So just taking the total length from inital release date they are a bit worse than MS but not hugely so (7 years vs 10 years). And those are the best of the linux distros from a support perspective. Look at debian or ubuntu or fedora or mandriva and you will find the times are much shorter.
And MS bases thier lifecycle not just on the release of the product but also on the release of the successor product and the second successor product. Redhat and novell don't afaict (though it may be that they release often enough that such a policy wouldn't make any difference).
Also, since this is HTML, whether you have a £ symbol on your keyboard isn't important. To reliably have anything with a character code outside of the 7-bit ASCII range display, you must use HTML entities [w3schools.com]. Not really, character encoding standards have been defined for years and any reasonablly modern browser handles them just fine.
Unfortunately the coders of/. fucked up. It seems thier posting interface gets UTF-8 from the browser (probablly because it's ajax based and IIRC that always posts in UTF-8) but send it back to the browser claiming it's ISO-8859-1 (which is what causes that extra symbol)
MS will still be releasing security updates free and bugfixes and support calls will still be availible to those prepared to pay for them.
And at this stage in XPs lifecycle the chances of a non-security bug being critical are pretty low.
What is far more significant is that (unless MS give another stay of execution) it is soon going to get a lot harder for home users and small buisnesses to get XP as OEM supplied downgrade media dissapears (afaict you will still be able to downgrade using existing media but unless you have vlk media or OEM media of the right brand this will mean a telephone activation for every machine).
Also if microsofts past behaviour is indicative of the future OEM windows 7 will probablly only allow downgrading to vista. This will basically force anyone who wants new XP machines to go the volume license route.
IIRC the 360 is managing to keep second place in the current console generation but only by being sold at an extreme knockdown price (they are selling it cheaper than the wii!).
The other difference is you have to pay for non-security hotfixes and they hit you serveral times over
Firstly for a volume license (if your machines are currently licensed on retail or OEM) Secondly for an extended hotfix agreement. Thirdly for the individual hotfixes
I doubt any of this is cheap (though I couldn't spot actual prices on microsofts website)
I don't think microsofts suppport lifecycle policy for windows is unreasonable. Mainstream support (hotfixes free, bundled support incidents valid) for at least 5 years from release and at least 2 years from release of the successor. Then extended support (security hotfixes free, other hotfixes chargable, bundled support incidents not valid) for at least 5 years from the end of mainstreams support.
They even give you two years to upgrade from one service pack to the next.
Compare that to the support lifecycles of most linux distros and see who comes out ahead.
how exactly are we supposed to pay? Through the nose;)
Seriously you buy a volume license and then buy the extended hotfix agreement through your volume license account. You also have to pay for the individual fixes on top of that. MS don't seem to show prices on thier website but I doubt it is cheap.
There is no easy, simple solution to GITMO. mmm, even if someone was innocent and upstanding going in I certainly wouldn't trust them to remain so once they come out after what the US has put them through.
I see a few potential ways to close up gitmo, none good.
1: send the people to the US for trial 2: send the people to the countries they came from for trial 3: keep the people there until they die naturally 4: stage an accident that kills all the prisoners in the facility 5: pull out of gitmo, leave the prisoners behind and let the cubans sort it out.
1 and 2 have the risk of letting very dangerous people go loose because the evidence is in too fucked up a state to get a conviction. 3, 4 and 5 have obvious human rights issues.
Of course marketing through pirate software only helps if you can get the people to pay eventually.
Thats why theese companies tolerate piracy by individuals who aren't yet making any money out of them but form organisations like the BSA to scare companies out of running pirate software.
The others use 'encrypted' pdfs, which require at least Acrobat 5 or something, however they don't ask for any sort of decryption key, so I am confused as to how the encryption actually works. A quick primer on pdf encyryption: *pdfs can be encrypted with a variety of encryption algorithms, the algorithms range from resaonable to very strong. *to decrypt the pdf one of two passwords is needed the "owner password" and the "user password", the user password is often blank allowing viewers to load the document without prompting for a password. *if the "user password" is used to decrypt then the viewer is supposed to apply a set of restrictions set by the author. However there are tools out that that ignore this rule and let you do what you like with such a pdf.
What you have sounds like a pdf with an owner password but a blank user password (like many pdfs you find on the web). Basically a pdf with restrictions on how it can be used (that only some software will enforce) but no security against anyone who has the file reading it.
5) Linux based While the EEE 700 (which I consider the original netbook, I don't really consider the OLPC a netbook thuogh it does have similarities with them) did initially ship with linux ASUS included instructions for installing XP and later added 700 series models with XP as standard.
With the EEE 900 which afaict was the first series to be widely cloned windows XP was an option from the start.
P.S. even the high end netbooks don't have specs equivilent to a normal entry level laptop, the clock speed is slower (1.6GHz for the netbook vs 2.13GHz for the bottom end dell vostro 15 inch laptop and I belive the atom has poor performance per clock compared to the chips used in regular laptops) and the screen resolution is much lower (1024x600 for most high end netbooks vs 1366x768 for the bottom end vostro I mentioned)
and equally the people who bought with linux and installed XP later (most likely a pirate copy or at least a dubious* copy) will be counted as netbooks sold with linux.
*by dubious I mean stuff like using an upgrade copy even if you have nothing to upgrade from, using a system builder copy even though you aren't registered as a system builder, using a MSDN copy even though you don't play to use the machine purely for development, reusing an old copy that the license says is not transferable and similar.
The original specs couldn't run XP very well Afaict the original EEE 700 was pretty poor whatever OS you used due to it's very small display and very small storage, very few others made netbooks that crappy though.
The EEE 900 (cheap old celeron CPU, 12G-20G flash, 9 inch 1024x600 display) runs XP ok. Installing software is a bit slow because of the slow write speed of the flash, the small vertical resoloution is annoying (but this also applies to most 10 inch netbooks) but other than that it's fine.
and it wasn't an option XP home was still availible normally when the first netbooks came out. Indeed my brothers EEE 900 has a normal ASUS windows XP home license sticker not a ULCPC license sticker.
I beleive that loading linux on the intial models served two main purposes
1: get the price as low as possible 2: In light of the impending XP deadline make it clear to MS that they consider shipping with linux and letting customers pirate XP themselves to be a viable option.
Afaict "netbooks" currently serve two markets 1: cheap ultraportable laptops 2: portable internet terminals
The arm netbooks will probablly takeover the former leaving the wintel machines to keep the latter. Which will prove more popular remains to be seen.
I belive there are certain types of earthquake resistance measures that can be retrofitted to buildings (e.g. inserting isolation mounts into a buildings columns)
I see two main uses for knowing the time of an earthquake
1: natural gas (or other piped fuels) and electricity could be isolated in the run up to an earthquake, afaict damaged services are a major cause of fires in the aftermath of an earthquake. 2: you can evacuate people (either everyone in an area or just people in high risk structures) so that when buildings collapse they don't take people with them, you wouldn't nessacerally need to send them very far if you designated particular buildings that were known to have a high degree of earthquake resistance as "earthquake shelters"
2) You fail to mention that the scheme includes a process for those whose money has been taken to claim the money back. All it does it take the money out of the bank: the QUANGO that receives the money then has just as much obligation to return it to you as the bank does. So what you are saying is it is yet another way for the government to hide public debt, probablly at considerably cost (see: pfi)
It is difficult to automate the log in and download process based on receipt of an email Not to mention risky and probablly against the terms and conditions of your agreement with the bank since the autologin would have to have your login details.
Then google comes along and finds that well targeted unobtrusive text adverts work well enough to support it's services and starts offering them as a service to other websites.
Excuse me now, I have to try to pry that RJ45 from a RJ11 jack. If someone has really managed to get a RJ45 into a RJ11 jack I doubt the jack is still in a usable state anyway.
Another possibility would be if you want to test your software to see if it's likely to be portable, or if it contains hidden linuxisms You would do much better with a real *bsd system for that. Debian gnu/kfreebsd will find linuxisms but it will not find gnuisms.
They may up the megahertz, but not at the expense of a more costly product or more power usage. Instead, the ARM chip vendors take a look at what needs the MHZ, such as video/audio decoding, and include special co-processors for those functions on the same silicon. Therefore they don't need to increase MHz for increased functionality.
Trouble is it means you need a specialised OS build to get the most out of the CPU.
For the netbook case this likely means that performace will be shit with anything other than the custom linux distro the vendor ships.
How long will the vendors keep up security updates etc for thier custom linux distros? my guess would be only a couple of years. What will the third party software support for the custom linux distros be like? my guess would be crap.
World population continues to grow, I see two outcomes of this
1: the tech level rises sufficiantly to both suppport the extra people and raise living standards to a level that turns arround the population growth. 2: the tech level does not rise sufficantly and huge numbers of people are killed off by famine/disease/war as a result of resource shortages
Slashdot Mirror
So just taking the total length from inital release date they are a bit worse than MS but not hugely so (7 years vs 10 years). And those are the best of the linux distros from a support perspective. Look at debian or ubuntu or fedora or mandriva and you will find the times are much shorter.
And MS bases thier lifecycle not just on the release of the product but also on the release of the successor product and the second successor product. Redhat and novell don't afaict (though it may be that they release often enough that such a policy wouldn't make any difference).
Also, since this is HTML, whether you have a £ symbol on your keyboard isn't important. To reliably have anything with a character code outside of the 7-bit ASCII range display, you must use HTML entities [w3schools.com].
Not really, character encoding standards have been defined for years and any reasonablly modern browser handles them just fine.
Unfortunately the coders of /. fucked up. It seems thier posting interface gets UTF-8 from the browser (probablly because it's ajax based and IIRC that always posts in UTF-8) but send it back to the browser claiming it's ISO-8859-1 (which is what causes that extra symbol)
Extended support != unsupported.
MS will still be releasing security updates free and bugfixes and support calls will still be availible to those prepared to pay for them.
And at this stage in XPs lifecycle the chances of a non-security bug being critical are pretty low.
What is far more significant is that (unless MS give another stay of execution) it is soon going to get a lot harder for home users and small buisnesses to get XP as OEM supplied downgrade media dissapears (afaict you will still be able to downgrade using existing media but unless you have vlk media or OEM media of the right brand this will mean a telephone activation for every machine).
Also if microsofts past behaviour is indicative of the future OEM windows 7 will probablly only allow downgrading to vista. This will basically force anyone who wants new XP machines to go the volume license route.
IIRC the 360 is managing to keep second place in the current console generation but only by being sold at an extreme knockdown price (they are selling it cheaper than the wii!).
The other difference is you have to pay for non-security hotfixes and they hit you serveral times over
Firstly for a volume license (if your machines are currently licensed on retail or OEM)
Secondly for an extended hotfix agreement.
Thirdly for the individual hotfixes
I doubt any of this is cheap (though I couldn't spot actual prices on microsofts website)
Most vendors are shipping vista by default. XP is only being offered because large numbers of customers demanded it.
I don't think microsofts suppport lifecycle policy for windows is unreasonable. Mainstream support (hotfixes free, bundled support incidents valid) for at least 5 years from release and at least 2 years from release of the successor. Then extended support (security hotfixes free, other hotfixes chargable, bundled support incidents not valid) for at least 5 years from the end of mainstreams support.
They even give you two years to upgrade from one service pack to the next.
Compare that to the support lifecycles of most linux distros and see who comes out ahead.
how exactly are we supposed to pay? ;)
Through the nose
Seriously you buy a volume license and then buy the extended hotfix agreement through your volume license account. You also have to pay for the individual fixes on top of that. MS don't seem to show prices on thier website but I doubt it is cheap.
There is no easy, simple solution to GITMO.
mmm, even if someone was innocent and upstanding going in I certainly wouldn't trust them to remain so once they come out after what the US has put them through.
I see a few potential ways to close up gitmo, none good.
1: send the people to the US for trial
2: send the people to the countries they came from for trial
3: keep the people there until they die naturally
4: stage an accident that kills all the prisoners in the facility
5: pull out of gitmo, leave the prisoners behind and let the cubans sort it out.
1 and 2 have the risk of letting very dangerous people go loose because the evidence is in too fucked up a state to get a conviction. 3, 4 and 5 have obvious human rights issues.
Of course marketing through pirate software only helps if you can get the people to pay eventually.
Thats why theese companies tolerate piracy by individuals who aren't yet making any money out of them but form organisations like the BSA to scare companies out of running pirate software.
The others use 'encrypted' pdfs, which require at least Acrobat 5 or something, however they don't ask for any sort of decryption key, so I am confused as to how the encryption actually works.
A quick primer on pdf encyryption:
*pdfs can be encrypted with a variety of encryption algorithms, the algorithms range from resaonable to very strong.
*to decrypt the pdf one of two passwords is needed the "owner password" and the "user password", the user password is often blank allowing viewers to load the document without prompting for a password.
*if the "user password" is used to decrypt then the viewer is supposed to apply a set of restrictions set by the author. However there are tools out that that ignore this rule and let you do what you like with such a pdf.
What you have sounds like a pdf with an owner password but a blank user password (like many pdfs you find on the web). Basically a pdf with restrictions on how it can be used (that only some software will enforce) but no security against anyone who has the file reading it.
and in all original incarnations
5) Linux based
While the EEE 700 (which I consider the original netbook, I don't really consider the OLPC a netbook thuogh it does have similarities with them) did initially ship with linux ASUS included instructions for installing XP and later added 700 series models with XP as standard.
With the EEE 900 which afaict was the first series to be widely cloned windows XP was an option from the start.
P.S. even the high end netbooks don't have specs equivilent to a normal entry level laptop, the clock speed is slower (1.6GHz for the netbook vs 2.13GHz for the bottom end dell vostro 15 inch laptop and I belive the atom has poor performance per clock compared to the chips used in regular laptops) and the screen resolution is much lower (1024x600 for most high end netbooks vs 1366x768 for the bottom end vostro I mentioned)
and equally the people who bought with linux and installed XP later (most likely a pirate copy or at least a dubious* copy) will be counted as netbooks sold with linux.
*by dubious I mean stuff like using an upgrade copy even if you have nothing to upgrade from, using a system builder copy even though you aren't registered as a system builder, using a MSDN copy even though you don't play to use the machine purely for development, reusing an old copy that the license says is not transferable and similar.
The original specs couldn't run XP very well
Afaict the original EEE 700 was pretty poor whatever OS you used due to it's very small display and very small storage, very few others made netbooks that crappy though.
The EEE 900 (cheap old celeron CPU, 12G-20G flash, 9 inch 1024x600 display) runs XP ok. Installing software is a bit slow because of the slow write speed of the flash, the small vertical resoloution is annoying (but this also applies to most 10 inch netbooks) but other than that it's fine.
and it wasn't an option
XP home was still availible normally when the first netbooks came out. Indeed my brothers EEE 900 has a normal ASUS windows XP home license sticker not a ULCPC license sticker.
I beleive that loading linux on the intial models served two main purposes
1: get the price as low as possible
2: In light of the impending XP deadline make it clear to MS that they consider shipping with linux and letting customers pirate XP themselves to be a viable option.
Afaict "netbooks" currently serve two markets
1: cheap ultraportable laptops
2: portable internet terminals
The arm netbooks will probablly takeover the former leaving the wintel machines to keep the latter. Which will prove more popular remains to be seen.
I belive there are certain types of earthquake resistance measures that can be retrofitted to buildings (e.g. inserting isolation mounts into a buildings columns)
I see two main uses for knowing the time of an earthquake
1: natural gas (or other piped fuels) and electricity could be isolated in the run up to an earthquake, afaict damaged services are a major cause of fires in the aftermath of an earthquake.
2: you can evacuate people (either everyone in an area or just people in high risk structures) so that when buildings collapse they don't take people with them, you wouldn't nessacerally need to send them very far if you designated particular buildings that were known to have a high degree of earthquake resistance as "earthquake shelters"
Depends on your definition of debian, this is the first non-linux port to be accepted into the debian archive.
There have been unofficial ports before but afaict this is the first time one has been accepted into the debian archive.
2) You fail to mention that the scheme includes a process for those whose money has been taken to claim the money back. All it does it take the money out of the bank: the QUANGO that receives the money then has just as much obligation to return it to you as the bank does.
So what you are saying is it is yet another way for the government to hide public debt, probablly at considerably cost (see: pfi)
It is difficult to automate the log in and download process based on receipt of an email
Not to mention risky and probablly against the terms and conditions of your agreement with the bank since the autologin would have to have your login details.
Very little I imagine, someone else is likely to pick up the slack pretty quickly.
Then google comes along and finds that well targeted unobtrusive text adverts work well enough to support it's services and starts offering them as a service to other websites.
Excuse me now, I have to try to pry that RJ45 from a RJ11 jack.
If someone has really managed to get a RJ45 into a RJ11 jack I doubt the jack is still in a usable state anyway.
Another possibility would be if you want to test your software to see if it's likely to be portable, or if it contains hidden linuxisms
You would do much better with a real *bsd system for that. Debian gnu/kfreebsd will find linuxisms but it will not find gnuisms.
They may up the megahertz, but not at the expense of a more costly product or more power usage. Instead, the ARM chip vendors take a look at what needs the MHZ, such as video/audio decoding, and include special co-processors for those functions on the same silicon. Therefore they don't need to increase MHz for increased functionality.
Trouble is it means you need a specialised OS build to get the most out of the CPU.
For the netbook case this likely means that performace will be shit with anything other than the custom linux distro the vendor ships.
How long will the vendors keep up security updates etc for thier custom linux distros? my guess would be only a couple of years. What will the third party software support for the custom linux distros be like? my guess would be crap.
World population continues to grow, I see two outcomes of this
1: the tech level rises sufficiantly to both suppport the extra people and raise living standards to a level that turns arround the population growth.
2: the tech level does not rise sufficantly and huge numbers of people are killed off by famine/disease/war as a result of resource shortages