One keeps wondering why they sell these PCs without Windows, if they are not able to test their hardware with other OSes before sending them to Wal-Mart for sale.
I don't think Linux users are the target buyer for these PCs. I suspect most of them are being sold to:
Folks with a PII/300 who want to upgrade and are planning on installing their OEM Win98SE
People who intend to install a pirated windows, most likely a copy from the office or a buddy
Both of these categories are in violation of MS EULA, but I would guess 80% of the machines end up with Windows on them. Most people who install an OEM copy of Windows will have no idea that they're breaking the law, which I believe is a large part of the reason click-wrap licensing gets away with so much.
I'm curious, how prominently are these PCs advertised as not having an OS? Is Wal-Mart getting many returns because nothing happened when the machine was turned on?
You're newfangled system better have DRM built in. I don't have any data, but it must be obvious that artists are losing billions in revenues every week due to mp3s being sent as attachments. This criminal behavior must be stopped or the practice of free expression will come to a screeching halt.
They had to have been in a dire position to start with, or merely decided to sell out. This gave them a reason to explain dumping everyone's accounts over to another ISP. They didn't specify how much they made off the deal.
I can't see a healthy, competent ISP being put out of business by dos attacks. Yet.
One small comfort is that no one buys ATI cards for performance. Any cards of the GeForce (Nvidia's brand) variety handily whip anything at the same price point with ATI.
This really isn't true any longer. ATI finally released better drivers for the 8500 this week and it keeps up fine with a GeForce3 Ti 500, for $50 less. Here's a review at Tom's Hardware.
I sympathize with your plight, but I have to wonder about a business model contingent on squeezing more ad revenue from the internet demographic most likely to employ advertising filtering.
However, no update is available by download. That's getting kinda screwy. Even MS makes service packs available by download. Did a bean counter at Apple figure out that distributing tons of free CDs to stores is cheaper than the bandwidth? Yet they must be making a profit on the mail orders, as a CD-ROM costs only $1 to stamp and package, then add a few bucks for postage and let a distributor take care of the rest.
I loved Q-Link. Maybe it was because it was the first online community I was involved in, but I suspect it had more to do with the community itself. It was small (relative to today's standards), and populated with mostly honorable people. I spent most of my time playing chess, but recognized a surprising portion of the usernames in most of the chat areas. No virtual communities have come near it since. The closest today are well-moderated IRC channels, but these are too small. On the other hand, AOL is too big, rooms don't have consistent community and there are 5 trolls or lurkers for every good person.
I've expended a lot of thought about what led to this type of community, free of trolls and the seedy quality of most chatrooms. I think it came from a couple things:
1. It was new to those participating. We hadn't learned to abuse anonymity.
2. The size was right. IRC channels are too small, while the scale of IRC servers or AOL itself is too large.
3. We paid a buttload for the service. At $3.60/hour the bills racked up quick. No one would pay that today, but it sure kept the idiots out.
It would be nice if someone started an AOL type community that required an application to join, capped its membership numbers (~5000), did not provide anonymity and charged a fee. I doubt it could be profitable, but it might be very refreshing.
It is a myth that decentralized servers are unstoppable. ISP services are being gobbled up by large media conglomerates whose aim is to control the traffic through their networks. They're winning. It used to be that this type of integration was illegal (movie studios couldn't own movie theaters, for example). But it is now the norm, and we can no longer count on logic to prevail.
Think of it this way. If everyone were required to use AOL (which owns Time/Warner), would file sharing exist? Absolutely not.
"The last movie placed First Contact in circa 2063. This is 90 years later, 2153.
According the ST Encyclopedia, the Federation was founded by several planets in 2161, after the Romulan wars. Better get busy in order to fight and win a war with allies and enemies you haven't met in less than ten years!"
Geeks who pour over ST minutia and compare consistency with stupid books sold at conventions are exactly the audience this series is NOT going after.
I use a different email address for each place i have to give an email address to. It's very useful for filtering and sorting incoming email.
For instance, I have amazon@mydomain.com, timezone@mydomain.com, ebay@mydomain.com, nlug@mydomain.com, etc.
This way, if an address goes rogue and gets inundated with spam, I set my filter to bounce it, which clears things up within a month or two. It's also a good way to check to see if someone is violating their privacy policy by selling my email address when they promise not to.
"AOL's actions are unprecedented and completely anti-consumer," said Microsoft spokesman Vivek Varma. "AOL is paying [computer makers] to eliminate consumer choice, forcing people to select the most expensive service in the industry."
What the DMCA needs are concrete examples like this that academic research will be stifled and critics silenced by this crappy law. DeCSS, the SDMI watermark controversy and this presentation at DefCon show that criminals aren't being punished, research and development folks are. The three most prominent enforcements of DMCA haven't yielded a single pirated copy of anyone's IP. This will be a powerful point to make before a congressional subcommittee.
If the industry had been smart, they would have waited until they found 1000 pirated copies of a movie or piece of software. Then they could have self-righteously claimed justification for the DMCA. Now, they're just shooting themselves in the foot.
I kinda assumed they chose Peerless as a response to RIAA's attack on Napster, as in:
"If folks can't use a Peer to Peer network system to trade files, we'll let 'em pile everything on portable drives so they can swap music in person. The system isn't P2P, it's Peerless!"
The companies claim to have actual gold. %100 in support of the currency. Whether they actually do or not is a relevant question, but the nature of the raid as described in Wired indicates that there is some political motive in the actions of the Secret Service. Namely, shutting down an alternative currency that they do not control.
This sounds like a bunch of chicken little nonsense by an organization looking to leverage TiVo's popularity for some publicity.
I own a TiVo and the documentation and onscreen setup information made clear from the start that aggregate info will be released to outside parties unless you opt-out. In the article, The Privacy Foundation takes issue with the statement that "no one outside your home, not even the TiVo staff or any of TiVo's computer systems, will ever have access to any of your personal viewing information without your prior consent. Your preferences are personal." This is completely true. I am a twenty eight year old male and my viewing habits are only being used to make generalizations about people in my demographic.
I have real concerns about the way corporations are treating privacy, especially when they exchange information without consent, but TiVo has behaved admirably with respect to this issue, and I have been very satisfied with their service.
This letter is the nicest cease and desist I've read. Probably because it wasn't written by lawyers who usually say something like "stop doing this right now and we'll probably sue you anyway. Deliver us your first born child or I'll generate 80 billable hours this week to bring the wrath of our perverted court system down upon your ass."
This letter contained every nicety but "Wishing you and yours well in the coming New Year(tm)".
And a great thing about.NET is, it's not mutually exclusive with Linux. Basically.NET just means that some of your application runs on the desktop, and some on the server. There's no stipulation that the desktop has to be Windows.
There's no stipulation that the desktop must be Windows, but how about the server? I've ignored this.NET thing from the beginning, so I'm speaking from ignorance, but is the thinking at Redmond that the desktop, which essentially becomes a browser on steroids (and hence free as in beer), is a loss leader and all revenue generation comes from leasing software time on the server end? This way they can claim compatibility with Linux, Mac, etc., but continue to corner the software market.
I feel the same about my 48SX graphing scientific calculator. Interestingly, it seemed to devolve in its current incarnation, the 48GX. They added a bunch of pop-up menus, which fortunately can be disabled by setting a couple flags, and changed the classic brown blue, and orange HP color scheme to purple, green and blue, which looks terrible.
Fortunately, my 12 year old 48SX is built to last. I've dropped it around a dozen times and had a tendency to really pound the keys during tests in college, but it's still got a lot of life left. It's not only the pinnacle of scientific calculators, but there's nothing being produced today that equals it.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think Linux users are the target buyer for these PCs. I suspect most of them are being sold to:
Both of these categories are in violation of MS EULA, but I would guess 80% of the machines end up with Windows on them. Most people who install an OEM copy of Windows will have no idea that they're breaking the law, which I believe is a large part of the reason click-wrap licensing gets away with so much.
I'm curious, how prominently are these PCs advertised as not having an OS? Is Wal-Mart getting many returns because nothing happened when the machine was turned on?
You're newfangled system better have DRM built in. I don't have any data, but it must be obvious that artists are losing billions in revenues every week due to mp3s being sent as attachments. This criminal behavior must be stopped or the practice of free expression will come to a screeching halt.
Nice of them to admit that their ads are invasive.
Actually, with infinite time, you only need one user
They had to have been in a dire position to start with, or merely decided to sell out. This gave them a reason to explain dumping everyone's accounts over to another ISP. They didn't specify how much they made off the deal.
I can't see a healthy, competent ISP being put out of business by dos attacks. Yet.
Now the bozo in front of me is going to be tweaking perl scripts instead of getting his lazy ass through the next yellow light.
One small comfort is that no one buys ATI cards for performance. Any cards of the GeForce (Nvidia's brand) variety handily whip anything at the same price point with ATI.
This really isn't true any longer. ATI finally released better drivers for the 8500 this week and it keeps up fine with a GeForce3 Ti 500, for $50 less. Here's a review at Tom's Hardware.
I sympathize with your plight, but I have to wonder about a business model contingent on squeezing more ad revenue from the internet demographic most likely to employ advertising filtering.
Best of luck.
The article states that the update is obtained:
However, no update is available by download. That's getting kinda screwy. Even MS makes service packs available by download. Did a bean counter at Apple figure out that distributing tons of free CDs to stores is cheaper than the bandwidth? Yet they must be making a profit on the mail orders, as a CD-ROM costs only $1 to stamp and package, then add a few bucks for postage and let a distributor take care of the rest.
Anyone else find this weird?
You mean that used to be legal?!
I loved Q-Link. Maybe it was because it was the first online community I was involved in, but I suspect it had more to do with the community itself. It was small (relative to today's standards), and populated with mostly honorable people. I spent most of my time playing chess, but recognized a surprising portion of the usernames in most of the chat areas. No virtual communities have come near it since. The closest today are well-moderated IRC channels, but these are too small. On the other hand, AOL is too big, rooms don't have consistent community and there are 5 trolls or lurkers for every good person.
I've expended a lot of thought about what led to this type of community, free of trolls and the seedy quality of most chatrooms. I think it came from a couple things:
1. It was new to those participating. We hadn't learned to abuse anonymity.
2. The size was right. IRC channels are too small, while the scale of IRC servers or AOL itself is too large.
3. We paid a buttload for the service. At $3.60/hour the bills racked up quick. No one would pay that today, but it sure kept the idiots out.
It would be nice if someone started an AOL type community that required an application to join, capped its membership numbers (~5000), did not provide anonymity and charged a fee. I doubt it could be profitable, but it might be very refreshing.
It is a myth that decentralized servers are unstoppable. ISP services are being gobbled up by large media conglomerates whose aim is to control the traffic through their networks. They're winning. It used to be that this type of integration was illegal (movie studios couldn't own movie theaters, for example). But it is now the norm, and we can no longer count on logic to prevail.
Think of it this way. If everyone were required to use AOL (which owns Time/Warner), would file sharing exist? Absolutely not.
"I wonder what colour the Blue Screen of Death is in her world?"
I think brown is the color of blue viewed through rose-colored glasses.
"The last movie placed First Contact in circa 2063. This is 90 years later, 2153. According the ST Encyclopedia, the Federation was founded by several planets in 2161, after the Romulan wars. Better get busy in order to fight and win a war with allies and enemies you haven't met in less than ten years!"
Geeks who pour over ST minutia and compare consistency with stupid books sold at conventions are exactly the audience this series is NOT going after.
Get ... a ... life
I use a different email address for each place i have to give an email address to. It's very useful for filtering and sorting incoming email.
For instance, I have amazon@mydomain.com, timezone@mydomain.com, ebay@mydomain.com, nlug@mydomain.com, etc.
This way, if an address goes rogue and gets inundated with spam, I set my filter to bounce it, which clears things up within a month or two. It's also a good way to check to see if someone is violating their privacy policy by selling my email address when they promise not to.
geez. In the twenty seconds I took to draft this comment, two other people submitted the exact same thing.
classic
What the DMCA needs are concrete examples like this that academic research will be stifled and critics silenced by this crappy law. DeCSS, the SDMI watermark controversy and this presentation at DefCon show that criminals aren't being punished, research and development folks are. The three most prominent enforcements of DMCA haven't yielded a single pirated copy of anyone's IP. This will be a powerful point to make before a congressional subcommittee.
If the industry had been smart, they would have waited until they found 1000 pirated copies of a movie or piece of software. Then they could have self-righteously claimed justification for the DMCA. Now, they're just shooting themselves in the foot.
I kinda assumed they chose Peerless as a response to RIAA's attack on Napster, as in:
"If folks can't use a Peer to Peer network system to trade files, we'll let 'em pile everything on portable drives so they can swap music in person. The system isn't P2P, it's Peerless!"
The companies claim to have actual gold. %100 in support of the currency. Whether they actually do or not is a relevant question, but the nature of the raid as described in Wired indicates that there is some political motive in the actions of the Secret Service. Namely, shutting down an alternative currency that they do not control.
This sounds like a bunch of chicken little nonsense by an organization looking to leverage TiVo's popularity for some publicity.
I own a TiVo and the documentation and onscreen setup information made clear from the start that aggregate info will be released to outside parties unless you opt-out. In the article, The Privacy Foundation takes issue with the statement that "no one outside your home, not even the TiVo staff or any of TiVo's computer systems, will ever have access to any of your personal viewing information without your prior consent. Your preferences are personal." This is completely true. I am a twenty eight year old male and my viewing habits are only being used to make generalizations about people in my demographic.
I have real concerns about the way corporations are treating privacy, especially when they exchange information without consent, but TiVo has behaved admirably with respect to this issue, and I have been very satisfied with their service.
This letter is the nicest cease and desist I've read. Probably because it wasn't written by lawyers who usually say something like "stop doing this right now and we'll probably sue you anyway. Deliver us your first born child or I'll generate 80 billable hours this week to bring the wrath of our perverted court system down upon your ass."
This letter contained every nicety but "Wishing you and yours well in the coming New Year(tm)".
There's no stipulation that the desktop must be Windows, but how about the server? I've ignored this .NET thing from the beginning, so I'm speaking from ignorance, but is the thinking at Redmond that the desktop, which essentially becomes a browser on steroids (and hence free as in beer), is a loss leader and all revenue generation comes from leasing software time on the server end? This way they can claim compatibility with Linux, Mac, etc., but continue to corner the software market.
Am I way off here?
I feel the same about my 48SX graphing scientific calculator. Interestingly, it seemed to devolve in its current incarnation, the 48GX. They added a bunch of pop-up menus, which fortunately can be disabled by setting a couple flags, and changed the classic brown blue, and orange HP color scheme to purple, green and blue, which looks terrible.
Fortunately, my 12 year old 48SX is built to last. I've dropped it around a dozen times and had a tendency to really pound the keys during tests in college, but it's still got a lot of life left. It's not only the pinnacle of scientific calculators, but there's nothing being produced today that equals it.
good point.