If you are a beta tester, doesn't it make sense to you at all that they would like to record what components you have installed, so they can *at the least* be able to know what configurations work???
Oh, wait, I see, you would rather NOT know that and just raise hell again when it sends that info without your knowledge. What a shill.
Regardless of what we may think of their business practices, or their prorietary type components they may include in the distro, at the least give them credit for being up-front.
A far more constructive approach would be to fill out the form with all that stuff, then go to the last box, where they ask for any additional info, then politely and professionally suggest that they put at the TOP of the form the reason behind their request.
I run Dual Boot Xandros2.0 w/ Win98. I also run SuSE 9.1 on a server, with Samba. With four family computers we have a nice network and space to share files. Xandros *installed* very easy as a dual boot, found and configured drivers for my HW. After initial boot, X2.0 found and set up our HP 7140 printer/scanner/copier/fax. It was also quite easy to set it up to login as a network share. The default SAMBA workgroup was "WORKGROUP", I just added our network neighborhood name. All the shares were available. Just as in Windows, I could easily share one of my directory as a shared drive and my wife could access it from her machine (a Compaq WINXP portable).
And the Xandros file manager is very similar to the Win XP interface, but about 30% faster (unless my XP at work and my wife's XP at home are special cases). You can also select a file, or drag/drop one on a "CD-BURN" folder and manage a burn from that folder. Like running Nero...
If you want an easy transition from WIN-xx, I would suggest XANDROS 2.0, or wait a few months for 3.0, which will (hopefully???) be based on the 2.6 kernel.
I've been using Xandros since 1.0 and installed it on some pretty quirky machines, and have had only a video card ID problem -- it was an old Fujitsu lifebook 735DX, with a Triton 93xx video chip. I just set it to boot into "Safe Mode" video as a default and it works fine.
Patent duration, originally, was based on a manfacturing cycle from the Industrial Revolution. It took a lot of time to build a manufacturing process and produce enough product for the inventor/creator to recoup her investment.
It is more correct to recognize a market domain (e.g software) as a determinant of patent duration. I believe it even more correct that the R&D cycle be recognized as well, along with market life cycle. So it could be a function of the three; R&D cycle, development to market and market life cycle.
Which would make software patent duration about 18 months... Pharmacueticals might be 15 years or more. Things change too quickly to have *everything* locked into a 17 year cycle.
The weighted average of three components would give a much more equitable patent life span.
Oh, and yes, we must remember that the Feds/other governments have the finest coders in the world to review, identify and understand the implications of any security faults they pull out.
You have become conditioned by the "Independent Studies" conducted by Microsoft. As Confucious say," Man who jump to conclusion often end up at bottom of cliff."
The GAO (General Accounting Office) conducts nothing BUT independent surveys...anytime they audit or report. And NOBODY likes their results, because it generally concludes contradictory to all political benefit. So, both sides hate them.
If you want a more true picture of anything, just get the GAO to Audit/Study it. They seemingly execute independent of the President and Congress, even though operating under auspices of Congress.
That would be a kick, have the GAO audit/report on MS and monopoly...wow.
* Whenever you stop for gas, it will send a signal to Redmond, recording where you are and what you did, including what kind of gas you used.
* When you take it in for it's 60,000 mile check-up, you have to bring it in four times at two-month intervals, in order to not trigger the "significant part changes" signal, which then refuses to allow the car to start, until you phone a "help" number, to get a new access key...
* If the sound system breaks down, you can't replace it, only add another one, since if you did replace it, the car will randomly stall out in intersections, refuse to start without flooding it, or get stuck in "Park". The onboard computer will give you random warning messages, like "Tire Pressure Low", or "Engine overheating", or randomly bill gas charges to your credit card, from parts of the country you NEVER heard of before...
All well and good, but please recall that MS WELDED the dang dll's together in order to make it "un-removable". I seem to recall that the dll's they combined were NOT tightly related, but provided them a convenient excuse as to why they couldn't be removed...they had strategically combined them so that you take the IE out of the environment, you take some core OS functionality along with it.
18 months ago, I was working an assignment in Calgary, Alberta. One of the local rock stations played a skit several times a week (it was a morning show). One of the female announcers/newspersons played the character. The skit had a young lady calling up for tech service saying something about her "floppy drive not working". The 5 minute skit was basically her asking questions, getting an answer, then encouraging him to give more detailed answers, while you could hear her breathing heavy into the phone.
Sort of a running "Tech Phone Sex" gag. IIRC, the young lady character was one of several characters she had on tap, including a blind exotic dancer, with an eccentric rottweiler dance partner, and a "valley girl" horoscope commentator. She always ended that bit with, "One time, I was dating this guy, and he was really hot......Whatever!"
"Sometimes it feals like killing the competition is the goal and making money just a side effect."
Well, kinda-sorta. Actually, it's more like..."choke 'em in their sleep, then steal all their belongings". Then they go out and make money
Isn't it odd the common viewpoint here...there seems to be an overwhelming distaste for business as a profession. Like you have to be a convicted horse thief, a hit-man or a bank robber to be considered for that profession. Instead of defining a competitive advantage in business as "offering a superior product, service and customer care", it gets defined as "what dirty laundry can I dig up to blaspheme brand X, legal road-block I can use to trip them or what pressure can I bring to bear on my suppliers to choke off THEIR supply?"
It seems to have become a profession devoid in morals, compassion for fellow man and only make a profit. "I'm here to make a profit, pay me. Screw the product, just pay me."
What the RIAA (and MPAA, PPA, etc.) doesn't want to hear is that means of product delivery have evolved well beyond traditional bricks and mortar storefronts. They cannot control electronic distribution processes like they can a B&M storefront -- which has a lockable door.
First off, their contracts with performers read like an indentured slave agreement -- an artist's copyright is transferred to the marketing firm; she loses the rights attached. Look closely at any music media, the songs will have author recognition, but the copyright is usually attached to the recording company. Why do you think the Beatles created APPLE? That's why an artist can't easily change recording companies and bring their past recordings with them.
These contracts should also be required to define how long the recording company can hold these exclusive rights to market a song and reap almost 100% of the profits from it.
We already have such a mechanism to determine that...Depletion allowances, as is used in the oil industry (I'm not advocating the oil barons, only pointing out the depletion allowance methodology as a fair way of setting time frames for exclusive rights to skim profit off an artist's copyrighted works).
This would force recording companies to determine at the inception of the contract just how long they will have this exclusive right, then it reverts 100% back to the artist, who can then do as she pleases with it...market it herself, sell it to another recording company, or make it public domain, or GPL.
the court and DOJ were that the lockout only needed to be there for a few years, through like EOY 2005 or something. And competition would be restored...somehow.
Which is probably WHY MS delayed longhorn till 2006. They may call it the "replacement" for Windows, but when they release it, it will be a "NEW" system. It'll be called MEGA-OS, or Vader-OS or something, just so they won't be called to task on it being a Windows Upgrade.
SCO's idea here, probably fully supported by financiers (no names please) is initiaite as many suits as possible. This results in hiring more lawyers (lawyers must be licensed/registered in a state/province/country in order to practice), who charge SCO money, which increases SCO's expenses.
Increased expenses means SCO must pay the bill (either out of income, or retained cash). With literally zero income, it comes out of owner's equity, which is also shared with stock value.
Are you with me so far? Good. When SCO spends all of the money, they go bankrupt. Sell of evrything they "own" (IP, source code, buildings, etc.). Court case with IBM, Redhat, Novell, DC, Autozone go away. With nothing resolved.
Another fine company picks up the gambit, and assets of SCO, and refiles the claims, sells licenses to MS, for even more outlandish prices, and fights "the good fight", as Darl would say, for another two years. After which they go bankrupt as well.
You think this is outlandish??? Please explain ENRON and WorldCom to me then. Tin foil hats aside, when someone brings up ethics and there are more than one businessman about, someone is going to get screwed.
Interesting fact you brought out...
Back in the days, MS was adamant about keeping their OS unlocked from the hardware.
Now, you can't even unweld it without getting crosswise of them.
F
What you describe is called the "Boiled Frog" syndrome.
If you put a frog in hot water, it will leap out...too uncomfortable, a drastic change in temperature causes a violent reaction.
However, if you put a frog in cool water, then simmer gently, the frog will continue to sit there, happily, until the water temperature kills it.
It doesn't matter which entity you talk about, corporate firms or governments, they understand that slow changes over time don't bother us frogs. With so much global interaction going on, we're just about at that temperature stasis now where our reactions are numbed, so they can do just about what they and we won't protest.
Including cranking the dial all the way up...
Slashdot Mirror
Ummmmm...
I think it's "Hara Kari"
Hari Kari sounds like the Cubs' WGN play by play guy.
Technically speaking, you bought the CD, box and manuals, plus you paid for a license for use of the game, subject to copyright restrictions.
No conveyance of ownership is included.
Sorry.
FPO
Is that like double press, and it becomes a brake?
Single press, and you accelerate?
Press and hold, steady speed?
What an egocentric opinion.
Geez, man!
If you are a beta tester, doesn't it make sense to you at all that they would like to record what components you have installed, so they can *at the least* be able to know what configurations work???
Oh, wait, I see, you would rather NOT know that and just raise hell again when it sends that info without your knowledge. What a shill.
Regardless of what we may think of their business practices, or their prorietary type components they may include in the distro, at the least give them credit for being up-front.
A far more constructive approach would be to fill out the form with all that stuff, then go to the last box, where they ask for any additional info, then politely and professionally suggest that they put at the TOP of the form the reason behind their request.
Guess that never occured to you, did it?
FPO
I run Dual Boot Xandros2.0 w/ Win98. I also run SuSE 9.1 on a server, with Samba. With four family computers we have a nice network and space to share files. Xandros *installed* very easy as a dual boot, found and configured drivers for my HW. After initial boot, X2.0 found and set up our HP 7140 printer/scanner/copier/fax. It was also quite easy to set it up to login as a network share. The default SAMBA workgroup was "WORKGROUP", I just added our network neighborhood name. All the shares were available. Just as in Windows, I could easily share one of my directory as a shared drive and my wife could access it from her machine (a Compaq WINXP portable).
And the Xandros file manager is very similar to the Win XP interface, but about 30% faster (unless my XP at work and my wife's XP at home are special cases). You can also select a file, or drag/drop one on a "CD-BURN" folder and manage a burn from that folder. Like running Nero...
If you want an easy transition from WIN-xx, I would suggest XANDROS 2.0, or wait a few months for 3.0, which will (hopefully???) be based on the 2.6 kernel.
I've been using Xandros since 1.0 and installed it on some pretty quirky machines, and have had only a video card ID problem -- it was an old Fujitsu lifebook 735DX, with a Triton 93xx video chip. I just set it to boot into "Safe Mode" video as a default and it works fine.
So, have at it.
Don't forget product life cycle. I would think that has just as much effect on sales as does disposable income of the market place...
FPO
Patent duration, originally, was based on a manfacturing cycle from the Industrial Revolution. It took a lot of time to build a manufacturing process and produce enough product for the inventor/creator to recoup her investment.
It is more correct to recognize a market domain (e.g software) as a determinant of patent duration. I believe it even more correct that the R&D cycle be recognized as well, along with market life cycle. So it could be a function of the three; R&D cycle, development to market and market life cycle.
Which would make software patent duration about 18 months... Pharmacueticals might be 15 years or more. Things change too quickly to have *everything* locked into a 17 year cycle.
The weighted average of three components would give a much more equitable patent life span.
FPO
Oh, and yes, we must remember that the Feds/other governments have the finest coders in the world to review, identify and understand the implications of any security faults they pull out.
Move along, we have nothing to fear...
FPO
You have become conditioned by the "Independent Studies" conducted by Microsoft. As Confucious say," Man who jump to conclusion often end up at bottom of cliff."
The GAO (General Accounting Office) conducts nothing BUT independent surveys...anytime they audit or report. And NOBODY likes their results, because it generally concludes contradictory to all political benefit. So, both sides hate them.
If you want a more true picture of anything, just get the GAO to Audit/Study it. They seemingly execute independent of the President and Congress, even though operating under auspices of Congress.
That would be a kick, have the GAO audit/report on MS and monopoly...wow.
Userfriendly.org had it right.
At $500 a pop for new bugs, like Mozilla offered, $60 Billion in the bank may not be enough...
FPO
You forgot about these:
FPOAll well and good, but please recall that MS WELDED the dang dll's together in order to make it "un-removable". I seem to recall that the dll's they combined were NOT tightly related, but provided them a convenient excuse as to why they couldn't be removed...they had strategically combined them so that you take the IE out of the environment, you take some core OS functionality along with it.
Sort of a running "Tech Phone Sex" gag. IIRC, the young lady character was one of several characters she had on tap, including a blind exotic dancer, with an eccentric rottweiler dance partner, and a "valley girl" horoscope commentator. She always ended that bit with, "One time, I was dating this guy, and he was really hot... ...Whatever!"
FPO
Well, kinda-sorta. Actually, it's more like..."choke 'em in their sleep, then steal all their belongings". Then they go out and make money
Isn't it odd the common viewpoint here...there seems to be an overwhelming distaste for business as a profession. Like you have to be a convicted horse thief, a hit-man or a bank robber to be considered for that profession. Instead of defining a competitive advantage in business as "offering a superior product, service and customer care", it gets defined as "what dirty laundry can I dig up to blaspheme brand X, legal road-block I can use to trip them or what pressure can I bring to bear on my suppliers to choke off THEIR supply?"
It seems to have become a profession devoid in morals, compassion for fellow man and only make a profit. "I'm here to make a profit, pay me. Screw the product, just pay me."
FPO
First off, their contracts with performers read like an indentured slave agreement -- an artist's copyright is transferred to the marketing firm; she loses the rights attached. Look closely at any music media, the songs will have author recognition, but the copyright is usually attached to the recording company. Why do you think the Beatles created APPLE? That's why an artist can't easily change recording companies and bring their past recordings with them.
These contracts should also be required to define how long the recording company can hold these exclusive rights to market a song and reap almost 100% of the profits from it.
We already have such a mechanism to determine that...Depletion allowances, as is used in the oil industry (I'm not advocating the oil barons, only pointing out the depletion allowance methodology as a fair way of setting time frames for exclusive rights to skim profit off an artist's copyrighted works).This would force recording companies to determine at the inception of the contract just how long they will have this exclusive right, then it reverts 100% back to the artist, who can then do as she pleases with it...market it herself, sell it to another recording company, or make it public domain, or GPL.
FPOIt's Deterrent, by the way.
Try Xandros, you can install Debian packages using Xandros Networks. Think of it as a package installer on the menu...It worked for me.
FPO
the court and DOJ were that the lockout only needed to be there for a few years, through like EOY 2005 or something. And competition would be restored...somehow.
Which is probably WHY MS delayed longhorn till 2006. They may call it the "replacement" for Windows, but when they release it, it will be a "NEW" system. It'll be called MEGA-OS, or Vader-OS or something, just so they won't be called to task on it being a Windows Upgrade.
SCO's idea here, probably fully supported by financiers (no names please) is initiaite as many suits as possible. This results in hiring more lawyers (lawyers must be licensed/registered in a state/province/country in order to practice), who charge SCO money, which increases SCO's expenses.
Increased expenses means SCO must pay the bill (either out of income, or retained cash). With literally zero income, it comes out of owner's equity, which is also shared with stock value.
Are you with me so far? Good. When SCO spends all of the money, they go bankrupt. Sell of evrything they "own" (IP, source code, buildings, etc.). Court case with IBM, Redhat, Novell, DC, Autozone go away. With nothing resolved.
Another fine company picks up the gambit, and assets of SCO, and refiles the claims, sells licenses to MS, for even more outlandish prices, and fights "the good fight", as Darl would say, for another two years. After which they go bankrupt as well.
You think this is outlandish??? Please explain ENRON and WorldCom to me then. Tin foil hats aside, when someone brings up ethics and there are more than one businessman about, someone is going to get screwed.
FPOglethorpe
Interesting fact you brought out... Back in the days, MS was adamant about keeping their OS unlocked from the hardware. Now, you can't even unweld it without getting crosswise of them. F
What you describe is called the "Boiled Frog" syndrome. If you put a frog in hot water, it will leap out...too uncomfortable, a drastic change in temperature causes a violent reaction. However, if you put a frog in cool water, then simmer gently, the frog will continue to sit there, happily, until the water temperature kills it. It doesn't matter which entity you talk about, corporate firms or governments, they understand that slow changes over time don't bother us frogs. With so much global interaction going on, we're just about at that temperature stasis now where our reactions are numbed, so they can do just about what they and we won't protest. Including cranking the dial all the way up...