I think customs was defrauded. Now, normally you defaud customs by saying something is worth less, not more. However, customs agents usually don't have good senses of humor.
Yeah, this guy had balls. I've heard of cases where there has been murders over stuff like this- not sure if it is true or not but think about the quality of people that you are dealing with on the other end and then ask yourself whether it was worth it.
Amusing, none the less, and entertaining to read. But overall I think you are better off just reporting the scam and letting it go. Sure, reporting it probably won't result in anything, but it is about the most we can legally do.
I've run various distos over time... they all have their good and bad points.
But, it is a matter of choices that people have been talking about lately. There are too many choices when it comes to Linux for the average Joe. The community is going in all different directions. It doesn't have to be that way though. OS X is a perfect example. I've love to see a vendor put that kind of shell around the linux kernel. They might have to dump KDE or Gnome and start from scratch, I don't know. But think of it- drag and drop installs, easy administration, etc. You don't spend days trying to figure out how to make things in OS X work. The thing is, I paid a lot for my iBook. It was worth it. I'd be willing to fork out some bucks for a similar OS package that was Linux based. There is money to be had out there. But the value add from most of the folks like Mandrake, Suse, RedHat, etc seems to be rather minimal compared to what Apple did with BSD.
Hi, thanks for the post. We're building more of these picture frames so your advice is not too late.
Can I make my WM xscreensaver by configuring ~/.xsession? That is the only way I had luck changing from KDE to icewm. The other options, toying around with/gdm/sessions and so forth, never really worked. I was missing something critical I think.
I had also considered using a screen saver, but the only way I could think of at the time was to boot into KDE and set the screen saver time to the minimum (1 minute) but I didn't like the 1 minute delay since that is essentially a wasted minute staring at the desktop.
I highly doubt that most people just can't get enough of XP.
What does that say about Linux on the desktop? It is free and readily available yet almost nobody is using it.
So why else are people using XP, if they aren't being forced to and there is an alternative? I've been reminded of why yet once again. My current project is a digital picture frame inspired by a previous slashdot story. It took several days of hacking to get RedHat 9 to do what I wanted (boot, log in, and go to a slideshow with no mouse cursor and never go into standby, and power down gracefully when the ATX power button is pressed. Well, just about nothing was pre-compiled. I had to compile the slideshow, Feh, along with imlib2 and several dependencies. I had to search all over and finally find and compile "unclutter", an app that would make the cursor go away. I had to do a kernel mod (powewswitch.o) which I still don't fully understand that picked up on the APM suspend hint and instead runs "shutdown -h now). Also, I was running KDE but then realized it was uncessary to use it's bloatware for this so went with Icewm only to find now a lot of the things I had configured to do with powerdown and stuff now had to be tweaked back to the Xfree86 config file. Also, RH 9 threw me for a few loops because it still used GDM even if you don't install Gnome and only run KDE. However, they put KDM stuff in the control panel making you think you can change login options there, only to get frustrated when they have no effect.
Anyway, this is a propietary project of course but a lot of the things were things oridinary users might want (slideshow apps, powerdown on power switch press, etc). Secondly, XP still would have been a better choice I think. It still boots much faster than RH 9 with everything turned off and IceWM. And, it would have been easier to configure- because most software is ALREADY COMPILED for one. So I did this project using Linux because I'm a geek and wanted to learn something new. Joe User however is going to turn to XP. Not because Microsoft is a monopoly but because it does things better than everyone else- like it or not.
P.S. I guess I can expect a flame now on the way I did things with my RH 9 install. Remember, though- I'm a software engineer and have loaded Linux on several boxes at my shop over the years. My whole point is usability by everyday people.
How many teachers have lost their jobs based solely on the accusations of children? I know of one, personally, but don't know many teachers so I would assume the numbers nationwide are greater. The truth is, people are in fact sometimes found guilty in a "his word against mine" type situation.
Having circumstantial evidence that a jury might view as repulsive (i.e. porn) is just going to make it worse.
These days, any combination of innocent things can make a trial by jury a very dangerous thing for an innocent person.
Case in point. Say a neighbor asks if his kid can come over to my house one afternoon for help with his math homework or something. Say the kid isn't as well adjusted as I thought, and tells everyone I touched him.
Well, that alone means I am now guilty in todays world. But enter the detectives. They take my PC and find that I have some porn in my cache. Most of it is adult porn which is bad enough. But then they go and do ID checks on some of the pics and turns out the girls were mature looking 16 year olds. Fuck, now I'm just sick- a true pedophile.
By now, the community has been told who I am. There are posters up in my neighborhood. My employer fires me. Even if I don't get convicted for some reason, my life is still over. And if I do get convicted, I'm now taking it in the butt in some federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison. In which case I'd probably kill myself.
Anybody can disagree with me if they like, but this kind of shit isn't a stretch. The story was bad enough even if I didn't have porn on my box, but that fact just kind of seals the deal.
I really had no idea how bad popups had gotten (since I haven't seen them in years) until trying to use my sister's computer over the weekend. Even the "standard" sites have popups. I went to a few places like cnn and so forth, and after closing the browser realized there was a stack of popups.
What is funny is how easily these things are to dispose of. The advertisers are damn lucky that more people don't have brains. Otherwise, a 5 minute download for most folks and they'd never see the ads again!
If this were true in the philisophical sense that you are communicating, there wouldn't be much incentive for anybody to actually make music, would there? I guess you don't favor the private ownership of anything at all, do you? In other words, any bum seeking warmth can invite himself into your home at any point, since your home isn't owned by you, but the public. It is the least you could do, if you expect a musician to immediately hand over his product to the public.
Well, what was the seller's feedback rating in both cases? I think it is a good idea to not just look at the number, but read the comments. See what has happened in the past when an item has arrived damaged, or was the wrong item, etc.
However, back to what you said- Often the stuff on e-bay is available for about the same price locally. So when it comes to dishing out a few hundred bucks, you have to really ask yourself- would you rather buy from someone who you can go kick the crap out of if necessary, or from basically an anonymous seller? No, you won't find me dropping big bucks on e-bay either.
When people send me Excel files, I kindly ask them to re-send the file in CSV or some other format.
While this sometimes work, it doesn't work when your customers are some of the largest companies in the U.S. and they're buying your software for a hundred grand or more a pop. No, I don't think my boss would appreciate me telling our customers to export their spreadheets as CSV and resend. Now isn't the time to have ethical arguments with your boss about Microsoft Excel. Especially with about a few million Patel's in India waiting in line for my job.
Personally, this form factor (similar to Creative Labs) has some appeal to me. I know everyone says that the HD's in iPods are shock proof and this and that, but for using at the gym or while running, you can't beat this super-mini form factor and solid state construction. Great to see they're offering some value-adds such as ogg support.
Now, consider that a EPIA 5000 Mini ITX board runs so cool, that it doesn't need a fan. Sure, its a "slow" box (500-600mhz), but bear with me for a sec. Now consider what the average user does with their PC. I just don't get what the average consumer is going to need to do with this horsepower. I've been saying that for years though. Most non-techies I know send mail, browse the web, write letters. Any of those $200 PCs at Wal*Mart can do this.
I see a lot of stuff all the time, Moore's law and what not. But has anybody ever studied WHERE consumer PC's are going and WHY? Won't they reach a point where they are "good enough"? Like a small Briggs and Stratton engine for a mower. Sure, they change a little over the years, but not a whole lot. Because they work and server their purpose.
Now, faster computers obviously have tremendous, unimaginable uses outside the consumer market. But my point is at some point the consumer won't need the same type of hardware that a scientist is using to sequence DNA or an IT shop is using to run web sites, process transactions, etc.
True, but a lot of the stuff they release is only for the latest version. Like, if you want JDK 1.4.2, JAI, etc.
The backwards compatibility is really poor. One one had it allows only the newest technology to be used which is nice in one regard- but it is annoying at the same time when it comes to $$$. Most software today for Win32 is backwards comapatible to Win 98.
Why, sure. By the same token, people with more time on their hands should be put in jail for LONGER.
Now see, I got a lot of valuable shit to be doing. Putting me in jail for one day would be pretty bad. But say, some unemployed oaf living off his parents, well, stick that bastard in jail for the same crime for 10 years.
Oh yeah, people also shouldn't be convicted if they rob someone who has "lots of money." Shit, if you steal Bill Gate's TV, it doesn't matter to him. Why should the thief be put in jail? Now steal day old bread from a homeless man- thats another story. Its all about the proletariat here at slashdot, comrade!
I really need to quit reading the news here. The sarcasm it is causing is just too much.
One other issue I fogot with Safari- not a biggie since there are other tools for this, but I wish it would display XML markup the way IE or Mozilla does.
OS X in general doesn't seem to be as XML aware as I'd like. The default.xml association is with a property editor app, I think.
Mail.app's handling of multiple mailboxes is horrendous - it puts all the mail from multiple inboxes into ONE inbox! Holy cow, Batman, which acid monkey dreamed that one up?
Hmmm... I'm running Mail 1.3.4 and have 4 inboxes, one for each mail POP3 account (3 are on one server, the fourth is a different server). Now, the way it looks visually, the 4 individual inboxes are listed UNDER a parent "Inbox", but there are actually 4 separate inboxes underneath it. Are we talking about the same thing?
I like the ease of being able to take an account offline by right clicking on an inbox icon. Most of the time I want my desktop receiving work email and don't want the iBook butting in, however when I'm off site with the iBook for work purposes I can have Mail fetch my messages.
I don't know the answer to this, but it does make me wonder something else.
How many folks on a Mac are really interested in using anything other than Safari and Mail? Camino, Mozilla, Firefox, etc. all run comparatively slow on my G4 iBook. Clearly a lot of optimizations have occured to make the "native" Panther apps run quickly. And they all integrate fairly nice together and have good feature sets so I just really don't see any incentive to change. It is just a question for you guys, would be curious to get some feedback.
Win32 is another story. The default mail and browser suck royal ass. And, Mozilla and friends run nicely.
Of course, if you bought an anonymous "invite" like people are selling, Google can't track you as directly. However, Ebay still can. Someone else posted this link:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/beta.html
Re:I got one on Ebay using "Buy It Now" for $19.99
on
Gmail Addresses For Sale
·
· Score: 0, Troll
The question about couldn't Google wipe out the Gmail accounts when it's out of beta is ridiculous. The first people they gave Gmail accounts to were Google employees and "friends of the company." Why would they piss those people off by canceling the beta accounts and making them then compete for usernames with the rest of the unwashed masses?
Uhhh, I hate to break this to you, but.... Is the address you bought still in use by a "friend of the company"? Right, no, it isn't because you bought it. So, if Google turns the account off, they won't be pissing off any "friends" will they?
Oh, but wait. Google doesn't know that you bought a beta account and that it no longer belongs to one of their friends.
I got mine about 5 minutes after that CNET story first hit on Friday. I immediately went to Ebay and searched for "gmail."
Except- SHIT! Do you think there is even the slightest chance that Google's corporate offices might have Internet access? SHIT! This means they have access to E-bay too! Holy crap, lets hope Google doesn't also hire software engineers. Someone might be ordered to write a perl script to disable all beta accounts that were UP FOR SALE!
Not to mention, if the email address was up for grabs on E-Bay, it won't be long until it is on every spam list out there. By my count dude, that $20 would have just about bought two 12 packs of Corona (if you can get them on sale.) Probably woulda been money better spent.
How about them deleting the accounts because they were sold on ebay? If I go to beta with my software and someone decides to sell one of their beta spots, I'll disable their key in a heartbeat if possible. Of course, it would also be written up in the agreement someone accepted when they became a beta tester. Not sure what agreement Google put in place.
Just a hunch but I'd say that very few of beta test users of any software are what we'd consider "good" beta testers. People who can spot bugs, even ones that aren't obvious- but most of all, people who actually take the time to DELIVER FEEDBACK.
Mainframes are optimized for batch processing. Interactive queries do not take full advantage of their vaunted I/O capacity.
Historically true and IMHO probably still true today, but I do have customers running our Java based server product on the host under Z/OS and the administrators would be sure to argue with us.
One admin was walking me through a config where he could have all these various instances of Red Hat running on their host. It would be interesting to see some real life case studies on a setup like this.
Right, right. No disagreement here, friend. I'm with you on the government buying side of things and almost added a disclaimer about it. There are airlines that should have went out of business years ago. If you can't turn a profit you shouldn't be in business. I think we should all get free flights now since we had to bail out the airlines once again. You'd think the morons would be smart enough to copy Southwest's biz model. It works.
For the context of this discussion I was more referencing the attitude that many slashdotters have... such as acting like people are forced at gunpoint to buy Windows XP and install it on their PC.
I agree with you, price is the biggest concern for most consumers. Maybe, the day will come when customer service gets SO BAD that people start thinking differently. It is already bad in most cases as call centers are stocked with low paid workers who don't know anything about the product or service they are supporting.
Personally, I look for the lowest prices. But I also ask myself a certain set of questions. For example, if I'm mail ordering, and find a low price, I do ask myself, "what happens if this product is D.O.A.?" WHO exactly am I doing business with?
Slashdot Mirror
Someone over in London should pay a bum 10 GBP to go in the babershop for a cut and to ask "do you guys sell powerbooks"?
I think customs was defrauded. Now, normally you defaud customs by saying something is worth less, not more. However, customs agents usually don't have good senses of humor.
Yeah, this guy had balls. I've heard of cases where there has been murders over stuff like this- not sure if it is true or not but think about the quality of people that you are dealing with on the other end and then ask yourself whether it was worth it.
Amusing, none the less, and entertaining to read. But overall I think you are better off just reporting the scam and letting it go. Sure, reporting it probably won't result in anything, but it is about the most we can legally do.
I've run various distos over time... they all have their good and bad points.
But, it is a matter of choices that people have been talking about lately. There are too many choices when it comes to Linux for the average Joe. The community is going in all different directions. It doesn't have to be that way though. OS X is a perfect example. I've love to see a vendor put that kind of shell around the linux kernel. They might have to dump KDE or Gnome and start from scratch, I don't know. But think of it- drag and drop installs, easy administration, etc. You don't spend days trying to figure out how to make things in OS X work. The thing is, I paid a lot for my iBook. It was worth it. I'd be willing to fork out some bucks for a similar OS package that was Linux based. There is money to be had out there. But the value add from most of the folks like Mandrake, Suse, RedHat, etc seems to be rather minimal compared to what Apple did with BSD.
Hi, thanks for the post. We're building more of these picture frames so your advice is not too late.
/gdm/sessions and so forth, never really worked. I was missing something critical I think.
Can I make my WM xscreensaver by configuring ~/.xsession? That is the only way I had luck changing from KDE to icewm. The other options, toying around with
I had also considered using a screen saver, but the only way I could think of at the time was to boot into KDE and set the screen saver time to the minimum (1 minute) but I didn't like the 1 minute delay since that is essentially a wasted minute staring at the desktop.
I highly doubt that most people just can't get enough of XP.
What does that say about Linux on the desktop? It is free and readily available yet almost nobody is using it.
So why else are people using XP, if they aren't being forced to and there is an alternative? I've been reminded of why yet once again. My current project is a digital picture frame inspired by a previous slashdot story. It took several days of hacking to get RedHat 9 to do what I wanted (boot, log in, and go to a slideshow with no mouse cursor and never go into standby, and power down gracefully when the ATX power button is pressed. Well, just about nothing was pre-compiled. I had to compile the slideshow, Feh, along with imlib2 and several dependencies. I had to search all over and finally find and compile "unclutter", an app that would make the cursor go away. I had to do a kernel mod (powewswitch.o) which I still don't fully understand that picked up on the APM suspend hint and instead runs "shutdown -h now). Also, I was running KDE but then realized it was uncessary to use it's bloatware for this so went with Icewm only to find now a lot of the things I had configured to do with powerdown and stuff now had to be tweaked back to the Xfree86 config file. Also, RH 9 threw me for a few loops because it still used GDM even if you don't install Gnome and only run KDE. However, they put KDM stuff in the control panel making you think you can change login options there, only to get frustrated when they have no effect.
Anyway, this is a propietary project of course but a lot of the things were things oridinary users might want (slideshow apps, powerdown on power switch press, etc). Secondly, XP still would have been a better choice I think. It still boots much faster than RH 9 with everything turned off and IceWM. And, it would have been easier to configure- because most software is ALREADY COMPILED for one. So I did this project using Linux because I'm a geek and wanted to learn something new. Joe User however is going to turn to XP. Not because Microsoft is a monopoly but because it does things better than everyone else- like it or not.
P.S. I guess I can expect a flame now on the way I did things with my RH 9 install. Remember, though- I'm a software engineer and have loaded Linux on several boxes at my shop over the years. My whole point is usability by everyday people.
How many teachers have lost their jobs based solely on the accusations of children? I know of one, personally, but don't know many teachers so I would assume the numbers nationwide are greater. The truth is, people are in fact sometimes found guilty in a "his word against mine" type situation.
Having circumstantial evidence that a jury might view as repulsive (i.e. porn) is just going to make it worse.
These days, any combination of innocent things can make a trial by jury a very dangerous thing for an innocent person.
Case in point. Say a neighbor asks if his kid can come over to my house one afternoon for help with his math homework or something. Say the kid isn't as well adjusted as I thought, and tells everyone I touched him.
Well, that alone means I am now guilty in todays world. But enter the detectives. They take my PC and find that I have some porn in my cache. Most of it is adult porn which is bad enough. But then they go and do ID checks on some of the pics and turns out the girls were mature looking 16 year olds. Fuck, now I'm just sick- a true pedophile.
By now, the community has been told who I am. There are posters up in my neighborhood. My employer fires me. Even if I don't get convicted for some reason, my life is still over. And if I do get convicted, I'm now taking it in the butt in some federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison. In which case I'd probably kill myself.
Anybody can disagree with me if they like, but this kind of shit isn't a stretch. The story was bad enough even if I didn't have porn on my box, but that fact just kind of seals the deal.
I really had no idea how bad popups had gotten (since I haven't seen them in years) until trying to use my sister's computer over the weekend. Even the "standard" sites have popups. I went to a few places like cnn and so forth, and after closing the browser realized there was a stack of popups.
What is funny is how easily these things are to dispose of. The advertisers are damn lucky that more people don't have brains. Otherwise, a 5 minute download for most folks and they'd never see the ads again!
Bull! The music is owned by the public
If this were true in the philisophical sense that you are communicating, there wouldn't be much incentive for anybody to actually make music, would there? I guess you don't favor the private ownership of anything at all, do you? In other words, any bum seeking warmth can invite himself into your home at any point, since your home isn't owned by you, but the public. It is the least you could do, if you expect a musician to immediately hand over his product to the public.
Well, what was the seller's feedback rating in both cases? I think it is a good idea to not just look at the number, but read the comments. See what has happened in the past when an item has arrived damaged, or was the wrong item, etc.
However, back to what you said- Often the stuff on e-bay is available for about the same price locally. So when it comes to dishing out a few hundred bucks, you have to really ask yourself- would you rather buy from someone who you can go kick the crap out of if necessary, or from basically an anonymous seller? No, you won't find me dropping big bucks on e-bay either.
When people send me Excel files, I kindly ask them to re-send the file in CSV or some other format.
While this sometimes work, it doesn't work when your customers are some of the largest companies in the U.S. and they're buying your software for a hundred grand or more a pop. No, I don't think my boss would appreciate me telling our customers to export their spreadheets as CSV and resend. Now isn't the time to have ethical arguments with your boss about Microsoft Excel. Especially with about a few million Patel's in India waiting in line for my job.
Personally, this form factor (similar to Creative Labs) has some appeal to me. I know everyone says that the HD's in iPods are shock proof and this and that, but for using at the gym or while running, you can't beat this super-mini form factor and solid state construction. Great to see they're offering some value-adds such as ogg support.
No foolin. These systems are gonna run hot.
Now, consider that a EPIA 5000 Mini ITX board runs so cool, that it doesn't need a fan. Sure, its a "slow" box (500-600mhz), but bear with me for a sec. Now consider what the average user does with their PC. I just don't get what the average consumer is going to need to do with this horsepower. I've been saying that for years though. Most non-techies I know send mail, browse the web, write letters. Any of those $200 PCs at Wal*Mart can do this.
I see a lot of stuff all the time, Moore's law and what not. But has anybody ever studied WHERE consumer PC's are going and WHY? Won't they reach a point where they are "good enough"? Like a small Briggs and Stratton engine for a mower. Sure, they change a little over the years, but not a whole lot. Because they work and server their purpose.
Now, faster computers obviously have tremendous, unimaginable uses outside the consumer market. But my point is at some point the consumer won't need the same type of hardware that a scientist is using to sequence DNA or an IT shop is using to run web sites, process transactions, etc.
ummm no one said you HAD to upgrade the software
True, but a lot of the stuff they release is only for the latest version. Like, if you want JDK 1.4.2, JAI, etc.
The backwards compatibility is really poor. One one had it allows only the newest technology to be used which is nice in one regard- but it is annoying at the same time when it comes to $$$. Most software today for Win32 is backwards comapatible to Win 98.
Why, sure. By the same token, people with more time on their hands should be put in jail for LONGER.
Now see, I got a lot of valuable shit to be doing. Putting me in jail for one day would be pretty bad. But say, some unemployed oaf living off his parents, well, stick that bastard in jail for the same crime for 10 years.
Oh yeah, people also shouldn't be convicted if they rob someone who has "lots of money." Shit, if you steal Bill Gate's TV, it doesn't matter to him. Why should the thief be put in jail? Now steal day old bread from a homeless man- thats another story. Its all about the proletariat here at slashdot, comrade!
I really need to quit reading the news here. The sarcasm it is causing is just too much.
One other issue I fogot with Safari- not a biggie since there are other tools for this, but I wish it would display XML markup the way IE or Mozilla does.
.xml association is with a property editor app, I think.
OS X in general doesn't seem to be as XML aware as I'd like. The default
Mail.app's handling of multiple mailboxes is horrendous - it puts all the mail from multiple inboxes into ONE inbox! Holy cow, Batman, which acid monkey dreamed that one up?
Hmmm... I'm running Mail 1.3.4 and have 4 inboxes, one for each mail POP3 account (3 are on one server, the fourth is a different server). Now, the way it looks visually, the 4 individual inboxes are listed UNDER a parent "Inbox", but there are actually 4 separate inboxes underneath it. Are we talking about the same thing?
I like the ease of being able to take an account offline by right clicking on an inbox icon. Most of the time I want my desktop receiving work email and don't want the iBook butting in, however when I'm off site with the iBook for work purposes I can have Mail fetch my messages.
I don't know the answer to this, but it does make me wonder something else.
How many folks on a Mac are really interested in using anything other than Safari and Mail? Camino, Mozilla, Firefox, etc. all run comparatively slow on my G4 iBook. Clearly a lot of optimizations have occured to make the "native" Panther apps run quickly. And they all integrate fairly nice together and have good feature sets so I just really don't see any incentive to change. It is just a question for you guys, would be curious to get some feedback.
Win32 is another story. The default mail and browser suck royal ass. And, Mozilla and friends run nicely.
Of course, if you bought an anonymous "invite" like people are selling, Google can't track you as directly. However, Ebay still can. Someone else posted this link:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/beta.html
The question about couldn't Google wipe out the Gmail accounts when it's out of beta is ridiculous. The first people they gave Gmail accounts to were Google employees and "friends of the company." Why would they piss those people off by canceling the beta accounts and making them then compete for usernames with the rest of the unwashed masses?
Uhhh, I hate to break this to you, but.... Is the address you bought still in use by a "friend of the company"? Right, no, it isn't because you bought it. So, if Google turns the account off, they won't be pissing off any "friends" will they?
Oh, but wait. Google doesn't know that you bought a beta account and that it no longer belongs to one of their friends.
I got mine about 5 minutes after that CNET story first hit on Friday. I immediately went to Ebay and searched for "gmail."
Except- SHIT! Do you think there is even the slightest chance that Google's corporate offices might have Internet access? SHIT! This means they have access to E-bay too! Holy crap, lets hope Google doesn't also hire software engineers. Someone might be ordered to write a perl script to disable all beta accounts that were UP FOR SALE!
Not to mention, if the email address was up for grabs on E-Bay, it won't be long until it is on every spam list out there. By my count dude, that $20 would have just about bought two 12 packs of Corona (if you can get them on sale.) Probably woulda been money better spent.
How about them deleting the accounts because they were sold on ebay? If I go to beta with my software and someone decides to sell one of their beta spots, I'll disable their key in a heartbeat if possible. Of course, it would also be written up in the agreement someone accepted when they became a beta tester. Not sure what agreement Google put in place.
Just a hunch but I'd say that very few of beta test users of any software are what we'd consider "good" beta testers. People who can spot bugs, even ones that aren't obvious- but most of all, people who actually take the time to DELIVER FEEDBACK.
Mainframes are optimized for batch processing. Interactive queries do not take full advantage of their vaunted I/O capacity.
Historically true and IMHO probably still true today, but I do have customers running our Java based server product on the host under Z/OS and the administrators would be sure to argue with us.
One admin was walking me through a config where he could have all these various instances of Red Hat running on their host. It would be interesting to see some real life case studies on a setup like this.
Right, right. No disagreement here, friend. I'm with you on the government buying side of things and almost added a disclaimer about it. There are airlines that should have went out of business years ago. If you can't turn a profit you shouldn't be in business. I think we should all get free flights now since we had to bail out the airlines once again. You'd think the morons would be smart enough to copy Southwest's biz model. It works.
For the context of this discussion I was more referencing the attitude that many slashdotters have... such as acting like people are forced at gunpoint to buy Windows XP and install it on their PC.
I agree with you, price is the biggest concern for most consumers. Maybe, the day will come when customer service gets SO BAD that people start thinking differently. It is already bad in most cases as call centers are stocked with low paid workers who don't know anything about the product or service they are supporting.
Personally, I look for the lowest prices. But I also ask myself a certain set of questions. For example, if I'm mail ordering, and find a low price, I do ask myself, "what happens if this product is D.O.A.?" WHO exactly am I doing business with?