You wouldn't need to. There are plenty of alternatives that aren't around just since yesterday.
But I'll stock up my supply of Pp-based solder before it is banned in Europe in 2006/2007.
Your comment is intendet as a joke but I'd modded it as insightful. I ask Indian developers to submit a story about IT-salaries in India . I visited the subcontinent thrice and It appears to me that even a well paid westerner couldn'd make an adequate living because you have to strech each rupee gained so much. Why not off-shore yourself before the management does (in case there's no family, no one who needs you near dearly, no debts)? I consider this option if the situation here gets worse. Hindi I already know, there're also ways to get a proper visa with a work-permit. But I've no idea how do I could cut just the cost of living there without going right to the bones.
Last friday I read in other news that a cell phone possibly ignited a flash explosion of gas vapors. I think this incident will revive the discussion about banning cell phone use from gas stations. In almost every manual there's a warning not to use the cell phone when exposed to inflammable gasses. I haven't seen a warning signs at filling stations yet but I expect them to come soon.
I still see lots of clipper apps in stores and in restaurants. They seem to fit the needs in those places where they are still in use. No Windows, because they'd require up-to-date hardware. The chef of your favorite restaurant doesn't see why an upgrade would be necessary. And consultans go there to to spend money and not to talk him into something he doesn't need.
Microsoft tries to be nice, because their image is taken more damage every day since last august when blaster/lovesan hit. Their software has a polished look and feel. Documentation of key features for the end-user is reasonable (it it's rotten when they have it translated, though). So even computer-illiterates can get their work done without ever opening the puny command shell.
A stand-alone Windows computer is OK for users who can cope with a bluescreen every now and then. It just works and when it doesn't they try to click around a bit until it somehow works again in an esoterical way. Real problems start if they need networking. Then there are costs and downfalls that will make the giveaway a time and money consuming burden. See it as a sort of embedded device for gaming and text precessing: If this is all you want, then it's nice. If you want to do more - like, check your e-mail - then it's just not the right platform.
Microsofts software has a broken implementation of networking and multi-user right-management. And it won't get better if they give their OS away precompiled and without sources for free/at low price. They'll have to make the sources available officialy. It's the only thing that will save Windows from extinction on the long term.
Microsoft should provide their customers with free running shoes. Admins need it when maintaining a Windows-network.
They can't just go into bankruptcy. I hope that their case will be settled first. Otherweise there may be another company that buys them just to spread more, bigger and better FUD.
Today there was a Q&Q^HA with SCO's VC Gregory Blepp and their contracted PR company here called each us (up to two times) just to convince us that I'd be rewarding and interesting to attend this sort of inofficial press conference. But no none would go and the marketing guy sounded a bit troubled. But what can _the_ most-despised IT-company expect? The'll have to hire the former Iraqi information minister to get more attention by the media.
Today you can get outdated hardware already for free, i.e a Pentium-II PC. It's not much use as an Desktop computer any more but as a low-cost router for small businesses or apartment-sharing communities it's a good option. Since there are well documented Linux-based projects like fli4l the setup isn't just 'for geeks only' anymore.
Well, there's no real icon for Fedora (yet). And in fc1's Gnome (haven't checked KDE) there's still that peculiar little red hat visible on the panel. It's an fedora[1] hat in fact.
[1] Taken from a glossary about hats: FEDORA ( fe doe ra ) Men's soft felt hat with brim and lengthwise crease in crown , adopted by women. The name Fedora was after the heroine of Victorian Sardou's drama presented in Paris in 1882. Also TYROLEAN HAT, ALPINE HAT, HOMBURG.
So as long as there isn't a new logo within the distro, the red hat fedora icon should be ok.
'Good news everyone, there're already websites with full scripts of Futurama episodes.'
I thought I was the only geek who appreciated Futurama so much to collect all DVDs. Thanks for enlighten me. Obligatory bittorrent.for the mentioned episode. A pitty that there won't be any more seasons.
The group of scientists "Bangalore Seven" developed the Simputer with the average user in mind. The average user lives in a indian village and is much different from the western users. So the design is also different to fit the specific needs of it's customers:
# Power supply in rural India is pretty bad, with frequent "load-shedding" blackouts. Without an UPS you can't run a desktop. The simputer runs on three AAA batteries.
# Your average user may has never used a computer before. So you'll have to keep the design as simple as possible.
# Desktop PCs consist of many parts that fail too easily under rough conditions. You need air condition or other internal sophisticated cooling equipment. Indian summers are hot and humid during the monsoon season. See the a chart of Delhi an an example. If something fails it's hard to get a replacement.
# The simputer is still much to expensive for customers with an average income of 40$/month. So expect that many people in a group (family, friends, collegues) will share one simputer. The desing makes sharing easy. Private data is saved to smartcards.
I think there're still many issues with the simputer. It's much too expensive. The price will have to drop to 50$, so they'll need to get the indian government to invest in this thing. Language support seems to be quite good with Hindi, Kannada, English already supported. Bengali , Tamil, Maharathi, Urdu also need to support. And Sanskrit would be nice for high-tech pundits =). But what to the illiterate people do? They need an icon-based GUI, speech output, or even speech recognition. Easy to set up printing would also be a nice feature.
As for the motion-controlled features we'll just have to wait for first-hand reviews. There're already games preinstalled based on this feature.
If all these requirements are met then there'll be a big market for the simputer - the whole india subcontinent in fact. And there's china that has similar requirements to get a majority of people to use computers. So India wouldn't have problems to export large quantities of the simputer to other emerging nations.
It depends on the business. But you're right, I've no experinece with mission critical environments.
You don't understand what business needs.
I am sorry if my posting was regarded as arrogant or even parvenu. But if budgets are cut the Suns are definitly a strain on the resources being left. I'm not involved with task that require 98% uptime. So please accept my apolopy
Frankly I do not understand what business needs except from a large budget to get things done. I understand that for gov, research or financial sectors only hours of downtime have devastating effects.
I'm with a company that using debian, fedora and windows and we use to call some services 'mission critical' (inflatory wording). And if something is broke we fix it inhouse within 1 or 2 days. That's definenity not mission critical. Background: It's a publishing company where a few hours downtime don't matter since the time to a deadline is counted in days, so your experiece may differ and I apologise again for being not available by a pager, like you. The problems with debian are a matter of hours. It's windows that slows things down up to 2 days. No problems with Fedora on the admin's desktops so far. But Admins have to walk a lot around to get Wurmdows-clients fixed. And there's a higer caste of admins who supervise the whole daily grind and have better contacts to the managment than we do. They are still super-funded and they tend to buy services that they never need, and they listen to consultants too often. They need contracted people who fix the stuff for them. We are more down to earth. And we are closer to the user and the systems. We have a bad feeling about things that can't be fixed without out-sourced knowledge. Because if there's problem and some contracted person fixes it for you without doing proper documentation, what do we do if the problem is still there tomorrow? We just need to do it inhouse. Especially if there's a huge f***up and you need to have someone like a "grizzled old guy nearing retirement" coming on site just to say "Someone of your coders wasn't aware, that this [insert your method] is now deprecated/unsuported/broken on our platform, so I'll fix it for you". Sorry, but we have some some "grizzled old guys nearing retirement" (with long hair and weird beards and beer bellys) here and they fix it themselves, if they are able to. I think that those collegues are mission critical to us.
And there's users who feel that certain services are 'mission critical'. And what if their workflow is dependend on a certain service that suddendy fail? What do you do? Wait for some other professional who has the experiece in things that always fail? Because otherwise I couldn's explain the speed of the Sun worshippers of yours.
I don't think that if Redhat enterprise is an alternative to Suns if there's proper budget. But back at university we installed redhat on some Sun-based CIP-servers and from what I know its still up and running.
I was visiting the Redhat world tour just yesterday. And for Redhat Enterprise they offer prolonged support for 5 years now, so they may have learned? I don't see Novell/Suse as a current competitor, because you'd have to do more out-sourcing. OK, the hardware may be a lot cheaper, but we don't know what they are up to. GPL'd Yast and proprietary Qt? We'll have to see.
Of course I think of nuts and bolts, but that's whats keeping the shop running. And I do not wear a tie and thankfully I don't have to listen to consultants (no offence meant if you're on our side).
And please do not take this previous posting of mine as an offence. I haven't worked with Suns for 15y. I just want you to understand that for quite a few projects out there where Suns are not an option any mire because of budgets.
You see, what he's talking about is support. Not colours. Not design.
Sorry I forgot, Suns are also mentioned in the credits of 'Finding Nem
They promote their product as a technical solution to a social problem? I don't think this will work.
Friends with children who are computer literate often ask me if there's a way to limit the log on time for the children's accounts. I've no children myself but I always advice against the technical way. If there's an apparent problem (homework not being done properly, neglect of friends, socialising with the wrong kind of people etc.) parents have to dedicate time to their kids and find an agreement together. Just installing spyware and barriers won't work.
Besides, parents often underestimate their kids' knowledge and creativity to jump technicals obstacles. And I'm sure there a quite a few children who have root account on their daddy's Windows box and know a lot more about computers than dad ever would.
But SUN's hardware is quite expensive and with the power saving alone you would be able to buy a bunch of x68 hardware with the prefered Linux flavor of your choice. I still understand your concerns and if you have the budget then stick to SUN. Besides the SUN's are well designed, nice-coloured and you could install redhat or fedora on them, if you get one on ebay.
For end-of-lifecycle die-hard redhats there's community Fedora Legacy Project.
I've a dislike for VBA, because of it's VB syntax. But if your into VBA and have protected VBA-Code that won't open in Word/Excel then try Openoffice. The 'protected' code itself is not encrypted and just flagged as protected. Openoffice does not care about the protection flag. It just opens the VBA code (user forms are not accessible) in it's script editor. No surprise that Microsoft dislikes this software that is just another example that security by obscurity is borken by design.
You mean this article, right?
http://support.microsoft.com:80/support/kb/article s/q276/3/04.asp
This is my all time favorite:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=161129
("Kitchen: Known Content Errors"). What were they thinking?
I tried it with a mobile phone one. The pillow went to the floor and woke up 20 minutes later just to realize that breakfast was out of options again.
I'd recommand a timered radio receiver blowing out you least favoured local ad-infested station. With only the speakers in your room and the switch to end end the cacophony in another room. Gets up quite fast. Preferably: the kitchen. And prepare all the ingredient for brewing you favorite type of coffee/tea the day before, so it's only a tip of your finger to get things going until you face RL. Italian Espresso pots are good: once you switch on the plate you'll know when it's ready in case you fall asleep again (you'll noticed by the smell [in time], the noise [overslept] or the firesquad knocking in your door [beyond getting up]).
I'd like to see a nmap scan of the ports still open after applying SP2. And a good reason why those ports are still open. Is 1025 open? If then, why? Does Microsoft break functionality in favor of security in an product that targets home users? A proper documentation for the ports used by XP Home and Pro would be far better than a obscure new service pack that does things and more voodoo. I read the
document on expected changes with SP2 (looks weird in OOs, but it's readable). Almost words about those funny ports beyond 1024 where those dynamic mappings to the RPC begin.
If you think so then learn Hindi or any other widely spoken Indian language. If you think that Bangalore will win the race then learn a Dravidian language like Kannada. English would be also ok in cities but with one of the native languages you'll be far better off.
When at university I attended Hindi classes in the evening. It was fun and there were only 4 other students so the pace was pretty fast.
I'd say that Hindi is easy to pick up and within a year (8h/week) you know the basic vocabulary you need even for extended stays. I haven't worked in India yet. But for inquiries for magazines my vocabulary was already sufficient with that little training.
You can't compete with the low salaries in India. But (western) companies that offshore IT units still need someone on site.
IT is a dying industry in the U.S.
It's not. It just in an awkward age.
The largest IT market is still the U.S. In Europe IT is experiencing a major crisis and clampdown in budgets.
Offshoring is just the a fruit of the basic realisation of all businesses that plan to be more successful: you can do a simlilar thing for less money elsewhere and still sell it for the same price. You would complain if your Nike/Adidas/Puma sneakers would cost double, wouldn't you? But why got those shoes so cheap in the first place?
Even without subscribing to the mailing list fixing the problems shouldn't be a problem - I was surprised how many sites already had workarounds and solutions to the common problems with fedora. Just a search in google should do.
I considered the buggy ISDN confguriation in RH9 one of the more annoying setbacks and found that this was finally fixed id Fedora Core 1.
I really like this distro from the start - admittedly I had to invest one weekend's time for setting things up the way I need them.
Add rpm.livna.org repositories to your yum.conf and apt-get/yum all the problematic packages redhat had to leave out. See http://rpm.livna.org/ for details.
It's hard to tell if it's biased or just broken or broken by design. I remember Googly having a page with pre-designed search results for the term "road to hell" or "more evil than satan himself" featuring Microsoft as the topmost search result. Search results like these are running gag anomg the lesser known search engines. Open www.fastbot.de and do a search for "crappy software". The first three hits are Microsoft, Oracle and SCO.
Slashdot Mirror
You wouldn't need to. There are plenty of alternatives that aren't around just since yesterday.
But I'll stock up my supply of Pp-based solder before it is banned in Europe in 2006/2007.
Your comment is intendet as a joke but I'd modded it as insightful. I ask Indian developers to submit a story about IT-salaries in India . I visited the subcontinent thrice and It appears to me that even a well paid westerner couldn'd make an adequate living because you have to strech each rupee gained so much.
Why not off-shore yourself before the management does (in case there's no family, no one who needs you near dearly, no debts)? I consider this option if the situation here gets worse. Hindi I already know, there're also ways to get a proper visa with a work-permit. But I've no idea how do I could cut just the cost of living there without going right to the bones.
Last friday I read in other news that a cell phone possibly ignited a flash explosion of gas vapors. I think this incident will revive the discussion about banning cell phone use from gas stations. In almost every manual there's a warning not to use the cell phone when exposed to inflammable gasses. I haven't seen a warning signs at filling stations yet but I expect them to come soon.
I wonder what Garrett Brown thinks about about Dogma95.
There you can't post and complain about incomplete coverage. But the link to a site about home made stabilizers should have been mentioned.
I still see lots of clipper apps in stores and in restaurants. They seem to fit the needs in those places where they are still in use. No Windows, because they'd require up-to-date hardware. The chef of your favorite restaurant doesn't see why an upgrade would be necessary. And consultans go there to to spend money and not to talk him into something he doesn't need.
Microsoft tries to be nice, because their image is taken more damage every day since last august when
blaster/lovesan hit.
Their software has a polished look and feel. Documentation of key features for the end-user is reasonable (it it's rotten when they have it translated, though). So even computer-illiterates can get their work done without ever opening the puny command shell.
A stand-alone Windows computer is OK for users who can cope with a bluescreen every now and then. It just works and when it doesn't they try to click around a bit until it somehow works again in an esoterical way.
Real problems start if they need networking. Then there are costs and downfalls that will make the giveaway a time and money consuming burden. See it as a sort of embedded device for gaming and text precessing: If this is all you want, then it's nice. If you want to do more - like, check your e-mail - then it's just not the right platform.
Microsofts software has a broken implementation of networking and multi-user right-management. And it won't get better if they give their OS away precompiled and without sources for free/at low price. They'll have to make the sources available officialy. It's the only thing that will save Windows from extinction on the long term.
Microsoft should provide their customers with free running shoes. Admins need it when maintaining a Windows-network.
They can't just go into bankruptcy. I hope that their case will be settled first. Otherweise there may be another company that buys them just to spread more, bigger and better FUD.
Today there was a Q&Q^HA with SCO's VC Gregory Blepp and their contracted PR company here called each us (up to two times) just to convince us that I'd be rewarding and interesting to attend this sort of inofficial press conference. But no none would go and the marketing guy sounded a bit troubled. But what can _the_ most-despised IT-company expect? The'll have to hire the former Iraqi information minister to get more attention by the media.
Today you can get outdated hardware already for free, i.e a Pentium-II PC. It's not much use as an Desktop computer any more but as a low-cost router for small businesses or apartment-sharing communities it's a good option. Since there are well documented Linux-based projects like fli4l the setup isn't just 'for geeks only' anymore.
Well, there's no real icon for Fedora (yet). And in fc1's Gnome (haven't checked KDE) there's still that peculiar little red hat visible on the panel. It's an fedora[1] hat in fact.
[1] Taken from a glossary about hats:
FEDORA ( fe doe ra ) Men's soft felt hat with brim and lengthwise crease in crown , adopted by women. The name Fedora was after the heroine of Victorian Sardou's drama presented in Paris in 1882. Also TYROLEAN HAT, ALPINE HAT, HOMBURG.
So as long as there isn't a new logo within the distro, the red hat fedora icon should be ok.
'Good news everyone, there're already websites with full scripts of Futurama episodes.'
I thought I was the only geek who appreciated Futurama so much to collect all DVDs. Thanks for enlighten me. Obligatory bittorrent.for the mentioned episode. A pitty that there won't be any more seasons.
The group of scientists "Bangalore Seven" developed the Simputer with the average user in mind. The average user lives in a indian village and is much different from the western users. So the design is also different to fit the specific needs of it's customers:
# Power supply in rural India is pretty bad, with frequent "load-shedding" blackouts. Without an UPS you can't run a desktop. The simputer runs on three AAA batteries.
# Your average user may has never used a computer before. So you'll have to keep the design as simple as possible.
# Desktop PCs consist of many parts that fail too easily under rough conditions. You need air condition or other internal sophisticated cooling equipment. Indian summers are hot and humid during the monsoon season. See the a chart of Delhi an an example. If something fails it's hard to get a replacement.
# The simputer is still much to expensive for customers with an average income of 40$/month. So expect that many people in a group (family, friends, collegues) will share one simputer. The desing makes sharing easy. Private data is saved to smartcards.
I think there're still many issues with the simputer. It's much too expensive. The price will have to drop to 50$, so they'll need to get the indian government to invest in this thing. Language support seems to be quite good with Hindi, Kannada, English already supported. Bengali , Tamil, Maharathi, Urdu also need to support. And Sanskrit would be nice for high-tech pundits =). But what to the illiterate people do? They need an icon-based GUI, speech output, or even speech recognition. Easy to set up printing would also be a nice feature.
As for the motion-controlled features we'll just have to wait for first-hand reviews. There're already games preinstalled based on this feature.
If all these requirements are met then there'll be a big market for the simputer - the whole india subcontinent in fact. And there's china that has similar requirements to get a majority of people to use computers. So India wouldn't have problems to export large quantities of the simputer to other emerging nations.
> You don't understand what business needs.
It depends on the business. But you're right, I've no experinece with mission critical environments.
You don't understand what business needs.
I am sorry if my posting was regarded as arrogant or even parvenu. But if budgets are cut the Suns are definitly a strain on the resources being left. I'm not involved with task that require 98% uptime. So please accept my apolopy
Frankly I do not understand what business needs except from a large budget to get things done. I understand that for gov, research or financial sectors only hours of downtime have devastating effects.
I'm with a company that using debian, fedora and windows and we use to call some services 'mission critical' (inflatory wording). And if something is broke we fix it inhouse within 1 or 2 days. That's definenity not mission critical. Background: It's a publishing company where a few hours downtime don't matter since the time to a deadline is counted in days, so your experiece may differ and I apologise again for being not available by a pager, like you. The problems with debian are a matter of hours. It's windows that slows things down up to 2 days. No problems with Fedora on the admin's desktops so far. But Admins have to walk a lot around to get Wurmdows-clients fixed. And there's a higer caste of admins who supervise the whole daily grind and have better contacts to the managment than we do. They are still super-funded and they tend to buy services that they never need, and they listen to consultants too often. They need contracted people who fix the stuff for them. We are more down to earth. And we are closer to the user and the systems. We have a bad feeling about things that can't be fixed without out-sourced knowledge. Because if there's problem and some contracted person fixes it for you without doing proper documentation, what do we do if the problem is still there tomorrow? We just need to do it inhouse. Especially if there's a huge f***up and you need to have someone like a "grizzled old guy nearing retirement" coming on site just to say "Someone of your coders wasn't aware, that this [insert your method] is now deprecated/unsuported/broken on our platform, so I'll fix it for you". Sorry, but we have some some "grizzled old guys nearing retirement" (with long hair and weird beards and beer bellys) here and they fix it themselves, if they are able to. I think that those collegues are mission critical to us.
And there's users who feel that certain services are 'mission critical'. And what if their workflow is dependend on a certain service that suddendy fail? What do you do? Wait for some other professional who has the experiece in things that always fail? Because otherwise I couldn's explain the speed of the Sun worshippers of yours.
I don't think that if Redhat enterprise is an alternative to Suns if there's proper budget. But back at university we installed redhat on some Sun-based CIP-servers and from what I know its still up and running.
I was visiting the Redhat world tour just yesterday. And for Redhat Enterprise they offer prolonged support for 5 years now, so they may have learned? I don't see Novell/Suse as a current competitor, because you'd have to do more out-sourcing. OK, the hardware may be a lot cheaper, but we don't know what they are up to. GPL'd Yast and proprietary Qt? We'll have to see. Of course I think of nuts and bolts, but that's whats keeping the shop running. And I do not wear a tie and thankfully I don't have to listen to consultants (no offence meant if you're on our side).
And please do not take this previous posting of mine as an offence. I haven't worked with Suns for 15y. I just want you to understand that for quite a few projects out there where Suns are not an option any mire because of budgets.
You see, what he's talking about is support. Not colours. Not design.
Sorry I forgot, Suns are also mentioned in the credits of 'Finding Nem
They promote their product as a technical solution to a social problem? I don't think this will work.
Friends with children who are computer literate often ask me if there's a way to limit the log on time for the children's accounts. I've no children myself but I always advice against the technical way. If there's an apparent problem (homework not being done properly, neglect of friends, socialising with the wrong kind of people etc.) parents have to dedicate time to their kids and find an agreement together. Just installing spyware and barriers won't work.
Besides, parents often underestimate their kids' knowledge and creativity to jump technicals obstacles. And I'm sure there a quite a few children who have root account on their daddy's Windows box and know a lot more about computers than dad ever would.
But SUN's hardware is quite expensive and with the power saving alone you would be able to buy a bunch of x68 hardware with the prefered Linux flavor of your choice. I still understand your concerns and if you have the budget then stick to SUN. Besides the SUN's are well designed, nice-coloured and you could install redhat or fedora on them, if you get one on ebay. For end-of-lifecycle die-hard redhats there's community Fedora Legacy Project.
I've a dislike for VBA, because of it's VB syntax. But if your into VBA and have protected VBA-Code that won't open in Word/Excel then try Openoffice. The 'protected' code itself is not encrypted and just flagged as protected. Openoffice does not care about the protection flag. It just opens the VBA code (user forms are not accessible) in it's script editor.
No surprise that Microsoft dislikes this software that is just another example that security by obscurity is borken by design.
Let him be buddhist, zarathustrian, parsi. Who cares? He's just a moron.
You mean this article, right? http://support.microsoft.com:80/support/kb/article s/q276/3/04.asp
This is my all time favorite:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=161129
("Kitchen: Known Content Errors"). What were they thinking?
I tried it with a mobile phone one. The pillow went to the floor and woke up 20 minutes later just to realize that breakfast was out of options again.
I'd recommand a timered radio receiver blowing out you least favoured local ad-infested station. With only the speakers in your room and the switch to end end the cacophony in another room. Gets up quite fast. Preferably: the kitchen. And prepare all the ingredient for brewing you favorite type of coffee/tea the day before, so it's only a tip of your finger to get things going until you face RL. Italian Espresso pots are good: once you switch on the plate you'll know when it's ready in case you fall asleep again (you'll noticed by the smell [in time], the noise [overslept] or the firesquad knocking in your door [beyond getting up]).
I'd like to see a nmap scan of the ports still open after applying SP2. And a good reason why those ports are still open. Is 1025 open? If then, why? Does Microsoft break functionality in favor of security in an product that targets home users? A proper documentation for the ports used by XP Home and Pro would be far better than a obscure new service pack that does things and more voodoo. I read the document on expected changes with SP2 (looks weird in OOs, but it's readable). Almost words about those funny ports beyond 1024 where those dynamic mappings to the RPC begin.
All your jobs are belong to India.
If you think so then learn Hindi or any other widely spoken Indian language. If you think that Bangalore will win the race then learn a Dravidian language like Kannada. English would be also ok in cities but with one of the native languages you'll be far better off.
When at university I attended Hindi classes in the evening. It was fun and there were only 4 other students so the pace was pretty fast. I'd say that Hindi is easy to pick up and within a year (8h/week) you know the basic vocabulary you need even for extended stays. I haven't worked in India yet. But for inquiries for magazines my vocabulary was already sufficient with that little training.
You can't compete with the low salaries in India. But (western) companies that offshore IT units still need someone on site.
IT is a dying industry in the U.S.
It's not. It just in an awkward age. The largest IT market is still the U.S. In Europe IT is experiencing a major crisis and clampdown in budgets. Offshoring is just the a fruit of the basic realisation of all businesses that plan to be more successful: you can do a simlilar thing for less money elsewhere and still sell it for the same price. You would complain if your Nike/Adidas/Puma sneakers would cost double, wouldn't you? But why got those shoes so cheap in the first place?
Even without subscribing to the mailing list fixing the problems shouldn't be a problem - I was surprised how many sites already had workarounds and solutions to the common problems with fedora. Just a search in google should do. I considered the buggy ISDN confguriation in RH9 one of the more annoying setbacks and found that this was finally fixed id Fedora Core 1. I really like this distro from the start - admittedly I had to invest one weekend's time for setting things up the way I need them.
Add rpm.livna.org repositories to your yum.conf and apt-get/yum all the problematic packages redhat had to leave out. See http://rpm.livna.org/ for details.
It's hard to tell if it's biased or just broken or broken by design.
I remember Googly having a page with pre-designed search results for the term "road to hell" or "more evil than satan himself" featuring Microsoft as the topmost search result.
Search results like these are running gag anomg the lesser known search engines. Open www.fastbot.de and do a search for "crappy software". The first three hits are Microsoft, Oracle and SCO.