I see very little chance of all GPL'ed software getting declared public domain because it is still IP that was created by the authors. There are still records of who wrote the software, and if the decision comes out as, "These authors released their code under a license that is not valid.", then I think it would revert back to them owning the code again, and they would have to choose another license under which to publish it.
SCO themselves is the one saying that "Congress, not the FSF or anyone else, regulates copyright."(attempted quote from memory) So, what does congressional copyright law say? I forget what it has been extended to by now, but it's something like 100+ years after the authors death plus however much time it takes to turn a dinosaur into oil. So nobody's code is going into public domain any time soon.
Whoa, I totally hadn't thought of this angle. I do see a problem with this logic though. Your argument seems to say they would be doing this to avoid getting sued from their wrongdoing. That only makes sense if they are making money from the wrongdoing and need to avoid consequences. Before they started this mess, not many people paid attention to them or used their products, so they were pretty much safe from being sued before they brought it up themselves.
Interesting idea, but I do think there must be a profit seeking side of this. I tend to stick with the pump-n-dump view of it, or maybe just the slim hope that they could actually get some suckers to give them a lot of licensing money for Linux before the court shoots it down. That seems to me to be the reason they are starting seeling the Linux licenses with the Fortune 1000 companies first. They want to try to get a decent amount of money before the legal thing crashes on them.
Why, if he wanted to get back at Microsoft, would he do something that directs most of the damage to IBM and Linux?
Damage? I don't see IBM or Linux getting much damage from this. I don't necessarily see his theory about Noorda as being very realistic, but this probably will end up having a pretty good outcome for Linux and OS in general. SCO will look like fools, and the GPL will come out looking very legitimate and having gotten a lot of publicity in the process--kind of like the valiant hero who defended against the overwhelming advance of the unwashed mass...er, I mean barbarian hordes.
I've been looking for a proper forum to express this about Mandrake. I have been a DOS and Windows user for a long time, but I do use a Unix workstation at work. I am trying to install Linux on my secondary computer at home, and have had two unsuccessful attempts at installing Mandrake 9.1. I was under the impression with all this talk of Linux "scalability" that it would be fine installing on a 1GB hard drive. Win98 is just fine, only taking about half the drive space, even with all its supposedly "bloated code". Mandrake should be smaller, right? I tried Mandrake because it is supposed to be a simple install, so that should be good to get me going and if I find there are some things I want to change, I'll maybe switch to Debian or something later.
First install try, I selected to let the installer choose partitioning. Without even showing me what it decided, it went on its merry way. (I came to find out later, it took half the drive for a swap partition, not leaving enough room for the OS.) I couldn't select any applications to install because it detected I didn't have enough hard drive space. KDE was all I could check before hitting the limit. Needless to say, the installation hung when it tried to download and install patches from Mandrake during installation.
Second try, make it use one partition for everything so the disk space is flexible to be used where needed. I've got 192MB of memory in it--should be good enough (maybe a little slow) to run. Nope--installation hangs again. And before you say I just wasn't patient enough, I don't just mean 5 or 10 minutes. Both times, I let it sit with that hourglass on the screen overnight to see if it would eventually finish something. I guess I'll give Debian a try, but this is not encouraging me about Linux.
I'm not trying to be a troll or flamebait. I just want to let you know of a real story from a person who is excited about Linux and really wants this to work but is encountering real problems. When installation completely fails on a system that Win98 had no problem with, how am I supposed to think this is so great?
I'm interested in responses if someone has (respectful) opinions on this. I didn't think a 1GB HD was that small, but is that a Mandrake thing? Is it that they make everything so pretty and nice with the shiny buttons and stuff for the n00bs that it just takes up a buttload of space? You sacrifice adaptability for braindead ease of use? Maybe I just picked the wrong distro to start with. Maybe I should have given it 100-200MB of space for a swap partition to keep it happy, but geez, can't it just use a swap FILE instead of allocating a bunch of space that may not be used?
From what I've heard from the Linux users here, it is just the opposite with respect to hardware. The "legacy" hardware is at least exactly what it claims to be with real components that can be run by fairly general drivers. The "newer" hardware that you seem to prefer includes the Winmodems and semi-soundcards that rely on crutches that it expects to find in the Windows operating system on the computer. I guess there is a level of compromise, though. I wouldn't want to have to go back to the days of opening up the case because I had to change the IRQ jumper blocks on my sound card.
I would laugh, but that happened to me just last week. My joke was a little too subtle and I got modded as a Troll because he or she thought I was serious. Slashdot becomes a less fun place when people mod FUNNY, for no Karma gain, the jokes they get, and mod TROLL, for a Karma loss, the jokes they don't get.
Yeah, can someone please help me find the form where you mod the editors for their story submissions? Let's see, *.SCO = FUNNY, Ballmer vs. Linux = FLAMEBAIT, *.clustered = REDUNDANT
I get your point about artists should stay away from the major record labels, but "poor and in debt"??!! Please! I don't think many artists that have gotten signed onto an RIAA record label are poor or in debt. (Unless they blow their money themselves, which is not the label's fault.)
You don't like that if you buy an X-Box, you can't modify it? Gee, that's too freakin' bad because when you bought it you agreed to a bunch of rules regarding how you can use it.
Who agreed to it? Does it say that on the box? Does it say that on the receipt? Does it say that in the manual? There is a big difference between physical product like hardware, and information type product like songs/software. The only restiction they can put on an XBox is that you void your warranty by modifying it. They can't restict you from modding it, but they can say that they have no more service obligation on the product once you do that.
These things about cars not allowed to be serviced at independent repair shops will never hold up at a court level. It can happen from a technology standpoint anyway, though, because they just put some computer components into the car that can only be read by a manufacturer-formatted machine, and then the independent shops can't do the extensive work that would require use of that.
in their usual psycho, extortion way. If they really sold licenses to the individual activists who want to buy one license as evidence to sue them for fraud, they would have a legal battle on their hands with only $699 to show for it. (Actually there would probably be a hundred or so people who would do this, all wanting to be the one to file the first suit.) If they only open it up to big, rich companies, there are enough computers to be licensed that SCO will bring in tons of money in exchange for giving out the fraud evidence and make it worth their while. That is not to mention a few other companies who probably will just pay it to make the problem go away, thereby stuffing SCO's pockets even more.
From a legitimate business perspective, it would be OK for any company in this situation to PURSUE big companies first to purchase a license, because that just makes sense from a revenue/effort ratio--it costs them to pursue people. But to only ALLOW big companies to purchase and to PREVENT individuals from purchasing, something is wrong. When people are holding out money for them to take, and they are refusing, it's obviously shady.
Read the quote I was responding to. I was not talking about hardware failures. That is different, and, yes, I would consider that a "need." I was addressing the original comment, "Eventually computers will get fast enough that many people don't need to replace them every 3 years." That is talking about the following type of people: "Wow, those new computers have 2GHz; mine only has 1. Oh, and I get a free printer with it, too!"
"Eventually computers will get fast enough that many people don't need to replace them every 3 years." Heh, I think we've been to that point for a while. People don't replace their computers because they NEED to. It's because they WANT to, or the marketing makes them think they can't live without it. "Oh, look! It's Shiny." Most people can do fine with systems that are 5 years old or so. If they would stop so much upward migration of resource-hogging OSes that don't benefit them much, they would hardly ever have to upgrade.
Yeah, I still have in a box in the closet a Sound Blaster Pro 8-bit card. I love that card because it had a built-in amp on the card that let it have a volume dial on the back of the card. I liked that because I have some passive speakers that I used to use with it so I didn't always have to find a power cord for the speakers. Also, I didn't have speakers that had a headphone jack built into them, so I had to plug the headphones into the speaker-out of the card, so that volume dial was handy.
The reason for upgrading from that card was playing Warcraft II. When the slaughter was on in someone's base, the 8-bits couldn't make all the dying people sounds. People's "Augghh!" sounds would start getting cut off by new ones.
That reminds me of one of the greatest features of Warcraft and Starcraft. You could substitute.wav files of your own for sounds in the game. I had some friends that substituted sound clips for the dying sounds in Warcraft that said, "Ow! My eye!" "D'oh! My spleen!", etc. That got pretty funny.
As for old hardware I'm still using, I still use the mouse, FD, CD ROM, 4MB S3 video card, and 15 in. Monitor from my Gateway P-100 system I bought in 1995. It's a secondary system for network Starcarft. That was a great system that I overclocked at 133MHz for a long time. I've since upgraded the case, MB, and proc. to an AMD K6-2. The best part of this system is the keyboard I still use with it. I didn't like the soft keys of the Gateway keyboard it came with, so I went to a used computer store, and bought one of those old built-like-a-tank IBM PC keyboards. It has real metal springs under the keys and makes a satisfying click when you press them. I guess the noise from it is sometimes annoying, but I sure like the feel of the keys. It also has the removable caps on the keys--for easy cleaning or something? I thought it was mainly for screwing up someone's typing when you shift a row of keys to the right one space or swap their Ctrl and Alt keys.
Yeah, when I first read this, I thought, "Oh, boy, it's another Slashdot tinfoil party. Let the paranoia begin!" I want to post a story to Slashdot "informing" people that the senders of the junk mail you get know EXACTLY WHERE YOU LIVE!!
Oh boy, the irony here is amazing. The article is asking for examples of FUD about Linux, and when someone posts one, they get blasted by the Linux zealots. I'm sitting here laughing at the zealots selective reading. It's like the context of "Give me examples of FUD" went sailing over their heads. You wouldn't think everyone posting in this thread would have to put a disclaimer at the beginning of every post saying, "The following is an example of anti-Linux FUD, as called for above. This does not represent the views of the poster." But apparently they do, because the mob will just perk up their ears--"Huh? He just said something bad about Linux! Let's get 'im!"
OK, here's mine: <linux FUD> Where am I supposed to get drivers for this thing? The install disc is useless on Linux.</linux FUD>
This sounds like the absolute Slashbot's dream. I can just see the engineers who designed this lurking on an Ask Slashdot forum on "What should the ideal set top box be capable of?"and writing down the system features list from user comments.
* It should run Linux, of course. * It has to connect to my PC so I can write all those recorded movies to DVD-R. * Oh yeah, and a satellite or cable decoder, so I can HAX0RS it and "share" free movies and stuff. * And I'm sure the hard drive won't be big enough, so I should be able to put in a much bigger drive.
I think the main reason for that is the bad quality of the complaints in the article. So many of the critiques he had were with some individual applications, that it cast the whole of the article in a questionable light as far was a real evaluation of Windows. I wouldn't say the posters are really Pro-Windows, but they are just being realistic against the whiny points the writer of the article made.
For my own part, I use Windows98 at home, and WindowsNT and Unix at work. Maybe someone else will end up making this comment, but I would be more than happy to just USE Linux--like if my PC at work were already set up with it. I just don't want to have to manage it on my machine. My biggest gripe is probably with hardware setup. It is far nicer for the OS to automatically detect any new piece of hardware I get and install the drivers for it, or at least just pop in the CD it came with and have it install correctly that way. I'm not above a little setup, but isn't that easier than going out on the web to search for drivers and then have to download, compile, and edit config files? Also, browser plugins--I was using Mozilla on my Unix system, and it couldn't play a quicktime.mov file. It prompts me to get the plugin, which goes to the Quicktime site, where it says to select which operating system. Hmm, 3 versions of Mac OS or Windows? No help for Linux or Unix. So I can't play this file now. I have to start a search for a program that will play this. Granted that once you find one, like Plugger, it has codecs for lots of stuff like WMP, RealPlayer, Quicktime, etc., so it saves some time on other file types. I just hope that distros like Mandrake or RedHat have these type of plugin programs included. Easy installation of stuff is another plus on the Windows side of things.
I want to download and install a version of Linux at home to start learning with, but there are some definite inconveniences. I just think that a more consolidated place for getting drivers for hardware would be really nice.
I think SCO has a very valid request for delaying this discovery request from RH. They do have a motion for complete dismissal in the pipe, and doing the discovery work would be a total waste of time and expense for them if they whole thing ends up being dismissed. From a rational point of view, I think it makes sense to wait for the dismissal request to be decided first and then to the discovery. That being said, though, I think the dismissal request should be denied in a heartbeat by the judge so the discovery process can go forward. It just seems unreasonable to point the finger at SCO already for "obvious delaying tactics" when they have a valid point of what needs to be decided first.
Re-encoding does NOT violate the ITMS terms of service. I just read through it from your link, and it is not trying to circumvent or reversen engineer their security system. I did notice something weird in their terms of service, though. On the main page, there is a section under Usage Rules that says "You shall be entitled to export, burn or copy Products solely for personal, noncommercial use." However, section 5 under the heading Policies and Rules has a link that goes to a page called Terms of Sale that tells stuff about taxes, prices, etc. It also has a section called Content Usage Rules that repeats much of the earlier description. This one, however, contains this line "You shall be entitled to burn and export Products solely for personal, non-commercial use." Do you think there's a reason they didn't just copy the text from one page to another? I'm not just asking to be a nitpicker, but because I think export and copy are the applicable terms when you talk about ripping to mp3. I believe this statement in their Terms of Use specifically allows any form of format conversion you want to do. When people complain about it being a lossy or bad quality format when extracted that way, I think I would have to say that you are given two options if you want to comply with copyright law. Go buy the CD so you can make your own high quality rips, or get the songs cheaper and tolerate a little lower quality. Why is it so hard to understand that choices involve weighing pros and cons? Life is not about getting everything you want with no sacrifice, and that should be applied to a lot more than just music. Think of the huge number of bankruptcies in this country due to credit card debt.
They can't go much(if any) lower than $.99 per song because there are so many hands that need a cut of it, as posted in this Slashdot story. The advantage of the $.99, of course, is that you can get one or two songs from an album that doesn't have anything else good on it. Congratulations, you have now achieved the same enjoyment from $1.98 as you would have from $12.99. Also, that new bargain price of $12.99 still doesn't look as good as the $9.99 for a whole album that iTunes has been offering since the beginning. I, for one, welcome our new Windows iTunes overlords!:)
I work in engineering at a semiconductor company, and most of the engineers where I work have two machines. We have a WinNT4 PC for the regular stuff--Outlook, IE, Excel, etc. and a Sun station running Solaris for our schematics, layout, data extraction, simulations, etc. The Sun monitors all have dual inputs with a toggle switch, so they just plug both machines into it. That works out kind of like dual monitors, but with the cost of one. It is not usually an inconvenience, because the stuff on Unix is usually so unrelated to the Windows stuff that you work on one system for an hour or two at a time. He brought up a point about wanting to copy and paste across the two machines, though, like emailing some code or a screenshot of some layout. For the text, I usually just paste it into a file and then grab it with FTP(shortcut to open the program to that connection). We do have a great piece of software that I use for the screenshots. We have Exceed, which will connect from the PC to a Unix box and run that desktop in a window. I find what I want and hit printscreen to grab it.
We do use Exceed for something a lot more useful, though. We get a lot of interns here in the summers, and don't necessarily have enough Sun boxes to set one up for every intern, so they just use Exceed to do their Unix stuff. When I started here, I used that for a while before they got a Sun for me. It was really nice to be able to copy and paste the Unix stuff. It just ran a little slower on the graphic-intensive Unix stuff.
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I see very little chance of all GPL'ed software getting declared public domain because it is still IP that was created by the authors. There are still records of who wrote the software, and if the decision comes out as, "These authors released their code under a license that is not valid.", then I think it would revert back to them owning the code again, and they would have to choose another license under which to publish it.
SCO themselves is the one saying that "Congress, not the FSF or anyone else, regulates copyright."(attempted quote from memory) So, what does congressional copyright law say? I forget what it has been extended to by now, but it's something like 100+ years after the authors death plus however much time it takes to turn a dinosaur into oil. So nobody's code is going into public domain any time soon.
Whoa, I totally hadn't thought of this angle. I do see a problem with this logic though. Your argument seems to say they would be doing this to avoid getting sued from their wrongdoing. That only makes sense if they are making money from the wrongdoing and need to avoid consequences. Before they started this mess, not many people paid attention to them or used their products, so they were pretty much safe from being sued before they brought it up themselves.
Interesting idea, but I do think there must be a profit seeking side of this. I tend to stick with the pump-n-dump view of it, or maybe just the slim hope that they could actually get some suckers to give them a lot of licensing money for Linux before the court shoots it down. That seems to me to be the reason they are starting seeling the Linux licenses with the Fortune 1000 companies first. They want to try to get a decent amount of money before the legal thing crashes on them.
Damage? I don't see IBM or Linux getting much damage from this. I don't necessarily see his theory about Noorda as being very realistic, but this probably will end up having a pretty good outcome for Linux and OS in general. SCO will look like fools, and the GPL will come out looking very legitimate and having gotten a lot of publicity in the process--kind of like the valiant hero who defended against the overwhelming advance of the unwashed mass...er, I mean barbarian hordes.
Yeah, unless the worms spoof IP addresses. That is going to open up the legal trouble when the "counter" action starts hitting wrong machines.
I've been looking for a proper forum to express this about Mandrake. I have been a DOS and Windows user for a long time, but I do use a Unix workstation at work. I am trying to install Linux on my secondary computer at home, and have had two unsuccessful attempts at installing Mandrake 9.1. I was under the impression with all this talk of Linux "scalability" that it would be fine installing on a 1GB hard drive. Win98 is just fine, only taking about half the drive space, even with all its supposedly "bloated code". Mandrake should be smaller, right? I tried Mandrake because it is supposed to be a simple install, so that should be good to get me going and if I find there are some things I want to change, I'll maybe switch to Debian or something later.
First install try, I selected to let the installer choose partitioning. Without even showing me what it decided, it went on its merry way. (I came to find out later, it took half the drive for a swap partition, not leaving enough room for the OS.) I couldn't select any applications to install because it detected I didn't have enough hard drive space. KDE was all I could check before hitting the limit. Needless to say, the installation hung when it tried to download and install patches from Mandrake during installation.
Second try, make it use one partition for everything so the disk space is flexible to be used where needed. I've got 192MB of memory in it--should be good enough (maybe a little slow) to run. Nope--installation hangs again. And before you say I just wasn't patient enough, I don't just mean 5 or 10 minutes. Both times, I let it sit with that hourglass on the screen overnight to see if it would eventually finish something. I guess I'll give Debian a try, but this is not encouraging me about Linux.
I'm not trying to be a troll or flamebait. I just want to let you know of a real story from a person who is excited about Linux and really wants this to work but is encountering real problems. When installation completely fails on a system that Win98 had no problem with, how am I supposed to think this is so great?
I'm interested in responses if someone has (respectful) opinions on this. I didn't think a 1GB HD was that small, but is that a Mandrake thing? Is it that they make everything so pretty and nice with the shiny buttons and stuff for the n00bs that it just takes up a buttload of space? You sacrifice adaptability for braindead ease of use? Maybe I just picked the wrong distro to start with. Maybe I should have given it 100-200MB of space for a swap partition to keep it happy, but geez, can't it just use a swap FILE instead of allocating a bunch of space that may not be used?
From what I've heard from the Linux users here, it is just the opposite with respect to hardware. The "legacy" hardware is at least exactly what it claims to be with real components that can be run by fairly general drivers. The "newer" hardware that you seem to prefer includes the Winmodems and semi-soundcards that rely on crutches that it expects to find in the Windows operating system on the computer. I guess there is a level of compromise, though. I wouldn't want to have to go back to the days of opening up the case because I had to change the IRQ jumper blocks on my sound card.
I would laugh, but that happened to me just last week. My joke was a little too subtle and I got modded as a Troll because he or she thought I was serious. Slashdot becomes a less fun place when people mod FUNNY, for no Karma gain, the jokes they get, and mod TROLL, for a Karma loss, the jokes they don't get.
Yeah, can someone please help me find the form where you mod the editors for their story submissions? Let's see, *.SCO = FUNNY, Ballmer vs. Linux = FLAMEBAIT, *.clustered = REDUNDANT
I get your point about artists should stay away from the major record labels, but "poor and in debt"??!! Please! I don't think many artists that have gotten signed onto an RIAA record label are poor or in debt. (Unless they blow their money themselves, which is not the label's fault.)
These things about cars not allowed to be serviced at independent repair shops will never hold up at a court level. It can happen from a technology standpoint anyway, though, because they just put some computer components into the car that can only be read by a manufacturer-formatted machine, and then the independent shops can't do the extensive work that would require use of that.
in their usual psycho, extortion way. If they really sold licenses to the individual activists who want to buy one license as evidence to sue them for fraud, they would have a legal battle on their hands with only $699 to show for it. (Actually there would probably be a hundred or so people who would do this, all wanting to be the one to file the first suit.) If they only open it up to big, rich companies, there are enough computers to be licensed that SCO will bring in tons of money in exchange for giving out the fraud evidence and make it worth their while. That is not to mention a few other companies who probably will just pay it to make the problem go away, thereby stuffing SCO's pockets even more.
From a legitimate business perspective, it would be OK for any company in this situation to PURSUE big companies first to purchase a license, because that just makes sense from a revenue/effort ratio--it costs them to pursue people. But to only ALLOW big companies to purchase and to PREVENT individuals from purchasing, something is wrong. When people are holding out money for them to take, and they are refusing, it's obviously shady.
Read the quote I was responding to. I was not talking about hardware failures. That is different, and, yes, I would consider that a "need." I was addressing the original comment, "Eventually computers will get fast enough that many people don't need to replace them every 3 years." That is talking about the following type of people:
"Wow, those new computers have 2GHz; mine only has 1. Oh, and I get a free printer with it, too!"
"Eventually computers will get fast enough that many people don't need to replace them every 3 years."
Heh, I think we've been to that point for a while. People don't replace their computers because they NEED to. It's because they WANT to, or the marketing makes them think they can't live without it. "Oh, look! It's Shiny." Most people can do fine with systems that are 5 years old or so. If they would stop so much upward migration of resource-hogging OSes that don't benefit them much, they would hardly ever have to upgrade.
Yeah, I still have in a box in the closet a Sound Blaster Pro 8-bit card. I love that card because it had a built-in amp on the card that let it have a volume dial on the back of the card. I liked that because I have some passive speakers that I used to use with it so I didn't always have to find a power cord for the speakers. Also, I didn't have speakers that had a headphone jack built into them, so I had to plug the headphones into the speaker-out of the card, so that volume dial was handy.
.wav files of your own for sounds in the game. I had some friends that substituted sound clips for the dying sounds in Warcraft that said, "Ow! My eye!" "D'oh! My spleen!", etc. That got pretty funny.
The reason for upgrading from that card was playing Warcraft II. When the slaughter was on in someone's base, the 8-bits couldn't make all the dying people sounds. People's "Augghh!" sounds would start getting cut off by new ones.
That reminds me of one of the greatest features of Warcraft and Starcraft. You could substitute
As for old hardware I'm still using, I still use the mouse, FD, CD ROM, 4MB S3 video card, and 15 in. Monitor from my Gateway P-100 system I bought in 1995. It's a secondary system for network Starcarft. That was a great system that I overclocked at 133MHz for a long time. I've since upgraded the case, MB, and proc. to an AMD K6-2. The best part of this system is the keyboard I still use with it. I didn't like the soft keys of the Gateway keyboard it came with, so I went to a used computer store, and bought one of those old built-like-a-tank IBM PC keyboards. It has real metal springs under the keys and makes a satisfying click when you press them. I guess the noise from it is sometimes annoying, but I sure like the feel of the keys. It also has the removable caps on the keys--for easy cleaning or something? I thought it was mainly for screwing up someone's typing when you shift a row of keys to the right one space or swap their Ctrl and Alt keys.
Yeah, when I first read this, I thought, "Oh, boy, it's another Slashdot tinfoil party. Let the paranoia begin!" I want to post a story to Slashdot "informing" people that the senders of the junk mail you get know EXACTLY WHERE YOU LIVE!!
Oh boy, the irony here is amazing. The article is asking for examples of FUD about Linux, and when someone posts one, they get blasted by the Linux zealots. I'm sitting here laughing at the zealots selective reading. It's like the context of "Give me examples of FUD" went sailing over their heads. You wouldn't think everyone posting in this thread would have to put a disclaimer at the beginning of every post saying, "The following is an example of anti-Linux FUD, as called for above. This does not represent the views of the poster." But apparently they do, because the mob will just perk up their ears--"Huh? He just said something bad about Linux! Let's get 'im!"
OK, here's mine:
<linux FUD> Where am I supposed to get drivers for this thing? The install disc is useless on Linux.</linux FUD>
OK, I'll take on of the other standard jokes.
In feudal Japan, kung fu robots beat you!
Well really, how many Russians do you know who do kung fu???
This sounds like the absolute Slashbot's dream. I can just see the engineers who designed this lurking on an Ask Slashdot forum on "What should the ideal set top box be capable of?"and writing down the system features list from user comments.
* It should run Linux, of course.
* It has to connect to my PC so I can write all those recorded movies to DVD-R.
* Oh yeah, and a satellite or cable decoder, so I can HAX0RS it and "share" free movies and stuff.
* And I'm sure the hard drive won't be big enough, so I should be able to put in a much bigger drive.
I think the main reason for that is the bad quality of the complaints in the article. So many of the critiques he had were with some individual applications, that it cast the whole of the article in a questionable light as far was a real evaluation of Windows. I wouldn't say the posters are really Pro-Windows, but they are just being realistic against the whiny points the writer of the article made.
.mov file. It prompts me to get the plugin, which goes to the Quicktime site, where it says to select which operating system. Hmm, 3 versions of Mac OS or Windows? No help for Linux or Unix. So I can't play this file now. I have to start a search for a program that will play this. Granted that once you find one, like Plugger, it has codecs for lots of stuff like WMP, RealPlayer, Quicktime, etc., so it saves some time on other file types. I just hope that distros like Mandrake or RedHat have these type of plugin programs included. Easy installation of stuff is another plus on the Windows side of things.
For my own part, I use Windows98 at home, and WindowsNT and Unix at work. Maybe someone else will end up making this comment, but I would be more than happy to just USE Linux--like if my PC at work were already set up with it. I just don't want to have to manage it on my machine. My biggest gripe is probably with hardware setup. It is far nicer for the OS to automatically detect any new piece of hardware I get and install the drivers for it, or at least just pop in the CD it came with and have it install correctly that way. I'm not above a little setup, but isn't that easier than going out on the web to search for drivers and then have to download, compile, and edit config files? Also, browser plugins--I was using Mozilla on my Unix system, and it couldn't play a quicktime
I want to download and install a version of Linux at home to start learning with, but there are some definite inconveniences. I just think that a more consolidated place for getting drivers for hardware would be really nice.
ICBWSHTKTTPTIANAL
(I can't believe we still have to keep telling these people that I am not a lawyer.)
I think SCO has a very valid request for delaying this discovery request from RH. They do have a motion for complete dismissal in the pipe, and doing the discovery work would be a total waste of time and expense for them if they whole thing ends up being dismissed. From a rational point of view, I think it makes sense to wait for the dismissal request to be decided first and then to the discovery.
That being said, though, I think the dismissal request should be denied in a heartbeat by the judge so the discovery process can go forward. It just seems unreasonable to point the finger at SCO already for "obvious delaying tactics" when they have a valid point of what needs to be decided first.
Re-encoding does NOT violate the ITMS terms of service. I just read through it from your link, and it is not trying to circumvent or reversen engineer their security system. I did notice something weird in their terms of service, though. On the main page, there is a section under Usage Rules that says "You shall be entitled to export, burn or copy Products solely for personal, noncommercial use." However, section 5 under the heading Policies and Rules has a link that goes to a page called Terms of Sale that tells stuff about taxes, prices, etc. It also has a section called Content Usage Rules that repeats much of the earlier description. This one, however, contains this line "You shall be entitled to burn and export Products solely for personal, non-commercial use." Do you think there's a reason they didn't just copy the text from one page to another? I'm not just asking to be a nitpicker, but because I think export and copy are the applicable terms when you talk about ripping to mp3. I believe this statement in their Terms of Use specifically allows any form of format conversion you want to do. When people complain about it being a lossy or bad quality format when extracted that way, I think I would have to say that you are given two options if you want to comply with copyright law. Go buy the CD so you can make your own high quality rips, or get the songs cheaper and tolerate a little lower quality. Why is it so hard to understand that choices involve weighing pros and cons? Life is not about getting everything you want with no sacrifice, and that should be applied to a lot more than just music. Think of the huge number of bankruptcies in this country due to credit card debt.
They can't go much(if any) lower than $.99 per song because there are so many hands that need a cut of it, as posted in this Slashdot story. The advantage of the $.99, of course, is that you can get one or two songs from an album that doesn't have anything else good on it. Congratulations, you have now achieved the same enjoyment from $1.98 as you would have from $12.99. Also, that new bargain price of $12.99 still doesn't look as good as the $9.99 for a whole album that iTunes has been offering since the beginning. I, for one, welcome our new Windows iTunes overlords! :)
I work in engineering at a semiconductor company, and most of the engineers where I work have two machines. We have a WinNT4 PC for the regular stuff--Outlook, IE, Excel, etc. and a Sun station running Solaris for our schematics, layout, data extraction, simulations, etc. The Sun monitors all have dual inputs with a toggle switch, so they just plug both machines into it. That works out kind of like dual monitors, but with the cost of one. It is not usually an inconvenience, because the stuff on Unix is usually so unrelated to the Windows stuff that you work on one system for an hour or two at a time. He brought up a point about wanting to copy and paste across the two machines, though, like emailing some code or a screenshot of some layout. For the text, I usually just paste it into a file and then grab it with FTP(shortcut to open the program to that connection). We do have a great piece of software that I use for the screenshots. We have Exceed, which will connect from the PC to a Unix box and run that desktop in a window. I find what I want and hit printscreen to grab it.
We do use Exceed for something a lot more useful, though. We get a lot of interns here in the summers, and don't necessarily have enough Sun boxes to set one up for every intern, so they just use Exceed to do their Unix stuff. When I started here, I used that for a while before they got a Sun for me. It was really nice to be able to copy and paste the Unix stuff. It just ran a little slower on the graphic-intensive Unix stuff.
A cluster of computer geeks unhooking their Commodore 64 web servers and hooking them together to form the combined computing power of...my microwave.