if a granny calls with a new Lindows computer running Linux then she's SOL for tech support.
Here's free tech support for granny, the same as she'd get for Windows from the OEM. Clip 'n save for all your tech support needs:
Have you rebooted the computer? Go ahead and reboot it now. OK, it's back? Is the problem still there? OK, then get the CD marked "recovery CD" and put it in the CD drive. Yes, that's the cupholder. It's in there? Good. Reboot again, please. When it asks if you want a "new install" or a "re-install" choose "re-install." Yes, just move the mouse arrow over the words "re-install" and click the left button... try the other left button. It's working? Good. That should do it. I'm sorry, we don't have anyone to send over. If it still doesn't work, back up all your documents - do you have a grandchild or neighborhood computer geek who can help you with that? - then re-boot from the CD, and choose "new install." Yes, it'll take quite a while. Call us back if you still have problems and we'll walk you through rebooting and re-installing from the CD again.
I wouldn't want anyone I know to be without that kind of valuable technical assistance.
OK, I've wondered about this since the dawn of PCs, and wonder about it every time I have to install nVidia drivers: Why do this? Onceupponatime, you bought hardware and drivers were just kinda there with it. Then they started putting copyright callouts on 'em. Now they're treating 'em as if they were standalone programs - doesn't an nVidia card kind of function as a dongle for the nVidia drivers, if they're so worried about copying?
If the driver spec is floating around in the open, that's a value-add for me as a comsumer (the company can't force-obsolete the cards by yanking drivers away, easier to switch OSes) and for the company (it makes the devices marketable to more people, and they get free optimizations and ports from the OSS community). On embedded devices it's even sillier, I mean, what good does PalmOS do me if I don't have a Palm? If I were trying to reverse-engineer an nVidia card or a Palm, wouldn't I start with the hardware? And if I did make a 100% Palm-compatible, I could just sponge off Palm's binaries then... ditto nVidia...
So, why be all grabby about drivers anyway? The cavalier something-for-nothing closed-source approach to open-source support seems vaguely dishonest to me somehow - it just makes me uneasy, and affects my purchasing decisions. If they're so happy to rip off the OSS community, won't they also be happy to rip me off, I ask myself.
IMO, binary-only is a trap: All it takes is closed-source drivers for motherboard devices, the manufacturer doesn't make a new version of the drivers to support a new kernel, and you're stuck buying a new computer or using Windows. A trap. Since an open driver spec is a value-add for both the consumer and the hardware company, I am very suspicious of proprietary drivers and the motives behind them. Trap. Linux is better off without binary-only taps. I mean drivers.
you will be able to make a citizen's arrest if you observe someone recording a movie
I woke up today and was wondering to myself, "How can I work for the MPAA for free today?" And here it is.
So if I see someone recording a movie, I'm supposed to incur the massive legal risks involved involved in having them arrested as a citizen. Got it. Ri-ight. And if the charges don't stick, oh yeah, I'm the one slapped with the false arrest suits.
That's a pretty good deal, but I think I have a better one: How about I give them the finger, and they pay their own damn business expenses?
Nowhere do I recall ever reading anything on compensation
I'd argue that GPL-software authors are compensated, in the form of access to subsequent code based on the original work. So even if SCO claims software must require payment to be protected, GPL software does that.
McBride takes on two contradictory positions regarding the GPL: On the one hand, the free-ness of GPL software undermines proprietary-code business models, so in that regard he wants the court to implement a price support (the price of software can't converge to "free").
On the other, he's also arguing that the requirement of making code modifications publicly available is too high a price to pay to use GPL software, so he also wants a price ceiling (the price can't go so high that I have to give up my precious code mods).
Added together, what he really wants is his own personal Welfare program: "We could write our own software, but ours isn't as good as theirs. They'll let us use theirs, but we're not willing to pay their price. We ask the court to declare that in this instance the free market has failed by succeeding, and that the court give us the exclusive rights to all their work, so that we may profit from selling the best available product without incurring the trouble and expense of developing it ourselves, or having to compete with others - including those who wrote most of it in the first place - who might do it more efficiently than we can."
Man, what chutzpah. Most folks are ashamed to bum a cigarette from a stranger, and look at that action. This is taking the long-con to a new level - it's legal 3-card Monte and the courts are his subway platform, and every time it looks like he believes in the game himself his stock goes up; he never even has to stop shuffling the cards and let the rube pick. You have to give it up for quality. I am in awe.
I am running Apache on Linux, and I still get 1000 hits a day trying to crack MSADC with buffer overflows, and FrontPage exploit attempts. It's not like the script kiddies check the server ID or pay any attention to it even if they do.
People can use the old punch-cards most places already have. After the polls close, the cards can be submitted to the mainframe operator for overnight batch-processing. The elections officials can pick up their printed results in the morning.
Best part is, there's only a need for about five of these mainframes in the whole world!
I vote (ha! get it?) that we just stick with paper and pen until we have more chance to discuss and develop alternatives
Ha! Got it. But how do I know that sticking with paper is what you really wrote? Ba-dump bump.
I appreciate the thought the author put into the idea, but why the need to make something as simple as a multiple-choice questionnaire into a massive computer technology festival anyway? Simple optical technology to quickly count such things has existed and been used by schools since the 1970s, and is now cheap and proven.
Where I live, we use optical stuff similar to the Scan-Tron forms used on multiple-choice tests - just much bigger, and arranged in a single column to help prevent voter error. It took about 45 minutes to count up on Tuesday night a few weeks ago. A recount would just require verifying a few form-readers and another 45 minutes to run the ballots through again, and it would still be done before the Wednesday morning paper went to press. Worst case, they're still human-readable to count the old-fashioned way if it came to that.
I'd appreciate a two-copy printed receipt though, so when I put my ballot in and it goes bleep-bleep, I could confirm that it recorded what I voted and I could put one receipt in a box for confirmation if there's a dispute, and take the other with me.
This being/. I'll probably get modded down for saying it, but sometimes, microcomputers are *not* the answer. This is one of those times.
As far as I could see, ["tight-fisted"] was entirely a Register invention
Insert sigh of relief here. As much as I love to MS-bash (and oh, how I do!), I'd rather not have it go there.
I have to believe whoever wrote that line in knew what they were doing. It was a very tacky move on someone's part. Whomever's invention it may be, if not Redmond's, then I took the bait. Thanks for setting me straight, and I'll read the Register much more carefully in the future.
Glad someone else saw that, too. Earth to Redmond: In addition to being obnoxious, the "tight fisted" comment can be read as an anti-Semitic slur.
So MS has painted themselves into a corner, and now they're kernel-panicking. They can't support Linux or BSD for business reasons, the Mac is a *nix box now too so it's out of the picture for them, and they've already pre-announced that their next Windows version can potentially, via DRM and copyrighted file formats, usurp the document owners' rights to their data. Why would one of world's most security-conscious states go for a deal that locks them into the world's least security-conscious software company?
"Buy it or we'll call you names" isn't going to cut it as a response. And for some reason, I don't think you need "advanced enterprise features" to crank out form letters that read: "Dear [applicant]: Thank you for your interest in..." even if it they do read from right to left.
Gotta give MS the Darl McBride Brass Balls Award though. It takes a lot of nerve for a company that can't even suffer the possibility of a hypothetical competitor cutting into its revenues in the future, to call someone else "tight-fisted" for not reaching into his pocket for cold cash right now, just to buy the privilege of paying again and again any time MS decides to "increase shareholder value."
And then there's the delicious irony of IBM and free software being the spoilers. [theatrical-trailer-voice] Twenty years ago, he stole their operating systems, (clip) and plunged the world into reboots (clip), incompatibilities (clip), and perpetual upgrades (pause). Now, they're back - with a vengeance! (30-sec. action clip sequence to dark screen. Cue titles) Desktop Wars II: IBM returns. Now playing in Israel and the West Bank. In theaters worldwide next Summer. This feature has not yet been understood by the Software Association of America.[/theatrical-trailer-voice]
Don't pay invoices presented by companies with whom you have no business, unless/until legally compelled to do so by a court.
Do not consent to a search of your home/business, especially by a private entity, unless/until compelled to do so by court order.
Thanks, Gartner. That's the kind of hard-hitting, insightful business advice we need in this management-by-Ziff-Davis world. Maybe next month they can do a helpful piece on not paying a parking ticket until you've been issued one, and then only if it was issued by a real Dept. of Traffic officer, and not some homeless guy who wrote the citation on a napkin.
I hardly think it's fair to compare last year's version of Mandrake to a version of Windows that's what, roughly eight or nine years old now?
NT was what came on my system when I bought it in '99. So as far as I'm concerned, it was the best Bill could do as recently as that. OTOH, your point is overwhelming. I'll cede, with mention that MS is comparing its newest stuff to five-y/o RedHat versions also.
Try out your SCSI chains with Windows 2000 or XP
I did try Win2K, it was the same as NT4, except they'd changed which function key I had to hit to get those drivers installed, as an additional fsck-you present. At 5 minutes per reboot - can't walk away because you only have a few seconds - well, that got old really fast. Then I ran it, it was sluggish, and I decided to go back, just to find it had silently changed the disk formats on every drive in my computer - another fsck-you present from Bill. After that, it became more a matter of trust than of tech.
XP, I haven't tried; the EULA's a deal-breaker. It also doesn't help their trust issues one bit with me.
The Win 3.1 comparison is, in retrospect, the second-dumbest thing I've ever posted on Slashdot.
Then again, I just pulled my Win3.1 box off the shelf to check. From the (formerly) shrink-wrapped box:
Easy to install, learn, and use.
Express Install automatically loads the Windows operating system onto your PC.
So yes, it certainly was targeted at home users, to install themselves. It was easy to install, and in fact, completely automatic - just read the box! Nothing can go wrogn! It also assumed that the user was able to navigate a DOS command line, and edit text files, in other points on the box. All these things that ten years of education and computer ubiquitousness later, we now assume is too scary for them. There's a real howler, too, it's OT but I can't resist:
A fast, reliable operating system
Application Reboot, which lets you stop a problem application while keeping everything else up and running.
Websters ought to include this in their definition of 'chutzpah.'
Anyway, back on topic, what I was trying to get at by bringing up 3.1 (and failed badly) was that the entire definition of 'easy to use' is 'what Microsoft does,' and anything that isn't exactly that is considered, 'not easy to use' - no matter how lousy MS's offering may be. Kind of like how, to Mac users, a good UI is a Mac UI, anything else is a bad UI (except at least the Mac UI is NOT lousy by any stretch, quite the opposite in fact, even if I do prefer KDE/Plastik to Mac/Aqua). There's a circular logic to it, as you said:
it's not ready for the desktop until it's at least as good as the newest, most shiny version of Windows.
IOW, Windows is automatically better every time they change the UI or re-arrange the control panel applets, even though it's still running the same creaky, hacked-to-pieces NT kernel. Me, I'm done using MS as the gold standard. Shiny, in my book, doesn't even rate. I know, other people think that's the end-all and be-all, it probably isn't your POV either, but it is frustrating and defies all logic. Linux is not ready for the desktop because only Windows can be ready for the desktop, and Linux is not Windows, therefore it can't be ready for the desktop. Ri-ight.
I've been mail-ordering them from a place in NYC's music district; my dad has the catalog right now so I can't give you more at the moment, but they're primarily a sheet-music publisher that's been there since 78s were state-of-the-art. Google for 'Victrola replacement parts' and you'll see quite a lot. In a pinch, if you just want to hear what's on there, you can even use a cactus needle without damaging the record. It's good enough to hear an FDR speech, anyway.
If you're any good with your hands, a few bits of aluminum, some small screws, and a jewler's drill and tool set are sufficient to rig just about any tonearm to take just about any cartridge. It's just a matter of making an adapter. Rebalancing and getting the anti-skate set up afterward takes a little fudging, but once you get a feel for it, that part's easy.
Go back to vinyl for that warm, fuzzy, buttery sound
False comparison. Buy a record, you own it. Buy from iTunes, you rent it.
I think she or he might have been kidding, but as a collector, I say the parent is on to something - go back to vinyl if you want music you'll be able to play a couple of decades down the road. I have original Scott Joplin 78's, and let me tell ya, a few clicks and pops beats the hell out of 'lost to posterity.' You can still get Joplin, sure, but would anyone like to try to find the rest of my 78s in re-issue? Anyone think I could get an authorization code for those now, if they'd had DRM back then? Last I checked, double-clocking a turntable to play at 78 wasn't a DMCA violation either.
CDs degrade, tapes degrade, DRM is planned obsolescence by design. An old-fashioned record on a ceramic base - that's forever.
As soon as I see 'Administer Outlook/Exchange' and 'on-call 24/7', I don't care how much it pays.
Besides, I don't have 5 years experience with 2K/XP. I don't know if they do that to weed out liars or what, but it's a big red flag to me that the employer is reality-challenged.
I switched from Windows NT to Mandrake 9.1 back in May, when I saw the release announcement here on Slashdot. I set aside a weekend to installing 'drake and setting up a dual-boot. I overestimated. It took 45 minutes, dual-boot was set up automatically by the Mandrake installer. Sweet.
There were a few bumps: During install, it popped up a message that it couldn't see my sound card (Crystal 4232b, you see), and I needed to run 'sndconfig' at a command line when I was finished. So the install finished, I opened a root console, and typed 'sndconfig' and hit enter. Done. Hello, sound. Right now. Why the installer couldn't do that, I have no idea. But compared to Windows driver hassles, it was so easy... Linux's loadable module support and the Mandrake installer put plug-n-pray to shame. One day I plugged a HP scanner into the SCSI chain, it was immediately detected and configured with no input from me required. Try that in Windows.
Other thing was that I have an NVidia card, and of course the acceleration wasn't working so GL performance sucked rocks. Fixing this involved a download of the NVidia binaries, the README therein said to run 'sh install.sh,' change one line in/etc/XF86Config from 'nv' to 'nvidia' and reboot. This is NVidia's fault, but I did it, and hello GL acceleration. One third-party driver install and it was all done. [NVidia, binary only is unacceptable, open it up. Do you want to sell me hardware ever again?]
Compare what I had to do to install NT: Put in CD and boot. When the screen goes black and says "Detecting hardware," I have 2 or 3 seconds to hit F6 (not that this is written down anywhere except in the errata on the SCSI driver floppy) so I can install my SCSI drivers from floppies. Choose custom install, turn off as much Microsoft lockin-ware as possible. Finish install, reboot. Install SP6a. Reboot. Install video driver and sound driver from disk. Reboot. Install tape backup driver. Reboot. Any other drivers needed and reboot again. Now install SP6a again and reboot again. Four hours later, I can start installing apps, more reboots. I have long SCSI chains; rebooting takes over 5 minutes. I spent more time just rebooting during a typical Windows install, than it would take to install Mandrake TWICE. And in six months, when the registry starts to bloat and the system starts bogging down, as it inevitably will, I get to do it all again.
Sidebar: My WinNT installs took even longer, since I figured out that if you install from an original issue pre-SP1 CD, then take a hacksaw to the registry, reboot, and then delete certain DLLs before installing any service packs, you can eliminate Internet Exploder, Infection Express, and SpamMessaging - SP6a won't put them back if you deleted all the keys and DLLs beforehand. Just FYI. So really it took 6-8 hours just to get to where I could install apps. See why I planned a whole weekend?
If Windows is "easy to install" and "ready for the desktop," then Mandrake is "trivially easy to install" and "Owns the desktop." Any Linux distro I've seen is easier to install than DOS/Windows 3.1 ever was, and I didn't see people saying consumers couldn't use that. I'm one good multitrack audio editor/mixer app away from banishing Bill from my life forever. I expect I'll see it within another year. Good riddance, Redmond.
A few ads in the installer seems a small price to pay. This ain't Windows, you're only going to run that installer once.
keep those illegal steel tariffs! Remember you need to win votes
If he wants my vote, only way that's going to happen is a 500% tarriff on "Offshoring" jobs, to be paid directly to the laid-off employees.
No wait, alternatively, how about a pair of laws:
1) Every executive who decides to "Offshore" any American job must have his recent photo, full legal name, and home address published on posters to be placed in Union Halls, Gun Stores, and Places where Alcohol is Served, and
2) Any American whose job has been "offshored" shall be considered to be under "extreme emotional duress," "not responsible for his actions," and "Not Guilty of murder" for a period of one year.
Fine, what I meant to say then is: "IN MY OPINION, this is pointless and doesn't add any useful features to a scooter," and so on. Just put IMOs wherever you deem appropriate. It's all opinion, except the analysis of the underlying physics. That part's fact. Three points define a plane, two inline wheels with a pivot can effectively use momentum and inertia as the third point. Two parallel wheels can't. Simple as that, can't wish it away.
Perhaps I haven't been clear where I'm coming from. Off the showroom floor, I'm sure these gadgets work fine. It's just a prediction on my part, based on every motorcycle and car I've ever owned that had electronics in it, that over time they'll start going wrong. Give it a few summer/winter expansion/contracion cycles in the contacts and sensors. I don't trust it, not over time. In my experience, and especially my experience with motorized vehicles, that making things any more complex than they need to be is a bad thing in the long term. Especially when it introduces superfluous points-of-failure. Does this make my feelings any clearer?
BTW, I never denied that the Segway has unique qualities. The Segway is indeed the only consumer vehicle I've ever seen that combines all the liabilities of two wheels with none of their benefits, so I agree, IMO it is quite unique in that regard. Come to think of it, the Segway is also the only production, powered, consumer-market, land-based vehicle I know of that has to expend locomotive energy to brake. I'll certainly credit the device with being unique, and I'm glad of that.
I don't care if everyone on the planet buys them, as long as I can still get one of those little scooters with the lawn-mower engine on it, preferably a two-stroke so I can rebuild it in an hour with hand tools if I need to, no muss no fuss. Maybe I'll even get an extra-long scooter so I can give Segway owners a lift home when their Segways break down.
the nature of the free market is that you can't argue, "but product X can do almost everything product Y can and it also has many other advantages, so don't buy Y."
WTF??? What do purchasing consultants do? What's Consumer Reports magazine? The free market relies on exactly that argument being constantly in progress about every product or service available! Have you never seen an advertisement that compares so-and-so's detergent against a thinly-veiled Brand X? Or the endless Ford-vs-Chevy truck commercials talking about which one has the most towing capacity or payload and the bigger cab and so on, so why would you buy the competitor? If one takes your statement literally, the free market would not allow you to build a better mousetrap and then advertise that your mousetrap is better than the old one! How could a free market exist in that situation?
I never said it couldn't be sold or that it was my place to decide for everyone if it was useful. Nobody died and made me God. The subject line was inherited from the parent I replied to, just in case that's not clear. I should have changed it to "Pointless, why bother?"
I guess what it comes down to for me is the question of why do this? All these things do is add an order of magnitude more complexity and possible points-of-failure to existing designs such as the simple motorized scooter, without adding any useful functionality. Scooters have the the small footprint, no parking problem, low energy consumption, and portability also. Additionally, they're much lighter, less expensive to purchase, and less maintenance intensive due to far fewer parts. And if the motor dies at speed, you stay upright and still can steer. Why fight physics when you can make it work for you?
If I ever see helicopter backpacks mass marketed at consumers as 'personal mobility devices' for daily commuting and errands, I'll be sure to mention the very high probability that malfunction == death, and when it does, which statistically it will some percentage of the time, people will be falling from the sky at high velocity and landing who-knows-where on god-knows-what (or who).
Till then, last I checked you needed a whole lot of training, certifications, and maintenance documentation to fly a helicopter. Joe Average can't just walk into a showroom, plunk down five grand and fly away in one no questions asked.
[FOSS] gives me the most control available, whereas most Microsoft software gives me least
That's not always true; it depends where you're sitting.
If you're at your desk on the console of your Windows computer, Windows does indeed give you the least control of any OS out there.
If someone else is trying to hack your Windows computer remotely, they have the kind of control a UNIX sysadmin can only dream about.
Its monopoly has made it lose its incentive to serve and make its products serve
When did MS have an incentive to serve its customers with useful (to the users) products? I've been here since CPM/86 and all I remember is a maniacal insistence that no one else should be making software - quality, user needs, and all else be damned.
Near as I can tell, they're claiming it's the defendants' job to prove themselves innocent, rather than the plaintiff's job to prove the defendant guilty, and that any code that can't be proven by to belong to its author, by its author, automatically belongs to SCO. Something like that.
Long term, I think what they're really going for is:
1) A ruling that copyright law only applies to work sold for profit in cash,
2) Anything not sold for profit in cash is automatically Public Domain, and
3) Anything in the Public Domain automatically becomes the sole property of the first corporation to claim it as theirs.
Sadly, I can almost see them winning in the current neo-fascist (small f) climate. Corporate profit uber alles.
Yeah, I see where you're coming from, I'm old enough to remember high-dives at public swimming pools, trampoline parks, skate parks, and all that.
OTOH, there's one big difference between this device (or a Segway for that matter) and a similarly dangerous vehicle such as a motorcycle: unlike the motorcycle, they're defective by design.
Motorcycles have a secondary method of stabilization when moving, as a side effect of the forks pivoting against the frame, allowing the vehicle's mass to move perpendicular to the direction of motion. This allows one to keep the bike upright even if one loses power.
These unicycle things, and Segways (all the costs of two wheels, none of the benefits!) do not have any secondary method of stabilization should the power or on-board gyro system fail, and this too is by design. Given that a certain number of failures will inevitably occur (ya really gotta hope these gadgets age gracefully), and the result of failure is inevitably catastrophic, I would call the design defective. Anyone who's ever had to replace a malfunctioning fuel-injection sensor in their car should be rightly terrified.
This kind of tech might be acceptable in military aircraft, where the probability of in-flight computer failure killing the pilot is small compared to the maneuvering advantage it gives the pilot in combat, which is a life-threatening situation to begin with. In consumer vehicles, however, it's an unacceptable risk if better designs exist.
And for what? 'Cause it looks cool? There's no advantage in a unicycle design. It's a liability. Why convert to alternative fuel, just to waste it fighting gravity when you could use a known stable design and not have to? At least they had the good sense to label it a concept vehicle, but I certainly hope that intentionally unstable vehicle designs with no fault-tolerance are NOT the norm in 2050. This is one of those instances, I think, where just because you can doesn't mean you should.
Slashdot Mirror
if a granny calls with a new Lindows computer running Linux then she's SOL for tech support.
Here's free tech support for granny, the same as she'd get for Windows from the OEM. Clip 'n save for all your tech support needs:
Have you rebooted the computer? Go ahead and reboot it now. OK, it's back? Is the problem still there? OK, then get the CD marked "recovery CD" and put it in the CD drive. Yes, that's the cupholder. It's in there? Good. Reboot again, please. When it asks if you want a "new install" or a "re-install" choose "re-install." Yes, just move the mouse arrow over the words "re-install" and click the left button... try the other left button. It's working? Good. That should do it. I'm sorry, we don't have anyone to send over. If it still doesn't work, back up all your documents - do you have a grandchild or neighborhood computer geek who can help you with that? - then re-boot from the CD, and choose "new install." Yes, it'll take quite a while. Call us back if you still have problems and we'll walk you through rebooting and re-installing from the CD again.
I wouldn't want anyone I know to be without that kind of valuable technical assistance.
OK, I've wondered about this since the dawn of PCs, and wonder about it every time I have to install nVidia drivers: Why do this? Onceupponatime, you bought hardware and drivers were just kinda there with it. Then they started putting copyright callouts on 'em. Now they're treating 'em as if they were standalone programs - doesn't an nVidia card kind of function as a dongle for the nVidia drivers, if they're so worried about copying?
If the driver spec is floating around in the open, that's a value-add for me as a comsumer (the company can't force-obsolete the cards by yanking drivers away, easier to switch OSes) and for the company (it makes the devices marketable to more people, and they get free optimizations and ports from the OSS community). On embedded devices it's even sillier, I mean, what good does PalmOS do me if I don't have a Palm? If I were trying to reverse-engineer an nVidia card or a Palm, wouldn't I start with the hardware? And if I did make a 100% Palm-compatible, I could just sponge off Palm's binaries then... ditto nVidia...
So, why be all grabby about drivers anyway? The cavalier something-for-nothing closed-source approach to open-source support seems vaguely dishonest to me somehow - it just makes me uneasy, and affects my purchasing decisions. If they're so happy to rip off the OSS community, won't they also be happy to rip me off, I ask myself.
IMO, binary-only is a trap: All it takes is closed-source drivers for motherboard devices, the manufacturer doesn't make a new version of the drivers to support a new kernel, and you're stuck buying a new computer or using Windows. A trap. Since an open driver spec is a value-add for both the consumer and the hardware company, I am very suspicious of proprietary drivers and the motives behind them. Trap. Linux is better off without binary-only taps. I mean drivers.
you will be able to make a citizen's arrest if you observe someone recording a movie
I woke up today and was wondering to myself, "How can I work for the MPAA for free today?" And here it is.
So if I see someone recording a movie, I'm supposed to incur the massive legal risks involved involved in having them arrested as a citizen. Got it. Ri-ight. And if the charges don't stick, oh yeah, I'm the one slapped with the false arrest suits.
That's a pretty good deal, but I think I have a better one: How about I give them the finger, and they pay their own damn business expenses?
Nowhere do I recall ever reading anything on compensation
I'd argue that GPL-software authors are compensated, in the form of access to subsequent code based on the original work. So even if SCO claims software must require payment to be protected, GPL software does that.
McBride takes on two contradictory positions regarding the GPL: On the one hand, the free-ness of GPL software undermines proprietary-code business models, so in that regard he wants the court to implement a price support (the price of software can't converge to "free").
On the other, he's also arguing that the requirement of making code modifications publicly available is too high a price to pay to use GPL software, so he also wants a price ceiling (the price can't go so high that I have to give up my precious code mods).
Added together, what he really wants is his own personal Welfare program: "We could write our own software, but ours isn't as good as theirs. They'll let us use theirs, but we're not willing to pay their price. We ask the court to declare that in this instance the free market has failed by succeeding, and that the court give us the exclusive rights to all their work, so that we may profit from selling the best available product without incurring the trouble and expense of developing it ourselves, or having to compete with others - including those who wrote most of it in the first place - who might do it more efficiently than we can."
Man, what chutzpah. Most folks are ashamed to bum a cigarette from a stranger, and look at that action. This is taking the long-con to a new level - it's legal 3-card Monte and the courts are his subway platform, and every time it looks like he believes in the game himself his stock goes up; he never even has to stop shuffling the cards and let the rube pick. You have to give it up for quality. I am in awe.
a product .... to confuse script kiddies
I am running Apache on Linux, and I still get 1000 hits a day trying to crack MSADC with buffer overflows, and FrontPage exploit attempts. It's not like the script kiddies check the server ID or pay any attention to it even if they do.
That's it. Macrocomputers.
People can use the old punch-cards most places already have. After the polls close, the cards can be submitted to the mainframe operator for overnight batch-processing. The elections officials can pick up their printed results in the morning.
Best part is, there's only a need for about five of these mainframes in the whole world!
I vote (ha! get it?) that we just stick with paper and pen until we have more chance to discuss and develop alternatives
Ha! Got it. But how do I know that sticking with paper is what you really wrote? Ba-dump bump.
I appreciate the thought the author put into the idea, but why the need to make something as simple as a multiple-choice questionnaire into a massive computer technology festival anyway? Simple optical technology to quickly count such things has existed and been used by schools since the 1970s, and is now cheap and proven.
Where I live, we use optical stuff similar to the Scan-Tron forms used on multiple-choice tests - just much bigger, and arranged in a single column to help prevent voter error. It took about 45 minutes to count up on Tuesday night a few weeks ago. A recount would just require verifying a few form-readers and another 45 minutes to run the ballots through again, and it would still be done before the Wednesday morning paper went to press. Worst case, they're still human-readable to count the old-fashioned way if it came to that.
I'd appreciate a two-copy printed receipt though, so when I put my ballot in and it goes bleep-bleep, I could confirm that it recorded what I voted and I could put one receipt in a box for confirmation if there's a dispute, and take the other with me.
This being /. I'll probably get modded down for saying it, but sometimes, microcomputers are *not* the answer. This is one of those times.
As far as I could see, ["tight-fisted"] was entirely a Register invention
Insert sigh of relief here. As much as I love to MS-bash (and oh, how I do!), I'd rather not have it go there.
I have to believe whoever wrote that line in knew what they were doing. It was a very tacky move on someone's part. Whomever's invention it may be, if not Redmond's, then I took the bait. Thanks for setting me straight, and I'll read the Register much more carefully in the future.
Microsoft's attitude speaks volumes here as well
Glad someone else saw that, too. Earth to Redmond: In addition to being obnoxious, the "tight fisted" comment can be read as an anti-Semitic slur.
So MS has painted themselves into a corner, and now they're kernel-panicking. They can't support Linux or BSD for business reasons, the Mac is a *nix box now too so it's out of the picture for them, and they've already pre-announced that their next Windows version can potentially, via DRM and copyrighted file formats, usurp the document owners' rights to their data. Why would one of world's most security-conscious states go for a deal that locks them into the world's least security-conscious software company?
"Buy it or we'll call you names" isn't going to cut it as a response. And for some reason, I don't think you need "advanced enterprise features" to crank out form letters that read: "Dear [applicant]: Thank you for your interest in..." even if it they do read from right to left.
Gotta give MS the Darl McBride Brass Balls Award though. It takes a lot of nerve for a company that can't even suffer the possibility of a hypothetical competitor cutting into its revenues in the future, to call someone else "tight-fisted" for not reaching into his pocket for cold cash right now, just to buy the privilege of paying again and again any time MS decides to "increase shareholder value."
And then there's the delicious irony of IBM and free software being the spoilers. [theatrical-trailer-voice] Twenty years ago, he stole their operating systems, (clip) and plunged the world into reboots (clip), incompatibilities (clip), and perpetual upgrades (pause). Now, they're back - with a vengeance! (30-sec. action clip sequence to dark screen. Cue titles) Desktop Wars II: IBM returns. Now playing in Israel and the West Bank. In theaters worldwide next Summer. This feature has not yet been understood by the Software Association of America.[/theatrical-trailer-voice]
In summary:
Thanks, Gartner. That's the kind of hard-hitting, insightful business advice we need in this management-by-Ziff-Davis world. Maybe next month they can do a helpful piece on not paying a parking ticket until you've been issued one, and then only if it was issued by a real Dept. of Traffic officer, and not some homeless guy who wrote the citation on a napkin.
your comment might invoke a reply from pro-gay people. thus, your comment might "bait" some "flames". flaimbait seems like the perfect label.
*rim shot* Well done!
So is "flaimbait" when you bait pro-gay comments via AOL Instant Messenger?
The parent used "gay" as a synonym for "broken." THAT's flamebait. I riff a lighthearted joke to call it out, and I get modded flamebait?
Wait a sec... Apple hardware has impeccable aesthetics, the logo has a rainbo... oh, crap. If I read it that way I'd have modded myself a troll.
I hardly think it's fair to compare last year's version of Mandrake to a version of Windows that's what, roughly eight or nine years old now?
NT was what came on my system when I bought it in '99. So as far as I'm concerned, it was the best Bill could do as recently as that. OTOH, your point is overwhelming. I'll cede, with mention that MS is comparing its newest stuff to five-y/o RedHat versions also.
Try out your SCSI chains with Windows 2000 or XP
I did try Win2K, it was the same as NT4, except they'd changed which function key I had to hit to get those drivers installed, as an additional fsck-you present. At 5 minutes per reboot - can't walk away because you only have a few seconds - well, that got old really fast. Then I ran it, it was sluggish, and I decided to go back, just to find it had silently changed the disk formats on every drive in my computer - another fsck-you present from Bill. After that, it became more a matter of trust than of tech.
XP, I haven't tried; the EULA's a deal-breaker. It also doesn't help their trust issues one bit with me.
The Win 3.1 comparison is, in retrospect, the second-dumbest thing I've ever posted on Slashdot.
Then again, I just pulled my Win3.1 box off the shelf to check. From the (formerly) shrink-wrapped box:
Easy to install, learn, and use.
Express Install automatically loads the Windows operating system onto your PC.
So yes, it certainly was targeted at home users, to install themselves. It was easy to install, and in fact, completely automatic - just read the box! Nothing can go wrogn! It also assumed that the user was able to navigate a DOS command line, and edit text files, in other points on the box. All these things that ten years of education and computer ubiquitousness later, we now assume is too scary for them. There's a real howler, too, it's OT but I can't resist:
A fast, reliable operating system
Application Reboot, which lets you stop a problem application while keeping everything else up and running.
Websters ought to include this in their definition of 'chutzpah.'
Anyway, back on topic, what I was trying to get at by bringing up 3.1 (and failed badly) was that the entire definition of 'easy to use' is 'what Microsoft does,' and anything that isn't exactly that is considered, 'not easy to use' - no matter how lousy MS's offering may be. Kind of like how, to Mac users, a good UI is a Mac UI, anything else is a bad UI (except at least the Mac UI is NOT lousy by any stretch, quite the opposite in fact, even if I do prefer KDE/Plastik to Mac/Aqua). There's a circular logic to it, as you said:
it's not ready for the desktop until it's at least as good as the newest, most shiny version of Windows.
IOW, Windows is automatically better every time they change the UI or re-arrange the control panel applets, even though it's still running the same creaky, hacked-to-pieces NT kernel. Me, I'm done using MS as the gold standard. Shiny, in my book, doesn't even rate. I know, other people think that's the end-all and be-all, it probably isn't your POV either, but it is frustrating and defies all logic. Linux is not ready for the desktop because only Windows can be ready for the desktop, and Linux is not Windows, therefore it can't be ready for the desktop. Ri-ight.
I've been mail-ordering them from a place in NYC's music district; my dad has the catalog right now so I can't give you more at the moment, but they're primarily a sheet-music publisher that's been there since 78s were state-of-the-art. Google for 'Victrola replacement parts' and you'll see quite a lot. In a pinch, if you just want to hear what's on there, you can even use a cactus needle without damaging the record. It's good enough to hear an FDR speech, anyway.
If you're any good with your hands, a few bits of aluminum, some small screws, and a jewler's drill and tool set are sufficient to rig just about any tonearm to take just about any cartridge. It's just a matter of making an adapter. Rebalancing and getting the anti-skate set up afterward takes a little fudging, but once you get a feel for it, that part's easy.
Windows gays up firewire drives
Yes, but after it does so, the firewire drive is tastefully decorated and sports a colorful rainbow sticker.
Go back to vinyl for that warm, fuzzy, buttery sound
False comparison. Buy a record, you own it. Buy from iTunes, you rent it.
I think she or he might have been kidding, but as a collector, I say the parent is on to something - go back to vinyl if you want music you'll be able to play a couple of decades down the road. I have original Scott Joplin 78's, and let me tell ya, a few clicks and pops beats the hell out of 'lost to posterity.' You can still get Joplin, sure, but would anyone like to try to find the rest of my 78s in re-issue? Anyone think I could get an authorization code for those now, if they'd had DRM back then? Last I checked, double-clocking a turntable to play at 78 wasn't a DMCA violation either.
CDs degrade, tapes degrade, DRM is planned obsolescence by design. An old-fashioned record on a ceramic base - that's forever.
As soon as I see 'Administer Outlook/Exchange' and 'on-call 24/7', I don't care how much it pays.
Besides, I don't have 5 years experience with 2K/XP. I don't know if they do that to weed out liars or what, but it's a big red flag to me that the employer is reality-challenged.
Hear, hear!
I switched from Windows NT to Mandrake 9.1 back in May, when I saw the release announcement here on Slashdot. I set aside a weekend to installing 'drake and setting up a dual-boot. I overestimated. It took 45 minutes, dual-boot was set up automatically by the Mandrake installer. Sweet.
There were a few bumps: During install, it popped up a message that it couldn't see my sound card (Crystal 4232b, you see), and I needed to run 'sndconfig' at a command line when I was finished. So the install finished, I opened a root console, and typed 'sndconfig' and hit enter. Done. Hello, sound. Right now. Why the installer couldn't do that, I have no idea. But compared to Windows driver hassles, it was so easy... Linux's loadable module support and the Mandrake installer put plug-n-pray to shame. One day I plugged a HP scanner into the SCSI chain, it was immediately detected and configured with no input from me required. Try that in Windows.
Other thing was that I have an NVidia card, and of course the acceleration wasn't working so GL performance sucked rocks. Fixing this involved a download of the NVidia binaries, the README therein said to run 'sh install.sh,' change one line in /etc/XF86Config from 'nv' to 'nvidia' and reboot. This is NVidia's fault, but I did it, and hello GL acceleration. One third-party driver install and it was all done. [NVidia, binary only is unacceptable, open it up. Do you want to sell me hardware ever again?]
Compare what I had to do to install NT: Put in CD and boot. When the screen goes black and says "Detecting hardware," I have 2 or 3 seconds to hit F6 (not that this is written down anywhere except in the errata on the SCSI driver floppy) so I can install my SCSI drivers from floppies. Choose custom install, turn off as much Microsoft lockin-ware as possible. Finish install, reboot. Install SP6a. Reboot. Install video driver and sound driver from disk. Reboot. Install tape backup driver. Reboot. Any other drivers needed and reboot again. Now install SP6a again and reboot again. Four hours later, I can start installing apps, more reboots. I have long SCSI chains; rebooting takes over 5 minutes. I spent more time just rebooting during a typical Windows install, than it would take to install Mandrake TWICE. And in six months, when the registry starts to bloat and the system starts bogging down, as it inevitably will, I get to do it all again.
Sidebar: My WinNT installs took even longer, since I figured out that if you install from an original issue pre-SP1 CD, then take a hacksaw to the registry, reboot, and then delete certain DLLs before installing any service packs, you can eliminate Internet Exploder, Infection Express, and SpamMessaging - SP6a won't put them back if you deleted all the keys and DLLs beforehand. Just FYI. So really it took 6-8 hours just to get to where I could install apps. See why I planned a whole weekend?
If Windows is "easy to install" and "ready for the desktop," then Mandrake is "trivially easy to install" and "Owns the desktop." Any Linux distro I've seen is easier to install than DOS/Windows 3.1 ever was, and I didn't see people saying consumers couldn't use that. I'm one good multitrack audio editor/mixer app away from banishing Bill from my life forever. I expect I'll see it within another year. Good riddance, Redmond.
A few ads in the installer seems a small price to pay. This ain't Windows, you're only going to run that installer once.
keep those illegal steel tariffs! Remember you need to win votes
If he wants my vote, only way that's going to happen is a 500% tarriff on "Offshoring" jobs, to be paid directly to the laid-off employees.
No wait, alternatively, how about a pair of laws:
1) Every executive who decides to "Offshore" any American job must have his recent photo, full legal name, and home address published on posters to be placed in Union Halls, Gun Stores, and Places where Alcohol is Served, and
2) Any American whose job has been "offshored" shall be considered to be under "extreme emotional duress," "not responsible for his actions," and "Not Guilty of murder" for a period of one year.
Now THAT, I would vote for.
Fine, what I meant to say then is: "IN MY OPINION, this is pointless and doesn't add any useful features to a scooter," and so on. Just put IMOs wherever you deem appropriate. It's all opinion, except the analysis of the underlying physics. That part's fact. Three points define a plane, two inline wheels with a pivot can effectively use momentum and inertia as the third point. Two parallel wheels can't. Simple as that, can't wish it away.
Perhaps I haven't been clear where I'm coming from. Off the showroom floor, I'm sure these gadgets work fine. It's just a prediction on my part, based on every motorcycle and car I've ever owned that had electronics in it, that over time they'll start going wrong. Give it a few summer/winter expansion/contracion cycles in the contacts and sensors. I don't trust it, not over time. In my experience, and especially my experience with motorized vehicles, that making things any more complex than they need to be is a bad thing in the long term. Especially when it introduces superfluous points-of-failure. Does this make my feelings any clearer?
BTW, I never denied that the Segway has unique qualities. The Segway is indeed the only consumer vehicle I've ever seen that combines all the liabilities of two wheels with none of their benefits, so I agree, IMO it is quite unique in that regard. Come to think of it, the Segway is also the only production, powered, consumer-market, land-based vehicle I know of that has to expend locomotive energy to brake. I'll certainly credit the device with being unique, and I'm glad of that.
I don't care if everyone on the planet buys them, as long as I can still get one of those little scooters with the lawn-mower engine on it, preferably a two-stroke so I can rebuild it in an hour with hand tools if I need to, no muss no fuss. Maybe I'll even get an extra-long scooter so I can give Segway owners a lift home when their Segways break down.
the nature of the free market is that you can't argue, "but product X can do almost everything product Y can and it also has many other advantages, so don't buy Y."
WTF??? What do purchasing consultants do? What's Consumer Reports magazine? The free market relies on exactly that argument being constantly in progress about every product or service available! Have you never seen an advertisement that compares so-and-so's detergent against a thinly-veiled Brand X? Or the endless Ford-vs-Chevy truck commercials talking about which one has the most towing capacity or payload and the bigger cab and so on, so why would you buy the competitor? If one takes your statement literally, the free market would not allow you to build a better mousetrap and then advertise that your mousetrap is better than the old one! How could a free market exist in that situation?
I never said it couldn't be sold or that it was my place to decide for everyone if it was useful. Nobody died and made me God. The subject line was inherited from the parent I replied to, just in case that's not clear. I should have changed it to "Pointless, why bother?"
I guess what it comes down to for me is the question of why do this? All these things do is add an order of magnitude more complexity and possible points-of-failure to existing designs such as the simple motorized scooter, without adding any useful functionality. Scooters have the the small footprint, no parking problem, low energy consumption, and portability also. Additionally, they're much lighter, less expensive to purchase, and less maintenance intensive due to far fewer parts. And if the motor dies at speed, you stay upright and still can steer. Why fight physics when you can make it work for you?
Helicopters
If I ever see helicopter backpacks mass marketed at consumers as 'personal mobility devices' for daily commuting and errands, I'll be sure to mention the very high probability that malfunction == death, and when it does, which statistically it will some percentage of the time, people will be falling from the sky at high velocity and landing who-knows-where on god-knows-what (or who).
Till then, last I checked you needed a whole lot of training, certifications, and maintenance documentation to fly a helicopter. Joe Average can't just walk into a showroom, plunk down five grand and fly away in one no questions asked.
[FOSS] gives me the most control available, whereas most Microsoft software gives me least
That's not always true; it depends where you're sitting.
If you're at your desk on the console of your Windows computer, Windows does indeed give you the least control of any OS out there.
If someone else is trying to hack your Windows computer remotely, they have the kind of control a UNIX sysadmin can only dream about.
Its monopoly has made it lose its incentive to serve and make its products serve
When did MS have an incentive to serve its customers with useful (to the users) products? I've been here since CPM/86 and all I remember is a maniacal insistence that no one else should be making software - quality, user needs, and all else be damned.
while we are at it, what are they claiming?
Near as I can tell, they're claiming it's the defendants' job to prove themselves innocent, rather than the plaintiff's job to prove the defendant guilty, and that any code that can't be proven by to belong to its author, by its author, automatically belongs to SCO. Something like that.
Long term, I think what they're really going for is:
1) A ruling that copyright law only applies to work sold for profit in cash,
2) Anything not sold for profit in cash is automatically Public Domain, and
3) Anything in the Public Domain automatically becomes the sole property of the first corporation to claim it as theirs.
Sadly, I can almost see them winning in the current neo-fascist (small f) climate. Corporate profit uber alles.
Whatever happened to assumption of risk?
Yeah, I see where you're coming from, I'm old enough to remember high-dives at public swimming pools, trampoline parks, skate parks, and all that.
OTOH, there's one big difference between this device (or a Segway for that matter) and a similarly dangerous vehicle such as a motorcycle: unlike the motorcycle, they're defective by design.
Motorcycles have a secondary method of stabilization when moving, as a side effect of the forks pivoting against the frame, allowing the vehicle's mass to move perpendicular to the direction of motion. This allows one to keep the bike upright even if one loses power.
These unicycle things, and Segways (all the costs of two wheels, none of the benefits!) do not have any secondary method of stabilization should the power or on-board gyro system fail, and this too is by design. Given that a certain number of failures will inevitably occur (ya really gotta hope these gadgets age gracefully), and the result of failure is inevitably catastrophic, I would call the design defective. Anyone who's ever had to replace a malfunctioning fuel-injection sensor in their car should be rightly terrified.
This kind of tech might be acceptable in military aircraft, where the probability of in-flight computer failure killing the pilot is small compared to the maneuvering advantage it gives the pilot in combat, which is a life-threatening situation to begin with. In consumer vehicles, however, it's an unacceptable risk if better designs exist.
And for what? 'Cause it looks cool? There's no advantage in a unicycle design. It's a liability. Why convert to alternative fuel, just to waste it fighting gravity when you could use a known stable design and not have to? At least they had the good sense to label it a concept vehicle, but I certainly hope that intentionally unstable vehicle designs with no fault-tolerance are NOT the norm in 2050. This is one of those instances, I think, where just because you can doesn't mean you should.