Re:Theo's an asshole and OpenBSD is over rated
on
OpenBSD 3.8 Released
·
· Score: 0, Troll
>Yeah... I totally agree. I don't know why OpenBSD feels the need to support "toy" platforms such as the sparc and sparc64 systems... they're total shit.
I wouldn't say that the platforms are total shit, though if your only experience with them is using Open BSD on them I can see why you wouldd get that impression (and trust me, you have my deepest sympathy). You might try using something by the people who actually make both the hardware and the software which is designed to fully support and take advantage of it.
Now that Solaris is free; price and licensing are no longer considerations which should hold you back.
Re:Theo's an asshole and OpenBSD is over rated
on
OpenBSD 3.8 Released
·
· Score: -1, Troll
I don't think anyone would seriously use their PDA as a server, however. At least not in any kind of professional enviroment.
If you are serious about your infrastructure, you'll use serious tools, with serious software. If you're not serious, I guess you can settle for one of the ameteur projects which you can use on a motely collection of toys.
Did I ever tell you about the man who taught his ass to talk? His whole abdomen would move up and down you dig farting out the words. It was unlike anything I had ever heard.
"This ass talk had sort of a gut frequency. It hit you right down there like you gotta go. You know when the old colon gives you the elbow and it feels sorta cold inside, and you know all you have to do is turn loose? Well this talking hit you right down there, a bubbly, thick stagnant sound, a sound you could smell.
"This man worked for a carnival you dig, and to start with it was like a novelty ventriliquist act. Real funny, too, at first. He had a number he called "The Better 'Ole' that was a scream, I tell you. I forget most of it but it was clever. Like, "Oh I say, are you still down there, old thing?'
"'Nah! I had to go relieve myself.'
"After a while the ass start talking on its own. He would go in without anything prepared and his ass would ad-lib and toss the gags back at him every time.
"Then it developed sort of teeth-like little raspy in- curving hooks and start eating. He thought this was cute at first and built and act around it, but the asshole would eat its way through his pants and start talking on the street, shouting out it wanted equal rights. It would get drunk, too, and have crying jags nobody loved it and it wanted to be kissed same as any other mouth. Finally it talked all the time day and night, you could hear him for blocks screaming at it to shut up, and beating it with his fist, and sticking candles up it, but nothing did any good and the asshole said to him: 'It's you who will shut up in the end. Not me. Because we don't need you around here any more. I can talk and eat AND shit.'
"After that he began waking up in the morning with a transparent jelly like a tadpole's tail all over his mouth. This jelly was what the scientists call un-D.T., Undifferentiated Tissue, which can grow into any kind of flesh on the human body. He would tear it off his mouth and the pieces would stick to his hands like burning gasoline jelly and grow there, grow anywhere on him a glob of it fell. So finally his mouth sealed over, and the whole head would have have amputated spontaneous- except for the EYES you dig. That's one thing the asshole COULDN'T do was see. It needed the eyes. But nerve connections were blocked and infiltrated and atrophied so the brain couldn't give orders any more. It was trapped in the skull, sealed off. For a while you could see the silent, helpless suffering of the brain behind the eyes, then finally the brain must have died, because the eyes WENT OUT, and there was no more feeling in them than a crab's eyes on the end of a stalk.
Sure they have plenty of processing power if you aren't running complex simulations, but if you are doing any type of scientific simulation its not hard to design a simulation that can bring a super computer to its knees. Ok, I expected someone would say that, and that's fine. But isn't that exactly the scenerio that clustering technologies have been created to be used in?
I seriously have a hard time imagining what kind of problem could not be solved with a cluster of pentium fours, each with 4-5 cpus (for a total of approx 12-15 GHZ each).
It certainly can't be a very commonly occuring one.
Really, given the fact that most popular computers have enough processing power to handle anything, and the fact that clustering technology has evolved and is usable in case they aren't...what is the point in the "super computer"? As a layman, it seems pretty obvious to me that there's no need for this, it's just ego and publicity which is going to eventually just DRIVE UP TAXES.
In USia, however, it's a different story. IMHO, there's a perverse sense of pride in not reading that is slowly crawling through the USian population. More and more people (that I work with, at least) simply want to go home and let the TV do their imagining for them.
So, you could have vending machines which not only print books, but tuck the reader in to bed after bringing them hot coco and a stuffed bear before reading it to them and they still wouldn't take off.
However, for you and I of the dwindling reading population, it is a neat thing.
"We are confident in our long-term ability to grow revenue, profits and shareholder value through our innovation and execution. We have been successful in addressing a significant portion of our ongoing legal exposure, and all seven of our businesses are growing," said Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive officer.
That's a couple of things that SCO can't say right about now.
Totally agree. Its just MS paying lip-service to open-source so that they have some more FUD rather than a definate NO when people ask about source availablility.
That's not the only benefit. They also have something to point to as an "alternative" to that evil, 'viral' GNU license. An example of how to do it 'right' (sic).
It's pretty clear in my mind that by handing select portions of the source code to "most valuble professionals" that microsoft merely wants to go through the motions of open source, while not being open at all.
And, certainly, this is their right, since it is their source code. However, I don't see many people outside of their "MVP" community (which is who? people stuck working on windows device drivers?) really being interested in doing their busy work for them. And for this reason, because of being unwilling to fully relinquish control, they are going to find themselves unable to fully benefit from openness.
In contrast, IBM fully understands what open source is all about, and manages to deal with the concept in an intelligent manner, instead of trying to make compromises and deal with half measures.
If open source manages to become a signifigant methodology in tomorrow's IT world, IBM seems better equipped to benefit from it, whereas Microsoft is unwilling to do what it takes to prevent sliding off into irrelevence.
A brief and redundant article
on
IPv6 is Here
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Really doesn't say much that slashdotters don't already know (it's a very
short article). There is one descrepcy that I'm sure I won't be the first
to notice it, either:
Rapid growth in the use of the World Wide Web has in recent times
prompted concerns about future scarcity of domain addresses, with
demand threatening to overload the existing system, the IPv4.
Now, I could be wrong; but my understanding was that the need for IPv6 comes from the scarcity of IP addresses (eg 12.34.56.78) not the scarcity of domain names (eg slashdot.org, slashdot.net, slashdot.jp).
Personally, even though my computer is from the dot-com era, I still have 384 megs of ram. And I'm sure I can pick up a 2.x gigahertz computer from retrobox.com for $200 (might even find one cheaper somewhere else).
Now all I have to worry about is that video card...
But what people constantly forget is that america is not the world. Even if MS manages to lock down Linux and OSS development here in the United States, that does not necessarily stop the rest of the world from pulling ahead of US.
That is, of course, assuming that IBM doesn't decide to stand up to MS and pull a few patent tricks of their own.
How many licenses can fit on the head of a pin?
on
PHP Not Moving To The GPL
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Really, it looks to me like the crux of the issue is that the devlopers of PHP don't like being told what 'free' means. And really, who can blame them? Freedom is certainly worth speaking up for, but from what I got from the article it seems as though all the parties concerned are using free licenses. In fact, I think that Gutman nailed it when he said "As long as they are not inhibited from being able to use PHP I don't see a problem from the end user's perspective. Personally I don't really see a big problem."
Windows wasn't a stand-alone operating system (meaning able to be run without a seperate purchase of MS-DOS) in 1994. Wether you bought it or got it bundled in with your system, you still needed MS-DOS for it.
Great points. Those points are exactly why I was pushing Rhapsody specifically. You can just pay a flat fee (which, in the case of students, should be covered by the university -and not passed along) per month and you can just stream the songs. You don't "own" them (unless you arrange to pay to have them burned onto cd) with either service; but at least with Rhapsody you only pay the 6 bucks or whatever and you listen to whatever you want.
First off, let me make something crystal clear up-front. I in no way condone the way that the RIAA has tried to unethically shape our legal landscape, much less the shadier tactics they've employed.
They're scum, no question about it.
However, the other side of the equation is almost pathological. While you have many honest people who simply want to defend their Fair Use rights, you also have a loud, vocal "I want I want I want" community who simply believes that it is eeeee-vil that they should ever have to pay for goods (cds) or services.
there has to be some sort of compromise between the two, and I honestly think this is a first, halting step in the right direction. I don't think much of napster, but I believe that if a university sponsored the use of a service such as Real's Rhapsody service which allowed unlimited streaming (as opposed to a mandatory $X a song) of music, it would be a good compromise between the two posistions. People would have access to a large library of music, and the artists would be recieving compensation.
Hell, if nothing else, the sponsorship of such a program may well help to diminish any credible claims that the RIAA has to push through bizarre and draconian laws.
When I got into computers in 1994 you had (as I remember) three choices for the PC platform: OS/2, PC-DOS (if you could find it, it wasn't sold anywhere near where I lived) and MS-DOS. Technically you had Linux -but bearing in mind that at that point in time Linux was still raw and unstable, and also had a fiercely steep learning curve for someone who simply wanted to play Doom and call up a bbs or two.
So, basically, this leaves OS/2 and MS-DOS. between the two, the system requirements alone for OS/2 put it out of the "low cost" arena - forget about the sticker price (which I remember being around $200 -but I could be wrong).
So, yes, given that you could run MS-DOS on a 386sx (or even less!) with an ega display, microsoft was -indeed- the low cost solution for the early 90s.
In the past Microsoft was the low cost solution and Microsoft was then competing and attacking expensive proprietary systems from below. Now for the first time the tables are turned and it's Microsoft that's being attacked from below by a lower price solution.
That is certainly true, but there's also a pscyhological dynamic as well. In the past (up until 1995) to some degree Microsoft was seen in two ways - the underdog (compared to the still-seen-as-evil IBM) and the platform of geeky freeware tinkerers. You used to have entire cottage industries that catered to the nerd contingent (eg JPSoft) of people who would sit at home and -on thier dos computers- see what they could contruct on their own and how they could push the performance of their 386sx computers.
So, not only does Microsoft suffer from signifigantly higher TCO, but they also have lost any sort of "outsider" aka geek cred that they may have had pre-1995.
I believe that this, along with the ill-will from Microsoft's more famous stumblings (eg, crushing netscape) have gone a long way to erode any kind of good will that computer users may have once had for them.
What really propelled Microsoft Windows success was an ecosystem that they created that allowed other people to benefit from your success. Actually your success was really a side effect or byproduct of their own success. If they saw a way that they could develop your platform, make money for themselves and build big businesses.
Actually, the reverse is true. By and large over the last 11 years -starting with the assimilation of disk compression and one or two symantec technologies- Microsoft has built their success on the successful deployment of third party technologies. The pattern has typically been that a signifigant technology will get a small foothold on the windows platform, and then when it starts to look promising, MS will either buy it out (in the case of many of its' office products) or clone it and make the original redundant (as was the case with netscape).
So, yes, they 'allowed' other players to grow on their platform, but I think it was more a matter of fattening them up for the kill!
Verizon Communications has stepped up its battle against cable operators with plans to debut a broadband-over-fiber service later this summer.
The service, called Fios, will be launched in Keller, Texas, and later parts of southern California and Florida, the company said Monday. At up to 30mbps (megabits per second), Fios is a quantum leap compared with Verizon's DSL (digital subscriber line) service, which runs at a maximum of 1.5mbps.
Fios can reach these speeds because it's based on fiber-optic lines that serve Internet access at a much higher clip than the traditional copper wires that support DSL.
Verizon also unveiled plans to sell cable television over the speedy Fios connection in 2005, boosting its strategy of offering customers a triple pack of services--voice calls, video and broadband--sold at discounted prices if purchased in a bundle. Cable operators have been using their own "triple play" strategy for several years to woo customers away from Verizon and the three other regional Bell operating companies
The launch of Fios opens a new front in a war between the Bells and the cable industry. Both sides are trying to lure the millions of Americans who are upgrading from slow dial-up services to speedier broadband connections. Cable leads in overall broadband market share, but the Bells have kept pace largely through aggressive DSL discounts and promotions.
Some of the Bells, such as Verizon and SBC Communications, see fiber as an answer to their problems. The Federal Communications Commission plans to allow the Bells to invest in fiber without requiring them to share their infrastructure with third parties, as is the case with copper wire networks. For many years, the Bells have protested that the line-sharing rules on copper wire networks are unfair, because cable companies are not required to share their lines.
Of the four Bells, Verizon is considered the furthest along with its fiber plans. It reiterated on Monday its goal of reaching 1 million homes and offices by the end of the year, with a third coming from expansion in Huntington Beach, Calif.; Tampa, Fla., and the Dallas-Fort Worth areas.
"Fiber from Verizon is coming down their streets and heading straight for their doors, and the excitement in these communities is building," Paul Lacouture, president of Verizon's network services group, said in a statement.
Fios will be only slightly more expensive than Verizon's DSL plans, even though it will be much faster, and Verizon will supply the modems needed to make the switch to fiber, a company representative said.
A 2mbps to 5mbps Fios connection will cost $35 a month if purchased along with Verizon's local and long-distance telephone service. The service will cost $40 if purchased alone. A connection of up to 15mbps is available for $45 a month if purchased as part of the same telephone service bundle, or $50 alone. The company did not reveal pricing for the 30mbps plans
Seriously, the linspire people are not the kinds of companies I, personally, would like to see carrying the Linux/OSS banner forward any more than I'd want to see claria be our standardbearer.
Hopefully after being forced to change their name will cause computer companies to consider bundling other "distributions" (if you deign call "lindows" a "distribution") such as mandrake or fedora wich are much more free (as in speech and as in beer), and who have not based their business model on a combination of selling free applications and having a name that sounds like 'windows'.
Personally, I would go one step further.
on
Game with God
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I would state that not only is religion handled "ineffectively" in most games, but between the wish to be politically correct and catering to the predominantly anti-christian sentiments in the gaming community most games end up being downright disdainful of christianity.
What is worse is the fact that most games put out by christians fall into one of two categories; blatant propaganda which is more concerned with pushing a message than with providing an enjoyable gaming experience, and "fluff" mostly written for children.
What the christian community urgently needs is a development company to emerge which can balance both the needs of the gospel, and the needs of the game playing experience.
Slashdot Mirror
Nazis showed up at the Immigrant protests in Phoenix and and now riots have broken out! Holy shit!
>Yeah... I totally agree. I don't know why OpenBSD feels the need to support "toy" platforms such as the sparc and sparc64 systems... they're total shit.
I wouldn't say that the platforms are total shit, though if your only experience with them is using Open BSD on them I can see why you wouldd get that impression (and trust me, you have my deepest sympathy). You might try using something by the people who actually make both the hardware and the software which is designed to fully support and take advantage of it.
Now that Solaris is free; price and licensing are no longer considerations which should hold you back.
I don't think anyone would seriously use their PDA as a server, however. At least not in any kind of professional enviroment.
If you are serious about your infrastructure, you'll use serious tools, with serious software. If you're not serious, I guess you can settle for one of the ameteur projects which you can use on a motely collection of toys.
Did I ever tell you about the man who taught his ass to talk? His whole abdomen would move up and down you dig farting out the words. It was unlike anything I had ever heard.
"This ass talk had sort of a gut frequency. It hit you right down there like you gotta go. You know when the old colon gives you the elbow and it feels sorta cold inside, and you know all you have to do is turn loose? Well this talking hit you right down there, a bubbly, thick stagnant sound, a sound you could smell.
"This man worked for a carnival you dig, and to start with it was like a novelty ventriliquist act. Real funny, too, at first. He had a number he called "The Better 'Ole' that was a scream, I tell you. I forget most of it but it was clever. Like, "Oh I say, are you still down there, old thing?'
"'Nah! I had to go relieve myself.'
"After a while the ass start talking on its own. He would go in without anything prepared and his ass would ad-lib and toss the gags back at him every time.
"Then it developed sort of teeth-like little raspy in- curving hooks and start eating. He thought this was cute at first and built and act around it, but the asshole would eat its way through his pants and start talking on the street, shouting out it wanted equal rights. It would get drunk, too, and have crying jags nobody loved it and it wanted to be kissed same as any other mouth. Finally it talked all the time day and night, you could hear him for blocks screaming at it to shut up, and beating it with his fist, and sticking candles up it, but nothing did any good and the asshole said to him: 'It's you who will shut up in the end. Not me. Because we don't need you around here any more. I can talk and eat AND shit.'
"After that he began waking up in the morning with a transparent jelly like a tadpole's tail all over his mouth. This jelly was what the scientists call un-D.T., Undifferentiated Tissue, which can grow into any kind of flesh on the human body. He would tear it off his mouth and the pieces would stick to his hands like burning gasoline jelly and grow there, grow anywhere on him a glob of it fell. So finally his mouth sealed over, and the whole head would have have amputated spontaneous- except for the EYES you dig. That's one thing the asshole COULDN'T do was see. It needed the eyes. But nerve connections were blocked and infiltrated and atrophied so the brain couldn't give orders any more. It was trapped in the skull, sealed off. For a while you could see the silent, helpless suffering of the brain behind the eyes, then finally the brain must have died, because the eyes WENT OUT, and there was no more feeling in them than a crab's eyes on the end of a stalk.
Sure they have plenty of processing power if you aren't running complex simulations, but if you are doing any type of scientific simulation its not hard to design a simulation that can bring a super computer to its knees.
Ok, I expected someone would say that, and that's fine. But isn't that exactly the scenerio that clustering technologies have been created to be used in?
I seriously have a hard time imagining what kind of problem could not be solved with a cluster of pentium fours, each with 4-5 cpus (for a total of approx 12-15 GHZ each).
It certainly can't be a very commonly occuring one.
Really, given the fact that most popular computers have enough processing power to handle anything, and the fact that clustering technology has evolved and is usable in case they aren't...what is the point in the "super computer"? As a layman, it seems pretty obvious to me that there's no need for this, it's just ego and publicity which is going to eventually just DRIVE UP TAXES.
So, again, what is the point, exactly?
Nobody eats anymore, huh? So all these giant McDonalds they're building are just for decoration?
In USia, however, it's a different story. IMHO, there's a perverse sense of pride in not reading that is slowly crawling through the USian population. More and more people (that I work with, at least) simply want to go home and let the TV do their imagining for them.
So, you could have vending machines which not only print books, but tuck the reader in to bed after bringing them hot coco and a stuffed bear before reading it to them and they still wouldn't take off.
However, for you and I of the dwindling reading population, it is a neat thing.
That's a couple of things that SCO can't say right about now.
That's not the only benefit. They also have something to point to as an "alternative" to that evil, 'viral' GNU license. An example of how to do it 'right' (sic).
I thought this was already happenning on Kazaa?
You can't find the code for XP or Server 2003 on kazaa; only for 2000; or were you joking?
It's pretty clear in my mind that by handing select portions of the source code to "most valuble professionals" that microsoft merely wants to go through the motions of open source, while not being open at all.
And, certainly, this is their right, since it is their source code. However, I don't see many people outside of their "MVP" community (which is who? people stuck working on windows device drivers?) really being interested in doing their busy work for them. And for this reason, because of being unwilling to fully relinquish control, they are going to find themselves unable to fully benefit from openness.
In contrast, IBM fully understands what open source is all about, and manages to deal with the concept in an intelligent manner, instead of trying to make compromises and deal with half measures.
If open source manages to become a signifigant methodology in tomorrow's IT world, IBM seems better equipped to benefit from it, whereas Microsoft is unwilling to do what it takes to prevent sliding off into irrelevence.
short article). There is one descrepcy that I'm sure I won't be the first
to notice it, either:
Now, I could be wrong; but my understanding was that the need for IPv6 comes from the scarcity of IP addresses (eg 12.34.56.78) not the scarcity of domain names (eg slashdot.org, slashdot.net, slashdot.jp).
Personally, even though my computer is from the dot-com era, I still have 384 megs of ram. And I'm sure I can pick up a 2.x gigahertz computer from retrobox.com for $200 (might even find one cheaper somewhere else).
Now all I have to worry about is that video card...
Debuggers and Virtual Machines are your friends!
But what people constantly forget is that america is not the world. Even if MS manages to lock down Linux and OSS development here in the United States, that does not necessarily stop the rest of the world from pulling ahead of US.
That is, of course, assuming that IBM doesn't decide to stand up to MS and pull a few patent tricks of their own.
Really, it looks to me like the crux of the issue is that the devlopers of PHP don't like being told what 'free' means. And really, who can blame them? Freedom is certainly worth speaking up for, but from what I got from the article it seems as though all the parties concerned are using free licenses. In fact, I think that Gutman nailed it when he said "As long as they are not inhibited from being able to use PHP I don't see a problem from the end user's perspective. Personally I don't really see a big problem."
I have to say that I don't see one either.
Windows wasn't a stand-alone operating system (meaning able to be run without a seperate purchase of MS-DOS) in 1994. Wether you bought it or got it bundled in with your system, you still needed MS-DOS for it.
Great points. Those points are exactly why I was pushing Rhapsody specifically. You can just pay a flat fee (which, in the case of students, should be covered by the university -and not passed along) per month and you can just stream the songs. You don't "own" them (unless you arrange to pay to have them burned onto cd) with either service; but at least with Rhapsody you only pay the 6 bucks or whatever and you listen to whatever you want.
First off, let me make something crystal clear up-front. I in no way condone the way that the RIAA
has tried to unethically shape our legal landscape, much less the shadier tactics they've employed.
They're scum, no question about it.
However, the other side of the equation is almost pathological. While you have many honest people who simply want to defend their Fair Use rights, you also have a loud, vocal "I want I want I want" community who simply believes that it is eeeee-vil that they should ever have to pay for goods (cds) or services.
there has to be some sort of compromise between the two, and I honestly think this is a first, halting step in the right direction. I don't think much of napster, but I believe that if a university sponsored the use of a service such as Real's Rhapsody service which allowed unlimited streaming (as opposed to a mandatory $X a song) of music, it would be a good compromise between the two posistions. People would have access to a large library of music, and the artists would be recieving compensation.
Hell, if nothing else, the sponsorship of such a program may well help to diminish any credible claims that the RIAA has to push through bizarre and draconian laws.
When I got into computers in 1994 you had (as I remember) three choices for the PC platform: OS/2, PC-DOS (if you could find it, it wasn't sold anywhere near where I lived) and MS-DOS. Technically you had Linux -but bearing in mind that at that point in time Linux was still raw and unstable, and also had a fiercely steep learning curve for someone who simply wanted to play Doom and call up a bbs or two.
So, basically, this leaves OS/2 and MS-DOS. between the two, the system requirements alone for OS/2 put it out of the "low cost" arena - forget about the sticker price (which I remember being around $200 -but I could be wrong).
So, yes, given that you could run MS-DOS on a 386sx (or even less!) with an ega display, microsoft was -indeed- the low cost solution for the early 90s.
That is certainly true, but there's also a pscyhological dynamic as well. In the past (up until 1995) to some degree Microsoft was seen in two ways - the underdog (compared to the still-seen-as-evil IBM) and the platform of geeky freeware tinkerers. You used to have entire cottage industries that catered to the nerd contingent (eg JPSoft) of people who would sit at home
and -on thier dos computers- see what they could contruct on their own and how they could push the performance of their 386sx computers.
So, not only does Microsoft suffer from signifigantly higher TCO, but they also have lost any sort of "outsider" aka geek cred that they may have had pre-1995.
I believe that this, along with the ill-will from Microsoft's more famous stumblings (eg, crushing netscape) have gone a long way to erode any kind of good will that computer users may have once had for them.
Actually, the reverse is true. By and large over the last 11 years -starting with the assimilation of disk compression and one or two symantec technologies- Microsoft has built their success on the successful deployment of third party technologies. The pattern has typically been that a signifigant technology will get a small foothold on the windows platform, and then when it starts to look promising, MS will either buy it out (in the case of many of its' office products) or clone it and make the original redundant (as was the case with netscape).
So, yes, they 'allowed' other players to grow on their platform, but I think it was more a matter of fattening them up for the kill!
Verizon Communications has stepped up its battle against cable operators with plans to debut a broadband-over-fiber service later this summer.
The service, called Fios, will be launched in Keller, Texas, and later parts of southern California and Florida, the company said Monday. At up to 30mbps (megabits per second), Fios is a quantum leap compared with Verizon's DSL (digital subscriber line) service, which runs at a maximum of 1.5mbps.
Fios can reach these speeds because it's based on fiber-optic lines that serve Internet access at a much higher clip than the traditional copper wires that support DSL.
Verizon also unveiled plans to sell cable television over the speedy Fios connection in 2005, boosting its strategy of offering customers a triple pack of services--voice calls, video and broadband--sold at discounted prices if purchased in a bundle. Cable operators have been using their own "triple play" strategy for several years to woo customers away from Verizon and the three other regional Bell operating companies
The launch of Fios opens a new front in a war between the Bells and the cable industry. Both sides are trying to lure the millions of Americans who are upgrading from slow dial-up services to speedier broadband connections. Cable leads in overall broadband market share, but the Bells have kept pace largely through aggressive DSL discounts and promotions.
Some of the Bells, such as Verizon and SBC Communications, see fiber as an answer to their problems. The Federal Communications Commission plans to allow the Bells to invest in fiber without requiring them to share their infrastructure with third parties, as is the case with copper wire networks. For many years, the Bells have protested that the line-sharing rules on copper wire networks are unfair, because cable companies are not required to share their lines.
Of the four Bells, Verizon is considered the furthest along with its fiber plans. It reiterated on Monday its goal of reaching 1 million homes and offices by the end of the year, with a third coming from expansion in Huntington Beach, Calif.; Tampa, Fla., and the Dallas-Fort Worth areas.
"Fiber from Verizon is coming down their streets and heading straight for their doors, and the excitement in these communities is building," Paul Lacouture, president of Verizon's network services group, said in a statement.
Fios will be only slightly more expensive than Verizon's DSL plans, even though it will be much faster, and Verizon will supply the modems needed to make the switch to fiber, a company representative said.
A 2mbps to 5mbps Fios connection will cost $35 a month if purchased along with Verizon's local and long-distance telephone service. The service will cost $40 if purchased alone. A connection of up to 15mbps is available for $45 a month if purchased as part of the same telephone service bundle, or $50 alone. The company did not reveal pricing for the 30mbps plans
Seriously, the linspire people are not the kinds of companies I, personally, would like to see carrying the Linux/OSS banner forward any more than I'd want to see claria be our standardbearer.
Hopefully after being forced to change their name will cause computer companies to consider bundling other "distributions" (if you deign call "lindows" a "distribution") such as mandrake or fedora wich are much more free (as in speech and as in beer), and who have not based their business model on a combination of selling free applications and having a name that sounds like 'windows'.
I would state that not only is religion handled "ineffectively" in most games, but between the wish to be politically correct and catering to the predominantly anti-christian sentiments in the gaming community most games end up being downright disdainful of christianity.
What is worse is the fact that most games put out by christians fall into one of two categories; blatant propaganda which is more concerned with pushing a message than with providing an enjoyable gaming experience, and "fluff" mostly written for children.
What the christian community urgently needs is a development company to emerge which can balance both the needs of the gospel, and the needs of the game playing experience.