Rule ONE in the information technology (IT) field: IT will ALWAYS go with the lowest cost solution that does the job.
Years ago I remember feeling upset because of IBM's seeming domination at the IT field, how IBM seemed to have a total lock on mainframe computers to the exclusion of almost everyone else. IBM seemed to be overcharging for what they were offering, while seemingly using... questionable... tactics to continue in that role. Guess what, IBM still has a near total lock on mainframe computers, but I (and most of the rest of IT) doesn't really care. Why? Well, there are still a few roles / jobs where BIG mainframes still do make sense, just not many roles, and those niches are getting smaller each year.
Why the near death of the mainframe computer? Well, a number of upstart visionaries/entrepreneurs, like Paul Allen, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Ken Olson, Jack Tramiel, and Steve Wozniak among MANY others, showed that in many roles the mainframe could be replaced with far less expensive hardware / software combinations. These various people offered a lower cost solution that could do the job.
So, where are we now? Well, Microsoft has a seeming near total lock on the desktop while using seemingly... questionable... tactics to continue that role. Going forward, where does Microsoft stand? Well, Microsoft are dead or dying in the server markets, and the embedded device markets. I don't know what will happen to desktop market, Microsoft may, like IBM with their mainframes, continue to dominate the desktop market... and almost nobody will care.
Microsoft can NOT compete on cost with Linux, so they will not be the mainstream of IT. It MIGHT be that mainstream IT will be Linux based smart phones backed up with Linux based servers, with Microsoft holding a lock on a steadily becoming irrelevant desktop market. Regardless as to how things play out, I do know that the least expensive solution will eventually win out as the mainstream IT technology and that may mean a small Microsoft catering to a small niche market...
Overall a very good video, but there is a small flaw. The video incorrectly notes that Oleg Vladimirovich Losev was a scientist in Imperial Russia... While Oleg Vladimirovich Losev was born in Imperial Russia, by the time he was working on diodes, it was the Soviet Union.
Other than that, an excellent video that only left we with the question, where do you get chunks of carborundum?
While not quite as extreme as the Foxconn motherboard issue noted above, I have run into Linux a nasty gotcha with an ASUS motherboard. Below is an e-mail I sent to the ASUS staff I have dealt with over the last while, going over the issues I have had, and if anyone can supply me with the e-mail (or postal) addresses of senior staff at ASUS I would appreciate it...
-=-=-
Dear Kara Renner, Elijah Alexander and Blanca Ortiz;
This e-mail is to note and explain my current unhappiness with the experiences I have had with purchase of one of your M2N-MX SE PLUS motherboards. I have normally been happy with ASUS products, something I have been very willing to note in publications I have written for, such as www.linuxjournal.com/article/8219 .
Before purchasing the M2N-MX SE PLUS motherboard I did take the precaution of reading the motherboard manual to make sure it supported net booting, and according to your documentation it does.
After purchase it took me some time and effort to determine why this new machine would not net boot. The diagnose process did include downloading and installing the latest available BIOS. In the end the issue turned out to be a multicast MAC address burned into the motherboard. This multicast MAC address makes successful net booting out of the question. Having determined why the motherboard would not work, I called your firm, obtained an RMA number (EL864256) and I shipped the defective motherboard to your facility in Indiana (this in spite of the fact that your Canadian office is less than a 1 hour drive from my home). The motherboard was then returned to me, apparently untouched, as the MAC address on the motherboard had been not been changed. Further a secondary issue of concern, noted in the cover letter included with the motherboard, a BIOS bug, "MCFG area at e0000000 is not E-820-reserved" was not touched.
Further telephone complaints triggered the shipping of a replacement BIOS ROM, which by the time it arrived at my location had be knocked around in transit. After some effort, bending pins I was able to install the ROM, but found that the motherboard would not even get to the POST messages after this change. Returning to the original BIOS ROM would at least allow the motherboard to display the POST messages.
Additional calls resulted in my obtaining a second RMA number (2EL874667) and the shipping the motherboard yet again to your office in Indiana. This time I trust the motherboard will be repaired or replaced with a AMD AM2+ supporting microATX motherboard that does actually work.
Going forward, regardless as to the result of this latest repair effort, this motherboard is a complete and total failure.
My goal with this motherboard was to build a prototype basic "dumb" remote multimedia terminal that could be inexpensively, quickly built in significant numbers. For inexpensive, we are talking over $95, $55 for the motherboard, then over $40 for shipping multiple times to your office, plus a number dollars for incidental costs like long distance phone calls. The M2N-MX SE PLUS motherboard compares very badly against your competitors in the $95 price range. In terms of time, this is not a system that can be assembled quickly. Not only have I had to spend significant amounts of time assembling / disassembling a PC around this motherboard. I have also had to spend time troubleshooting, packing / unpacking and waiting for the repair. I am now looking a minimum of about two months between purchase and being able to actually use this motherboard, a figure I do not have the time to repeat. In other words, this is a prototype I can not repeat. I will have to look to another motherboard, most likely from another manufacture, to achieve my original goals.
You can assume this is the last M2N-MX SE PLUS motherboard I will purchase, and may be the last ASUS product I will ever purchase. You can also assume that I will passing word of my poor experiences on via a number of routes, my writing, my presentations before local user groups and the mailing lists / web forms to which I belong. This way the people I know or come in contact with will not make the same purchasing error I made.
Without using Google, how many people know of any jeweler tool supply shops?
I do, Lacy and Company in Toronto, Ontario. But, ok, a little while ago I was looking at what would be involved in doing a small scale casting project, so I made a point of checking out Toronto, Ontario area metal suppliers and jewelry supply shops.
As for Lacy and Company, it is nice little shop that one will NOT find by accident (basement level of a small downtown office building). Still, kind of cute to wander around the store, lots of mini-tools for doing precision work, special waxes, ceramic containers for melting metals, along with presentation stuff (ring boxes and other stuff to show off completed work).
So, ok I may be an exception, but jewelry supply shops are around, just have to be willing to hunt a bit. As for the original story, doing a Green Lantern ring, not my style, but the story is interesting because it isn't too far from a topic that has been of on/off interest to me, doing small scale casting....
Is any US Sci-Fi show (or any show whatsoever) ever going to beat Doctor Who (or Coronation Street)?
Meet The Press which got its start as a radio program in 1945, and then as a TV show in November 1947. This beats both Coronation Street, 1960 and Doctor Who, 1963. Now granted, Meet The Press is not a Science Fiction TV show, though, some of the material from members of the current U.S. administration have carried a Twilight Zone type feel.
Anonymous Coward on Friday December 09, @11:50AM (#14220562)
x installed rootkit
x virus was written to use rootkit
x lied about it sending info
x licensing was illegal
x contained stolen copyrighted code
x created patch that contained vulnerability
x patch collected info from machine
x another drm contained vulnerability
x created patch with vulnerability
9 strikes. Did I leave anything out?
Regretably, yes
x patent infringement
So up to 10 strikes... I have normally loved Sony hardware, back from the days when I had two Beta VCRs, but this stunt has been unforgivable...
You can buy new computers, standalone network drives, network printer interfaces etc. for very little these days.
True, but...
At the moment I have a very limited budget for hardware and a fair bit of free time, so, instead of spending $30 on a commercial firewall/router, I was much happier taking a Pentium 166 box and 2 network cards from my "junk" box, then running Coyote Linux on the lot. This combination has worked for 2 years, and I am happy with it, likely I will run this until the hardware fails (likely some time from now, as the box is almost empty (no hard drive, floppy only used during boot). When this combo does fail then likely I will check my junk box and see what other old/low-end stuff I have then.
In the mean time I have a usefull bit of hardware that I didn't have to spend $ on and it was a fun little project to do...
No, you may not distribute your own recorded music, because how can you verify that the underlying musical work is actually original and not subconsciously copied [slashdot.org] from an existing copyrighted work?
Maybe not. But what you can do is record your own version of say Ludwig van Beethoven's 9th Symphony No.9 played on say a didgeridoo. Yes, the music would be clearly based on someone elses work, but it would be a work that is out of copyright.
Other sources of music that could be legally made available via P2P networks includes recordings that are old enough to be outside copyright (I have one relative who collects Edison Cylinder Phonograph recording, the vast majority of those are outside copyright).
There's a whole slew of issues, not the least of which is population density. It is wonderful that those TINY little nations have ass-bleeding net access. And I'm not harshing them in any way, I'm just saying we have hela more land area. If you take the total population and divide that by square kilometres, it works out like this:
United States at 32/km South Korea at 491/km Belgium at 338/km
America is better off trying to wire everyone with digital satellite connections, than laying fibre or coax. Fibre works in the large cities, just like it works in those smaller nations.
Had you read the article you would have seen that Canada ranks number 2 in broadband take-up (behind South Korea but ahead of Belgium. Canada's population density at 3/km makes the United States seem absolutely packed. No, the lack of broadband in the U.S. is for reasons other than desnsity. My take on the problem is the big issues are:
Lack of competition between the telco's and the cable companies
Poor choices by the FCC
Also, the amount of bandwidth available on a satellite is fairly limited (think a T3 per satellite), and while good for some remote communities, satellites will not deliver the sort of bandwidth to solve the bandwidth needs of a nation with the population like the United States.
'Toronto will become home this weekend to what's being touted as the first retail computer store devoted exclusively to Linux-based products.'
As a Toronto resident I had planned on a quiet weekend, with nothing more than seeing FAHRENHEIT 9/11 now it looks like I will have to attending a store opening...
For the transit bound, looks like the best way to get to 2930 Dufferin St. address of the new store would be to go to the Laurence West subway station, then take any west bound bus (52+, 58+, or 59+) to Dufferin, then take the Dufferin (29+) bus south.
One of the Greek islands is the island of Lesbos (where the poet Sappho first wrote about love between women, and yes this is where the term lesbian comes from). This would be seriously cool on several counts:
Phobe being a female figure in Greek mythology this fits better than a lot of male oriented names.
It would annoy the U.S. right wing seriously, which at this point is a very good thing.
Because of the previous point, this may make it easier to get cash for space exploration, as in:
To the left talk about how more money would allow more heroes of the left be honored.
For the right talk about such features have to obliterated
In other words everyone who loves space exploration wins:-).
A frequency counter is a standard bit of test equipment for people who have to test radio transmitters, be they these little very low power things like garage door openers, or big TV transmitters. What a frequency counter does is that it tells you what frequency your transmitter is ACTUALLY transmitting at (not what is being claimed). There are firmsthatsell frequency counters and building a frequncy counter is well with in the range of someone with reasonable construction skills, such as here or here.
Now for investigating aroung what you suspect may be a transmitter, well, a portable frequency counter will tell you if your dealing with a working transmitter, and if it is transmitting, what frequency the transmitter is using. That information can then lead you other places, like who is legally allowed to transmit on the frequency you are detecting...
If Heinz gave me a bottle of Miranader sauce when I bought a bottle of ketchup, I wouldn't expect the makers of other Miranader sauces to complain that they were being pushed out of the market because "Everyone uses heinz and now no one will buy our Marinader sauce"..
I would expect other sauce makers to complain, quite rightfully too, because here Heinz would be using their near monopoly in one area (ketchup) to destroy competition in another area.
If I wanted the other Miranader sauce there is nothing keeping me from going and getting the other sauce. Now I have THREE sauces to choose from!!! Choosing one option over another always means giving up your investment in the first option. I don't quite understand this point. If a linux dev team were to switch to MS they'd have to give up their investment in Linux... ?? If Heinz offered apparel/novelty market goods that were good enough that I would buy them over the stuff I wear already, then I would buy their clothing.. What is wrong with that???
Nothing wrong with Heinz offering apparel/novelty market goods. What would be wrong is IF (note the IF) Heinz were to tell retailers the cost of the ketchup will be 50% higher if they don't carry the apparel, or the ketchup will be 50% more if they carry any other brand of ketchup. The issue is not the near monopoly, it is how they got there and how they handle themselves once they became a near monopoly.
Anti-trust laws were invented not to prevent companies from attaining 90% control of the market but from abusing that position.
Yes, exectly, Heinz has some 90% of the U.S. ketchup market, this even though you can make your own ketchup, and firms like Hunt's offer ketchup. Yet the anti-trust people have not been knocking down Heinz's door. The key reason being that Heinz has not abused their position in the ketchup market. For example:
Buying a bottle of Heinz ketchup does not also mean you MUST buy a packet of Heinz Marinader sauce.
Giving up on Heinz ketchup in favor of say home made ketchup does not mean you must give up your investment in Heinz Sweet Teriyaki sauce
Heinz does not use the profits from their near monopoly in ketchup to subsidize losses in the apparel / novelty market (with the clear dream of setting up a monopolies in those areas too).
In other words this has never been about Microsoft having a near monopoly it is about the abuse of the monopoly. If for the sake of argument Microsoft had (like say Heinz) reached their position just by having a very good, resonably priced product, then not used their near monopoly to try and crush all others the regulators would have basicly left them alone. Instead Microsoft has taken a very different path... and the net result Heinz is being left alone while Microsoft isn't.
I remember when 867-5309 first came out (or whatever the actual name of the song is). People who had that number were constantly harassed by young pranksters like myself calling and asking to speak to Jenny. According to the news, people who had that number were forced to change it due to the never-ending phone calls. Instant celebrity is not all its cracked up to be.
When the song "Jenny (867-5309)" came out that number was in use in Toronto, Ontario by a branch of the Bank of Montreal (Canadian banks unlike the US are allowed to set up branches where ever they want in the country). Needless to say within 48 hours of that song coming out that Bank of Montreal branch had a new phone number. Some firms/organizations just do want a well known number...
One of the things that struck me as interesting was seeing the SCO laptops were all running some flavour of Windows. One of the audience members (sitting in the back row) had a laptop running RedHat. In other words there were no SCO boxes at a SCO event...
Of the under 30 people there, two I know to be working with/for not for profit/charities that are SCO free and I was just there as a Linux centric consultant to try to understand the SCO mind (bit of a wasted effort I'm afraid...). In other words over 10 percent where non-SCO clients/resellers, and people who are unlikely to become SCO clients.
The seemed to be some question regarding the availability of source code for some GPL'ed software, with one of the resellers asking where to get the source for such programs as the SCO version of Apache, and the SCO people not being sure where or if the source was available.
Everyone present got a T-Shirt that on the back read:
---
[GOT UNIX IN YOUR LINUX?]
FACT: SCO OWNS THE LEGAL COPYRIGHT TO UNIX SYSTEM V.
FACT: SCO OWNS ALL CLAIMS ARISING OUT OF VIOLATIONS BY UNIX LICENSEES.
FACT: SCO HAS PROOF OF DIRECT COPYING OF SYSTEM V INTO LINUX.
I SAW IT FOR MYSELF AT SCOFORUM 2003
---
I did get some extra copies of this T-Shirt and think I will put them them up for sale at an upcomming Toronto Linux User Group meeting (for use as target practice?).
For food SCO put on a breakfast and lunch for attendies. The breakfast was lame, pastries, fruit, tea/coffee/fruit juice. Lunch was quite good, several kinds of salad, rice with veggies, spicy noodles with tiny shrimp, and/or chicken with veggies with tea/coffee/pop.
Slashdot Mirror
Rule ONE in the information technology (IT) field: IT will ALWAYS go with the lowest cost solution that does the job.
Years ago I remember feeling upset because of IBM's seeming domination at the IT field, how IBM seemed to have a total lock on mainframe computers to the exclusion of almost everyone else. IBM seemed to be overcharging for what they were offering, while seemingly using ... questionable ... tactics to continue in that role. Guess what, IBM still has a near total lock on mainframe computers, but I (and most of the rest of IT) doesn't really care. Why? Well, there are still a few roles / jobs where BIG mainframes still do make sense, just not many roles, and those niches are getting smaller each year.
Why the near death of the mainframe computer? Well, a number of upstart visionaries/entrepreneurs, like Paul Allen, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Ken Olson, Jack Tramiel, and Steve Wozniak among MANY others, showed that in many roles the mainframe could be replaced with far less expensive hardware / software combinations. These various people offered a lower cost solution that could do the job.
So, where are we now? Well, Microsoft has a seeming near total lock on the desktop while using seemingly ... questionable ... tactics to continue that role. Going forward, where does Microsoft stand? Well, Microsoft are dead or dying in the server markets, and the embedded device markets. I don't know what will happen to desktop market, Microsoft may, like IBM with their mainframes, continue to dominate the desktop market ... and almost nobody will care.
Microsoft can NOT compete on cost with Linux, so they will not be the mainstream of IT. It MIGHT be that mainstream IT will be Linux based smart phones backed up with Linux based servers, with Microsoft holding a lock on a steadily becoming irrelevant desktop market. Regardless as to how things play out, I do know that the least expensive solution will eventually win out as the mainstream IT technology and that may mean a small Microsoft catering to a small niche market...
Colin McGregor
Overall a very good video, but there is a small flaw. The video incorrectly notes that Oleg Vladimirovich Losev was a scientist in Imperial Russia... While Oleg Vladimirovich Losev was born in Imperial Russia, by the time he was working on diodes, it was the Soviet Union.
Other than that, an excellent video that only left we with the question, where do you get chunks of carborundum?
While not quite as extreme as the Foxconn motherboard issue noted above, I have run into Linux a nasty gotcha with an ASUS motherboard. Below is an e-mail I sent to the ASUS staff I have dealt with over the last while, going over the issues I have had, and if anyone can supply me with the e-mail (or postal) addresses of senior staff at ASUS I would appreciate it...
-=-=-
Dear Kara Renner, Elijah Alexander and Blanca Ortiz;
This e-mail is to note and explain my current unhappiness with the experiences I have had with purchase of one of your M2N-MX SE PLUS motherboards. I have normally been happy with ASUS products, something I have been very willing to note in publications I have written for, such as www.linuxjournal.com/article/8219 .
Before purchasing the M2N-MX SE PLUS motherboard I did take the precaution of reading the motherboard manual to make sure it supported net booting, and according to your documentation it does.
After purchase it took me some time and effort to determine why this new machine would not net boot. The diagnose process did include downloading and installing the latest available BIOS. In the end the issue turned out to be a multicast MAC address burned into the motherboard. This multicast MAC address makes successful net booting out of the question. Having determined why the motherboard would not work, I called your firm, obtained an RMA number (EL864256) and I shipped the defective motherboard to your facility in Indiana (this in spite of the fact that your Canadian office is less than a 1 hour drive from my home). The motherboard was then returned to me, apparently untouched, as the MAC address on the motherboard had been not been changed. Further a secondary issue of concern, noted in the cover letter included with the motherboard, a BIOS bug, "MCFG area at e0000000 is not E-820-reserved" was not touched.
Further telephone complaints triggered the shipping of a replacement BIOS ROM, which by the time it arrived at my location had be knocked around in transit. After some effort, bending pins I was able to install the ROM, but found that the motherboard would not even get to the POST messages after this change. Returning to the original BIOS ROM would at least allow the motherboard to display the POST messages.
Additional calls resulted in my obtaining a second RMA number (2EL874667) and the shipping the motherboard yet again to your office in Indiana. This time I trust the motherboard will be repaired or replaced with a AMD AM2+ supporting microATX motherboard that does actually work.
Going forward, regardless as to the result of this latest repair effort, this motherboard is a complete and total failure.
My goal with this motherboard was to build a prototype basic "dumb" remote multimedia terminal that could be inexpensively, quickly built in significant numbers. For inexpensive, we are talking over $95, $55 for the motherboard, then over $40 for shipping multiple times to your office, plus a number dollars for incidental costs like long distance phone calls. The M2N-MX SE PLUS motherboard compares very badly against your competitors in the $95 price range. In terms of time, this is not a system that can be assembled quickly. Not only have I had to spend significant amounts of time assembling / disassembling a PC around this motherboard. I have also had to spend time troubleshooting, packing / unpacking and waiting for the repair. I am now looking a minimum of about two months between purchase and being able to actually use this motherboard, a figure I do not have the time to repeat. In other words, this is a prototype I can not repeat. I will have to look to another motherboard, most likely from another manufacture, to achieve my original goals.
You can assume this is the last M2N-MX SE PLUS motherboard I will purchase, and may be the last ASUS product I will ever purchase. You can also assume that I will passing word of my poor experiences on via a number of routes, my writing, my presentations before local user groups and the mailing lists / web forms to which I belong. This way the people I know or come in contact with will not make the same purchasing error I made.
Sincerely,
Colin McGregor
Without using Google, how many people know of any jeweler tool supply shops?
I do, Lacy and Company in Toronto, Ontario. But, ok, a little while ago I was looking at what would be involved in doing a small scale casting project, so I made a point of checking out Toronto, Ontario area metal suppliers and jewelry supply shops.
As for Lacy and Company, it is nice little shop that one will NOT find by accident (basement level of a small downtown office building). Still, kind of cute to wander around the store, lots of mini-tools for doing precision work, special waxes, ceramic containers for melting metals, along with presentation stuff (ring boxes and other stuff to show off completed work).
So, ok I may be an exception, but jewelry supply shops are around, just have to be willing to hunt a bit. As for the original story, doing a Green Lantern ring, not my style, but the story is interesting because it isn't too far from a topic that has been of on/off interest to me, doing small scale casting....
Meet The Press which got its start as a radio program in 1945, and then as a TV show in November 1947. This beats both Coronation Street, 1960 and Doctor Who, 1963. Now granted, Meet The Press is not a Science Fiction TV show, though, some of the material from members of the current U.S. administration have carried a Twilight Zone type feel.
x installed rootkit
x virus was written to use rootkit
x lied about it sending info
x licensing was illegal
x contained stolen copyrighted code
x created patch that contained vulnerability
x patch collected info from machine
x another drm contained vulnerability
x created patch with vulnerability
9 strikes. Did I leave anything out?
Regretably, yes
x patent infringement
So up to 10 strikes ... I have normally loved Sony hardware, back from the days when I had two Beta VCRs, but this stunt has been unforgivable...
True, but...
At the moment I have a very limited budget for hardware and a fair bit of free time, so, instead of spending $30 on a commercial firewall/router, I was much happier taking a Pentium 166 box and 2 network cards from my "junk" box, then running Coyote Linux on the lot. This combination has worked for 2 years, and I am happy with it, likely I will run this until the hardware fails (likely some time from now, as the box is almost empty (no hard drive, floppy only used during boot). When this combo does fail then likely I will check my junk box and see what other old/low-end stuff I have then.
In the mean time I have a usefull bit of hardware that I didn't have to spend $ on and it was a fun little project to do...
Colin McGregor My most recent article : A Beginning Look At MythTVMaybe not. But what you can do is record your own version of say Ludwig van Beethoven's 9th Symphony No.9 played on say a didgeridoo. Yes, the music would be clearly based on someone elses work, but it would be a work that is out of copyright.
Other sources of music that could be legally made available via P2P networks includes recordings that are old enough to be outside copyright (I have one relative who collects Edison Cylinder Phonograph recording, the vast majority of those are outside copyright).
AC wrote:
There's a whole slew of issues, not the least of which is population density. It is wonderful that those TINY little nations have ass-bleeding net access. And I'm not harshing them in any way, I'm just saying we have hela more land area. If you take the total population and divide that by square kilometres, it works out like this:
United States at 32/km
South Korea at 491/km
Belgium at 338/km
America is better off trying to wire everyone with digital satellite connections, than laying fibre or coax. Fibre works in the large cities, just like it works in those smaller nations.
Had you read the article you would have seen that Canada ranks number 2 in broadband take-up (behind South Korea but ahead of Belgium. Canada's population density at 3/km makes the United States seem absolutely packed. No, the lack of broadband in the U.S. is for reasons other than desnsity. My take on the problem is the big issues are:
Also, the amount of bandwidth available on a satellite is fairly limited (think a T3 per satellite), and while good for some remote communities, satellites will not deliver the sort of bandwidth to solve the bandwidth needs of a nation with the population like the United States.
As a Toronto resident I had planned on a quiet weekend, with nothing more than seeing FAHRENHEIT 9/11 now it looks like I will have to attending a store opening...
For the transit bound, looks like the best way to get to 2930 Dufferin St. address of the new store would be to go to the Laurence West subway station, then take any west bound bus (52+, 58+, or 59+) to Dufferin, then take the Dufferin (29+) bus south.
One of the Greek islands is the island of Lesbos (where the poet Sappho first wrote about love between women, and yes this is where the term lesbian comes from). This would be seriously cool on several counts:
In other words everyone who loves space exploration wins :-) .
A frequency counter is a standard bit of test equipment for people who have to test radio transmitters, be they these little very low power things like garage door openers, or big TV transmitters. What a frequency counter does is that it tells you what frequency your transmitter is ACTUALLY transmitting at (not what is being claimed). There are firms that sell frequency counters and building a frequncy counter is well with in the range of someone with reasonable construction skills, such as here or here.
Now for investigating aroung what you suspect may be a transmitter, well, a portable frequency counter will tell you if your dealing with a working transmitter, and if it is transmitting, what frequency the transmitter is using. That information can then lead you other places, like who is legally allowed to transmit on the frequency you are detecting...
I would expect other sauce makers to complain, quite rightfully too, because here Heinz would be using their near monopoly in one area (ketchup) to destroy competition in another area.
If I wanted the other Miranader sauce there is nothing keeping me from going and getting the other sauce. Now I have THREE sauces to choose from!!! Choosing one option over another always means giving up your investment in the first option. I don't quite understand this point. If a linux dev team were to switch to MS they'd have to give up their investment in Linux... ?? If Heinz offered apparel/novelty market goods that were good enough that I would buy them over the stuff I wear already, then I would buy their clothing.. What is wrong with that???Nothing wrong with Heinz offering apparel/novelty market goods. What would be wrong is IF (note the IF) Heinz were to tell retailers the cost of the ketchup will be 50% higher if they don't carry the apparel, or the ketchup will be 50% more if they carry any other brand of ketchup. The issue is not the near monopoly, it is how they got there and how they handle themselves once they became a near monopoly.
Yes, exectly, Heinz has some 90% of the U.S. ketchup market, this even though you can make your own ketchup, and firms like Hunt's offer ketchup. Yet the anti-trust people have not been knocking down Heinz's door. The key reason being that Heinz has not abused their position in the ketchup market. For example:
In other words this has never been about Microsoft having a near monopoly it is about the abuse of the monopoly. If for the sake of argument Microsoft had (like say Heinz) reached their position just by having a very good, resonably priced product, then not used their near monopoly to try and crush all others the regulators would have basicly left them alone. Instead Microsoft has taken a very different path... and the net result Heinz is being left alone while Microsoft isn't.
When the song "Jenny (867-5309)" came out that number was in use in Toronto, Ontario by a branch of the Bank of Montreal (Canadian banks unlike the US are allowed to set up branches where ever they want in the country). Needless to say within 48 hours of that song coming out that Bank of Montreal branch had a new phone number. Some firms/organizations just do want a well known number...
One of the things that struck me as interesting was seeing the SCO laptops were all running some flavour of Windows. One of the audience members (sitting in the back row) had a laptop running RedHat. In other words there were no SCO boxes at a SCO event...
Of the under 30 people there, two I know to be working with/for not for profit/charities that are SCO free and I was just there as a Linux centric consultant to try to understand the SCO mind (bit of a wasted effort I'm afraid...). In other words over 10 percent where non-SCO clients/resellers, and people who are unlikely to become SCO clients.
The seemed to be some question regarding the availability of source code for some GPL'ed software, with one of the resellers asking where to get the source for such programs as the SCO version of Apache, and the SCO people not being sure where or if the source was available.
Everyone present got a T-Shirt that on the back read:
---
[GOT UNIX IN YOUR LINUX?]
FACT: SCO OWNS THE LEGAL COPYRIGHT TO UNIX SYSTEM V.
FACT: SCO OWNS ALL CLAIMS ARISING OUT OF VIOLATIONS BY UNIX LICENSEES.
FACT: SCO HAS PROOF OF DIRECT COPYING OF SYSTEM V INTO LINUX.
I SAW IT FOR MYSELF AT SCOFORUM 2003
---
I did get some extra copies of this T-Shirt and think I will put them them up for sale at an upcomming Toronto Linux User Group meeting (for use as target practice?).
For food SCO put on a breakfast and lunch for attendies. The breakfast was lame, pastries, fruit, tea/coffee/fruit juice. Lunch was quite good, several kinds of salad, rice with veggies, spicy noodles with tiny shrimp, and/or chicken with veggies with tea/coffee/pop.