How can this company be worth 8.75 million. What does it do that is worth that much a year? As far as I can see nothing. The only "product" it has it gives away for free. If it started charging a dozen open source versions would appear in it's place. Even if they didn't the system can be copied by others for virtually nothing. What is it with these really high value estimations?
Re:Might have taken a while....
on
Vim 6.4 Released
·
· Score: 1
Good point. Strange though because release cycles in Debian feel longer than Windows. What I am about to say may offend some but here goes anyway. Perhaps it's because Windows is a more mature product and therefore there is little new stuff appearing (I'm thinking of using both OSes as desktop machines rather than server boxes as I wouldn't use a Windows box as a server). With Linux there are new features being released left right and centre. An 18 month old Linux installation feels really old. I suppose that will change eventually though.
Re:Might have taken a while....
on
Vim 6.4 Released
·
· Score: 1
Your think MS is slow you should try using Debian stable!
While a good idea I don't think it will work. How do you ensure that the board isn't able to make better use of one brand of CPU than another? I'm sure there wouldn't be intentional delays built in but you can't be sure that due to a quirk of the design AMD chips won't interently run faster than Intel chips etc etc. At the end of the day I don't think you can quantitativly compare such complex pieces of equipment. There will always be an element of qualitative comparison simply because they don't share exactly the same feature set.
Ok maybe none is a little harsh. There are always some people that will shell out for gimmicks and the like. I have to admit that I once bought a motherboard from PC Chips and it was the biggest pile of steaming faeces that I have ever seen. The first board was DOA the replacement failed after about 15 minutes the replacement for that managed a whole day before catching alight. I asked for my money back and bought a better board.
I would love to have a well paid job coming up with solutions to "difficult" problems like this. I'd give my employer the first solution for free:
Launch new satelites that are compatible with the old system!
then I would charge a fortune for all the other ideas once I had got them hooked. My god I can't believe anyone is even questioning this. It's a total no brainer. Have IQs dropped recently or is it just that all the money has been spent on other things?
I think you pretty much hit the nail on the head there. Phishing could be stopped over night if people checked the identity of the site they were entering their details into. The problem is even banks don't take security seriously. One of the banks I delt with had a name mismatch on their web site certificate which was flagged up by the browser. I informed them of the problem and got basically a machine response. It was like that for at least 12 months - this was on the main web banking site of a fairly large bank.
Perhaps the banks should force their customers to learn about web site certificates how they ensure you are talkign to the person you think you are talking to. Only once customers have signed an agreement that they understand the system will they be allowed to use on line banking. If they get their details stolen by a phisher liability is then 100% theirs for not checking the site was legitimate.
Ah I give up. We can't fix the world. It's to choc full of stupid people.
I agree completely with what you say. There is, I find, rather to much zealotry in the OSS world and I can't help feeling that does as much harm as good. I look forward to the day when Linux (or a combination of open source OSes) has a 10% share of the desktop. That, I think, will be the point where hardware manufacturers really start to think about making hardware that is compatible with Linux. I'm sure hardware manufacturers will sacrifice 1% or 2% but 10% would start to dent their bottom line.
For my part I have converted two people to Debian after finally being fully converted myself about 3 years ago. Linux on the desktop will spread slowly but it will get there in the end. I think there's probably a couple more years developement needed before it's really ready though.
I'm torn between agreeing with you and, at the same time, pointing out how your plan isn't going to work. Certainly anyone interested in getting the most from their machine would do well to follow your advice. The vast majority of people though just don't care and probalby wouldn't even understand what you are talking about.
I phoned a company the other day and asked about some software they give away. I mentioned that we run Linux servers and asked would the software run on them. The sales person I was talking to didn't even realize there was an alternative to windows. How can you convince someone like that to switch? You can't - well not in any reasonable amount of time.
Easy. Pick something that you care about or would like to see succeed. Then picture it failing for some stupid reason that is essentially unrelated to the thing you care about. I think you would agree that is at least frustrating and probably anger inducing.
You just know that we will have years worth of misery as each and every content provider implements their own DRM that demands the user purchase and use their particular brand of reader etc etc etc. Any gains in usefulness that we might get from having a cheap light easy to read electonic display will easily be offset by needing to carry around 12 different versions for each publication you want to read. I makes me really cross to see such great technology being scuppered by the petty greed of a small number of (already very rich) people. Grrrrr
I'm lucky if I can get audio to work properly half the time. With some applications only talking to OSS, some to only Arts and some others only speaking directly to ALSA (with about a million other variations on this theme) I'm happy if I can get the damn machine to play an MP3. We really do have an wealth of sound applications just a shame they don't play nicely together. Looks like this is going to continue in the future as well with everyone and their uncle producing a next generation sound server.
What I would like to know is how much money it is estimated they made from price fixing. While $300 million is a lot of money I can't help feeling that they made a lot more than that and therefore over all they have still made a profit. Personally, I think these companies should be fined to the point where they are all but bankrupt. After all it's not like they did it by accident. Perhaps makign the directors personally liable would be another route to take. The threat of a couple of year behind bars would probably make them care about shady practices.
One itty bitty little temporal mistake that could easily cause the end of the universe if it became reality and your all over me like rash. I can't help it. I had red painted bedroom walls as a kid.:o)
Yes you heard it here first folks. Continuing the proud tradition of security first we at Microsoft have implimented new Sieve Security Technology (tm) throughout our systems. Now, as well as producing the most bug ridden insecure operating system around, we can't even keep hold of the software before it is written.
Some good points. I disagree with the zero physical risk part - your forgetting that skinny white boys in prison don't do so well;o).
Anyway, it's a little different on this side of the pond - people don't get killed quite so often by the police (unless they are Brazilian of course) and the punishment for kidnapping is fairly low as long as you don't harm the captive. I would guess you would only get 10 years tops for a first offence. If you can get enough money from it it might be worth it.
Of course the really big money is in fraud but that requires you to put yourself in the position of having money to aquire fraudulently. Not an easy task if you are as thick as two short planks.
The problem with the drugs market is that it seems to be saturated already and there isn't much scope for independent work due to the high "accident" rate, as you pointed out.
The analogy of evolution certainly works but evolution can't find a solution to every problem. Take for example the deserts. Yes, there is life in even the most arid desert but there isn't much of it. If we end up with a network that is the equivalent of a desert for crackers there will be very few of them. I doubt that there are many animals adapting to live in the desert because it's already supporting as many animals as it can.
To use an example a bit closer to the situation we are talking about think about car thefts. It was getting to the point where you had to put your car on an elastic band they were getting stolen so much. The immobilizer has all but stopped that. Cars do still get stolen but it isn't even a fraction of the problem it once was. In fact the problem has moved and now people steal the contents of the glove box but that is somewhere beside the point. Same goes for car radios. Once car radios became keyed to the car theft rates dropped dramatically.
There is a barrier beyond which it simply becomes impractical to bother trying to exploit the resources. I suppose it's just a cost benifit analysis at the end of hte day. Interestingly the barrier almost never seems to be punishment related always prevention related but that's getting off topic.
I forsee the day when bot nets are a thing of the past. While I admit that currently most police forces couldn't catch a virus by opening infected email things seem to be changing.
The scale of setting up a useful botnet is such that there are thousands of tiny ways that you could screw up and leave a drity great big flag pointing out your location / identity. Even the most carefully created botnet will contain some useful information to track down it's owner. In fact the very nature of the beast means that at some point you will have to contact it which potentially gives away your location. Ok you can run through proxies and use other methods to hide you identity but it only takes one slip up which someone technical is watching. Of course you also have the problem of collecting you payments. While you might be able to hide in the online world hiding from the banking world is much harder. At some point you have to collect you money.
All in all I think it would be easier to just go into kidnapping or drug dealing. The profit margin has got to be higher.
I for one can't wait for OOo 2.0 to be released. Version 1.1.4 is great but it looks awful (MSO 95 era quality looks) even with the KDE L&F installed. More importantly for me it doesn't compile for 64 bit (at least not on Debian) which 2.0 should.
The worst problem with 1.1.4 though, for me anyway, is that when you step off the well beaten track of common functions you very quickly get into areas where things only "sort of" work. The core is good and solid but the edges are like a jungle full of deadly snakes. This, I believe, is the key difference between MSO and OOo. MS has had 10 years to get the edges right so while they might not be as polished as the core they are pretty good.
I suppose time will improve the quality of the edges. There are already some serious MSO killers in 1.1.4 that have been greatly improved in 2.0. I love the mail merge for instance - it's harder to use than the one in MSO but so much more powerful.
Of course RedHat don't mind fragmentation it helps them. By encouraging fragmentation they can sit at the top and say to people "look, we offer stability". That's why Debian does so well (although I have to say I believe stable is a little to stable - 18 month update cycles please:) they offer some stability. It's important to try now ideas out but it's just as important that the OSS community tries to pull together.
While it is great that I can choose from 300 different distributions I have to ask the question: how many of them don't suck? About 5 to 10 would probably be the answer. I just want to cry when I look at the amount of time and effort that has gone into some of these projects that get maybe a hand full of users and then die a slow death as the idologues that started the project realize they aren't going to caputre the market.
It's great that people want to help it's just a shame there are a lot of people that feel the only wheel they can use is the one they built themselves.
I'm sure this post will get moded as a troll in two seconds flat so I am going to stop wasting my time.
Slashdot Mirror
What was that?
Blinking 'eck, it was flock of flying pigs.
How can this company be worth 8.75 million. What does it do that is worth that much a year? As far as I can see nothing. The only "product" it has it gives away for free. If it started charging a dozen open source versions would appear in it's place. Even if they didn't the system can be copied by others for virtually nothing. What is it with these really high value estimations?
Good point. Strange though because release cycles in Debian feel longer than Windows. What I am about to say may offend some but here goes anyway. Perhaps it's because Windows is a more mature product and therefore there is little new stuff appearing (I'm thinking of using both OSes as desktop machines rather than server boxes as I wouldn't use a Windows box as a server). With Linux there are new features being released left right and centre. An 18 month old Linux installation feels really old. I suppose that will change eventually though.
Your think MS is slow you should try using Debian stable!
While a good idea I don't think it will work. How do you ensure that the board isn't able to make better use of one brand of CPU than another? I'm sure there wouldn't be intentional delays built in but you can't be sure that due to a quirk of the design AMD chips won't interently run faster than Intel chips etc etc. At the end of the day I don't think you can quantitativly compare such complex pieces of equipment. There will always be an element of qualitative comparison simply because they don't share exactly the same feature set.
I think I can answer that question for them. Note
Ok maybe none is a little harsh. There are always some people that will shell out for gimmicks and the like. I have to admit that I once bought a motherboard from PC Chips and it was the biggest pile of steaming faeces that I have ever seen. The first board was DOA the replacement failed after about 15 minutes the replacement for that managed a whole day before catching alight. I asked for my money back and bought a better board.
Get doped up and more intelligent at the same time. Life couldn't be better.
Lets fund more research like this. We all know that if enough people believe something is true then it is true.
I would love to have a well paid job coming up with solutions to "difficult" problems like this. I'd give my employer the first solution for free:
Launch new satelites that are compatible with the old system!
then I would charge a fortune for all the other ideas once I had got them hooked. My god I can't believe anyone is even questioning this. It's a total no brainer. Have IQs dropped recently or is it just that all the money has been spent on other things?
I think you pretty much hit the nail on the head there. Phishing could be stopped over night if people checked the identity of the site they were entering their details into. The problem is even banks don't take security seriously. One of the banks I delt with had a name mismatch on their web site certificate which was flagged up by the browser. I informed them of the problem and got basically a machine response. It was like that for at least 12 months - this was on the main web banking site of a fairly large bank.
Perhaps the banks should force their customers to learn about web site certificates how they ensure you are talkign to the person you think you are talking to. Only once customers have signed an agreement that they understand the system will they be allowed to use on line banking. If they get their details stolen by a phisher liability is then 100% theirs for not checking the site was legitimate.
Ah I give up. We can't fix the world. It's to choc full of stupid people.
I agree completely with what you say. There is, I find, rather to much zealotry in the OSS world and I can't help feeling that does as much harm as good. I look forward to the day when Linux (or a combination of open source OSes) has a 10% share of the desktop. That, I think, will be the point where hardware manufacturers really start to think about making hardware that is compatible with Linux. I'm sure hardware manufacturers will sacrifice 1% or 2% but 10% would start to dent their bottom line.
For my part I have converted two people to Debian after finally being fully converted myself about 3 years ago. Linux on the desktop will spread slowly but it will get there in the end. I think there's probably a couple more years developement needed before it's really ready though.
I'm torn between agreeing with you and, at the same time, pointing out how your plan isn't going to work. Certainly anyone interested in getting the most from their machine would do well to follow your advice. The vast majority of people though just don't care and probalby wouldn't even understand what you are talking about.
I phoned a company the other day and asked about some software they give away. I mentioned that we run Linux servers and asked would the software run on them. The sales person I was talking to didn't even realize there was an alternative to windows. How can you convince someone like that to switch? You can't - well not in any reasonable amount of time.
Easy. Pick something that you care about or would like to see succeed. Then picture it failing for some stupid reason that is essentially unrelated to the thing you care about. I think you would agree that is at least frustrating and probably anger inducing.
You just know that we will have years worth of misery as each and every content provider implements their own DRM that demands the user purchase and use their particular brand of reader etc etc etc. Any gains in usefulness that we might get from having a cheap light easy to read electonic display will easily be offset by needing to carry around 12 different versions for each publication you want to read. I makes me really cross to see such great technology being scuppered by the petty greed of a small number of (already very rich) people. Grrrrr
I'm lucky if I can get audio to work properly half the time. With some applications only talking to OSS, some to only Arts and some others only speaking directly to ALSA (with about a million other variations on this theme) I'm happy if I can get the damn machine to play an MP3. We really do have an wealth of sound applications just a shame they don't play nicely together. Looks like this is going to continue in the future as well with everyone and their uncle producing a next generation sound server.
What I would like to know is how much money it is estimated they made from price fixing. While $300 million is a lot of money I can't help feeling that they made a lot more than that and therefore over all they have still made a profit. Personally, I think these companies should be fined to the point where they are all but bankrupt. After all it's not like they did it by accident. Perhaps makign the directors personally liable would be another route to take. The threat of a couple of year behind bars would probably make them care about shady practices.
...wheezy badger.
Thank you - leave tips at the door.
One itty bitty little temporal mistake that could easily cause the end of the universe if it became reality and your all over me like rash. I can't help it. I had red painted bedroom walls as a kid. :o)
Yes you heard it here first folks. Continuing the proud tradition of security first we at Microsoft have implimented new Sieve Security Technology (tm) throughout our systems. Now, as well as producing the most bug ridden insecure operating system around, we can't even keep hold of the software before it is written.
I don't know who to hate most Real or MS. Why can't we lobby for a new law that allows for both parties to lose.
If someone gave me electo-shock "therapy" I know I would stop using the Internet. In fact I think I will stop now just in case. No carrier....
Some good points. I disagree with the zero physical risk part - your forgetting that skinny white boys in prison don't do so well ;o).
Anyway, it's a little different on this side of the pond - people don't get killed quite so often by the police (unless they are Brazilian of course) and the punishment for kidnapping is fairly low as long as you don't harm the captive. I would guess you would only get 10 years tops for a first offence. If you can get enough money from it it might be worth it.
Of course the really big money is in fraud but that requires you to put yourself in the position of having money to aquire fraudulently. Not an easy task if you are as thick as two short planks.
The problem with the drugs market is that it seems to be saturated already and there isn't much scope for independent work due to the high "accident" rate, as you pointed out.
Looks like I'll never be rich.
The analogy of evolution certainly works but evolution can't find a solution to every problem. Take for example the deserts. Yes, there is life in even the most arid desert but there isn't much of it. If we end up with a network that is the equivalent of a desert for crackers there will be very few of them. I doubt that there are many animals adapting to live in the desert because it's already supporting as many animals as it can.
To use an example a bit closer to the situation we are talking about think about car thefts. It was getting to the point where you had to put your car on an elastic band they were getting stolen so much. The immobilizer has all but stopped that. Cars do still get stolen but it isn't even a fraction of the problem it once was. In fact the problem has moved and now people steal the contents of the glove box but that is somewhere beside the point. Same goes for car radios. Once car radios became keyed to the car theft rates dropped dramatically.
There is a barrier beyond which it simply becomes impractical to bother trying to exploit the resources. I suppose it's just a cost benifit analysis at the end of hte day. Interestingly the barrier almost never seems to be punishment related always prevention related but that's getting off topic.
I forsee the day when bot nets are a thing of the past. While I admit that currently most police forces couldn't catch a virus by opening infected email things seem to be changing.
The scale of setting up a useful botnet is such that there are thousands of tiny ways that you could screw up and leave a drity great big flag pointing out your location / identity. Even the most carefully created botnet will contain some useful information to track down it's owner. In fact the very nature of the beast means that at some point you will have to contact it which potentially gives away your location. Ok you can run through proxies and use other methods to hide you identity but it only takes one slip up which someone technical is watching. Of course you also have the problem of collecting you payments. While you might be able to hide in the online world hiding from the banking world is much harder. At some point you have to collect you money.
All in all I think it would be easier to just go into kidnapping or drug dealing. The profit margin has got to be higher.
I for one can't wait for OOo 2.0 to be released. Version 1.1.4 is great but it looks awful (MSO 95 era quality looks) even with the KDE L&F installed. More importantly for me it doesn't compile for 64 bit (at least not on Debian) which 2.0 should.
The worst problem with 1.1.4 though, for me anyway, is that when you step off the well beaten track of common functions you very quickly get into areas where things only "sort of" work. The core is good and solid but the edges are like a jungle full of deadly snakes. This, I believe, is the key difference between MSO and OOo. MS has had 10 years to get the edges right so while they might not be as polished as the core they are pretty good.
I suppose time will improve the quality of the edges. There are already some serious MSO killers in 1.1.4 that have been greatly improved in 2.0. I love the mail merge for instance - it's harder to use than the one in MSO but so much more powerful.
But like everything in life moderation is key.
Of course RedHat don't mind fragmentation it helps them. By encouraging fragmentation they can sit at the top and say to people "look, we offer stability". That's why Debian does so well (although I have to say I believe stable is a little to stable - 18 month update cycles please :) they offer some stability. It's important to try now ideas out but it's just as important that the OSS community tries to pull together.
While it is great that I can choose from 300 different distributions I have to ask the question: how many of them don't suck? About 5 to 10 would probably be the answer. I just want to cry when I look at the amount of time and effort that has gone into some of these projects that get maybe a hand full of users and then die a slow death as the idologues that started the project realize they aren't going to caputre the market.
It's great that people want to help it's just a shame there are a lot of people that feel the only wheel they can use is the one they built themselves.
I'm sure this post will get moded as a troll in two seconds flat so I am going to stop wasting my time.