Microsoft is NOT a monopoly? Who locks vendors into their software? Who tried to block other media players on their OS? Who committed numerous acts of perjury at their antitrust trial?
Locking vendors into your software isn't a monopolistic practice, it is common every day business practice and has been since time immemorial. You propose instead what? That Microsoft create and give to the world standards that anyone can write to for any platform? That's like telling Hardinge to create and give to the world a universal spindle standard. Standards are adopted by force of market, not idiotic movements.
Microsoft has every right to do with their OS whatever the Hell they wish and it is their job to respond to market forces or go out of business. If you want Linux to be adopted, make it as easy to use for the common user as Windows XP. It isn't, and won't be, because it is dominated by "hard is beautiful because it lets me show off because I have insecurity issues" geeks. XP isn't. My mother-in-law can maneuver through Windows XP Pro and Office XP like a speed demon. Ten years of training would be needed for her figure out how to find xorg.conf to change her monitor resolution and not fark it up. Most of the people thinking Linux is on par with Windows are either seriously delusional or too young to remember the lack of productivity in offices on DOS prior to Windows. It's MS' OS and they've cornered the market simply by putting out a better OS that at its worst is still better than Linux when it is slightly cranky. A truly farked Linux box is masochism delight.
They lied at an antitrust trial? Who farking doesn't? Since when does that create a monopoly?
Dada is right. It takes force and coercion to create a monopoly, only government can do it, and our government doesn't put a gun to anyone's head to make them buy Windows. They just want an OS that doesn't suck and Windows doesn't suck. Again, a committed Fedora Core user who can build apps from source and fix dependency Hell in his sleep is telling you this. But then, I happen to be a former programmer from back when we knew to write apps for real people to use and not whatever we bloody well felt like and screw the useability or common sense. Linux has "screw the common user" written all over it. Of course, it would given that it descends from Unix, arguably the dumbest thing ever conceived this side of OS/2. That no one is trying to make Linux into a monopoly doesn't make it better than Windows which only has the share that it does because it doesn't suck in comparison.
Why is this so hard to understand for the geeks of today? If we ran things years ago like you're trying to have them now, there'd be none of the nifty engineering and technological marvels there are because we'd have built whatever we felt like instead what the CORPORATIONS and the END USERS PAYING THEM wanted. And you'd not have PCs, the Internet, or anything else you use while taking them for granted to write your socialistic twaddle non-sequitr missives on Slashdot.
...to the rear! Now NAV can bone your PC over the Internet without having to do it the old fashioned way by installing it!
Oh joy. All we need is a BHO that leeches onto ports 25 and 110 in IE just waiting for an IE weakness to be exploited turning every open browser into an open relay, never mind is bogged down by system processes causing it to pause long enough to timeout connections to your mail server.
This is because a wiki lyrics site would be subject to individual submissions and thus filled with guesses at lyrics no better than yours. Do you want to take as authoritative such a site telling you that Fleetwood Mac's Rhiannon is actually sung "Magggggggggggnum!"?
If you don't like how Microsoft builds their OS then don't frigging buy it, it is just that simple. This boils down to people whose lack of technical expertise is showing brilliantly like a nova turning to the usual old standby of whining.
I've been in network and PC and software support forever now and Windows HAS NO ISSUES ON PAR WITH THE FUD-HYPE WHEN YOU HAVE A SINGLE CLUE WHAT YOU ARE DOING. That amazingly simple. I've beaten Windows XP down like a chump on too many boxes to count and the damage done was MINE. NOT MICROSOFT'S. THEIR product worked fine. It didn't start to misbehave until I farked with it in a way either calculated to cause it or that was brazenly indifferent to good operating practice.
This is NOT unique to Windows. I can bring almost any Linux distribution to its knees with a few such moves. That it is harder and less point and click than Windows is totally irrellevant. The default Red Hat, SuSE, Fedora Core, and Ubuntu distros when installed to their carefully chosen default configurations are just as well behaved as Windows (but not nearly as easy to use).
This is about people wanting Windows whatever way their whim of the moment decides it should be, wanting Windows for less money or for free, wanting Bill Gates and Microsoft to take it in the shorts, but not because Microsoft has done anything criminal or unethical. If Gateway wants to bundle Ubuntu or Windows, that choice is Gateway's, NOT Microsoft's. It is simply not profitable to bundle and deploy Linux as opposed to Windows. Hence the box builders go with Windows.
The idea that Microsoft somehow makes box builders deploy Windows instead of Linux is truly tail wags the dog thinking but par for the course on Slashdot.
I mean, if you can find an angle where government regulation of business, or anyone else you happen to be at political or philosophical differences with, is a good thing, then I'm sure you can find an angle where the government regulation of what you do on the roads is a good thing for some other group. Like pedestrians, safer drivers than you, what have you. They obviously know what is best for your utilities, so why wouldn't they know what is best for your roads?
(This sarcasm brought to you by the Department of the Glaringly Obvious)
...that so many of the same people who espouse FUD regarding the government whenever the question of regulation of anything else comes up ranging from minor paranoia to extreme tinfoil hat psych ward paranoia are so happy to embrace an all-controlling government when it comes to forcing some other party to suck wind, take a loss, and give them something for less money.
Okay, now run your own company and tell me it is right for the government to tell you how to run it. Those who've actually run their own businesses really aren't so quick to embrace this. It's not the place of government to constantly tell you how to run your life, it's the place of the people to tell the government how to run itself. Your business is yours. You'd not simply say, "oh well, best interest of the consumers and all even if I can't give decent wages to anyone nor make profits attractive to investors or engage in R&D that might make the busines more efficient and... *sigh*..." Be honest people.
Be consistant as well. Either the government that governs least is best or the government that governs most. Either you can trust the government implicitly at all times and in all things no matter who gets elected or appointed or you can't. Don't go on about GWB and the Republicans every chance you get and wax revolutionary about the threat of the government taking away control of your rights, property, free time, etc. but then espouse big government whenever they're screwing someone else for your benefit.
What they do to big business tomorrow, what they do to some other group you don't like the day after that, they will sooner or later do to you and yours the next day after that.
The alterative I think will be pay-for-listen digital networks with distributed architecture where bits of the music files constantly flit across the network from user cache to user cache, each one only an encrypted piece and hence not useable by itself. Only when you authenticate to the artist's system, will you first be able retrieve the encrypted pieces and get the right order they should be in and then the keys to decrypt and play on the fly.
This sort of DRM where the artist holds all the cards is a far better solution for me. This I could back. Of course, to work, many artists would need to band together into associations, hence labels, of their own and those labels would need to aggregate into... music associations.
What would make the difference would be this being artist dominated for control and not suits who exist to suck money off the system for themselves. The wonks at the RIAA don't make music or entertain me, rather the opposite. It annoys me to think they get more of my music entertainment dollar than the artist I actually want to hear from.
If they were using Linux, do you really think they could provide a list of programmers? I mean come on think of the thousands upon thousands who have contributed, many times without mention...
If this were demanded of Red Hat, they too would have to leave and that would suck because I like Raleigh and Red Hat is a great thing to have there.
It is not the job of government to force the people to do anything. Such is thinking worthy of the feudal past of monarchies and empires. It is the job of people to force the government. You might think you are fulfilling that, but you're only doing that to do the former thing; you're getting the people to force the government to force the people.
The people cannot and thus will not be as efficient in energy usage as you fancifully imagine because the technologies that will allow them to do so at their current standard of living have not been mass produced through enough generations of revisions and refinements and been adopted enough by industry and individuals. This is a matter of economics and free will which go hand in hand.
The alternative is the idiocy of the Mother Earth News crowd from the 60s. We can all raise pigs and make methane and so on while we reminisce about a non-existant good ol days when in reality the old days were filled with poverty, misery, pestilence, and violence on a scale and frequency most modern people cannot grasp. It all eventually devolves into an essentially feudal system where some people are more equal than others, live better, and the great masses exist only to ensure the survival of the people at the top and die at their whim.
Anyone want to guess what the urban poor will have to say about that? As former urban and suburban poor I can tell you it won't go over well.
As the descendant of immigrants of too many nationalities to enumerate in short order, we here in the USA aren't exactly jonesing for the respect of a world that keeps farking things up so bad that signifigant portions of their population don't simply talk about moving to another country like the poser leftists here, they actually do it, and quite frequently risk their lives to do it. You sh*t on the US, you sh*t on all those people who came here fleeing tyranny, villainy, and all the other attrocious crimes perpetrated on their citizenry by so many of the countries of "most of the world". No one in my family has forgotten, not three or five generations later.
Not surprisingly, the most nasty rhetoric comes from young people right here in the USA who think the world should be provided to them on a silver platter and whine because it isn't while peers of their age group are busy risking life and limb to come here and build what they want on life because they see the opportunities some of the people who've been here three or five generations don't. All I can do is shake my head in disgust for this idiotic mindset and remain thankful that there are always others willing to take the productive place in society these dipsticks throw away willfully.
The people most given to hating Microsoft for being smart where their competition was stupid are themselves geeks and nerds, the people who are themselves most often hated in school for NOT being stupid instead of UNlike a lot of others.
Microsoft is still, to this day, being held accountable for the monumental incompetence and world-class idiocy of IBM, Oracle, Netscape, and AOL and probably will for eternity. Microsoft products, compared to their competitors, don't suck. Given that Microsoft spent close to ten year straight selling beta as release and splooging the market with it, you have to be big time stupid to fail against it. Well, IBM, Oracle, Netscape, and AOL were and still are big time stupid.
Why should I be surprised? The people most given to hating Microsoft for being smart where their competition was stupid are themselves geeks and nerds, the people who are themselves most often hated in school for being stupid instead of dumb like a lot of others. Don't abused peole themselves learn to become abusers? Seems a lot of people who do well but are disliked for that out of envy do the same damn thing...
On topic to the article, it doesn't surprise me that they are afraid but I think they are more afraid of committing to open source and then eating the blame when it backfires and fails. Open source does cost more to support because you're generally going with *nix and that means a smaller talent pool, more expensive to aquire *and keep*. Business doesn't make profit by spending money without getting money back. Support manpower is not a money maker it is a money eater and thus the imperative is to lower it at all costs. You don't do that by going with the smaller talent pool which tips the balance towards an employee's market. MS allows an employer's market and it will likely stay that way.
A free verse rap-off between Steve Balmer and Richard Stallman?
Stallman would lose because rhyming FOSS buzzwords is harder and Balmer is good in a dust up with office furniture. You know that if you're going to represent, you better be good in a fight. Stallman is taking a chair in the first five minutes.
Usenet? I can see the titles of the spam in those groups now. "See hot intellectual babes getting down with their accellarators"
Torrent? Oh yeah, I can trying to piece together ten thousand Postscript files of formulas and oops, was that the second part of the fifth equation or the fourth part of the eighth?
P2P? "It has come to our attention that your IP address 192.168.24.32 has been identified as hosting intellectual property not belonging to you. You have five days to respond with an admission and pay our demand of $5000..."
Paper? Didn't the computer SCIENCE world promise to eliminate paper from offices and so on?
And we thought we had a fair grasp of where all the Luddites were. I guess we can add another one.
Forget fusion weapons. They'd not need more than a few stray rocks large enough to survive atmospheric friction. Boom, boom, boom. End of human civilization.
If there was the slightest chance we were building up towards a war with an offworld power we'd need much more advanced technologies and we'd not be hearing about them in the open press. That should go without saying for all but the most deluded.
I'm not sure which is crazier... the idea that we could use known technology to fight an alien power capable of warp-style travel or the idea that the government believes this. This is loonier than Saddam believing his weapons people that they were working on WMDs long after they stopped.
At the rate things get done by the RH people, and by packagers, FC3 should have decent package availibility until FC6. Many sites still have FC1 packages on their servers.
That said, it does give more of a reason to think about an upgrade to FC4, but given the disasters I've heard compared to FC3, I probably will leave FC3 on my boxes for now.
Religious extremism come in many flavors folks, and if we are not careful, we are going to lose our edge. Remember, this country is only a couple hundred years old. Those societies that have embraced education and science historically are those societies that survive.
Which would those be? I ask because I know of not one nation on Earth to be in continuous unbroken governance and structure since let's say the time of Troy. Nothing lasts forever, or even very long, where the species concerned has a deep-seated short attention span problem compared to their own history and more desire for individual thought than lockstep conformity at any cost which is more the sort of thing that would be required for them to have any given nation stay intact for three thousand years. That would be boring. Upheaval and change is in the nature of the people we're concerned with. So I wouldn't look towards survival of any given nation past a few hundred years as all that important.
If so, I will be joining the Sony and RIAA action to stop this insidious abuse of tape and joining any action to encourage lawmakers to restrict the use of tape from organizations such as/. for our own good.
If not, then Sony can go whistle and we'll have to get back to looking for something else to scapegoat because the real reasons certainly ain't being taken seriously. (Some sort of "I'd never read organ I was accepted to edit or publish on" phenomenon it seems...)
They need to next try urban outsourcing. There's lots of people smart enough to do this work and in desperate need of someone taking them seriously and warehouseing them in desperation and poverty sure as fark ain't working.
I hope this is a joke because I have a 2GHz P-IV w/256MB RAM and with as much stripped down as possible, it still won't burn a DVD-/+R at 8X on-the-fly without fouling up. Fedora Core 3, K3B, everything quintuple checked.
Ever look at the average Linux desktop load and see what is set to run every so often in the background? Ever have Linux grind to a frigging halt in both KDE and Gnome, six different kernel revisions, various software running at each time, and when you go to top you find it is the same mysterious thing that on a Google shows as a common Linux daemon set to update itself and its database every so often?
Happens to me constantly on every box I have ever installed Linux on, every mainstream version. Faster my (...)...
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft is NOT a monopoly? Who locks vendors into their software? Who tried to block other media players on their OS? Who committed numerous acts of perjury at their antitrust trial?
Locking vendors into your software isn't a monopolistic practice, it is common every day business practice and has been since time immemorial. You propose instead what? That Microsoft create and give to the world standards that anyone can write to for any platform? That's like telling Hardinge to create and give to the world a universal spindle standard. Standards are adopted by force of market, not idiotic movements.
Microsoft has every right to do with their OS whatever the Hell they wish and it is their job to respond to market forces or go out of business. If you want Linux to be adopted, make it as easy to use for the common user as Windows XP. It isn't, and won't be, because it is dominated by "hard is beautiful because it lets me show off because I have insecurity issues" geeks. XP isn't. My mother-in-law can maneuver through Windows XP Pro and Office XP like a speed demon. Ten years of training would be needed for her figure out how to find xorg.conf to change her monitor resolution and not fark it up. Most of the people thinking Linux is on par with Windows are either seriously delusional or too young to remember the lack of productivity in offices on DOS prior to Windows. It's MS' OS and they've cornered the market simply by putting out a better OS that at its worst is still better than Linux when it is slightly cranky. A truly farked Linux box is masochism delight.
They lied at an antitrust trial? Who farking doesn't? Since when does that create a monopoly?
Dada is right. It takes force and coercion to create a monopoly, only government can do it, and our government doesn't put a gun to anyone's head to make them buy Windows. They just want an OS that doesn't suck and Windows doesn't suck. Again, a committed Fedora Core user who can build apps from source and fix dependency Hell in his sleep is telling you this. But then, I happen to be a former programmer from back when we knew to write apps for real people to use and not whatever we bloody well felt like and screw the useability or common sense. Linux has "screw the common user" written all over it. Of course, it would given that it descends from Unix, arguably the dumbest thing ever conceived this side of OS/2. That no one is trying to make Linux into a monopoly doesn't make it better than Windows which only has the share that it does because it doesn't suck in comparison.
Why is this so hard to understand for the geeks of today? If we ran things years ago like you're trying to have them now, there'd be none of the nifty engineering and technological marvels there are because we'd have built whatever we felt like instead what the CORPORATIONS and the END USERS PAYING THEM wanted. And you'd not have PCs, the Internet, or anything else you use while taking them for granted to write your socialistic twaddle non-sequitr missives on Slashdot.
"Proactive Leveraging of Synergistic Diversification" was missing, but the spirit of it was present.
Yeah, that's so shocking. You'd think young boys would look for pr0n in their dad's sock drawer like their forbearers did.
...to the rear! Now NAV can bone your PC over the Internet without having to do it the old fashioned way by installing it!
Oh joy. All we need is a BHO that leeches onto ports 25 and 110 in IE just waiting for an IE weakness to be exploited turning every open browser into an open relay, never mind is bogged down by system processes causing it to pause long enough to timeout connections to your mail server.
This is because a wiki lyrics site would be subject to individual submissions and thus filled with guesses at lyrics no better than yours. Do you want to take as authoritative such a site telling you that Fleetwood Mac's Rhiannon is actually sung "Magggggggggggnum!"?
Neither do I.
have they found the place that the Earth makes contact with that giant turtle it is supposed to be sitting?
Huh? I thought those were "dirty knees".
I must need to get my hearing aid adjusted. Damn whippersnappers and their weird lyrics.
If you don't like how Microsoft builds their OS then don't frigging buy it, it is just that simple. This boils down to people whose lack of technical expertise is showing brilliantly like a nova turning to the usual old standby of whining.
I've been in network and PC and software support forever now and Windows HAS NO ISSUES ON PAR WITH THE FUD-HYPE WHEN YOU HAVE A SINGLE CLUE WHAT YOU ARE DOING. That amazingly simple. I've beaten Windows XP down like a chump on too many boxes to count and the damage done was MINE. NOT MICROSOFT'S. THEIR product worked fine. It didn't start to misbehave until I farked with it in a way either calculated to cause it or that was brazenly indifferent to good operating practice.
This is NOT unique to Windows. I can bring almost any Linux distribution to its knees with a few such moves. That it is harder and less point and click than Windows is totally irrellevant. The default Red Hat, SuSE, Fedora Core, and Ubuntu distros when installed to their carefully chosen default configurations are just as well behaved as Windows (but not nearly as easy to use).
This is about people wanting Windows whatever way their whim of the moment decides it should be, wanting Windows for less money or for free, wanting Bill Gates and Microsoft to take it in the shorts, but not because Microsoft has done anything criminal or unethical. If Gateway wants to bundle Ubuntu or Windows, that choice is Gateway's, NOT Microsoft's. It is simply not profitable to bundle and deploy Linux as opposed to Windows. Hence the box builders go with Windows.
The idea that Microsoft somehow makes box builders deploy Windows instead of Linux is truly tail wags the dog thinking but par for the course on Slashdot.
I mean, if you can find an angle where government regulation of business, or anyone else you happen to be at political or philosophical differences with, is a good thing, then I'm sure you can find an angle where the government regulation of what you do on the roads is a good thing for some other group. Like pedestrians, safer drivers than you, what have you. They obviously know what is best for your utilities, so why wouldn't they know what is best for your roads?
(This sarcasm brought to you by the Department of the Glaringly Obvious)
...that so many of the same people who espouse FUD regarding the government whenever the question of regulation of anything else comes up ranging from minor paranoia to extreme tinfoil hat psych ward paranoia are so happy to embrace an all-controlling government when it comes to forcing some other party to suck wind, take a loss, and give them something for less money.
Okay, now run your own company and tell me it is right for the government to tell you how to run it. Those who've actually run their own businesses really aren't so quick to embrace this. It's not the place of government to constantly tell you how to run your life, it's the place of the people to tell the government how to run itself. Your business is yours. You'd not simply say, "oh well, best interest of the consumers and all even if I can't give decent wages to anyone nor make profits attractive to investors or engage in R&D that might make the busines more efficient and... *sigh*..." Be honest people.
Be consistant as well. Either the government that governs least is best or the government that governs most. Either you can trust the government implicitly at all times and in all things no matter who gets elected or appointed or you can't. Don't go on about GWB and the Republicans every chance you get and wax revolutionary about the threat of the government taking away control of your rights, property, free time, etc. but then espouse big government whenever they're screwing someone else for your benefit.
What they do to big business tomorrow, what they do to some other group you don't like the day after that, they will sooner or later do to you and yours the next day after that.
The alterative I think will be pay-for-listen digital networks with distributed architecture where bits of the music files constantly flit across the network from user cache to user cache, each one only an encrypted piece and hence not useable by itself. Only when you authenticate to the artist's system, will you first be able retrieve the encrypted pieces and get the right order they should be in and then the keys to decrypt and play on the fly.
This sort of DRM where the artist holds all the cards is a far better solution for me. This I could back. Of course, to work, many artists would need to band together into associations, hence labels, of their own and those labels would need to aggregate into... music associations.
What would make the difference would be this being artist dominated for control and not suits who exist to suck money off the system for themselves. The wonks at the RIAA don't make music or entertain me, rather the opposite. It annoys me to think they get more of my music entertainment dollar than the artist I actually want to hear from.
If they were using Linux, do you really think they could provide a list of programmers? I mean come on think of the thousands upon thousands who have contributed, many times without mention...
If this were demanded of Red Hat, they too would have to leave and that would suck because I like Raleigh and Red Hat is a great thing to have there.
It is not the job of government to force the people to do anything. Such is thinking worthy of the feudal past of monarchies and empires. It is the job of people to force the government. You might think you are fulfilling that, but you're only doing that to do the former thing; you're getting the people to force the government to force the people.
The people cannot and thus will not be as efficient in energy usage as you fancifully imagine because the technologies that will allow them to do so at their current standard of living have not been mass produced through enough generations of revisions and refinements and been adopted enough by industry and individuals. This is a matter of economics and free will which go hand in hand.
The alternative is the idiocy of the Mother Earth News crowd from the 60s. We can all raise pigs and make methane and so on while we reminisce about a non-existant good ol days when in reality the old days were filled with poverty, misery, pestilence, and violence on a scale and frequency most modern people cannot grasp. It all eventually devolves into an essentially feudal system where some people are more equal than others, live better, and the great masses exist only to ensure the survival of the people at the top and die at their whim.
Anyone want to guess what the urban poor will have to say about that? As former urban and suburban poor I can tell you it won't go over well.
and are well respected by most of the World.
As the descendant of immigrants of too many nationalities to enumerate in short order, we here in the USA aren't exactly jonesing for the respect of a world that keeps farking things up so bad that signifigant portions of their population don't simply talk about moving to another country like the poser leftists here, they actually do it, and quite frequently risk their lives to do it. You sh*t on the US, you sh*t on all those people who came here fleeing tyranny, villainy, and all the other attrocious crimes perpetrated on their citizenry by so many of the countries of "most of the world". No one in my family has forgotten, not three or five generations later.
Not surprisingly, the most nasty rhetoric comes from young people right here in the USA who think the world should be provided to them on a silver platter and whine because it isn't while peers of their age group are busy risking life and limb to come here and build what they want on life because they see the opportunities some of the people who've been here three or five generations don't. All I can do is shake my head in disgust for this idiotic mindset and remain thankful that there are always others willing to take the productive place in society these dipsticks throw away willfully.
The people most given to hating Microsoft for being smart where their competition was stupid are themselves geeks and nerds, the people who are themselves most often hated in school for NOT being stupid instead of UNlike a lot of others.
Microsoft is still, to this day, being held accountable for the monumental incompetence and world-class idiocy of IBM, Oracle, Netscape, and AOL and probably will for eternity. Microsoft products, compared to their competitors, don't suck. Given that Microsoft spent close to ten year straight selling beta as release and splooging the market with it, you have to be big time stupid to fail against it. Well, IBM, Oracle, Netscape, and AOL were and still are big time stupid.
Why should I be surprised? The people most given to hating Microsoft for being smart where their competition was stupid are themselves geeks and nerds, the people who are themselves most often hated in school for being stupid instead of dumb like a lot of others. Don't abused peole themselves learn to become abusers? Seems a lot of people who do well but are disliked for that out of envy do the same damn thing...
On topic to the article, it doesn't surprise me that they are afraid but I think they are more afraid of committing to open source and then eating the blame when it backfires and fails. Open source does cost more to support because you're generally going with *nix and that means a smaller talent pool, more expensive to aquire *and keep*. Business doesn't make profit by spending money without getting money back. Support manpower is not a money maker it is a money eater and thus the imperative is to lower it at all costs. You don't do that by going with the smaller talent pool which tips the balance towards an employee's market. MS allows an employer's market and it will likely stay that way.
A free verse rap-off between Steve Balmer and Richard Stallman?
Stallman would lose because rhyming FOSS buzzwords is harder and Balmer is good in a dust up with office furniture. You know that if you're going to represent, you better be good in a fight. Stallman is taking a chair in the first five minutes.
Off the web?
Usenet? I can see the titles of the spam in those groups now. "See hot intellectual babes getting down with their accellarators"
Torrent? Oh yeah, I can trying to piece together ten thousand Postscript files of formulas and oops, was that the second part of the fifth equation or the fourth part of the eighth?
P2P? "It has come to our attention that your IP address 192.168.24.32 has been identified as hosting intellectual property not belonging to you. You have five days to respond with an admission and pay our demand of $5000..."
Paper? Didn't the computer SCIENCE world promise to eliminate paper from offices and so on?
And we thought we had a fair grasp of where all the Luddites were. I guess we can add another one.
Forget fusion weapons. They'd not need more than a few stray rocks large enough to survive atmospheric friction. Boom, boom, boom. End of human civilization.
If there was the slightest chance we were building up towards a war with an offworld power we'd need much more advanced technologies and we'd not be hearing about them in the open press. That should go without saying for all but the most deluded.
I'm not sure which is crazier... the idea that we could use known technology to fight an alien power capable of warp-style travel or the idea that the government believes this. This is loonier than Saddam believing his weapons people that they were working on WMDs long after they stopped.
At the rate things get done by the RH people, and by packagers, FC3 should have decent package availibility until FC6. Many sites still have FC1 packages on their servers.
That said, it does give more of a reason to think about an upgrade to FC4, but given the disasters I've heard compared to FC3, I probably will leave FC3 on my boxes for now.
Religious extremism come in many flavors folks, and if we are not careful, we are going to lose our edge. Remember, this country is only a couple hundred years old. Those societies that have embraced education and science historically are those societies that survive.
Which would those be? I ask because I know of not one nation on Earth to be in continuous unbroken governance and structure since let's say the time of Troy. Nothing lasts forever, or even very long, where the species concerned has a deep-seated short attention span problem compared to their own history and more desire for individual thought than lockstep conformity at any cost which is more the sort of thing that would be required for them to have any given nation stay intact for three thousand years. That would be boring. Upheaval and change is in the nature of the people we're concerned with. So I wouldn't look towards survival of any given nation past a few hundred years as all that important.
If so, I will be joining the Sony and RIAA action to stop this insidious abuse of tape and joining any action to encourage lawmakers to restrict the use of tape from organizations such as /. for our own good.
If not, then Sony can go whistle and we'll have to get back to looking for something else to scapegoat because the real reasons certainly ain't being taken seriously. (Some sort of "I'd never read organ I was accepted to edit or publish on" phenomenon it seems...)
They need to next try urban outsourcing. There's lots of people smart enough to do this work and in desperate need of someone taking them seriously and warehouseing them in desperation and poverty sure as fark ain't working.
The ever-popular "forget the children, think of the police" justification.
Still don't like it.
It runs faster.
I hope this is a joke because I have a 2GHz P-IV w/256MB RAM and with as much stripped down as possible, it still won't burn a DVD-/+R at 8X on-the-fly without fouling up. Fedora Core 3, K3B, everything quintuple checked.
Ever look at the average Linux desktop load and see what is set to run every so often in the background? Ever have Linux grind to a frigging halt in both KDE and Gnome, six different kernel revisions, various software running at each time, and when you go to top you find it is the same mysterious thing that on a Google shows as a common Linux daemon set to update itself and its database every so often?
Happens to me constantly on every box I have ever installed Linux on, every mainstream version. Faster my (...)...