I hear you! Unfortunately we learn very quickly that when an American is saying "Don't you love America?" it's usually a herald for much more frightening behaviors, so we do tend to take it very seriously!
I think perhaps the best way to celebrate games like Dungeons and Dragons is to get some friends together and go play it.
And nobody is better than gamers at being petty and political when in large groups. I've been involved in the local science fiction convention crowd and I've never known a more incestuous, aloof, and petty bunch of people. Most visitors to the cons missed the point of about half of the events at the cons because they were all what amounts to pretty large circlejerks for the organisers. And yeah, some of them were furries. I'm not sure people like that should be trusted to run large events.
I'm going to jump up and say, yeah, as an Australian, I don't really like America. I'm more free than Americans, so I live in a land more free than the land of the free. Cute, huh? So, we got a four digit telling people on the "internet" that Slashdot is only for people who love America huh? That's a good one. If you were truly free, and truly believed in freedom, you'd respect other people's opinions a lot more than you do. And you sure as heck wouldn't stoop down so low from your 4 digit ivory tower to wrestle in the mud arguing on the internets.
Anyway, I digress. The Gen Con people messed up pretty bad. Colossally bad, I might say. From one of the linked articles:
1. Gen Con failed to uphold its legal obligations in terms of financial reporting, accounting and payments to Lucasfilm ($500,000 in damages) 2. Gen Con did not give auction proceeds to Make-A-Wish as they had agreed to do ($150,000 in damages) 3. Gen Con did not give Lucasfilm their share of the auction proceeds ($150,000 in damages) 4. Gen Con did this all unjustly ($150,000 in damages)
I don't want people who fleece the Make-A-Wish foundation, either through incompetence or malice, to be responsible for things I care about. People capable of that ineptitude are not "most prestigious". Nonetheless, the undeserving will always remain in positions of power. You don't always get what you want, but in a free country you should be entitled to try get it.
I recently bought a HOTAS (Hand On Throttle And Stick) Saitek joystick for playing Flight Simulators.
Flight sims have never been more realistic, but where they were once one of the greatest genres of PC gaming, now they've really fallen by the wayside.
Having said that, every gamepad out there now seems to have two little joysticks, so what are people going on about?
Joysticks are a clumsy way to play a lot of games, though. RTS? No joystick. FPS? No joystick. Third person? No joystick. This makes me wonder, if the joystick is such a weak control mechanism for anything, but, well, flightsims, why do consoles use two of them? Give me the perfect mouse + keyboard combo anyday.
*ring ring* BK: Hello, Burger King, how may I help you? Darl: Hello, my customer, McDonalds, has patents on the meat you use. BK: I'm sorry, what? Darl: That is our beef and you aren't authorised to use it. BK: Can you prove it? I'm going to get my manager. Darl: You can sell those whoppers but you have to buy a license from us for $699.99 for each one BK: *click**beepbeepbeep* Dark: Hello? Hello? I'm getting my lawyers to send you a letter, they're going to arrest you.
There will likely only be one more beta release after this one before Mozilla begins issuing final release candidates.
If a release candidate is supposed to be of high enough quality to immediately become the final release, then why would you *plan* to have more than one?
I know if you fail to plan, you plan to fail... but who plans to fail deliberately?
Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer no longer have the "File / Edit / View" menu bars across the top of the window. Translation: "The UI is different, I can't handle changes, or I am unwilling to learn to do things in a new and possibly more efficient manner."
Windows Explorer also did away with the "Up" button that lets you browse from the current directory to the higher-level directory. Translation: "The UI is different, I can't handle changes, or I am unwilling to learn to do things in a new and possibly more efficient manner."
I have an older monitor, so I wanted to turn ClearType off. Translation: "My PC isn't really modern enough to be running Vista, Vista was not intended for very old hardware, but I am doing it anyway, and expect Microsoft to bow to my wishes as a minority."
Virtual PC, which worked on all versions of Windows XP, is not supported on Vista Home Premium. Translation: "I wanted to save some money so didn't buy Ultimate, and didn't bother finding out that Microsoft, as a business, likes to charge more for additional functionality. I thought 'Home' obviously meant buy this O/S if you want to install Virtual Machines, typically a business function or enthusiast function, not a home user function. Also, I'm writing for an I/T website but I haven't heard about VMWare. Please continue to take me seriously anyway."
Telnet no longer installed by default. Translation: "I'm savvy enough to know what Telnet is, but I don't know how to install it. I don't know what PuTTY is. I'll blame that on Microsoft too."
The aforementioned Facebook problem. Translation: "I know and I've even mentioned that it was Facebook's IPv6 gear that was busted, but I'm going to try really hard to make it look like Microsoft's fault by including it in this article as a Vista gripe, because Vista had gone far enough to actually push IPv6 a little."
Can we get some unbiased journalism around here? Please?
At what point do you need to stop and consider your own sanity? When does a rational person recognise that their sheer greed has become so great that it is reinforcing what is essentially psychopathological behavior?
I am learning to play guitar. Last night I plucked a bunch of strings in an interesting and novel way. I will copyright that. I am concerned that Cary Sherman may violate the copyright on that music. He has a variety of devices in his home, and may install more, that he could use to violate that copyright. It has been shown before that members of the recording industry have violated copyrights in the past.
As such, I feel that I am justified in expecting video cameras and microphones be installed in every room of his house, a master key to every lock and the freedom to enter his house and shuffle through his belongings at any time. Also, in case he should try to "hide" my music entering his house through encryption, I believe I should be entitled to search him and his family and any prostitutes he has visiting him to ensure they are not violating my copyright. I will also make it mandatory for him to wear a microphone at all times to ensure he does not listen to my music without my permission.
Does that sound fair to you? It is copyright after all, I am protecting my rights. It is therefore fair for me to assume that Cary Sherman is guilty and intends to infringe my copyright.
The "journalist" made these awesome discoveries that there were minor differences in single trial file copying speeds of a memory card of all things. And further testing on unzipping files because that's such a core OS function.
The author didn't bother testing SMB1 vs. SMB2 copy speeds or even acknowledging that she understood there was a difference in these technologies.
I was going to make a joke about someone in my family being able to write a more authoritative article, but then I realised it wouldn't be a joke. Even my parents Jack Russel Terrier knows more about the real issues with Vista than this hack.
Can we get slashdot submitters to consider only submitting articles involving real journalism instead of a quick "Oh this looks like an anti-MS article!" kneejerk?
Well it is amazing but I can finally say that Australia has been ahead of the USA by several years on this one.
Every single Australian ISP has quotas. Every "broadband" plan is capped, cable or DSL.
Excess usage over quota will be dealt with in one of two ways, shaping speed down to dial-up levels, or charging a hefty fee per extra megabyte. I think a recent analysis of a Telstra plan showed you could run up a bill of several million dollars if you used your connection to it's full extent for a month.
This is because Australian ISPs entering broadband markets realised very quickly the same thing that Time Warner does, that a very small proportion of customers use the largest amount of data. This hurts the ISP's ability to oversubscribe their network connections, which in turn is less profitable. Also, beating up a minority of customers for the sake of profit is awesome, just ask any corporate exec.
Couple that with the most evil telco in the world, Telstra, and you can see why the thumbscrews were put on Australian broadband before it even hit the market.
Now it seems that evil corporations, wherever they are in the world, will continue to find new and more evil ways to gouge customers as time goes on. Good luck, USA, and have fun with the quotas.
Well yes... it's just the same as the open source community. You want your package to be better, so you just find some implementation that's great that someone else already did, and you hook it in (assuming your licenses are compatible).
The corporate world works the same way, but the things you need aren't free as in beer/speech, but cost $44.6 billion.
Anyone got a spare $44.7 billion? We could outbid Microsoft for a joke.
Ugh, it's worse than that, the chump didn't even bother patching the games or anything... nobody runs unpatched Civ IV (apart from this guy...)
I notice he didn't try running Crysis, Half-Life 2, Bioshock etc etc. Maybe he's not aware of them? Or maybe they'd knife his crummy headline-for-page-hits? What a hack!
Well, let me pick 4 really bad examples tested in such a bad way to absolutely show my results the way I want you to see them, and I'll be able to persuade the public into believing anything!
It's always interesting to read articles from people like Jamie, he's pretty gruff on the show and doesn't spend that much time on camera, but the article was quite well thought out and his writing was quite articulate. Even if it was nothing new. Having said that, he is a celebrity so maybe some marketing departments will pay attention?
Oh, but there is a difference between one reality and the other... ODF is an open standard. Public domain. OOXML is pwnt by the MS Office development team.
From that perspective, and assuming you were cloned and raised by Microsoft managers, you might not understand what IBM is doing - they won't directly cement a monopoly or even market control if ODF gets in. Microsoft will gain a lot by pushing OOXML.
From the outside point of view, Microsoft doesn't even lose if ODF gets chosen... it wouldn't be that hard for them to make Office support ODF. It's an open standard!
What I love about it, that made me chuckle, is that Microsoft is upset with IBM for running with a completely valid business model. Give away the software and make money from supporting and consulting? How dare they! IBM has done nothing wrong here. Microsoft can push a closed source agenda and IBM can push the open source/services/consulting model that they're subsisting on.
No kidding, IBM is pushing the services agenda as they have done ever since they became "good guys" and adopted open source models. This methodology threatens the Microsoft business model and they're upset.
Because copy protection has never been broken before, making it free will mean that game copying will stop forever. Just like how DRM ceased all music and video copyright infringement.
Or maybe DRM is access control, only wildly farcical in it's intent and design.
Access control - Sensible way to keep data secure and allow straightforward heirarchies of access (read only, write/modify/delete, execute). DRM - Batshit insane coked up record company exec spin on access control containing nutbag crazy ideas (read it sometimes, don't copy it even though you can read it, self destruct in five minutes, install rootkit to spy on you, etc etc). Defective by design.
It doesn't work as an operating system, but you could argue that neither does Vista. Which raises the question then, Vista has more flaws than most coffee mugs, can't be used to contain the delicious beverage, and doesn't work particularly well as an O/S.
Let's play with that analogy... After all, QT is bundled with Macs presumably to discourage proliferation of other media players, so it is the same strategy as Microsoft is using, just much weaker because of Apple's much lower market share.
But, Apple changing QT in such a way that it disables apps... this is farther than Microsoft ever went, ever, no matter how evil they are. No changes to MSIE ever disabled Netscape or Opera to prevent them from reading data from copyrighted Microsoft web pages.
Microsoft bundled a web browser to outcompete Netscape, and arguably to improve end user UI experience. Apple maliciously disabled third party software functionality to protect the MPAA without an even justifiable benefit to the end user.
Which of those two carries the most onerous and evil overtones? (Hint: MSIE doesn't disable your other web browsers).
Online gameplay costs an average of $15 USD per month
For americans, the highest rate is $15... longer subscriptions come at a reduced rate. Given 5.5 million of the subscribers are in asia, and Blizzard doesn't even run that version of WoW (it's outsourced)... anyway, I'm pretty sure it's not $15US/month.
Did you hear that? Possessions. Not licensed content, not rentals or leases, but things I own. When I buy music, I own that copy no matter how much they wrongly insist otherwise. I will not pay extra to buy restrictions to prevent me from using my possessions they way I want to use them, even if that was is undesirable for its makers. As long as I'm staying within the constraints of the law and not giving copies of it to others, it's none of their business (even if they wish it was).
Well... to some extent what you say is right, and to other extents, it's not. Yes, it's your copy and you should be able to do just about anything you like with it, take backups, listen to it anywhere you want to, and so on. But I believe the fundamental intention of copyright is still valid, too, people should get some reward for the work that they do. Copyright lengths have been extended perversely, probably 10, 15, 20 years at most would be plenty for a productive artist to live off the proceeds of one article of work and generate the next one. You shouldn't be able to set up a music distribution studio and sell everyone else's work under your own label by making and selling copies of the mudic you bought, but your comments imply that you are demanding exactly that right.
IT costs money. I'm sorry that your outsourcer had some bad ideas. But your management must understand that IT services aren't free, and the health of your company depends on it's infrastructure.
Without knowing the specifics, the only low cost suggestion I can provide is converting desktop PC's into Linux servers, thus providing you with the distributed server network you need. Of course, the boxes will be underpowered and fall over all the time (yay desktop hardware), but if you really want to cut costs, there you have it. For backups, put in extra hard disk and backup to disk, it beats nothing at all.
Will it manage VMs better than VirtualCenter? I am somehow thinking that it won't. VMWare really has a solid product, it will be very difficult for them to compete with such a heavily entrenched company.
Slashdot Mirror
I hear you! Unfortunately we learn very quickly that when an American is saying "Don't you love America?" it's usually a herald for much more frightening behaviors, so we do tend to take it very seriously!
I think perhaps the best way to celebrate games like Dungeons and Dragons is to get some friends together and go play it.
And nobody is better than gamers at being petty and political when in large groups. I've been involved in the local science fiction convention crowd and I've never known a more incestuous, aloof, and petty bunch of people. Most visitors to the cons missed the point of about half of the events at the cons because they were all what amounts to pretty large circlejerks for the organisers. And yeah, some of them were furries. I'm not sure people like that should be trusted to run large events.
I'm going to jump up and say, yeah, as an Australian, I don't really like America. I'm more free than Americans, so I live in a land more free than the land of the free. Cute, huh? So, we got a four digit telling people on the "internet" that Slashdot is only for people who love America huh? That's a good one. If you were truly free, and truly believed in freedom, you'd respect other people's opinions a lot more than you do. And you sure as heck wouldn't stoop down so low from your 4 digit ivory tower to wrestle in the mud arguing on the internets.
Anyway, I digress. The Gen Con people messed up pretty bad. Colossally bad, I might say. From one of the linked articles:
1. Gen Con failed to uphold its legal obligations in terms of financial reporting, accounting and payments to Lucasfilm ($500,000 in damages)
2. Gen Con did not give auction proceeds to Make-A-Wish as they had agreed to do ($150,000 in damages)
3. Gen Con did not give Lucasfilm their share of the auction proceeds ($150,000 in damages)
4. Gen Con did this all unjustly ($150,000 in damages)
I don't want people who fleece the Make-A-Wish foundation, either through incompetence or malice, to be responsible for things I care about. People capable of that ineptitude are not "most prestigious". Nonetheless, the undeserving will always remain in positions of power. You don't always get what you want, but in a free country you should be entitled to try get it.
I recently bought a HOTAS (Hand On Throttle And Stick) Saitek joystick for playing Flight Simulators.
Flight sims have never been more realistic, but where they were once one of the greatest genres of PC gaming, now they've really fallen by the wayside.
Having said that, every gamepad out there now seems to have two little joysticks, so what are people going on about?
Joysticks are a clumsy way to play a lot of games, though. RTS? No joystick. FPS? No joystick. Third person? No joystick. This makes me wonder, if the joystick is such a weak control mechanism for anything, but, well, flightsims, why do consoles use two of them? Give me the perfect mouse + keyboard combo anyday.
He's going to work at McDonalds.
*ring ring*
BK: Hello, Burger King, how may I help you?
Darl: Hello, my customer, McDonalds, has patents on the meat you use.
BK: I'm sorry, what?
Darl: That is our beef and you aren't authorised to use it.
BK: Can you prove it? I'm going to get my manager.
Darl: You can sell those whoppers but you have to buy a license from us for $699.99 for each one
BK: *click**beepbeepbeep*
Dark: Hello? Hello? I'm getting my lawyers to send you a letter, they're going to arrest you.
Wait a minute
There will likely only be one more beta release after this one before Mozilla begins issuing final release candidates.
If a release candidate is supposed to be of high enough quality to immediately become the final release, then why would you *plan* to have more than one?
I know if you fail to plan, you plan to fail... but who plans to fail deliberately?
Let's run one out to Alpha Centauri.
No? I guess "unlimited" was a bit of an overstatement then.
Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer no longer have the "File / Edit / View" menu bars across the top of the window.
Translation: "The UI is different, I can't handle changes, or I am unwilling to learn to do things in a new and possibly more efficient manner."
Windows Explorer also did away with the "Up" button that lets you browse from the current directory to the higher-level directory.
Translation: "The UI is different, I can't handle changes, or I am unwilling to learn to do things in a new and possibly more efficient manner."
I have an older monitor, so I wanted to turn ClearType off.
Translation: "My PC isn't really modern enough to be running Vista, Vista was not intended for very old hardware, but I am doing it anyway, and expect Microsoft to bow to my wishes as a minority."
Virtual PC, which worked on all versions of Windows XP, is not supported on Vista Home Premium.
Translation: "I wanted to save some money so didn't buy Ultimate, and didn't bother finding out that Microsoft, as a business, likes to charge more for additional functionality. I thought 'Home' obviously meant buy this O/S if you want to install Virtual Machines, typically a business function or enthusiast function, not a home user function. Also, I'm writing for an I/T website but I haven't heard about VMWare. Please continue to take me seriously anyway."
Telnet no longer installed by default.
Translation: "I'm savvy enough to know what Telnet is, but I don't know how to install it. I don't know what PuTTY is. I'll blame that on Microsoft too."
The aforementioned Facebook problem.
Translation: "I know and I've even mentioned that it was Facebook's IPv6 gear that was busted, but I'm going to try really hard to make it look like Microsoft's fault by including it in this article as a Vista gripe, because Vista had gone far enough to actually push IPv6 a little."
Can we get some unbiased journalism around here? Please?
At what point do you need to stop and consider your own sanity? When does a rational person recognise that their sheer greed has become so great that it is reinforcing what is essentially psychopathological behavior?
I am learning to play guitar. Last night I plucked a bunch of strings in an interesting and novel way. I will copyright that. I am concerned that Cary Sherman may violate the copyright on that music. He has a variety of devices in his home, and may install more, that he could use to violate that copyright. It has been shown before that members of the recording industry have violated copyrights in the past.
As such, I feel that I am justified in expecting video cameras and microphones be installed in every room of his house, a master key to every lock and the freedom to enter his house and shuffle through his belongings at any time. Also, in case he should try to "hide" my music entering his house through encryption, I believe I should be entitled to search him and his family and any prostitutes he has visiting him to ensure they are not violating my copyright. I will also make it mandatory for him to wear a microphone at all times to ensure he does not listen to my music without my permission.
Does that sound fair to you? It is copyright after all, I am protecting my rights. It is therefore fair for me to assume that Cary Sherman is guilty and intends to infringe my copyright.
The "journalist" made these awesome discoveries that there were minor differences in single trial file copying speeds of a memory card of all things. And further testing on unzipping files because that's such a core OS function.
The author didn't bother testing SMB1 vs. SMB2 copy speeds or even acknowledging that she understood there was a difference in these technologies.
I was going to make a joke about someone in my family being able to write a more authoritative article, but then I realised it wouldn't be a joke. Even my parents Jack Russel Terrier knows more about the real issues with Vista than this hack.
Can we get slashdot submitters to consider only submitting articles involving real journalism instead of a quick "Oh this looks like an anti-MS article!" kneejerk?
Well it is amazing but I can finally say that Australia has been ahead of the USA by several years on this one.
Every single Australian ISP has quotas. Every "broadband" plan is capped, cable or DSL.
Excess usage over quota will be dealt with in one of two ways, shaping speed down to dial-up levels, or charging a hefty fee per extra megabyte. I think a recent analysis of a Telstra plan showed you could run up a bill of several million dollars if you used your connection to it's full extent for a month.
This is because Australian ISPs entering broadband markets realised very quickly the same thing that Time Warner does, that a very small proportion of customers use the largest amount of data. This hurts the ISP's ability to oversubscribe their network connections, which in turn is less profitable. Also, beating up a minority of customers for the sake of profit is awesome, just ask any corporate exec.
Couple that with the most evil telco in the world, Telstra, and you can see why the thumbscrews were put on Australian broadband before it even hit the market.
Now it seems that evil corporations, wherever they are in the world, will continue to find new and more evil ways to gouge customers as time goes on. Good luck, USA, and have fun with the quotas.
Well yes... it's just the same as the open source community. You want your package to be better, so you just find some implementation that's great that someone else already did, and you hook it in (assuming your licenses are compatible).
The corporate world works the same way, but the things you need aren't free as in beer/speech, but cost $44.6 billion.
Anyone got a spare $44.7 billion? We could outbid Microsoft for a joke.
Ugh, it's worse than that, the chump didn't even bother patching the games or anything... nobody runs unpatched Civ IV (apart from this guy...)
I notice he didn't try running Crysis, Half-Life 2, Bioshock etc etc. Maybe he's not aware of them? Or maybe they'd knife his crummy headline-for-page-hits? What a hack!
Well, let me pick 4 really bad examples tested in such a bad way to absolutely show my results the way I want you to see them, and I'll be able to persuade the public into believing anything!
They misspelled "eatosaurs". Which is certainly appropriate for ancient crocodiles!
It's always interesting to read articles from people like Jamie, he's pretty gruff on the show and doesn't spend that much time on camera, but the article was quite well thought out and his writing was quite articulate. Even if it was nothing new. Having said that, he is a celebrity so maybe some marketing departments will pay attention?
Oh, but there is a difference between one reality and the other... ODF is an open standard. Public domain. OOXML is pwnt by the MS Office development team.
From that perspective, and assuming you were cloned and raised by Microsoft managers, you might not understand what IBM is doing - they won't directly cement a monopoly or even market control if ODF gets in. Microsoft will gain a lot by pushing OOXML.
From the outside point of view, Microsoft doesn't even lose if ODF gets chosen... it wouldn't be that hard for them to make Office support ODF. It's an open standard!
What I love about it, that made me chuckle, is that Microsoft is upset with IBM for running with a completely valid business model. Give away the software and make money from supporting and consulting? How dare they! IBM has done nothing wrong here. Microsoft can push a closed source agenda and IBM can push the open source/services/consulting model that they're subsisting on.
No kidding, IBM is pushing the services agenda as they have done ever since they became "good guys" and adopted open source models. This methodology threatens the Microsoft business model and they're upset.
Because copy protection has never been broken before, making it free will mean that game copying will stop forever. Just like how DRM ceased all music and video copyright infringement.
Or maybe DRM is access control, only wildly farcical in it's intent and design.
Access control - Sensible way to keep data secure and allow straightforward heirarchies of access (read only, write/modify/delete, execute).
DRM - Batshit insane coked up record company exec spin on access control containing nutbag crazy ideas (read it sometimes, don't copy it even though you can read it, self destruct in five minutes, install rootkit to spy on you, etc etc). Defective by design.
I've seen rats eating plants all the time. Usually they like to eat food pellets too. What's the big deal?
Has fewer flaws than Vista or XP, or even Linux.
It doesn't work as an operating system, but you could argue that neither does Vista. Which raises the question then, Vista has more flaws than most coffee mugs, can't be used to contain the delicious beverage, and doesn't work particularly well as an O/S.
What exactly are they trying to prove again?
Let's play with that analogy... After all, QT is bundled with Macs presumably to discourage proliferation of other media players, so it is the same strategy as Microsoft is using, just much weaker because of Apple's much lower market share.
But, Apple changing QT in such a way that it disables apps... this is farther than Microsoft ever went, ever, no matter how evil they are. No changes to MSIE ever disabled Netscape or Opera to prevent them from reading data from copyrighted Microsoft web pages.
Microsoft bundled a web browser to outcompete Netscape, and arguably to improve end user UI experience.
Apple maliciously disabled third party software functionality to protect the MPAA without an even justifiable benefit to the end user.
Which of those two carries the most onerous and evil overtones? (Hint: MSIE doesn't disable your other web browsers).
Online gameplay costs an average of $15 USD per month
For americans, the highest rate is $15... longer subscriptions come at a reduced rate.
Given 5.5 million of the subscribers are in asia, and Blizzard doesn't even run that version of WoW (it's outsourced)... anyway, I'm pretty sure it's not $15US/month.
Did you hear that? Possessions. Not licensed content, not rentals or leases, but things I own. When I buy music, I own that copy no matter how much they wrongly insist otherwise. I will not pay extra to buy restrictions to prevent me from using my possessions they way I want to use them, even if that was is undesirable for its makers. As long as I'm staying within the constraints of the law and not giving copies of it to others, it's none of their business (even if they wish it was).
Well... to some extent what you say is right, and to other extents, it's not. Yes, it's your copy and you should be able to do just about anything you like with it, take backups, listen to it anywhere you want to, and so on. But I believe the fundamental intention of copyright is still valid, too, people should get some reward for the work that they do. Copyright lengths have been extended perversely, probably 10, 15, 20 years at most would be plenty for a productive artist to live off the proceeds of one article of work and generate the next one. You shouldn't be able to set up a music distribution studio and sell everyone else's work under your own label by making and selling copies of the mudic you bought, but your comments imply that you are demanding exactly that right.
Some basic truths.
IT costs money. I'm sorry that your outsourcer had some bad ideas. But your management must understand that IT services aren't free, and the health of your company depends on it's infrastructure.
Without knowing the specifics, the only low cost suggestion I can provide is converting desktop PC's into Linux servers, thus providing you with the distributed server network you need. Of course, the boxes will be underpowered and fall over all the time (yay desktop hardware), but if you really want to cut costs, there you have it. For backups, put in extra hard disk and backup to disk, it beats nothing at all.
Will it manage VMs better than VirtualCenter? I am somehow thinking that it won't. VMWare really has a solid product, it will be very difficult for them to compete with such a heavily entrenched company.