...an adaptation of the Open Code Market idea. I'm glad the open source community is exploring more and more ways to make a living while creating free software.
There's a neat link at the bottom of the article to another article about $200 being the magic number for PCs.
I've always thought this would be a neat idea for corporations: Several fairly powerful servers, running everything from file sharing to groupware (on BSD or Linux, SMP, etc.). A bunch of cheap PCs with no hard drives and Knoppix-type CDs configured for the company's network. All files accessed via NFS, etc.
Talk about a) inexpensive solution and b) easy support. The computers are throwaways, and you don't have to move data from a broken one to a new one. It's all on the servers. But the computers are still powerful enough to do plenty of processing on their own.
Upgrades are a cinch - distribute new CDs to everyone.
With $200 computers (how much cheaper would they be without hard drives?) it's more than possible.
I love it... spammers paying the salaries of those that hunt them.
On the other hand, this is reminiscent of some Corporate Avenger lyrics (from "Taxes are Stealing"):
Their hands are in our pockets, They're bleeding us to death, They fucking keep on taking till there's nothing fucking left
. .. And if you don't cooperate, They'll lock your ass away With the very fucking money that they fucking took away
Second, I'm talking about the original legal definition of monopoly, not the perverted (that's "distorted," not "disgusting and objected to by most Christians and soccer moms") definition created by the anti-trust laws that were passed in the late 1800s in the US.
The "monopolies" which did not have legal force and were broken up based on those laws, mostly would have been legal prior to those laws being passed. AT&T is an exception because of the initial semi-monopoly rights granted to it by the US government.
I've read it. I still don't see a problem with MS using its large market share in the OS market to distribute its media player.
First of all, my comment about using Winamp/RealPlayer/Quicktime applies. Windows does not disable any of that functionality. I have multiple media players on my system and use them without problems.
Second, I don't see why my rant isn't relevant. It all comes down to anti-trust issues anyway. They're using their market share in the OS market to expand vertically into the media player market. But they don't have any sort of legal compulsion that allows them to force people to only use their media player. That's what I was talking about. Why should a government get involved? Let people choose to install Winamp if they wish. Most people I know do.
I know this goes against the grain of what most Slashdotters believe, but Microsoft is not a monopoly. A monopoly is a company that gets exclusive market rights from the government. The US Postal Service is a monopoly, because (IIRC) the US government forbids anyone from charging lower postage for first class mail within the US, for example.
If you don't like IE, use Netscape or Opera or lynx or whatever. If you don't like Windows, use Linux or BSD or HURD or BeOS or MacOS or...
If you don't like Windows Media Player, use Winamp or RealPlayer or Quicktime or whatever you want.
Customers who aren't satisfied with Microsoft don't sue them. They simply switch to a better solution. Microsoft simply does not have the legal ability to force alternatives out of existence. They are not a legal monopoly.
I wish the governments of the world would get that already, and stop wasting our tax money on lawyers. And stop wasting our tax money on Microsoft licenses too, whose prices are inflated by Microsoft's legal fees.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, switch to open-source software and stop being so sue-happy. Stupid governments.
Interestingly, Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto has made similar claims in his book, The Mystery of Capital. I've skimmed the book at a bookstore (haven't gotten the time to buy/read it), but it makes a lot of sense. Apparently he's leading a government initiative in Peru to formalize in legal code most of the extralegal property rights that have existed there, and it's having a very large positive impact on their economy.
In all seriousness, I know someone that's working on an open-source point of sale project that I think is able to use the Cue Cat. I can't get a hold of him to get the URL for it now, though...
The device could be very small because it would not involve moving parts such as the laser and motor drive required by CDs.
From what a professor told me once, CDs didn't have to be created the way they are. They could've been made square so that, instead of the CD spinning in the tray, the laser beam would be bent by a prism (or through other means). This would make CD technology much faster and less susceptible to errors, etc.
Why did they make CDs round? Because they were first used for audio, so they were made to look like records. A silly marketing strategy screwed us out of a much better implementation of the same technology!
I created several stages of images for the deployment I did. The first was an image of the OS itself, and then I created various app deployment packages. Then I imaged the original OS-only image onto a machine's HD, deployed the app packages to it, and made an image of that. Worked like a charm!
Ghost has worked fine for me in the past, but I really like Novell's Zenworks server. I haven't tried Ghostcast so I'm guessing they're somewhat similar, but Zenworks uses a 3-disk Linux boot floppy system and their image program can back up and restore onto local and server-based images. With some finagling, you can just create those floppy disks and copy straight from one drive to another (and unlike dd, it's a file-by-file rather than bit-by-bit copy).
That still doesn't address the problem of some/most CDs having a few good songs and the rest being crap filler. IMO, services like iTunes remain a better idea because you can buy only the songs you want.
I knew robots would one day replace humans in jobs, but THIS? I mean, artists are ALREADY so desperate that the RIAA has to sue 12-year-old girls without having to compete with ROBOTS too!
Not just like it. Capable of the same functionality.
I, personally, could care less. I don't use most of the features in Outlook. But half the customers that my company supports do, and the other half (which uses Groupwise) complains about the features that aren't available (particularly shared folders). Outlook also makes it easier to open multiple mailboxes than Groupwise's "proxy" feature. We may even be moving one of our customers from Netware to Windows. One of our ex-customers hired an internal IT guy who switched them from Netware to Windows himself (with my help, on a Saturday and Sunday, because he fucked things up).
In any case, my observations were mostly about what it would take to get people to start using Linux on the desktop. *shrug* Hey, if it's what people want, why not give it to 'em?
If it was up to me, all of our customers would be on Linux.:)
I think there have been two things keeping Linux from taking the desktop by storm.
The first, and possibly most important, has been the lack of anything like MS Outlook for the Linux platform. Security flaws aside, it's a great way to keep everything organized - from e-mail, to scheduling, to notes, to tasks, etc. I looked at Ximian Evolution, but it doesn't allow public folders. A lot of our customers love those public folders - particularly for scheduling things. That's one of the grievances some of our customers have with Groupwise, too.
Now, though, I see Kontact/Kolab ramping up as an integrated groupware solution that will be distributed with KDE, already one of the two most popular desktops for X. Once this starts being adopted as a groupware solution by companies, IMO, corporate desktops are going to see a lot more Linux. I also think it will propel KDE ahead of Gnome (because Evolution, again, IMO, doesn't stack up to Kontact).
The other thing, and I haven't looked closely for it, so it may already exist, but that's an easy development tool for X. Visual Basic-style. Make something easy for your run-of-the-mill Joe to code halfway useful applications in, make it integrate well with an Office suite (preferably KOffice, since Kontact will work well with it), and make it free and open-source. Better yet, provide easy ways of migrating legacy VB/VBA code to it. Wham bam thank you ma'am, Linux on the desktop.
Slashdot Mirror
Hrm... yeah, I think you're right. Same sort of idea though - MS issued a new CRL entry using Windows Update.
Not only that, but it was Slammer that infected them. Blaster used an RPC exploit. :)
That happened once. Someone got their hands on a copy of one of Microsoft's private keys for code signing.
:)
They very quickly put out a Critical Update that added the key to IE's certificate revocation list, IIRC. I remember installing that update.
...an adaptation of the Open Code Market idea. I'm glad the open source community is exploring more and more ways to make a living while creating free software.
There's a neat link at the bottom of the article to another article about $200 being the magic number for PCs.
I've always thought this would be a neat idea for corporations: Several fairly powerful servers, running everything from file sharing to groupware (on BSD or Linux, SMP, etc.). A bunch of cheap PCs with no hard drives and Knoppix-type CDs configured for the company's network. All files accessed via NFS, etc.
Talk about a) inexpensive solution and b) easy support. The computers are throwaways, and you don't have to move data from a broken one to a new one. It's all on the servers. But the computers are still powerful enough to do plenty of processing on their own.
Upgrades are a cinch - distribute new CDs to everyone.
With $200 computers (how much cheaper would they be without hard drives?) it's more than possible.
Hrm.
I love it... spammers paying the salaries of those that hunt them.
On the other hand, this is reminiscent of some Corporate Avenger lyrics (from "Taxes are Stealing"):
No they won't. With a penis that's 30-70% longer, they'll have other convicts BEGGING to be their bitches!
I'm glad the iPod wasn't around about 7 years ago, when I was 16.
I can just imagine plugging into one and hearing "MMMMMMMMBOP!"
I can also imagine subsequently spending about 30 years in prison for ruthlessly ripping apart a teenage girl.
First, thanks for the ad hominem fallacy.
Second, I'm talking about the original legal definition of monopoly, not the perverted (that's "distorted," not "disgusting and objected to by most Christians and soccer moms") definition created by the anti-trust laws that were passed in the late 1800s in the US.
The "monopolies" which did not have legal force and were broken up based on those laws, mostly would have been legal prior to those laws being passed. AT&T is an exception because of the initial semi-monopoly rights granted to it by the US government.
I've read it. I still don't see a problem with MS using its large market share in the OS market to distribute its media player.
First of all, my comment about using Winamp/RealPlayer/Quicktime applies. Windows does not disable any of that functionality. I have multiple media players on my system and use them without problems.
Second, I don't see why my rant isn't relevant. It all comes down to anti-trust issues anyway. They're using their market share in the OS market to expand vertically into the media player market. But they don't have any sort of legal compulsion that allows them to force people to only use their media player. That's what I was talking about. Why should a government get involved? Let people choose to install Winamp if they wish. Most people I know do.
I know this goes against the grain of what most Slashdotters believe, but Microsoft is not a monopoly. A monopoly is a company that gets exclusive market rights from the government. The US Postal Service is a monopoly, because (IIRC) the US government forbids anyone from charging lower postage for first class mail within the US, for example.
If you don't like IE, use Netscape or Opera or lynx or whatever. If you don't like Windows, use Linux or BSD or HURD or BeOS or MacOS or...
If you don't like Windows Media Player, use Winamp or RealPlayer or Quicktime or whatever you want.
Customers who aren't satisfied with Microsoft don't sue them. They simply switch to a better solution. Microsoft simply does not have the legal ability to force alternatives out of existence. They are not a legal monopoly.
I wish the governments of the world would get that already, and stop wasting our tax money on lawyers. And stop wasting our tax money on Microsoft licenses too, whose prices are inflated by Microsoft's legal fees.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, switch to open-source software and stop being so sue-happy. Stupid governments.
Interestingly, Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto has made similar claims in his book, The Mystery of Capital. I've skimmed the book at a bookstore (haven't gotten the time to buy/read it), but it makes a lot of sense. Apparently he's leading a government initiative in Peru to formalize in legal code most of the extralegal property rights that have existed there, and it's having a very large positive impact on their economy.
...the rights of the dead buried people that they're digging up?
Who owns those plots of land? Do dead bodies automatically become the property of the state?
Cue Cats will be back! Their website says so!
In all seriousness, I know someone that's working on an open-source point of sale project that I think is able to use the Cue Cat. I can't get a hold of him to get the URL for it now, though...
...no secret Ritz crackers on the inside?
I want my money back.
The device could be very small because it would not involve moving parts such as the laser and motor drive required by CDs.
From what a professor told me once, CDs didn't have to be created the way they are. They could've been made square so that, instead of the CD spinning in the tray, the laser beam would be bent by a prism (or through other means). This would make CD technology much faster and less susceptible to errors, etc.
Why did they make CDs round? Because they were first used for audio, so they were made to look like records. A silly marketing strategy screwed us out of a much better implementation of the same technology!
I created several stages of images for the deployment I did. The first was an image of the OS itself, and then I created various app deployment packages. Then I imaged the original OS-only image onto a machine's HD, deployed the app packages to it, and made an image of that. Worked like a charm!
Ghost has worked fine for me in the past, but I really like Novell's Zenworks server. I haven't tried Ghostcast so I'm guessing they're somewhat similar, but Zenworks uses a 3-disk Linux boot floppy system and their image program can back up and restore onto local and server-based images. With some finagling, you can just create those floppy disks and copy straight from one drive to another (and unlike dd, it's a file-by-file rather than bit-by-bit copy).
The "Shaft" key.
That still doesn't address the problem of some/most CDs having a few good songs and the rest being crap filler. IMO, services like iTunes remain a better idea because you can buy only the songs you want.
I knew robots would one day replace humans in jobs, but THIS? I mean, artists are ALREADY so desperate that the RIAA has to sue 12-year-old girls without having to compete with ROBOTS too!
Oh, man, that's awesome. I'm going to start playing with that ASAP! :)
Which RFC'd server are you talking about? Cyrus?
:)
Please point me in the right direction... I'm curious now!
Moderators, please mod parent up. He brings up some interesting/informative points!
Not just like it. Capable of the same functionality.
:)
I, personally, could care less. I don't use most of the features in Outlook. But half the customers that my company supports do, and the other half (which uses Groupwise) complains about the features that aren't available (particularly shared folders). Outlook also makes it easier to open multiple mailboxes than Groupwise's "proxy" feature. We may even be moving one of our customers from Netware to Windows. One of our ex-customers hired an internal IT guy who switched them from Netware to Windows himself (with my help, on a Saturday and Sunday, because he fucked things up).
In any case, my observations were mostly about what it would take to get people to start using Linux on the desktop. *shrug* Hey, if it's what people want, why not give it to 'em?
If it was up to me, all of our customers would be on Linux.
I think there have been two things keeping Linux from taking the desktop by storm.
The first, and possibly most important, has been the lack of anything like MS Outlook for the Linux platform. Security flaws aside, it's a great way to keep everything organized - from e-mail, to scheduling, to notes, to tasks, etc. I looked at Ximian Evolution, but it doesn't allow public folders. A lot of our customers love those public folders - particularly for scheduling things. That's one of the grievances some of our customers have with Groupwise, too.
Now, though, I see Kontact/Kolab ramping up as an integrated groupware solution that will be distributed with KDE, already one of the two most popular desktops for X. Once this starts being adopted as a groupware solution by companies, IMO, corporate desktops are going to see a lot more Linux. I also think it will propel KDE ahead of Gnome (because Evolution, again, IMO, doesn't stack up to Kontact).
The other thing, and I haven't looked closely for it, so it may already exist, but that's an easy development tool for X. Visual Basic-style. Make something easy for your run-of-the-mill Joe to code halfway useful applications in, make it integrate well with an Office suite (preferably KOffice, since Kontact will work well with it), and make it free and open-source. Better yet, provide easy ways of migrating legacy VB/VBA code to it. Wham bam thank you ma'am, Linux on the desktop.