Yes, they offer exactly one workstaion with Redhat Linux (monitor not included). It is "classified" as a business machine, which in itself isn't too big a deal except that you can't buy some stuff from Dell you might want for a home machine (for example, a better graphics card). Still, that makes this new offer (the FreeDOS machine) even more bizarre.
The news is that the machines are now available "at the consumer level". However, it will flop. The typical home user is not going to buy a computer that they can't take home, set up, turn on, and have it work.
Waste of time and source of FUD for Microsoft
on
Dell Offering "Open" PC
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
This is the kind of thing that leads to misleading statistics...News headline: "Dell offers PCs without Windows but demand remains close to zero." Microsoft spokesman "It's obvious to us that most PC buyers want Windows running on their machines yadda yadda yadda..."
Who would buy this machine? A inexperienced home user? They wouldn't be interested in a computer that wouldn't even start up out of the box. Business? Business would buy the equivalent Windows machine for $70 less and replace Windows with Linux (assuming that was the intended use for the FreeDOS machine). Geeks? They'd recycle an old machine or build their own.
If Dell was serious about providing another OS on their hardware, they'd partner with a Linux company (Red Hat, Novell, Mandriva, Linspire, etc.) and let the Linux company provide the software support.
"This is a test of the Emergency Dating System. The geeks of your area in voluntary cooperation with the Federal, State and local authorities have developed this system to give you hope in the unlikely event of an actual dating opportunity. If this had been an actual dating situation, the search results you just experienced would have been followed by the epiphany that no person of the female persuasion would even consider using such a system for dating in the first place, so you're wasting your time. This concludes this test of the Emergency Dating System."
According to several people briefed on the matter, the labels separately were seeking royalty payments of $6 to $8 per user, per month. People close to the labels say that is in line with what existing subscription-music services pay, the Journal reported.
Seems rather high, considering you still have to pay $1 or more for each song you download, and the song is likely to be encumbered with DRM, and the quality is usually less than a rip from a CD. One would get the feeling the music labels don't really want to sell songs via the Internet...
If software publishers were liable for their bugs to the extent that they had to pay every user's entire loss caused by a bug then no one could ever afford to publish software. But as long as publishers risk no liability whatsoever, we will always have buggy software.
The problem is the all or nothing approach. What we need is a liability definition that is higher than nothing for paid software (I would explicitly exempt software offered for free, since the publisher is not monetarily compensated). For example, if the maximum risk was $100 per licensed copy with a minimum damage required of $10,000 (purely arbitrary numbers, no need to explain why these numbers are too small or too large) then a publisher could calculate the risk and appropriately assign the right amount of resources to eliminate bugs. Just an idea.
Interesting but the question would be can you use the Best Buy phone with your cell phone provider of choice, and if so do you still have to sign a contract and pay a penalty for early cancellation (contracts and early cancellation is promoted by the cell phone company as devices for them to recover the cost of a subsidized phone -- something that would not apply in this situation)...
You are a victim of the arbitrary methods used to accept or reject submissions on Slashdot. Acceptance of a submission is subjective to the editor who reviews your story. Unfortuately, the people who run Slashdot feel this is perfectly acceptable and don't plan to change it any time soon.
Personally, I have specifically asked a cell phone company (I'm not naming names) if I could use an old phone that I had (bought from them about two years earlier) with a new service plan without a contract. I had cancelled my previous plan months earlier with them because of certain circumstances. Even though they still sold the exact same phone with some of their plans, I was told that I had to buy a new phone and sign up under a contract. They would not let me use my existing phone. It was pretty obvious that they're much more interested in getting you locked into a contract vs. worrying about recouping the phone subsidy.
The subsidized cell phone is a win/win for the cell phone service provider and the manufacturer. The provider locks you into a contract (thereby avoiding competition based on quality of service) and the manufacturer need not worry about reducing costs. All subsidies eliminate competition in some fashion. It does not benefit you the consumer.
Problem is, if you out and out buy your phone they still lock it. Which would be a good point to bring up in the suit because it would mean the lock doesn't have anything to do with the subsidy (it has everything to do with keeping you locked to the cell phone company).
I hope they do so as well, but it probably won't be the end of it. The cell phone company simply needs to change the contract to say that if you unlock your phone then you have to pay xxx dollars to the cell phone company. Should be legal, and if they make it prominent they might not even piss off their customers, who knows. Personally, if the company gives me the choice, I would rather pay for the phone up front and not sign a contract. Contracts mean the companies can concentrate on new sales and not existing customer support or quality of service (most of us change cell companies because we are dissatisfied with our existing company, not because the new company is better). As long as we have contracts, we lose in service and quality.
Do I care what their front page says? The front page is dynamic and changes with every headline that comes along. The article page, and the permanent link to the article, has absolutely no mention that this is an opinion. If you go to the article, it looks like a news release. At best you might imply it is an opinion because the article's page has the heading "MORE VIEWS HEADLINES" on the right side of the page, but it surely isn't obvious. The RIGHT way to do it would be to replace the article's headline "Massachusetts Should Close Down OpenDocument" with "OPINION: Massachusetts Should Close Down OpenDocument". Otherwise, Fox News is promoting this opinion piece as news.
This is not a criticism...how can you become a "powerful Slashdot User"? I would think that if you are a cohort of the people that manage Slashdot, you are as power as you can get (for Slashdot). All the rest of us are just voices in the matrix. No more or less powerful than any other Slashdot participant. While I appreciate some of the Slashdot members for their writing style, tone of voice, and sometimes even opinions and witticisms, I wouldn't go so far as to consider any of them more powerful than another. Slashdot is just an informal discussion on a variety of topics shared by a large number of people who, in truth, are usually no more qualified to discuss any given topic that the average person on the street. Anyone who takes postings on Slashdot seriously is already half a bubble off (IMHO:). I can't imagine being concerned about any particular participant.
An excellent and well written response. I appreciate good conversation.
Concerning this point: One of them said something to the effect that "The richer a society gets the less likely any member would have the skills to even survive on their own." It's quite true. I was just thinking about this the other day in connection with the New Orleans situation. If the same thing happened where I live, we would be in a world of hurt. Most of us, including myself, couldn't even grow our own food from scratch. And I'm talking about from scratch. Not buying seeds and planting but going out and finding a non-man made source of plant seeds and starting from there. Not that it's our fault. As you pointed out, that's where we are today. As to our technology, it seems the risk of a real collapse of our civilization grows each day as we build more and more fragile technology. For example, the need for a multibillion dollor fab facility using ultra clean rooms and ultraviolet lithography. Imagine if it became impossible to create an ultra clean room -- maybe because of the release of a world wide nano-agent of some kind -- we'd lose the ability to create all of these vaulted billion transistor CPU's. The truth is, some of the most prevalent technologies used in our society are more fragile that we realize. Oh well, at worst we can always go back to a hunter/gatherer society I guess.
SCO? SCO hasn't won yet. And assuming they scrape together the money to finish the fight, it doesn't look like they will win. In this case, the only injustice we will have if SCO runs out of money will be that we don't settle the UNIX copyright ownership once and for all.
Saying the silicon transistor is based on quantum principles is like saying energy production via wind power is based on quantum principles. They both depend on quantum components (electrons or molecules of air), true. But neither are controlled based on those principles. Today, we slam billions of electrons through a transistor every second because our technology can't do otherwise. Real control would use one electron to the the same work.
For the same reason, lasers would be considered a photon device in the same way as a flashlight would be. Even lasers used for communications vary voltage fields (i.e. the photon itself carries no information). Instead of this, I'm envisioning something along the lines of an electronic device that has photons flowing along channels instead of electrons, or maybe something else not even imagined right now.
Lastly, electron (not electronic) spin and magnetic spin are generally used interchangeably. However, the important part is that we are just now learning to manipulate the spin as opposed to the charge, which is really cool. As an aside, spin is really a bad term because it is probable that nothing is really moving, it's the charge that is rotating. Not that we really know what that means yet.
You assume I'm a member of the younger generation. It's likely I'm old enough to be your grandfather. I guess we could argue about where the line is for "quantum principles" but it would probably be pointless, as I suspect neither you nor I would be qualified to determine it's location. Regardless, I would say we have crossed that line only after we start controlling quantum phenomena (such as the electron tunneling effect) instead of fighting to eliminate it in our electronic designs.
As to whether our current transistor technology would be considered technology based on quantum principles, I think I can positively say that the electron charge we so deftly manipulate is accomplished without resorting to or relying on what would be considered quantum principles. Instead, our whole approach to controlling this fundamental pillar of our modern society is crudely based on bulk, macro methods, with little or no control at the quantum level. In short, the technology we employ today is the antithesis of control by quantum principles. In case you were wondering....
Abe: I used to be with it, but then they changed what "it" was. Now, what I'm with isn't it, and what's "it" seems weird and scary to me. (Episode: 3F21 Homerpalooza)
It's only going to get worse as the pace of change continues to accelerate. In ten years a few engineers will be designing new classes of electronics based on quantum principles. Or totally new types of devices based on photons or magnetic spin vs. electron charge. Ten years later, that will be passé and maybe we'll be doing something with neutrinos. Who knows how things will work 30 years from now. It will all be magic by then.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, they offer exactly one workstaion with Redhat Linux (monitor not included). It is "classified" as a business machine, which in itself isn't too big a deal except that you can't buy some stuff from Dell you might want for a home machine (for example, a better graphics card). Still, that makes this new offer (the FreeDOS machine) even more bizarre.
The news is that the machines are now available "at the consumer level". However, it will flop. The typical home user is not going to buy a computer that they can't take home, set up, turn on, and have it work.
This is the kind of thing that leads to misleading statistics...News headline: "Dell offers PCs without Windows but demand remains close to zero." Microsoft spokesman "It's obvious to us that most PC buyers want Windows running on their machines yadda yadda yadda..."
Who would buy this machine? A inexperienced home user? They wouldn't be interested in a computer that wouldn't even start up out of the box. Business? Business would buy the equivalent Windows machine for $70 less and replace Windows with Linux (assuming that was the intended use for the FreeDOS machine). Geeks? They'd recycle an old machine or build their own.
If Dell was serious about providing another OS on their hardware, they'd partner with a Linux company (Red Hat, Novell, Mandriva, Linspire, etc.) and let the Linux company provide the software support.
"This is a test of the Emergency Dating System. The geeks of your area in voluntary cooperation with the Federal, State and local authorities have developed this system to give you hope in the unlikely event of an actual dating opportunity. If this had been an actual dating situation, the search results you just experienced would have been followed by the epiphany that no person of the female persuasion would even consider using such a system for dating in the first place, so you're wasting your time. This concludes this test of the Emergency Dating System."
According to several people briefed on the matter, the labels separately were seeking royalty payments of $6 to $8 per user, per month. People close to the labels say that is in line with what existing subscription-music services pay, the Journal reported.
Seems rather high, considering you still have to pay $1 or more for each song you download, and the song is likely to be encumbered with DRM, and the quality is usually less than a rip from a CD. One would get the feeling the music labels don't really want to sell songs via the Internet...
Key word search "Heap-o-Protect"...
If software publishers were liable for their bugs to the extent that they had to pay every user's entire loss caused by a bug then no one could ever afford to publish software. But as long as publishers risk no liability whatsoever, we will always have buggy software.
The problem is the all or nothing approach. What we need is a liability definition that is higher than nothing for paid software (I would explicitly exempt software offered for free, since the publisher is not monetarily compensated). For example, if the maximum risk was $100 per licensed copy with a minimum damage required of $10,000 (purely arbitrary numbers, no need to explain why these numbers are too small or too large) then a publisher could calculate the risk and appropriately assign the right amount of resources to eliminate bugs. Just an idea.
Interesting but the question would be can you use the Best Buy phone with your cell phone provider of choice, and if so do you still have to sign a contract and pay a penalty for early cancellation (contracts and early cancellation is promoted by the cell phone company as devices for them to recover the cost of a subsidized phone -- something that would not apply in this situation)...
You live in the UK, I live in the US. Makes a difference.
You are a victim of the arbitrary methods used to accept or reject submissions on Slashdot. Acceptance of a submission is subjective to the editor who reviews your story. Unfortuately, the people who run Slashdot feel this is perfectly acceptable and don't plan to change it any time soon.
Personally, I have specifically asked a cell phone company (I'm not naming names) if I could use an old phone that I had (bought from them about two years earlier) with a new service plan without a contract. I had cancelled my previous plan months earlier with them because of certain circumstances. Even though they still sold the exact same phone with some of their plans, I was told that I had to buy a new phone and sign up under a contract. They would not let me use my existing phone. It was pretty obvious that they're much more interested in getting you locked into a contract vs. worrying about recouping the phone subsidy.
The subsidized cell phone is a win/win for the cell phone service provider and the manufacturer. The provider locks you into a contract (thereby avoiding competition based on quality of service) and the manufacturer need not worry about reducing costs. All subsidies eliminate competition in some fashion. It does not benefit you the consumer.
Problem is, if you out and out buy your phone they still lock it. Which would be a good point to bring up in the suit because it would mean the lock doesn't have anything to do with the subsidy (it has everything to do with keeping you locked to the cell phone company).
I hope they do so as well, but it probably won't be the end of it. The cell phone company simply needs to change the contract to say that if you unlock your phone then you have to pay xxx dollars to the cell phone company. Should be legal, and if they make it prominent they might not even piss off their customers, who knows. Personally, if the company gives me the choice, I would rather pay for the phone up front and not sign a contract. Contracts mean the companies can concentrate on new sales and not existing customer support or quality of service (most of us change cell companies because we are dissatisfied with our existing company, not because the new company is better). As long as we have contracts, we lose in service and quality.
Do I care what their front page says? The front page is dynamic and changes with every headline that comes along. The article page, and the permanent link to the article, has absolutely no mention that this is an opinion. If you go to the article, it looks like a news release. At best you might imply it is an opinion because the article's page has the heading "MORE VIEWS HEADLINES" on the right side of the page, but it surely isn't obvious. The RIGHT way to do it would be to replace the article's headline "Massachusetts Should Close Down OpenDocument" with "OPINION: Massachusetts Should Close Down OpenDocument". Otherwise, Fox News is promoting this opinion piece as news.
This is not a criticism...how can you become a "powerful Slashdot User"? I would think that if you are a cohort of the people that manage Slashdot, you are as power as you can get (for Slashdot). All the rest of us are just voices in the matrix. No more or less powerful than any other Slashdot participant. While I appreciate some of the Slashdot members for their writing style, tone of voice, and sometimes even opinions and witticisms, I wouldn't go so far as to consider any of them more powerful than another. Slashdot is just an informal discussion on a variety of topics shared by a large number of people who, in truth, are usually no more qualified to discuss any given topic that the average person on the street. Anyone who takes postings on Slashdot seriously is already half a bubble off (IMHO :). I can't imagine being concerned about any particular participant.
Why, what has that got to do with Slashdot?
An excellent and well written response. I appreciate good conversation.
Concerning this point: One of them said something to the effect that "The richer a society gets the less likely any member would have the skills to even survive on their own." It's quite true. I was just thinking about this the other day in connection with the New Orleans situation. If the same thing happened where I live, we would be in a world of hurt. Most of us, including myself, couldn't even grow our own food from scratch. And I'm talking about from scratch. Not buying seeds and planting but going out and finding a non-man made source of plant seeds and starting from there. Not that it's our fault. As you pointed out, that's where we are today. As to our technology, it seems the risk of a real collapse of our civilization grows each day as we build more and more fragile technology. For example, the need for a multibillion dollor fab facility using ultra clean rooms and ultraviolet lithography. Imagine if it became impossible to create an ultra clean room -- maybe because of the release of a world wide nano-agent of some kind -- we'd lose the ability to create all of these vaulted billion transistor CPU's. The truth is, some of the most prevalent technologies used in our society are more fragile that we realize. Oh well, at worst we can always go back to a hunter/gatherer society I guess.
Heh, cute.
SCO? SCO hasn't won yet. And assuming they scrape together the money to finish the fight, it doesn't look like they will win. In this case, the only injustice we will have if SCO runs out of money will be that we don't settle the UNIX copyright ownership once and for all.
Not to disagree but...
Saying the silicon transistor is based on quantum principles is like saying energy production via wind power is based on quantum principles. They both depend on quantum components (electrons or molecules of air), true. But neither are controlled based on those principles. Today, we slam billions of electrons through a transistor every second because our technology can't do otherwise. Real control would use one electron to the the same work.
For the same reason, lasers would be considered a photon device in the same way as a flashlight would be. Even lasers used for communications vary voltage fields (i.e. the photon itself carries no information). Instead of this, I'm envisioning something along the lines of an electronic device that has photons flowing along channels instead of electrons, or maybe something else not even imagined right now.
Lastly, electron (not electronic) spin and magnetic spin are generally used interchangeably. However, the important part is that we are just now learning to manipulate the spin as opposed to the charge, which is really cool. As an aside, spin is really a bad term because it is probable that nothing is really moving, it's the charge that is rotating. Not that we really know what that means yet.
You assume I'm a member of the younger generation. It's likely I'm old enough to be your grandfather. I guess we could argue about where the line is for "quantum principles" but it would probably be pointless, as I suspect neither you nor I would be qualified to determine it's location. Regardless, I would say we have crossed that line only after we start controlling quantum phenomena (such as the electron tunneling effect) instead of fighting to eliminate it in our electronic designs.
As to whether our current transistor technology would be considered technology based on quantum principles, I think I can positively say that the electron charge we so deftly manipulate is accomplished without resorting to or relying on what would be considered quantum principles. Instead, our whole approach to controlling this fundamental pillar of our modern society is crudely based on bulk, macro methods, with little or no control at the quantum level. In short, the technology we employ today is the antithesis of control by quantum principles. In case you were wondering....
I see Anonymous Coward is aptly named.
Abe: I used to be with it, but then they changed what "it" was. Now, what I'm with isn't it, and what's "it" seems weird and scary to me. (Episode: 3F21 Homerpalooza)
It's only going to get worse as the pace of change continues to accelerate. In ten years a few engineers will be designing new classes of electronics based on quantum principles. Or totally new types of devices based on photons or magnetic spin vs. electron charge. Ten years later, that will be passé and maybe we'll be doing something with neutrinos. Who knows how things will work 30 years from now. It will all be magic by then.
Which proves victory via the US legal system is based on money, not justice.
Heh, too cowardly to post this under your real ID, eh?