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User: anacron

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Comments · 83

  1. Re:Breaking news on AOL Sued for Creating Gnutella · · Score: 1

    Exactly. It's as if noone ever traded music before Gnutella came around. "Let's make a case ... Without technology, no one would have ever broken the law!" Ha. The slashdot article from the Atlantic posted a few days ago mentioned that copyright infringement was huge around the turn of the century -- people were bootlegging printed music. I wonder how wide the distribution channel would have been if there was a sheet-music version of gnutella around in 1890.

  2. Let's sue capitalism on AOL Sued for Creating Gnutella · · Score: 1

    Right. Now let's sue the folks that invented capitalism because it allows people to sell stolen property. Also, let's sue the people that created the first storefront, because someone else could have used that idea to put together a shop that sells questionable material. Also, we should sue the people that actually make computers -- they help promote the internet and the internet is the root of all evil, right?

    Maybe we should just sue god for creating the world and making it possible to have people who do subversive things with enabling tools. Any lawyers wanna take this one up?

    (I wonder who god would god would choose as a defense attorney?)

  3. Re:NO, actually... on Groening Says The Simpsons Movie Planned · · Score: 2

    Actually, Ralph Wiggum said this first. In a later episode, Homer repeated it.

  4. Campaign on Transmeta Files For IPO · · Score: 1

    Ultra-secret for 4 years = public buzz
    Linus as an employee = Linux buyin
    Can run MS OS = Windows buyin

    What's left? How can this not be successful? It's been vaporware for 4 years, but they finally have a product. Woo-Hoo.

  5. To port or not to port on On Microsoft Porting to Linux/Unix · · Score: 1

    Given that Microsoft will eventually start porting apps, the question becomes: does this really benefit the *x community?

    Sure, Linux users will be able to open up Word documents and Excel spreadsheets.

    Sure, Solaris users will be able to use Windows Media Player.

    But The OS is where the money is. Why would Microsoft port enough applications for Linux to become viable as an end-user desktop? I reason that they wouldn't. Hell, they might even keep the releases on *x one step (in features and bug fixes) behind the Windows releases.

  6. Re:The marketshare is just too big on Microsoft Porting Applications To Linux (Really!) · · Score: 1

    The 7% is only for advertising. So if they're going to launch a new Money 2000 ad campaign in Kansas, they want to know they'll make a 7% ROI before they even start designing it.

    It's a bit different, though, when you write applications. A well established company can't make a lot of money on something that hasn't shipped yet. So I'm sure the ROI standards for software in the Microsoft world are a bit higher. It's expensive to create new things and not so expensive to put new features on old things.

    Where they really excell is in gaining marketshare for strategic placements of products. They know their target audience before a product ships, so they know how to maximize it. They wouldn't port apps to Linux if it was done without considering the Linux users -- who tend to be more compu-savy than the ordinary Win98 user.

  7. The marketshare is just too big on Microsoft Porting Applications To Linux (Really!) · · Score: 3

    Microsoft doesn't invest in advertising unless they *know* they're going to get a 7% ROI. I would be willing to bet that their standards for software development are much higher.

    Ok, so they port applications to *x. It's just a business strategy. It's a new market space for them to grow into ... one that's really untapped by any major software house. Prime Real Estate.

    And the bottom line, for the current CEO, is that if it pays off, the stock holders will be happy. Also, it'll probably help their anti-trust appeal because they'll be able to show that they're not only in the business of OSs, but also in providing valuable applications to the entire user community.

  8. @Home is constantly monitoring their network on @Home Stops Allowing VPNs · · Score: 1

    I've been watching tcpdumps of the network traffic, and @Home has been using arp and ping to cycle through all of the IPs within their subnet. So not only are they monitoring how many IPs are in use, but they're monitoring which ones are active and by who. I've had the service for a week, and I've seen them cycle through all of their IP addresses several times. At first I thought it was sort of an "on-demand" thing -- so they could ping the network to see which IPs were available. But the arp requests come in at about 1/sec and have been continuously for the past week.

    Of course, my FreeBSD firewall blocks the incoming UDP arp packets, and blocks pings anyway, so they won't get anything from me.