping the knife that sharp. You'd be arrogant too, and blame it completely on the "victim".